His conduct seemed inexplicable, for though not looked upon by his superiors as very resolute or masterful, he was believed to be sincere. At length the explanation got about, which young Grierson himself, for some reason or another, was reluctant to offer, and when the story of the death came to be told, the utmost sympathy was felt with Grierson, and it was admitted by most that, under the circumstances, he could hardly be blamed for making the solemn promise which detached him from the United Irishmen. But among them there were not wanting some who scoffed at Robert’s respect for the promise which he had given to the dead, but the majority, it must be said, respected him for it, although they considered it was unreasonable to exact it, and not binding on Robert.
Avoiding, as far as possible, doing any violence to his feelings, the chief men of the district endeavoured to withdraw him from his solitary course, but in vain. They represented to him that a promise exacted under such circumstances was not binding, for if it were, then the living generations might always be bound by the dead, and that all progress in human affairs would be arrested.
But Robert Grierson heeded them not, and he became apparently more disconsolate, and what time he could spare from his business he spent wandering by the banks of the stream, broad and brown, and tossing up its tawny locks as it passed fretfully over the stones that here and there interrupted its passage, and which formed the “mearing” between his property and Mr. George Jephson, who was one of the chiefs of the United Irish Society in his district.
A little story got abroad that there was another, or at least an additional, reason for Robert Grierson keeping so much to himself. It was said that he had been the suitor of a young lady in a position a little higher than his own, and that in the eyes of her parents his Republican principles had proved an insuperable barrier to their union, and that with the object of bringing their romantic attachment to an end, the young lady had been sent away to England and was lost on the voyage there, the vessel in which she sailed having been wrecked just outside Holyhead and all on board drowned.
The story was, in the main, true, and it was a cause of the most poignant grief to Robert Grierson that, having allowed his first love to go away from him rather than surrender his political principles, he now felt himself coerced by his promise to his dead father to abandon them, and, at least, to find it necessary for him to sever himself from those who continued to be the exponents of those principles.
But love-stricken as Robert Grierson was, his heart had not been fatally wounded, and although the homely life he was now leading seemed to hand him over a prey to melancholy, and although he persuaded himself that he was utterly love-lorn and that his heart was secure from any new assaults of Cupid, he knew nothing of the power and the wiles of the mischievous son of Aphrodite, and never dreamt that the little archer had the shaft fitted to the bow that would leave the whirring string only to find a sure passage into his, Robert Grierson’s heart.
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.”