As the autumn wore on, we heard now and then from old Mackrill the doctor.
His reports of the Major were pretty uniform. Derrick used to hand them
over to me when he had read them; but, by tacit consent, the Major’s name
was never mentioned.
Meantime, besides re-writing ‘At Strife,’ he was accumulating material for
his next book and working to very good purpose. Not a minute of his day
was idle; he read much, saw various phases of life hitherto unknown to
him, studied, observed, gained experience, and contrived, I believe, to
think very little and very guardedly of Freda.
But, on Christmas Eve, I noticed a change in him—and that very night
he spoke to me. For such an impressionable fellow, he had really
extraordinary tenacity, and, spite of the course of Herbert Spencer that I
had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things which
to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well the
arguments we used to have on the vexed question of ‘Free-will,’ and being
myself more or less of a fatalist, it annoyed me that I never could in the
very slightest degree shake his convictions on that point. Moreover, when
I plagued him too much with Herbert Spencer, he had a way of retaliating,
and would foist upon me his favourite authors. He was never a worshipper
of any one writer, but always had at least a dozen prophets in whose
praise he was enthusiastic.
Well, on this Christmas Eve, we had been to see dear old Ravenscroft and
his grand-daughter, and we were walking back through the quiet precincts
of the Temple, when he said abruptly:
“I have decided to go back to Bath to-morrow.”
“Have you had a worse account?” I asked, much startled at this sudden
announcement.
“No,” he replied, “but the one I had a week ago was far from good if you
remember, and I have a feeling that I ought to be there.”
At that moment we emerged into the confusion of Fleet Street; but when we
had crossed the road I began to remonstrate with him, and argued the folly
of the idea all the way down Chancery Lane.
However, there was no shaking his purpose; Christmas and its associations
had made his life in town no longer possible for him.
“I must at any rate try it again and see how it works,” he said.
And all I could do was to persuade him to leave the bulk of his
possessions in London, “in case,” as he remarked, “the Major would not
have him.”
So the next day I was left to myself again with nothing to remind me of
Derrick’s stay but his pictures which still hung on the wall of our
sitting-room. I made him promise to write a full, true, and particular
account of his return, a bona-fide old-fashioned letter, not the
half-dozen lines of these degenerate days; and about a week later I
received the following budget:
“Dear Sydney,—I got down to Bath all right, and, thanks to your
‘Study of Sociology,’ endured a slow, and cold, and dull, and depressing
journey with the thermometer down to zero, and spirits to correspond, with
the country a monotonous white, and the sky a monotonous grey, and a
companion who smoked the vilest tobacco you can conceive. The old place
looks as beautiful as ever, and to my great satisfaction the hills round
about are green. Snow, save in pictures, is an abomination. Milsom Street
looked asleep, and Gay Street decidedly dreary, but the inhabitants were
roused by my knock, and the old landlady nearly shook my hand off. My
father has an attack of jaundice and is in a miserable state. He was
asleep when I got here, and the good old landlady, thinking the front
sitting-room would be free, had invited ‘company,’ i.e., two or three
married daughters and their belongings; one of the children beats Magnay’s
‘Carina’ as to beauty—he ought to paint her. Happy thought, send him
and pretty Mrs. Esperance down here on spec. He can paint the child for
the next Academy, and meantime I could enjoy his company. Well, all these
good folks being just set-to at roast beef, I naturally wouldn’t hear of
disturbing them, and in the end was obliged to sit down too and eat at
that hour of the day the hugest dinner you ever saw—anything but
voracious appetites offended the hostess. Magnay’s future model, for all
its angelic face, ‘ate to repletion,’ like the fair American in the story.
Then I went into my father’s room, and shortly after he woke up and asked
me to give him some Friedrichshall water, making no comment at all on my
return, but just behaving as though I had been here all the autumn, so
that I felt as if the whole affair were a dream. Except for this attack of
jaundice, he has been much as usual, and when you next come down you will
find us settled into our old groove. The quiet of it after London is
extraordinary. But I believe it suits the book, which gets on pretty fast.
This afternoon I went up Lansdowne and right on past the Grand Stand to
Prospect Stile, which is at the edge of a high bit of tableland, and looks
over a splendid stretch of country, with the Bristol Channel and the Welsh
hills in the distance. While I was there the sun most considerately set in
gorgeous array. You never saw anything like it. It was worth the journey
from London to Bath, I can assure you. Tell Magnay, and may it lure him
down; also name the model aforementioned.
