“Both Goethe and Schiller were profoundly convinced that Artwas no luxury of leisure, no mere amusement to charm theidle, or relax the careworn; but a mighty influence, seriousin its aims although pleasureable in its means; a sister ofReligion, by whose aid the great world-scheme was wroughtinto reality.” Lewes’s Life of Goethe.
Man is a selfish being, and I am a particularly fine specimen of the race as far as that characteristic goes. If I had had a dozen drunken parents I should never have danced attendance on one of them; yet in my secret soul I admired Derrick for the line he had taken, for we mostly do admire what is unlike ourselves and really noble, though it is the fashion to seem totally indifferent to everything in heaven and earth. But all the same I felt annoyed about the whole business, and was glad to forget it in my own affairs at Mondisfield.
Weeks passed by. I lived through a midsummer dream of happiness, and a hard awaking. That, however, has nothing to do with Derrick’s story, and may be passed over. In October I settled down in Montague Street, Bloomsbury, and began to read for the Bar, in about as disagreeable a frame of mind as can be conceived. One morning I found on my breakfast table a letter in Derrick’s handwriting. Like most men, we hardly ever corresponded—what women say in the eternal letters they send to each other I can’t conceive—but it struck me that under the circumstances I ought to have sent him a line to ask how he was getting on, and my conscience pricked me as I remembered that I had hardly thought of him since we parted, being absorbed in my own matters. The letter was not very long, but when one read between the lines it somehow told a good deal. I have it lying by me, and this is a copy of it:
“Dear Sydney,—Do like a good fellow go to North Audley Street for me, to the house which I described to you as the one where Lynwood lodged, and tell me what he would see besides the church from his window—if shops, what kind? Also if any glimpse of Oxford Street would be visible. Then if you’ll add to your favours by getting me a second-hand copy of Laveleye’s ‘Socialisme Contemporain,’ I should be for ever grateful. We are settled in here all right. Bath is empty, but I people it as far as I can with the folk out of ‘Evelina’ and ‘Persuasion.’ How did you get on at Blachington? and which of the Misses Merrifield went in the end? Don’t bother about the commissions. Any time will do.
“Ever yours,
“Derrick Vaughan.”
Poor old fellow! all the spirit seemed knocked out of him. There was not one word about the Major, and who could say what wretchedness was veiled in that curt phrase, “we are settled in all right”? All right! it was all as wrong as it could be! My blood began to boil at the thought of Derrick, with his great powers—his wonderful gift—cooped up in a place where the study of life was so limited and so dull. Then there was his hunger for news of Freda, and his silence as to what had kept him away from Blachington, and about all a sort of proud humility which prevented him from saying much that I should have expected him to say under the circumstances.
It was Saturday, and my time was my own. I went out, got his book for him; interviewed North Audley Street; spent a bad five minutes in company with that villain ‘Bradshaw,’ who is responsible for so much of the brain and eye disease of the nineteenth century, and finally left Paddington in the Flying Dutchman, which landed me at Bath early in the afternoon. I left my portmanteau at the station, and walked through the city till I reached Gay Street. Like most of the streets of Bath, it was broad, and had on either hand dull, well-built, dark grey, eminently respectable, unutterably dreary-looking houses. I rang, and the door was opened to me by a most quaint old woman, evidently the landlady. An odour of curry pervaded the passage, and became more oppressive as the door of the sitting-room was opened, and I was ushered in upon the Major and his son, who had just finished lunch.
“Hullo!” cried Derrick, springing up, his face full of delight which touched me, while at the same time it filled me with envy.
Even the Major thought fit to give me a hearty welcome.
“Glad to see you again,” he said pleasantly enough. “It’s a relief to have a fresh face to look at. We have a room which is quite at your disposal, and I hope you’ll stay with us. Brought your portmanteau, eh?”
“It is at the station,” I replied.
“See that it is sent for,” he said to Derrick; “and show Mr. Wharncliffe all that is to be seen in this cursed hole of a place.” Then, turning again to me, “Have you lunched? Very well, then, don’t waste this fine afternoon in an invalid’s room, but be off and enjoy yourself.”
So cordial was the old man, that I should have thought him already a reformed character, had I not found that he kept the rough side of his tongue for home use. Derrick placed a novel and a small handbell within his reach, and we were just going, when we were checked by a volley of oaths from the Major; then a book came flying across the room, well aimed at Derrick’s head. He stepped aside, and let it fall with a crash on the sideboard.
“What do you mean by giving me the second volume when you know I am in the third?” fumed the invalid.
He apologised quietly, fetched the third volume, straightened the disordered leaves of the discarded second, and with the air of one well accustomed to such little domestic scenes, took up his hat and came out with me.
“How long do you intend to go on playing David to the Major’s Saul?” I asked, marvelling at the way in which he endured the humours of his father.
“As long as I have the chance,” he replied. “I say, are you sure you won’t mind staying with us? It can’t be a very comfortable household for an outsider.”
“Much better than for an insider, to all appearance,” I replied. “I’m only too delighted to stay. And now, old fellow, tell me the honest truth—you didn’t, you know, in your letter—how have you been getting on?”
Derrick launched into an account of his father’s ailments.
“Oh, hang the Major! I don’t care about him, I want to know about you,” I cried.
