And now Peg appears for the first time, and brings her radiant presence, her roguish smile, her big, frank, soulful, blue eyes, her dazzling red hair, her direct, honest and outspoken truth: her love of all that is clean and pure and beautiful—Peg enters our pages and turns what was a history of romance and drama into a Comedy, of Youth.
Peg—pure as a mountain lily, sweet as a fragrant rose, haunting as an old melody—Peg o' our Hearts comes into our story, even as she entered her father's life, as the Saviour of these pages, even as she was the means of saving O'Connell.
And she did save her father.
It was the presence and the thought of the little motherless baby that kept O'Connell's hand from destroying himself when his reason almost left him after his wife's death. The memories of the days immediately following the passing of Angela are too painful to dwell upon. They are past. They are sacred in O'Connell's heart. They will be to the historian. Thanks to some kindly Irishmen who heard of O'Connell's plight he borrowed enough money to bury his dead wife and place a tablet to her memory.
He sent a message to Kingsnorth telling him of his sister's death. He neither expected nor did he receive an answer.
As soon as it was possible he returned to Ireland and threw himself once again heart and soul into working for the "Cause." He realised his only hope of keeping his balance was to work. He went back to the little village he was born in and it was Father Cahill's hands that poured the baptismal waters on O'Connell's and Angela's baby and it was Father Cahill's voice that read the baptismal service.
She was christened Margaret.
Angela, one night, when it was nearing her time, begged him if it were a girl to christen her Margaret after her mother, since all the best in Angela came from her mother.
O'Connell would have liked to have named the mite "Angela." But his dead wife's wishes were paramount So Margaret the baby was christened. It was too distinguished a name and too long for such a little bundle of pink and white humanity. It did not seem to fit her. So, "Peg" she was named and "Peg" she remained for the rest of her life.
When she was old enough to go with him O'Connell took Peg everywhere. He seemed to bear a charmed life when she was with him.
Peg's earliest memories are of the village where she was baptised and where her father was born. Her little will was law to everyone who came in contact with her. She ruled her little court with a hand of iron.
Many were the dire predictions of the rod O'Connell was making for his own back in giving the little mite her own way in everything.
But O'Connell's only happiness was in Peg and he neither heard nor cared about any criticism that may have been levelled at him for his fond, and, perhaps, foolish care of her.
Looming large in Peg's memories in after life are her father showing her St. Kernan's Hill, and pointing out the mount on which he stood and spoke that day, whilst her mother, hidden by that dense mass of trees, saw every movement and heard every word. From there he took her to "The Gap" and pointed out the windows of the room in which he was nursed for those three blessed days.
It eased his mind to talk to the child of Angela and always he pictured her as the poet writes in verse of the passion of his life: as the painter puts on canvas the features that make life worth the living for him.
Those memories were very clear in little Peg's mind.
Then somehow her childish thoughts all seemed to run to Home Rule—to love of Ireland and hatred of England—to thinking all that was good of Irishmen and all that was bad of Englishmen.
"Why do yez hate the English so much, father?" she asked O'Connell once, looking up at him with a puzzled look in her big blue eyes, and the most adorable brogue coming fresh from her tongue.
"Why do yez hate them?" she repeated.
"I've good cause to, Peg me darlin'," he answered, and a deep frown gathered on his brow.
"Sure wasn't me mother English?" Peg asked.
"She was."
"Then WHY do yez hate the English?"
"It 'ud take a long time to tell ye that, Peggy. Some day I will. There's many a reason why the Irish hate the English, and many a good reason too. But there's one why you and I should hate them, and hate them with all the bittherness that's in us."
"And what is it?" said Peg curiously.
"I'll tell ye. When yer mother and I were almost starvin', and she lyin' on a bed of sickness, she wrote to an Englishman and asked him to assist her. An' this is the reply she got: 'Ye've made yer bed; lie in it.' That was the answer she got the day before you were born, and she died givin' ye life. And by the same token the man that wrote that shameful message to a dyin' woman was her own brother."
"Her own brother, yer tellin' me?" asked Peg wrathfully.
"I am, Peg. Her own brother, I'm tellin' ye."
