THE ISLET-GEMMED ST. LAWRENCE.
On a morning late in December Mrs. Gower sat alone in her pretty restful library, with its olive-green velvet cushions and hangings, its water-lilies, like the beauties in our bay, with their green stalks and leaves painted on the panelled walls, its English ivy trained up and around the Queen Anne mantel, with graceful palms standing on either side of the floral blossoms on the stand. The occupant looks well in a close-fitting gown of navy blue flannel, embroidered in rose silk; there is a half-smile on the lips, and the dreaminess of some tender thought in the dark eyes, as she idly opens and closes a black lace fan, with a spray of honeysuckle painted thereon. A gentleman's card lay beside her work-basket on the table.
"So Alexander Blair is his name," she thought; "how very, very long," with a sigh, "it has taken to come to me—his name, of course, I mean." She thought, with a smile, putting the card to her lips, "how foolish of me, but I have always had that way. I remember travelling to Port Elgin, from Toronto, and on my arrival, my trunk, containing my dearest treasures, was not forthcoming. I was wild with grief, when, after enriching the telegraph offices, at the expense of my purse, in three days it was again in my possession; and what did I do, why kissed and fondled both trunk and key. Elaine Gower, you are a foolish, impressionable woman. And so I dropped my fan at the Grand, last night. His card says, 'With compliments, dropped at the theatre.' He scarcely seemed a stranger seated beside me at 'Erminie,' and I feel sure he felt likewise. How handsome he is, or rather how essentially manly, with the look of strength in his broad shoulders, and of honesty of purpose in his fearless, blue eyes. He is iron-grey, and slightly bald, I noticed, when he stooped to pick up my handkerchief, but his beard and moustache are brown. He is decidedly dark; I wonder if Highland Scotch; for dark, and true, and tender are the North. His name suits him. I like them both for old association's sake, one being the maiden name of one whose memory is sacred, the other, the Christian name of my loved dead. I wonder what poor Charlie Cole would think of my having made his acquaintance in this romantic fashion. I remember, he also had had instantaneous photographs, as we laughingly called them, of a young lady who had interested him."
At this moment Miss Crew, entering, in walking costume, said:
"I met the letter-carrier as I came in, Mrs. Gower, and here is your share."
"Thank you. You look better for your walk; but did you walk?"
"Only from the Spadina Avenue car terminus, but I had some little walking in my district, but the College Street Mission is worth fatiguing oneself for. Oh, Mrs. Gower, have you heard how Mayor Howland purposes raising building funds for the cottage in connection with the Industrial Home at Mimico?"
"Yes, I read it in some newspaper, the Globe of yesterday, I think."
"Won't it be something to be proud of, if the children carry it out."
"Yes, and I believe they will; children are very much in earnest, when the heart is touched; and now for our correspondence; take off your hat and mantle here by the grate, though Gurney's furnace does keep us very comfortable all over the house."
"Pardon my interrupting you, Mrs. Gower; but I am reading a letter from Mrs. Dale, in which she says, to be sure and remind you to write her some description of your yachting on the St. Lawrence; those English friends of theirs would so much like to get some idea of the life, as they purpose purchasing an island."
"Yes, I must do so; but I fear any poor words of mine, will fail in doing justice to its many delights;" and on finishing reading her letters, seating herself at her escretoire, she wrote as follows:
"The Islet-Gemmed St. Lawrence.
"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dale,—It has never been my lot to read anything descriptive of river-life, on our loveliest of streams, that I have considered did justice to its varied charms; so you may imagine how powerless I feel, in the task you have assigned me; but when I tell you that that martyr to ennui, Jack Halton, this summer owned to myself that he had, at last, found something worth living for, you will therefore not be surprised that I, loving nature as I do, should have gone into raptures.
"In the first place, our steam-yacht, the Ino, was the trimmest little craft, the daintiest little beauty on the river; and we had the perfection of host and hostess, each in their respective niche, leaving nothing to be desired. I told them they must have had 'Aladdin's lamp' stowed away somewhere; for we had but to clap our hands, and our will was done.
