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J. Hartley Manners >> Peg O\' My Heart
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21 This etext was produced by Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Peg O' My Heart
by J. Hartley Manners
To
"LAURIE"
"--in that which no waters can quench,
No time forget, nor distance wear away."
PREFACE
Up to the time of publication, December 1922, "Peg o' My Heart" has
been played as a comedy in English in the United States and Canada
in excess of 8000 times, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland in excess of 6000 times, in India 65 times, in the Orient 20
times, in Holland 152 times, and in Scandinavia 23 times. Australia
and New Zealand have seen 701 performances while South Africa has
witnessed 229.
Three companies are playing in France where the total performances
exceed 500, the Belgian figures are not yet available, Spain has two
companies, and Italy five, the total figures for these three
countries last-named running well over a thousand performances. In
France and Belgium "Peg de Mon Coeur" is the title for the French
language version, in Italy "Peg del Mio Cuore" is the name of the
Italian "Peg", while her Spanish admirers and translators have named
her "Rirri."
Over 194,000 copies of the novel have been sold in the United
States, while the British Empire has bought 51,600 in novel form. In
play form 3000 copies have been sold to date. The new film "Peg o'
My Heart" in nine reels is being distributed throughout the entire
world, and while innumerable companies are playing the comedy
throughout the United States, Canada and the British Empire, an
internationally-known composer, Dr. Hugo Felix, is at work upon the
score of a "Peg" operetta in collaboration with its author, so that
the young lady may continue her career in musical form.
The present work is submitted in its original form with the addition
of illustrations taken from the film recently made, through the
courtesy of the Metro Pictures Corporation, for which acknowledgment
is gratefully made.
It is believed that these statistics are unique in theatrical and
publishing history for it will now be possible in any large city to
read or witness "Peg o' My Heart" in the five phases of her career
to date, viz., novel, printed play, acted comedy, photo play and
operetta.
J. Hartley Manners.
The Lotes Club, New York City,
December, 1922.
CONTENTS
BOOK THE FIRST
The Romance of an Irish Agitator and an
English Lady of Quality
I The Irish Agitator Makes His First Appearance
II The Panorama of a Lost Youth
III St. Kernan's Hill
IV Nathaniel Kingsnorth Visits Ireland
V Angela
VI Angela Speaks Her Mind Freely to Nathaniel
VII The Wounded Patriot
VIII Angela in Sore Distress
IX Two Letters
X O'Connell Visits Angela in London
XI Kingsnorth's Despair
XII Looking Forward
BOOK THE SECOND
The End of the Romance
I Angela's Confession
II A Communication from Nathaniel Kingsnorth
III The Birth of Peg
BOOK THE THIRD
Peg
I Peg's Childhood
II We Meet an Old Friend After Many Years
III Peg Leaves Her Father for the First Time
BOOK THE FOURTH
Peg in England
I The Chichester Family
II Christian Brent
III Peg Arrives in England
IV The Chichester Family Receive a Second Shock
V Peg Meets Her Aunt
VI Jerry
VII The Passing of the First Month
VIII The Temple of Friendship
IX The Dance and its Sequel
X Peg Intervenes
XI "The Rebellion of Peg"
XII A Room in New York
XIII The Morning After
XIV Alaric to the Rescue
XV Montgomery Hawkes
XVI The Chief Executor Appears on the Scene
XVII Peg Learns of Her Uncle's Legacy
XVIII Peg's Farewell to England
BOOK THE FIFTH
Peg Returns to Her Father
I After Many Days
II Looking Backward
III An Unexpected Visitor
Afterword
CHAPTER I
THE IRISH AGITATOR MAKES HIS FIRST APPEARANCE
"Faith, there's no man says more and knows less than yerself, I'm
thinkin'."
"About Ireland, yer riverence?"
"And everything else, Mr. O'Connell."
"Is that criticism or just temper, Father?"
"It's both, Mr. O'Connell."
"Sure it's the good judge ye must be of ignorance, Father Cahill."
"And what might that mane?"
"Ye live so much with it, Father."
"I'm lookin' at it and listenin' to it now, Frank O'Connell."
"Then it's a miracle has happened, Father."
"A miracle?"
"To see and hear one's self at the same time is indade a miracle,
yer riverence."
Father Cahill tightened his grasp on his blackthorn stick, and
shaking it in the other's face, said:
"Don't provoke the Man of God!"
"Not for the wurrld," replied the other meekly, "bein' mesef a Child
of Satan."
"And that's what ye are. And ye'd have others like yerself. But ye
won't while I've a tongue in me head and a sthrong stick in me
hand."