“About me?” said Derrick doubtfully. “Oh, I’m right enough.”
“What do you do with yourself? How on earth do you kill time?” I asked. “Come, give me a full, true, and particular account of it all.”
“We have tried three other servants,” said Derrick; “but the plan doesn’t answer. They either won’t stand it, or else they are bribed into smuggling brandy into the house. I find I can do most things for my father, and in the morning he has an attendant from the hospital who is trustworthy, and who does what is necessary for him. At ten we breakfast together, then there are the morning papers, which he likes to have read to him. After that I go round to the Pump Room with him—odd contrast now to what it must have been when Bath was the rage. Then we have lunch. In the afternoon, if he is well enough, we drive; if not he sleeps, and I get a walk. Later on an old Indian friend of his will sometimes drop in; if not he likes to be read to until dinner. After dinner we play chess—he is a first-rate player. At ten I help him to bed; from eleven to twelve I smoke and study Socialism and all the rest of it that Lynwood is at present floundering in.”
“Why don’t you write, then?”
“I tried it, but it didn’t answer. I couldn’t sleep after it, and was, in fact, too tired; seems absurd to be tired after such a day as that, but somehow it takes it out of one more than the hardest reading; I don’t know why.”
“Why,” I said angrily, “it’s because it is work to which you are quite unsuited—work for a thick-skinned, hard-hearted, uncultivated and well-paid attendant, not for the novelist who is to be the chief light of our generation.”
He laughed at this estimate of his powers.
“Novelists, like other cattle, have to obey their owner,” he said lightly.
I thought for a moment that he meant the Major, and was breaking into an angry remonstrance, when I saw that he meant something quite different. It was always his strongest point, this extraordinary consciousness of right, this unwavering belief that he had to do and therefore could do certain things. Without this, I know that he never wrote a line, and in my heart I believe this was the cause of his success.
“Then you are not writing at all?” I asked.
“Yes, I write generally for a couple of hours before breakfast,” he said.
And that evening we sat by his gas stove and he read me the next four chapters of ‘Lynwood.’ He had rather a dismal lodging-house bedroom, with faded wall-paper and a prosaic snuff-coloured carpet. On a rickety table in the window was his desk, and a portfolio full of blue foolscap, but he had done what he could to make the place habitable; his Oxford pictures were on the walls—Hoffman’s ‘Christ speaking to the Woman taken in Adultery,’ hanging over the mantelpiece—it had always been a favourite of his. I remember that, as he read the description of Lynwood and his wife, I kept looking from him to the Christ in the picture till I could almost have fancied that each face bore the same expression. Had this strange monotonous life with that old brute of a Major brought him some new perception of those words, “Neither do I condemn thee”? But when he stopped reading, I, true to my character, forgot his affairs in my own, as we sat talking far into the night—talking of that luckless month at Mondisfield, of all the problems it had opened up, and of my wretchedness.
“You were in town all September?” he asked; “you gave up Blachington?”
“Yes,” I replied. “What did I care for country houses in such a mood as that.”
He acquiesced, and I went on talking of my grievances, and it was not till I was in the train on my way back to London that I remembered how a look of disappointment had passed over his face just at the moment. Evidently he had counted on learning something about Freda from me, and I—well, I had clean forgotten both her existence and his passionate love.
Something, probably self-interest, the desire for my friend’s company, and so forth, took me down to Bath pretty frequently in those days; luckily the Major had a sort of liking for me, and was always polite enough; and dear old Derrick—well, I believe my visits really helped to brighten him up. At any rate he said he couldn’t have borne his life without them, and for a sceptical, dismal, cynical fellow like me to hear that was somehow flattering. The mere force of contrast did me good. I used to come back on the Monday wondering that Derrick didn’t cut his throat, and realising that, after all, it was something to be a free agent, and to have comfortable rooms in Montague Street, with no old bear of a drunkard to disturb my peace. And then a sort of admiration sprang up in my heart, and the cynicism bred of melancholy broodings over solitary pipes was less rampant than usual.
It was, I think, early in the new year that I met Lawrence Vaughan in Bath. He was not staying at Gay Street, so I could still have the vacant room next to Derrick’s. Lawrence put up at the York House Hotel.
“For you know,” he informed me, “I really can’t stand the governor for more than an hour or two at a time.”
“Derrick manages to do it,” I said.
“Oh, Derrick, yes,” he replied, “it’s his metier, and he is well accustomed to the life. Besides, you know, he is such a dreamy, quiet sort of fellow; he lives all the time in a world of his own creation, and bears the discomforts of this world with great philosophy. Actually he has turned teetotaller! It would kill me in a week.”
I make a point of never arguing with a fellow like that, but I think I had a vindictive longing, as I looked at him, to shut him up with the Major for a month, and see what would happen.
These twin brothers were curiously alike in face and curiously unlike in nature. So much for the great science of physiognomy! It often seemed to me that they were the complement of each other. For instance, Derrick in society was extremely silent, Lawrence was a rattling talker; Derrick, when alone with you, would now and then reveal unsuspected depths of thought and expression; Lawrence, when alone with you, very frequently showed himself to be a cad. The elder twin was modest and diffident, the younger inclined to brag; the one had a strong tendency to melancholy, the other was blest or cursed with the sort of temperament which has been said to accompany “a hard heart and a good digestion.”
