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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Derrick Vaughan--Novelist, by Edna Lyall
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Derrick Vaughan--Novelist
+
+Author: Edna Lyall
+
+Posting Date: October 1, 2008 [EBook #1665]
+Release Date: March, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DERRICK VAUGHAN--NOVELIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+DERRICK VAUGHAN--NOVELIST
+
+By Edna Lyall
+
+
+     'It is only through deep sympathy that a man can become a
+     great artist.'--Lewes's Life of Goethe.
+
+
+     'Sympathy is feeling related to an object, whilst sentiment
+     is the same feeling seeking itself alone.'--Arnold Toynbee.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+'Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion; better if un- or
+partially occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the
+county and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled
+solitude of one, with my feelings at seven years old!'--From Letters of
+Charles Lamb.
+
+
+To attempt a formal biography of Derrick Vaughan would be out of the
+question, even though he and I have been more or less thrown together
+since we were both in the nursery. But I have an odd sort of wish to
+note down roughly just a few of my recollections of him, and to show how
+his fortunes gradually developed, being perhaps stimulated to make the
+attempt by certain irritating remarks which one overhears now often
+enough at clubs or in drawing-rooms, or indeed wherever one goes.
+"Derrick Vaughan," say these authorities of the world of small-talk,
+with that delightful air of omniscience which invariably characterises
+them, "why, he simply leapt into fame. He is one of the favourites of
+fortune. Like Byron, he woke one morning and found himself famous."
+
+Now this sounds well enough, but it is a long way from the truth, and
+I--Sydney Wharncliffe, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law--desire,
+while the past few years are fresh in my mind, to write a true version
+of my friend's career.
+
+Everyone knows his face. Has it not appeared in 'Noted Men,'
+and--gradually deteriorating according to the price of the paper and
+the quality of the engraving--in many another illustrated journal? Yet
+somehow these works of art don't satisfy me, and, as I write, I see
+before me something very different from the latest photograph by Messrs.
+Paul and Reynard.
+
+I see a large-featured, broad-browed English face, a trifle
+heavy-looking when in repose, yet a thorough, honest, manly face, with
+a complexion neither dark nor fair, with brown hair and moustache, and
+with light hazel eyes that look out on the world quietly enough. You
+might talk to him for long in an ordinary way and never suspect that he
+was a genius; but when you have him to yourself, when some consciousness
+of sympathy rouses him, he all at once becomes a different being. His
+quiet eyes kindle, his face becomes full of life--you wonder that you
+ever thought it heavy or commonplace. Then the world interrupts in some
+way, and, just as a hermit-crab draws down its shell with a comically
+rapid movement, so Derrick suddenly retires into himself.
+
+Thus much for his outer man.
+
+For the rest, there are of course the neat little accounts of his
+birthplace, his parentage, his education, etc., etc., published with the
+list of his works in due order, with the engravings in the illustrated
+papers. But these tell us little of the real life of the man.
+
+Carlyle, in one of his finest passages, says that 'A true delineation of
+the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage through life is capable of
+interesting the greatest men; that all men are to an unspeakable degree
+brothers, each man's life a strange emblem of every man's; and that
+human portraits faithfully drawn are of all pictures the welcomest on
+human walls.' And though I don't profess to give a portrait, but merely
+a sketch, I will endeavour to sketch faithfully, and possibly in the
+future my work may fall into the hands of some of those worthy people
+who imagine that my friend leapt into fame at a bound, or of those
+comfortable mortals who seem to think that a novel is turned out as
+easily as water from a tap.
+
+There is, however, one thing I can never do:--I am quite unable to
+put into words my friend's intensely strong feeling with regard to the
+sacredness of his profession. It seemed to me not unlike the feeling
+of Isaiah when, in the vision, his mouth had been touched with the
+celestial fire. And I can only hope that something of this may be read
+between my very inadequate lines.
+
+Looking back, I fancy Derrick must have been a clever child. But he was
+not precocious, and in some respects was even decidedly backward. I can
+see him now--it is my first clear recollection of him--leaning back
+in the corner of my father's carriage as we drove from the Newmarket
+station to our summer home at Mondisfield. He and I were small boys of
+eight, and Derrick had been invited for the holidays, while his twin
+brother--if I remember right--indulged in typhoid fever at Kensington.
+He was shy and silent, and the ice was not broken until we passed
+Silvery Steeple.
+
+"That," said my father, "is a ruined church; it was destroyed by
+Cromwell in the Civil Wars."
+
+In an instant the small quiet boy sitting beside me was transformed. His
+eyes shone; he sprang forward and thrust his head far out of the window,
+gazing at the old ivy-covered tower as long as it remained in sight.
+
+"Was Cromwell really once there?" he asked with breathless interest.
+
+"So they say," replied my father, looking with an amused smile at the
+face of the questioner, in which eagerness, delight, and reverence were
+mingled. "Are you an admirer of the Lord Protector?"
+
+"He is my greatest hero of all," said Derrick fervently. "Do you
+think--oh, do you think he possibly can ever have come to Mondisfield?"
+
+My father thought not, but said there was an old tradition that the
+Hall had been attacked by the Royalists, and the bridge over the moat
+defended by the owner of the house; but he had no great belief in the
+story, for which, indeed, there seemed no evidence.
+
+Derrick's eyes during this conversation were something wonderful to see,
+and long after, when we were not actually playing at anything, I used
+often to notice the same expression stealing over him, and would cry
+out, "There is the man defending the bridge again; I can see him in your
+eyes! Tell me what happened to him next!"
+
+Then, generally pacing to and fro in the apple walk, or sitting astride
+the bridge itself, Derrick would tell me of the adventures of my
+ancestor, Paul Wharncliffe, who performed incredible feats of valour,
+and who was to both of us a most real person. On wet days he wrote
+his story in a copy-book, and would have worked at it for hours had my
+mother allowed him, though of the manual part of the work he had, and
+has always retained, the greatest dislike. I remember well the comical
+ending of this first story of his. He skipped over an interval of ten
+years, represented on the page by ten laboriously made stars, and did
+for his hero in the following lines:
+
+"And now, reader, let us come into Mondisfield churchyard. There are
+three tombstones. On one is written, 'Mr. Paul Wharncliffe.'"
+
+The story was no better than the productions of most eight-year-old
+children, the written story at least. But, curiously enough, it proved
+to be the germ of the celebrated romance, 'At Strife,' which Derrick
+wrote in after years; and he himself maintains that his picture of life
+during the Civil War would have been much less graphic had he not lived
+so much in the past during his various visits to Mondisfield.
+
+It was at his second visit, when we were nine, that I remember his
+announcing his intention of being an author when he was grown up. My
+mother still delights in telling the story. She was sitting at work in
+the south parlour one day, when I dashed into the room calling out:
+
+"Derrick's head is stuck between the banisters in the gallery; come
+quick, mother, come quick!"
+
+She ran up the little winding staircase, and there, sure enough, in
+the musician's gallery, was poor Derrick, his manuscript and pen on the
+floor and his head in durance vile.
+
+"You silly boy!" said my mother, a little frightened when she found that
+to get the head back was no easy matter, "What made you put it through?"
+
+"You look like King Charles at Carisbrooke," I cried, forgetting how
+much Derrick would resent the speech.
+
+And being released at that moment he took me by the shoulders and gave
+me an angry shake or two, as he said vehemently, "I'm not like King
+Charles! King Charles was a liar."
+
+I saw my mother smile a little as she separated us.
+
+"Come, boys, don't quarrel," she said. "And Derrick will tell me the
+truth, for indeed I am curious to know why he thrust his head in such a
+place."
+
+"I wanted to make sure," said Derrick, "whether Paul Wharncliffe could
+see Lady Lettice, when she took the falcon on her wrist below in the
+passage. I mustn't say he saw her if it's impossible, you know. Authors
+have to be quite true in little things, and I mean to be an author."
+
+"But," said my mother, laughing at the great earnestness of the hazel
+eyes, "could not your hero look over the top of the rail?"
+
+"Well, yes," said Derrick. "He would have done that, but you see it's
+so dreadfully high and I couldn't get up. But I tell you what, Mrs.
+Wharncliffe, if it wouldn't be giving you a great deal of trouble--I'm
+sorry you were troubled to get my head back again--but if you would
+just look over, since you are so tall, and I'll run down and act Lady
+Lettice."
+
+"Why couldn't Paul go downstairs and look at the lady in comfort?" asked
+my mother.
+
+Derrick mused a little.
+
+"He might look at her through a crack in the door at the foot of the
+stairs, perhaps, but that would seem mean, somehow. It would be a pity,
+too, not to use the gallery; galleries are uncommon, you see, and you
+can get cracked doors anywhere. And, you know, he was obliged to look at
+her when she couldn't see him, because their fathers were on different
+sides in the war, and dreadful enemies."
+
+When school-days came, matters went on much in the same way; there was
+always an abominably scribbled tale stowed away in Derrick's desk, and
+he worked infinitely harder than I did, because there was always before
+him this determination to be an author and to prepare himself for
+the life. But he wrote merely from love of it, and with no idea of
+publication until the beginning of our last year at Oxford, when,
+having reached the ripe age of one-and-twenty, he determined to delay no
+longer, but to plunge boldly into his first novel.
+
+He was seldom able to get more than six or eight hours a week for it,
+because he was reading rather hard, so that the novel progressed but
+slowly. Finally, to my astonishment, it came to a dead stand-still.
+
+I have never made out exactly what was wrong with Derrick then, though
+I know that he passed through a terrible time of doubt and despair. I
+spent part of the Long with him down at Ventnor, where his mother had
+been ordered for her health. She was devoted to Derrick, and as far as
+I can understand, he was her chief comfort in life. Major Vaughan, the
+husband, had been out in India for years; the only daughter was married
+to a rich manufacturer at Birmingham, who had a constitutional dislike
+to mothers-in-law, and as far as possible eschewed their company; while
+Lawrence, Derrick's twin brother, was for ever getting into scrapes, and
+was into the bargain the most unblushingly selfish fellow I ever had the
+pleasure of meeting.
+
+"Sydney," said Mrs. Vaughan to me one afternoon when we were in the
+garden, "Derrick seems to me unlike himself, there is a division between
+us which I never felt before. Can you tell me what is troubling him?"
+
+She was not at all a good-looking woman, but she had a very sweet,
+wistful face, and I never looked at her sad eyes without feeling ready
+to go through fire and water for her. I tried now to make light of
+Derrick's depression.
+
+"He is only going through what we all of us go through," I said,
+assuming a cheerful tone. "He has suddenly discovered that life is a
+great riddle, and that the things he has accepted in blind faith are,
+after all, not so sure."
+
+She sighed.
+
+"Do all go through it?" she said thoughtfully. "And how many, I wonder,
+get beyond?"
+
+"Few enough," I replied moodily. Then, remembering my role,--"But
+Derrick will get through; he has a thousand things to help him which
+others have not,--you, for instance. And then I fancy he has a sort of
+insight which most of us are without."
+
+"Possibly," she said. "As for me, it is little that I can do for him.
+Perhaps you are right, and it is true that once in a life at any rate we
+all have to go into the wilderness alone."
+
+That was the last summer I ever saw Derrick's mother; she took a chill
+the following Christmas and died after a few days' illness. But I have
+always thought her death helped Derrick in a way that her life might
+have failed to do. For although he never, I fancy, quite recovered from
+the blow, and to this day cannot speak of her without tears in his eyes,
+yet when he came back to Oxford he seemed to have found the answer to
+the riddle, and though older, sadder and graver than before, had quite
+lost the restless dissatisfaction that for some time had clouded his
+life. In a few months, moreover, I noticed a fresh sign that he was out
+of the wood. Coming into his rooms one day I found him sitting in the
+cushioned window-seat, reading over and correcting some sheets of blue
+foolscap.
+
+"At it again?" I asked.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I mean to finish the first volume here. For the rest I must be in
+London."
+
+"Why?" I asked, a little curious as to this unknown art of novel-making.
+
+"Because," he replied, "one must be in the heart of things to understand
+how Lynwood was affected by them."
+
+"Lynwood! I believe you are always thinking of him!" (Lynwood was the
+hero of his novel.)
+
+"Well, so I am nearly--so I must be, if the book is to be any good."
+
+"Read me what you have written," I said, throwing myself back in a
+rickety but tolerably comfortable arm-chair which Derrick had inherited
+with the rooms.
+
+He hesitated a moment, being always very diffident about his own work;
+but presently, having provided me with a cigar and made a good deal of
+unnecessary work in arranging the sheets of the manuscript, he began to
+read aloud, rather nervously, the opening chapters of the book now so
+well known under the title of 'Lynwood's Heritage.'
+
+I had heard nothing of his for the last four years, and was amazed at
+the gigantic stride he had made in the interval. For, spite of a certain
+crudeness, it seemed to me a most powerful story; it rushed straight to
+the point with no wavering, no beating about the bush; it flung itself
+into the problems of the day with a sort of sublime audacity; it took
+hold of one; it whirled one along with its own inherent force, and drew
+forth both laughter and tears, for Derrick's power of pathos had always
+been his strongest point.
+
+All at once he stopped reading.
+
+"Go on!" I cried impatiently.
+
+"That is all," he said, gathering the sheets together.
+
+"You stopped in the middle of a sentence!" I cried in exasperation.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly, "for six months."
+
+"You provoking fellow! why, I wonder?"
+
+"Because I didn't know the end."
+
+"Good heavens! And do you know it now?"
+
+He looked me full in the face, and there was an expression in his eyes
+which puzzled me.
+
+"I believe I do," he said; and, getting up, he crossed the room, put the
+manuscript away in a drawer, and returning, sat down in the window-seat
+again, looking out on the narrow, paved street below, and at the grey
+buildings opposite.
+
+I knew very well that he would never ask me what I thought of the
+story--that was not his way.
+
+"Derrick!" I exclaimed, watching his impassive face, "I believe after
+all you are a genius."
+
+I hardly know why I said "after all," but till that moment it had
+never struck me that Derrick was particularly gifted. He had so far got
+through his Oxford career creditably, but then he had worked hard; his
+talents were not of a showy order. I had never expected that he would
+set the Thames on fire. Even now it seemed to me that he was too dreamy,
+too quiet, too devoid of the pushing faculty to succeed in the world.
+
+My remark made him laugh incredulously.
+
+"Define a genius," he said.
+
+For answer I pulled down his beloved Imperial Dictionary and read
+him the following quotation from De Quincey: 'Genius is that mode of
+intellectual power which moves in alliance with the genial nature, i.e.,
+with the capacities of pleasure and pain; whereas talent has no
+vestige of such an alliance, and is perfectly independent of all human
+sensibilities.'
+
+"Let me think! You can certainly enjoy things a hundred times more than
+I can--and as for suffering, why you were always a great hand at that.
+Now listen to the great Dr. Johnson and see if the cap fits, 'The true
+genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined in some
+particular direction.'
+
+"'Large general powers'!--yes, I believe after all you have them with,
+alas, poor Derrick! one notable exception--the mathematical faculty. You
+were always bad at figures. We will stick to De Quincey's definition,
+and for heaven's sake, my dear fellow, do get Lynwood out of that awful
+plight! No wonder you were depressed when you lived all this age with
+such a sentence unfinished!"
+
+"For the matter of that," said Derrick, "he can't get out till the end
+of the book; but I can begin to go on with him now."
+
+"And when you leave Oxford?"
+
+"Then I mean to settle down in London--to write leisurely--and possibly
+to read for the Bar."
+
+"We might be together," I suggested. And Derrick took to this idea,
+being a man who detested solitude and crowds about equally. Since his
+mother's death he had been very much alone in the world. To Lawrence he
+was always loyal, but the two had nothing in common, and though fond
+of his sister he could not get on at all with the manufacturer, his
+brother-in-law. But this prospect of life together in London pleased him
+amazingly; he began to recover his spirits to a great extent and to look
+much more like himself.
+
+It must have been just as he had taken his degree that he received a
+telegram to announce that Major Vaughan had been invalided home, and
+would arrive at Southampton in three weeks' time. Derrick knew very
+little of his father, but apparently Mrs. Vaughan had done her best to
+keep up a sort of memory of his childish days at Aldershot, and in
+these the part that his father played was always pleasant. So he looked
+forward to the meeting not a little, while I, from the first, had my
+doubts as to the felicity it was likely to bring him.
+
+However, it was ordained that before the Major's ship arrived, his son's
+whole life should change. Even Lynwood was thrust into the background.
+As for me, I was nowhere. For Derrick, the quiet, the self-contained,
+had fallen passionately in love with a certain Freda Merrifield.
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+     'Infancy?  What if the rose-streak of morning
+      Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
+      Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
+      Love once:  e'en love's disappointment endears;
+      A moment's success pays the failure of years.'
