Man is a selfish being, and I am a particularly fine specimen of the race as far as that characteristic goes. If I had had a dozen drunken parents I should never have danced attendance on one of them; yet in my secret soul I admired Derrick for the line he had taken, for we mostly do admire what is unlike ourselves and really noble, though it is the fashion to seem totally indifferent to everything in heaven and earth. But all the same I felt annoyed about the whole business, and was glad to forget it in my own affairs at Mondisfield.

Weeks passed by. I lived through a midsummer dream of happiness, and a hard awaking. That, however, has nothing to do with Derrick’s story, and may be passed over. In October I settled down in Montague Street, Bloomsbury, and began to read for the Bar, in about as disagreeable a frame of mind as can be conceived. One morning I found on my breakfast table a letter in Derrick’s handwriting. Like most men, we hardly ever corresponded—what women say in the eternal letters they send to each other I can’t conceive—but it struck me that under the circumstances I ought to have sent him a line to ask how he was getting on, and my conscience pricked me as I remembered that I had hardly thought of him since we parted, being absorbed in my own matters. The letter was not very long, but when one read between the lines it somehow told a good deal. I have it lying by me, and this is a copy of it:

“Dear Sydney,—Do like a good fellow go to North Audley Street for me, to the house which I described to you as the one where Lynwood lodged, and tell me what he would see besides the church from his window—if shops, what kind? Also if any glimpse of Oxford Street would be visible. Then if you’ll add to your favours by getting me a second-hand copy of Laveleye’s ‘Socialisme Contemporain,’ I should be for ever grateful. We are settled in here all right. Bath is empty, but I people it as far as I can with the folk out of ‘Evelina’ and ‘Persuasion.’ How did you get on at Blachington? and which of the Misses Merrifield went in the end? Don’t bother about the commissions. Any time will do.

“Ever yours,

“Derrick Vaughan.”

Poor old fellow! all the spirit seemed knocked out of him. There was not one word about the Major, and who could say what wretchedness was veiled in that curt phrase, “we are settled in all right”? All right! it was all as wrong as it could be! My blood began to boil at the thought of Derrick, with his great powers—his wonderful gift—cooped up in a place where the study of life was so limited and so dull. Then there was his hunger for news of Freda, and his silence as to what had kept him away from Blachington, and about all a sort of proud humility which prevented him from saying much that I should have expected him to say under the circumstances.

It was Saturday, and my time was my own. I went out, got his book for him; interviewed North Audley Street; spent a bad five minutes in company with that villain ‘Bradshaw,’ who is responsible for so much of the brain and eye disease of the nineteenth century, and finally left Paddington in the Flying Dutchman, which landed me at Bath early in the afternoon. I left my portmanteau at the station, and walked through the city till I reached Gay Street. Like most of the streets of Bath, it was broad, and had on either hand dull, well-built, dark grey, eminently respectable, unutterably dreary-looking houses. I rang, and the door was opened to me by a most quaint old woman, evidently the landlady. An odour of curry pervaded the passage, and became more oppressive as the door of the sitting-room was opened, and I was ushered in upon the Major and his son, who had just finished lunch.

“Hullo!” cried Derrick, springing up, his face full of delight which touched me, while at the same time it filled me with envy.

Even the Major thought fit to give me a hearty welcome.

“Glad to see you again,” he said pleasantly enough. “It’s a relief to have a fresh face to look at. We have a room which is quite at your disposal, and I hope you’ll stay with us. Brought your portmanteau, eh?”

“It is at the station,” I replied.

“See that it is sent for,” he said to Derrick; “and show Mr. Wharncliffe all that is to be seen in this cursed hole of a place.” Then, turning again to me, “Have you lunched? Very well, then, don’t waste this fine afternoon in an invalid’s room, but be off and enjoy yourself.”

So cordial was the old man, that I should have thought him already a reformed character, had I not found that he kept the rough side of his tongue for home use. Derrick placed a novel and a small handbell within his reach, and we were just going, when we were checked by a volley of oaths from the Major; then a book came flying across the room, well aimed at Derrick’s head. He stepped aside, and let it fall with a crash on the sideboard.

