On our way, a fellow passenger, experienced in sight-seeing, had recommended to us to take our first view from the American side, and from below, instead of the usual view from Table Rock. We therefore crossed the river a little distance below the Falls, without giving way to the temptation of gazing for a moment at the view before us, though the roar was terrible in our ears. Then we walked on the American side, closer, closer till we were within twenty feet of the cataract. The spray dripped over us, the rocks were slippery to our feet, the roar of a thousand floods seemed in our bewildered ears; and below, as it were, the reverberating yells of damned spirits tossing, and whirling, and dashing and howling forever. Then we looked up. The volume of water seemed coming down from the very heavens upon us. We uttered a faint cry of terror—turned round and fled. That is to say, we fled several yards. No matter. We were impressed sufficiently with the physical grandeur of the scene. It was oppressive, overwhelming. Afterward, when we roamed over all these rocks and took views from every point, and gazed at the cataract’s wondrous beauty as well as power, we found a moral grandeur with which our souls sympathized, and to which they rose to enjoy and adore. These jottings down of our impressions can give no idea to one who has not visited the Falls, and to one who has, will scarcely enhance his recollections. I mention them only to illustrate a trait of Claire’s character.
A mother with her child were wandering along among the loose stones and sharp rocks close to the terrible whirlpool from which we had just turned. The mother had let go the child’s hand, and he, a lad of some four or five years old, slipped from the stone on which he stood, and as a natural consequence was in imminent danger of his life. But one rock, and that slippery and sloping, intervened between the little fellow and certain death. The mother screamed, but was motionless from mere horror; Claire, who at once forgot every thing about her but what was connected with the living drama before her, pulled at a stroke her scarf from her neck, and giving me one end to hold, while she held the other, slid her feet rapidly down to the very brink of the torrent, caught the boy firmly by his foot and stood holding him. She was as pale as death, but as firm and strong in her attitude as if she stood on the parlor floor. She dared not move, and I had not strength, and was too distrustful of the strength of the scarf, to dare to pull them up.
As we stood thus it seemed hours, though it could scarcely be half a minute before relief was obtained by a rope thrown by a strong arm from behind over the form of Claire, which fully supported her in her perilous position. Immediately after she was clasped in the arms of a man in a cloak, whom we had seen sitting near us in an absorbed attitude, seemingly regardless of all about him. He had sprung from his seat, caught up a boat-rope, which I perfectly remembered afterward to have stepped over, thrown it around Claire, so as to support her, and then giving the noose to my servant, who stood close but inactively behind, steadied himself by the other end of the rope, slipped and sprang down by Claire, caught up the boy with one hand and tossed him up to his mother, and then bore the now fainting Claire carefully up to the bank.
The boy screamed wildly with fright, and the mother was voluble with her thanks and offers of assistance. Claire remained still and motionless in the arms of the stranger, and I watched the spray dash over her marble face. Presently her eyes opened slowly, with a deep sigh. She looked at her preserver and a beautiful color overspread her face. Then for the first time I also looked at him, for to this moment no one had spoken but the woman whose carelessness had put in jeopardy three lives.
He had bent his head down to hers and had kissed her forehead, rosy with returned consciousness. She replied by pulling her arm over his neck and kissing, not his forehead, but his very lips. The woman and her boy had gone, the servant discreetly retired, and there in the sound and rush of many waters, in the turmoil of elemental war, the still, small voice of two loving hearts, lately so near to death, was heard and registered.
“But you wrote me, Herbert, that you were setting off for Quebec last week. Who could have dreamed of finding you here?”
“And so I did go to Quebec. But I used it up in two days, and then came on here once more. In my then state of mind it was a relief to place myself where you found me, and listen to the roar of the water from morning till night. Now, I don’t care how soon we go away.”
We did journey, however, for some weeks; and when we returned and were once more in our own quiet parlor at home, I asked Herbert to come with me to my room.
“I am going to read you something, Herbert. Something about Claire.”
Then I opened the packet which Father Angelo had given me. First there was the official announcement, or rather a copy of it, of Father Angelo’s admission to the Convent of la Trappe, in Piedmont, and his consequent death to the world and every body in it. Then a separate packet contained such particulars of his life as he deemed necessary for me to know, and to communicate to Claire, if I thought proper, or to whomsoever she should hereafter marry. There were also papers conveying a small amount of property to her. Enough for her subsistence should she be deprived by misfortune of my support.