+                                               R. Browning.
+
+The wonder would have been if he had not fallen in love with her, for
+a more fascinating girl I never saw. She had only just returned from
+school at Compiegne, and was not yet out; her charming freshness
+was unsullied; she had all the simplicity and straightforwardness of
+unspoilt, unsophisticated girlhood. I well remember our first sight
+of her. We had been invited for a fortnight's yachting by Calverley of
+Exeter. His father, Sir John Calverley, had a sailing yacht, and some
+guests having disappointed him at the last minute, he gave his son carte
+blanche as to who he should bring to fill the vacant berths.
+
+So we three travelled down to Southampton together one hot summer day,
+and were rowed out to the Aurora, an uncommonly neat little schooner
+which lay in that over-rated and frequently odoriferous roadstead,
+Southampton Water. However, I admit that on that evening--the tide being
+high--the place looked remarkably pretty; the level rays of the setting
+sun turned the water to gold; a soft luminous haze hung over the town
+and the shipping, and by a stretch of imagination one might have thought
+the view almost Venetian. Derrick's perfect content was only marred
+by his shyness. I knew that he dreaded reaching the Aurora; and sure
+enough, as we stepped on to the exquisitely white deck and caught sight
+of the little group of guests, I saw him retreat into his crab-shell of
+silent reserve. Sir John, who made a very pleasant host, introduced us
+to the other visitors--Lord Probyn and his wife and their niece, Miss
+Freda Merrifield. Lady Probyn was Sir John's sister, and also the sister
+of Miss Merrifield's mother; so that it was almost a family party,
+and by no means a formidable gathering. Lady Probyn played the part of
+hostess and chaperoned her pretty niece; but she was not in the least
+like the aunt of fiction--on the contrary, she was comparatively young
+in years and almost comically young in mind; her niece was devoted to
+her, and the moment I saw her I knew that our cruise could not possibly
+be dull.
+
+As to Miss Freda, when we first caught sight of her she was standing
+near the companion, dressed in a daintily made yachting costume of blue
+serge and white braid, and round her white sailor hat she wore the
+name of the yacht stamped on a white ribbon; in her waist-band she
+had fastened two deep crimson roses, and she looked at us with frank,
+girlish curiosity, no doubt wondering whether we should add to or
+detract from the enjoyment of the expedition. She was rather tall,
+and there was an air of strength and energy about her which was most
+refreshing. Her skin was singularly white, but there was a healthy glow
+of colour in her cheeks; while her large, grey eyes, shaded by long
+lashes, were full of life and brightness. As to her features, they
+were perhaps a trifle irregular, and her elder sisters were supposed to
+eclipse her altogether; but to my mind she was far the most taking of
+the three.
+
+I was not in the least surprised that Derrick should fall head over ears
+in love with her; she was exactly the sort of girl that would infallibly
+attract him. Her absence of shyness; her straightforward, easy way of
+talking; her genuine goodheartedness; her devotion to animals--one of
+his own pet hobbies--and finally her exquisite playing, made the
+result a foregone conclusion. And then, moreover, they were perpetually
+together. He would hang over the piano in the saloon for hours while she
+played, the rest of us lazily enjoying the easy chairs and the fresh air
+on deck; and whenever we landed, these two were sure in the end to be
+just a little apart from the rest of us.
+
+It was an eminently successful cruise. We all liked each other; the sea
+was calm, the sunshine constant, the wind as a rule favourable, and I
+think I never in a single fortnight heard so many good stories, or had
+such a good time. We seemed to get right out of the world and its narrow
+restrictions, away from all that was hollow and base and depressing,
+only landing now and then at quaint little quiet places for some merry
+excursion on shore. Freda was in the highest spirits; and as to Derrick,
+he was a different creature. She seemed to have the power of drawing him
+out in a marvellous degree, and she took the greatest interest in his
+work--a sure way to every author's heart.
+
+But it was not till one day, when we landed at Tresco, that I felt
+certain she genuinely loved him--there in one glance the truth flashed
+upon me. I was walking with one of the gardeners down one of the long
+shady paths of that lovely little island, with its curiously foreign
+look, when we suddenly came face to face with Derrick and Freda. They
+were talking earnestly, and I could see her great grey eyes as they were
+lifted to his--perhaps they were more expressive than she knew--I cannot
+say. They both started a little as we confronted them, and the colour
+deepened in Freda's face. The gardener, with what photographers usually
+ask for--'just the faint beginning of a smile,'--turned and gathered a
+bit of white heather growing near.
+
+"They say it brings good luck, miss," he remarked, handing it to Freda.
+
+"Thank you," she said, laughing, "I hope it will bring it to me. At
+any rate it will remind me of this beautiful island. Isn't it just like
+Paradise, Mr. Wharncliffe?"
+
+"For me it is like Paradise before Eve was created," I replied, rather
+wickedly. "By the bye, are you going to keep all the good luck to
+yourself?"
+
+"I don't know," she said laughing. "Perhaps I shall; but you have only
+to ask the gardener, he will gather you another piece directly."
+
+I took good care to drop behind, having no taste for the third-fiddle
+business; but I noticed when we were in the gig once more, rowing back
+to the yacht, that the white heather had been equally divided--one half
+was in the waist-band of the blue serge dress, the other half in the
+button-hole of Derrick's blazer.
+
+So the fortnight slipped by, and at length one afternoon we found
+ourselves once more in Southampton Water; then came the bustle of
+packing and the hurry of departure, and the merry party dispersed.
+Derrick and I saw them all off at the station, for, as his father's ship
+did not arrive till the following day, I made up my mind to stay on with
+him at Southampton.
+
+"You will come and see us in town," said Lady Probyn, kindly. And Lord
+Probyn invited us both for the shooting at Blachington in September. "We
+will have the same party on shore, and see if we can't enjoy ourselves
+almost as well," he said in his hearty way; "the novel will go all the
+better for it, eh, Vaughan?"
+
+Derrick brightened visibly at the suggestion. I heard him talking to
+Freda all the time that Sir John stood laughing and joking as to the
+comparative pleasures of yachting and shooting.
+
+"You will be there too?" Derrick asked.
+
+"I can't tell," said Freda, and there was a shade of sadness in her
+tone. Her voice was deeper than most women's voices--a rich contralto
+with something striking and individual about it. I could hear her quite
+plainly; but Derrick spoke less distinctly--he always had a bad trick of
+mumbling.
+
+"You see I am the youngest," she said, "and I am not really 'out.'
+Perhaps my mother will wish one of the elder ones to go; but I half
+think they are already engaged for September, so after all I may have a
+chance."
+
+Inaudible remark from my friend.
+
+"Yes, I came here because my sisters did not care to leave London till
+the end of the season," replied the clear contralto. "It has been a
+perfect cruise. I shall remember it all my life."
+
+After that, nothing more was audible; but I imagine Derrick must have
+hazarded a more personal question, and that Freda had admitted that it
+was not only the actual sailing she should remember. At any rate her
+face when I caught sight of it again made me think of the girl described
+in the 'Biglow Papers':
+
+     "''Twas kin' o' kingdom come to look
+        On sech a blessed creatur.
+        A dogrose blushin' to a brook
+        Ain't modester nor sweeter.'"
+
+So the train went off, and Derrick and I were left to idle about
+Southampton and kill time as best we might. Derrick seemed to walk the
+streets in a sort of dream--he was perfectly well aware that he had met
+his fate, and at that time no thought of difficulties in the way had
+arisen either in his mind or in my own. We were both of us young and
+inexperienced; we were both of us in love, and we had the usual lover's
+notion that everything in heaven and earth is prepared to favour the
+course of his particular passion.
+
+I remember that we soon found the town intolerable, and, crossing by the
+ferry, walked over to Netley Abbey, and lay down idly in the shade of
+the old grey walls. Not a breath of wind stirred the great masses of
+ivy which were wreathed about the ruined church, and the place looked so
+lovely in its decay, that we felt disposed to judge the dissolute
+monks very leniently for having behaved so badly that their church and
+monastery had to be opened to the four winds of heaven. After all, when
+is a church so beautiful as when it has the green grass for its floor
+and the sky for its roof?
+
+I could show you the very spot near the East window where Derrick told
+me the whole truth, and where we talked over Freda's perfections and the
+probability of frequent meetings in London. He had listened so often and
+so patiently to my affairs, that it seemed an odd reversal to have to
+play the confidant; and if now and then my thoughts wandered off to the
+coming month at Mondisfield, and pictured violet eyes while he talked of
+grey, it was not from any lack of sympathy with my friend.
+
+Derrick was not of a self-tormenting nature, and though I knew he was
+amazed at the thought that such a girl as Freda could possibly care for
+him, yet he believed most implicitly that this wonderful thing had come
+to pass; and, remembering her face as we had last seen it, and the look
+in her eyes at Tresco, I, too, had not a shadow of a doubt that she
+really loved him. She was not the least bit of a flirt, and society
+had not had a chance yet of moulding her into the ordinary girl of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+Perhaps it was the sudden and unexpected change of the next day that
+makes me remember Derrick's face so distinctly as he lay back on the
+smooth turf that afternoon in Netley Abbey. As it looked then, full of
+youth and hope, full of that dream of cloudless love, I never saw it
+again.
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+     "Religion in him never died, but became a habit--a habit of
+     enduring hardness, and cleaving to the steadfast performance
+     of duty in the face of the strongest allurements to the
+     pleasanter and easier course." Life of Charles Lamb, by A.
+     Ainger.
+
+Derrick was in good spirits the next day. He talked much of Major
+Vaughan, wondered whether the voyage home had restored his health,
+discussed the probable length of his leave, and speculated as to the
+nature of his illness; the telegram had of course given no details.
+
+"There has not been even a photograph for the last five years," he
+remarked, as we walked down to the quay together. "Yet I think I should
+know him anywhere, if it is only by his height. He used to look so well
+on horseback. I remember as a child seeing him in a sham fight charging
+up Caesar's Camp."
+
+"How old were you when he went out?"
+
+"Oh, quite a small boy," replied Derrick. "It was just before I first
+stayed with you. However, he has had a regular succession of photographs
+sent out to him, and will know me easily enough."
+
+Poor Derrick! I can't think of that day even now without a kind of
+mental shiver. We watched the great steamer as it glided up to the quay,
+and Derrick scanned the crowded deck with eager eyes, but could nowhere
+see the tall, soldierly figure that had lingered so long in his memory.
+He stood with his hand resting on the rail of the gangway, and when
+presently it was raised to the side of the steamer, he still kept his
+position, so that he could instantly catch sight of his father as he
+passed down. I stood close behind him, and watched the motley procession
+of passengers; most of them had the dull colourless skin which bespeaks
+long residence in India, and a particularly yellow and peevish-looking
+old man was grumbling loudly as he slowly made his way down the gangway.
+
+"The most disgraceful scene!" he remarked. "The fellow was as drunk as
+he could be."
+
+"Who was it?" asked his companion.
+
+"Why, Major Vaughan, to be sure. The only wonder is that he hasn't drunk
+himself to death by this time--been at it years enough!"
+
+Derrick turned, as though to shelter himself from the curious eyes of
+the travellers; but everywhere the quay was crowded. It seemed to me not
+unlike the life that lay before him, with this new shame which could not
+be hid, and I shall never forget the look of misery in his face.
+
+"Most likely a great exaggeration of that spiteful old fogey's," I said.
+"Never believe anything that you hear, is a sound axiom. Had you not
+better try to get on board?"
+
+"Yes; and for heaven's sake come with me, Wharncliffe!" he said. "It
+can't be true! It is, as you say, that man's spite, or else there is
+someone else of the name on board. That must be it--someone else of the
+name."
+
+I don't know whether he managed to deceive himself. We made our way
+on board, and he spoke to one of the stewards, who conducted us to the
+saloon. I knew from the expression of the man's face that the words we
+had overheard were but too true; it was a mere glance that he gave
+us, yet if he had said aloud, "They belong to that old drunkard! Thank
+heaven I'm not in their shoes!" I could not have better understood what
+was in his mind.
+
+There were three persons only in the great saloon: an officer's servant,
+whose appearance did not please me; a fine looking old man with grey
+hair and whiskers, and a rough-hewn honest face, apparently the ship's
+doctor; and a tall grizzled man in whom I at once saw a sort of horrible
+likeness to Derrick--horrible because this face was wicked and degraded,
+and because its owner was drunk--noisily drunk. Derrick paused for a
+minute, looking at his father; then, deadly pale, he turned to the old
+doctor. "I am Major Vaughan's son," he said.
+
+The doctor grasped his hand, and there was something in the old man's
+kindly, chivalrous manner which brought a sort of light into the gloom.
+
+"I am very glad to see you!" he exclaimed. "Is the Major's luggage
+ready?" he inquired turning to the servant. Then, as the man replied
+in the affirmative, "How would it be, Mr. Vaughan, if your father's man
+just saw the things into a cab? and then I'll come on shore with you and
+see my patient safely settled in."
+
+Derrick acquiesced, and the doctor turned to the Major, who was leaning
+up against one of the pillars of the saloon and shouting out "'Twas in
+Trafalgar Bay," in a way which, under other circumstances, would have
+been highly comic. The doctor interrupted him, as with much feeling he
+sang how:
+
+     "England declared that every man
+      That day had done his duty."
+
+"Look, Major," he said; "here is your son come to meet you."
+
+"Glad to see you, my boy," said the Major, reeling forward and running
+all his words together. "How's your mother? Is this Lawrence? Glad to
+see both of you! Why, you'r's like's two peas! Not Lawrence, do you say?
+Confound it, doctor, how the ship rolls to-day!"
+
+And the old wretch staggered and would have fallen, had not Derrick
+supported him and landed him safely on one of the fixed ottomans.
+
+"Yes, yes, you're the son for me," he went on, with a bland smile, which
+made his face all the more hideous. "You're not so rough and clumsy as
+that confounded John Thomas, whose hands are like brickbats. I'm a mere
+wreck, as you see; it's the accursed climate! But your mother will soon
+nurse me into health again; she was always a good nurse, poor soul!
+it was her best point. What with you and your mother, I shall soon be
+myself again."
+
+Here the doctor interposed, and Derrick made desperately for a porthole
+and gulped down mouthfuls of fresh air: but he was not allowed much of a
+respite, for the servant returned to say that he had procured a cab, and
+the Major called loudly for his son's arm.
+
+"I'll not have you," he said, pushing the servant violently away. "Come,
+Derrick, help me! you are worth two of that blockhead."
+
+And Derrick came quickly forward, his face still very pale, but with a
+dignity about it which I had never before seen; and, giving his arm
+to his drunken father, he piloted him across the saloon, through the
+staring ranks of stewards, officials, and tardy passengers outside,
+down the gangway, and over the crowded quay to the cab. I knew that each
+derisive glance of the spectators was to him like a sword-thrust, and
+longed to throttle the Major, who seemed to enjoy himself amazingly on
+terra firma, and sang at the top of his voice as we drove through
+the streets of Southampton. The old doctor kept up a cheery flow of
+small-talk with me, thinking, no doubt, that this would be a kindness to
+Derrick: and at last that purgatorial drive ended, and somehow Derrick
+and the doctor between them got the Major safely into his room at
+Radley's Hotel.
+
+We had ordered lunch in a private sitting-room, thinking that the Major
+would prefer it to the coffee-room; but, as it turned out, he was in no
+state to appear. They left him asleep, and the ship's doctor sat in
+the seat that had been prepared for his patient, and made the meal
+as tolerable to us both as it could be. He was an odd, old-fashioned
+fellow, but as true a gentleman as ever breathed.
+
+"Now," he said, when lunch was over, "you and I must have a talk
+together, Mr. Vaughan, and I will help you to understand your father's
+case."
+
+I made a movement to go, but sat down again at Derrick's request. I
+think, poor old fellow, he dreaded being alone, and knowing that I
+had seen his father at the worst, thought I might as well hear all
+particulars.
+
+"Major Vaughan," continued the doctor, "has now been under my care for
+some weeks, and I had some communication with the regimental surgeon
+about his case before he sailed. He is suffering from an enlarged
+liver, and the disease has been brought on by his unfortunate habit
+of over-indulgence in stimulants." I could almost have smiled, so very
+gently and considerately did the good old man veil in long words
+the shameful fact. "It is a habit sadly prevalent among our
+fellow-countrymen in India; the climate aggravates the mischief, and
+very many lives are in this way ruined. Then your father was also
+unfortunate enough to contract rheumatism when he was camping out in the
+jungle last year, and this is increasing on him very much, so that his
+life is almost intolerable to him, and he naturally flies for relief to
+his greatest enemy, drink. At all costs, however, you must keep him from
+stimulants; they will only intensify the disease and the sufferings, in
+fact they are poison to a man in such a state. Don't think I am a bigot
+in these matters; but I say that for a man in such a condition as this,
+there is nothing for it but total abstinence, and at all costs your
+father must be guarded from the possibility of procuring any sort of
+intoxicating drink. Throughout the voyage I have done my best to
+shield him, but it was a difficult matter. His servant, too, is not
+trustworthy, and should be dismissed if possible."
