Peg O' My Heart Part 19

CHAPTER III

THE BIRTH OF PEG

Toward morning the doctor placed a little mite of humanity in O'Connell's arms. He looked down at it in a stupor. It had really come to pa.s.s. Their child--Angela's and his! A little baby-girl. The tiny wail from this child, born of love and in sorrow, seemed to waken his dull senses. He pressed the mite to him as the hot tears flowed down his cheeks. A woman in one of the adjoining flats who had kindly offered to help took the child away from him. The doctor led him to the bedside. He looked down at his loved one. A glaze was over Angela's eyes as she looked up at him. She tried to smile. All her suffering was forgotten. She knew only pride and love. She was at peace. She raised her hand, thin and transparent now, to O'Connell. He pressed it to his lips.

She whispered:

"My baby. Bring me--my baby."

He took it from the woman and placed it in Angela's weak arms. She kissed it again and again. The child wailed pitifully. The effort had been too much for Angela's failing strength. Consciousness left her.

Just before sunrise she woke. O'Connell was sitting beside her. He had never moved. The infant was sleeping on some blankets on the couch--the woman watching her.

Angela motioned her husband to bend near to her. Her eyes shone with unearthly brightness. He put his ear near her lips. Her voice was very, very faint.

"Take--care--of--our--baby--Frank. I'm--I'm--leaving you.

G.o.d--help--you--and--keep--you--and bless you--for--your--love--of me."

She paused to take breath--then she whispered her leave-taking. The words never left O'Connell's memory for all the days of all the years that followed.

"My--last--words--dear--the--last--I'll--ever--speak--to--you.

I--I--love--you--with--all--my heart--and--my soul--HUSBAND!

Good--good-bye--Frank." She slipped from his arms and lay, lips parted, eyes open, body still.

The struggle was over. She had gone where there are no petty treacheries, no mean brutalities--where all stand alike before the Throne to render an account of their stewards.h.i.+p.

The brave, gentle little heart was stilled forever.

BOOK III

PEG

CHAPTER I

PEG'S CHILDHOOD

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 pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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.