'The sunshine, broken in the rill,Though turned astray, is sunshine still,'
'The sunshine, broken in the rill,
Though turned astray, is sunshine still,'
as somebody says. Well, and how do we feel to-day?"
"Badly enough, Doctor; badly enough!" replied the Squire, in a low thick voice. "I'm running down very fast, and there's very little more sunshine for me--" here an attack of coughing interrupted him for a moment; "so I'm making the most of it."
"O, you mustn't say that," said Dr. Barford cheerily. "While there's life there's hope, you know; and you've gone through some baddish bouts since we've known each other."
"None so bad as this," said Mark Challoner. "Your skill, under Providence, has kept me alive hitherto; but though you're as skilful as ever, and as kind--God bless you for it!--you've not got Providence working with you now. I'm doomed, and I know it. What's more, I don't repine, only I want to make the most of the time that's left me; and, above all, I want to see Miles again."
"Miles? O, ay! He's staying in town, is he not?"
"Yes, with my old friend Sandilands, who loves him as if he were his own son. Poor Miles, it's a shame to drag him away from his enjoyment to come down to a poor, dull, dying old man."
"You would not hurt his feelings by saying that before him," said the Doctor shortly, "and you've no right to say it now. Has he been sent for?"
"Yes, they telegraphed for him this morning."
"Well, there can be no harm in that, though I won't have you give way to this feeling of lowness that is coming over you."
"Coming over me!" the old man repeated wearily. "Ah, Barford, my dear friend, you know how long it is since the light died out of my life, and left me the mere shell and husk of man that I have been since; you know, Doctor, how long it is ago, though you don't know the cause of it."
"Nor ever sought to know it, Squire; bear me witness of that," said the little Doctor. "It's no part of my business or of my nature to seek confidences; and though perhaps if I had been aware of what was troubling you--and at the first I knew perfectly well thatanimo magis quam corporewas the seat of your illness--and though, being unable to 'minister to a mind diseased,' as somebody says, I was labouring, as it were, at a disadvantage,--you will do me the justice to say, that I never for a moment hinted that--hum! you understand?" And Dr. Barford, who would have given the results of a week's practice to know really what had first worked the change in the old man, stopped short and looked at him with a confidence-inviting glance.
"Perfectly," said the Squire; "but it could never have been. My secret must die with me; and when after my death the closet is broken open, and people find the skeleton in it, they will merely come upon a lot of old bones jumbled together, and, not having got the key of the puzzle to fit them together, will wonder what I can have been afraid of. Why do you stare so earnestly?"
"A skeleton, my dear Squire!" said the little Doctor, on tiptoe with eagerness; "you said a skeleton in a closet, and a lot of old bones jumbled together--"
A smile, the first seen for many a day, passed across Mark Challoner's wan face as he said, "I was speaking metaphorically, Barford; that is all. No belated traveller was ever robbed and murdered at Rowley Court--in my time at least, believe me."
Dr. Barford laughed a short laugh, and shrugged his shoulders as though deprecating a pursuance of the subject, but he evidently did not place entire credence on his friend's assertion. However, he plunged at once into a series of medical questions, and shortly afterwards took his leave. As he passed the hall-door, which was open, on his way to the stables, he saw a neatly-dressed middle-aged woman pacing quietly up and down the hall; and recognising her as the nurse from London, who for some time past had been in nightly attendance on the old man, he beckoned her to him.
"Coming out to get a little breath of fresh air, nurse?" he said pleasantly, as she approached. "You must need it, I should think."
"Well, sir, it is warm and close in the Squire's room now, there's no denying; and what it'll be when the summer comes on I often dread to think."
"No you don't, nurse," said the Doctor, eyeing her keenly. "You know better than that, with all the practice and experience you've had. No summer for the Squire, poor fellow, this side the grave."
"You think not, sir?"
"Iknowit, nurse, and so do you, if you only chose to say so. However, he's gone down so very rapidly since I was here last, and his tone is altogether so very low and depressed, that I imagine the end to be very close upon us; so close that I think you had better tell Mr. Miles--the son that has been telegraphed for, you know, and who will probably be down to-night--that if he has anything special to say to his father he had better do so very shortly after his arrival. What's that?" he asked, as a dull sound fell upon his ear.
"That's the Squire knocking for Barnard to fetch his chair, sir; see, Barnard has heard, and is going to him."
"O, all right! Poor old Squire! poor good old fellow! Don't forget about Mr. Miles, nurse. Goodnight;" and the little Doctor, casting a kindly look towards the spot where the figure of the old man in the chair loomed hazily in the dim distance, hurried away.
