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,