PEGGY’S LUCK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1715, 11 January 1905, Page 12

PEGGY’S LUCK.

(By Alice Furlong.) Tn the haymaking season, one fine day, Peggy's luck was promised to her. That is, her great luck —for she had nothing to complain of even before it came, being the daughter of a good mother, and blessed with beauty and good qualities of mind and heart. A hot, clear sunshine lay on land and sea. The yellow sands were hot under the naked feet of the fishermen’s children, where they played upon the beach. A hot, day wind blew about, and teased the meadow-sweet in the ditch, and the bough upon the tree, and wore the clouds of heaven to long fine streaks over the blue. Many a pail of oatmeal tea was drunk that day by the haymakers in the fields. Wayfarers on the sandy road were just as thirsty. Ola Sarah Kilbride, the “white witch,” who lived at the head of the hill, helping herself home with her big stick, stopped at the door of Mary Mulcahy’s cabin, and said: ”Good woman, would yc be givin’ us a dhrinik o' such as ye have? I’ve got the hill-road to face, an’ it’s no easy road foa* an ould person.” “Sure, ye can have your fill o’ butthermilk, an’ welcome/’ said Mary Mulcahy’s daughter, black-haired, slender Peggy. Mary herself was tumbling out the dinner on the table, and could not take her eye off the potatoes, afraid they would roll about the floor. “Kike marbles for size -am’ hardness, that’s what they are!” she was saying, when the shadow of the white witch fell upon her door-stone. “Am' many a week to run before the new comas in.”

When, from the corner of her eye, she Baw what was behind the shadow, she took no notice of the visitor, but pretended to be closely engaged on her task. Sarah might be a white witch, not of such bad account as a black witch, but Mary did not want any of her kind, be they black or white, about the place- She said nothing against her daughter for filling the noggin from the churn in the corner, but she was blind and deaf and mute to Sarah Kilbride. If the white witch was angry at such treatment, she did nob show it. She took the vessel from. Peggy’s hand, and drank, and was. grateful. “Full an’ plenty to ye’ my likely girleen 1” said she. “An’ take the word of a wise woman for it—there’s luck cornin’ over the salt wather to meet ye!” Then she went to the door-stone and hobbled out of sight up the hill-road. The hill-road, she called it, but it may be said that the hills of that country were no more than green headlands of loamy soil, rich with crops of barley and wheat. “All ould pisherogues!” said Mary Mulcahy, with scorn. “Don’t give heed to her talk. They d!o always think that they must be say in’ something, them wise women.” And slie sat down to the table and began to abuse the badness of

the old potatoes, and hoped the good (season would bring the new in early. Peggy, twining heir purple-black hair upon her finger, could scarcely bring herself to pay proper attention to what her mother was saying. Let them come to their knowledge as they might, she thought, those white witches could tell many a thing. It was Peggy’s habit to walk abroad of an evening. “Ye might as soon ask a bird to be by your hearth as my Peggy,” Mary used to say. “She will be off afther supper, gettin’ the full o' her eyes o’ the sunset, or the comin’in o’ the big white waves on the shore. Myself, I can’t bear to lay my eyes upon the salt wather, for I do begin to think o' my boy, Padraig, that’s abroad upon th’ ocean; but Peggy, she stares out upon the say, till you’d be thinkin’ she was a sailor-man’s wife smilin’ to watch her husband’s boat come in safe.” Likely enough the wise woman had taken notice of that pleasant look across the sea, when she promised the luck to the girl. “I believe I’ll be off with myself,” said Peggy that evening, and tied the sunbonnet upon her curls. “Maybe I’ll be meetin’ with my luck on the shore below/’ But the mother, like a sensible woman, laughed. “I said before, an’ I say again, that them wise women often knows no more than other people,” she remarked. “Else why wouldn’t she have been telling us how Kate Hyland’s sweetheart was come home of a sudden from foreign parts?” “An’ is Kate Hyland’s sweetheart come back?” asked Peggy. “So I hear they say/' answered the mother. “But none seen him yet nor can tell whether he come rich or poor, sick or well.”

Peggy took her way down the lane to the shore of the sea. She crossed in upon the fields. There was a certain bank undler a field of standing corn that had its boundary almost upon the very surf. Between it and 1 the water there was no breadth of sand or shingle, but rugged green rocks that set the sea hissing and foaming against itself if the winds were high, or else let the waves rise and fall as clear as sapphire-stones or emerald's. Peggy sat by the' sea, with blue eyes looking over it, and the sun had 1 gone down, and the wind was still. She thought of Kate Hyland’s sweetheart.