"It's bad luck that man'll have all his life!" said Peg fiercely. "To write me mother that—and she dyin'! Faith I'd like to see him some day—just meet him—and tell him—" she stopped, her little fingers clenched into a miniature fist. The hot colour was in her cheeks and she stamped her small foot in actual rage. "I'd like to meet him some day," she muttered.
"I hope ye never will, Peg," said her father solemnly. "And," he added, "don't let us ever talk of it again, me darlin'!"
And she never did. But she often thought of the incident and the memory of that brutal message was stamped vividly on her little brain.
The greatest excitements of her young life were going with her father to hear him speak. She made the most extraordinary collection of scraps of the speeches she had heard her father make for Home Rule. While he would be speaking she would listen intently, her lips apart, her little body tense with excitement, her little heart beating like a trip-hammer.
When they applauded him she would laugh gleefully and clap her little hands together: if they interrupted him she would turn savagely upon them. She became known all over the countryside as "O'Connell's Peg."
"Sure O'Connell's not the same man at all, at all, since he came back with that little bit of a red-headed child," said a man to Father Cahill one day.
"God is good, Flaherty," replied the priest. "He sent O'Connell a baby to take him up nearer to Himself. Ye're right. He's NOT the same man. It's the good Catholic he is again as he was as a boy. An' it's I'm thankful for that same."
Father Cahill smiled happily. He was much older, but though the figure was a little bent and the hair thinner, and the remainder of it snow-white, the same sturdy spirit was in the old man.
"They're like boy and girl together, that's what they are," said Flaherty with a tone of regret in his voice. "He seems as much of a child as she is when he's with her," he added.
"Every good man has somethin' of the child left in him, me son. O'Connell was goin' in the way of darkness until a woman's hand guided him and gave him that little baby to hold on to his heart strings."
"Sure Peg's the light o' his life, that's what she is," grumbled Flaherty. "It's small chance we ever have of broken heads an' soldiers firin' on us, an' all, through O'Connell, since that child's laid hands on him." Flaherty sighed. "Them was grand days and all," he said.
"They were wicked days, Flaherty," said the priest severely; "and it's surprised I am that a God-fearin' man like yerself should wish them back."
"There are times when I do, Father, the Lord forgive me. A fight lets the bad blood out of ye. Sure it was a pike or a gun O'Connell 'ud shouldher in the ould days, and no one to say him nay, and we all following him like the Colonel of a regiment—an' proud to do it, too. But now it's only the soft words we get from him."
"A child's hand shall guide," said the priest. Then he added:
"It has guided him. Whenever ye get them wicked thoughts about shouldherin' a gun and flashin' a pike, come round to confession, Flaherty, and it's the good penance I'll give ye to dhrive the devil's temptation away from ye."
"I will that, Father Cahill," said Flaherty, hurriedly, and the men went their different ways.
O'Connell did everything for Peg since she was an infant. His were the only hands to tend the little body, to wash her and dress her, and tie up her little shoe-laces, and sit beside her in her childish sicknesses. He taught her to read and to write and to pray. As she grew bigger he taught her the little he knew of music and the great deal he knew of poetry. He instilled a love of verse into her little mind. He never tired of reading her Tom Moore and teaching her his melodies. He would make her learn them and she would stand up solemnly and recite or sing them, her quaint little brogue giving them an added music. O'Connell and Peg were inseparable.
One wonderful year came to Peg when she was about fourteen.
O'Connell had become recognised as a masterly exponent of the particular form of Land Act that would most benefit Ireland.
It was proposed that he should lecture right through the country, wherever they would let him, and awaken amongst the more violent Irish, the recognition that legislative means were surer of securing the end in view, than the more violent ones of fifteen years before.
The brutality of the Coercion Act had been moderated and already the agricultural and dairy produce of the country had developed so remarkably that the terrible misery of by-gone days, when the potato-crop would fail, had been practically eliminated, or at least in many districts mitigated.
O'Connell accepted the proposition.
Through the country he went speaking in every village he passed through, and sometimes giving several lectures in the big cities. His mode of travelling was in a cart. He would speak from the back of it, Peg sitting at his feet, now watching him, again looking eagerly and intently at the strange faces before her.