I was not surprised to find that the son who could not tolerate the governor’s presence for more than an hour or two, was a prime favourite with the old man; that was just the way of the world. Of course, the Major was as polite as possible to him; Derrick got the kicks and Lawrence the half-pence.
In the evenings we played whist, Lawrence coming in after dinner, “For, you know,” he explained to me, “I really couldn’t get through a meal with nothing but those infernal mineral waters to wash it down.”
And here I must own that at my first visit I had sailed rather close to the wind; for when the Major, like the Hatter in ‘Alice,’ pressed me to take wine, I—not seeing any—had answered that I did not take it; mentally adding the words, “in your house, you brute!”
The two brothers were fond of each other after a fashion. But Derrick was human, and had his faults like the rest of us; and I am pretty sure he did not much enjoy the sight of his father’s foolish and unreasonable devotion to Lawrence. If you come to think of it, he would have been a full-fledged angel if no jealous pang, no reflection that it was rather rough on him, had crossed his mind, when he saw his younger brother treated with every mark of respect and liking, and knew that Lawrence would never stir a finger really to help the poor fractious invalid. Unluckily they happened one night to get on the subject of professions.
“It’s a comfort,” said the Major, in his sarcastic way, “to have a fellow-soldier to talk to instead of a quill-driver, who as yet is not even a penny-a-liner. Eh, Derrick? Don’t you feel inclined to regret your fool’s choice now? You might have been starting off for the war with Lawrence next week, if you hadn’t chosen what you’re pleased to call a literary life. Literary life, indeed! I little thought a son of mine would ever have been so wanting in spirit as to prefer dabbling in ink to a life of action—to be the scribbler of mere words, rather than an officer of dragoons.”
Then to my astonishment Derrick sprang to his feet in hot indignation. I never saw him look so handsome, before or since; for his anger was not the distorting, devilish anger that the Major gave way to, but real downright wrath.
“You speak contemptuously of mere novels,” he said in a low voice, yet more clearly than usual, and as if the words were wrung out of him. “What right have you to look down on one of the greatest weapons of the day? and why is a writer to submit to scoffs and insults and tamely to hear his profession reviled? I have chosen to write the message that has been given me, and I don’t regret the choice. Should I have shown greater spirit if I had sold my freedom and right of judgment to be one of the national killing machines?”
With that he threw down his cards and strode out of the room in a white heat of anger. It was a pity he made that last remark, for it put him in the wrong and needlessly annoyed Lawrence and the Major. But an angry man has no time to weigh his words, and, as I said, poor old Derrick was very human, and when wounded too intolerably could on occasion retaliate.
The Major uttered an oath and looked in astonishment at the retreating figure. Derrick was such an extraordinarily quiet, respectful, long-suffering son as a rule, that this outburst was startling in the extreme. Moreover, it spoilt the game, and the old man, chafed by the result of his own ill-nature, and helpless to bring back his partner, was forced to betake himself to chess. I left him grumbling away to Lawrence about the vanity of authors, and went out in the hope of finding Derrick. As I left the house I saw someone turn the corner into the Circus, and starting in pursuit, overtook the tall, dark figure where Bennett Street opens on to the Lansdowne Hill.
“I’m glad you spoke up, old fellow,” I said, taking his arm.
He modified his pace a little. “Why is it,” he exclaimed, “that every other profession can be taken seriously, but that a novelist’s work is supposed to be mere play? Good God! don’t we suffer enough? Have we not hard brain work and drudgery of desk work and tedious gathering of statistics and troublesome search into details? Have we not an appalling weight of responsibility on us?—and are we not at the mercy of a thousand capricious chances?”
“Come now,” I exclaimed, “you know that you are never so happy as when you are writing.”
“Of course,” he replied; “but that doesn’t make me resent such an attack the less. Besides, you don’t know what it is to have to write in such an atmosphere as ours; it’s like a weight on one’s pen. This life here is not life at all—it’s a daily death, and it’s killing the book too; the last chapters are wretched—I’m utterly dissatisfied with them.”
“As for that,” I said calmly, “you are no judge at all. You can never tell the worth of your own work; the last bit is splendid.”
“I could have done it better,” he groaned. “But there is always a ghastly depression dragging one back here—and then the time is so short; just as one gets into the swing of it the breakfast bell rings, and then comes—” He broke off.
I could well supply the end of the sentence, however, for I knew that then came the slow torture of a tete-a-tete day with the Major, stinging sarcasms, humiliating scoldings, vexations and difficulties innumerable.
I drew him to the left, having no mind to go to the top of the hill. We slackened our pace again and walked to and fro along the broad level pavement of Lansdowne Crescent. We had it entirely to ourselves—not another creature was in sight.
“I could bear it all,” he burst forth, “if only there was a chance of seeing Freda. Oh, you are better off than I am—at least, you know the worst. Your hope is killed, but mine lives on a tortured, starved life! Would to God I had never seen her!”
Certainly before that night I had never quite realised the irrevocableness of poor Derrick’s passion. I had half hoped that time and separation would gradually efface Freda Merrifield from his memory; and I listened with a dire foreboding to the flood of wretchedness which he poured forth as we paced up and down, thinking now and then how little people guessed at the tremendous powers hidden under his usually quiet exterior.
