Down the River to the Sea

by Agnes Maule Machar

“Well, Hugh, are you satisfied now?” asked Flora. Hugh’s eyes were shining through the dripping moisture, and his face, so far as it was visible, was glowing with exercise and excitement.

“Satisfied? No!—delighted? Yes. But when is the eye satisfied with seeing? The grandest sights only seem to quicken our aspirations towards the Infinite.”

But Aunt Bella was now beckoning to the party to hasten back, and, as soon as they were within speaking distance, she hurried Hugh off to change his clothes as speedily as possible. Kate and he were soon out of their grotesque disguise, and in a few minutes they were all ascending, in the elevator, to the upper bank. Here they found the carriage awaiting them, which had been ordered to come back to meet them, and discovered, to their surprise, that they would have to drive home as rapidly as possible if they wished to be at the Clifton in time for the hotel dinner. It was a quiet drive across the suspension bridge, with the Falls to their left, and the deep green gorge of the winding river to their right. Each felt the silent enjoyment of the scenes they had just left, and of the fair evening view around them—with the wonderful Falls always in the distance,—quite enough for the present, without trying to talk about it. Even Mrs. Sandford, usually discursive, was too much fatigued with the day’s outing to do her usual part in the matter of conversation.

They made up for it later, however, when, too tired for further roaming, they all sat on the balcony watching the sunset tints fade into those of the brightening moonlight, whose whiteness seemed to harmonize so well with the snowy sheen of the Falls. Kate got out her guidebook, and, with occasional appeals to May to fill up her outlines, gave the strangers a few particulars as to the historical associations of the locality. “You see,” she said, “all this frontier was the natural scene of hostilities when the two countries were at war. This is one of the points at which New York troops could most easily make their entrance into Canada.” And then Hugh Macnab, by dint of cross-questioning, drew from the two girls, in turn, the main outlines of the war of 1812, concluding with the battle of Lundy’s Lane. As they at last said good-night to each other, and to the beauty of the moonlit Falls, they noticed regretfully that a yellowish halo had formed round the moon.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sandford, “it’s quite likely we shall have a rainy day to-morrow, and, when it once begins, I shouldn’t wonder if we had two or three days of it, after such a dry time!”

“Well, we won’t believe anything quite so dreadful just now,” said Kate. “We’ll go to sleep now, and hope for the best.”

Mrs. Sandford was somewhat triumphant in the justification of her weather wisdom, when they heard, next morning, the sound of the rain pattering down on the veranda without. The morning did, indeed, look gray, dull, unpromising, as even a July day can sometimes look. May was rather mournful over the loss of the light and color, and the general change that had come over the landscape. But Kate persisted in her optimistic declaration that she believed it would soon clear up, and then everything would be even more lovely than before. Meantime they would have the chance of seeing how the Falls looked in bad weather!

And, indeed, they were by no means without beauty, even now. The purity of the central green was gone, but the soft gray tones melting away into gray mist, under a gray sky, gave the effect of a sketch rather than a finished picture, with suggestions of sublimity far beyond the visible.

As they wistfully scanned the sky after breakfast, watching for a promising gleam of blue, Kate proposed a programme to be carried out as soon as it should clear.

“You see it will be too wet for much walking and scrambling about, which would never do for Hugh, at any rate. Now, let us order a carriage and take a nice leisurely drive all about the country. We’ve seen the Falls pretty well now, and we can do the battle-grounds—Lundy’s Lane and Queenston Heights, and take the Whirlpool on the way.”