Still he concentrated all
his moral power and resolution in order to accomplish the task he had
undertaken, which, indeed, was not so much to announce his mother's
death, as to support his father under it. After a, violent effort, he at
length said:--
"Are you sorry, father, because God has taken my mother to Himself?
Would you wish to have her here, in pain and suffering? Do you grudge
her heaven? Father, you were always a brave and strong, fearless man,
but what are you now? Is this the example you are settin' to us, who
ought to look up to you for support? Don't you know my mother's in
heaven? Why, one would think you're sorry for it? Come, come, father,
set your childre' an example now when they want it, that they can look
up to--be a man, and don't forget that she's in God's Glory, Come in
now, and comfort the rest."
"Ay, but when I think of what she was, Bryan; of what she was to me,
Bryan, from the first day I ever called her my wife, ay, and before it,
when she could get better matches, when she struggled, and waited, and
fought for me, against all opposition, till her father an' mother saw
her heart was fixed upon me; hould your tongue, Bryan, I'll have no one'
to stop my grief for her, where is she? where's my wife, I tell you?
where's Bridget M'Mahon?--Bridget, where are you? have you left me, gone
from me, an' must I live here widout you? must I rise in the mornin,'
and neither see you nor hear you? or must I live here by myself an'
never have your opinion nor advice to ask upon anything as I used to
do--Bridget M'Mahon, why did you leave me? where are you from me?"
"Here's Dora," said a sweet but broken voice; "here's Dora M'Mahon--your
own Dora, too--and that you love bekaise I was like her.
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