They were marvellous days, travelling, sometimes, under a golden sun through the glistening fields: or pushing on at night under a great green-and-white moon. Peg would sit beside her father as he drove and he would tell her little folk-stories, or sing wild snatches of songs of the days of the Rebellion; or quote lines ringing with the great Irish confidence in the triumph of Justice:
"Lo the path we tread
By our martyred dead
Has been trodden 'mid bane and blessing,
But unconquered still
Is the steadfast will
And the faith they died confessing."
Or at night he would croon from Moore:
"When the drowsy world is dreaming, love,
Then awake—the heavens look bright, my dear,
'Tis never too late for delight, my dear,
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!"
When storms would come she would cower down in the bottom of the cart and cry and pray. Storms terrified her. It seemed as if all the anger of the heavens were levelled at her. She would cry and moan pitifully whilst O'Connell would try to soothe her and tell her that neither God nor man would harm her—no one would touch his "Peg o' my Heart."
After one of those scenes he would sit and brood. Angela had always been afraid of storms, and in the child's terror his beloved wife would rise up before him and the big tears would drop silently down his cheeks.
Peg crept out once when the storm had cleared and the sky was bright with stars. Her father did not hear her. His thoughts were bridging over the years and once more Angela was beside him.
Peg touched him timidly and peered up into his face. She thought his cheeks were wet. But that could not be. She had never seen her father cry.
"What are ye thinkin' about, father?" she whispered. His voice broke. He did not want her to see his emotion. He answered with a half-laugh, half-sob:
"Thinkin' about, is it? It's ashamed I am of ye to be frightened by a few little flashes of lightnin' and the beautiful, grand thundher that always kapes it company. It's ashamed I am of ye—that's what I am!" He spoke almost roughly to hide his emotion and he furtively wiped the tears from his face so that she should not see them.
"It's not the lightnin' I'm afraid of, father," said Peg solemnly. "It's the thundher. It shrivels me up, that's what it does."
"The thundher, is it? Sure that's only the bluff the storm puts up when the rale harm is done by the lightnin's flash. There is no harm in the thundher at all. And remember, after all, it's the will of God."
Peg thought a moment:
"It always sounds just as if He were lookin' down at us and firin' off cannons at us because He's angry with us."
O'Connell said nothing. Presently he felt her small hand creep into his:
"Father," said Peg; "are yez ralely ashamed of me when I'm frightened like that?"
O'Connell was afraid to unbend lest he broke down altogether. So he continued in a voice of mock severity:
"I am that—when ye cry and moan about what God has been good enough to send us."
"Is it a coward I am for bein' afraid, father?" said Peg, her lips quivering.
"That's what ye are, Peg," replied O'Connell with Spartan severity.
"Then I'll never be one again, father! Never again," and her eyes filled up.
He suddenly took her in his arms and pressed her to him and rocked her as though she were still a baby, and his voice trembled and was full of pity as he said:
"Ye can't help it, acushla. Ye can't help it. Ye're NOT a coward, my own brave little Peg. It's yer mother in ye. She could never bear a thunder-storm without fear, and she was the bravest woman that ever lived Bad luck to me for sayin' a cross word to ye."
Suddenly poor little Peg burst out crying and buried her face on her father's breast and sobbed and sobbed as though her heart would break.
"Ssh! Ssh! There—there, me darlin'," cried O'Connell, now thoroughly alarmed at the depth of feeling the child had loosened from her pent-up emotion, "ye mustn't cry—ye mustn't. See it's laughin' I am! Laughin', that's what I'm doin'."
And he laughed loudly while his heart ached, and he told her stories until she forgot her tears and laughed too. And that night as he watched her fall off to sleep he knelt down in the straw and prayed:
"Oh, kape her always like she is now—always just a sweet, innocent, pure little creature. Kape the mother in her always, dear Lord, so that she may grow in Your likeness and join my poor, dear Angela in the end. Amen."
Those were indeed glorious days for Peg. She never forgot them in after life.
Waking in the freshness of the early morning, making their frugal breakfast, feeding the faithful old horse and then starting off through the emerald green for another new and wonderful day, to spread the light of the "Cause."
