CHAPTER XXVIII.
A TALE APART.
Harry Ringrose used sometimes to complain of his life from a literary point of view. This piece of ingratitude he was wont to couch in the technical terminology with which his conversation was rather freely garnished. He acknowledged that his "African horse had good legs," as Gordon Lowndes would remind him; it was the later years that set him grumbling. In Harry's opinion they were full of "good stuff," which he longed to "handle"; but the facts were so badly "constructed" (as facts will be) that all the king's horses and all the king's men could not pull them to pieces and put them together again without spoiling them. Then there were the "unities": our author was not quite clear as to their meaning, but he had an uncomfortable presentiment that they would prove another difficulty. And the "dramatic interest" lacked continuity. It was also of too many different kinds. The play began in one theatre, went on in another, and finished across the river. Worst of all was the "love story:" it disappeared for years, and then came altogether in a lump.
This was true. It did. And if Harry Ringrose had essayed the task to which his innate subjectivity and the want of better ideas often drew him, there is no saying how much he would have made of scenes which the impersonal historian is content simply to mention. Of such was the meeting which took place within a few hours of that other meeting in the Eastbourne lodgings. Yet this proved to be the beginning of a new story rather than the end of an old one, which poor Harry meant it to be, as he returned alone to town the same afternoon, and drove straight to Berkeley Square.
His excitement is not to be described. It seemed but a day since the leave-taking in the little shabby drawing-room on Richmond Hill. He remembered his own words so clearly. He remembered her replies. There were no more mysteries now; there were no more quarrels; and he cared still, as he had always done, Heaven knew! If only she still cared for him—if only there was nobody else—what was there to hinder it for another minute?
Nothing, one would have thought: yet it was dusk when Harry rang the bell in a shivering glow of hope and fear, and nearly midnight when he came away downcast and disheartened: and during all those hours but one he had been pressing an unsuccessful suit: though he had her word for it that there was nobody else.
What was there, then?
Those six years which had once given Harry Ringrose a misleading sense of safety.
And literally nothing else!
He called again next day. He hindered the removal on the plea of making himself useful. And in season and out of season he tried his luck in vain.