+
+"Had he spoken at all of his plans?" asked Derrick, and his voice
+sounded strangely unlike itself.
+
+"He asked me what place in England he had better settle down in," said
+the doctor, "and I strongly recommended him to try Bath. This seemed to
+please him, and if he is well enough he had better go there to-morrow.
+He mentioned your mother this morning; no doubt she will know how to
+manage him."
+
+"My mother died six months ago," said Derrick, pushing back his chair
+and beginning to pace the room. The doctor made kindly apologies.
+
+"Perhaps you have a sister, who could go to him?"
+
+"No," replied Derrick. "My only sister is married, and her husband would
+never allow it."
+
+"Or a cousin or an aunt?" suggested the old man, naively unconscious
+that the words sounded like a quotation.
+
+I saw the ghost of a smile flit over Derrick's harassed face as he shook
+his head.
+
+"I suggested that he should go into some Home for--cases of the kind,"
+resumed the doctor, "or place himself under the charge of some medical
+man; however, he won't hear of such a thing. But if he is left to
+himself--well, it is all up with him. He will drink himself to death in
+a few months."
+
+"He shall not be left alone," said Derrick; "I will live with him. Do
+you think I should do? It seems to be Hobson's choice."
+
+I looked up in amazement--for here was Derrick calmly giving himself up
+to a life that must crush every plan for the future he had made. Did men
+make such a choice as that while they took two or three turns in a room?
+Did they speak so composedly after a struggle that must have been so
+bitter? Thinking it over now, I feel sure it was his extraordinary gift
+of insight and his clear judgment which made him behave in this way. He
+instantly perceived and promptly acted; the worst of the suffering came
+long after.
+
+"Why, of course you are the very best person in the world for him,"
+said the doctor. "He has taken a fancy to you, and evidently you have a
+certain influence with him. If any one can save him it will be you."
+
+But the thought of allowing Derrick to be sacrificed to that old brute
+of a Major was more than I could bear calmly.
+
+"A more mad scheme was never proposed," I cried. "Why, doctor, it will
+be utter ruin to my friend's career; he will lose years that no one can
+ever make up. And besides, he is unfit for such a strain, he will never
+stand it."
+
+My heart felt hot as I thought of Derrick, with his highly-strung,
+sensitive nature, his refinement, his gentleness, in constant
+companionship with such a man as Major Vaughan.
+
+"My dear sir," said the old doctor, with a gleam in his eye, "I
+understand your feeling well enough. But depend upon it, your friend has
+made the right choice, and there is no doubt that he'll be strong enough
+to do his duty."
+
+The word reminded me of the Major's song, and my voice was abominably
+sarcastic in tone as I said to Derrick, "You no longer consider writing
+your duty then?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "but it must stand second to this. Don't be vexed,
+Sydney; our plans are knocked on the head, but it is not so bad as you
+make out. I have at any rate enough to live on, and can afford to wait."
+
+There was no more to be said, and the next day I saw that strange trio
+set out on their road to Bath. The Major looking more wicked when sober
+than he had done when drunk; the old doctor kindly and considerate as
+ever; and Derrick, with an air of resolution about that English face of
+his and a dauntless expression in his eyes which impressed me curiously.
+
+These quiet, reserved fellows are always giving one odd surprises.
+He had astonished me by the vigour and depth of the first volume of
+'Lynwood's Heritage.' He astonished me now by a new phase in his own
+character. Apparently he who had always been content to follow where I
+led, and to watch life rather than to take an active share in it, now
+intended to strike out a very decided line of his own.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+     "Both Goethe and Schiller were profoundly convinced that Art
+     was no luxury of leisure, no mere amusement to charm the
+     idle, or relax the careworn; but a mighty influence, serious
+     in its aims although pleasureable in its means; a sister of
+     Religion, by whose aid the great world-scheme was wrought
+     into reality."  Lewes's Life of Goethe.
+
+Man is a selfish being, and I am a particularly fine specimen of the
+race as far as that characteristic goes. If I had had a dozen drunken
+parents I should never have danced attendance on one of them; yet in my
+secret soul I admired Derrick for the line he had taken, for we mostly
+do admire what is unlike ourselves and really noble, though it is the
+fashion to seem totally indifferent to everything in heaven and earth.
+But all the same I felt annoyed about the whole business, and was glad
+to forget it in my own affairs at Mondisfield.
+
+Weeks passed by. I lived through a midsummer dream of happiness, and a
+hard awaking. That, however, has nothing to do with Derrick's story,
+and may be passed over. In October I settled down in Montague Street,
+Bloomsbury, and began to read for the Bar, in about as disagreeable a
+frame of mind as can be conceived. One morning I found on my breakfast
+table a letter in Derrick's handwriting. Like most men, we hardly ever
+corresponded--what women say in the eternal letters they send to each
+other I can't conceive--but it struck me that under the circumstances
+I ought to have sent him a line to ask how he was getting on, and my
+conscience pricked me as I remembered that I had hardly thought of him
+since we parted, being absorbed in my own matters. The letter was not
+very long, but when one read between the lines it somehow told a good
+deal. I have it lying by me, and this is a copy of it:
+
+"Dear Sydney,--Do like a good fellow go to North Audley Street for me,
+to the house which I described to you as the one where Lynwood lodged,
+and tell me what he would see besides the church from his window--if
+shops, what kind? Also if any glimpse of Oxford Street would be visible.
+Then if you'll add to your favours by getting me a second-hand copy of
+Laveleye's 'Socialisme Contemporain,' I should be for ever grateful. We
+are settled in here all right. Bath is empty, but I people it as far as
+I can with the folk out of 'Evelina' and 'Persuasion.' How did you get
+on at Blachington? and which of the Misses Merrifield went in the end?
+Don't bother about the commissions. Any time will do.
+
+"Ever yours,
+
+"Derrick Vaughan."
+
+
+Poor old fellow! all the spirit seemed knocked out of him. There was not
+one word about the Major, and who could say what wretchedness was veiled
+in that curt phrase, "we are settled in all right"? All right! it was
+all as wrong as it could be! My blood began to boil at the thought of
+Derrick, with his great powers--his wonderful gift--cooped up in a place
+where the study of life was so limited and so dull. Then there was his
+hunger for news of Freda, and his silence as to what had kept him away
+from Blachington, and about all a sort of proud humility which prevented
+him from saying much that I should have expected him to say under the
+circumstances.
+
+It was Saturday, and my time was my own. I went out, got his book
+for him; interviewed North Audley Street; spent a bad five minutes in
+company with that villain 'Bradshaw,' who is responsible for so much of
+the brain and eye disease of the nineteenth century, and finally left
+Paddington in the Flying Dutchman, which landed me at Bath early in the
+afternoon. I left my portmanteau at the station, and walked through the
+city till I reached Gay Street. Like most of the streets of Bath, it
+was broad, and had on either hand dull, well-built, dark grey, eminently
+respectable, unutterably dreary-looking houses. I rang, and the door
+was opened to me by a most quaint old woman, evidently the landlady. An
+odour of curry pervaded the passage, and became more oppressive as the
+door of the sitting-room was opened, and I was ushered in upon the Major
+and his son, who had just finished lunch.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Derrick, springing up, his face full of delight which
+touched me, while at the same time it filled me with envy.
+
+Even the Major thought fit to give me a hearty welcome.
+
+"Glad to see you again," he said pleasantly enough. "It's a relief to
+have a fresh face to look at. We have a room which is quite at your
+disposal, and I hope you'll stay with us. Brought your portmanteau, eh?"
+
+"It is at the station," I replied.
+
+"See that it is sent for," he said to Derrick; "and show Mr. Wharncliffe
+all that is to be seen in this cursed hole of a place." Then, turning
+again to me, "Have you lunched? Very well, then, don't waste this fine
+afternoon in an invalid's room, but be off and enjoy yourself."
+
+So cordial was the old man, that I should have thought him already a
+reformed character, had I not found that he kept the rough side of his
+tongue for home use. Derrick placed a novel and a small handbell within
+his reach, and we were just going, when we were checked by a volley
+of oaths from the Major; then a book came flying across the room, well
+aimed at Derrick's head. He stepped aside, and let it fall with a crash
+on the sideboard.
+
+"What do you mean by giving me the second volume when you know I am in
+the third?" fumed the invalid.
+
+He apologised quietly, fetched the third volume, straightened the
+disordered leaves of the discarded second, and with the air of one well
+accustomed to such little domestic scenes, took up his hat and came out
+with me.
+
+"How long do you intend to go on playing David to the Major's Saul?"
+I asked, marvelling at the way in which he endured the humours of his
+father.
+
+"As long as I have the chance," he replied. "I say, are you sure you
+won't mind staying with us? It can't be a very comfortable household for
+an outsider."
+
+"Much better than for an insider, to all appearance," I replied. "I'm
+only too delighted to stay. And now, old fellow, tell me the honest
+truth--you didn't, you know, in your letter--how have you been getting
+on?"
+
+Derrick launched into an account of his father's ailments.
+
+"Oh, hang the Major! I don't care about him, I want to know about you,"
+I cried.
+
+"About me?" said Derrick doubtfully. "Oh, I'm right enough."
+
+"What do you do with yourself? How on earth do you kill time?" I asked.
+"Come, give me a full, true, and particular account of it all."
+
+"We have tried three other servants," said Derrick; "but the plan
+doesn't answer. They either won't stand it, or else they are bribed
+into smuggling brandy into the house. I find I can do most things for my
+father, and in the morning he has an attendant from the hospital who is
+trustworthy, and who does what is necessary for him. At ten we breakfast
+together, then there are the morning papers, which he likes to have read
+to him. After that I go round to the Pump Room with him--odd contrast
+now to what it must have been when Bath was the rage. Then we have
+lunch. In the afternoon, if he is well enough, we drive; if not he
+sleeps, and I get a walk. Later on an old Indian friend of his will
+sometimes drop in; if not he likes to be read to until dinner. After
+dinner we play chess--he is a first-rate player. At ten I help him to
+bed; from eleven to twelve I smoke and study Socialism and all the rest
+of it that Lynwood is at present floundering in."
+
+"Why don't you write, then?"
+
+"I tried it, but it didn't answer. I couldn't sleep after it, and was,
+in fact, too tired; seems absurd to be tired after such a day as that,
+but somehow it takes it out of one more than the hardest reading; I
+don't know why."
+
+"Why," I said angrily, "it's because it is work to which you are quite
+unsuited--work for a thick-skinned, hard-hearted, uncultivated and
+well-paid attendant, not for the novelist who is to be the chief light
+of our generation."
+
+He laughed at this estimate of his powers.
+
+"Novelists, like other cattle, have to obey their owner," he said
+lightly.
+
+I thought for a moment that he meant the Major, and was breaking into an
+angry remonstrance, when I saw that he meant something quite different.
+It was always his strongest point, this extraordinary consciousness of
+right, this unwavering belief that he had to do and therefore could do
+certain things. Without this, I know that he never wrote a line, and in
+my heart I believe this was the cause of his success.
+
+"Then you are not writing at all?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, I write generally for a couple of hours before breakfast," he
+said.
+
+And that evening we sat by his gas stove and he read me the next four
+chapters of 'Lynwood.' He had rather a dismal lodging-house bedroom,
+with faded wall-paper and a prosaic snuff-coloured carpet. On a rickety
+table in the window was his desk, and a portfolio full of blue foolscap,
+but he had done what he could to make the place habitable; his Oxford
+pictures were on the walls--Hoffman's 'Christ speaking to the Woman
+taken in Adultery,' hanging over the mantelpiece--it had always been a
+favourite of his. I remember that, as he read the description of Lynwood
+and his wife, I kept looking from him to the Christ in the picture till
+I could almost have fancied that each face bore the same expression. Had
+this strange monotonous life with that old brute of a Major brought him
+some new perception of those words, "Neither do I condemn thee"? But
+when he stopped reading, I, true to my character, forgot his affairs in
+my own, as we sat talking far into the night--talking of that luckless
+month at Mondisfield, of all the problems it had opened up, and of my
+wretchedness.
+
+"You were in town all September?" he asked; "you gave up Blachington?"
+
+"Yes," I replied. "What did I care for country houses in such a mood as
+that."
+
+He acquiesced, and I went on talking of my grievances, and it was not
+till I was in the train on my way back to London that I remembered how
+a look of disappointment had passed over his face just at the moment.
+Evidently he had counted on learning something about Freda from me, and
+I--well, I had clean forgotten both her existence and his passionate
+love.
+
+Something, probably self-interest, the desire for my friend's company,
+and so forth, took me down to Bath pretty frequently in those days;
+luckily the Major had a sort of liking for me, and was always polite
+enough; and dear old Derrick--well, I believe my visits really helped
+to brighten him up. At any rate he said he couldn't have borne his life
+without them, and for a sceptical, dismal, cynical fellow like me to
+hear that was somehow flattering. The mere force of contrast did me
+good. I used to come back on the Monday wondering that Derrick didn't
+cut his throat, and realising that, after all, it was something to be
+a free agent, and to have comfortable rooms in Montague Street, with
+no old bear of a drunkard to disturb my peace. And then a sort of
+admiration sprang up in my heart, and the cynicism bred of melancholy
+broodings over solitary pipes was less rampant than usual.
+
+It was, I think, early in the new year that I met Lawrence Vaughan in
+Bath. He was not staying at Gay Street, so I could still have the vacant
+room next to Derrick's. Lawrence put up at the York House Hotel.
+
+"For you know," he informed me, "I really can't stand the governor for
+more than an hour or two at a time."
+
+"Derrick manages to do it," I said.
+
+"Oh, Derrick, yes," he replied, "it's his metier, and he is well
+accustomed to the life. Besides, you know, he is such a dreamy, quiet
+sort of fellow; he lives all the time in a world of his own creation,
+and bears the discomforts of this world with great philosophy. Actually
+he has turned teetotaller! It would kill me in a week."
+
+I make a point of never arguing with a fellow like that, but I think I
+had a vindictive longing, as I looked at him, to shut him up with the
+Major for a month, and see what would happen.
+
+These twin brothers were curiously alike in face and curiously unlike in
+nature. So much for the great science of physiognomy! It often seemed to
+me that they were the complement of each other. For instance, Derrick in
+society was extremely silent, Lawrence was a rattling talker; Derrick,
+when alone with you, would now and then reveal unsuspected depths of
+thought and expression; Lawrence, when alone with you, very frequently
+showed himself to be a cad. The elder twin was modest and diffident, the
+younger inclined to brag; the one had a strong tendency to melancholy,
+the other was blest or cursed with the sort of temperament which has
+been said to accompany "a hard heart and a good digestion."
+
+I was not surprised to find that the son who could not tolerate the
+governor's presence for more than an hour or two, was a prime favourite
+with the old man; that was just the way of the world. Of course, the
+Major was as polite as possible to him; Derrick got the kicks and
+Lawrence the half-pence.
+
+In the evenings we played whist, Lawrence coming in after dinner, "For,
+you know," he explained to me, "I really couldn't get through a meal
+with nothing but those infernal mineral waters to wash it down."
+
+And here I must own that at my first visit I had sailed rather close to
+the wind; for when the Major, like the Hatter in 'Alice,' pressed me
+to take wine, I--not seeing any--had answered that I did not take it;
+mentally adding the words, "in your house, you brute!"
+
+The two brothers were fond of each other after a fashion. But Derrick
+was human, and had his faults like the rest of us; and I am pretty sure
+he did not much enjoy the sight of his father's foolish and unreasonable
+devotion to Lawrence. If you come to think of it, he would have been a
+full-fledged angel if no jealous pang, no reflection that it was rather
+rough on him, had crossed his mind, when he saw his younger brother
+treated with every mark of respect and liking, and knew that Lawrence
+would never stir a finger really to help the poor fractious invalid.
+Unluckily they happened one night to get on the subject of professions.
+
+"It's a comfort," said the Major, in his sarcastic way, "to have a
+fellow-soldier to talk to instead of a quill-driver, who as yet is not
+even a penny-a-liner. Eh, Derrick? Don't you feel inclined to regret
+your fool's choice now? You might have been starting off for the war
+with Lawrence next week, if you hadn't chosen what you're pleased to
+call a literary life. Literary life, indeed! I little thought a son of
+mine would ever have been so wanting in spirit as to prefer dabbling in
+ink to a life of action--to be the scribbler of mere words, rather than
+an officer of dragoons."
