Peg O' My Heart. J. Hartley Manners

CHAPTER I

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THE IRISH AGITATOR MAKES HIS FIRST APPEARANCE

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      "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