When Mark Challoner's servant had reached his master's chair, and, obedient to the signal he had received, was about to wheel it towards the house, he found that the old man had changed his intention, and was desirous of remaining out on the terrace yet a few minutes. On receiving this order Barnard looked over his shoulder at the nurse, who was still standing at the hall-door; and as she made no sign to him to hasten his movements, he concluded that his master's wish might be obeyed, and so, after touching his hat respectfully, he returned to the genial society of the gardener and the stable-lad. And Mark Challoner was once more left alone. The fact in its broadest significance seemed to become patent to him as he watched the retreating figure of his servant, and two tears coursed down his wan cheeks. Mark Challoner knew that his last illness was then upon him; for weeks he had felt that he should never again shake off the lassitude and weakness so stealthily yet so surely creeping over him; but now, within the last few minutes, the conviction had flashed across him that the end was close at hand--that he had arrived at the final remnant of that originally grand strength and vitality which, slowly decaying, had enabled him to make head against disease so long, and that he was taking his last look at the fair fields which he had inherited, and in the improvement of which he had at one time--ah, how long ago!--found his delight. It was this thought that made him dismiss Barnard. The old man, with the new-born consciousness of his approaching end fresh in him, wanted to gaze once more at his diminished possessions; and for the last time to experience the old associations which a contemplation of them never failed to revive. There, with the westering sun just gilding its topmost branches, was the Home Copse, where he had shot his first pheasant, to his old father's loudly-expressed delight. Just below it lay the Black Pool, out of which, at the risk of his own life, he had pulled Charles Gammock, a rosy-faced boy with fair hair--Charles Gammock! ay, ay, they buried him a year ago, and his grandson now holds the land. There, bare and attenuated now, but as he first remembered it young and strong and full of promise, was the Regent's Plantation, so called in honour of the illustrious personage who, staying for the night with Howard Challoner, had honoured him by planting the first tree in it. Beyond it, Dirck's land, now--and as that thought crossed him the Squire's brow became furrowed, and his wan colour deepened into a leaden hue, for Dirck was one of the moneyed interest, one of the manufacturers who had come in Sir Thomas Walbrook's wake, and were bent on the acquisition of all the county property which might come into the market. Beyond it lay Thurston Gap, the surest place for finding a fox in the whole county, old Tom Horniblow used to say. Old Tom Horniblow! Why, there had been three or four huntsmen to the Cotswold since him: he must have been dead these forty years, during which time the Squire had not thought of him a dozen times; and yet then, at that moment, the stout figure of the old huntsman mounted on his famous black horse, just as he had seen him at the cover-side half a century ago, rose before his eyes. This reminiscence turned Mark Challoner's thoughts from places to people; and though his glance still rested on the landscape, his mind was busy recalling the ghosts of the past. His father, a squire indeed of the old type--hearty, boisterous, and hot-headed: it was well--and a faint smile dawned on Mark Challoner's cheek as the thought crossed his mind--it was as well that his father had died before the irruption of the Walbrooks, Dircks, and such-like; it would have been too much for him. His brother, the dandy with the high cravat and the buckskin breeches and hessian boots, ridiculed by his country neighbours, and regarding his estate but as a means to supply his town dissipation. His wife--she seemed more dim and ghost-like to him than any of the others; he had known her so short a time, so much of his life had been passed since her death; since the gentle little woman, whose wedding-ring he had worn on his little finger until it had eaten into the flesh, glided out of the world after having given birth to her second son. And, with the train of thought awakened by the reminiscence of the career of that second son, from his birth until the morning of his abrupt departure from the ancestral home, surging round him, the old man's head sunk upon his breast, a fresh access of feebleness seemed to come over him; and when the watchful Barnard sallied from his retreat and advanced towards the chair, he found his master in a state bordering on collapse, and made the utmost haste to get him to his room, and place him under the professional care of the nurse.
In the course of a very few minutes, however, the Squire, aided by stimulants, revived; and his senses rapidly returning, he ordered his desk to be brought to the side of the bed into which he had been moved, and commenced listlessly sorting the papers therein. They were few and unimportant; the old man's illness had not been sudden; he had always been a thoroughly methodical man, and he had had plenty of time and opportunity to attend to his correspondence. Propped up by the pillows, he was leisurely looking through the orderly bundles of letters, neatly tied together and scrupulously docketed, when the sound of a horse's hoofs on the gravel outside, the grating of wheels, the barking of the dogs in the stable-yard, and the almost simultaneous ringing of the house-bell, gave warning of an arrival. Mark Challoner had scarcely time to note these various occurrences when the room-door was thrown open, and in the next instant the old man's wavering and unsteady hands were fast in the grasp of his son Miles.
