CHAPTER XXI.
CLOSING SCENES.
After the stubborn and sanguinary battles of Chippewa, Lundy's Lane, and Fort Erie, the Niagara frontier had exemption from invasion, and a sort of armed truce prevailed to the end of the war. It was long, however, before the exasperation of feeling excited on either side by the unhappy conflict had died away. Now, thank God, the ameliorating influence of time, of commercial intercourse, and, let us hope, of Christian amity, has almost entirely obliterated the bitter memories of that unnatural strife. A continual exchange of international courtesies and friendly amenities, marks the intercourse of the kindred peoples who dwell upon opposite sides of the Niagara River. At the narrowest part of that river, two miles below the Falls, it is now spanned by the fairy-like railway Suspension Bridge—a life-artery along which throbs a ceaseless pulse of commerce between the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America, the two fairest and noblest daughters of brave Old England, the great mother of nations. As the deep and gloomy gorge beneath that bridge, with its wrathful and tumultuous torrent, seemed to forbid all intercourse between its opposite banks, so, unhappily, a deep and gloomy chasm has too long yawned between these neighbouring peoples, through which has raged a brawling torrent of estrangement, bitterness, and even of fratricidal strife. But as wire by wire that wondrous bridge was woven between the two countries, so social, religious, and commercial intercourse has been weaving subtile cords of fellowship between the adjacent communities; and now, let us hope, by the late Treaty of Washington, a golden bridge of amity and peace has spanned the gulf, and made them one in brotherhood for ever. As treason against humanity is that spirit to be deprecated that would sever one strand of those ties of friendship, or stir up strife between two great nations of one blood, one faith, one tongue. May this peaceful arbitration be the inauguration of the happy era told by the poet and seer,
"When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world!"
While musing on this theme, the following fancies wove themselves into verse, in whose aspiration all true patriots of either land will devoutly join:
As the great bridge which spans Niagara'a flood
Was deftly woven, subtile strand by strand
Into a strong and stable iron band,
Which heaviest stress and strain has long withstood;
So the bright golden strands of friendship strong,
Knitting the Mother and the Daughter land
In bonds of love—as grasp of kindly hand
May bind together hearts estranged long—
Is deftly woven now, in that firm gage
Of mutual plight and troth, which, let us pray,
May still endure unshamed from age to age—
The pledge of peace and concord true alway:
Perish the hand and palsied be the arm
That would one fibre of that fabric harm!
Neville Trueman held on the even tenor of his way, through the period during which the tide of war was ebbing away on the Atlantic coast and on the lower Mississippi. Notwithstanding the tried and true character of his loyalty, he was not free from ungenerous and unjust aspersions by those prejudiced and bigoted against his American birth. He had, however, one friend who never swerved from her generous admiration of his character and respect for his conduct. Katharine Drayton never failed to defend both the one and the other when unkindly criticised in her presence. Yet to himself she was, while uniformly kind and courteous, yet unusually reserved in the expression of her personal feelings. The words of high appreciation which were spoken, in his defence to others, and which would to him have been a guerdon compensating a hundredfold all his trials and troubles, were to him unuttered. A sense of maiden modesty, if not a deeper and tenderer feeling, sealed her lips and made her, on this subject, dumb in his presence.
If the enthusiastic friendship of her brother could have made amends for this reserve Neville had, indeed, ample compensation. Nevertheless a sense of loneliness and isolation were at times oppressively felt by the young man. Almost unconsciously to himself the character and person of Katharine Drayton had become to him very dear. They occupied much of his thought, and mingled even with his morning and evening orisons. Yet he sedulously avoided giving expression, even to himself, to his desires and aspirations. The sad uncertainties of the times forbade the thought of marrying or giving in marriage. His own anomalous position as having, apparently, an allegiance divided between the two countries unhappily at war, was also felt to be a great embarrassment in all his personal relations. Above all he was not without the apprehension that the heart of Katharine Drayton might have been won by the brave soldier whose untimely death she deplored with a sorrow deep and unfeigned. Her lacerated affections he felt to be too tender and too sacred a subject to be lightly approached. Moreover, what had he, a poor Methodist itinerant, without a home, without a country, dependent for his daily food and nightly shelter upon the Providence of God and the generosity of an alien people, themselves impoverished by a long and cruel conflict with his own countrymen, to offer in exchange for her love! For himself he had no fears, no forebodings for the future, no feeling of humiliation in accepting the generous hospitality of his kind congregations. But, he questioned, how could he ask the delicately-nurtured Katharine Drayton, the heiress of many acres, whose lightest wish had been gladly gratified by loving hands,—how could he ask her to leave the sheltering roof and cheerful hearth, where she reigned a queen, to share the privations, discomforts, and it might be poverty, of his migratory existence? The question smote with appalling emphasis upon his heart. So he continued to nourish in his soul a vague hope, menaced by a vague fear that sorely tried his courage and his faith.
Meanwhile the fratricidal strife between the kindred nations came to an end—never, let us hope, while the world stands, to be renewed. The Treaty of Paris brought repose to the two war-wearied people. The Angel of Peace waved her branch of olive over the ravaged fields and desolated homes, and the kindly hand of Nature veiled with her gentle ministries the devastations of war. One evening, in the leafy month of June, shortly after the tidings of the peace had arrived, Neville Trueman was walking with Miss Drayton on the banks of the noble river where, three years before, he had gazed upon the summer sunset and sung the song of Jerusalem the Golden. They had been on a visit of charity to a sick member of Neville's flock, and were now returning through the after-glow of a golden sunset. The breath of the peach and apple blossoms filled the air with fragrance, and their pink and white bloom clothed the orchard trees with beauty. Swift swallows clove with their scythe-like wings the sky, and skimmed the surface of the dimpling wave, and the whip-poor-will's plaint of tender melancholy was borne faintly on the breeze. At a point of vantage commanding a broad view of the river, which, wimpling and dimpling in its beauty, flowed, a sapphire set in emerald, between its verdurous banks, Kate stood to gaze upon the lovely scene—fair as the storied Bay of Naples or the far-famed Riviera of Genoa.