O'Connell had changed very much since the days of St. Kernan's Hill. As was foreshadowed earlier, he no longer urged violence. He had come under the influence of the more temperate men of the party, and was content to win by legislative means, what Ireland had failed to accomplish wholly by conflict. Although no one recognised more thoroughly than O'Connell what a large part the determined attitude of the Irish party, in resisting the English laws, depriving them of the right of free speech, and of meeting to spread light amongst the ignorant, had played in wringing some measure of recognition and of tolerance from the bitter narrowness of the English ministers.
What changed O'Connell more particularly was the action of a band of so-called "Patriots" who operated in many parts of Ireland—maiming cattle, ruining crops, injuring peaceable farmers, who did not do their bidding and shooting at landlords and prominent people connected with the government.
Crime is not a means to honourable victory and O'Connell was ashamed of the miscreants who blackened the fair name of his country by their ruthless and despicable methods.
He avoided the possibility of imprisonment again for the sake of Peg. What would befall her if he were taken from her?
The continual thought that preyed upon him was that he would have nothing to leave her when his call came. Do what he would he could make but little money—and when he had a small surplus he would spend it on Peg—a shawl to keep her warm, or a ribbon to give a gleam of colour to the drab little clothes.
On great occasions he would buy her a new dress, and then Peg was the proudest little child in the whole of Ireland.
Every year, on the anniversary of her mother's death, O'Connell had a Mass said for the repose of Angela's soul, and he would kneel beside Peg through the service, and be silent for the rest of the day. One year he had candles, blessed by the Archbishop, lit on our Lady's altar and he stayed long after the service was over. He sent Peg home. But, although Peg obeyed him, partially, by leaving the church, she kept watch outside until her father came out. He was wiping his eyes as he saw her. He pretended to be very angry.
"Didn't I tell ye to go home?"
"Ye did, father."
"Then why didn't ye obey me?"
"Sure an' what would I be doin' at home, all alone, without you? Don't be cross with me, father."
He took her hand and they walked home in silence. He had been crying and Peg could not understand it. She had never seen him do such a thing before and it worried her. It did not seem right that a MAN should cry. It seemed a weakness—and that her father, of all men, should do it—he who was not afraid of anything nor anyone—it was wholly unaccountable to her.
When they reached home Peg busied herself about her father, trying to make him comfortable, furtively watching him all the while. When she had put him in an easy chair, and brought him his slippers, and built up the fire, she sat down on a little stool by his side. After a long silence she stroked the back of his hand and then gave him a little tug. He looked down at her.
"What is it, Peg?"
"Was my mother very beautiful, father?"
"The most beautiful woman that ever lived in all the wurrld, Peg."
"She looks beautiful in the picture ye have of her."
From the inside pocket of his coat he drew out a little beautifully-painted miniature. The frame had long since been worn and frayed. O'Connell looked at the face and his eyes shone:
"The man that painted it couldn't put the soul of her into it. That he couldn't. Not the soul of her."
"Am I like her, at all, father?" asked Peg wistfully.
"Sometimes ye are, dear: very like."
After a little pause Peg said:
"Ye loved her very much, father, didn't ye?"
He nodded. "I loved her with all the heart of me and all the strength of me."
Peg sat quiet for some minutes: then she asked him a question very quietly and hung in suspense on his answer:
"Do ye love me as much as ye loved her, father?"
"It's different, Peg—quite, quite different."
"Why is it?" She waited He did not answer.
"Sure, love is love whether ye feel it for a woman or a child," she persisted.
O'Connell remained silent.
"Did ye love her betther than ye love me, father?"
Her soul was in her great blue eyes as she waited excitedly for the answer to that, to her, momentous question.
"Why do ye ask me that?" said O'Connell.
"Because I always feel a little sharp pain right through my heart whenever ye talk about me mother. Ye see, father, I've thought all these years that I was the one ye really loved—"
"Ye're the only one I have in the wurrld, Peg."
"And ye don't love her memory betther than ye do me?"
O'Connell put both of his arms around her.
"Yer mother is with the Saints, Peg, and here are you by me side. Sure there's room in me heart for the memory of her and the love of you."
She breathed a little sigh of satisfaction and nestled onto her father's shoulder. The little fit of childish jealousy of her dead mother's place in her father's heart passed.