At length he paused, but his last heart-broken words seemed to vibrate in the air and to force me to speak some kind of comfort.
“Derrick,” I said, “come back with me to London—give up this miserable life.”
I felt him start a little; evidently no thought of yielding had come to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past, surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I looked at my companion’s pale, tortured face, and thought of the life he had elected to lead in the hope of saving one whom duty bound him to honour. After all, which life was the most worth living—which was the most to be admired?
We walked on; down below us and up on the farther hill we could see the lights of Bath; the place so beautiful by day looked now like a fairy city, and the Abbey, looming up against the moon-lit sky, seemed like some great giant keeping watch over the clustering roofs below. The well-known chimes rang out into the night and the clock struck ten.
“I must go back,” said Derrick, quietly. “My father will want to get to bed.”
I couldn’t say a word; we turned, passed Beckford’s house once more, walked briskly down the hill, and reached the Gay Street lodging-house. I remember the stifling heat of the room as we entered it, and its contrast to the cool, dark, winter’s night outside. I can vividly recall, too, the old Major’s face as he looked up with a sarcastic remark, but with a shade of anxiety in his bloodshot eyes. He was leaning back in a green-cushioned chair, and his ghastly yellow complexion seemed to me more noticeable than usual—his scanty grey hair and whiskers, the lines of pain so plainly visible in his face, impressed me curiously. I think I had never before realised what a wreck of a man he was—how utterly dependent on others.
Lawrence, who, to do him justice, had a good deal of tact, and who, I believe, cared for his brother as much as he was capable of caring for any one but himself, repeated a good story with which he had been enlivening the Major, and I did what I could to keep up the talk. Derrick meanwhile put away the chessmen, and lighted the Major’s candle. He even managed to force up a laugh at Lawrence’s story, and, as he helped his father out of the room, I think I was the only one who noticed the look of tired endurance in his eyes.
“I knowHow far high failure overtops the boundsOf low successes. Only suffering drawsThe inner heart of song, and can elicitThe perfumes of the soul.”Epic of Hades.
Next week, Lawrence went off like a hero to the war; and my friend—also I think like a hero—stayed on at Bath, enduring as best he could the worst form of loneliness; for undoubtedly there is no loneliness so frightful as constant companionship with an uncongenial person. He had, however, one consolation: the Major’s health steadily improved, under the joint influence of total abstinence and Bath water, and, with the improvement, his temper became a little better.
But one Saturday, when I had run down to Bath without writing beforehand, I suddenly found a different state of things. In Orange Grove I met Dr. Mackrill, the Major’s medical man; he used now and then to play whist with us on Saturday nights, and I stopped to speak to him.
“Oh! you’ve come down again. That’s all right!” he said. “Your friend wants someone to cheer him up. He’s got his arm broken.”
“How on earth did he manage that?” I asked.
“Well, that’s more than I can tell you,” said the Doctor, with an odd look in his eyes, as if he guessed more than he would put into words. “All that I could get out of him was that it was done accidentally. The Major is not so well—no whist for us to-night, I’m afraid.”
He passed on, and I made my way to Gay Street. There was an air of mystery about the quaint old landlady; she looked brimful of news when she opened the door to me, but she managed to ‘keep herself to herself,’ and showed me in upon the Major and Derrick, rather triumphantly I thought. The Major looked terribly ill—worse than I had ever seen him, and as for Derrick, he had the strangest look of shrinking and shame-facedness you ever saw. He said he was glad to see me, but I knew that he lied. He would have given anything to have kept me away.
“Broken your arm?” I exclaimed, feeling bound to take some notice of the sling.
“Yes,” he replied; “met with an accident to it. But luckily it’s only the left one, so it doesn’t hinder me much! I have finished seven chapters of the last volume of ‘Lynwood,’ and was just wanting to ask you a legal question.”
All this time his eyes bore my scrutiny defiantly; they seemed to dare me to say one other word about the broken arm. I didn’t dare—indeed to this day I have never mentioned the subject to him.
But that evening, while he was helping the Major to bed, the old landlady made some pretext for toiling up to the top of the house, where I sat smoking in Derrick’s room.
“You’ll excuse my making bold to speak to you, sir,” she said. I threw down my newspaper, and, looking up, saw that she was bubbling over with some story.
“Well?” I said, encouragingly.
“It’s about Mr. Vaughan, sir, I wanted to speak to you. I really do think, sir, it’s not safe he should be left alone with his father, sir, any longer. Such doings as we had here the other day, sir! Somehow or other—and none of us can’t think how—the Major had managed to get hold of a bottle of brandy. How he had it I don’t know; but we none of us suspected him, and in the afternoon he says he was too poorly to go for a drive or to go out in his chair, and settles off on the parlour sofa for a nap while Mr. Vaughan goes out for a walk. Mr. Vaughan was out a couple of hours. I heard him come in and go into the sitting-room; then there came sounds of voices, and a scuffling of feet and moving of chairs, and I knew something was wrong and hurried up to the door—and just then came a crash like fire-irons, and I could hear the Major a-swearing fearful. Not hearing a sound from Mr. Vaughan, I got scared, sir, and opened the door, and there I saw the Major a leaning up against the mantelpiece as drunk as a lord, and his son seemed to have got the bottle from him; it was half empty, and when he saw me he just handed it to me and ordered me to take it away. Then between us we got the Major to lie down on the sofa and left him there. When we got out into the passage Mr. Vaughan he leant against the wall for a minute, looking as white as a sheet, and then I noticed for the first time that his left arm was hanging down at his side. ‘Lord! sir,’ I cried, ‘your arm’s broken.’ And he went all at once as red as he had been pale just before, and said he had got it done accidentally, and bade me say nothing about it, and walked off there and then to the doctor’s, and had it set. But sir, given a man drunk as the Major was, and given a scuffle to get away the drink that was poisoning him, and given a crash such as I heard, and given a poker a-lying in the middle of the room where it stands to reason no poker could get unless it was thrown—why, sir, no sensible woman who can put two and two together can doubt that it was all the Major’s doing.”
