Robert Emmett bowed absently, as if he but half-heard, and, kneeling by Sara's chair again, muttered--forgetful of lookers-on: 'Oh, my love--my love. Do we part thus? I hoped to have been a prop, round which your affections might have clung; but a rude blast has snapped it--they have fallen across a grave!' Then, twining her fair hair about his fingers with affectionate regret, he fell a dreaming, whilst Madam Gillin gulped down her sobs.
'I go into my cold and silent tomb,' he whispered, as he stroked the baby-fingers of his mistress. My lamp of life is nearly extinguished; the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom.'
Major Sirr perceived with his usual tact that this sentimental scene was producing a bad impression, and must be interrupted. The extreme youth and woe-begone appearance of Robert--his half-distracted, half-inspired look--moved the spectators to tears. Surely he was too young--too much of a visionary--to be held really accountable for the storm that he had raised. As to the frail girl, she appeared to be beyond sublunary cares. Lulled by angel-strains, she was gazing upon a world which has nothing in common with ours--what she saw was beautiful, and true, and real--the people flitting round her couch were the unreal shades. The town-major tapped his prisoner's arm, and begged him to make haste. 'I must obey orders,' he said. 'They are straightforward, and concise as Lord Clare's always are. I've brought one prisoner here, and must take another hence. Come along!'
Mrs. Gillin, unhooking a pair of scissors from her girdle, between convulsive hiccups, handed them to Doreen. The one woman understood the other's thought. Doreen gently cut the longest tress from Sara's golden head and pressed it into Robert's palm.
'Thanks,' he said, with a quiver of the lip. 'I will wear this in my bosom when I mount the scaffold. I am ready, gentlemen, and will not detain you. Before I leave the world--and I leave it now when I leave my friends--I have one request to make. May the charity of oblivion be accorded to my memory! Let no one write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dares now to vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed!'
This would never do. Major Sirr grasped him roughly by the coat-tail to drag his prisoner away. The soldiers, accustomed to the business, closed in quickly. But ere Robert went, Mr. Curran, with tears streaming down his rugged features, placed his arms about his neck, and held him in a long embrace.
Then was the last of Moiley's victims marched away under a strong guard, and the rest were left to their own sombre meditations. A stillness of oppression fell on all as Curran, Terence, and Doreen gathered round prostrate Sara. Mr. Cassidy found himself awkwardly situated, for nobody took any notice of him. Vainly his boots creaked, while he coughed behind his hand. Mrs. Gillin was no longer afraid, for she as well as others saw that, the tussle over, the final clearing away of Catholic disabilities was only a matter of time--that even if he launched the thunderbolt at her, in terror of which she had held her peace concerning what she knew of him, it would signify little. With the Union a new era was dawning--all the Catholics felt that--one in which Irish and English interests would grow to be the same in the future, when the sea of blood was bridged--one in which the last vile fragments of the Penal Code must soon be swept away--a relic of the dark ages. Even if Mr. Cassidy were to declare publicly that she took her Protestant daughter with her to the mass, it was possible she might escape tribulation for the enormity. So Mr. Cassidy coughed at her in vain. Curran had never liked him. Doreen knew too much of him. It was a satisfaction to all, himself included, when, with a clumsy excuse, he twirled his fine beaver and backed himself out of the apartment.
The old earl, his parent, smirked from his frame upon the new wearer of the coronet. Was the simper more full of meaning than it used to be, or was it merely the limner's conventional flattery? The desire expressed with such solemnity upon his deathbed was accomplished; the wrong was righted now--at last.
An unconscious mesmeric sympathy beyond their own volition fixed the gaze of three people upon that portrait of the wicked earl, while the same thought struck each of them in turn. Doreen withdrew her eyes, and they fell on Terence, who nodded, and striding towards his mother's bedchamber, opened the door softly and entered. Though the day was bright and mild there was a large fire on the hearth, before which crouched my lady, wrapped in a loose white wrapper, supported by many pillows. The windows were dimmed to twilight. Shane's favourite hounds, Aileach and Eblana, sat on their haunches with their muzzles on her lap, in wistful expectancy of that which they might never see. She took no notice of the intruder, supposing that it was Doreen, till recognising a heavier footstep and a dreaded voice, she shrank away from him with a moan, as if she had received a blow.
'Mother!' Terence began.