"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.'
