"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:
"Oh, love for a year, a week, a day, But alas! for the love that loves alway."
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.
Chapter IX.
"To duty firm, to conscience true, However tried and pressed, In God's clear sight high work we do, If we but do out best."
Lawrence came down to the funeral, and I took good care that he should hear all about his father's last hours, and I made the solicitor show him the unsigned will. He made hardly any comment on it till we three were alone together. Then with a sort of kindly patronage he turned to his brother--Derrick, it must be remembered, was the elder twin--and said pityingly, "Poor old fellow! it was rather rough on you that the governor couldn't sign this; but never mind, you'll soon, no doubt, be earning a fortune by your books; and besides, what does a bachelor want with more than you've already inherited from our mother? Whereas, an officer just going to be married, and with this confounded reputation of hero to keep up, why, I can tell you it needs every penny of it!"
Derrick looked at his brother searchingly. I honestly believe that he didn't very much care about the money, but it cut him to the heart that Lawrence should treat him so shabbily. The soul of generosity himself, he could not understand how anyone could frame a speech so infernally mean.
"Of course," I broke in, "if Derrick liked to go to law he could no doubt get his rights, there are three witnesses who can prove what was the Major's real wish."
"I shall not go to law," said Derrick, with a dignity of which I had hardly imagined him capable. "You spoke of your marriage, Lawrence; is it to be soon?"
"This autumn, I hope," said Lawrence; "at least, if I can overcome Sir Richard's ridiculous notion that a girl ought not to marry till she's twenty-one. He's a most crotchety old fellow, that future father-in-law of mine."
When Lawrence had first come back from the war I had thought him wonderfully improved, but a long course of spoiling and flattery had done him a world of harm. He liked very much to be lionised, and to see him now posing in drawing-rooms, surrounded by a worshipping throng of women, was enough to sicken any sensible being.
As for Derrick, though he could not be expected to feel his bereavement in the ordinary way, yet his father's death had been a great shock to him. It was arranged that after settling various matters in Bath he should go down to stay with his sister for a time, joining me in Montague Street later on. While he was away in Birmingham, however, an extraordinary change came into my humdrum life, and when he rejoined me a few weeks later, I--selfish brute--was so overwhelmed with the trouble that had befallen me that I thought very little indeed of his affairs.
He took this quite as a matter of course, and what I should have done without him I can't conceive. However, this story concerns him and has nothing to do with my extraordinary dilemma; I merely mention it as a fact which brought additional cares into his life. All the time he was doing what could be done to help me he was also going through a most baffling and miserable time among the publishers; for 'At Strife,'
unlike its predecessor, was rejected by Davison and by five other houses. Think of this, you comfortable readers, as you lie back in your easy chairs and leisurely turn the pages of that popular story. The book which represented years of study and long hours of hard work was first burnt to a cinder. It was re-written with what infinite pains and toil few can understand. It was then six times tied up and carried with anxiety and hope to a publisher's office, only to re-appear six times in Montague Street, an unwelcome visitor, bringing with it depression and disappointment.
Derrick said little, but suffered much. However, nothing daunted him.
When it came back from the sixth publisher he took it to a seventh, then returned and wrote away like a Trojan at his third book. The one thing that never failed him was that curious consciousness that he HAD to write; like the prophets of old, the 'burden' came to him, and speak it he must.
The seventh publisher wrote a somewhat dubious letter: the book, he thought, had great merit, but unluckily people were prejudiced, and historical novels rarely met with success. However, he was willing to take the story, and offered half profits, candidly admitting that he had no great hopes of a large sale. Derrick instantly closed with this offer, proofs came in, the book appeared, was well received like its predecessor, fell into the hands of one of the leaders of Society, and, to the intense surprise of the publisher, proved to be the novel of the year. Speedily a second edition was called for; then, after a brief interval, a third edition--this time a rational one-volume affair; and the whole lot--6,000 I believe--went off on the day of publication.
Derrick was amazed; but he enjoyed his success very heartily, and I think no one could say that he had leapt into fame at a bound.
Having devoured 'At Strife,' people began to discover the merits of 'Lynwood's Heritage;' the libraries were besieged for it, and a cheap edition was hastily published, and another and another, till the book, which at first had been such a dead failure, rivalled 'At Strife.' Truly an author's career is a curious thing; and precisely why the first book failed, and the second succeeded, no one could explain.
It amused me very much to see Derrick turned into a lion--he was so essentially un-lion-like. People were for ever asking him how he worked, and I remember a very pretty girl setting upon him once at a dinner-party with the embarrassing request:
"Now, do tell me, Mr. Vaughan, how do you write stories? I wish you would give me a good receipt for a novel."
Derrick hesitated uneasily for a minute; finally, with a humorous smile, he said:
"Well, I can't exactly tell you, because, more or less, novels grow; but if you want a receipt, you might perhaps try after this fashion:--Conceive your hero, add a sprinkling of friends and relatives, flavour with whatever scenery or local colour you please, carefully consider what circumstances are most likely to develop your man into the best he is capable of, allow the whole to simmer in your brain as long as you can, and then serve, while hot, with ink upon white or blue foolscap, according to taste."
