"We shall rest in the life to come," quietly replied Mr. Robesart. "In the life that now is, we have but to be and do God's will."
"You take it calmly, Father! But then, for you there is no such need. 'Tis easy gear to counsel a man to lie still whose veins burn with fever, when your own pulse is as quiet as a mill-tarn." And Roger laughed, with a laugh which was not all mirth.
Mr. Robesart's answering smile was rather pathetic.
"Having lived through the fever, I may know your Lordship's feelings."
On the third day the wind changed, and they set sail from Haverford. Three weeks—a very favourable passage—landed them at Wexford; and as Roger set foot upon the shore of Ireland, he turned and looked across to the invisible mountains of Wales.
"Fair fall thou, my native land!" he said half sarcastically. "From henceforth is this land of my fathers mine own land, and thou must serve thee without me."
The autumn and winter of that year found him at Kilkenny, spending his time in an unusual manner for a noble of the fourteenth century. He summoned Irish minstrels and chroniclers around him, and went deep into Irish history. Perhaps it was a natural result that Irish history went deep into him. He became an enthusiastic admirer of the character and annals of the nation the blood of whose kings ran in his veins. His own natural impetuosity drove him along the groove which he had chosen, and ere long one passionate aspiration took possession of his soul, next after that "Un Dieu, un Roy" which had possessed and would possess it for ever. England and Ireland should be at peace, and he would be the means of it. They should live and love as sisters, happy and tranquil, under one sceptre, having but one aim, and the glory of the one should be the glory of the other. To this he would give himself as long as he should live. He would secure it—or die in the attempt.
All the Mortimers had entertained an affection for Ireland, and could never forget their Irish blood. King Richard also had a liking for that country, of which his uncle of Gloucester was pleased to speak very scornfully.
"He is a fool who thinks of conquering Ireland," said Gloucester, in his usual unwatered diction. "The Irish are a poor and wicked people, with an impoverished country; and he who should conquer it one year would lose it the next."
This affection of the young Earl for the Green Isle by no means increased his popularity with his English retainers. Saxon and Celt have always mutually looked down upon each other. The Irish saw in the English intruding strangers, none the more welcome for being conquerors; the English reckoned the Irish uncivilised barbarians with whom no person of refinement could be satisfied to associate. They were not themselves so over-refined that they need have been particular: but the half-educated man (still more woman) is usually more fastidious on the score of vulgarity than the blue-blooded noble. There were murmurs among Roger's suit that he was too accessible to the masses, and that his heart was rather Irish than English.