“What do you mean by giving me the second volume when you know I am in the third?” fumed the invalid.

He apologised quietly, fetched the third volume, straightened the disordered leaves of the discarded second, and with the air of one well accustomed to such little domestic scenes, took up his hat and came out with me.

“How long do you intend to go on playing David to the Major’s Saul?” I asked, marvelling at the way in which he endured the humours of his father.

“As long as I have the chance,” he replied. “I say, are you sure you won’t mind staying with us? It can’t be a very comfortable household for an outsider.”

“Much better than for an insider, to all appearance,” I replied. “I’m only too delighted to stay. And now, old fellow, tell me the honest truth—you didn’t, you know, in your letter—how have you been getting on?”

Derrick launched into an account of his father’s ailments.

“Oh, hang the Major! I don’t care about him, I want to know about you,” I cried.

“About me?” said Derrick doubtfully. “Oh, I’m right enough.”

“What do you do with yourself? How on earth do you kill time?” I asked. “Come, give me a full, true, and particular account of it all.”

“We have tried three other servants,” said Derrick; “but the plan doesn’t answer. They either won’t stand it, or else they are bribed into smuggling brandy into the house. I find I can do most things for my father, and in the morning he has an attendant from the hospital who is trustworthy, and who does what is necessary for him. At ten we breakfast together, then there are the morning papers, which he likes to have read to him. After that I go round to the Pump Room with him—odd contrast now to what it must have been when Bath was the rage. Then we have lunch. In the afternoon, if he is well enough, we drive; if not he sleeps, and I get a walk. Later on an old Indian friend of his will sometimes drop in; if not he likes to be read to until dinner. After dinner we play chess—he is a first-rate player. At ten I help him to bed; from eleven to twelve I smoke and study Socialism and all the rest of it that Lynwood is at present floundering in.”

“Why don’t you write, then?”

“I tried it, but it didn’t answer. I couldn’t sleep after it, and was, in fact, too tired; seems absurd to be tired after such a day as that, but somehow it takes it out of one more than the hardest reading; I don’t know why.”

“Why,” I said angrily, “it’s because it is work to which you are quite unsuited—work for a thick-skinned, hard-hearted, uncultivated and well-paid attendant, not for the novelist who is to be the chief light of our generation.”

He laughed at this estimate of his powers.

“Novelists, like other cattle, have to obey their owner,” he said lightly.

I thought for a moment that he meant the Major, and was breaking into an angry remonstrance, when I saw that he meant something quite different. It was always his strongest point, this extraordinary consciousness of right, this unwavering belief that he had to do and therefore could do certain things. Without this, I know that he never wrote a line, and in my heart I believe this was the cause of his success.

“Then you are not writing at all?” I asked.

“Yes, I write generally for a couple of hours before breakfast,” he said.

And that evening we sat by his gas stove and he read me the next four chapters of ‘Lynwood.’ He had rather a dismal lodging-house bedroom, with faded wall-paper and a prosaic snuff-coloured carpet. On a rickety table in the window was his desk, and a portfolio full of blue foolscap, but he had done what he could to make the place habitable; his Oxford pictures were on the walls—Hoffman’s ‘Christ speaking to the Woman taken in Adultery,’ hanging over the mantelpiece—it had always been a favourite of his. I remember that, as he read the description of Lynwood and his wife, I kept looking from him to the Christ in the picture till I could almost have fancied that each face bore the same expression. Had this strange monotonous life with that old brute of a Major brought him some new perception of those words, “Neither do I condemn thee”? But when he stopped reading, I, true to my character, forgot his affairs in my own, as we sat talking far into the night—talking of that luckless month at Mondisfield, of all the problems it had opened up, and of my wretchedness.

“You were in town all September?” he asked; “you gave up Blachington?”

“Yes,” I replied. “What did I care for country houses in such a mood as that.”

He acquiesced, and I went on talking of my grievances, and it was not till I was in the train on my way back to London that I remembered how a look of disappointment had passed over his face just at the moment. Evidently he had counted on learning something about Freda from me, and I—well, I had clean forgotten both her existence and his passionate love.

