“You must take it, my son. Helena is my heiress, and alas! now Melnos has vanished in smoke and fire, there is no use for it there. You will return to England, Maurice, and, with all this wealth, do what good you can in the world. Crispin is already rich, so it would be useless to leave him anything.”
“I have Eunice, and that is enough for me.”
“Well, now all is arranged, we must drop the curtain on this comedy of life,” said Justinian, with a flash of his old cynicism. “After all, I have played my part to the best of my ability on this life’s stage, but Fate has been too strong for me.”
“It is the will of God,” observed the Rector solemnly.
Justinian said nothing, as he did not wish to offend the firm faith of the old clergyman, but he could not, for the life of him, think that it was the will of God that forty years of hard work to raise up a new civilization should be blotted out for no reason whatsoever.
“Life’s a problem!” he said, with a faint sigh; “we do our best, and remain poor, we do our worst, and become rich. However, it is all over now, and of all my schemes nothing remains. Dust, ashes, smoke, fire, have they all come to, and I, after seventy-five years of life, die foiled and beaten by Fate.”
“Oh, father, do not talk so! You will not die! you will live!”
“I am afraid not, my child!” replied the dying man faintly; “the parting gift of Melnos has crushed the life out of me. Oh, my island, my beautiful island! that bloomed like a rose on the waters! how your glory has departed! The forge of Hephaistos hath supplanted the garden of Cytherea.”
“Will I not pray for you?” asked the Rector gently.
“To whom? God? Well, a good man’s prayers can do no harm, and, if there is truth in your belief, may do some good. But we are all in the dark, you with your Christianity, I with my paganism. The comedy is ended, drop the curtain.”