A Modern Buccaneer Part 39

"Hear, hear!" from the guests, and Mr. Richard Jones.

"And now I come to a piece of news which I am sure you will hear with pleasure. The house and grounds have been purchased by a young friend of mine, whose health, with that of his charming wife, I now ask you to drink with all the honours. The health of Mr. and Mrs. Telfer, their long life and prosperity! and may we all have many as pleasant a sail round the harbour as we have had to-day, and come here to enjoy ourselves at the end of it."

The applause which followed was tumultuous. Paul has sprung a surprise upon his guests with a vengeance. I was as much astonished as anybody; for though I knew that he had promised to make inquiries about the price put upon the property, I had no idea that he would go further in the matter, still less that he would purchase it on my account, as it was evident that he had done.

I said a few words, chiefly to the effect that it seemed to me quite unnecessary to go through the form of exerting myself for my advancement in life, as my friends, Mr. Frankston and Captain Carryall, were bent on making my fortune for me. I trusted to prove not wholly unworthy of such unselfish friends.h.i.+p, and thanking them all in the name of my wife and myself, trusted that a meeting like this would often conclude a happy day such as we had just completed. As for Miranda, she went up to the old man, and placing her hand in his, looked up into his face with an expression of heartfelt grat.i.tude, which hardly needed the addition of her words: "You have made us both perfectly happy--what can I say? My heart will not let me speak. We have nothing to wish for now in this world."

The old man looked at her with an expression of mingled admiration and paternal affection. "I have two daughters now," he said, "and two sons; I was always wis.h.i.+ng to have another pair, to gossip with when Antonia and Ernest were away. Now I have found them I am sure. The only thing we want now is another boat."

Miranda's eyes glistened at the allusion, and she looked as if she was only prevented, by a half-instinctive doubt as to the fitness of the occasion, from embracing Paul before the a.s.sembled company.

Years have pa.s.sed since that day. Children's voices have long since echoed in the wide verandahs and amid the shrubberies of Edenhall. The house, thoroughly renovated, is one of the most comfortable, if not the most aristocratic, of the many embowered mansions which look over the Haven Beauteous.

My boys have been "water babies" from earliest childhood, and we can turn out a crew not easy to beat, particularly when their mother can be persuaded to steer. My girls have inherited a large proportion of their mother's fearless spirit, though people say not one has equalled her in beauty. Their partners in the dance, however, appear to consider them sufficiently good-looking, if one may judge by the compet.i.tion which their appearance at b.a.l.l.s usually produces.

Our business, always aided by the cool heads and steady courage of the senior partners, has increased, with the growth of the city of Sydney and the development of the island trade, beyond all hope and expectation. I am a rich man now, and, indeed, somewhat in danger of the occasional mood of discontent with the uneventful, unvarying tide of success upon which life's barque appears ever to float. But one look at Miranda's face, serenely happy in her children, in her daily life of charity and almsgiving, in the devoted love and trust of my parents, is all-sufficient to banish all vagrant ideas.

Sometimes, in the train of unbidden fancies which throng the portals of the mind, the scenes and sounds of a far clime claim right of audience.

Again I see the paradisal woodland, the mysterious mountain forest, the ceaseless moan of the billow upon the reef sounds in my ear; while forms, now fair, now fierce, flit, shadow-like, across the scene. I hear again the soft voices of the island girls as in frolic race they troop to beach or stream. I see the sad, bright eyes of Lalia, or mark the fierce regard of Hope Island Nellie as she stands with bared bosom full in the track of the deadly arrow flight. I hear the lion roar of Hayston as he quells a mutiny, or towers, alone and unarmed, above a crowd of hostile islanders. I shudder in thought at the dangers which I have escaped. Once more sounds from afar the weird voice of the tempest in the midnight wreck of the _Leonora_. Lastly, the harbour lights disappear as I sit in my cane lounge in the verandah of Edenhall, and in place of the wooded heights and distant city I see the breakers upon the reef of Ocean Island, and discern a solitary figure in the stern of a small boat sailing out into the illimitable gloom; I fall a musing upon the mysterious problems of Fate--of man's life and the strange procession of circ.u.mstance--until the hour strikes and I retire. Yet my thoughts are still dominated by the majestic figure of the Captain, grand in his natural good qualities, grand in his fearless courage, his generosity, his friends.h.i.+p--grand even in his vices. He was not without resemblance to a yet more famous corsair, immortalised by the poet--

Who died and left a name to other times, Link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

THE END