Harrington went back to Dorchester with his father next day, and the acceptance was promptly honoured when it was presented at the house in Cornhill.
Sir Henry had discounted it at the local bank almost immediately after it passed into his possession, and the bank had regarded the document as good value for their money, Matthew Dalbrook being very unlikely to allow his son’s signature to be dishonoured.
CHAPTER XX.
“All the spring-time of his love
Is already gone and past.”
Theodore went back to wintry London before the year was a week old. He settled himself by his lonely fireside, in the silence of his old-fashioned rooms. All he had of the beauty of this world was a glimpse of the river athwart the heavy grey mists of a London morning, or the lamps on the Embankment shining like a string of jewels in the evening dusk. There were days of sullen, hopeless fog, when even these things were hidden from him, and when it was hard work to keep that stealthy, penetrating greyness and damp cold out of his rooms.
He had brought a fox-terrier from Dorchester on his return from his holiday, an old favourite that had seen the best days of her youth, and was better able to put up with a sedentary life, varied only by an occasional run, than a younger animal would have been. This faithful friend, an animated little beast even at this mature stage of her existence, lightened the burden of his loneliness, were it only by leaping on to his knees twenty times in five minutes, and only desisting therefrom upon most serious remonstrance. It was pleasant to him to have something that loved him, even this irrepressible Miss Nipper, with her sidelong grin of affectionate greeting, and her unconquerable suspicion of rats behind the wainscot. He felt less like Dr. Faustus on that famous Easter morning, when the emptiness of life and learning came home to the lonely student with such desolating intensity, when even a devil was welcome who could offer escape from that dull burden of existence.
He had come back from his brief holiday dejected and disheartened. It seemed to him that she who was his lode-star was more remote from him than she had ever been—more and more remote—vanishing into a distant world where it was vain for him to follow. He had failed in the task that she had imposed upon him. He was no nearer the solution of that dark mystery which troubled her life than he had been when he first promised to help her. How poor and impotent a creature he must appear in her eyes. His only discoveries had been negative. All that his keen, trained intellect, sharpened by seven years of legal experience, had been able to do was to prove the unsoundness of her own theory. He had started no theory upon his part. No flash of genius had illumined the obscurity which surrounded Godfrey Carmichael’s death.
He went on with his plodding work, resolutely bent upon doing the utmost that patient labour can do to insure success. Even if it were all vain and futile—that hope of winning favour in her eyes—the mere possibility of standing better with her, of showing her that he was of the stuff which goes to the making of distinguished men—even this was worth working for.
“She may have great offers by-and-by,” he told himself, recalling what Lord Cheriton had said about his daughter’s chances. “With her beauty and her expectations, to say nothing of her present means, she is sure of distinguished admirers; but at the worst she cannot look down upon a man who is on the road to success in her father’s profession.”