The Rock Ahead (Vol. 1&2). Edmund Yates

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.".