A tall man, over six feet in height, with a bright red-and-white complexion, large brown eyes, a straight nose too big for his face, a large mouth full of sound white teeth, with dark brown hair curling crisply at the sides of his head and over his poll, with long moustache and flowing brown beard, with a strongly-knit but somewhat ungainly figure, dressed in a well-made but loosely-fitting gray suit, and with large, well-shaped, brown hands, which, after releasing the first grip of the Squire's fingers, joined themselves together and kept working in tortuous lissom twists: this was Miles Challoner. A faint smile, half of pleasure, half of amusement--something odd in Miles had always been remarked by his father--flitted over the Squire's face, as he said, after the first greeting, "You've come in time, Miles: you received the telegram?"
"And started off at once, sir. All I could do to prevent his lordship from coming with me--wanted to come immensely; but I told him I thought he'd better not. Even such an old friend as he is in the way when one's seedy--don't you think I'm right, sir?"
"You're right enough, Miles; more especially when, as in the present case, it's a question of something more than 'seediness,' as you call it. My time," continued the Squire, in tones a little thickened by emotion,--"my time has come, my boy. I'm only waiting for you, before, like Hezekiah, I should 'turn my face unto the wall.' I have, I hope, 'set my house in order,' and I know that now 'I shall die, and not live;' but I wanted to see you before--before I go."
The young man leaned quickly forward and looked earnestly in his father's face, as he heard these words; then with a gesture of inquiry elevated his eyebrows at the nurse, who was standing just inside the door. Receiving for answer an affirmative nod, Miles Challoner's cheek for an instant turned as pale as that of the invalid; but he speedily recovered himself, and said in a voice which lacked the cheery ring that should have accompanied the words: "You're a little down, sir, and that's natural enough, considering your illness; but you'll make head against it now, and we shall soon have you about as usual. It was only yesterday Lord Sandilands was saying that though he's some quarter of a century your junior, he should be very sorry to back himself against you at 'anything British,' as he expressed it--anything where strength and bottom were required."
The old man smiled again as he said: "Sandilands has been a townman for so long that he's lost all condition, and has ruined his health for want of air and exercise. But at least he lives; while I--I've vegetated for the last few years, and now there's an end even to that."
"Why didn't you send for me before, sir? If I'd had any idea you thought yourself so ill, I'd have come long since."
"I know that, my dear boy, and that's the very reason why I didn't send. Why should I fetch you from your friends and your gaiety to potter about an old man's bedside? I would not have sent for you even now, save that I have that inward feeling which is unmistakable, and which tells me that I can't last many days, many hours more, and I wanted, selfishly enough, to have you near me at the last." The old man spoke these words with indescribable affection, and, half involuntarily as it seemed, threw his arm round his son's neck. The big strong frame of the young man shook with ill-repressed emotion as he took the thin hand hanging round his shoulder, and pressed it reverently to his lips. "Father!" he said; and as he said it, both the men felt how many years had passed since he had chanced to use the term "Father!"
"True, my boy," said Mark Challoner quietly,--"it is a pleasure, though I fear a selfish one. 'On some fond breast the parting soul relies,' you know, Miles; and you're all that's left to me in the world. Besides, the tie between us has been such a happy one; as long as I can recollect we've had no difference,--we were more like brothers than father and son, Miles."
Miles answered only by a pressure of his father's hand. He dared not trust himself to speak, he knew that his voice was thick and choked with tears. His father looked at him for an instant, and then said: "Now, boy, go and get some dinner. How thoughtless of me to keep you so long fasting after your journey!--Nurse, take Mr. Miles away, and see that he is properly attended to. Be as careful of him as you are of me, that's all I ask;" and the old man, half-exhausted, sank back on his pillow.