“Yes,” I said, “that is clear enough; but for Mr. Vaughan’s sake we must hush it up; and, as for safety, why, the Major is hardly strong enough to do him any worse damage than that.”
The good old thing wiped away a tear from her eyes. She was very fond of Derrick, and it went to her heart that he should lead such a dog’s life.
I said what I could to comfort her, and she went down again, fearful lest he should discover her upstairs and guess that she had opened her heart to me.
Poor Derrick! That he of all people on earth should be mixed up with such a police court story—with drunkard, and violence, and pokers figuring in it! I lay back in the camp chair and looked at Hoffman’s ‘Christ,’ and thought of all the extraordinary problems that one is for ever coming across in life. And I wondered whether the people of Bath who saw the tall, impassive-looking, hazel-eyed son and the invalid father in their daily pilgrimages to the Pump Room, or in church on Sunday, or in the Park on sunny afternoons had the least notion of the tragedy that was going on. My reflections were interrupted by his entrance. He had forced up a cheerfulness that I am sure he didn’t really feel, and seemed afraid of letting our talk flag for a moment. I remember, too, that for the first time he offered to read me his novel, instead of as usual waiting for me to ask to hear it. I can see him now, fetching the untidy portfolio and turning over the pages, adroitly enough, as though anxious to show how immaterial was the loss of a left arm. That night I listened to the first half of the third volume of ‘Lynwood’s Heritage,’ and couldn’t help reflecting that its author seemed to thrive on misery; and yet how I grudged him to this deadly-lively place, and this monotonous, cooped-up life.
“How do you manage to write one-handed?” I asked.
And he sat down to his desk, put a letter-weight on the left-hand corner of the sheet of foolscap, and wrote that comical first paragraph of the eighth chapter over which we have all laughed. I suppose few readers guessed the author’s state of mind when he wrote it. I looked over his shoulder to see what he had written, and couldn’t help laughing aloud—I verily believe that it was his way of turning off attention from his arm, and leading me safely from the region of awkward questions.
“By-the-by,” I exclaimed, “your writing of garden-parties reminds me. I went to one at Campden Hill the other day, and had the good fortune to meet Miss Freda Merrifield.”
How his face lighted up, poor fellow, and what a flood of questions he poured out. “She looked very well and very pretty,” I replied. “I played two sets of tennis with her. She asked after you directly she saw me, seeming to think that we always hunted in couples. I told her you were living here, taking care of an invalid father; but just then up came the others to arrange the game. She and I got the best courts, and as we crossed over to them she told me she had met your brother several times last autumn, when she had been staying near Aldershot. Odd that he never mentioned her here; but I don’t suppose she made much impression on him. She is not at all his style.”
“Did you have much more talk with her?” he asked.
“No, nothing to be called talk. She told me they were leaving London next week, and she was longing to get back to the country to her beloved animals—rabbits, poultry, an aviary, and all that kind of thing. I should gather that they had kept her rather in the background this season, but I understand that the eldest sister is to be married in the winter, and then no doubt Miss Freda will be brought forward.”
He seemed wonderfully cheered by this opportune meeting, and though there was so little to tell he appeared to be quite content. I left him on Monday in fairly good spirits, and did not come across him again till September, when his arm was well, and his novel finished and revised. He never made two copies of his work, and I fancy this was perhaps because he spent so short a time each day in actual writing, and lived so continually in his work; moreover, as I said before, he detested penmanship.
The last part of ‘Lynwood’ far exceeded my expectations; perhaps—yet I don’t really think so—I viewed it too favourably. But I owed the book a debt of gratitude, since it certainly helped me through the worst part of my life.
“Don’t you feel flat now it is finished?” I asked.
“I felt so miserable that I had to plunge into another story three days after,” he replied; and then and there he gave me the sketch of his second novel, ‘At Strife,’ and told me how he meant to weave in his childish fancies about the defence of the bridge in the Civil Wars.
“And about ‘Lynwood?’ Are you coming up to town to hawk him round?” I asked.
“I can’t do that,” he said; “you see I am tied here. No, I must send him off by rail, and let him take his chance.”
“No such thing!” I cried. “If you can’t leave Bath I will take him round for you.”