O'Connell looked at him with a mischievous twinkle in his blue-grey
eyes:
"Yer eloquence seems to nade somethin' to back it up, I'm thinkin'."
Father Cahill breathed hard. He was a splendid type of the Irish
Parish-Priest of the old school. Gifted with a vivid power of
eloquence as a preacher, and a heart as tender as a woman's toward
the poor and the wretched, he had been for many years idolised by
the whole community of the village of M--in County Clare. But of
late there was a growing feeling of discontent among the younger
generation. They lacked the respect their elders so willingly gave.
They asked questions instead of answering them. They began to throw
themselves, against Father Cahill's express wishes and commands,
into the fight for Home Rule under the masterly statesmanship of
Charles Stuart Parnell. Already more than one prominent speaker had
come into the little village and sown the seeds of temporal and
spiritual unrest. Father Cahill opposed these men to the utmost of
his power. He saw, as so many far-sighted priests did, the legacy of
bloodshed and desolation that would follow any direct action by the
Irish against the British Government. Though the blood of the
patriot beat in Father Cahill's veins, the well-being of the people
who had grown up with him was near to his heart. He was their Priest
and he could not bear to think of men he had known as children being
beaten and maimed by constabulary, and sent to prison afterwards, in
the, apparently, vain fight for self-government.
To his horror that day he met Frank Owen O'Connell, one of the most
notorious of all the younger agitators, in the main street of the
little village.
O'Connell's back sliding had been one of Father Cahill's bitterest
regrets. He had closed O'Connell's father's eyes in death and had
taken care of the boy as well as he could. But at the age of fifteen
the youth left the village, that had so many wretched memories of
hardship and struggle, and worked his way to Dublin. It was many
years before Father Cahill heard of him again. He had developed
meanwhile into one of the most daring of all the fervid speakers in
the sacred Cause of Liberty. Many were the stories told of his
narrow escapes from death and imprisonment. He always had the people
on his side, and once away from the hunt, he would hide in caves, or
in mountains, until the hue and cry was over, and then appear in
some totally unexpected town and call on the people to act in the
name of Freedom.
And that was exactly what happened on this particular day. He had
suddenly appeared in the town he was born in and called a meeting on
St. Kernan's Hill that afternoon.
It was this meeting Father Cahill was determined to stop by every
means in his power.
He could hardly believe that this tall, bronzed, powerful young man
was the Frank O'Connell he had watched about the village, as a boy--
pale, dejected, and with but little of the fire of life in him. Now
as he stood before Father Cahill and looked him straight through
with his piercing eye, shoulders thrown back, and head held high, he
looked every inch a born leader of men, and just for a moment the
priest quailed. But only for a moment.
"Not a member of my flock will attend yer meetin' to-day. Not a door
will open this day. Ye can face the constabulary yerself and the few
of the rabble that'll follow ye. But none of my God-fearin' people
will risk their lives and their liberty to listen to you."
O'Connell looked at him strangely. A far-away glint came into his
eye, and the suspicion of a tear, as he answered:
"Sure it's precious little they'd be riskin', Father Cahill; havin'
NO liberty and their lives bein' of little account to them."
O'Connell sighed as the thought of his fifteen years of withered
youth in that poor little village came up before him.
"Let my people alone, I tell ye!" cried the priest. "It's contented
they've been until the likes of you came amongst us."
"Then they must have been easily satisfied," retorted O'Connell, "to
judge by their poor little homes and their drab little lives."
"A hovel may be a palace if the Divine Word is in it," said the
priest.
"Sure it's that kind of tachin' keeps Ireland the mockery of the
whole world. The Divine Word should bring Light. It's only darkness
I find in this village," argued O'Connell.
"I've given my life to spreadin' the Light!" said the priest.
A smile hovered on O'Connell's lips as he muttered:
"Faith, then, I'm thinkin' it must be a DARK-LANTERN yer usin', yer
riverence."
"Is that the son of Michael O'Connell talkin'?"
Suddenly the smile left O'Connell's lips, the sneer died on his
tongue, and with a flash of power that turned to white heat before
he finished, he attacked the priest with:
"Yes, it is! It is the son of Michael O'Connell who died on the
roadside and was buried by the charity of his neighbours. Michael
O'Connell, born in the image of God, who lived eight-and-fifty years
of torment and starvation and sickness and misery! Michael
O'Connell, who was thrown out from a bed of fever, by order of his
landlord, to die in sight of where he was born. It's his son is
talkin', Father Cahill, and it's his son WILL talk while there's
breath in his body to keep his tongue waggin'. It's a precious
legacy of hatred Michael O'Connell left his son, and there's no
priest, no government, no policeman or soldier will kape that son
from spendin' his legacy."