Miles Challoner left the room with the nurse, and when they were alone, he took the first opportunity of asking her real opinion as to his father's state. This she gave him frankly and fully, telling him moreover what Dr. Barford had said as to the necessity of not delaying anything which he might have to say to the Squire. Miles thanked her, and then sat down to his cheerless meal. His thoughts were preoccupied, and he ate and drank but little, pausing every now and then, bestriding the room, reseating himself, and leaning his head on his hand with a helpless puzzled air, as one to whom the process of thought was unfamiliar. He could scarcely realise the fact that the presiding spirit of the place, the man whose will had been law ever since he could recollect, "the Squire," who, with diminished possessions and failing fortunes, had commanded, partly through his own style and manner, partly through the prestige attaching to the family, more respect and esteem than all the members of the invading calicocracy put together,--he could scarcely realise that this rural autocrat's power was ebbing, and that he himself lay on his death-bed. On his death-bed!--that was a curious thought: Miles Challoner had never attempted to realise the position, and now; when vaguely he attempted it, he failed. Only one thing came out clearly to him after his attempted examination of the subject, and that was that it would be most desirable to be at peace with all the world, and that any enmity cherished to the last would probably have a most disturbing and uncomfortable effect. Pondering all this he returned to the sick-room. During his absence, the curtains had been closed and the night-lamp lighted. The nurse sat nodding in a large easy-chair by the bedside, and the Squire lay in a dozing state, half-waking now and again as his head slipped off the high pillow on which it rested, or when the heaviness of his breathing became specially oppressive. Miles seated himself on a couch at the foot of the bed, and fatigued by his journey, soon fell asleep. He seemed to have been unconscious only a few minutes, but in reality had slept nearly an hour, when he was awakened by a touch on the shoulder, and opening his eyes, saw the nurse standing by him. "The Squire's calling for you," she said, adding in a whisper, "he's going fast!" Miles roused himself, and crept silently to the head of the bed, where he found his father gasping for breath. The Squire's dim eyes recognised his son, and between the paroxysms of laboured respiration he again threw his arm round Miles's neck and touched the bowed forehead with his lips. Then the thoughts that had been fermenting in Miles Challoner's heart for so many years, and which had caused him such mental disturbance that night, at length found vent in words. With his father's arm around him, and with his face close to the old man's, Miles said: "Father! one word, only one! You hear and understand me?" A pressure of the hand on his cheeks--O, such a feeble pressure, but still a recognition--answered him. "Father, what of Geoffrey?" A low moan escaped the old man's lips; other sign made he none. "What of Geoffrey?" continued Miles,--"years ago you forbade me ever to ask what had become of him, why he had left us, even to mention his name. I have obeyed you, as you know: but now, father, now--"
"Never!" said the old man in dull low accents. "Your brother Geoffrey is, and must be for ever, dead to you. Miles, my boy, my own boy, listen! Should you ever meet him, as you may do, shun him, I urge, I command you! Think of what I say to you now, here, as I am--shun him, fly from him, let nothing earthly induce you to know him or acknowledge him."
"But, father, you will surely tell me why---"
The nurse touched Miles on the shoulder as he spoke, and pointed to the Squire, whose swooning had been noticed by her observant eyes. When he recovered himself he essayed again to speak, but his strength failing him he laid his hand in his son's, and so peacefully passed away.
"Really, hardly sooner than I expected, my dear sir," said Dr. Barford, when he came to pay his accustomed daily visit at Rowley Court, and found his occupation gone. "A little accelerated by nervousness about your coming home, but very little; not more than a few hours. I quite expected the event; told the nurse as much yesterday, in fact. Ah, well, my dear sir, it is what we must all come to. He was a fine old gentleman, a very fine old gentleman,--has not left many like him in Gloucestershire; more's the pity;" and Dr. Barford continued to talk on with smooth professional glibness, by no means unconscious of the fact that he was not listened to by Miles Challoner with even a show of attention.
Old Mark Challoner's death was emphatically a "bad business" for Dr. Barford, and he said so (to himself) quite frankly. The Squire had been a very profitable and by no means a troublesome or exacting patient to the worthy doctor for a considerable time, and it was not pleasant to him to know that the attendance which brought much that was agreeable with it, in addition to liberal and regularly-paid fees, was at an end. Dr. Barford looked at Miles Challoner, and a mild despondency possessed itself of his soul. Miles was a model of health and strength; his complexion indicated unconsciousness of the presence of bile in his system, and he looked as little like a man troubled, or likely to be troubled, with nerves, or fancied ailments of any kind, as need be. So Dr. Barford felt his footing at Rowley Court was a thing of the past, and mentally bade it farewell with a plaintive sigh. He was an honest little man, and kind-hearted too, though he did think of the event, as we all think of every event in which we are concerned, from a selfish standpoint; and he was frankly, genuinely sorry for his old friend; and Miles recognised the sincerity of feeling in him, and threw off his absence of mind, and shook hands with him over again, thanking him for the skill and care that had availed so long, none the less warmly that it could avail no longer.
Miles Challoner's grief for his father was very deep and poignant. His nature was acutely sensitive, and he had the power of feeling sorrow more intensely than most men, while he lacked the faculty for shaking it off, and betaking himself to the way of life which had been his before the trouble came upon him, which most men possess, and find very useful in a world which affords little time and has not much toleration for sentiment. Loneliness fell heavily upon him, and the society which in the winter would have been within his reach was not available now. The season was well on in London, and most of the people who formed the not very extensive neighbourhood of Rowley Court were in town; so that Miles Challoner was all uncheered by neighbourly kindness, and his evenings were especially solitary.