“How is the old Q.C. and his pretty grandchild? That quaint old room of
theirs in the Temple somehow took my fancy, and the child was divine. Do
you remember my showing you, in a gloomy narrow street here, a jolly old
watchmaker who sits in his shop-window and is for ever bending over sick
clocks and watches? Well, he’s still sitting there, as if he had never
moved since we saw him that Saturday months ago. I mean to study him for a
portrait; his sallow, clean-shaved, wrinkled face has a whole story in it.
I believe he is married to a Xantippe who throws cold water over him, both
literally and metaphorically; but he is a philosopher—I’ll stake my
reputation as an observer on that—he just shrugs his sturdy old
shoulders, and goes on mending clocks and watches. On dark days he works
by a gas jet—and then Rembrandt would enjoy painting him. I look at
him whenever my world is particularly awry, and find him highly
beneficial. Davison has forwarded me to-day two letters from readers of
‘Lynwood.’ The first is from an irate female who takes me to task for the
dangerous tendency of the story, and insists that I have drawn impossible
circumstances and impossible characters. The second is from an old
clergyman, who writes a pathetic letter of thanks, and tells me that it is
almost word for word the story of a son of his who died five years ago.
Query: shall I send the irate female the old man’s letter, and save myself
the trouble of writing? But on the whole I think not; it would be pearls
before swine. I will write to her myself. Glad to see you whenever you can
run down.
“Yours ever,
“D. V.”
(“Never struck me before what pious initials mine are.”)
The very evening I received this letter I happened to be dining at the
Probyn’s. As luck would have it, pretty Miss Freda was staying in the
house, and she fell to my share. I always liked her, though of late I had
felt rather angry with her for being carried away by the general storm of
admiration and swept by it into an engagement with Lawrence Vaughan. She
was a very pleasant, natural sort of talker, and she always treated me as
an old friend. But she seemed to me, that night, a little less satisfied
than usual with life. Perhaps it was merely the effect of the black lace
dress which she wore, but I fancied her paler and thinner, and somehow she
seemed all eyes.
“Where is Lawrence now?” I asked, as we went down to the dining-room.
“He is stationed at Dover,” she replied. “He was up here for a few hours
yesterday; he came to say good-bye to me, for I am going to Bath next
Monday with my father, who has been very rheumatic lately—and you
know Bath is coming into fashion again, all the doctors recommend it.”
“Major Vaughan is there,” I said, “and has found the waters very good, I
believe; any day, at twelve o’clock, you may see him getting out of his
chair and going into the Pump Room on Derrick’s arm. I often wonder what
outsiders think of them. It isn’t often, is it, that one sees a son
absolutely giving up his life to his invalid father?”
She looked a little startled.
“I wish Lawrence could be more with Major Vaughan,” she said; “for he is
his father’s favourite. You see he is such a good talker, and Derrick—well,
he is absorbed in his books; and then he has such extravagant notions
about war, he must be a very uncongenial companion to the poor Major.”
I devoured turbot in wrathful silence. Freda glanced at me.
“It is true, isn’t it, that he has quite given up his life to writing, and
cares for nothing else?”
“Well, he has deliberately sacrificed his best chance of success by
leaving London and burying himself in the provinces,” I replied drily;
“and as to caring for nothing but writing, why he never gets more than two
or three hours a day for it.” And then I gave her a minute account of his
daily routine.
She began to look troubled.
“I have been misled,” she said; “I had gained quite a wrong impression of
him.”
“Very few people know anything at all about him,” I said warmly; “you are
not alone in that.”
“I suppose his next novel is finished now?” said Freda; “he told me he had
only one or two more chapters to write when I saw him a few months ago on
his way from Ben Rhydding. What is he writing now?”
“He is writing that novel over again,” I replied.
“Over again? What fearful waste of time!”
“Yes, it has cost him hundreds of hours’ work; it just shows what a man he
is, that he has gone through with it so bravely.”
“But how do you mean? Didn’t it do?”
Rashly, perhaps, yet I think unavoidably, I told her the truth.
“It was the best thing he had ever written, but unfortunately it was
destroyed, burnt to a cinder. That was not very pleasant, was it, for a
man who never makes two copies of his work?”
“It was frightful!” said Freda, her eyes dilating. “I never heard a word
about it. Does Lawrence know?”
“No, he does not; and perhaps I ought not to have told you, but I was
annoyed at your so misunderstanding Derrick. Pray never mention the
affair; he would wish it kept perfectly quiet.”
“Why?” asked Freda, turning her clear eyes full upon mine.
“Because,” I said, lowering my voice, “because his father burnt it.”
She almost gasped.
“Deliberately?”
“Yes, deliberately,” I replied. “His illness has affected his temper, and
he is sometimes hardly responsible for his actions.”
