“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.