And Derrick, who with the oddest inconsistency would let his MS. lie about anyhow at home, but hated the thought of sending it out alone on its travels, gladly accepted my offer. So next week I set off with the huge brown paper parcel; few, however, will appreciate my good nature, for no one but an author or a publisher knows the fearful weight of a three volume novel in MS.! To my intense satisfaction I soon got rid of it, for the first good firm to which I took it received it with great politeness, to be handed over to their ‘reader’ for an opinion; and apparently the ‘reader’s’ opinion coincided with mine, for a month later Derrick received an offer for it with which he at once closed—not because it was a good one, but because the firm was well thought of, and because he wished to lose no time, but to have the book published at once. I happened to be there when his first ‘proofs’ arrived. The Major had had an attack of jaundice, and was in a fiendish humour. We had a miserable time of it at dinner, for he badgered Derrick almost past bearing, and I think the poor old fellow minded it more when there was a third person present. Somehow through all he managed to keep his extraordinary capacity for reverencing mere age—even this degraded and detestable old age of the Major’s. I often thought that in this he was like my own ancestor, Hugo Wharncliffe, whose deference and respectfulness and patience had not descended to me, while unfortunately the effects of his physical infirmities had. I sometimes used to reflect bitterly enough on the truth of Herbert Spencer’s teaching as to heredity, so clearly shown in my own case. In the year 1683, through the abominable cruelty and harshness of his brother Randolph, this Hugo Wharncliffe, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, was immured in Newgate, and his constitution was thereby so much impaired and enfeebled that, two hundred years after, my constitution is paying the penalty, and my whole life is thereby changed and thwarted. Hence this childless Randolph is affecting the course of several lives in the 19th century to their grievous hurt.
But revenons a nos moutons—that is to say, to our lion and lamb—the old brute of a Major and his long-suffering son.
While the table was being cleared, the Major took forty winks on the sofa, and we two beat a retreat, lit up our pipes in the passage, and were just turning out when the postman’s double knock came, but no showers of letters in the box. Derrick threw open the door, and the man handed him a fat, stumpy-looking roll in a pink wrapper.
“I say!” he exclaimed, “PROOFS!”
And, in hot haste, he began tearing away the pink paper, till out came the clean, folded bits of printing and the dirty and dishevelled blue foolscap, the look of which I knew so well. It is an odd feeling, that first seeing one’s self in print, and I could guess, even then, what a thrill shot through Derrick as he turned over the pages. But he would not take them into the sitting-room, no doubt dreading another diatribe against his profession; and we solemnly played euchre, and patiently endured the Major’s withering sarcasms till ten o’clock sounded our happy release.
However, to make a long story short, a month later—that is, at the end of November—‘Lynwood’s Heritage’ was published in three volumes with maroon cloth and gilt lettering. Derrick had distributed among his friends the publishers’ announcement of the day of publication; and when it was out I besieged the libraries for it, always expressing surprise if I did not find it in their lists. Then began the time of reviews. As I had expected, they were extremely favourable, with the exception of the Herald, the Stroller, and the Hour, which made it rather hot for him, the latter in particular pitching into his views and assuring its readers that the book was ‘dangerous,’ and its author a believer in—various thing especially repugnant to Derrick, at it happened.
I was with him when he read these reviews. Over the cleverness of the satirical attack in the Weekly Herald he laughed heartily, though the laugh was against himself; and as to the critic who wrote in the Stroller it was apparent to all who knew ‘Lynwood’ that he had not read much of the book; but over this review in the Hour he was genuinely angry—it hurt him personally, and, as it afterwards turned out, played no small part in the story of his life. The good reviews, however, were many, and their recommendation of the book hearty; they all prophesied that it would be a great success. Yet, spite of this, ‘Lynwood’s Heritage’ didn’t sell. Was it, as I had feared, that Derrick was too devoid of the pushing faculty ever to make a successful writer? Or was it that he was handicapped by being down in the provinces playing keeper to that abominable old bear? Anyhow, the book was well received, read with enthusiasm by an extremely small circle, and then it dropped down to the bottom among the mass of overlooked literature, and its career seemed to be over. I can recall the look in Derrick’s face when one day he glanced through the new Mudie and Smith lists and found ‘Lynwood’s Heritage’ no longer down. I had been trying to cheer him up about the book and quoting all the favourable remarks I had heard about it. But unluckily this was damning evidence against my optimist view.
He sighed heavily and put down the lists.
“It’s no use to deceive one’s self,” he said, drearily, “‘Lynwood’ has failed.”
Something in the deep depression of look and tone gave me a momentary insight into the author’s heart. He thought, I know, of the agony of mind this book had cost him; of those long months of waiting and their deadly struggle, of the hopes which had made all he passed through seem so well worth while; and the bitterness of the disappointment was no doubt intensified by the knowledge that the Major would rejoice over it.
We walked that afternoon along the Bradford Valley, a road which Derrick was specially fond of. He loved the thickly-wooded hills, and the glimpses of the Avon, which, flanked by the canal and the railway, runs parallel with the high road; he always admired, too, a certain little village with grey stone cottages which lay in this direction, and liked to look at the site of the old hall near the road: nothing remained of it but the tall gate posts and rusty iron gates looking strangely dreary and deserted, and within one could see, between some dark yew trees, an old terrace walk with stone steps and balustrades—the most ghostly-looking place you can conceive.
“I know you’ll put this into a book some day,” I said, laughing.
“Yes,” he said, “it is already beginning to simmer in my brain.” Apparently his deep disappointment as to his first venture had in no way affected his perfectly clear consciousness that, come what would, he had to write.