Incidental to his position as sole heir to the diminished but still respectable possessions of the Challoners, a great deal of business had to be gone through which was particularly distasteful to Miles. The family lawyer lived in London, of course, but his personal services had not been needed. Old Mark Challoner had set his house very thoroughly in order; no rents were in arrear, the debts were few, and the tenants were orderly and well-behaved. They had liked their old landlord well enough, and had been somewhat afraid of him. They were not quite sure whether they should approve altogether so much of the new one. Not that Miles had done anything to offend his father's people; not that he had saliently departed from, or violently transgressed, the traditions of conduct of the foregone Challoners; not that there was the slightest suspicion of milk-sopism attaching to Miles; but there was an uneasy notion abroad that Miles did not take much interest in the old place, that he cared over-much for books and "Lunnon," and was rather degenerately ignorant in matters appertaining to agriculture. On the whole, though there was no disaffection among the Rowley-Court tenantry, there was not much enthusiasm. Men who would have thought it a desperate hardship, an entirely unnatural and unheard-of slight indeed, if they had not been, whenever they desired it, immediately admitted to an interview with old Mark Challoner, were perfectly satisfied to transact their business with Mr. Styles the steward, and displayed to the deputy very little curiosity respecting his principal. They talked about Miles a little among themselves, wondering whether he would not marry soon, and supposing, in rather depreciatory accents, that he would bring a lady from "Lunnon."
"Glo'ster won't do for him, depend on it," said farmer Bewlay to the buxom wife of farmer Oliver; "he'll be having a fine madam, what'll want to be six months among the furriners, and save all she can at home the other six. Times have changed since the old Squire brought his pretty little wife home, and she shook hands with us all in the churchyard, after morning prayers, her first Sunday here, and told us how she knew us all already, from her husband's talk."
"I don't remember it myself," said farmer Oliver's buxom wife; "but I've heard Tummas talk of it, and how she looked up at the old Squire when she said, 'my husband,' and smiled just like a summer morning."
"Ay, indeed she did," assented farmer Bewlay; "but he wasn't the old Squire then, but a brave and good-looking gentleman; and she was a pretty girl, was madam, when she came to Rowley Court, and pretty up to the time they carried her out of it. I helped in that job; and the Squire had nowt but his little boys left."
"Has anybody heerd tell anything about Master Geoffrey?" said farmer Oliver's wife, dropping her voice, and looking round her, as people look who are talking of things which are not, or should not be, generally mentioned. "Does Mr. Styles say anything about him? Does Mr. Styles know where he is?"
"Mr. Styles never mentions him. I don't believe he knows any more than we do where he is, or what has become of him. A handsome child he was, and a handsome boy, though small and sly and cruel in his ways, and no more like the Squire, nor madam neither, than I am. You remember Master Geoffrey, surely?"
"O yes, I remember him. How the Squire changed after he went away! He ran away to sea, didn't he?"
"Some folk said so; but for my part I don't believe it. The sea, from all I've ever heard tell of it, ain't an easy life, nor a gay life, for the matter o' that; and wherever Master Geoffrey run to--and it's certain sure he can somewheres--it wasn't to sea, in my opinion. I don't know; I only have my own thoughts about it; and I ha'n't no means of knowin'. Anyhow he went, and Squire was never the same man after; he were always good, and fond of the place, and that he were to the last; but he never had the same smile again, and I never see him talking to the children about, or patting them on the head, or doing anything like what he used."
The honest dark eyes of Polly Oliver filled with tears. "It's all true," she said, "and more than that. When our Johnny were lying in the measles, and very near his end, the Squire came down one day along with Dr. Barford, the physician, you know. He thought there ought to be someone beside the doctor to see the child; and when Dr. Barford told us--very kind and feeling like, I must say--as the child couldn't be left with us any longer, and I began to cry, as was only natural, and made no difference to me who was there, Squire or no Squire, he says to me, quiet like, but I can hear the words now, 'You won't believe me, Mrs. Oliver, and it would be hard to expect you should; but there are worse things in life than seeing your boy die;' and then he went away. And when Johnny was buried, and I had time to think of anything else, I thought of the Squire's words; and many a time I wondered what was the meaning that was in them, and knew it must be Master Geoffrey's doing somehow, but how I did not know, and I suppose no one knows."
"I don't know about that," said farmer Bewlay; "it's likely as Mr. Miles knows, and Mr. Geoffrey; but I'm sure Styles doesn't: and outside them two, and the Squire in his grave, I daresay nobody in this world knows the rights of the story."
While the people over whom Miles Challoner had come to reign in the course of nature thus curiously, but not unkindly or with any lack of feeling, discussed the actualities and the probabilities of his life, and raked up the memory of that mysterious family secret, strongly suspected to be of a calamitous nature, which had long been hidden by the impenetrable silence of the Squire, and now lay buried in his grave, Miles Challoner himself was much occupied with the selfsame subject. The unanswered question which he had asked his father in his last moments,--the unsolved enigma which had disturbed his mind for years, which haunted him now, and made all his life seem unreal, wrong, and out of joint,--. rose up before him, and engaged his thoughts constantly, almost to the exclusion of every other matter for reflection except his father's death. The two linked themselves together in a strong bond of pain, and held him in their withes. This time was a very heavy one to the new master of Rowley Court.