The man trembled from head to foot with the nervous intensity of his
attack. Everything that had been outraged in him all his life came
before him.
Father Cahill began to realise as he watched him the secret of the
tremendous appeal the man had to the suffering people. Just for a
moment the priest's heart went out to O'Connell, agitator though he
was.
"Your father died with all the comforts of the Holy Church," said
the priest gently, as he put his old hand the young man's shoulder.
"The comforts of the church!" scoffed O'Connell. "Praise be to
heaven for that!" He laughed a grim, derisive laugh as he went on:
"Sure it's the fine choice the Irish peasant has to-day. 'Stones and
dirt are good enough for them to eat,' sez the British government.
'Give them prayers,' say the priests. And so they die like flies in
the highways and hedges, but with 'all the comforts of the Holy
Church'!"
Father Cahill's voice thrilled with indignation as he said:
"I'll not stand and listen to ye talk that way, Frank O'Connell."
"I've often noticed that those who are the first to PREACH truth are
the last to LISTEN to it," said the agitator drily.
"Where would Ireland be to-day but for the priest? Answer me that.
Where would she be? What has my a here been? I accepted the yoke of
the Church when I was scarcely your age. I've given my life to
serving it. To help the poor, and to keep faith and love for Him in
their hearts. To tache the little children and bring them up in the
way of God. I've baptised them when their eyes first looked out on
this wurrld of sorrows. I've given them in marriage, closed their
eyes in death, and read the last message to Him for their souls. And
there are thousands more like me, giving their lives to their little
missions, trying to kape the people's hearts clean and honest, so
that their souls may go to Him when their journey is ended."
Father Cahill took a deep breath as he finished. He had indeed
summed up his life's work. He had given it freely to his poor little
flock. His only happiness had been in ministering to their needs.
And now to have one to whom he had taught his first prayer, heard
his first confession and given him his first Holy Communion speak
scoffingly of the priest, hurt him as nothing else could hurt and
bruise him.
The appeal was not lost on O'Connell. In his heart he loved Father
Cahill for the Christ-like life of self-denial he had passed in this
little place. But in his brain O'Connell pitied the old man for his
wasted years in the darkness of ignorance in which so many of the
villages of Ireland seemed to be buried.
O'Connell belonged to the "Young Ireland" movement. They wanted to
bring the searchlight of knowledge into the abodes of darkness in
which the poor of Ireland were submerged. To the younger men it
seemed the priests were keeping the people from enlightenment. And
until the fierce blaze of criticism could be turned on to the
government of cruelty and oppression there was small hope of freeing
the people who had suffered so long in silence. O'Connell was in the
front band of men striving to arouse the sleeping nation to a sense
of its own power. And nothing was going to stop the onward movement.
It pained him to differ from Father Cahill--the one friend of his
youth. If only he could alter the good priest's outlook--win him
over to the great procession that was marching surely and firmly to
self-government, freedom of speech and of action, and to the
ultimate making of men of force out of the crushed and the hopeless.
He would try.
"Father Cahill," he began softly, as though the good priest might be
wooed by sweet reason when the declamaory force of the orator
failed, "don't ye think it would be wiser to attend a little more to
the people's BODIES than to their SOULS? to their BRAINS rather than
to their HEARTS? Don't ye?"
"No, I do NOT," hotly answered the priest.
"Well, if ye DID," said the agitator, "if more priests did, it's a
different Ireland we'd be livin' in to-day--that we would. The
Christian's heaven seems so far away when he's livin' in hell. Try
to make EARTH more like a heaven and he'll be more apt to listen to
stories of the other one. Tache them to kape their hovels clean and
their hearts and lives will have a betther chance of health. Above
all broaden their minds. Give them education and the Divine tachin'
will find a surer restin' place. Ignorance and dirt fill the
hospitals and the asylums, and it is THAT so many of the priests are
fosterin'."
"I'll not listen to another wurrd," cried Father Cahill, turning
away.
O'Connell strode in front of him.
"Wait. There's another thing. I've heard more than one priest boast
that there was less sin in the villages of Ireland than in any other
country. And why? What is yer great cure for vice? MARRIAGE--isn't
it?"
"What are ye sayin'?"