As we walked back to Bath he told me his ‘Ruined Hall’ story as far as it had yet evolved itself in his brain, and we were still discussing it when in Milsom Street we met a boy crying evening papers, and details of the last great battle at Saspataras Hill.
Derrick broke off hastily, everything but anxiety for Lawrence driven from his mind.
“Say not, O Soul, thou art defeated,Because thou art distressed;If thou of better thing art cheated,Thou canst not be of best.”T. T. Lynch.
“Good heavens, Sydney!” he exclaimed in great excitement and with his whole face aglow with pleasure, “look here!”
He pointed to a few lines in the paper which mentioned the heroic conduct of Lieutenant L. Vaughan, who at the risk of his life had rescued a brother officer when surrounded by the enemy and completely disabled. Lieutenant Vaughan had managed to mount the wounded man on his own horse and had miraculously escaped himself with nothing worse than a sword-thrust in the left arm.
We went home in triumph to the Major, and Derrick read the whole account aloud. With all his detestation of war, he was nevertheless greatly stirred by the description of the gallant defence of the attacked position—and for a time we were all at one, and could talk of nothing but Lawrence’s heroism, and Victoria Crosses, and the prospects of peace. However, all too soon, the Major’s fiendish temper returned, and he began to use the event of the day as a weapon against Derrick, continually taunting him with the contrast between his stay-at-home life of scribbling and Lawrence’s life of heroic adventure. I could never make out whether he wanted to goad his son into leaving him, in order that he might drink himself to death in peace, or whether he merely indulged in his natural love of tormenting, valuing Derrick’s devotion as conducive to his own comfort, and knowing that hard words would not drive him from what he deemed to be his duty. I rather incline to the latter view, but the old Major was always an enigma to me; nor can I to this day make out his raison-d’etre, except on the theory that the training of a novelist required a course of slow torture, and that the old man was sent into the world to be a sort of thorn in the flesh of Derrick.
What with the disappointment about his first book, and the difficulty of writing his second, the fierce craving for Freda’s presence, the struggle not to allow his admiration for Lawrence’s bravery to become poisoned by envy under the influence of the Major’s incessant attacks, Derrick had just then a hard time of it. He never complained, but I noticed a great change in him; his melancholy increased, his flashes of humour and merriment became fewer and fewer—I began to be afraid that he would break down.
“For God’s sake!” I exclaimed one evening when left alone with the Doctor after an evening of whist, “do order the Major to London. Derrick has been mewed up here with him for nearly two years, and I don’t think he can stand it much longer.”
So the Doctor kindly contrived to advise the Major to consult a well-known London physician, and to spend a fortnight in town, further suggesting that a month at Ben Rhydding might be enjoyable before settling down at Bath again for the winter. Luckily the Major took to the idea, and just as Lawrence returned from the war Derrick and his father arrived in town. The change seemed likely to work well, and I was able now and then to release my friend and play cribbage with the old man for an hour or two while Derrick tore about London, interviewed his publisher, made researches into seventeenth century documents at the British Museum, and somehow managed in his rapid way to acquire those glimpses of life and character which he afterwards turned to such good account. All was grist that came to his mill, and at first the mere sight of his old home, London, seemed to revive him. Of course at the very first opportunity he called at the Probyns’, and we both of us had an invitation to go there on the following Wednesday to see the march past of the troops and to lunch. Derrick was nearly beside himself at the prospect, for he knew that he should certainly meet Freda at last, and the mingled pain and bliss of being actually in the same place with her, yet as completely separated as if seas rolled between them, was beginning to try him terribly.
Meantime Lawrence had turned up again, greatly improved in every way by all that he had lived through, but rather too ready to fall in with his father’s tone towards Derrick. The relations between the two brothers—always a little peculiar—became more and more difficult, and the Major seemed to enjoy pitting them against each other.
At length the day of the review arrived. Derrick was not looking well, his eyes were heavy with sleeplessness, and the Major had been unusually exasperating at breakfast that morning, so that he started with a jaded, worn-out feeling that would not wholly yield even to the excitement of this long-expected meeting with Freda. When he found himself in the great drawing-room at Lord Probyn’s house, amid a buzz of talk and a crowd of strange faces, he was seized with one of those sudden attacks of shyness to which he was always liable. In fact, he had been so long alone with the old Major that this plunge into society was too great a reaction, and the very thing he had longed for became a torture to him.
Freda was at the other end of the room talking to Keith Collins, the well-known member for Codrington, whose curious but attractive face was known to all the world through the caricatures of it in ‘Punch.’ I knew that she saw Derrick, and that he instantly perceived her, and that a miserable sense of separation, of distance, of hopelessness overwhelmed him as he looked. After all, it was natural enough. For two years he had thought of Freda night and day; in his unutterably dreary life her memory had been his refreshment, his solace, his companion. Now he was suddenly brought face to face, not with the Freda of his dreams, but with a fashionable, beautifully dressed, much-sought girl, and he felt that a gulf lay between them; it was the gulf of experience. Freda’s life in society, the whirl of gaiety, the excitement and success which she had been enjoying throughout the season, and his miserable monotony of companionship with his invalid father, of hard work and weary disappointment, had broken down the bond of union that had once existed between them. From either side they looked at each other—Freda with a wondering perplexity, Derrick with a dull grinding pain at his heart.