+
+Then to my astonishment Derrick sprang to his feet in hot indignation.
+I never saw him look so handsome, before or since; for his anger was
+not the distorting, devilish anger that the Major gave way to, but real
+downright wrath.
+
+"You speak contemptuously of mere novels," he said in a low voice, yet
+more clearly than usual, and as if the words were wrung out of him.
+"What right have you to look down on one of the greatest weapons of the
+day? and why is a writer to submit to scoffs and insults and tamely to
+hear his profession reviled? I have chosen to write the message that
+has been given me, and I don't regret the choice. Should I have shown
+greater spirit if I had sold my freedom and right of judgment to be one
+of the national killing machines?"
+
+With that he threw down his cards and strode out of the room in a white
+heat of anger. It was a pity he made that last remark, for it put him
+in the wrong and needlessly annoyed Lawrence and the Major. But an angry
+man has no time to weigh his words, and, as I said, poor old Derrick
+was very human, and when wounded too intolerably could on occasion
+retaliate.
+
+The Major uttered an oath and looked in astonishment at the retreating
+figure. Derrick was such an extraordinarily quiet, respectful,
+long-suffering son as a rule, that this outburst was startling in the
+extreme. Moreover, it spoilt the game, and the old man, chafed by the
+result of his own ill-nature, and helpless to bring back his partner,
+was forced to betake himself to chess. I left him grumbling away to
+Lawrence about the vanity of authors, and went out in the hope of
+finding Derrick. As I left the house I saw someone turn the corner into
+the Circus, and starting in pursuit, overtook the tall, dark figure
+where Bennett Street opens on to the Lansdowne Hill.
+
+"I'm glad you spoke up, old fellow," I said, taking his arm.
+
+He modified his pace a little. "Why is it," he exclaimed, "that every
+other profession can be taken seriously, but that a novelist's work is
+supposed to be mere play? Good God! don't we suffer enough? Have we
+not hard brain work and drudgery of desk work and tedious gathering of
+statistics and troublesome search into details? Have we not an appalling
+weight of responsibility on us?--and are we not at the mercy of a
+thousand capricious chances?"
+
+"Come now," I exclaimed, "you know that you are never so happy as when
+you are writing."
+
+"Of course," he replied; "but that doesn't make me resent such an attack
+the less. Besides, you don't know what it is to have to write in such an
+atmosphere as ours; it's like a weight on one's pen. This life here is
+not life at all--it's a daily death, and it's killing the book too; the
+last chapters are wretched--I'm utterly dissatisfied with them."
+
+"As for that," I said calmly, "you are no judge at all. You can never
+tell the worth of your own work; the last bit is splendid."
+
+"I could have done it better," he groaned. "But there is always a
+ghastly depression dragging one back here--and then the time is so
+short; just as one gets into the swing of it the breakfast bell rings,
+and then comes--" He broke off.
+
+I could well supply the end of the sentence, however, for I knew that
+then came the slow torture of a tete-a-tete day with the Major, stinging
+sarcasms, humiliating scoldings, vexations and difficulties innumerable.
+
+I drew him to the left, having no mind to go to the top of the hill.
+We slackened our pace again and walked to and fro along the broad level
+pavement of Lansdowne Crescent. We had it entirely to ourselves--not
+another creature was in sight.
+
+"I could bear it all," he burst forth, "if only there was a chance of
+seeing Freda. Oh, you are better off than I am--at least, you know the
+worst. Your hope is killed, but mine lives on a tortured, starved life!
+Would to God I had never seen her!"
+
+Certainly before that night I had never quite realised the
+irrevocableness of poor Derrick's passion. I had half hoped that time
+and separation would gradually efface Freda Merrifield from his memory;
+and I listened with a dire foreboding to the flood of wretchedness
+which he poured forth as we paced up and down, thinking now and then how
+little people guessed at the tremendous powers hidden under his usually
+quiet exterior.
+
+At length he paused, but his last heart-broken words seemed to vibrate
+in the air and to force me to speak some kind of comfort.
+
+"Derrick," I said, "come back with me to London--give up this miserable
+life."
+
+I felt him start a little; evidently no thought of yielding had come
+to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that
+strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank
+windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past,
+surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I
+looked at my companion's pale, tortured face, and thought of the life
+he had elected to lead in the hope of saving one whom duty bound him to
+honour. After all, which life was the most worth living--which was the
+most to be admired?
+
+We walked on; down below us and up on the farther hill we could see the
+lights of Bath; the place so beautiful by day looked now like a fairy
+city, and the Abbey, looming up against the moon-lit sky, seemed like
+some great giant keeping watch over the clustering roofs below. The
+well-known chimes rang out into the night and the clock struck ten.
+
+"I must go back," said Derrick, quietly. "My father will want to get to
+bed."
+
+I couldn't say a word; we turned, passed Beckford's house once more,
+walked briskly down the hill, and reached the Gay Street lodging-house.
+I remember the stifling heat of the room as we entered it, and its
+contrast to the cool, dark, winter's night outside. I can vividly
+recall, too, the old Major's face as he looked up with a sarcastic
+remark, but with a shade of anxiety in his bloodshot eyes. He was
+leaning back in a green-cushioned chair, and his ghastly yellow
+complexion seemed to me more noticeable than usual--his scanty grey
+hair and whiskers, the lines of pain so plainly visible in his face,
+impressed me curiously. I think I had never before realised what a wreck
+of a man he was--how utterly dependent on others.
+
+Lawrence, who, to do him justice, had a good deal of tact, and who, I
+believe, cared for his brother as much as he was capable of caring
+for any one but himself, repeated a good story with which he had been
+enlivening the Major, and I did what I could to keep up the talk.
+Derrick meanwhile put away the chessmen, and lighted the Major's candle.
+He even managed to force up a laugh at Lawrence's story, and, as he
+helped his father out of the room, I think I was the only one who
+noticed the look of tired endurance in his eyes.
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+                                     "I know
+      How far high failure overtops the bounds
+      Of low successes.  Only suffering draws
+      The inner heart of song, and can elicit
+      The perfumes of the soul."
+                                Epic of Hades.
+
+Next week, Lawrence went off like a hero to the war; and my friend--also
+I think like a hero--stayed on at Bath, enduring as best he could the
+worst form of loneliness; for undoubtedly there is no loneliness so
+frightful as constant companionship with an uncongenial person. He had,
+however, one consolation: the Major's health steadily improved, under
+the joint influence of total abstinence and Bath water, and, with the
+improvement, his temper became a little better.
+
+But one Saturday, when I had run down to Bath without writing
+beforehand, I suddenly found a different state of things. In Orange
+Grove I met Dr. Mackrill, the Major's medical man; he used now and then
+to play whist with us on Saturday nights, and I stopped to speak to him.
+
+"Oh! you've come down again. That's all right!" he said. "Your friend
+wants someone to cheer him up. He's got his arm broken."
+
+"How on earth did he manage that?" I asked.
+
+"Well, that's more than I can tell you," said the Doctor, with an odd
+look in his eyes, as if he guessed more than he would put into words.
+"All that I could get out of him was that it was done accidentally. The
+Major is not so well--no whist for us to-night, I'm afraid."
+
+He passed on, and I made my way to Gay Street. There was an air of
+mystery about the quaint old landlady; she looked brimful of news when
+she opened the door to me, but she managed to 'keep herself to herself,'
+and showed me in upon the Major and Derrick, rather triumphantly I
+thought. The Major looked terribly ill--worse than I had ever seen
+him, and as for Derrick, he had the strangest look of shrinking and
+shame-facedness you ever saw. He said he was glad to see me, but I knew
+that he lied. He would have given anything to have kept me away.
+
+"Broken your arm?" I exclaimed, feeling bound to take some notice of the
+sling.
+
+"Yes," he replied; "met with an accident to it. But luckily it's only
+the left one, so it doesn't hinder me much! I have finished seven
+chapters of the last volume of 'Lynwood,' and was just wanting to ask
+you a legal question."
+
+All this time his eyes bore my scrutiny defiantly; they seemed to dare
+me to say one other word about the broken arm. I didn't dare--indeed to
+this day I have never mentioned the subject to him.
+
+But that evening, while he was helping the Major to bed, the old
+landlady made some pretext for toiling up to the top of the house, where
+I sat smoking in Derrick's room.
+
+"You'll excuse my making bold to speak to you, sir," she said. I threw
+down my newspaper, and, looking up, saw that she was bubbling over with
+some story.
+
+"Well?" I said, encouragingly.
+
+"It's about Mr. Vaughan, sir, I wanted to speak to you. I really do
+think, sir, it's not safe he should be left alone with his father, sir,
+any longer. Such doings as we had here the other day, sir! Somehow or
+other--and none of us can't think how--the Major had managed to get hold
+of a bottle of brandy. How he had it I don't know; but we none of us
+suspected him, and in the afternoon he says he was too poorly to go for
+a drive or to go out in his chair, and settles off on the parlour sofa
+for a nap while Mr. Vaughan goes out for a walk. Mr. Vaughan was out a
+couple of hours. I heard him come in and go into the sitting-room;
+then there came sounds of voices, and a scuffling of feet and moving of
+chairs, and I knew something was wrong and hurried up to the door--and
+just then came a crash like fire-irons, and I could hear the Major
+a-swearing fearful. Not hearing a sound from Mr. Vaughan, I got scared,
+sir, and opened the door, and there I saw the Major a leaning up against
+the mantelpiece as drunk as a lord, and his son seemed to have got the
+bottle from him; it was half empty, and when he saw me he just handed it
+to me and ordered me to take it away. Then between us we got the Major
+to lie down on the sofa and left him there. When we got out into the
+passage Mr. Vaughan he leant against the wall for a minute, looking as
+white as a sheet, and then I noticed for the first time that his left
+arm was hanging down at his side. 'Lord! sir,' I cried, 'your arm's
+broken.' And he went all at once as red as he had been pale just before,
+and said he had got it done accidentally, and bade me say nothing about
+it, and walked off there and then to the doctor's, and had it set. But
+sir, given a man drunk as the Major was, and given a scuffle to get away
+the drink that was poisoning him, and given a crash such as I heard,
+and given a poker a-lying in the middle of the room where it stands to
+reason no poker could get unless it was thrown--why, sir, no sensible
+woman who can put two and two together can doubt that it was all the
+Major's doing."
+
+"Yes," I said, "that is clear enough; but for Mr. Vaughan's sake we must
+hush it up; and, as for safety, why, the Major is hardly strong enough
+to do him any worse damage than that."
+
+The good old thing wiped away a tear from her eyes. She was very fond of
+Derrick, and it went to her heart that he should lead such a dog's life.
+
+I said what I could to comfort her, and she went down again, fearful
+lest he should discover her upstairs and guess that she had opened her
+heart to me.
+
+Poor Derrick! That he of all people on earth should be mixed up with
+such a police court story--with drunkard, and violence, and pokers
+figuring in it! I lay back in the camp chair and looked at Hoffman's
+'Christ,' and thought of all the extraordinary problems that one is for
+ever coming across in life. And I wondered whether the people of Bath
+who saw the tall, impassive-looking, hazel-eyed son and the invalid
+father in their daily pilgrimages to the Pump Room, or in church on
+Sunday, or in the Park on sunny afternoons had the least notion of
+the tragedy that was going on. My reflections were interrupted by his
+entrance. He had forced up a cheerfulness that I am sure he didn't
+really feel, and seemed afraid of letting our talk flag for a moment. I
+remember, too, that for the first time he offered to read me his novel,
+instead of as usual waiting for me to ask to hear it. I can see him
+now, fetching the untidy portfolio and turning over the pages, adroitly
+enough, as though anxious to show how immaterial was the loss of a left
+arm. That night I listened to the first half of the third volume of
+'Lynwood's Heritage,' and couldn't help reflecting that its author
+seemed to thrive on misery; and yet how I grudged him to this
+deadly-lively place, and this monotonous, cooped-up life.
+
+"How do you manage to write one-handed?" I asked.
+
+And he sat down to his desk, put a letter-weight on the left-hand corner
+of the sheet of foolscap, and wrote that comical first paragraph of the
+eighth chapter over which we have all laughed. I suppose few readers
+guessed the author's state of mind when he wrote it. I looked over his
+shoulder to see what he had written, and couldn't help laughing aloud--I
+verily believe that it was his way of turning off attention from his
+arm, and leading me safely from the region of awkward questions.
+
+"By-the-by," I exclaimed, "your writing of garden-parties reminds me. I
+went to one at Campden Hill the other day, and had the good fortune to
+meet Miss Freda Merrifield."
+
+How his face lighted up, poor fellow, and what a flood of questions he
+poured out. "She looked very well and very pretty," I replied. "I played
+two sets of tennis with her. She asked after you directly she saw me,
+seeming to think that we always hunted in couples. I told her you were
+living here, taking care of an invalid father; but just then up came
+the others to arrange the game. She and I got the best courts, and as we
+crossed over to them she told me she had met your brother several times
+last autumn, when she had been staying near Aldershot. Odd that he never
+mentioned her here; but I don't suppose she made much impression on him.
+She is not at all his style."
+
+"Did you have much more talk with her?" he asked.
+
+"No, nothing to be called talk. She told me they were leaving London
+next week, and she was longing to get back to the country to her beloved
+animals--rabbits, poultry, an aviary, and all that kind of thing. I
+should gather that they had kept her rather in the background this
+season, but I understand that the eldest sister is to be married in the
+winter, and then no doubt Miss Freda will be brought forward."
+
+He seemed wonderfully cheered by this opportune meeting, and though
+there was so little to tell he appeared to be quite content. I left him
+on Monday in fairly good spirits, and did not come across him again till
+September, when his arm was well, and his novel finished and revised. He
+never made two copies of his work, and I fancy this was perhaps because
+he spent so short a time each day in actual writing, and lived so
+continually in his work; moreover, as I said before, he detested
+penmanship.
+
+The last part of 'Lynwood' far exceeded my expectations; perhaps--yet I
+don't really think so--I viewed it too favourably. But I owed the book
+a debt of gratitude, since it certainly helped me through the worst part
+of my life.
+
+"Don't you feel flat now it is finished?" I asked.
+
+"I felt so miserable that I had to plunge into another story three days
+after," he replied; and then and there he gave me the sketch of his
+second novel, 'At Strife,' and told me how he meant to weave in his
+childish fancies about the defence of the bridge in the Civil Wars.
+
+"And about 'Lynwood?' Are you coming up to town to hawk him round?" I
+asked.
+
+"I can't do that," he said; "you see I am tied here. No, I must send him
+off by rail, and let him take his chance."
+
+"No such thing!" I cried. "If you can't leave Bath I will take him round
+for you."
+
+And Derrick, who with the oddest inconsistency would let his MS. lie
+about anyhow at home, but hated the thought of sending it out alone on
+its travels, gladly accepted my offer. So next week I set off with the
+huge brown paper parcel; few, however, will appreciate my good nature,
+for no one but an author or a publisher knows the fearful weight of a
+three volume novel in MS.! To my intense satisfaction I soon got rid of
+it, for the first good firm to which I took it received it with great
+politeness, to be handed over to their 'reader' for an opinion; and
+apparently the 'reader's' opinion coincided with mine, for a month
+later Derrick received an offer for it with which he at once closed--not
+because it was a good one, but because the firm was well thought of,
+and because he wished to lose no time, but to have the book published at
+once. I happened to be there when his first 'proofs' arrived. The Major
+had had an attack of jaundice, and was in a fiendish humour. We had
+a miserable time of it at dinner, for he badgered Derrick almost past
+bearing, and I think the poor old fellow minded it more when there was
+a third person present. Somehow through all he managed to keep his
+extraordinary capacity for reverencing mere age--even this degraded and
+detestable old age of the Major's. I often thought that in this he
+was like my own ancestor, Hugo Wharncliffe, whose deference and
+respectfulness and patience had not descended to me, while unfortunately
+the effects of his physical infirmities had. I sometimes used to
+reflect bitterly enough on the truth of Herbert Spencer's teaching as to
+heredity, so clearly shown in my own case. In the year 1683, through
+the abominable cruelty and harshness of his brother Randolph, this Hugo
+Wharncliffe, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, was immured
+in Newgate, and his constitution was thereby so much impaired and
+enfeebled that, two hundred years after, my constitution is paying the
+penalty, and my whole life is thereby changed and thwarted. Hence this
+childless Randolph is affecting the course of several lives in the 19th
+century to their grievous hurt.
+
+But revenons a nos moutons--that is to say, to our lion and lamb--the
+old brute of a Major and his long-suffering son.