“Oh, I knew that he was irritable and hasty, and that Derrick annoyed him.
Lawrence told me that, long ago,” said Freda. “But that he should have
done such a thing as that! It is horrible! Poor Derrick, how sorry I am
for him. I hope we shall see something of them at Bath. Do you know how
the Major is?”
“I had a letter about him from Derrick only this evening,” I replied; “if
you care to see it, I will show it you later on.”
And by-and-by, in the drawing-room, I put Derrick’s letter into her hands,
and explained to her how for a few months he had given up his life at
Bath, in despair, but now had returned.
“I don’t think Lawrence can understand the state of things,” she said
wistfully. “And yet he has been down there.”
I made no reply, and Freda, with a sigh, turned away.
A month later I went down to Bath and found, as my friend foretold,
everything going on in the old groove, except that Derrick himself had an
odd, strained look about him, as if he were fighting a foe beyond his
strength. Freda’s arrival at Bath had been very hard on him, it was almost
more than he could endure. Sir Richard, blind as a bat, of course, to
anything below the surface, made a point of seeing something of Lawrence’s
brother. And on the day of my arrival Derrick and I had hardly set out for
a walk, when we ran across the old man.
Sir Richard, though rheumatic in the wrists, was nimble of foot and an
inveterate walker. He was going with his daughter to see over Beckford’s
Tower, and invited us to accompany him. Derrick, much against the grain, I
fancy, had to talk to Freda, who, in her winter furs and close-fitting
velvet hat, looked more fascinating than ever, while the old man descanted
to me on Bath waters, antiquities, etc., in a long-winded way that lasted
all up the hill. We made our way into the cemetery and mounted the tower
stairs, thinking of the past when this dreary place had been so gorgeously
furnished. Here Derrick contrived to get ahead with Sir Richard, and Freda
lingered in a sort of alcove with me.
“I have been so wanting to see you,” she said, in an agitated voice. “Oh,
Mr. Wharncliffe, is it true what I have heard about the Major? Does he
drink?”
“Who told you?” I said, a little embarrassed.
“It was our landlady,” said Freda; “she is the daughter of the Major’s
landlady. And you should hear what she says of Derrick! Why, he must be a
downright hero! All the time I have been half despising him”—she
choked back a sob—“he has been trying to save his father from what
was certain death to him—so they told me. Do you think it is true?”
“I know it is,” I replied gravely.
“And about his arm—was that true?”
I signed an assent.
Her grey eyes grew moist.
“Oh,” she cried, “how I have been deceived and how little Lawrence
appreciates him! I think he must know that I’ve misjudged him, for he
seems so odd and shy, and I don’t think he likes to talk to me.”
I looked searchingly into her truthful grey eyes, thinking of poor
Derrick’s unlucky love-story.
“You do not understand him,” I said; “and perhaps it is best so.”
But the words and the look were rash, for all at once the colour flooded
her face. She turned quickly away, conscious at last that the midsummer
dream of those yachting days had to Derrick been no dream at all, but a
life-long reality.
I felt very sorry for Freda, for she was not at all the sort of girl who
would glory in having a fellow hopelessly in love with her. I knew that
the discovery she had made would be nothing but a sorrow to her, and could
guess how she would reproach herself for that innocent past fancy, which,
till now, had seemed to her so faint and far-away—almost as
something belonging to another life. All at once we heard the others
descending, and she turned to me with such a frightened, appealing look,
that I could not possibly have helped going to the rescue. I plunged
abruptly into a discourse on Beckford, and told her how he used to keep
diamonds in a tea-cup, and amused himself by arranging them on a piece of
velvet. Sir Richard fled from the sound of my prosy voice, and, needless
to say, Derrick followed him. We let them get well in advance and then
followed, Freda silent and distraite, but every now and then asking a
question about the Major.
As for Derrick, evidently he was on guard. He saw a good deal of the
Merrifields and was sedulously attentive to them in many small ways; but
with Freda he was curiously reserved, and if by chance they did talk
together, he took good care to bring Lawrence’s name into the
conversation. On the whole, I believe loyalty was his strongest
characteristic, and want of loyalty in others tried him more severely than
anything in the world.
As the spring wore on, it became evident to everyone that the Major could
not last long. His son’s watchfulness and the enforced temperance which
the doctors insisted on had prolonged his life to a certain extent, but
gradually his sufferings increased and his strength diminished. At last he
kept his bed altogether.
What Derrick bore at this time no one can ever know. When, one bright
sunshiny Saturday, I went down to see how he was getting on, I found him
worn and haggard, too evidently paying the penalty of sleepless nights and
thankless care. I was a little shocked to hear that Lawrence had been
summoned, but when I was taken into the sick room I realised that they had
done wisely to send for the favourite son.
