Peg O' My Heart Part 22

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 hara.s.sed 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sing 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, t.i.tian-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. Superst.i.tion 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 pa.s.sionately, "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."