"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.