It was five years since he had gone from the valley between the low, green hills. The girl remembered to have seen him pass her mother’s door on the day he had parted from Kate Hyland —a lithe, tall-stripling he was, with a pale face and wild eyes that told how sore* that parting had been to liim. Peggy was but a child then, with shy glances peeping from a comer as the youth went by. Mary, her mother, had blessed the boy, for his own mother was dead, and had wished him a prosperous journey and a safe return. Peggy had stayed in hei- comer, andi wept for bi« sad looks. It was all five years ago. Those many seasons had been long to the child growing from her childhood into blooming youth. Were they likely to have been short to the boy in the foreign land and the girl pining among the Irish hills ? Mary Mulcahy’s daughter sighed, thinking of them both. Then she brightened again, recollecting that they were together at last. “Well, well/’ she said under her breath, “Kate must be in high good humour.” Ajfter that she thought about the words of her mother, and how she had said none could tell whether the bo<y came poor or rich. There are hearts that soften with years, and hearts that harden. Kate Hyland, it was whispered sometimes, had grown to know the value of a full purse, and how a full heart was not to be compared with it. There had been talk of Dan Mabomy, the strong farmer from the glen, going to look for her in marriage. “God send it’s not the thruth!” said Mary Mulcahy, when she had heard of it. “If he does, th' other may walk the lonely road. A fine farm, an’ a long lease, is more nor foreign gold to a colleen like Kate. Musha, maybe 'tis as well for my own Padraig to be away on the salt sea, or he might be losin’ his rest about her, like others!”

Peggy sat beside the sea, and heard the hollow sounding of the tide upon far beaches. The darkness was crepineg up the land behind her, along the low hills where the corn was still green upon the slopes, and the heavy white hay lay in swathes, new mown. At hand - there was a mellow tint upon the wheat, a promise of ripeness before the September moon came to swell the latest grain of harvest. Poppies in a scarlet crowd, seemed to have' dropped asleep in the silence of the wind, so heavily they hung. But if the twilight was wrap ping the land into itself, there was yet brightness upon the sea and in it. All tlie evening sky glowed again under the wave ; silver lights wavering on the Ig/xlcH, falling showers of fiery roses, streaks and interweavings of the sunbeam and the wave. It was like a heart that keeps its memories as a brightness drowned in tears.

The girl sat spinning of her thoughts such dreams and visions as come to the young, and the hour passed l . Of a sudden, there came a moan to Peggy’s hearing. The dazzle of light was still in the west, but/ fading there with every rise

and fall of the surge. The place was lonely. All at once a blast sprung up out of the dusk, and the sea and the wind in the com began to make an uLLagone together. Scared and trembling, the girl rose from her place. She turned towards the land, towards the creeping darkness, and felt the chill of the rising dew. Like a startled deer, her glances went from right to left. Then, hard by, she discerned something moving in the wheat, where it was beaten, down about a man’s stride in from the margin. “For sure an’ certain,” said Peggy in her mind, “ ’tis some poor person has been overtaken by sickness. Blessed be God that 'tis nothing unnatural!” She went to the place, going softly upon the grass of the headland, and found a tall young man lying in the corn, with his arms thrown out beyond his head. Before lie everheard hea- foot, the stranger raised himself a little and lifted his eyes. It is said by wise people that one soul will feel another near. “Who have I in it-?'’ he said with a weak voice. “Ye have the kind look, whoever ye will be. I didn’t think there were any kind women left in Ireland afther them I’ve met with !” He laid his palm under his forehead then, and let his head rest there. “Hell fire is burnin’ in my skull, I think,” said he with a groan. Peggy knelt down and peered at him. His drowsy, blue eyes were half hiddlen under their lids. “Ye haven’t been drinkin’ at the public-house, have ye?” she said. “If ye haven't, ’tis like as if ye got a sunstroke. Many met with the same sickness this year in the hayon akin'.”

The young man shook liis head in an impatient manner.

“There’s no drink on me,” he answered, rough and sharp Avith the girl. “A man may lose his right mind by other things. A false woman brings more ruin nor a full jug. Do ye mind that, now!”

Peggy put no other question to him but one. “Where are ye goin’ to spend the night?” said she. He was like a tramp on the road, or a poor scholar upon a journey. There was a stick on the ground by him, and a bundle tied up in a red kea-chief, and a battered caubeen. He did not look like a man to have the price of his lodging ready to his hand. He raised his head again to answer her, and she knew him with that glance of his eye. It was Kate Hyland’s sweetheart come back over the salt sea. /Ochone I” said Peggy out- loud. “He’s in a poor way afther all!” She forgot everything but the boy’s heavy trouble. He, too, forgot wliat answer he would have made her concerning the lodging. He looked up, and saw the young girl in her beauty weeping over him. Not so had wept another, whom he had expected to shed her tears for his misfortunes. He muttered half to himself : “A handsome colleen, rosy an’ dark. Where dlid I meet with her before? Not in Americay, where the women do be yellow and worn. Well, well, I’ve seen enough o’ handsome women an’ their ways!” Hie let his face fall against his hand again, and shivered from head to foot.

