The weekly banner. (Athens, Ga.) 1891-1921, July 07, 1891, Image 6
DERRICK VAUGHAN, NOVELIST.
kffihid my mother allowed him, though of
fatuul part of the work he had, and has
oriretamed. the greatest dislike. I remem-
Will ike comical ending of this first story of
k He (lipped over an interval of ten years,
SBMted on the page by ten laboriously made
to, ud did for his hero in the following
be
‘kino!?,reader, let us come into Mondis-
wttahjard. There are three tombstones.
«Mimitten, ‘ Jlr. Paul Wbarnclifle.’ ”
ibftejvas no better than the productions
Itol tight-year-old children, the written
But curiously enough it proved
wnn of the celebrated romance “ At
® ” which Derrick wrote in after-years; and
maintains that bis picture of life dur-
jw C;vil War would have been much less
Jjta had he not lived so much in the past
«? la various visits to Mondisfield.
nw at hi? second visit, when wo were nine,
“iKicember his announcing his intention
in author when he was grown up. My
«!ffil delights in telling the story. She
r*»sg at work in the south parlor one day,
into tho room calling out:
JK* bead is stuck between the bal-
, gallery; come quick, mother, come
A'toup tho little winding staircase, and
d *5‘ ou ,?h. in tho musician’s gallery,
4*« Me**’ * lls manuscript and pen on
‘C;®; 1 head in durance vile.
1” said my mother, a little
whoa she found that to get tho head
(fcSy> 0a8 ^ ma * tt ‘ r ' “ What made you put
Charles at Carisbrooke,”
8 how much Derrick would re-
TJ*JP«ch.
a t that moment he took
Sj ™ e ,* JOui 'lers and gave me an angry
juy.™ u > as ho said, vehemently, “I’m
. • VJ S Charles! King Charles was a
r. .--ftmilc as she separated us.
top Jjiw-,?,’ quarrel,” she said. “ And
Vs,,,)..' 1 ' n '° truth, for indeed I am
jk" ' a '’* "hj ho thrust his head in such
tavrlpli rn ma h° sure,” said Derrick,
she tiv.i- a ™ c J*f e cou 'd see Lady Let-
5?
iw hxA tho falcon on her wrist below
So, 1 mustn’t say he saw her if it’s
Authors have to be
t ths things, aud I moan to be an
e great
ovc, » ze i syes. “ could not your
top of tho rail ?”
fftit’bet^'- r . r ‘cn. “He would have
?Q I01W ll ' 8 80 readfullv hisrh.
T’ornHiff.; •.••r 1 ■ L>ut x W3U you wna
Jt^-dof troubv 'r uldn ’t bo giving you “
get rnv , , m sorry you were trou-
^loott Jback again—but if you
t ’ mnce Jon are so tall, and
to3dn’?r> ct ,h*dy Lettice.”
» aS? .. B ° down-stairs and look
in h er through a crack in the
mean 0 sta ! rs - I> er hap8, but that
act to mo Romu how. It would be a
MkI ‘J 1 ®, 8 aller y! galleries are
IflMlwhenT 0 ’ , y ou can get cracked
f? 10 look at .^ J ’ v y°u know, he was
ENniss thei. «. r *u W “ en sbe couldn’t see
an,i‘ a ' tber ?x, , wure on different
ft* »ch%u?,, uroa dful enemies.”
^Jtasamc > w.„ ca, ?v’ mattera w ent on
sgtJlHjBcrihM*??! there was always an
away in Dor-
a H Weans?, *T otked tufinitely harder
was alway8 before
Jl^msslf «?“,^o be an author and to
of it ,e life. But he wrote merely
k V k&miae of on n i 0 ea of publication
sssa-sfA.*» ■»* to
Sirs saj?*?*
«2“«y, to mv V« h * e “T 1 prop-eased but
JJtoa-aiilL my a0 t°mshmeat, it came to
thom*TkS, tty ^ at ? as wrong
i^rible tima r I ^ n . ow thafc he passed
onT w ?i , l 0ubt , an<1 despair !