"I'm sayin' this, Father Cahill. If a boy looks at a girl twice,
what do ye do? Engage them to be married. To you marriage is the
safeguard against sin. And what ARE such marriages? Hunger marryin'
thirst! Poverty united to misery! Men and women ignorant and stunted
in mind and body, bound together by a sacrament, givin' them the
right to bring others, equally distorted, into the wurrld. And when
they're born you baptise them, and you have more souls entered on
the great register for the Holy Church. Bodies livin' in perpetual
torment, with a heaven wavin' at them all through their lives as a
reward for their suffering here. I tell ye ye're wrong! Ye're wrong!
Ye're wrong! The misery of such marriages will reach through all the
generations to come. I'd rather see vice--vice that burns out and
leaves scar-white the lives it scorches. There is more sin in the
HEARTS and MINDS of these poor, wretched, ill-mated people than in
the sinks of Europe. There is some hope for the vicious.
Intelligence and common-sense will wean them from it. But there is
no hope for the people whose lives from the cradle to the grave are
drab and empty and sordid and wretched."
As O'Connell uttered this terrible arraignment of the old order of
protecting society by early and indiscriminate marriages, it seemed
as if the mantle of some modern prophet had fallen on him. He had
struck at the real keynote of Ireland's misery to-day. The spirit of
oppression followed them into the privacy of their lives. Even their
wives were chosen for them by their teachers. Small wonder the
English government could enforce brutal and unjust laws when the
very freedom of choosing their mates and of having any voice in the
control of their own homes was denied them.
To Father Cahill such words were blasphemy. He looked at O'Connell
in horror.
"Have ye done?" he asked.
"What else I may have to say will be said on St. Kernan's Hill this
afternoon."
"There will be no meetin' there to-day," cried the priest.
"Come and listen to it," replied the agitator.
"I've forbidden my people to go."
"They'll come if I have to drag them from their homes."
"I've warned the resident-magistrate. The police will be there if ye
thry to hold a meetin'."
"We'll outnumber them ten to one."
"There'll be riotin' and death." "Better to die in a good cause than
to live in a bad one," cried O'Connell. "It's the great dead who
lead the world by their majesty. It's the bad livin' who keep it
back by their infamy."
"Don't do this, Frank O'Connell. I ask you in the name of the Church
in which ye were baptised--by me."
"I'll do it in the name of the suffering people I was born among."
"I command you! Don't do this!"
"I can hear only the voice of my dead father saying: 'Go on!'"
"I entreat you--don't!"
"My father's voice is louder than yours, Father Cahill."
"Have an old man's tears no power to move ye?"
O'Connell looked at the priest. Tears were streaming down his
cheeks. He made no effort to staunch them. O'Connell hesitated, then
he said firmly
"My father wept in the ditch when he was dyin', dying in sight of
his home. Mine was the only hand that wiped away his tears. I can
see only HIS to-day, Father."
"I'll make my last appeal. What good can this meetin' do? Ye say the
people are ignorant and wretched. Why have them batthered and shot
down by the soldiers?"
"It has always been the martyrs who have made a cause. I am willin'
to be one. I'd be a thraitor if I passed my life without lifting my
voice and my hands against my people's oppressors."
"Ye're throwin' yer life away, Frank O'Connell."
"I wouldn't be the first and I won't be the last"
"Nothing will move ye?" cried the priest.
"One thing only," replied the agitator.
"And what is that?"
"Death!" and O'Connell strode abruptly away.
CHAPTER II
THE PANORAMA OF A LOST YOUTH
As O'Connell hurried through the streets of the little village
thoughts surged madly through his brain. It was in this barren spot
he was born and passed his youth. Youth! A period of poverty and
struggle: of empty dreams and futile hopes. It passed before him now
as a panorama. There was the doctor's house where his father hurried
the night he was born. How often had his mother told him of that
night of storm when she gave her last gleam of strength in giving
him life! In storm he was born: in strife he would live. The mark
was on him.
Now he came to the little schoolhouse where he first learned to
read. Facing it Father Cahill's tiny church, where he had learned to
pray. Beyond lay the green on which he had his first fight. It was
about his father. Bruised and bleeding, he crept home that day--
beaten. His mother cried over him and washed his cuts and bathed his
bruises. A flush of shame crept across his face as he thought of
that beating. The result of our first battle stays with us through
life. He watched his conqueror, he remembered for years. He had but
one ambition in those days--to gain sufficient strength to wipe out
that disgrace. He trained his muscles, He ran on the roads at early
morning until his breathing was good. He made friends with an
English soldier stationed in the town, by doing him some slight
service. The man had learned boxing in London and could beat any one
in his regiment. O'Connell asked the man to teach him boxing. The
soldier agreed. He found the boy an apt pupil. O'Connell mastered
the art of self-defence. He learned the vulnerable points of attack.