Something, probably self-interest, the desire for my friend’s company, and so forth, took me down to Bath pretty frequently in those days; luckily the Major had a sort of liking for me, and was always polite enough; and dear old Derrick—well, I believe my visits really helped to brighten him up. At any rate he said he couldn’t have borne his life without them, and for a sceptical, dismal, cynical fellow like me to hear that was somehow flattering. The mere force of contrast did me good. I used to come back on the Monday wondering that Derrick didn’t cut his throat, and realising that, after all, it was something to be a free agent, and to have comfortable rooms in Montague Street, with no old bear of a drunkard to disturb my peace. And then a sort of admiration sprang up in my heart, and the cynicism bred of melancholy broodings over solitary pipes was less rampant than usual.

It was, I think, early in the new year that I met Lawrence Vaughan in Bath. He was not staying at Gay Street, so I could still have the vacant room next to Derrick’s. Lawrence put up at the York House Hotel.

“For you know,” he informed me, “I really can’t stand the governor for more than an hour or two at a time.”

“Derrick manages to do it,” I said.

“Oh, Derrick, yes,” he replied, “it’s his metier, and he is well accustomed to the life. Besides, you know, he is such a dreamy, quiet sort of fellow; he lives all the time in a world of his own creation, and bears the discomforts of this world with great philosophy. Actually he has turned teetotaller! It would kill me in a week.”

I make a point of never arguing with a fellow like that, but I think I had a vindictive longing, as I looked at him, to shut him up with the Major for a month, and see what would happen.

These twin brothers were curiously alike in face and curiously unlike in nature. So much for the great science of physiognomy! It often seemed to me that they were the complement of each other. For instance, Derrick in society was extremely silent, Lawrence was a rattling talker; Derrick, when alone with you, would now and then reveal unsuspected depths of thought and expression; Lawrence, when alone with you, very frequently showed himself to be a cad. The elder twin was modest and diffident, the younger inclined to brag; the one had a strong tendency to melancholy, the other was blest or cursed with the sort of temperament which has been said to accompany “a hard heart and a good digestion.”

I was not surprised to find that the son who could not tolerate the governor’s presence for more than an hour or two, was a prime favourite with the old man; that was just the way of the world. Of course, the Major was as polite as possible to him; Derrick got the kicks and Lawrence the half-pence.

In the evenings we played whist, Lawrence coming in after dinner, “For, you know,” he explained to me, “I really couldn’t get through a meal with nothing but those infernal mineral waters to wash it down.”

And here I must own that at my first visit I had sailed rather close to the wind; for when the Major, like the Hatter in ‘Alice,’ pressed me to take wine, I—not seeing any—had answered that I did not take it; mentally adding the words, “in your house, you brute!”

The two brothers were fond of each other after a fashion. But Derrick was human, and had his faults like the rest of us; and I am pretty sure he did not much enjoy the sight of his father’s foolish and unreasonable devotion to Lawrence. If you come to think of it, he would have been a full-fledged angel if no jealous pang, no reflection that it was rather rough on him, had crossed his mind, when he saw his younger brother treated with every mark of respect and liking, and knew that Lawrence would never stir a finger really to help the poor fractious invalid. Unluckily they happened one night to get on the subject of professions.

“It’s a comfort,” said the Major, in his sarcastic way, “to have a fellow-soldier to talk to instead of a quill-driver, who as yet is not even a penny-a-liner. Eh, Derrick? Don’t you feel inclined to regret your fool’s choice now? You might have been starting off for the war with Lawrence next week, if you hadn’t chosen what you’re pleased to call a literary life. Literary life, indeed! I little thought a son of mine would ever have been so wanting in spirit as to prefer dabbling in ink to a life of action—to be the scribbler of mere words, rather than an officer of dragoons.”

Then to my astonishment Derrick sprang to his feet in hot indignation. I never saw him look so handsome, before or since; for his anger was not the distorting, devilish anger that the Major gave way to, but real downright wrath.