•i2iiS D te2M? a An
’ tnB
in life. Major Vaughan, the husband, bad 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 com
pany ; while Lawrence, Derrick’s }win brother,
was forever getting into scrapes, and was into
the bargain the most unblushmgly selfish fellow
I ever had the pleasure of meeting.
“ Sydney,” said Mrs. Vaughan to mo one after
noon 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, bat
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 re
membering my rote—“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 rato we
all have to go into the wilderness alone.”
That was the last summer I ever saw Derrick’s
mother; she took a chill tho following Christ
mas and died after a few days’, illness. But I
have always thought her death helped Derrick
in a way that her fife might have failed to do.
For although ho 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 an
swer to the riddle, and though older, sadder and
raver tliati before, had quite lost the restless
issatisfaction that for sorao time had clouded
his life. In a few months, moreover, I noticed
a fresh sign that he was out of the wood. Com
ing into his rooms one day I found him sitting
in the cushioned window-seat reading over and
correcting some sheets ot blue foolscap.
“ At it again ?” I asked.
He nodded.
“ I mean to finish the first volume hero. For
tho rest I must bo in London.”
“ Why?” I asked, a little curions as to this un
known art of novel-making.
“ Because,” he replied, “ one mast be in the
heart of things to understand how Lynwood was
affected by them.”
■ “Lynwood I I believe you are always think
ing of him 1 ” (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 armchair which Derrick had inher
ited with the rooms-
He hesitated a moment, being always very
diffident about his own work; but presently hav
ing provided me with a cigar and made a good’
deal of unnecessary work in arranging tho
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 cer
tain crudeness, the story seemed to me a most
powerful story; it rushed straight to the point
with no wavering, no beating about the bush ; it
fiung 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 Der
rick’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 1” 1
cried m exasperation.
“ Yes,” he said, quietly, " for six monijhs.”
You provoking fellow! why, I wonder?”
“ Because I didn’t know the end.”
Good heavens! And do you know it now ?”
Ho looked me fUll in the face, and there wai
an expression in his eyes which puzzled me.
I believe I do,” ho said; and, getting up, he
crossed the room, put tho manuscript away in a
drawer, and returning, sat down in the window-
seat again, looking out on the narrow, paved
street below, and at tho gay buildings oppo
site.
I knew very well that he would never ask me
what .1 thought of the story—that was not his
way.
“Derrick!” I exclaimed, watching his im
passive 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 Der
rick was particularly gifted. He had so far got
through nis 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 firo. 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 Impe
rial Dictionary and read him the following quo
tation from Do Quincey: “ Genius is that mode
of intellectual power which moves in alliance
with the genial nature; i. e., with the capacity of
pleasure and pain; whereas talent has no ves
tige of such an alliance, and is perfectly inde
pendent 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 werp always a great hand
at that. Now listen to the groat Doctor John
son 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, yon have. them with—alas, poor Der
rick! one noble exception—tho mathematical
faculty. You were always bad at figures. Wo
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 1” . ,
“ 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
Ba “We might be together,” I suggested. And
Derrick took to this idea, being a man who de
tested solitude and crowds about equally.
Since his mother’s death he had been very much
alone in the world. To Lawrence he was always
loval. but the two had nothing in common, and
though fond of hia sister he could not get along
at all with the manufacturer, his brother-in-law.
But this prospect of life together m London
pleased him amazingly; he began to recover
tis spirits to a great extent and to look much
more like himself. . , .
It must have been just as he had taken his de-
■ce that he received a telegram to announce
«iat Major Vaughan had been inyahded home,
and would arrive at Southampton in three weeks
time. Derrick knew very htUe of. his fether,
bnt apparently Mrs. Vaughan had done her beat
to keep up a sort of memory of his childish days
at Aldershot, and in these the part toat hia
father played was always pleasant. So he looked
forward to the meeting not a hUle, while I from
the first had my doubts as to the felicity it was
the first had my ooudio *■
^HiCve^FwM ordained that before tlm
"•-"lonately m love with a certain Freda Mem
CHAPTER II.
ESESssr;,
all thesimphcity and sw^ig ! well re-
spoiled, unsophmB^tea gnm » ^
member our first e^nv by Qy v
7 John
member our
invited for a
of Exeter. His