A Passionate Girl Read Online Free Page A

then. I’ve got it in my inside, all through me, and it comes out and in like breathing.”
    A tremendous bolt of lightning split the sky above the lake, and a crash of thunder followed it. “You can breathe in the house as well as out,” Mary said. “Come on or I’ll lambaste you one like I used to do when we were little.”
    â€œI’ll submit to your pedestrian spirit,” I said, holding out my arms to her. “Place the manacles upon my wrists and lead me to your dungeon vile. Tomorrow or the next day, Donal Ogue will come to liberate me.”
    Mockingly I chanted another verse from the poem:
    â€œI saw him first on a Sunday evening
    Before the Easter and I was kneeling
    â€™Twas about Christ’s passion that I was reading
    But my eyes were on him and my own heart bleeding.”
    â€œThat is the worst yet,” Mary said. “Pure blasphemy. Pride rules your will, Bess.”
    Mary fled back into the house, abandoning me to Lord Desmond or pneumonia. By now the rain was starting to splash down in a torrent. I followed her into the parlor and felt contrite. Mother bustled in the kitchen, and Father read his paper by the oil lamp. I dried my hair and offered Mary a game of dominoes. We matched pieces while the storm beat on the roof and windows of our sturdy house. Hearing the wind howl, Peggy, the thin maid, wondered if it was the dwarf, Fer Fi, who haunts the lake, playing his magic music on his three-stringed harp. “Let’s hope it’s gentraighe, ” I said, using the Irish word for “laughter music.” Fer Fi only played three tunes, ceolsidhe, wail music for mourning, suantraighe, sleep music for dreamers, and laughter music.
    The door burst open and Michael reeled into the room, soaked by the storm, his boots streaming, his black hair in a wild tangle. “Father,” he said. “You must help us. I have a man with me from America—”
    The man himself stood in the doorway. He had the ripest curl to his smile and the whitest teeth and hair of the softest golden-yellow amber and the most reckless gray eyes I had ever seen. He stood well over six feet and carried himself like a soldier, his back straight and his shoulders squared.
    â€œDan McCaffrey,” he said.
    He wore expensive clothes, a stone-gray cloth-lined raglan coat and a dark gray suit that fit him beautifully. He closed the door against the storm and stood there while Michael told Father what had happened. McCaffrey was a major in the Fenian army in America. He had come to Ireland to help organize a rising. They had called a meeting of the Fenian circle, as their groups were called, in the cellar of a pub in Limerick. Only thirty men came, though a hundred had taken the oath. As they talked, a pounding of feet was heard outside, and the Peelers—the Royal Irish Constabulary—burst in through doors and windows. Someone had turned informer. McCaffrey had seized Michael’s gun—the only weapon the circle owned—and cut down the first man who came at him, then drew a pistol and fought his way to the stairs, with Michael on his heels using the old hunting gun like a club. Only a few followed them; most of the circle were now captives.
    Father groaned aloud and held his head in his hands. “Michael, Michael, you’ve ruined us,” he said.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Michael said. “This has nothing to do with you.”
    â€œWe need horses, Mr. Fitzmaurice,” McCaffrey said. “There’ll be a boat in Bantry Bay in five days to take me back to America. I’ll take Michael with me.”
    I listened, fascinated. It was the first time I ever had heard an American talk. It sounded utterly strange. He said “hosses” and “Baantry Baay.”
    â€œTake him with you?” Father said bitterly. “Just like that? Take a man’s only son, and leave him in his old age with a wife and daughters to support and no