"Day after day, never tiring, ever with renewed zest we boarded the Ino, to dream away the hours in the most ravishing bits of scenery my eyes ever beheld. With hampers full of dainties and substantials, we wandered in and about the islands; sometimes meeting other idlers like ourselves, and pic-nicking at some chosen spot; sometimes the guests at one or other of our acquaintances having summer homes in this our Canadian fairyland. Truly, if all the year were June, the world in woods would roam; for our gay little Ino was a spirit of the waters, and though we had no spiritualists on board, still we had table rappings on some good story by our witty host; neither were we so spiritual as to despise the material, which we proved as we sat to dinner; and such dinners, Ambrosia! Yea, and for our goddesses; though with sunburnt faces we women did not much resemble the latter, our men looking handsomer the browner they grew; but as for dinner, we had from dishes to tickle the palate of our club epicures to—hodge-podge, which we relished.
"Yes, from morn till eve, and often late, late, in the white moonlight, we lived an ideal life on our pet yacht, the Ino.
"One will sometimes say, in meteing out great praise to some favored spot, that one would live and die there; but here, who talks of dying? One would fain live forever; for, every moment one lives, one breathes a new life; for on the luxuriously appointed Ino, we gazed out from curtained windows, or from under a canopied arch, while we reclined on softest of cushioned seats, and literally drank in the 'Elixir of Life.' The air of the pine groves as we passed, the air of the grandly dark and dashing river, full of ozone, is the air to inflate one's lungs with, and carry back with one to our crowded cities, which seemed so far away in that land of beauty.
"Some delightful evenings, we would tread a measure on the green sward, to music of flute and violin; for, had one or more of our group not been innate musicians, the scene was enough to inspire one, and so, in songs, merry laughter or sentiment, our days passed as a dream.
"For we stem the shining river,
The river of the isles,
On our fairy yacht, the Ino,
With our love beside our side.For I there met a sorcerer, who robbed me of my heart, and whose spells I could not break until I fled from this scene of enchantment. And again we board our trim yacht, and what varied scenes of beauty met the eye, whenever and wherever we gazed. Such lights, such shadows, such artist bits, such trees, such rocks, such everything! Surely we were in fairyland, and not in plain, practical Canada.
"On some of the islands are ideal summer homes; now we came upon a fairy-like structure, in Italian villa style; now, upon a palatial mansion; now, upon a camp all alive, and signalling Ino the fair.
"The only specks in my sun were, that the American islands were made more beautiful by their owners than our own; and that uneuphonious names had been given to some of these charming islets. Fancy one 'Pitch Pine Point'—I failed to see the point of christening it so.
"The rocks take most fantastic shapes in the shadowed moonlight. By and under the rock-bound shore, I used to fancy I saw nymphs dancing on the rippling waters, which was to them music; and, dreaming on, as we lazily stemmed the tide, it all came to me, that in days of yore, the youths from the shore, coming to row and sport in the waves at eve, saw the water-sprites, and fell in love; when the sea-gods, for revenge, fell upon them, transforming them into some of the most fantastic-shaped rocks we see; and, the sea-nymphs, pitying the sons of men for their fatal love, prayed the gods to transform themselves into trees, to grow into the clefts of the rocks; and so protect their would-be lovers from old Sol's fiery beams, and their wish was granted.
"But we invariably turned ere a bend in the river robbed it from our sight, to take a last loving glance at the beauteous Isle Manhattan, where we had been most hospitably entertained by its charming American inmates. It is beautifully wooded, and an elegant mansion thereon, with one of the most hospitable of verandas, stretching long and wide, with many American rockers and pillowed rattan sofas, on which we have reclined or sat while partaking of iced claret and, for those who liked it, champagne carte blanche, and where we had one of the most perfect views from the commanding tower of the villa.
"A view that wants a Lett, an Imrie, or an Awde to sing of, a Longfellow to immortalize—my pen is lifeless in describing its beauty; a beauty that would ravish the soul of a poet, and send an artist wild; a view which brought to my mind the remark of a dear old Scotchman, whom a party of tourists came upon, lost in admiration of the Falls of Niagara. On one of the party asking him what he thought of the Falls, he said, 'Eh, man, I just feel like takin' aff my bonnet til't.'
"In the far-stretching scene of loveliness here, in the heart of the Islands, one should go to the Tower, at Manhattan alone, leaving the merry, madding crowd on board the yacht, or on the veranda; one should go alone, or in dual solitude, where a clasp of the hand, or a look, is sympathy enough; for one should carry with one one's fill of such a scene of perfect beauty, to brighten darker days and drearier times."