+
+While the table was being cleared, the Major took forty winks on the
+sofa, and we two beat a retreat, lit up our pipes in the passage, and
+were just turning out when the postman's double knock came, but no
+showers of letters in the box. Derrick threw open the door, and the man
+handed him a fat, stumpy-looking roll in a pink wrapper.
+
+"I say!" he exclaimed, "PROOFS!"
+
+And, in hot haste, he began tearing away the pink paper, till out came
+the clean, folded bits of printing and the dirty and dishevelled blue
+foolscap, the look of which I knew so well. It is an odd feeling, that
+first seeing one's self in print, and I could guess, even then, what a
+thrill shot through Derrick as he turned over the pages. But he would
+not take them into the sitting-room, no doubt dreading another diatribe
+against his profession; and we solemnly played euchre, and patiently
+endured the Major's withering sarcasms till ten o'clock sounded our
+happy release.
+
+However, to make a long story short, a month later--that is, at the end
+of November--'Lynwood's Heritage' was published in three volumes with
+maroon cloth and gilt lettering. Derrick had distributed among his
+friends the publishers' announcement of the day of publication; and when
+it was out I besieged the libraries for it, always expressing surprise
+if I did not find it in their lists. Then began the time of reviews. As
+I had expected, they were extremely favourable, with the exception of
+the Herald, the Stroller, and the Hour, which made it rather hot for
+him, the latter in particular pitching into his views and assuring
+its readers that the book was 'dangerous,' and its author a believer
+in--various thing especially repugnant to Derrick, at it happened.
+
+I was with him when he read these reviews. Over the cleverness of the
+satirical attack in the Weekly Herald he laughed heartily, though
+the laugh was against himself; and as to the critic who wrote in the
+Stroller it was apparent to all who knew 'Lynwood' that he had not read
+much of the book; but over this review in the Hour he was genuinely
+angry--it hurt him personally, and, as it afterwards turned out, played
+no small part in the story of his life. The good reviews, however, were
+many, and their recommendation of the book hearty; they all prophesied
+that it would be a great success. Yet, spite of this, 'Lynwood's
+Heritage' didn't sell. Was it, as I had feared, that Derrick was too
+devoid of the pushing faculty ever to make a successful writer? Or was
+it that he was handicapped by being down in the provinces playing keeper
+to that abominable old bear? Anyhow, the book was well received, read
+with enthusiasm by an extremely small circle, and then it dropped down
+to the bottom among the mass of overlooked literature, and its career
+seemed to be over. I can recall the look in Derrick's face when one day
+he glanced through the new Mudie and Smith lists and found 'Lynwood's
+Heritage' no longer down. I had been trying to cheer him up about the
+book and quoting all the favourable remarks I had heard about it. But
+unluckily this was damning evidence against my optimist view.
+
+He sighed heavily and put down the lists.
+
+"It's no use to deceive one's self," he said, drearily, "'Lynwood' has
+failed."
+
+Something in the deep depression of look and tone gave me a momentary
+insight into the author's heart. He thought, I know, of the agony of
+mind this book had cost him; of those long months of waiting and their
+deadly struggle, of the hopes which had made all he passed through seem
+so well worth while; and the bitterness of the disappointment was no
+doubt intensified by the knowledge that the Major would rejoice over it.
+
+We walked that afternoon along the Bradford Valley, a road which Derrick
+was specially fond of. He loved the thickly-wooded hills, and the
+glimpses of the Avon, which, flanked by the canal and the railway, runs
+parallel with the high road; he always admired, too, a certain little
+village with grey stone cottages which lay in this direction, and liked
+to look at the site of the old hall near the road: nothing remained of
+it but the tall gate posts and rusty iron gates looking strangely dreary
+and deserted, and within one could see, between some dark yew trees,
+an old terrace walk with stone steps and balustrades--the most
+ghostly-looking place you can conceive.
+
+"I know you'll put this into a book some day," I said, laughing.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it is already beginning to simmer in my brain."
+Apparently his deep disappointment as to his first venture had in no way
+affected his perfectly clear consciousness that, come what would, he had
+to write.
+
+As we walked back to Bath he told me his 'Ruined Hall' story as far as
+it had yet evolved itself in his brain, and we were still discussing it
+when in Milsom Street we met a boy crying evening papers, and details of
+the last great battle at Saspataras Hill.
+
+Derrick broke off hastily, everything but anxiety for Lawrence driven
+from his mind.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+     "Say not, O Soul, thou art defeated,
+        Because thou art distressed;
+      If thou of better thing art cheated,
+        Thou canst not be of best."
+                              T. T. Lynch.
+
+"Good heavens, Sydney!" he exclaimed in great excitement and with his
+whole face aglow with pleasure, "look here!"
+
+He pointed to a few lines in the paper which mentioned the heroic
+conduct of Lieutenant L. Vaughan, who at the risk of his life had
+rescued a brother officer when surrounded by the enemy and completely
+disabled. Lieutenant Vaughan had managed to mount the wounded man on his
+own horse and had miraculously escaped himself with nothing worse than a
+sword-thrust in the left arm.
+
+We went home in triumph to the Major, and Derrick read the whole account
+aloud. With all his detestation of war, he was nevertheless greatly
+stirred by the description of the gallant defence of the attacked
+position--and for a time we were all at one, and could talk of nothing
+but Lawrence's heroism, and Victoria Crosses, and the prospects of
+peace. However, all too soon, the Major's fiendish temper returned,
+and he began to use the event of the day as a weapon against Derrick,
+continually taunting him with the contrast between his stay-at-home life
+of scribbling and Lawrence's life of heroic adventure. I could never
+make out whether he wanted to goad his son into leaving him, in order
+that he might drink himself to death in peace, or whether he merely
+indulged in his natural love of tormenting, valuing Derrick's devotion
+as conducive to his own comfort, and knowing that hard words would not
+drive him from what he deemed to be his duty. I rather incline to the
+latter view, but the old Major was always an enigma to me; nor can I
+to this day make out his raison-d'etre, except on the theory that the
+training of a novelist required a course of slow torture, and that the
+old man was sent into the world to be a sort of thorn in the flesh of
+Derrick.
+
+What with the disappointment about his first book, and the difficulty
+of writing his second, the fierce craving for Freda's presence, the
+struggle not to allow his admiration for Lawrence's bravery to become
+poisoned by envy under the influence of the Major's incessant attacks,
+Derrick had just then a hard time of it. He never complained, but I
+noticed a great change in him; his melancholy increased, his flashes of
+humour and merriment became fewer and fewer--I began to be afraid that
+he would break down.
+
+"For God's sake!" I exclaimed one evening when left alone with the
+Doctor after an evening of whist, "do order the Major to London. Derrick
+has been mewed up here with him for nearly two years, and I don't think
+he can stand it much longer."
+
+So the Doctor kindly contrived to advise the Major to consult a
+well-known London physician, and to spend a fortnight in town, further
+suggesting that a month at Ben Rhydding might be enjoyable before
+settling down at Bath again for the winter. Luckily the Major took to
+the idea, and just as Lawrence returned from the war Derrick and his
+father arrived in town. The change seemed likely to work well, and I was
+able now and then to release my friend and play cribbage with the old
+man for an hour or two while Derrick tore about London, interviewed his
+publisher, made researches into seventeenth century documents at the
+British Museum, and somehow managed in his rapid way to acquire those
+glimpses of life and character which he afterwards turned to such good
+account. All was grist that came to his mill, and at first the mere
+sight of his old home, London, seemed to revive him. Of course at the
+very first opportunity he called at the Probyns', and we both of us had
+an invitation to go there on the following Wednesday to see the march
+past of the troops and to lunch. Derrick was nearly beside himself at
+the prospect, for he knew that he should certainly meet Freda at last,
+and the mingled pain and bliss of being actually in the same place with
+her, yet as completely separated as if seas rolled between them, was
+beginning to try him terribly.
+
+Meantime Lawrence had turned up again, greatly improved in every way by
+all that he had lived through, but rather too ready to fall in with
+his father's tone towards Derrick. The relations between the two
+brothers--always a little peculiar--became more and more difficult, and
+the Major seemed to enjoy pitting them against each other.
+
+At length the day of the review arrived. Derrick was not looking well,
+his eyes were heavy with sleeplessness, and the Major had been unusually
+exasperating at breakfast that morning, so that he started with a jaded,
+worn-out feeling that would not wholly yield even to the excitement
+of this long-expected meeting with Freda. When he found himself in the
+great drawing-room at Lord Probyn's house, amid a buzz of talk and a
+crowd of strange faces, he was seized with one of those sudden attacks
+of shyness to which he was always liable. In fact, he had been so long
+alone with the old Major that this plunge into society was too great a
+reaction, and the very thing he had longed for became a torture to him.
+
+Freda was at the other end of the room talking to Keith Collins, the
+well-known member for Codrington, whose curious but attractive face was
+known to all the world through the caricatures of it in 'Punch.' I knew
+that she saw Derrick, and that he instantly perceived her, and that a
+miserable sense of separation, of distance, of hopelessness overwhelmed
+him as he looked. After all, it was natural enough. For two years he
+had thought of Freda night and day; in his unutterably dreary life her
+memory had been his refreshment, his solace, his companion. Now he was
+suddenly brought face to face, not with the Freda of his dreams, but
+with a fashionable, beautifully dressed, much-sought girl, and he felt
+that a gulf lay between them; it was the gulf of experience. Freda's
+life in society, the whirl of gaiety, the excitement and success which
+she had been enjoying throughout the season, and his miserable monotony
+of companionship with his invalid father, of hard work and weary
+disappointment, had broken down the bond of union that had once existed
+between them. From either side they looked at each other--Freda with a
+wondering perplexity, Derrick with a dull grinding pain at his heart.
+
+Of course they spoke to each other; but I fancy the merest platitudes
+passed between them. Somehow they had lost touch, and a crowded London
+drawing-room was hardly the place to regain it.
+
+"So your novel is really out," I heard her say to him in that deep,
+clear voice of hers. "I like the design on the cover."
+
+"Oh, have you read the book?" said Derrick, colouring.
+
+"Well, no," she said truthfully. "I wanted to read it, but my father
+wouldn't let me--he is very particular about what we read."
+
+That frank but not very happily worded answer was like a stab to poor
+Derrick. He had given to the world then a book that was not fit for her
+to read! This 'Lynwood,' which had been written with his own heart's
+blood, was counted a dangerous, poisonous thing, from which she must be
+guarded!
+
+Freda must have seen that she had hurt him, for she tried hard to
+retrieve her words.
+
+"It was tantalising to have it actually in the house, wasn't it? I have
+a grudge against the Hour, for it was the review in that which set
+my father against it." Then rather anxious to leave the difficult
+subject--"And has your brother quite recovered from his wound?"
+
+I think she was a little vexed that Derrick did not show more animation
+in his replies about Lawrence's adventures during the war; the less he
+responded the more enthusiastic she became, and I am perfectly sure that
+in her heart she was thinking:
+
+"He is jealous of his brother's fame--I am disappointed in him. He has
+grown dull, and absent, and stupid, and he is dreadfully wanting in
+small-talk. I fear that his life down in the provinces is turning him
+into a bear."
+
+She brought the conversation back to his book; but there was a little
+touch of scorn in her voice, as if she thought to herself, "I suppose
+he is one of those people who can only talk on one subject--his own
+doings." Her manner was almost brusque.
+
+"Your novel has had a great success, has it not?" she asked.
+
+He instantly perceived her thought, and replied with a touch of dignity
+and a proud smile:
+
+"On the contrary, it has been a great failure; only three hundred and
+nine copies have been sold."
+
+"I wonder at that," said Freda, "for one so often heard it talked of."
+
+He promptly changed the topic, and began to speak of the march past. "I
+want to see Lord Starcross," he added. "I have no idea what a hero is
+like."
+
+Just then Lady Probyn came up, followed by an elderly harpy in
+spectacles and false, much-frizzed fringe.
+
+"Mrs. Carsteen wishes to be introduced to you, Mr. Vaughan; she is a
+great admirer of your writings."
+
+And poor Derrick, who was then quite unused to the species, had to
+stand and receive a flood of the most fulsome flattery, delivered in
+a strident voice, and to bear the critical and prolonged stare of the
+spectacled eyes. Nor would the harpy easily release her prey. She kept
+him much against his will, and I saw him looking wistfully now and then
+towards Freda.
+
+"It amuses me," I said to her, "that Derrick Vaughan should be so
+anxious to see Lord Starcross. It reminds me of Charles Lamb's anxiety
+to see Kosciusko, 'for,' said he, 'I have never seen a hero; I wonder
+how they look,' while all the time he himself was living a life of
+heroic self-sacrifice."
+
+"Mr. Vaughan, I should think, need only look at his own brother," said
+Freda, missing the drift of my speech.
+
+I longed to tell her what it was possible to tell of Derrick's life, but
+at that moment Sir Richard Merrifield introduced to his daughter a girl
+in a huge hat and great flopping sleeves, Miss Isaacson, whose picture
+at the Grosvenor had been so much talked of. Now the little artist knew
+no one in the room, and Freda saw fit to be extremely friendly to her.
+She was introduced to me, and I did my best to talk to her and set Freda
+at liberty as soon as the harpy had released Derrick; but my endeavours
+were frustrated, for Miss Isaacson, having looked me well over, decided
+that I was not at all intense, but a mere commonplace, slightly cynical
+worldling, and having exchanged a few lukewarm remarks with me, she
+returned to Freda, and stuck to her like a bur for the rest of the time.
+
+We stood out on the balcony to see the troops go by. It was a fine
+sight, and we all became highly enthusiastic. Freda enjoyed the mere
+pageant like a child, and was delighted with the horses. She looked now
+more like the Freda of the yacht, and I wished that Derrick could be
+near her; but, as ill-luck would have it, he was at some distance,
+hemmed in by an impassable barrier of eager spectators.
+
+Lawrence Vaughan rode past, looking wonderfully well in his uniform. He
+was riding a spirited bay, which took Freda's fancy amazingly, though
+she reserved her chief enthusiasm for Lord Starcross and his steed. It
+was not until all was over, and we had returned to the drawing-room,
+that Derrick managed to get the talk with Freda for which I knew he
+was longing, and then they were fated, apparently, to disagree. I was
+standing near and overheard the close of their talk.
+
+"I do believe you must be a member of the Peace Society!" said Freda
+impatiently. "Or perhaps you have turned Quaker. But I want to introduce
+you to my god-father, Mr. Fleming; you know it was his son whom your
+brother saved."
+
+And I heard Derrick being introduced as the brother of the hero of
+Saspataras Hill; and the next day he received a card for one of Mrs.
+Fleming's receptions, Lawrence having previously been invited to dine
+there on the same night.
+
+What happened at that party I never exactly understood. All I could
+gather was that Lawrence had been tremendously feted, that Freda had
+been present, and that poor old Derrick was as miserable as he could be
+when I next saw him. Putting two and two together, I guessed that he had
+been tantalised by a mere sight of her, possibly tortured by watching
+more favoured men enjoying long tete-a-tetes; but he would say little or
+nothing about it, and when, soon after, he and the Major left London, I
+feared that the fortnight had done my friend harm instead of good.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+     "Then in that hour rejoice, since only thus
+      Can thy proud heart grow wholly piteous.
+      Thus only to the world thy speech can flow
+      Charged with the sad authority of woe.
+      Since no man nurtured in the shade can sing
+      To a true note one psalm of conquering;
+      Warriors must chant it whom our own eyes see
+      Red from the battle and more bruised than we,
+      Men who have borne the worst, have known the whole,
+      Have felt the last abeyance of the soul."
+                                     F. W. H. Myers.
+
+About the beginning of August, I rejoined him at Ben Rhydding. The place
+suited the Major admirably, and his various baths took up so great a
+part of each day, that Derrick had more time to himself than usual, and
+'At Strife' got on rapidly. He much enjoyed, too, the beautiful country
+round, while the hotel itself, with its huge gathering of all sorts and
+conditions of people, afforded him endless studies of character. The
+Major breakfasted in his own room, and, being so much engrossed with his
+baths, did not generally appear till twelve. Derrick and I breakfasted
+in the great dining-hall; and one morning, when the meal was over,
+we, as usual, strolled into the drawing-room to see if there were any
+letters awaiting us.
+
+"One for you," I remarked, handing him a thick envelope.
+
+"From Lawrence!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Well, don't read it in here; the Doctor will be coming to read prayers.
+Come out in the garden," I said.
+
+We went out into the beautiful grounds, and he tore open the envelope
+and began to read his letter as we walked. All at once I felt the
+arm which was linked in mine give a quick, involuntary movement, and,
+looking up, saw that Derrick had turned deadly pale.
