Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1915 — PEG O' MY HEART [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PEG O' MY HEART

By J. Hartley Manners

A. Comedy of Youth Founded by Mr. Manners on His Great Play of the Same Title—lllustrations From Photographs of the Play Copyright, 1913, by Dodd. Mead £r* Company

SYNOPSIS.

Frank O’Connell, young Irish patriot, Is shot and wounded by British soldiers while making a home rule speech. H« Is aided by Angela Kingsnorth. an English society girl, who defends him. Angela takes O’Connell to her brother’s home and helps to nurse him. He recovers, and he and the girl become fast friends. O’Connell when well is sent to Jail for disturbing the peace. He finally writes Angela that he has finished his sentence. O'Connell and Angela wed. She has espoused the Irish cause. Her brother, a member of parliament, is very angry. The happy couple come to America to live. A daughter is born to them. Angela’s brother refuses to help the couple in any way Angela dies. O’Connell names his daughter Margaret and calls her "Peg.” O’Connell receives a most important letter from England, which perplexes him. CHAPTER VIII. For 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 recognized more thoroughly than O'Connell what a large part the determined attitude of the Irish party in resisting the English jaws, depriving them of the right of free speech and of meeting to spread light among the ignorant, had played in wringing some measure of recognition and of tolerance from 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. 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 color 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 Lbe 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 or any one, 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 ana built up the firb 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 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:

rr 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,” sho 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 on to. 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: “Y\ ho would I be 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 leavin# Ireland. All her little likes and dislikes, her impulsive affections and hot hatred, were 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 bedroom 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 agaiii-this time for his daughter. His wife was buried in 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 ojnJx his wife’s remains, but O’Con-

nell’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. Teg 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 at night. lit- found a sehbol for Peg. She did not want to go to it. but just to please her father she agreed. She lasted in it j ust 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 he with her at certain periods of the day and outlined her studies from his own slender stock of knowledge. One wonderful day they had an addition to their small family. A little, wiry haired, scrubby, melancholy Irish terrier followed < O’Connell for miles. lly 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 be would run along and catch him up and wag his overlong 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 be 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. 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 eon kl save enough to leave Peg sufficient to carry her on for awhile if "anything happened.” There was always that “if anything happened” running in his mind. (TO BE CONTINUED.)