His position was irksome to him. The privileges of proprietorship had no charms for Miles Challoner. He disliked the business details in which it involved him; he shrunk from the keenly painful associations it produced; he suffered much from his loneliness,--from the loneliness of the Court generally. Hitherto, whenever he had been away, he had returned to enjoy the tranquillity--tranquillity which, when it was tasted as a change, he appreciated very highly, but which as the normal state of things wearied him rapidly and excessively. He had had much companionship, in and since his boyhood, with his father, and the blank left by the old Squire's death was indeed complete. Miles Challoner, without deserving precisely the appellation of a student, was fond of books. He was well-educated, not in a very profound, but in a tolerably extensive and various sense; and his taste took a literary turn early in life, which, wholly unshared by his father, had been encouraged, fostered, and directed by his father's friend, Lord Sandilands. Miles was a man of few intimacies. He liked society; but no one would ever have called him sociable: he had much more the air of frequenting general, in order to keep clear of particular society; and this really was the case. Upon his sensitive disposition the family secret, concerning which he had vainly questioned his father on his death-bed, weighed heavily. It set him apart, and kept him apart from anything like intimacy with young men of his own age, because he felt that they too would be always trying to find out that of which he himself was ignorant; and he was not at ease with the older people, his father's contemporaries and neighbours, because he was not sure whether they had any inkling or certain knowledge of the family secret,--whether they were all in a conspiracy to keep him in the darkness to which his father had condemned him from the period of his brother's disappearance. Would Mark Challoner have at last confided the truth to his son, had a little more life, a little longer time, been accorded to him? This was the vain question which Miles asked himself as he sat moodily in the library after his solitary dinner, and watched the sun go down in a sea of gold and azure behind the grand old woods of Rowley Court, or strolled about the terrace listlessly, until the night fell. He could never answer it--no one could ever answer it; but this did not keep Miles Challoner from pondering upon it. He felt quite certain that there was but one man in the world who could resolve his doubts, who could tell him the worst,--might it not rather be the best--of this matter, which so sorely perplexed him. That man was Lord Sandilands. If anyone knew the truth, it was he; but whether Miles would ever hear it from him depended, as he felt, entirely on the terms on which the communication had been made, if it had been made at all, by his father to Lord Sandilands. That the family lawyer knew nothing of it, Miles felt confident; that Mr. Styles, the steward, was as ignorant and as curious, if not as anxious, as himself, he had no doubt whatever. There was no one to share, no one to aid, his mental inquietude. Was his brother living, or was he the only--the last--one bearing the old name left?
Very shortly after Mark Challoner's funeral had taken place, his son had instituted the strictest possible search among the documents of all kinds which the house contained, for any letters or papers bearing upon the mysterious occurrences which had changed the aspect of affairs at Rowley Court while the old Squire's sons were yet boys, and had shut the younger out from his father's house into banishment and oblivion. This search, which Miles had conducted quite alone, and had been careful to keep from the knowledge of the servants, had been entirely unrewarded by success, and had only revealed to Miles a circumstance which still further deepened the mystery which tormented him, and increased its distressing effect. Not only did there not exist among the Squire's papers any memoranda, letters, or documents of any description bearing upon, or having any reference to, the period at which Geoffrey Challoner had left Rowley Court, but none existed in any way, directly or indirectly, relating to him. Not a scrap of his writing as a child, though Miles found his own little letters to his father and mother carefully treasured up, with the correct dates noted upon each packet; and his portrait, as a baby of three years old, hung over the mantelpiece of his father's bedroom. But there was no likeness of Geoffrey. By an effort of memory Miles recalled the taking of that little portrait; he remembered how he had sat upon his father's knee, and played with the heavy gold hunting-watch, which was his especial delight--it was ticking away still in a watch-stand in the library--while the artist did his work. He remembered how his hair had been additionally brushed and curled for the occasion; and--yes, now he distinctly remembered that Geoffrey's portrait had also been painted. Where was it? What had been done with it?