+
+"What's up?" I said. But he read on without replying; and, when I paused
+and sat down on a sheltered rustic seat, he unconsciously followed my
+example, looking more like a sleep-walker than a man in the possession
+of all his faculties. At last he finished the letter, and looked up in a
+dazed, miserable way, letting his eyes wander over the fir-trees and the
+fragrant shrubs and the flowers by the path.
+
+"Dear old fellow, what is the matter?" I asked.
+
+The words seemed to rouse him.
+
+A dreadful look passed over his face--the look of one stricken to
+the heart. But his voice was perfectly calm, and full of a ghastly
+self-control.
+
+"Freda will be my sister-in-law," he said, rather as if stating the fact
+to himself than answering my question.
+
+"Impossible!" I said. "What do you mean? How could--"
+
+As if to silence me he thrust the letter into my hand. It ran as
+follows:
+
+"Dear Derrick,--For the last few days I have been down in the Flemings'
+place in Derbyshire, and fortune has favoured me, for the Merrifields
+are here too. Now prepare yourself for a surprise. Break the news to the
+governor, and send me your heartiest congratulations by return of post.
+I am engaged to Freda Merrifield, and am the happiest fellow in the
+world. They are awfully fastidious sort of people, and I do not believe
+Sir Richard would have consented to such a match had it not been for
+that lucky impulse which made me rescue Dick Fleming. It has all been
+arranged very quickly, as these things should be, but we have seen a
+good deal of each other--first at Aldershot the year before last, and
+just lately in town, and now these four days down here--and days in a
+country house are equal to weeks elsewhere. I enclose a letter to my
+father--give it to him at a suitable moment--but, after all, he's sure
+to approve of a daughter-in-law with such a dowry as Miss Merrifield is
+likely to have.
+
+"Yours affly.,
+
+"Lawrence Vaughan."
+
+
+I gave him back the letter without a word. In dead silence we moved on,
+took a turning which led to a little narrow gate, and passed out of the
+grounds to the wild moorland country beyond.
+
+After all, Freda was in no way to blame. As a mere girl she had allowed
+Derrick to see that she cared for him; then circumstances had entirely
+separated them; she saw more of the world, met Lawrence, was perhaps
+first attracted to him by his very likeness to Derrick, and finally fell
+in love with the hero of the season, whom every one delighted to honour.
+Nor could one blame Lawrence, who had no notion that he had supplanted
+his brother. All the blame lay with the Major's slavery to drink, for
+if only he had remained out in India I feel sure that matters would have
+gone quite differently.
+
+We tramped on over heather and ling and springy turf till we reached the
+old ruin known as the Hunting Tower; then Derrick seemed to awake to the
+recollection of present things. He looked at his watch.
+
+"I must go back to my father," he said, for the first time breaking the
+silence.
+
+"You shall do no such thing!" I cried. "Stay out here and I will see to
+the Major, and give him the letter too if you like."
+
+He caught at the suggestion, and as he thanked me I think there were
+tears in his eyes. So I took the letter and set off for Ben Rhydding,
+leaving him to get what relief he could from solitude, space, and
+absolute quiet. Once I just glanced back, and somehow the scene has
+always lingered in my memory--the great stretch of desolate moor, the
+dull crimson of the heather, the lowering grey clouds, the Hunting Tower
+a patch of deeper gloom against the gloomy sky, and Derrick's figure
+prostrate, on the turf, the face hidden, the hands grasping at the
+sprigs of heather growing near.
+
+The Major was just ready to be helped into the garden when I reached
+the hotel. We sat down in the very same place where Derrick had read
+the news, and, when I judged it politic, I suddenly remembered with
+apologies the letter that had been entrusted to me. The old man received
+it with satisfaction, for he was fond of Lawrence and proud of him, and
+the news of the engagement pleased him greatly. He was still discussing
+it when, two hours later, Derrick returned.
+
+"Here's good news!" said the Major, glancing up as his son approached.
+"Trust Lawrence to fall on his feet! He tells me the girl will have a
+thousand a year. You know her, don't you? What's she like?"
+
+"I have met her," replied Derrick, with forced composure. "She is very
+charming."
+
+"Lawrence has all his wits about him," growled the Major. "Whereas
+you--" (several oaths interjected). "It will be a long while before any
+girl with a dowry will look at you! What women like is a bold man of
+action; what they despise, mere dabblers in pen and ink, writers
+of poisonous sensational tales such as yours! I'm quoting your own
+reviewers, so you needn't contradict me!"
+
+Of course no one had dreamt of contradicting; it would have been the
+worst possible policy.
+
+"Shall I help you in?" said Derrick. "It is just dinner time."
+
+And as I walked beside them to the hotel, listening to the Major's
+flood of irritating words, and glancing now and then at Derrick's
+grave, resolute face, which successfully masked such bitter suffering, I
+couldn't help reflecting that here was courage infinitely more deserving
+of the Victoria Cross than Lawrence's impulsive rescue. Very patiently
+he sat through the long dinner. I doubt if any but an acute observer
+could have told that he was in trouble; and, luckily, the world in
+general observes hardly at all. He endured the Major till it was time
+for him to take a Turkish bath, and then having two hours' freedom,
+climbed with me up the rock-covered hill at the back of the hotel. He
+was very silent. But I remember that, as we watched the sun go down--a
+glowing crimson ball, half veiled in grey mist--he said abruptly, "If
+Lawrence makes her happy I can bear it. And of course I always knew that
+I was not worthy of her."
+
+Derrick's room was a large, gaunt, ghostly place in one of the towers
+of the hotel, and in one corner of it was a winding stair leading to the
+roof. When I went in next morning I found him writing away at his novel
+just as usual, but when I looked at him it seemed to me that the night
+had aged him fearfully. As a rule, he took interruptions as a matter
+of course, and with perfect sweetness of temper; but to-day he seemed
+unable to drag himself back to the outer world. He was writing at a
+desperate pace too, and frowned when I spoke to him. I took up the sheet
+of foolscap which he had just finished and glanced at the number of the
+page--evidently he had written an immense quantity since the previous
+day.
+
+"You will knock yourself up if you go on at this rate!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said sharply. "You know it never tires me."
+
+Yet, all the same, he passed his hand very wearily over his forehead,
+and stretched himself with the air of one who had been in a cramping
+position for many hours.
+
+"You have broken your vow!" I cried. "You have been writing at night."
+
+"No," he said; "it was morning when I began--three o'clock. And it pays
+better to get up and write than to lie awake thinking."
+
+Judging by the speed with which the novel grew in the next few weeks, I
+could tell that Derrick's nights were of the worst.
+
+He began, too, to look very thin and haggard, and I more than once
+noticed that curious 'sleep-walking' expression in his eyes; he seemed
+to me just like a man who has received his death-blow, yet still
+lingers--half alive, half dead. I had an odd feeling that it was his
+novel which kept him going, and I began to wonder what would happen when
+it was finished.
+
+A month later, when I met him again at Bath, he had written the last
+chapter of 'At Strife,' and we read it over the sitting-room fire on
+Saturday evening. I was very much struck with the book; it seemed to
+me a great advance on 'Lynwood's Heritage,' and the part which he had
+written since that day at Ben Rhydding was full of an indescribable
+power, as if the life of which he had been robbed had flowed into his
+work. When he had done, he tied up the MS. in his usual prosaic fashion,
+just as if it had been a bundle of clothes, and put it on a side table.
+
+It was arranged that I should take it to Davison--the publisher of
+'Lynwood's Heritage'--on Monday, and see what offer he would make for
+it. Just at that time I felt so sorry for Derrick that if he had asked
+me to hawk round fifty novels I would have done it.
+
+Sunday morning proved wet and dismal; as a rule the Major, who was fond
+of music, attended service at the Abbey, but the weather forced him now
+to stay at home. I myself was at that time no church-goer, but Derrick
+would, I verily believe, as soon have fasted a week as have given up
+a Sunday morning service; and having no mind to be left to the Major's
+company, and a sort of wish to be near my friend, I went with him. I
+believe it is not correct to admire Bath Abbey, but for all that 'the
+lantern of the west' has always seemed to me a grand place; as for
+Derrick, he had a horror of a 'dim religious light,' and always stuck
+up for his huge windows, and I believe he loved the Abbey with all his
+heart. Indeed, taking it only from a sensuous point of view, I could
+quite imagine what a relief he found his weekly attendance here; by
+contrast with his home the place was Heaven itself.
+
+As we walked back, I asked a question that had long been in my mind:
+"Have you seen anything of Lawrence?"
+
+"He saw us across London on our way from Ben Rhydding," said Derrick,
+steadily. "Freda came with him, and my father was delighted with her."
+
+I wondered how they had got through the meeting, but of course my
+curiosity had to go unsatisfied. Of one thing I might be certain,
+namely, that Derrick had gone through with it like a Trojan, that he
+had smiled and congratulated in his quiet way, and had done the best to
+efface himself and think only of Freda. But as everyone knows:
+
+     "Face joy's a costly mask to wear,
+      'Tis bought with pangs long nourished
+      And rounded to despair;"
+
+and he looked now even more worn and old than he had done at Ben
+Rhydding in the first days of his trouble.
+
+However, he turned resolutely away from the subject I had introduced and
+began to discuss titles for his novel.
+
+"It's impossible to find anything new," he said, "absolutely impossible.
+I declare I shall take to numbers."
+
+I laughed at this prosaic notion, and we were still discussing the title
+when we reached home.
+
+"Don't say anything about it at lunch," he said as we entered. "My
+father detests my writing."
+
+I nodded assent and opened the sitting-room door--a strong smell of
+brandy instantly became apparent; the Major sat in the green velvet
+chair, which had been wheeled close to the hearth. He was drunk.
+
+Derrick gave an ejaculation of utter hopelessness.
+
+"This will undo all the good of Ben Rhydding!" he said. "How on earth
+has he managed to get it?"
+
+The Major, however, was not so far gone as he looked; he caught up the
+remark and turned towards us with a hideous laugh.
+
+"Ah, yes," he said, "that's the question. But the old man has still some
+brains, you see. I'll be even with you yet, Derrick. You needn't think
+you're to have it all your own way. It's my turn now. You've deprived me
+all this time of the only thing I care for in life, and now I turn the
+tables on you. Tit for tat. Oh! yes, I've turned your d----d scribblings
+to a useful purpose, so you needn't complain!"
+
+All this had been shouted out at the top of his voice and freely
+interlarded with expressions which I will not repeat; at the end he
+broke again into a laugh, and with a look, half idiotic, half devilish,
+pointed towards the grate.
+
+"Good Heavens!" I said, "what have you done?"
+
+By the side of the chair I saw a piece of brown paper, and, catching
+it up, read the address--"Messrs. Davison, Paternoster Row"; in the
+fireplace was a huge charred mass. Derrick caught his breath; he stooped
+down and snatched from the fender a fragment of paper slightly burned,
+but still not charred beyond recognition like the rest. The writing was
+quite legible--it was his own writing--the description of the Royalists'
+attack and Paul Wharncliffe's defence of the bridge. I looked from the
+half-burnt scrap of paper to the side table where, only the previous
+night, we had placed the novel, and then, realising as far as any but an
+author could realise the frightful thing that had happened, I looked in
+Derrick's face. Its white fury appalled me. What he had borne hitherto
+from the Major, God only knows, but this was the last drop in the cup.
+Daily insults, ceaseless provocation, even the humiliations of personal
+violence he had borne with superhuman patience; but this last injury,
+this wantonly cruel outrage, this deliberate destruction of an amount of
+thought, and labour, and suffering which only the writer himself could
+fully estimate--this was intolerable.
+
+What might have happened had the Major been sober and in the possession
+of ordinary physical strength I hardly care to think. As it was, his
+weakness protected him. Derrick's wrath was speechless; with one look
+of loathing and contempt at the drunken man, he strode out of the room,
+caught up his hat, and hurried from the house.
+
+The Major sat chuckling to himself for a minute or two, but soon he grew
+drowsy, and before long was snoring like a grampus. The old landlady
+brought in lunch, saw the state of things pretty quickly, shook her head
+and commiserated Derrick. Then, when she had left the room, seeing no
+prospect that either of my companions would be in a fit state for lunch,
+I made a solitary meal, and had just finished when a cab stopped at the
+door and out sprang Derrick. I went into the passage to meet him.
+
+"The Major is asleep," I remarked.
+
+He took no more notice than if I had spoken of the cat.
+
+"I'm going to London," he said, making for the stairs. "Can you get your
+bag ready? There's a train at 2.5."
+
+Somehow the suddenness and the self-control with which he made this
+announcement carried me back to the hotel at Southampton, where, after
+listening to the account of the ship's doctor, he had announced his
+intention of living with his father. For more than two years he had
+borne this awful life; he had lost pretty nearly all that there was
+to be lost and he had gained the Major's vindictive hatred. Now, half
+maddened by pain, and having, as he thought, so hopelessly failed, he
+saw nothing for it but to go--and that at once.
+
+I packed my bag, and then went to help him. He was cramming all his
+possessions into portmanteaux and boxes; the Hoffman was already packed,
+and the wall looked curiously bare without it. Clearly this was no visit
+to London--he was leaving Bath for good, and who could wonder at it?
+
+"I have arranged for the attendant from the hospital to come in at night
+as well as in the morning," he said, as he locked a portmanteau that was
+stuffed almost to bursting. "What's the time? We must make haste or we
+shall lose the train. Do, like a good fellow, cram that heap of things
+into the carpet-bag while I speak to the landlady."
+
+At last we were off, rattling through the quiet streets of Bath, and
+reaching the station barely in time to rush up the long flight of stairs
+and spring into an empty carriage. Never shall I forget that journey.
+The train stopped at every single station, and sometimes in between; we
+were five mortal hours on the road, and more than once I thought Derrick
+would have fainted. However, he was not of the fainting order, he only
+grew more and more ghastly in colour and rigid in expression.
+
+I felt very anxious about him, for the shock and the sudden anger
+following on the trouble about Freda seemed to me enough to unhinge even
+a less sensitive nature. 'At Strife' was the novel which had, I firmly
+believe, kept him alive through that awful time at Ben Rhydding, and
+I began to fear that the Major's fit of drunken malice might prove the
+destruction of the author as well as of the book. Everything had, as it
+were, come at once on poor Derrick; yet I don't know that he fared worse
+than other people in this respect.
+
+Life, unfortunately, is for most of us no well-arranged story with a
+happy termination; it is a chequered affair of shade and sun, and for
+one beam of light there come very often wide patches of shadow. Men
+seem to have known this so far back as Shakespeare's time, and to have
+observed that one woe trod on another's heels, to have battled not with
+a single wave, but with a 'sea of troubles,' and to have remarked that
+'sorrows come not singly, but in battalions.'
+
+However, owing I believe chiefly to his own self-command, and to his
+untiring faculty for taking infinite pains over his work, Derrick did
+not break down, but pleasantly cheated my expectations. I was not called
+on to nurse him through a fever, and consumption did not mark him
+for her own. In fact, in the matter of illness, he was always a most
+prosaic, unromantic fellow, and never indulged in any of the euphonious
+and interesting ailments. In all his life, I believe, he never went
+in for anything but the mumps--of all complaints the least
+interesting--and, may be, an occasional headache.
+
+However, all this is a digression. We at length reached London,
+and Derrick took a room above mine, now and then disturbing me with
+nocturnal pacings over the creaking boards, but, on the whole, proving
+himself the best of companions.
+
+If I wrote till Doomsday, I could never make you understand how the
+burning of his novel affected him--to this day it is a subject I
+instinctively avoid with him--though the re-written 'At Strife' has been
+such a grand success. For he did re-write the story, and that at once.
+He said little; but the very next morning, in one of the windows of
+our quiet sitting-room, often enough looking despairingly at the grey
+monotony of Montague Street, he began at 'Page I, Chapter I,' and so
+worked patiently on for many months to re-make as far as he could
+what his drunken father had maliciously destroyed. Beyond the unburnt
+paragraph about the attack on Mondisfield, he had nothing except a
+few hastily scribbled ideas in his note-book, and of course the very
+elaborate and careful historical notes which he had made on the Civil
+War during many years of reading and research--for this period had
+always been a favourite study with him.
+
+But, as any author will understand, the effort of re-writing was
+immense, and this, combined with all the other troubles, tried Derrick
+to the utmost. However, he toiled on, and I have always thought that his
+resolute, unyielding conduct with regard to that book proved what a man
+he was.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+     "How oft Fate's sharpest blow shall leave thee strong,
+      With some re-risen ecstacy of song."
+                                         F. W. H. Myers.
