I remember then blurting out that I’d take not a penny; that all should have gone to my father; and that all was his, will or no will, save only that my cousin Oliver and Miss Milne must share. Oliver, though shaking hands with me, growled that he would take nothing from me; Mr. Bradbury, chuckling, avowed that as trustees and guardians, Sir Gavin Masters and he would see to it that I did not dissipate my fortune ere I attained my majority. And presently I was left with only my mother and my father by me; and we were falling to planning all that we might do with this fortune that was ours: build up the old house and its race again, and spend wisely and for the happiness of the folk about us out of the treasure which my grandfather had won in the years of his sailing.
Now I might tell our story through the years since that far sunlit afternoon, and find delight in telling. I might tell of the happiness that was ours; I might tell how my kinsman Oliver fought with the Great Duke, and of the honours that were his; I might tell how Roger Galt died by his side years after, at Waterloo; I might tell how I sailed with Nelson to his dying in his most glorious Victory. Long ere Oliver was come back from the wars, I had quitted the sea to turn country squire, and to win Evelyn Milne, who from pale maid was grown the most desirable of brides and most adorable. I might tell—
Nay, I have set down faithfully only the story of my coming to Rogues’ Haven, and all that happened to me at my kinsman’s hands. Ay, and the clock strikes midnight; the candles burn down into their silver sticks; through the open window of my library I see the moonlight white upon the terrace,—on the deep lawns, the flowers in the garden, even as my uncle dreamed so long ago.
His words come sounding to me from that far afternoon, when last he walked within the garden: “I have looked from my window of a summer night, and I have seen the ghosts walk in the garden as it was, and I have known the beauty and the colour and the laughter of this garden and this house, as once they were. I have thought of the beauty of Craike House restored, the greatness of our race.”
I think almost to hear my uncle’s laughter out of the moon-lit garden where his ghost may walk, and take delight in this white, scented night of summer.
THE END