CHAPTER II.
On an evening in May, 1797, Robert Grierson was strolling down by the banks of the stream that bound his lands. The weather for weeks had been mild, and the country was dressed in the tender green that had not yet drunk too deeply of the sunlight, unlike the leaves of mid-June, that hang so heavily and so listless in the still air. The stream was not yet as clear as it would be some weeks later, but it glared brightly enough as it flashed and swirled when the stones or boulders strove to stop its way, and even when it ran smooth and deep the rays of the sun, descending in an almost cloudless sky, coloured its brown surface to a golden hue.
Like most romantic youths, Robert Grierson loved to converse with rivers. Their bickerings, their whispers, their mysterious murmurings and sobbings, their chafing at obstructions, and the soft fretting on the banks when the way was clear had all become familiar to him, and all these seemed to glide into his darker musings, “and steal away their sharpness ere he was aware.”
Had anyone interrupted him as he strolled along and asked him what he was thinking of, he would have found it difficult, if not impossible to give a satisfactory reply. The thoughts of youth, as the poet tells us, “are long, long thoughts,” which is another way of saying it is given them to indulge in indefinable longings. But whatever were the musings of Robert Grierson on this evening he was suddenly brought back to his surroundings by a scream and a splash.
At the opposite side of the stream and knee-deep up to his fore-legs in it, was a pony, on which sat a lady, looking scared but gloriously beautiful in the light of the setting sun.
“Oh, I’ll be drowned! I’ll be drowned!”
There was no danger whatever. The pony had come down a boreen leading to the river—to a watering place and knew what he was about. Not so the lady, whom Grierson saw was a stranger, and who was evidently afraid the pony would carry her up mid-stream.
Grierson without hesitation plunged in, and waded up to his neck for a short distance until he swam by the pony’s head. Assuring the lady that there was no danger, he waited until the pony had slaked his thirst, and then turning his head round led him back to the boreen.
The lady was profuse in her thanks, which Grierson protested were not at all deserved, but they were, nevertheless, very grateful to him, for they were uttered in a voice the most musical he had ever heard. It was soft, almost caressing, and there was, moreover, a flavour of a foreign accent which seems to claim a special tender consideration for the speaker when she is a lady, young and beautiful, and a stranger.
With a final graceful wave of her hand, and shooting a Parthian glance from her dark eyes that went with unerring aim to Grierson’s heart, she urged her pony forward, and rounding a bend of the boreen was quickly lost to view.
Grierson stood gazing after her, like one whose gaze was fixed on a vision. It may be that the sun had sunk down behind the hills when she vanished, as it were, from his sight, but the very air seemed dark, the river ran in shadows, and his clinging wet clothes helped to free him from the spell of enchantment under which he had been drawn.
He ought to have hastened home to change his clothing, but he went there slowly, rehearsing in his mind the little scene in which he had taken part. Never was face so fair, he whispered to himself; never was voice so sweet, never were eyes so bewitching. As he thought of them his very soul seemed striving to escape from him to follow them.
Alas, “for the love that lasts alway!”
Had anyone dared on that morning to whisper to Robert Grierson that before the sun went down he would have completely forgotten his first love, and become the bondslave of a woman’s eyes, whose name he did not know, and whom he had never seen, he would have regarded the prophecy as little better than an insult, or, at least, as a foolish, idle utterance. And now, as he was turning into his house, he felt that in meeting so unexpectedly the fair unknown this evening he had met his fate.
He spent many hours that night thinking of her, and wondering who she was. He surmised that she was a guest of his neighbour, Mr. ——, who, as we know, was a prominent member of the United Society, and Grierson wondered he had heard nothing of her before, but then he remembered that he had kept himself so much aloof that very little gossip of any kind reached his ears.
When he thought of the way in which she and he had met he could not help regretting that he had not the opportunity of rendering her a more signal service, and he began spinning out romantic scenes in his mind—a horse tearing madly along straight for a precipice, a shrieking maiden clinging to his mane, and at the last moment he, Robert Grierson, managing to seize the reins, stopping the horse, but falling as he did so, and becoming unconscious, and then when he woke up, feeling sore all over, not knowing where he was, for he found himself in a dimly lighted room, and while he was still wondering a fair face bent softly over him, etc., etc. Other scenes in which the incidents were varied, succeeded, until he fell asleep.
When he woke the following morning, the fair vision of the previous evening came before his eyes, and he decided that he would endeavour to find out who the lady was.
The news came to him unexpectedly. Mr. —— came over to thank him for himself and also on behalf of his guest. Grierson very naturally made light of the business as a thing, so far as he was concerned, not worth talking about; but Mr. —— assured him that the young lady was very grateful, and it would, he said, give him great pleasure if Grierson would come over to his house that evening to supper. Grierson, after a little reluctance, which he felt bound to pretend owing to his having refused so many former invitations from the same quarter, agreed to go, and that evening found him in the society of Rosette Neilan, who had lately come back from France, and who was an ardent admirer of that gallant people, and was full of enthusiasm for the cause of liberty.