“Get up, if ye can, an’ come home with me. to my mother’s house,” said Peggy, as if she had not heard his mutterings, although her cheek was putting the pop pies, for all their redness, to shame that minute. “My mother she is a great woman to< make sick people well.” Mary Mulcahy hadl much knowledge concerning simple and soothing syrups, anc many folks resorted to her for cures in their ailments.

The moon was rising when Mary saw her daughter and the stranger standing at her door, between the fire-shine and the moonlight. “My word! ’tis courtin’ they must be,” said she to herself. “Linkin’ arm in arm like that.” And she peered from her corner of the chimney.

But. the daughter said: “Mother, agra, this is Tadgh dhu Sullivan cook home. An’ ’tis sore an' sick I found him in the cornfield by the brink o’ the sea. What will ye be doin’ for him?”

The mother rose up, and tlu’ew aside the knitting from, her hands*. “This is what I’ll be doin’ for him,” said she. “What I’d pray another woman to do for my own gossoon in a like misfortune.”

She brought him in, and tended upon him, and lowered the settle-bed' on the floor for his night’s rest. “ ’Twas Pa-d----raig’s bed when he was in it,” said Mary Mulcahy. “God knows, but- maybe the kindness toi the sthrangex* will win xny hoy a bed when he needs it, too!’’ She did not ask him whether he had the wherewithal to pay for food and shelter. She took notice of his ragged clothes and gaping brogues, and the rents answered her with so many mouths as they had that he was a beggar on the King’s high road. “Lord look on. him, an’ he was a brave an’ high goin’ off with himself!”' said she-, kneeling on hex* knees that night.

He lay in that house, heavy with sickness, for a week and a day. He was wan and silent upon Padraig’s bed, but his eyes following Padraig’s sister everywhere she went about the big, dark kitchen.

“Your mother is a good warrant to heal a man’s sick body,” said he to her that first day of the second week he was

"with them. The shadows were about him in his corner past the dresser, but the evening light was on Peggy’s countenance as she stood in the doorway. “But you/' said Tadgh dhu Sullivan, “/tis yourself that could heal a man’s sick soul.”

The beam of sunlight upon her face was not brighter than her smile on him. “God send I may heal yours,” said, she. Then she ran away to her mother whp was milking in the field, and told her what had been the words of Tadgh dhu Sullivan.

The woman looked into her child’s eyes, and saw the light of love shining clearly there. She sighed and said: “I was lookin’ to get a better match for ye, allanna.. But Tadgh dhu is a decent boy, an’ come o’ decent people.'’ Peggy knew then that the mother would not. refuse her consent to their marrying, if it was to be so.

Shortly after that the young man left his bed restored to health. He got work from a farmer in the. neighbourhood, and he was mowing and making hay all day, and courting pretty Peggy in the evening until the midsummer came with the eve of Saint John. They, were called to be married on the very next Sunday.

There was a bonfire* made at the crossroads., and the old people sat. on the dykes and watched the young folks dancing and making merry about it, until the new moon went down and the evening star followed her, and there were fragrant winds blowing from the fields. “Let us walk home/’ said Tadgh dim to his sweetheart.

They went down to the sea lane together until they came to the door of Mary Malcahy’s cabin, to that very spot whei-e the white witch had promised the luck to Peggy. The young man took the measure of her finger for the ring with a blade of rush. “I’ll be goin’ to the town to-morrow to' buy it,” he said. “Likely you’ll be in the town yourself, too.” “I've to get a few things,” said Peggy, wishing it was five pounds instead of one she had to buy her wedding dross with. He put his hand into his breast and took out a bag on a running string. “There’s a present of a few pounds for ye,” said he- “It was gathered to lay before Kate Hyland, but not to buy her with. My heart’s love was to buy her, but she wouldn’t, be bought with such-like. You were different, Peggy.” He kissed her, and went his way to the farmer’s house where he worked. The gii*l brought the bag in to her mother. They opened it, and found bank-notes for five hundied pounds.

Maa-y laughed and said: “Sarah Kilbride was no liar now, afther all.” The boy and girl were married, and there was a great wedding. When Kate Hyland heard the news she tore her hair. “To think I might have had him an’ the money !” she cried to all that came near her. There were people listening who were quick enough to carry her words to Tadgh dhu Sullivan. “Thank God, she didn't/’ said lie, with a proud look at. his Peggy.— “M.A.P.”