All the circumstances returned to Miles Challoner's memory. The two pictures had hung side by side for years. Where was that of the younger son? The Squire had gone abroad for a short time, and the brothers had remained at Rowley Court under the care of their tutor. They had both written regularly to their father; and Miles found all his own letters of that period carefully preserved, arranged according to their dates, and indorsed, in his father's hand, "My Son's Letters, 18-." But there was no scrap of Geoffrey's writing, there was no trace that he had ever lived, to be found within the walls of Rowley Court. Only when Miles went into the room which had been the brothers' study, only when he entered and looked round the long-unused apartments which had been their nursery and play-room, could he realise that there had been two in that stately old house eleven years ago. The room which had been his wife's had always been occupied by the Squire after her death; otherwise Miles would have hoped to find some little memento of his brother there,--there, where he could dimly remember--or was it fancy, and not memory?--- a gentle pale face turned wistfully towards him when, a very little child, he was brought to see the fading mother who had been early and mercifully taken away from the evil to come. From evil indeed, from terrible and irremediable evil Miles Challoner felt it must have been; else why the hopeless banishment, why the impenetrable silence, why the apparently complete oblivion? He brooded upon these things in the solitude to which the first few weeks of his proprietorship of Rowley Court were devoted, almost to the exclusion of every other subject of thought; and Mr. Styles found him singularly inattentive and indifferent to the details of his property and his squirearchical duties, as that experienced person laid them before him.
"I can't make him out, and that's the truth," Mr. Styles remarked to Dr. Barford one day that the steward met the doctor taking his gig by a short cut through a lane which formed the boundary of Rowley Court on one side,--"I really can't make him out. He cares for nothing; and it is not natural for a young gentleman like him. I was talking to him this morning about the likely look of the turnips on the Lea Farm, and I'm blessed if he heard one word in ten; and when I asked him a question, just to rouse him up like, he said, 'O, ah! turnips, I think you said? Of course do as you think best;' which was altogether complete nonsense. Of course he's cut up about the Squire; and very natural and right it is he should be so; but it ain't natural and it ain't right to go on as he's going. And it's my belief," said Mr. Styles, as he removed his hat, took his checked pocket-handkerchief out of the crown, gave his face a desponding wipe with it, and replaced it,--"it's my belief as he don't know the difference between turnips and pine-apples; and there's a fine promise too, such as a man might look to getting some credit along of."
"That's bad, Styles; that's bad," said Dr. Barford; "I don't like to hear that my old friend's son is taking to moping. I'll call up at the Court and see him to-morrow. Good-day, Styles;" and the Doctor drove on, thinking gravely of the changes he had seen at Rowley Court, though he knew as little of their origin as everybody else knew.
On the following day, as Miles Challoner and the Doctor walked together upon the stone terrace, Miles stopped on the very spot whence his father had taken his last look at the lands which had called him master so long; and, looking full and earnestly at his companion, asked him: "Dr. Barford, do you know why my brother left his home? Do you know what that grief was which my father had on his mind while he lived, and when he died?"
Dr. Barford hesitated for a moment before he replied to Miles Challoner's question, but his hesitation arose from surprise, not from uncertainty. There was not the least tone of doubt or reserve in his voice and manner as he answered: "No, Mr. Challoner, your question surprises me very much; but I can assure you most positively I know nothing of the matter."
"Did my father never mention it to you? Never, even at the last, when he knew--for he told me so--he was dying?"
"Never," said Dr. Barford; then he added, after a momentary pause, "he did say something to me, on the last occasion when I had any talk with him, which may have had some reference to your brother; but if it had any, it was only incidental, and quite unexplained. He said something about his sharing in the common lot--having a skeleton in the cupboard; but that was all. Nothing more explicit ever passed his lips to me."
"Then, or at any time?" asked Miles.
"Then, or at any time, Mr. Challoner," repeated Dr. Barford gravely; and the two fell into silence, which lasted for several minutes.
At length Miles spoke:
"You really advise me to leave Rowley Court?" he said.
"Certainly I do; if not as a physician--in which capacity you do not require my services, happily--as a friend. You are not naturally of a very active temperament; and moping about here, in a place which is necessarily gloomy just now, and where you have no congenial occupation, will not improve you in that respect. Go up to town for the remainder of the season, and then go abroad for a few months; and you will find that you will come back wonderfully reconciled to being master of Rowley Court."
"I like your advice," said Miles with unusual briskness of tone; "and I think I will take it; at least I will take it so far as going up to town is concerned. As for the rest--"
"As for the rest, you can think of it when the time comes," said the Doctor. "And now I must bid you good-bye, and be off. I have to call at Dale and Stourton before I go home to dinner."
As Dr. Barford drove down the wide smooth avenue, between the ranks of tall stately elms which bordered the well-kept road, he thought: "That's a fine young fellow, but of rather a gloomy turn of mind. I hope he may fall in love and marry up in London, and bring a new mistress to the Court."
Miles walked up and down the terrace long after the Doctor had left him, and his face wore a brighter and more serene expression than it had been used to wear of late. He had remained at Rowley Court long enough; he knew how his affairs stood now; he had really nothing to keep him there. He could only learn what he most desired to know, if indeed it were possible to learn it at all, from Lord Sandilands, who was just then at his house in London. He would go and stay with Lord Sandilands. Having come to this decision, he turned into the house with a brisker step, and felt the evening which ensued the least dreary through which he had lived since the Squire died.