She wanted no one to share her father's affection with her. She gave him all of hers. She needed all of his.
When Peg was eighteen years old and they were living in Dublin, O'Connell was offered quite a good position in New York. It appealed to him. The additional money would make things easier for Peg. She was almost a woman now, and he wanted her to get the finishing touches of education that would prepare her for a position in the world if she met the man she felt she could marry. Whenever he would speak of marriage Peg would laugh scornfully:
"Who would I be of AFTHER marryin' I'd like to know? Where in the wurrld would I find a man like you?"
And no coaxing would make her carry on the discussion or consider its possibility.
It still harassed him to think he had so little to leave her if anything happened to him. The offer to go to America seemed providential. Her mother was buried there. He would take Peg to her grave.
Peg grew very thoughtful at the idea of leaving Ireland. All her little likes and dislikes—her impulsive affections and hot hatreds were all bound up in that country. She dreaded the prospect of meeting a number of new people.
Still it was for her father's good, so she turned a brave face to it and said:
"Sure it is the finest thing in the wurrld for both of us."
But the night before they left Ireland she sat by the little window in her bed-room until daylight looking back through all the years of her short life.
It seemed as if she were cutting off all that beautiful golden period. She would never again know the free, careless, happy-go-lucky, living-from-day-to-day existence, that she had loved so much.
It was a pale, wistful, tired little Peg that joined her father at breakfast next morning.
His heart was heavy, too. But he laughed and joked and sang and said how glad they ought to be—going to that wonderful new country, and by the way the country Peg was born in, too! And then he laughed again and said how FINE SHE looked and how WELL HE felt and that it seemed as if it were God's hand in it all. And Peg pretended to cheer up, and they acted their parts right to the end—until the last line of land disappeared and they were headed for America. Then they separated and went to their little cabins to think of all that had been. And every day they kept up the little deception with each other until they reached America.
They were cheerless days at first for O'Connell. Everything reminded him of his first landing twenty years before with his young wife—both so full of hope, with the future stretching out like some wonderful panorama before them. He returns twenty years older to begin the fight again—this time for his daughter.
His wife was buried at a little Catholic cemetery a few miles outside New York City. There he took Peg one day and they put flowers on the little mound of earth and knelt awhile in prayer. Beneath that earth lay not only his wife's remains, but O'Connell's early hopes and ambitions were buried with her.
Neither spoke either going to or returning from the cemetery. O'Connell's heart was too full. Peg knew what was passing through his mind and sat with her hands folded in her lap—silent. But her little brain was busy thinking back.
Peg had much to think of during the early days following her arrival in New York. At first the city awed her with its huge buildings and ceaseless whirl of activity and noise. She longed to be back in her own little green, beautiful country.
O'Connell was away during those first days until late apt night.
He found a school for Peg. She did not want to go to it, but just to please her father she agreed. She lasted in it just one week. They laughed at her brogue and teased and tormented her for her absolute lack of knowledge. Peg put up with that just as long as she could. Then one day she opened out on them and astonished them. They could not have been more amazed had a bomb exploded in their midst. The little, timid-looking, open-eyed, Titian-haired girl was a veritable virago. She attacked and belittled, and mimicked and berated them. They had talked of her BROGUE! They should listen to their own nasal utterances, that sounded as if they were speaking with their noses and not with their tongues! Even the teacher did not go unscathed. She came in for an onslaught, too. That closed Peg's career as a New York student.
Her father arranged his work so that he could be with her at certain periods of the day, and outlined her studies from his own slender stock of knowledge. He even hired a little piano for her and followed up what he had begun years before in Ireland—imbuing her with a thorough acquaintance with Moore and his delightful melodies.
One wonderful day they had an addition to their small family. A little, wiry-haired, scrubby, melancholy Irish terrier followed O'Connell for miles. He tried to drive him away. The dog would turn and run for a few seconds and the moment O'Connell would take his eyes off him he would run along and catch him up and wag his over-long tail and look up at O'Connell with his sad eyes. The dog followed him all the way home and when O'Connell opened the door he ran in. O'Connell Had not the heart to turn him out, so he poured out some milk and broke up some dry biscuits for him and then played with him until Peg came home. She liked the little dog at once and then and there O'Connell adopted him and gave him to Peg. He said the dog's face had a look of Michael Quinlan, the Fenian. So "Michael" he was named and he took his place in the little home. He became Peg's boon companion. They romped together like children, and they talked to each other and understood each other. "Michael" had an eloquent tail, an expressive bark and a pair of eyes that told more than speech.
