“We are young and strong, thank God,” said Hubert; “it’s not as though we did not see our way to be back here again within a reasonable time. But my work lies in Australia, and I can’t settle to this kind of easy-going life just yet. When Windāhgil Downs is in thorough working order and fully stocked, we can treat ourselves to a run home every five years or so without feeling uneasy about the seasons or anything else. So we’ll just take our passage by the next boat and wake them up at Mooramah once more.”
“I’m ready, dearest,” said his wife. “With you, I think our work is only half-done, and the sooner we commence life in earnest the better. We’ve seen picture galleries enough to last us for the next few years, and I begin to pine for a sight of my dear old father, and Willoughby, poor boy! I wonder how they are getting on at Wantabalree?”
Once more the family circles were replenished, irradiated by the old love and tenderness in the persons of the wanderers—once more grateful hearts were full to overflowing, and humble thanks were offered up to the Supreme Power which had permitted their happy reunion, in spite of perils by land and sea—the thousand chances of danger and death which had irrevocably marred less fortunate households. All had gone well in their absence—Linda and her sailor love had been made mutually happy, and through the exercise of judicious local interest Captain Fitzurse, as he was now proudly styled by mankind and his adoring bride, had secured a colonial appointment involving naval duty, but not forbidding the occupation of one of those delightful marine residences of which Sydney boasts so many perfect specimens.
Donald Greenhaugh had amply justified the confidence bestowed on him. The stations were growing and flourishing to the fullest extent of sanguine expectation. Willoughby had developed into a stalwart bushman, properly bronzed and duly experienced in all pastoral lore. The seasons “out back” had been good. Nothing was wanting of all the conditions of permanent prosperity.
Of all the members of the two families so happily united and thankfully enjoying their unwonted success, universally admired and envied, Mr. Stamford alone seemed to be laden with care. At times abstracted and preoccupied, silent and grave amidst the family hilarity; at whist, striking out confusing lines of play, for which no precedent could be found. Such was his departure in general behaviour from the ordinary cheerful and equable habit that his wife and children commenced seriously to fear that the unwonted prosperity had turned his head, or that old anxieties had induced morbid action of the brain. The Colonel shook his head as he delicately alluded to the melancholy fact in a walk with Rosalind. It would grieve him to the heart. He didn’t think really he could stay on at Wantabalree; that a man who could lead from a weak suit and play the Queen of Hearts when the King was still in petto, must be suffering from incipient softening of the brain, was patent to him.
The fact was that Mr. Stamford had come to the conclusion that the time had arrived when it was necessary to make a clean breast of his secret. And he did not like the idea at all. When the matter was buried in his own breast and in that of Mr. Worthington, than whom his own iron safe was not more reticent of office secrets, it did not, like other hidden deeds, appear so frightful. But now, after all these years, to be compelled to tell his wife and children, who believed that they shared every thought of his heart, that he had carefully, wilfully, artfully concealed from them the knowledge of their true position! He could hardly stand up and face the idea. “What if his children should resent this want of all confidence? Would his wife think that all her love and trust deserved a different return?”
Mr. Stamford wiped his heated brow and thought the position unendurable. Still, the motive was a good one, a pure one, even practical. And how had it worked? The result might not have directly proceeded from the means employed; but still everything had followed for which he had hoped and prayed.
His children had not shrunk from any test of self-denial, of fortitude, of continuous industry rendered necessary by the apparent narrowness of their fortunes. True, they were at the same time actuated by filial reverence and family love, swayed by the tenets of that religious teaching which from their infancy had been unwaveringly inculcated. But could these influences have been sufficiently strong to counteract the strong currents of ease and pleasure, the soft zephyrs of flattery, the clinging weight of indolence, all urging towards the wreck-strewn shore of self-indulgence, when once the fatal knowledge should be acquired that all care for the morrow was superfluous?
Who shall say? Had not the fate of his friend’s family, the melancholy failure of even his modest aspirations for social distinction, been as a beacon light and a warning?