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io OKRRICK VAUGHAN, NOVELIST. E eriod had always been a fevorite study with im. But, as any author will 'understand, the effofct of rewriting was immense, and this, combined with all the other troubles, tried Derrick to the utmost. However, he toilod on, and I have al ways thought that his resolute, unyielding con duct with regard to that book proved what a man he was. CHAPTER Vm. How oft Fate's sharpest blow shall leave thee strong. With some rerlscn ecstasy ot song. —F. IF. //. Myers. As the antumn wore on, wo 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, tho major’s name was never mentioned. Meantimo, besides rewriting “ At Strife,” ho was accumulating material for his next book and working to good purposo. Not a minute of his day was idle ; ho read much, saw various phases of life hitherto unknown to him, studied, ob served, gained experience, and contrived, 1 be lieve, to think very little and very guardedly of Freda. But, on Christmas-eve, I noticed a change in him—and that vory night ho spoke to me. For such an impressionable fellow, no had really ex traordinary tenacity, and, spite of the course of Herbert Spencer that 1 had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things which to me were at that tiino the merest le gends. 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, ho had a way of retaliat ing, and wonld foist upon me his favorite au thors. 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 Bavencroft and his granddaughter, 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-mor row.” i “Have von had a worse account?” I asked, much starued at this sudden announcement. “ No,” he replied; “ but the one I had a week ago was for from good, if you remember, and I have a feeling that I ought to be there.” At that moment we emerged into the confu sion of Fleet Street; but when we had crossed the road I began to remonstrate with him, and argued the folly of the idea all tho 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. “ 1 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 loft to myBelf again with nothing to remind me of Derrick’s stay but his pictures which still hung on the wail 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 tines of these degenerate days; and vabout a week later I received the following budget: « Deab Sydney,—I got down to Bath all right, and, thanks to vour * Study of Sociology,’ en dured a slow and cold and dull and depressing journey with the thermometer down to zero, and spirits to correspond, with tho couutry a monotonous white, and the sky a monotonous gray, and a companion who smoked the vilest tobacco you can conceive. The old place looks as beautiful as ever, and to my great satisfac tion the hills round about are green. Snow,' save in pictures, is an abomination. Hilsom Street looked asleep, and Gay Street decidedly dreary, but the inhabitants were aroused by my knock, and the old landlady nearly shook my hand off. My fother has an attack of jaundico 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—h« ought to paint her. Happy thought, send him and pretty Mrs. Esperance on spec. He can paint the child for the next Academy, and meantime I could enjoy his com pany. Well, all these good folks being just set- to at roast beef, I naturally wouldn’t hear of dis turbing them, and in the end was obliged to sit down, too, and eat at that hour of> the day the biggest dinner you ever saw—anything but voracious appetites offended the hostess. Mag- nay’s future model, for all its angelic face, * ate to repletion’ tike the fair American in tho storv. Then I went into my father’s room, and shortly after he woko up and asked me to give him some Friedrichshall water, making no comment at all on my roturn, but just behaving as thsugh 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 1 believe it suits the book, which gets on pretty fast. This afternoon I went up Lansdown and right on past the Grand Stand to Prospect Stile, which is at the edge of a high bit of table-land, and looks over a splendid stretch of country, with the Bristol Channel and the Welsh hills in the dis tance. While I was there the sun most con siderately set in gorgeous array. You never saw anything like it. It was worth the journey lrom London to Bath, I can assure you. Tell Magnay, and may it lure him down; also name tho model aforementioned. How is the old Q. C. and his pretty grand child ? That quaint old room of theirs in the Temple somehow took my fancy, and the child was divine. Don you remember my showing you, in a gloomy, narrow street here, a jolly old watchmaker who sits in bis shop window and is forever 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 ift married to a Xan thippe who throws cold water over him, both literally and metaphorically; but he is a philoso pher—I’ll stake my reputation as an observer on that—he just shrugs bis sturdy old shoulders, and goes on mending clocks and watches. On dark days he works by a gas-let—and then Rem brandt would enjoy painting nim. I look at him whenever my world is particularly awry, and find him highly beneficial. Davison has forwarded me to-day two letter from readers of ‘ Lynwood.’ The first is from an irate female who takos me to task for the dangerous tendency of the story, and insists that I have drawn impossible cir cumstances 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 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 hap pened to be dining at the Probyns’. 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 en gagement 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 tittle less satisfied than usjual with life. Perhaps it tyis merely the effect Of tho black lace dress which she wore, but I fancied her paler and thinner, and some how 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 was going to Bath next Monday with my fother, 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 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 Pomp 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 fother?” “I wish Vaughan,” she said; “for he is his father's' favorite. 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 bury ing himself in the provinces,” I replied, dryly; “ and as to caring for nothing but writing, wny he never gets more than two or three hours a day for it." And then I gavo her minute ac count 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 re plied. Over again ? What tearful waste of time I” 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, burned to a cinder. That was not very pleasant, was it, for a man who never makes two copies of his work ?” “ It was frightful 1” said Freda, her eyes dilat ing. “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 men tion the afiair, he would wish it kept perfectly quiet” “ Why ?” asked Freda, turning her clear eyes full upen mine. “Because,” I said, lowering my voice, “be cause his father burned it.” She almost gasped. “ Deliberately ?” “ Yea, 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 ho should have done such a thing as that 1 It is horrible! Poor Derrick, how sorry I am for him 1 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 tbia 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 bad re turned. “ 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 Too 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 tho surface, made a point of seeing some thing of Lawrence’s brother. And on the day of my arrival Derrick and I 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 fascin ating than ever, while the old man decanted to me on Bath waters, antiauities, 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