Then he waited his opportunity. One half-holiday, when the
schoolboys were playing on the green, he walked up deliberately to
his conqueror and challenged him to a return engagement. The boys
crowded around them. "Is it another batin' ye'd be afther havin', ye
beggar-man's son?" said the enemy.
O'Connell's reply was a well-timed punch on that youth's jaw, and
the second battle was on.
As O'Connell fought he remembered every blow of the first fight
when, weak and unskilful, he was an easy prey for his victor.
"That's for the one ye gave me two years ago, Martin Quinlan," cried
O'Connell, as he closed that youth's right eye, and stepped nimbly
back from a furious counter.
"And it's a bloody nose ye'll have, too," as he drove his left with
deadly precision on Quinlan's olfactory organ, staggering that
amazed youth, who, nothing daunted, ran into a series of jabs and
swings that completely dazed him and forced him to clinch to save
further damage. But the fighting blood of O'Connell was up. He beat
Quinlan out of the clinch with a well-timed upper-cut that put the
youth upon his back on the green,
"Now take back that 'beggar-man's' son!" shouted O'Connell.
"I'll not," from the grass.
"Then get up and be beaten," screamed O'Connell. The boys danced
around them. It was too good to be true. Quinlan had thrashed them
all, and here was the apparently weakest of them--white-faced
O'Connell--thrashing him. Why, if O'Connell could best him, they all
could. The reign of tyranny was over.
"Fight! Fight!" they shouted, as they crowded around the combatants.
Quinlan rose to his feet only to be put back again on the ground by
a straight right in the mouth. He felt the warm blood against his
lips and tasted the salt on his tongue. It maddened him. He
staggered up and rushed with all his force against O'Connell, who
stepped aside and caught Quinlan, as he stumbled past, full behind
the ear. He pitched forward on his face and did not move. The battle
was over.
"And I'll serve just the same any that sez a word against me
father!"
Not a boy said a word.
"Fighting O'Connell" he was nicknamed that day, and "Fighting
O'Connell" he was known years afterwards to Dublin Castle.
When he showed his mother his bruised knuckles that night and told
her how he came by them, she cried again as she did two years
before. Only this time they were tears of pride.
From door to door he went.
"St. Kernan's Hill at three," was all he said. Some nodded, some
said nothing, others agreed volubly. On all their faces he read that
they would be there.
On through the village he went until he reached the outskirts. He
paused and looked around. There was the spot on which the little
cabin he was born in and in which his mother died, had stood. It had
long since been pulled down for improvements. Not a sign to mark the
tomb of his youth. It was here they placed his father that bleak
November day--here by the ditch. It was here his father gave up the
struggle. The feeble pulse ebbed. The flame died out.
The years stripped back. It seemed as yesterday. And here HE stood
grown to manhood. He needed just that reminder to stir his blood and
nerve him for the ordeal of St. Kernan's Hill.
The old order was dying out in Ireland.
The days of spiritless bending to the yoke were over. It was a
"Young Ireland" he belonged to and meant to lead. A "Young Ireland"
with an inheritance of oppression and slavery to wipe out. A "Young
Ireland" that demanded to be heard: that meant to act: that would
fight step by step in the march to Westminster to compel recognition
of their just claims. And he was to be one of their leaders. He
squared his shoulders as he looked for the last time on the little
spot of earth that once meant "Home" to him.
He took in a deep breath and muttered through his clenched teeth:
"Let the march begin to-day. Forward!" and he turned toward St.
Kernan's Hill.
CHAPTER III
ST. KERNAN'S HILL
To the summit of the hill climbed up men, women and children. The
men grimy and toil-worn; a look of hopelessness in their eyes: the
sob of misery in their voices. Dragging themselves up after them
came the women--some pressing babies to their breasts, others
leading little children by the hand. The men had begged them to stay
at home. There might be bad work that day, but the women had
answered:
"If WE go they won't hurt YOU!" and they pressed on after the
leaders.
At three o'clock O'Connell ascended the hill and stood alone on the
great mount.
A cry of greeting went up.
He raised his hand in acknowledgment.
It was strange indeed for him to stand there looking down at the
people he had known since childhood. A thousand conflicting emotions
swept through him as he looked at the men and women whom, only a
little while ago, it seemed, he had known as children. THEN he bent
to their will. The son of a peasant, he was amongst the poorest of
the poor. Now he came amongst them to try and lift them from the
depths he had risen from himself.
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