The Major was evidently dying.
Never can I forget the cruelty and malevolence with which his bloodshot
eyes rested on Derrick, or the patience with which the dear old fellow
bore his father’s scathing sarcasms. It was while I was sitting by the bed
that the landlady entered with a telegram, which she put into Derrick’s
hand.
“From Lawrence!” said the dying man triumphantly, “to say by what train we
may expect him. Well?” as Derrick still read the message to himself,
“can’t you speak, you d—d idiot? Have you lost your d—d
tongue? What does he say?”
“I am afraid he cannot be here just yet,” said Derrick, trying to tone
down the curt message; “it seems he cannot get leave.”
“Not get leave to see his dying father? What confounded nonsense. Give me
the thing here;” and he snatched the telegram from Derrick and read it in
a quavering, hoarse voice:
“Impossible to get away. Am hopelessly tied here. Love to my father.
Greatly regret to hear such bad news of him.”
I think that message made the old man realise the worth of Lawrence’s
often expressed affection for him. Clearly it was a great blow to him. He
threw down the paper without a word and closed his eyes. For half an hour
he lay like that, and we did not disturb him. At last he looked up; his
voice was fainter and his manner more gentle.
“Derrick,” he said, “I believe I’ve done you an injustice; it is you who
cared for me, not Lawrence, and I’ve struck your name out of my will—have
left all to him. After all, though you are one of those confounded
novelists, you’ve done what you could for me. Let some one fetch a
solicitor—I’ll alter it—I’ll alter it!”
I instantly hurried out to fetch a lawyer, but it was Saturday afternoon,
the offices were closed, and some time passed before I had caught my man.
I told him as we hastened back some of the facts of the case, and he
brought his writing materials into the sick room and took down from the
Major’s own lips the words which would have the effect of dividing the old
man’s possessions between his two sons. Dr. Mackrill was now present; he
stood on one side of the bed, his fingers on the dying man’s pulse. On the
other side stood Derrick, a degree paler and graver than usual, but
revealing little of his real feelings.
“Word it as briefly as you can,” said the doctor.
And the lawyer scribbled away as though for his life, while the rest of us
waited in a wretched hushed state of tension. In the room itself there was
no sound save the scratching of the pen and the laboured breathing of the
old man; but in the next house we could hear someone playing a waltz.
Somehow it did not seem to me incongruous, for it was ‘Sweethearts,’ and
that had been the favourite waltz of Ben Rhydding, so that I always
connected it with Derrick and his trouble, and now the words rang in my
ears:
If it had not been for the Major’s return from India, I firmly believed
that Derrick and Freda would by this time have been betrothed. Derrick had
taken a line which necessarily divided them, had done what he saw to be
his duty; yet what were the results? He had lost Freda, he had lost his
book, he had damaged his chance of success as a writer, he had been struck
out of his father’s will, and he had suffered unspeakably. Had anything
whatever been gained? The Major was dying unrepentant to all appearance,
as hard and cynical an old worldling as I ever saw. The only spark of
grace he showed was that tardy endeavour to make a fresh will. What good
had it all been? What good?
I could not answer the question then, could only cry out in a sort of
indignation, “What profit is there in his blood?” But looking at it now, I
have a sort of perception that the very lack of apparent profitableness
was part of Derrick’s training, while if, as I now incline to think, there
is a hereafter where the training begun here is continued, the old Major
in the hell he most richly deserved would have the remembrance of his
son’s patience and constancy and devotion to serve as a guiding light in
the outer darkness.
The lawyer no longer wrote at railroad speed; he pushed back his chair,
brought the will to the bed, and placed the pen in the trembling yellow
hand of the invalid.
“You must sign your name here,” he said, pointing with his finger; and the
Major raised himself a little, and brought the pen quaveringly down
towards the paper. With a sort of fascination I watched the finely-pointed
steel nib; it trembled for an instant or two, then the pen dropped from
the convulsed fingers, and with a cry of intolerable anguish the Major
fell back.
For some minutes there was a painful struggle; presently we caught a word
or two between the groans of the dying man.
“Too late!” he gasped, “too late!” And then a dreadful vision of horrors
seemed to rise before him, and with a terror that I can never forget he
turned to his son and clutched fast hold of his hands: “Derrick!” he
shrieked.
Derrick could not speak, but he bent low over the bed as though to screen
the dying eyes from those horrible visions, and with an odd sort of thrill
I saw him embrace his father.
When he raised his head the terror had died out of the Major’s face; all
was over.
