The weekly banner. (Athens, Ga.) 1891-1921, July 07, 1891, Image 6

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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