When Tom boarded the tram for Rathfarnham, he did so with the intention to write an article on secondary education in Ireland with a certain focus on St. Enda's, which had distinguished itself from others of its kind as being an institution that instructed its students in Irish as well as English.
When he met Patrick Pearse, however, Tom felt his article shift its direction away from focusing on education to focusing on the man who met him in the thoughtfully furnished parlor.
At first, Tom wasn't sure what to make of the headmaster of St. Enda's. Both Tom and Pearse were of the same sturdy build, though Tom stood a few inches taller than the other. It wasn't until Pearse turned his head to see who had entered the parlor (his mother, Mrs. Margaret Pearse), and Tom saw the man in profile, that he felt something stir in his heart.
From their earlier conversation (and from asking around here and there), Tom had learned an interesting thing or two about the man now sitting before him. First, Pearse had joined the Gaelic League at sixteen years old and became the editor of its newspaper at twenty-three. Second, like every boy, Pearse had a few heroes. As a child, those heroes had been the likes of Cúchulainn and the Fianna, now, they were said to be Robert Emmet (who had been beheaded on the very grounds of the school) and Theobald Wolfe Tone. Third, Pearse was a notorious orator, as evidenced by his speech at Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa's funeral in 1915. No doubt that had brought him to the attention of the British administration in Dublin Castle, and if not…well they had another thing coming, even Tom saw that.
These were the facts, the thirty-something headmaster looking at him head-on, answering his questions as if he was used to it (which he probably was, now that Tom thought about it). That was Patrick Pearse who attended University College Dublin and enrolled as a Barrister-at-Law at the King's Inns. It was the Patrick Pearse made up of family members' names and addresses and degrees and silly little facts that someday would be forgotten entirely.
When the anthology of facts that bore the name Patrick Pearse turned his head, Tom saw what could not be captured in names, addresses, degrees—no amount of information could paint a portrait of this man.
That's what you came here to do, Tom realized, beginning to write everything down.
How Pearse looked in profile, how his heart quivered in the anticipation of something that Tom couldn't name (this would not make the article, but he would remember it as he wrote), and how Pearse seemed to wear the air about him as if he was born into it. Tom had to get it all down on paper before the moment passed and that perfect portrait of Patrick Pearse, headmaster, poet, lawyer, teacher, and perhaps Irish Republican, was lost forever.
A/N: So this was a short chapter, I know, but there is a method to my madness, I assure you (and we will be seeing Sybil next chapter, I think that's a safe promise for me to make).
I just wanted to give a quick sketch of Patrick Pearse because he and several others will be important in the later part of this fic, and it would be unfair to Pearse and the others if I waited until I get to the actual Rising to introduce them, seeing as they did actually have lives other than the Rising (I mean, I never learned that Pearse was a poet or a teacher...I thought Yeats just decided that it fit in with the meter of Easter 1916, which I highly recommend, by the way).
Anyways, that's all for now, maybe more this week, we'll see.
thank you so much and if you liked it, please feel free to leave a review, let me know what I am doing right, what you want more of, or where I can improve.