Had Mark Challoner been of a less autocratic disposition it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for him to have carried into execution the absolute taboo under which he had placed the subject of Geoffrey's disappearance. But the Squire had been a man of inexorable determination of character; and as he was not at all capricious, and exerted this resolution only when and where it was necessary, he had never met with rebellion on the part of his elder son. What the story of the younger had been, no one knew; no one had any certain indication by which to guess. The tutor to whom the education of the two boys had been intrusted was absent from Rowley Court when the separation intended by Mark Challoner, and destined by Providence, to be final, had taken place; and there was no reason to suppose that Mr. Mordaunt had ever received any information concerning his former pupil from the Squire. Had Miles Challoner been either older or younger at the time of the occurrence, he might have been unable to observe his father's peremptory command with the reluctant obedience he had manifested until the end, when his pent-up anxiety had found vent in his useless appeal to the dying Squire. But he had outlived the restless irrepressible curiosity of the child, and he had not reached the calm deliberative reasoning of the man. Now that the latter mode of thought had fully come to him, he suffered keenly, as only such sensitive natures have the gift to suffer, from his helpless ignorance of his brother's fate. The thought haunted him. As children, he and Geoffrey had loved each other well enough, after the childish fashion which includes any amount of quarrelling and making-up again; but as boys they had never got on very well together. They were essentially different, with the difference which makes discord, not with the contrast which produces harmony. Miles had always had an unacknowledged consciousness that Geoffrey cared very little about him, and this had had its influence upon the sensitive boy, an influence even stronger than that of the want of accord in the tastes and pursuits of the brothers. As Miles had advanced into manhood, he had come to understand all the appalling gravity of such a sentence as that which his father had passed upon his brother when he forbade the mention of his name in the house where he had been born and bred. With this comprehension came an intense yearning to know the meaning of the sentence,--to be enabled to estimate its justice; a kind of revolt on behalf of the banished brother, in which affection had less share than an abstract love of right, happily strong in the nature of the young man. And now there was no means of satisfying this yearning; the secret had to all appearance died with the Squire, but its consequences remained, to become an almost intolerable burden to Miles Challoner.
Lord Sandilands received his young friend's letter with sincere pleasure. He liked Miles; he liked his ideas and "ways;" he liked his society The young man had a happy faculty for creating this kind of liking among his fellows. He was large-minded and unselfish, and so he did not neglect or trample upon the feelings of other people, or try their tempers much or often. He was not a brilliant person, and therefore could afford to be good-natured and unaffected; and though he possessed rather more than an average amount of information upon most subjects of general interest and importance, there were few men less inclined to display their knowledge than Miles Challoner. He was disposed to accord to everybody his or her fair share of conversation, and had an acquiescent uncritical way with him which made friends for him, particularly among women. Without being in the least deserving of that truly opprobrious epithet, a lady's man, Miles had strong partisans among "the conflicting gender;" and women who found him a very impracticable subject for flirtation were ready to acknowledge that his notions of friendship were peculiarly exalted and practical. People who knew him, but had never troubled themselves to think about him particularly, would nevertheless have answered promptly to any question respecting him, that he was a fine honourably-minded fellow, and rather clever than otherwise; and the few who knew him well would have said substantially the same thing in more numerous and perhaps stronger words. The truth is, it was about all that could be said of Miles Challoner at the important period of his life which witnessed his father's death and his own succession to the family property, with its penalties and privileges of squiredom. He had reached man's estate some years before; but there had been nothing in the course and manner of his life previously to develop his character strongly,--to bring its good or evil traits into prominence. It had been an even, prosperous, happy life, on which he had entered with all the advantages of high animal spirits and unblemished health. Whether he had in him the stuff which either defies or moulds destiny, the courage which is matured in suffering, the truth and steadfastness of character which are at once weapons and armour in the strife of human existence, it was for time to tell.
Time did tell.
"I'm uncommonly glad you have made up your mind to come to town," wrote Lord Sandilands to Miles Challoner; "it is the best thing you can do; and so far from being disrespectful to your father's memory, it is your best way of avoiding what might even appear disrespectful to those who are no doubt watching you pretty closely. You have not a taste for the things the Squire (God bless him!) delighted in, and you cannot affect to have; because, in the first place, it is not in you to affect, and, in the second, you would certainly be found out by Mr. Styles. (Ceres and Pomona! shall I ever forget a dialogue between your father and him about the best crop for the Bayhamsfields?) You will offend your new people much less by absence than by indifference, depend upon it. Then you can thoroughly depend on Styles; and you can always put agricultural enthusiasm on paper. So come up, my dear boy; and the sooner the better."
Miles Challoner went to London, and very soon after he arrived there "time" began "to tell.".