+
+As the autumn wore on, we heard now and then from old Mackrill the
+doctor. His reports of the Major were pretty uniform. Derrick used to
+hand them over to me when he had read them; but, by tacit consent, the
+Major's name was never mentioned.
+
+Meantime, besides re-writing 'At Strife,' he was accumulating material
+for his next book and working to very good purpose. Not a minute of his
+day was idle; he read much, saw various phases of life hitherto unknown
+to him, studied, observed, gained experience, and contrived, I believe,
+to think very little and very guardedly of Freda.
+
+But, on Christmas Eve, I noticed a change in him--and that very night
+he spoke to me. For such an impressionable fellow, he had really
+extraordinary tenacity, and, spite of the course of Herbert Spencer that
+I had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things
+which to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well
+the arguments we used to have on the vexed question of 'Free-will,'
+and being myself more or less of a fatalist, it annoyed me that I never
+could in the very slightest degree shake his convictions on that point.
+Moreover, when I plagued him too much with Herbert Spencer, he had a way
+of retaliating, and would foist upon me his favourite authors. He was
+never a worshipper of any one writer, but always had at least a dozen
+prophets in whose praise he was enthusiastic.
+
+Well, on this Christmas Eve, we had been to see dear old Ravenscroft and
+his grand-daughter, and we were walking back through the quiet precincts
+of the Temple, when he said abruptly:
+
+"I have decided to go back to Bath to-morrow."
+
+"Have you had a worse account?" I asked, much startled at this sudden
+announcement.
+
+"No," he replied, "but the one I had a week ago was far from good if you
+remember, and I have a feeling that I ought to be there."
+
+At that moment we emerged into the confusion of Fleet Street; but when
+we had crossed the road I began to remonstrate with him, and argued the
+folly of the idea all the way down Chancery Lane.
+
+However, there was no shaking his purpose; Christmas and its
+associations had made his life in town no longer possible for him.
+
+"I must at any rate try it again and see how it works," he said.
+
+And all I could do was to persuade him to leave the bulk of his
+possessions in London, "in case," as he remarked, "the Major would not
+have him."
+
+So the next day I was left to myself again with nothing to remind me
+of Derrick's stay but his pictures which still hung on the wall of our
+sitting-room. I made him promise to write a full, true, and particular
+account of his return, a bona-fide old-fashioned letter, not the
+half-dozen lines of these degenerate days; and about a week later I
+received the following budget:
+
+"Dear Sydney,--I got down to Bath all right, and, thanks to your 'Study
+of Sociology,' endured a slow, and cold, and dull, and depressing
+journey with the thermometer down to zero, and spirits to correspond,
+with the country a monotonous white, and the sky a monotonous grey,
+and a companion who smoked the vilest tobacco you can conceive. The old
+place looks as beautiful as ever, and to my great satisfaction the hills
+round about are green. Snow, save in pictures, is an abomination.
+Milsom Street looked asleep, and Gay Street decidedly dreary, but the
+inhabitants were roused by my knock, and the old landlady nearly shook
+my hand off. My father has an attack of jaundice and is in a miserable
+state. He was asleep when I got here, and the good old landlady,
+thinking the front sitting-room would be free, had invited 'company,'
+i.e., two or three married daughters and their belongings; one of the
+children beats Magnay's 'Carina' as to beauty--he ought to paint her.
+Happy thought, send him and pretty Mrs. Esperance down here on spec. He
+can paint the child for the next Academy, and meantime I could enjoy his
+company. Well, all these good folks being just set-to at roast beef, I
+naturally wouldn't hear of disturbing them, and in the end was obliged
+to sit down too and eat at that hour of the day the hugest dinner
+you ever saw--anything but voracious appetites offended the hostess.
+Magnay's future model, for all its angelic face, 'ate to repletion,'
+like the fair American in the story. Then I went into my father's
+room, and shortly after he woke up and asked me to give him some
+Friedrichshall water, making no comment at all on my return, but just
+behaving as though I had been here all the autumn, so that I felt as if
+the whole affair were a dream. Except for this attack of jaundice, he
+has been much as usual, and when you next come down you will find
+us settled into our old groove. The quiet of it after London is
+extraordinary. But I believe it suits the book, which gets on pretty
+fast. This afternoon I went up Lansdowne and right on past the
+Grand Stand to Prospect Stile, which is at the edge of a high bit
+of tableland, and looks over a splendid stretch of country, with the
+Bristol Channel and the Welsh hills in the distance. While I was there
+the sun most considerately set in gorgeous array. You never saw anything
+like it. It was worth the journey from London to Bath, I can assure
+you. Tell Magnay, and may it lure him down; also name the model
+aforementioned.
+
+"How is the old Q.C. and his pretty grandchild? That quaint old room of
+theirs in the Temple somehow took my fancy, and the child was divine. Do
+you remember my showing you, in a gloomy narrow street here, a jolly old
+watchmaker who sits in his shop-window and is for ever bending over sick
+clocks and watches? Well, he's still sitting there, as if he had never
+moved since we saw him that Saturday months ago. I mean to study him for
+a portrait; his sallow, clean-shaved, wrinkled face has a whole story
+in it. I believe he is married to a Xantippe who throws cold water over
+him, both literally and metaphorically; but he is a philosopher--I'll
+stake my reputation as an observer on that--he just shrugs his sturdy
+old shoulders, and goes on mending clocks and watches. On dark days he
+works by a gas jet--and then Rembrandt would enjoy painting him. I
+look at him whenever my world is particularly awry, and find him highly
+beneficial. Davison has forwarded me to-day two letters from readers of
+'Lynwood.' The first is from an irate female who takes me to task for
+the dangerous tendency of the story, and insists that I have drawn
+impossible circumstances and impossible characters. The second is from
+an old clergyman, who writes a pathetic letter of thanks, and tells me
+that it is almost word for word the story of a son of his who died five
+years ago. Query: shall I send the irate female the old man's letter,
+and save myself the trouble of writing? But on the whole I think not;
+it would be pearls before swine. I will write to her myself. Glad to see
+you whenever you can run down.
+
+"Yours ever,
+
+"D. V."
+
+("Never struck me before what pious initials mine are.")
+
+
+The very evening I received this letter I happened to be dining at the
+Probyn's. As luck would have it, pretty Miss Freda was staying in the
+house, and she fell to my share. I always liked her, though of late I
+had felt rather angry with her for being carried away by the general
+storm of admiration and swept by it into an engagement with Lawrence
+Vaughan. She was a very pleasant, natural sort of talker, and she always
+treated me as an old friend. But she seemed to me, that night, a little
+less satisfied than usual with life. Perhaps it was merely the effect
+of the black lace dress which she wore, but I fancied her paler and
+thinner, and somehow she seemed all eyes.
+
+"Where is Lawrence now?" I asked, as we went down to the dining-room.
+
+"He is stationed at Dover," she replied. "He was up here for a few hours
+yesterday; he came to say good-bye to me, for I am going to Bath next
+Monday with my father, who has been very rheumatic lately--and you know
+Bath is coming into fashion again, all the doctors recommend it."
+
+"Major Vaughan is there," I said, "and has found the waters very good, I
+believe; any day, at twelve o'clock, you may see him getting out of his
+chair and going into the Pump Room on Derrick's arm. I often wonder
+what outsiders think of them. It isn't often, is it, that one sees a son
+absolutely giving up his life to his invalid father?"
+
+She looked a little startled.
+
+"I wish Lawrence could be more with Major Vaughan," she said; "for he
+is his father's favourite. You see he is such a good talker, and
+Derrick--well, he is absorbed in his books; and then he has such
+extravagant notions about war, he must be a very uncongenial companion
+to the poor Major."
+
+I devoured turbot in wrathful silence. Freda glanced at me.
+
+"It is true, isn't it, that he has quite given up his life to writing,
+and cares for nothing else?"
+
+"Well, he has deliberately sacrificed his best chance of success by
+leaving London and burying himself in the provinces," I replied drily;
+"and as to caring for nothing but writing, why he never gets more than
+two or three hours a day for it." And then I gave her a minute account
+of his daily routine.
+
+She began to look troubled.
+
+"I have been misled," she said; "I had gained quite a wrong impression
+of him."
+
+"Very few people know anything at all about him," I said warmly; "you
+are not alone in that."
+
+"I suppose his next novel is finished now?" said Freda; "he told me he
+had only one or two more chapters to write when I saw him a few months
+ago on his way from Ben Rhydding. What is he writing now?"
+
+"He is writing that novel over again," I replied.
+
+"Over again? What fearful waste of time!"
+
+"Yes, it has cost him hundreds of hours' work; it just shows what a man
+he is, that he has gone through with it so bravely."
+
+"But how do you mean? Didn't it do?"
+
+Rashly, perhaps, yet I think unavoidably, I told her the truth.
+
+"It was the best thing he had ever written, but unfortunately it was
+destroyed, burnt to a cinder. That was not very pleasant, was it, for a
+man who never makes two copies of his work?"
+
+"It was frightful!" said Freda, her eyes dilating. "I never heard a word
+about it. Does Lawrence know?"
+
+"No, he does not; and perhaps I ought not to have told you, but I was
+annoyed at your so misunderstanding Derrick. Pray never mention the
+affair; he would wish it kept perfectly quiet."
+
+"Why?" asked Freda, turning her clear eyes full upon mine.
+
+"Because," I said, lowering my voice, "because his father burnt it."
+
+She almost gasped.
+
+"Deliberately?"
+
+"Yes, deliberately," I replied. "His illness has affected his temper,
+and he is sometimes hardly responsible for his actions."
+
+"Oh, I knew that he was irritable and hasty, and that Derrick annoyed
+him. Lawrence told me that, long ago," said Freda. "But that he should
+have done such a thing as that! It is horrible! Poor Derrick, how sorry
+I am for him. I hope we shall see something of them at Bath. Do you know
+how the Major is?"
+
+"I had a letter about him from Derrick only this evening," I replied;
+"if you care to see it, I will show it you later on."
+
+And by-and-by, in the drawing-room, I put Derrick's letter into her
+hands, and explained to her how for a few months he had given up his
+life at Bath, in despair, but now had returned.
+
+"I don't think Lawrence can understand the state of things," she said
+wistfully. "And yet he has been down there."
+
+I made no reply, and Freda, with a sigh, turned away.
+
+A month later I went down to Bath and found, as my friend foretold,
+everything going on in the old groove, except that Derrick himself had
+an odd, strained look about him, as if he were fighting a foe beyond
+his strength. Freda's arrival at Bath had been very hard on him, it
+was almost more than he could endure. Sir Richard, blind as a bat, of
+course, to anything below the surface, made a point of seeing something
+of Lawrence's brother. And on the day of my arrival Derrick and I had
+hardly set out for a walk, when we ran across the old man.
+
+Sir Richard, though rheumatic in the wrists, was nimble of foot and an
+inveterate walker. He was going with his daughter to see over Beckford's
+Tower, and invited us to accompany him. Derrick, much against the grain,
+I fancy, had to talk to Freda, who, in her winter furs and close-fitting
+velvet hat, looked more fascinating than ever, while the old man
+descanted to me on Bath waters, antiquities, etc., in a long-winded
+way that lasted all up the hill. We made our way into the cemetery and
+mounted the tower stairs, thinking of the past when this dreary place
+had been so gorgeously furnished. Here Derrick contrived to get ahead
+with Sir Richard, and Freda lingered in a sort of alcove with me.
+
+"I have been so wanting to see you," she said, in an agitated voice.
+"Oh, Mr. Wharncliffe, is it true what I have heard about the Major? Does
+he drink?"
+
+"Who told you?" I said, a little embarrassed.
+
+"It was our landlady," said Freda; "she is the daughter of the Major's
+landlady. And you should hear what she says of Derrick! Why, he must
+be a downright hero! All the time I have been half despising him"--she
+choked back a sob--"he has been trying to save his father from what was
+certain death to him--so they told me. Do you think it is true?"
+
+"I know it is," I replied gravely.
+
+"And about his arm--was that true?"
+
+I signed an assent.
+
+Her grey eyes grew moist.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "how I have been deceived and how little Lawrence
+appreciates him! I think he must know that I've misjudged him, for he
+seems so odd and shy, and I don't think he likes to talk to me."
+
+I looked searchingly into her truthful grey eyes, thinking of poor
+Derrick's unlucky love-story.
+
+"You do not understand him," I said; "and perhaps it is best so."
+
+But the words and the look were rash, for all at once the colour flooded
+her face. She turned quickly away, conscious at last that the midsummer
+dream of those yachting days had to Derrick been no dream at all, but a
+life-long reality.
+
+I felt very sorry for Freda, for she was not at all the sort of girl who
+would glory in having a fellow hopelessly in love with her. I knew that
+the discovery she had made would be nothing but a sorrow to her, and
+could guess how she would reproach herself for that innocent past fancy,
+which, till now, had seemed to her so faint and far-away--almost as
+something belonging to another life. All at once we heard the others
+descending, and she turned to me with such a frightened, appealing look,
+that I could not possibly have helped going to the rescue. I plunged
+abruptly into a discourse on Beckford, and told her how he used to keep
+diamonds in a tea-cup, and amused himself by arranging them on a piece
+of velvet. Sir Richard fled from the sound of my prosy voice, and,
+needless to say, Derrick followed him. We let them get well in advance
+and then followed, Freda silent and distraite, but every now and then
+asking a question about the Major.
+
+As for Derrick, evidently he was on guard. He saw a good deal of the
+Merrifields and was sedulously attentive to them in many small ways;
+but with Freda he was curiously reserved, and if by chance they did
+talk together, he took good care to bring Lawrence's name into the
+conversation. On the whole, I believe loyalty was his strongest
+characteristic, and want of loyalty in others tried him more severely
+than anything in the world.
+
+As the spring wore on, it became evident to everyone that the Major
+could not last long. His son's watchfulness and the enforced temperance
+which the doctors insisted on had prolonged his life to a certain
+extent, but gradually his sufferings increased and his strength
+diminished. At last he kept his bed altogether.
+
+What Derrick bore at this time no one can ever know. When, one bright
+sunshiny Saturday, I went down to see how he was getting on, I found him
+worn and haggard, too evidently paying the penalty of sleepless nights
+and thankless care. I was a little shocked to hear that Lawrence had
+been summoned, but when I was taken into the sick room I realised that
+they had done wisely to send for the favourite son.
+
+The Major was evidently dying.
+
+Never can I forget the cruelty and malevolence with which his bloodshot
+eyes rested on Derrick, or the patience with which the dear old fellow
+bore his father's scathing sarcasms. It was while I was sitting by
+the bed that the landlady entered with a telegram, which she put into
+Derrick's hand.
+
+"From Lawrence!" said the dying man triumphantly, "to say by what train
+we may expect him. Well?" as Derrick still read the message to himself,
+"can't you speak, you d--d idiot? Have you lost your d--d tongue? What
+does he say?"
+
+"I am afraid he cannot be here just yet," said Derrick, trying to tone
+down the curt message; "it seems he cannot get leave."
+
+"Not get leave to see his dying father? What confounded nonsense. Give
+me the thing here;" and he snatched the telegram from Derrick and read
+it in a quavering, hoarse voice:
+
+"Impossible to get away. Am hopelessly tied here. Love to my father.
+Greatly regret to hear such bad news of him."
+
+I think that message made the old man realise the worth of Lawrence's
+often expressed affection for him. Clearly it was a great blow to him.
+He threw down the paper without a word and closed his eyes. For half an
+hour he lay like that, and we did not disturb him. At last he looked up;
+his voice was fainter and his manner more gentle.
+
+"Derrick," he said, "I believe I've done you an injustice; it is you
+who cared for me, not Lawrence, and I've struck your name out of my
+will--have left all to him. After all, though you are one of those
+confounded novelists, you've done what you could for me. Let some one
+fetch a solicitor--I'll alter it--I'll alter it!"
+
+I instantly hurried out to fetch a lawyer, but it was Saturday
+afternoon, the offices were closed, and some time passed before I had
+caught my man. I told him as we hastened back some of the facts of the
+case, and he brought his writing materials into the sick room and took
+down from the Major's own lips the words which would have the effect of
+dividing the old man's possessions between his two sons. Dr. Mackrill
+was now present; he stood on one side of the bed, his fingers on the
+dying man's pulse. On the other side stood Derrick, a degree paler and
+graver than usual, but revealing little of his real feelings.
+
+"Word it as briefly as you can," said the doctor.
+
+And the lawyer scribbled away as though for his life, while the rest
+of us waited in a wretched hushed state of tension. In the room itself
+there was no sound save the scratching of the pen and the laboured
+breathing of the old man; but in the next house we could hear someone
+playing a waltz. Somehow it did not seem to me incongruous, for it was
+'Sweethearts,' and that had been the favourite waltz of Ben Rhydding,
+so that I always connected it with Derrick and his trouble, and now the
+words rang in my ears:
+
+     "Oh, love for a year, a week, a day,
+      But alas! for the love that loves alway."
