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DERRICK VAUGHAN
' »> uniaung words,
J 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 gray mist—he said, abruptly,
“ If Lawrenoe makes her happy I can bear it.
And of course I always knew that I was not wor
thy of her.”
Derriok’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 glancod at the number of the page—evi
dently he had written an immense quantity since
the previous-day.
“ You will knock yonrself up if yon go on at
this rate 1” I exclaimed.
“ Nonsense 1” he said, sharply. “ You know
it never tires me.”
Yet, all the same, he passed his hand very
wearily over his forehead, and stretched him-
Belf with the air of one who had been in a cramp
ing position for many hours.
“ You have broken your vow 1 ” I cried. “ You
have been writing at night.”
“ No,” he said, “ it was morning when I be
gan—three o'clock. And it pays better to get
up and write than to lie awake thinking.”
Judging by the Bpeed with which tne novel
grew in the next few weeks, I could ten 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 eyeshe
seemed to me just like a man who had 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 the
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 Bhydding
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 prosaio fashion, just as if it
had been a bundle of clothes, and put it on a
side ‘able.
It was arranged that I should take it to Davi
son—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 Der
rick 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, attend
ed 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 hav
ing no mind to be left to the major’s company,
ana 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, re
ligious light,” and alwaVB stuck up for its huge
windows, and I believe he loved tne abbey with
all his heart. Indeed, taking it only fromji
sensuous point of view, I could quite imagine
what a relief he found his weekly attendance
here; by contrast with his home tne place was
heaven itselfl
As we walked back I asked a question that
had long been in my mind: “Have you seen
anything of Lawrence V*
He saw u acroes London an our way from
-juumg,-'Bald 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 congratu
lated in his quiet way, and had done his best to
efface himself and think only of Freda. But as
every one knows—
“ Face joy’s a costly mask to wear,
’Tis bought with pangs long nourished.
And rounded to despair,”
and he lt&ked now even more worn and old
than he had done at Ben Bhydding 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 prosaio 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 hopeless-
383.
“ This will undo all the good of Ben Bhyd
ding 1” 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 sdid, “that’s the question.
you re to have it all you re own way.
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 1”
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 be broke
again into a laugh, and with a look, half idiotic,
half devilish, pointed toward the grate.
“ Good heavens 1” I said, “ what have you
done ?”
By the side of the chair I saw a piece of brown
paper, and catching it np, read the address—
“ Messrs. Davidson, Paternoster Bow”—in the
first place 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 legiblei—it was his own writing-the des
cription of the Boyalists’ attack, and Paul
Whamcliffe’s defense of the bridge. I looked
from the half-burned scrap of paper to the
side-table where, only the previous night, he
had placed the novel, and then, realizing as far
as any but an author conld realize the frightful
thing that had happened, I looked in Derrick's
face. It’s white fury appalled me. What he
had borne hitherto from Hie major, God only
knows, but this was the last drop in the cup.
Daily insults, ceaseless provocation, even the
humiliation of personal violence he had borne
with superhuman patience; but this last mjury,
this wantonly cruel outrage, this deliberate
destruction of an amount of thought, and labor,
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 bat, and hurried
from-the house.
The major sat chuckling to himself for a
minute or two, bqt soon he grew drowsy, and
before long was snoring like a grampus. The
old landlady brought in lunch, saw the state of
thingB pretty quickly, shook her head and com
miserated Derrick. Then, when she had left the
room, seeing no prospect that either of my com
panions would be in a fit state for lonph, I
made a solitary meal, and had just finished
when a cab stopped at the door, and outsprung
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 oag ready?
Dhere’s a train at two-five.”
Somehow the suddenness and self-control with
which he made this announcement carried
me back to the hotel at Southampton, where,
after listening to the account of the Bhip’s doc
tor, 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 port
manteaus and boxes ; the Hoffman was already
packed, and the wall looked curiously bare with
out it. Clearly this was no visit to London—he
was leaving Bath for good, and who could won
der at it?
“ I have arranged for the attendant from the
hospital to come m 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 tne 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 ana
spring into an empty carriage. Never shall I
forget that journey. The tram stopped at every
single station, ana sometimes in between; we
were five mortal hours on the road, and more
than once I thought Derrick would have fain tod.
However, he was not of the fainting order, he
only grew more and more ghastly in color and
rigid in expression.
I felt very anxious about him, for the shock
and the sudden anger following oh 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 Bhydding,
and I began to fear that the major’s fit or drunk
en malice might prove the destruction of the
author as well as of the book. Everything bad,
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
checkered affair of shade and sun, and for one
beam of light there come very often wide patches
of shadow. Men seemed to lmve known this so
far back as Shakespeare’s time, and to have ob
served 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 ex
pectations. 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 ill
ness, he was always the most prosaic, unroman
tic fellow, and never indulged in any of the eu
phonious and interesting ailments. In all his
life, I believe, he never went in for anything but
the mumps—of all complaints the least interest
ing—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 noc
turnal pacings over the creaking boards, but, on
the whole, proving himself the best of compan
ions.
If I wrote till Doomsday, I conld never make
you understand how the burning of bis novel af
fected him, to this day it is a subject I instinctive ■
ly avoid with him, though the rewritten “ At
Strife ” has been such a grand success. For he
did rewrite 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 out despairingly at the gray monotony
of Montague Street, he began at “ Page 1, Chap
ter I,” and so worked patiently on for many
months to remake as far as he could what his
drunken father had maliciously destroyed. Be
yond the unburnt paragraph about the attack on
Moudisfteld, 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