The young lady applauded the receipt, but she sighed a little, and probably relinquished all hope of concocting a novel herself; on the whole, it seemed to involve incessant taking of trouble.
About this time I remember, too, another little scene, which I enjoyed amazingly. I laugh now when I think of it. I happened to be at a huge evening crush, and rather to my surprise, came across Lawrence Vaughan.
We were talking together, when up came Connington of the Foreign Office.
"I say, Vaughan," he said, "Lord Remington wishes to be introduced to you." I watched the old statesman a little curiously as he greeted Lawrence, and listened to his first words: "Very glad to make your acquaintance, Captain Vaughan; I understand that the author of that grand novel, 'At Strife,' is a brother of yours." And poor Lawrence spent a mauvais quart d'heure, inwardly fuming, I know, at the idea that he, the hero of Saspataras Hill, should be considered merely as 'the brother of Vaughan, the novelist.'
Fate, or perhaps I should say the effect of his own pernicious actions, did not deal kindly just now with Lawrence. Somehow Freda learnt about that will, and, being no bread-and-butter miss, content meekly to adore her fiance and deem him faultless, she 'up and spake' on the subject, and I fancy poor Lawrence must have had another mauvais quart d'heure.
It was not this, however, which led to a final breach between them; it was something which Sir Richard discovered with regard to Lawrence's life at Dover. The engagement was instantly broken off, and Freda, I am sure, felt nothing but relief. She went abroad for some time, however, and we did not see her till long after Lawrence had been comfortably married to 1,500 pounds a year and a middle-aged widow, who had long been a hero-worshipper, and who, I am told, never allowed any visitor to leave the house without making some allusion to the memorable battle of Saspataras Hill and her Lawrence's gallant action.
For the two years following after the Major's death, Derrick and I, as I mentioned before, shared the rooms in Montague Street. For me, owing to the trouble I spoke of, they were years of maddening suspense and pain; but what pleasure I did manage to enjoy came entirely through the success of my friend's books and from his companionship. It was odd that from the care of his father he should immediately pass on to the care of one who had made such a disastrous mistake as I had made. But I feel the less compunction at the thought of the amount of sympathy I called for at that time, because I notice that the giving of sympathy is a necessity for Derrick, and that when the troubles of other folk do not immediately thrust themselves into his life he carefully hunts them up. During these two years he was reading for the Bar--not that he ever expected to do very much as a barrister, but he thought it well to have something to fall back on, and declared that the drudgery of the reading would do him good. He was also writing as usual, and he used to spend two evenings a week at Whitechapel, where he taught one of the classes in connection with Toynbee Hall, and where he gained that knowledge of East-end life which is conspicuous in his third book--'Dick Carew.'
This, with an ever increasing and often very burdensome correspondence, brought to him by his books, and with a fair share of dinners, 'At Homes,' and so forth, made his life a full one. In a quiet sort of way I believe he was happy during this time. But later on, when, my trouble at an end, I had migrated to a house of my own, and he was left alone in the Montague Street rooms, his spirits somehow flagged.
Fame is, after all, a hollow, unsatisfying thing to a man of his nature.
He heartily enjoyed his success, he delighted in hearing that his books had given pleasure or had been of use to anyone, but no public victory could in the least make up to him for the loss he had suffered in his private life; indeed, I almost think there were times when his triumphs as an author seemed to him utterly worthless--days of depression when the congratulations of his friends were nothing but a mockery. He had gained a striking success, it is true, but he had lost Freda; he was in the position of the starving man who has received a gift of bon-bons, but so craves for bread that they half sicken him. I used now and then to watch his face when, as often happened, someone said: "What an enviable fellow you are, Vaughan, to get on like this!" or, "What wouldn't I give to change places with you!" He would invariably smile and turn the conversation; but there was a look in his eyes at such times that I hated to see--it always made me think of Mrs. Browning's poem, 'The Mask':
"Behind no prison-grate, she said, Which slurs the sunshine half a mile, Live captives so uncomforted As souls behind a smile."
As to the Merrifields, there was no chance of seeing them, for Sir Richard had gone to India in some official capacity, and no doubt, as everyone said, they would take good care to marry Freda out there.
Derrick had not seen her since that trying February at Bath, long ago.
Yet I fancy she was never out of his thoughts.
And so the years rolled on, and Derrick worked away steadily, giving his books to the world, accepting the comforts and discomforts of an author's life, laughing at the outrageous reports that were in circulation about him, yet occasionally, I think, inwardly wincing at them, and learning from the number of begging letters which he received, and into which he usually caused searching inquiry to be made, that there are in the world a vast number of undeserving poor.
One day I happened to meet Lady Probyn at a garden-party; it was at the same house on Campden Hill where I had once met Freda, and perhaps it was the recollection of this which prompted me to enquire after her.