+
+If it had not been for the Major's return from India, I firmly believed
+that Derrick and Freda would by this time have been betrothed. Derrick
+had taken a line which necessarily divided them, had done what he saw to
+be his duty; yet what were the results? He had lost Freda, he had lost
+his book, he had damaged his chance of success as a writer, he had been
+struck out of his father's will, and he had suffered unspeakably. Had
+anything whatever been gained? The Major was dying unrepentant to all
+appearance, as hard and cynical an old worldling as I ever saw. The only
+spark of grace he showed was that tardy endeavour to make a fresh will.
+What good had it all been? What good?
+
+I could not answer the question then, could only cry out in a sort of
+indignation, "What profit is there in his blood?" But looking at it
+now, I have a sort of perception that the very lack of apparent
+profitableness was part of Derrick's training, while if, as I now
+incline to think, there is a hereafter where the training begun here is
+continued, the old Major in the hell he most richly deserved would have
+the remembrance of his son's patience and constancy and devotion to
+serve as a guiding light in the outer darkness.
+
+The lawyer no longer wrote at railroad speed; he pushed back his chair,
+brought the will to the bed, and placed the pen in the trembling yellow
+hand of the invalid.
+
+"You must sign your name here," he said, pointing with his finger; and
+the Major raised himself a little, and brought the pen quaveringly
+down towards the paper. With a sort of fascination I watched the
+finely-pointed steel nib; it trembled for an instant or two, then the
+pen dropped from the convulsed fingers, and with a cry of intolerable
+anguish the Major fell back.
+
+For some minutes there was a painful struggle; presently we caught a
+word or two between the groans of the dying man.
+
+"Too late!" he gasped, "too late!" And then a dreadful vision of horrors
+seemed to rise before him, and with a terror that I can never forget
+he turned to his son and clutched fast hold of his hands: "Derrick!" he
+shrieked.
+
+Derrick could not speak, but he bent low over the bed as though to
+screen the dying eyes from those horrible visions, and with an odd sort
+of thrill I saw him embrace his father.
+
+When he raised his head the terror had died out of the Major's face; all
+was over.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+     "To duty firm, to conscience true,
+        However tried and pressed,
+      In God's clear sight high work we do,
+        If we but do out best."
+
+Lawrence came down to the funeral, and I took good care that he should
+hear all about his father's last hours, and I made the solicitor show
+him the unsigned will. He made hardly any comment on it till we three
+were alone together. Then with a sort of kindly patronage he turned to
+his brother--Derrick, it must be remembered, was the elder twin--and
+said pityingly, "Poor old fellow! it was rather rough on you that the
+governor couldn't sign this; but never mind, you'll soon, no doubt, be
+earning a fortune by your books; and besides, what does a bachelor want
+with more than you've already inherited from our mother? Whereas, an
+officer just going to be married, and with this confounded reputation of
+hero to keep up, why, I can tell you it needs every penny of it!"
+
+Derrick looked at his brother searchingly. I honestly believe that he
+didn't very much care about the money, but it cut him to the heart that
+Lawrence should treat him so shabbily. The soul of generosity himself,
+he could not understand how anyone could frame a speech so infernally
+mean.
+
+"Of course," I broke in, "if Derrick liked to go to law he could no
+doubt get his rights, there are three witnesses who can prove what was
+the Major's real wish."
+
+"I shall not go to law," said Derrick, with a dignity of which I had
+hardly imagined him capable. "You spoke of your marriage, Lawrence; is
+it to be soon?"
+
+"This autumn, I hope," said Lawrence; "at least, if I can overcome Sir
+Richard's ridiculous notion that a girl ought not to marry till she's
+twenty-one. He's a most crotchety old fellow, that future father-in-law
+of mine."
+
+When Lawrence had first come back from the war I had thought him
+wonderfully improved, but a long course of spoiling and flattery had
+done him a world of harm. He liked very much to be lionised, and to see
+him now posing in drawing-rooms, surrounded by a worshipping throng of
+women, was enough to sicken any sensible being.
+
+As for Derrick, though he could not be expected to feel his bereavement
+in the ordinary way, yet his father's death had been a great shock to
+him. It was arranged that after settling various matters in Bath
+he should go down to stay with his sister for a time, joining me in
+Montague Street later on. While he was away in Birmingham, however, an
+extraordinary change came into my humdrum life, and when he rejoined me
+a few weeks later, I--selfish brute--was so overwhelmed with the trouble
+that had befallen me that I thought very little indeed of his affairs.
+He took this quite as a matter of course, and what I should have done
+without him I can't conceive. However, this story concerns him and has
+nothing to do with my extraordinary dilemma; I merely mention it as a
+fact which brought additional cares into his life. All the time he was
+doing what could be done to help me he was also going through a most
+baffling and miserable time among the publishers; for 'At Strife,'
+unlike its predecessor, was rejected by Davison and by five other
+houses. Think of this, you comfortable readers, as you lie back in your
+easy chairs and leisurely turn the pages of that popular story. The book
+which represented years of study and long hours of hard work was first
+burnt to a cinder. It was re-written with what infinite pains and toil
+few can understand. It was then six times tied up and carried with
+anxiety and hope to a publisher's office, only to re-appear six times in
+Montague Street, an unwelcome visitor, bringing with it depression and
+disappointment.
+
+Derrick said little, but suffered much. However, nothing daunted him.
+When it came back from the sixth publisher he took it to a seventh, then
+returned and wrote away like a Trojan at his third book. The one thing
+that never failed him was that curious consciousness that he HAD to
+write; like the prophets of old, the 'burden' came to him, and speak it
+he must.
+
+The seventh publisher wrote a somewhat dubious letter: the book, he
+thought, had great merit, but unluckily people were prejudiced, and
+historical novels rarely met with success. However, he was willing to
+take the story, and offered half profits, candidly admitting that he
+had no great hopes of a large sale. Derrick instantly closed with this
+offer, proofs came in, the book appeared, was well received like its
+predecessor, fell into the hands of one of the leaders of Society, and,
+to the intense surprise of the publisher, proved to be the novel of
+the year. Speedily a second edition was called for; then, after a brief
+interval, a third edition--this time a rational one-volume affair; and
+the whole lot--6,000 I believe--went off on the day of publication.
+Derrick was amazed; but he enjoyed his success very heartily, and I
+think no one could say that he had leapt into fame at a bound.
+
+Having devoured 'At Strife,' people began to discover the merits of
+'Lynwood's Heritage;' the libraries were besieged for it, and a cheap
+edition was hastily published, and another and another, till the book,
+which at first had been such a dead failure, rivalled 'At Strife.' Truly
+an author's career is a curious thing; and precisely why the first book
+failed, and the second succeeded, no one could explain.
+
+It amused me very much to see Derrick turned into a lion--he was so
+essentially un-lion-like. People were for ever asking him how he
+worked, and I remember a very pretty girl setting upon him once at a
+dinner-party with the embarrassing request:
+
+"Now, do tell me, Mr. Vaughan, how do you write stories? I wish you
+would give me a good receipt for a novel."
+
+Derrick hesitated uneasily for a minute; finally, with a humorous smile,
+he said:
+
+"Well, I can't exactly tell you, because, more or less, novels grow;
+but if you want a receipt, you might perhaps try after this
+fashion:--Conceive your hero, add a sprinkling of friends and relatives,
+flavour with whatever scenery or local colour you please, carefully
+consider what circumstances are most likely to develop your man into the
+best he is capable of, allow the whole to simmer in your brain as long
+as you can, and then serve, while hot, with ink upon white or blue
+foolscap, according to taste."
+
+The young lady applauded the receipt, but she sighed a little, and
+probably relinquished all hope of concocting a novel herself; on the
+whole, it seemed to involve incessant taking of trouble.
+
+About this time I remember, too, another little scene, which I enjoyed
+amazingly. I laugh now when I think of it. I happened to be at a huge
+evening crush, and rather to my surprise, came across Lawrence Vaughan.
+We were talking together, when up came Connington of the Foreign Office.
+"I say, Vaughan," he said, "Lord Remington wishes to be introduced
+to you." I watched the old statesman a little curiously as he greeted
+Lawrence, and listened to his first words: "Very glad to make your
+acquaintance, Captain Vaughan; I understand that the author of that
+grand novel, 'At Strife,' is a brother of yours." And poor Lawrence
+spent a mauvais quart d'heure, inwardly fuming, I know, at the idea that
+he, the hero of Saspataras Hill, should be considered merely as 'the
+brother of Vaughan, the novelist.'
+
+Fate, or perhaps I should say the effect of his own pernicious actions,
+did not deal kindly just now with Lawrence. Somehow Freda learnt about
+that will, and, being no bread-and-butter miss, content meekly to adore
+her fiance and deem him faultless, she 'up and spake' on the subject,
+and I fancy poor Lawrence must have had another mauvais quart d'heure.
+It was not this, however, which led to a final breach between them; it
+was something which Sir Richard discovered with regard to Lawrence's
+life at Dover. The engagement was instantly broken off, and Freda, I am
+sure, felt nothing but relief. She went abroad for some time, however,
+and we did not see her till long after Lawrence had been comfortably
+married to 1,500 pounds a year and a middle-aged widow, who had long
+been a hero-worshipper, and who, I am told, never allowed any visitor to
+leave the house without making some allusion to the memorable battle of
+Saspataras Hill and her Lawrence's gallant action.
+
+For the two years following after the Major's death, Derrick and I, as I
+mentioned before, shared the rooms in Montague Street. For me, owing to
+the trouble I spoke of, they were years of maddening suspense and
+pain; but what pleasure I did manage to enjoy came entirely through the
+success of my friend's books and from his companionship. It was odd that
+from the care of his father he should immediately pass on to the care of
+one who had made such a disastrous mistake as I had made. But I feel the
+less compunction at the thought of the amount of sympathy I called
+for at that time, because I notice that the giving of sympathy is a
+necessity for Derrick, and that when the troubles of other folk do not
+immediately thrust themselves into his life he carefully hunts them
+up. During these two years he was reading for the Bar--not that he ever
+expected to do very much as a barrister, but he thought it well to have
+something to fall back on, and declared that the drudgery of the reading
+would do him good. He was also writing as usual, and he used to spend
+two evenings a week at Whitechapel, where he taught one of the classes
+in connection with Toynbee Hall, and where he gained that knowledge
+of East-end life which is conspicuous in his third book--'Dick Carew.'
+This, with an ever increasing and often very burdensome correspondence,
+brought to him by his books, and with a fair share of dinners, 'At
+Homes,' and so forth, made his life a full one. In a quiet sort of way I
+believe he was happy during this time. But later on, when, my trouble
+at an end, I had migrated to a house of my own, and he was left alone in
+the Montague Street rooms, his spirits somehow flagged.
+
+Fame is, after all, a hollow, unsatisfying thing to a man of his nature.
+He heartily enjoyed his success, he delighted in hearing that his books
+had given pleasure or had been of use to anyone, but no public victory
+could in the least make up to him for the loss he had suffered in his
+private life; indeed, I almost think there were times when his triumphs
+as an author seemed to him utterly worthless--days of depression when
+the congratulations of his friends were nothing but a mockery. He had
+gained a striking success, it is true, but he had lost Freda; he was in
+the position of the starving man who has received a gift of bon-bons,
+but so craves for bread that they half sicken him. I used now and
+then to watch his face when, as often happened, someone said: "What
+an enviable fellow you are, Vaughan, to get on like this!" or, "What
+wouldn't I give to change places with you!" He would invariably smile
+and turn the conversation; but there was a look in his eyes at such
+times that I hated to see--it always made me think of Mrs. Browning's
+poem, 'The Mask':
+
+     "Behind no prison-grate, she said,
+        Which slurs the sunshine half a mile,
+      Live captives so uncomforted
+        As souls behind a smile."
+
+As to the Merrifields, there was no chance of seeing them, for Sir
+Richard had gone to India in some official capacity, and no doubt,
+as everyone said, they would take good care to marry Freda out there.
+Derrick had not seen her since that trying February at Bath, long ago.
+Yet I fancy she was never out of his thoughts.
+
+And so the years rolled on, and Derrick worked away steadily, giving
+his books to the world, accepting the comforts and discomforts of
+an author's life, laughing at the outrageous reports that were in
+circulation about him, yet occasionally, I think, inwardly wincing at
+them, and learning from the number of begging letters which he received,
+and into which he usually caused searching inquiry to be made, that
+there are in the world a vast number of undeserving poor.
+
+One day I happened to meet Lady Probyn at a garden-party; it was at the
+same house on Campden Hill where I had once met Freda, and perhaps it
+was the recollection of this which prompted me to enquire after her.
+
+"She has not been well," said Lady Probyn, "and they are sending her
+back to England; the climate doesn't suit her. She is to make her home
+with us for the present, so I am the gainer. Freda has always been my
+favourite niece. I don't know what it is about her that is so taking;
+she is not half so pretty as the others."
+
+"But so much more charming," I said. "I wonder she has not married out
+in India, as everyone prophesied."
+
+"And so do I," said her aunt. "However, poor child, no doubt, after
+having been two years engaged to that very disappointing hero of
+Saspataras Hill, she will be shy of venturing to trust anyone again."
+
+"Do you think that affair ever went very deep?" I ventured to ask. "It
+seemed to me that she looked miserable during her engagement, and happy
+when it was broken off."
+
+"Quite so," said Lady Probyn; "I noticed the same thing. It was
+nothing but a mistake. They were not in the least suited to each other.
+By-the-by, I hear that Derrick Vaughan is married."
+
+"Derrick?" I exclaimed; "oh, no, that is a mistake. It is merely one
+of the hundred and one reports that are for ever being set afloat about
+him."
+
+"But I saw it in a paper, I assure you," said Lady Probyn, by no means
+convinced.
+
+"Ah, that may very well be; they were hard up for a paragraph, no doubt,
+and inserted it. But, as for Derrick, why, how should he marry? He has
+been madly in love with Miss Merrifield ever since our cruise in the
+Aurora."
+
+Lady Probyn made an inarticulate exclamation.
+
+"Poor fellow!" she said, after a minute's thought; "that explains much
+to me."
+
+She did not explain her rather ambiguous remark, and before long our
+tete-a-tete was interrupted.
+
+Now that my friend was a full-fledged barrister, he and I shared
+chambers, and one morning about a month after this garden party, Derrick
+came in with a face of such radiant happiness that I couldn't imagine
+what good luck had befallen him.
+
+"What do you think?" he exclaimed; "here's an invitation for a cruise in
+the Aurora at the end of August--to be nearly the same party that we had
+years ago," and he threw down the letter for me to read.
+
+Of course there was special mention of "my niece, Miss Merrifield, who
+has just returned from India, and is ordered plenty of sea-air." I could
+have told that without reading the letter, for it was written quite
+clearly in Derrick's face. He looked ten years younger, and if any of
+his adoring readers could have seen the pranks he was up to that morning
+in our staid and respectable chambers, I am afraid they would no longer
+have spoken of him "with 'bated breath and whispering humbleness."
+
+As it happened, I, too, was able to leave home for a fortnight at the
+end of August; and so our party in the Aurora really was the same,
+except that we were all several years older, and let us hope wiser, than
+on the previous occasion. Considering all that had intervened, I was
+surprised that Derrick was not more altered; as for Freda, she was
+decidedly paler than when we first met her, but before long sea-air and
+happiness wrought a wonderful transformation in her.
+
+In spite of the pessimists who are for ever writing books, even writing
+novels (more shame to them), to prove that there is no such thing as
+happiness in the world, we managed every one of us heartily to enjoy our
+cruise. It seemed indeed true that:
+
+     "Green leaves and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
+      And singing and loving all come back together."
+
+Something, at any rate, of the glamour of those past days came back to
+us all, I fancy, as we laughed and dozed and idled and talked beneath
+the snowy wings of the Aurora, and I cannot say I was in the least
+surprised when, on roaming through the pleasant garden walks in that
+unique little island of Tresco, I came once more upon Derrick and Freda,
+with, if you will believe it, another handful of white heather given
+to them by that discerning gardener! Freda once more reminded me of the
+girl in the 'Biglow Papers,' and Derrick's face was full of such bliss
+as one seldom sees.
+
+He had always had to wait for his good things, but in the end they came
+to him. However, you may depend upon it, he didn't say much. That was
+never his way. He only gripped my hand, and, with his eyes all aglow
+with happiness, exclaimed "Congratulate me, old fellow!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Derrick Vaughan--Novelist, by Edna Lyall
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