Of course they spoke to each other; but I fancy the merest platitudes passed between them. Somehow they had lost touch, and a crowded London drawing-room was hardly the place to regain it.
“So your novel is really out,” I heard her say to him in that deep, clear voice of hers. “I like the design on the cover.”
“Oh, have you read the book?” said Derrick, colouring.
“Well, no,” she said truthfully. “I wanted to read it, but my father wouldn’t let me—he is very particular about what we read.”
That frank but not very happily worded answer was like a stab to poor Derrick. He had given to the world then a book that was not fit for her to read! This ‘Lynwood,’ which had been written with his own heart’s blood, was counted a dangerous, poisonous thing, from which she must be guarded!
Freda must have seen that she had hurt him, for she tried hard to retrieve her words.
“It was tantalising to have it actually in the house, wasn’t it? I have a grudge against the Hour, for it was the review in that which set my father against it.” Then rather anxious to leave the difficult subject—“And has your brother quite recovered from his wound?”
I think she was a little vexed that Derrick did not show more animation in his replies about Lawrence’s adventures during the war; the less he responded the more enthusiastic she became, and I am perfectly sure that in her heart she was thinking:
“He is jealous of his brother’s fame—I am disappointed in him. He has grown dull, and absent, and stupid, and he is dreadfully wanting in small-talk. I fear that his life down in the provinces is turning him into a bear.”
She brought the conversation back to his book; but there was a little touch of scorn in her voice, as if she thought to herself, “I suppose he is one of those people who can only talk on one subject—his own doings.” Her manner was almost brusque.
“Your novel has had a great success, has it not?” she asked.
He instantly perceived her thought, and replied with a touch of dignity and a proud smile:
“On the contrary, it has been a great failure; only three hundred and nine copies have been sold.”
“I wonder at that,” said Freda, “for one so often heard it talked of.”
He promptly changed the topic, and began to speak of the march past. “I want to see Lord Starcross,” he added. “I have no idea what a hero is like.”
Just then Lady Probyn came up, followed by an elderly harpy in spectacles and false, much-frizzed fringe.
“Mrs. Carsteen wishes to be introduced to you, Mr. Vaughan; she is a great admirer of your writings.”
And poor Derrick, who was then quite unused to the species, had to stand and receive a flood of the most fulsome flattery, delivered in a strident voice, and to bear the critical and prolonged stare of the spectacled eyes. Nor would the harpy easily release her prey. She kept him much against his will, and I saw him looking wistfully now and then towards Freda.
“It amuses me,” I said to her, “that Derrick Vaughan should be so anxious to see Lord Starcross. It reminds me of Charles Lamb’s anxiety to see Kosciusko, ‘for,’ said he, ‘I have never seen a hero; I wonder how they look,’ while all the time he himself was living a life of heroic self-sacrifice.”
“Mr. Vaughan, I should think, need only look at his own brother,” said Freda, missing the drift of my speech.
I longed to tell her what it was possible to tell of Derrick’s life, but at that moment Sir Richard Merrifield introduced to his daughter a girl in a huge hat and great flopping sleeves, Miss Isaacson, whose picture at the Grosvenor had been so much talked of. Now the little artist knew no one in the room, and Freda saw fit to be extremely friendly to her. She was introduced to me, and I did my best to talk to her and set Freda at liberty as soon as the harpy had released Derrick; but my endeavours were frustrated, for Miss Isaacson, having looked me well over, decided that I was not at all intense, but a mere commonplace, slightly cynical worldling, and having exchanged a few lukewarm remarks with me, she returned to Freda, and stuck to her like a bur for the rest of the time.
We stood out on the balcony to see the troops go by. It was a fine sight, and we all became highly enthusiastic. Freda enjoyed the mere pageant like a child, and was delighted with the horses. She looked now more like the Freda of the yacht, and I wished that Derrick could be near her; but, as ill-luck would have it, he was at some distance, hemmed in by an impassable barrier of eager spectators.
Lawrence Vaughan rode past, looking wonderfully well in his uniform. He was riding a spirited bay, which took Freda’s fancy amazingly, though she reserved her chief enthusiasm for Lord Starcross and his steed. It was not until all was over, and we had returned to the drawing-room, that Derrick managed to get the talk with Freda for which I knew he was longing, and then they were fated, apparently, to disagree. I was standing near and overheard the close of their talk.
“I do believe you must be a member of the Peace Society!” said Freda impatiently. “Or perhaps you have turned Quaker. But I want to introduce you to my god-father, Mr. Fleming; you know it was his son whom your brother saved.”
And I heard Derrick being introduced as the brother of the hero of Saspataras Hill; and the next day he received a card for one of Mrs. Fleming’s receptions, Lawrence having previously been invited to dine there on the same night.
What happened at that party I never exactly understood. All I could gather was that Lawrence had been tremendously feted, that Freda had been present, and that poor old Derrick was as miserable as he could be when I next saw him. Putting two and two together, I guessed that he had been tantalised by a mere sight of her, possibly tortured by watching more favoured men enjoying long tete-a-tetes; but he would say little or nothing about it, and when, soon after, he and the Major left London, I feared that the fortnight had done my friend harm instead of good.