The days flowed quietly on, O'Connell apparently satisfied with his lot. But to Peg's sharp eye all was not well with him. There was a settled melancholy about him whenever she surprised him thinking alone. She thought he was fretting for Ireland and their happy days together and so said nothing.
He was really worrying over Peg's future. He had such a small amount of money put by, and working on a salary it would be long before he could save enough to leave Peg sufficient to carry her on for a while if "anything happened." There was always that "if anything happened!" running in his mind.
One day the chance of solving the whole difficulty of Peg's future was placed in his hands. But the means were so distasteful to him that he hesitated about even telling her.
He came in unexpectedly in the early afternoon of that day and found a letter waiting for him with an English postmark. Peg had eyed it curiously off and on for hours. She had turned it over and over in her fingers and looked at the curious, angular writing, and felt a little cold shiver run up and down her as she found herself wondering who could be writing to her father from England.
When O'Connell walked in and picked the letter up she watched him excitedly. She felt, for some strange reason, that they were going to reach a crisis in their lives when the seal was broken and the contents disclosed. Superstition was strong—in Peg, and all that day she had been nervous without reason, and excited without cause.
O'Connell read the letter through twice—slowly the first time, quickly the second. A look of bewilderment came across his face as he sat down and stared at the letter in his hand.
"Who is it from, at all?" asked Peg very quietly, though she was trembling all through her body.
Her father said nothing.
Presently he read it through again.
"It's from England, father, isn't it?" queried Peg, pale as a ghost.
"Yes, Peg," answered her father and his voice sounded hollow and spiritless.
"I didn't know ye had friends in England?" said Peg, eyeing the letter.
"I haven't," replied her father.
"Then who is it from?" insisted Peg, now all impatience and with a strange fear tugging at her heart.
O'Connell looked up at her as she stood there staring down at him, her big eyes wide open and her lips parted. He took both of her hands in one of his and held them all crushed together for what seemed to Peg to be a long, long while. She hardly breathed. She knew something was going to happen to them both.
At last O'Connell spoke and his voice trembled and broke:
"Peg, do ye remember one mornin', years and years ago, when I was goin' to speak in County Mayo, an' we started in the cart at dawn, an' we thravelled for miles and miles an' we came to a great big crossing where the roads divided an' there was no sign post an' we asked each other which one we should take an' we couldn't make up our minds an' I left it to you an' ye picked a road an' it brought us out safe and thrue at the spot we were making for? Do you remember it, Peg?"
"Faith I do, father. I remember it well. Ye called me yer little guide and said ye'd follow my road the rest of yer life. An' it's many's the laugh we had when I'd take ye wrong sometimes afterwards." She paused. "What makes ye think of that just now, father?"
He did not answer.
"Is it on account o' that letther?" she persisted.
"It is, Peg." He spoke with difficulty as if the words hurt him to speak. "We've got to a great big crossin'-place again where the roads branch off an' I don't know which one to take."
"Are ye goin' to lave it to me again, father?" said Peg.
"That's what I can't make up me mind about, dear—for it may be that ye'll go down one road and me down the other."
"No, father," Peg cried passionately, "that we won't. Whatever the road we'll thravel it together."
"I'll think it out by meself, Peg. Lave me for a while—alone. I want to think it out by meself—alone."
"If it's separation ye're thinkin' of, make up yer mind to one thing—that I'LL never lave YOU. Never."
"Take 'MICHAEL' out for a spell and come back in half an hour and in the meanwhile I'll bate it all out in me mind."
She bent down and straightened the furrows in his forehead with the tips of her fingers, and kissed him and then whistled to the wistful "MICHAEL" and together they went running down the street toward the little patch of green where the children played, and amongst whom "MICHAEL" was a prime favourite.
Sitting, his head in his hands, his eyes staring into the past, O'Connell was facing the second great tragedy of his life.
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