"Lawrence has all his wits about him," growled the Major. "Whereas you--" (several oaths interjected). "It will be a long while before any girl with a dowry will look at you! What women like is a bold man of action; what they despise, mere dabblers in pen and ink, writers of poisonous sensational tales such as yours! I'm quoting your own reviewers, so you needn't contradict me!"
Of course no one had dreamt of contradicting; it would have been the worst possible policy.
"Shall I help you in?" said Derrick. "It is just dinner time."
And as I walked beside them to the hotel, listening to the Major's flood of irritating words, and glancing now and then at Derrick's grave, resolute face, which successfully masked such bitter suffering, I couldn't help reflecting that here was courage infinitely more deserving of the Victoria Cross than Lawrence's impulsive rescue. Very patiently he sat through the long dinner. I doubt if any but an acute observer could have told that he was in trouble; and, luckily, the world in general observes hardly at all.
He endured the Major till it was time for him to take a Turkish bath, and then having two hours' *******, climbed with me up the rock-covered hill at the back of the hotel. He was very silent.
But I remember that, as we watched the sun go down--a glowing crimson ball, half veiled in grey mist--he said abruptly, "If Lawrence makes her happy I can bear it. And of course I always knew that I was not worthy of her."
Derrick's room was a large, gaunt, ghostly place in one of the towers of the hotel, and in one corner of it was a winding stair leading to the roof. When I went in next morning I found him writing away at his novel just as usual, but when I looked at him it seemed to me that the night had aged him fearfully. As a rule, he took interruptions as a matter of course, and with perfect sweetness of temper; but to-day he seemed unable to drag himself back to the outer world. He was writing at a desperate pace too, and frowned when I spoke to him. I took up the sheet of foolscap which he had just finished and glanced at the number of the page--evidently he had written an immense quantity since the previous day.
"You will knock yourself up if you go on at this rate!" I exclaimed.
"Nonsense!" he said sharply. "You know it never tires me."
Yet, all the same, he passed his hand very wearily over his forehead, and stretched himself with the air of one who had been in a cramping position for many hours.
"You have broken your vow!" I cried. "You have been writing at night."
"No," he said; "it was morning when I began--three o'clock. And it pays better to get up and write than to lie awake thinking."
Judging by the speed with which the novel grew in the next few weeks, I could tell that Derrick's nights were of the worst.
He began, too, to look very thin and haggard, and I more than once noticed that curious 'sleep-walking' expression in his eyes; he seemed to me just like a man who has received his death-blow, yet still lingers--half alive, half dead. I had an odd feeling that it was his novel which kept him going, and I began to wonder what would happen when it was finished.
A month later, when I met him again at Bath, he had written the last chapter of 'At Strife,' and we read it over the sitting-room fire on Saturday evening. I was very much struck with the book; it seemed to me a great advance on 'Lynwood's Heritage,' and the part which he had written since that day at Ben Rhydding was full of an indescribable power, as if the life of which he had been robbed had flowed into his work. When he had done, he tied up the MS. in his usual prosaic fashion, just as if it had been a bundle of clothes, and put it on a side table.
It was arranged that I should take it to Davison--the publisher of 'Lynwood's Heritage'--on Monday, and see what offer he would make for it. Just at that time I felt so sorry for Derrick that if he had asked me to hawk round fifty novels I would have done it.
Sunday morning proved wet and dismal; as a rule the Major, who was fond of music, attended service at the Abbey, but the weather forced him now to stay at home. I myself was at that time no church-goer, but Derrick would, I verily believe, as soon have fasted a week as have given up a Sunday morning service; and having no mind to be left to the Major's company, and a sort of wish to be near my friend, I went with him. I believe it is not correct to admire Bath Abbey, but for all that 'the lantern of the west' has always seemed to me a grand place; as for Derrick, he had a horror of a 'dim religious light,' and always stuck up for his huge windows, and I believe he loved the Abbey with all his heart. Indeed, taking it only from a sensuous point of view, I could quite imagine what a relief he found his weekly attendance here; by contrast with his home the place was Heaven itself.
As we walked back, I asked a question that had long been in my mind:
"Have you seen anything of Lawrence?"
"He saw us across London on our way from Ben Rhydding," said Derrick, steadily. "Freda came with him, and my father was delighted with her."
I wondered how they had got through the meeting, but of course my curiosity had to go unsatisfied. Of one thing I might be certain, namely, that Derrick had gone through with it like a Trojan, that he had smiled and congratulated in his quiet way, and had done the best to efface himself and think only of Freda. But as everyone knows:
"Face joy's a costly mask to wear, 'Tis bought with pangs long nourished And rounded to despair;" and he looked now even more worn and old than he had done at Ben Rhydding in the first days of his trouble.
However, he turned resolutely away from the subject I had introduced and began to discuss titles for his novel.
"It's impossible to find anything new," he said, "absolutely impossible. I declare I shall take to numbers."
I laughed at this prosaic notion, and we were still discussing the title when we reached home.
"Don't say anything about it at lunch," he said as we entered. "My father detests my writing."
