Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

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