“You speak contemptuously of mere novels,” he said in a low voice, yet more clearly than usual, and as if the words were wrung out of him. “What right have you to look down on one of the greatest weapons of the day? and why is a writer to submit to scoffs and insults and tamely to hear his profession reviled? I have chosen to write the message that has been given me, and I don’t regret the choice. Should I have shown greater spirit if I had sold my freedom and right of judgment to be one of the national killing machines?”

With that he threw down his cards and strode out of the room in a white heat of anger. It was a pity he made that last remark, for it put him in the wrong and needlessly annoyed Lawrence and the Major. But an angry man has no time to weigh his words, and, as I said, poor old Derrick was very human, and when wounded too intolerably could on occasion retaliate.

The Major uttered an oath and looked in astonishment at the retreating figure. Derrick was such an extraordinarily quiet, respectful, long-suffering son as a rule, that this outburst was startling in the extreme. Moreover, it spoilt the game, and the old man, chafed by the result of his own ill-nature, and helpless to bring back his partner, was forced to betake himself to chess. I left him grumbling away to Lawrence about the vanity of authors, and went out in the hope of finding Derrick. As I left the house I saw someone turn the corner into the Circus, and starting in pursuit, overtook the tall, dark figure where Bennett Street opens on to the Lansdowne Hill.

“I’m glad you spoke up, old fellow,” I said, taking his arm.

He modified his pace a little. “Why is it,” he exclaimed, “that every other profession can be taken seriously, but that a novelist’s work is supposed to be mere play? Good God! don’t we suffer enough? Have we not hard brain work and drudgery of desk work and tedious gathering of statistics and troublesome search into details? Have we not an appalling weight of responsibility on us?—and are we not at the mercy of a thousand capricious chances?”

“Come now,” I exclaimed, “you know that you are never so happy as when you are writing.”

“Of course,” he replied; “but that doesn’t make me resent such an attack the less. Besides, you don’t know what it is to have to write in such an atmosphere as ours; it’s like a weight on one’s pen. This life here is not life at all—it’s a daily death, and it’s killing the book too; the last chapters are wretched—I’m utterly dissatisfied with them.”

“As for that,” I said calmly, “you are no judge at all. You can never tell the worth of your own work; the last bit is splendid.”

“I could have done it better,” he groaned. “But there is always a ghastly depression dragging one back here—and then the time is so short; just as one gets into the swing of it the breakfast bell rings, and then comes—” He broke off.

I could well supply the end of the sentence, however, for I knew that then came the slow torture of a tete-a-tete day with the Major, stinging sarcasms, humiliating scoldings, vexations and difficulties innumerable.

I drew him to the left, having no mind to go to the top of the hill. We slackened our pace again and walked to and fro along the broad level pavement of Lansdowne Crescent. We had it entirely to ourselves—not another creature was in sight.

“I could bear it all,” he burst forth, “if only there was a chance of seeing Freda. Oh, you are better off than I am—at least, you know the worst. Your hope is killed, but mine lives on a tortured, starved life! Would to God I had never seen her!”

Certainly before that night I had never quite realised the irrevocableness of poor Derrick’s passion. I had half hoped that time and separation would gradually efface Freda Merrifield from his memory; and I listened with a dire foreboding to the flood of wretchedness which he poured forth as we paced up and down, thinking now and then how little people guessed at the tremendous powers hidden under his usually quiet exterior.

At length he paused, but his last heart-broken words seemed to vibrate in the air and to force me to speak some kind of comfort.

“Derrick,” I said, “come back with me to London—give up this miserable life.”

I felt him start a little; evidently no thought of yielding had come to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past, surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I looked at my companion’s pale, tortured face, and thought of the life he had elected to lead in the hope of saving one whom duty bound him to honour. After all, which life was the most worth living—which was the most to be admired?

We walked on; down below us and up on the farther hill we could see the lights of Bath; the place so beautiful by day looked now like a fairy city, and the Abbey, looming up against the moon-lit sky, seemed like some great giant keeping watch over the clustering roofs below. The well-known chimes rang out into the night and the clock struck ten.

“I must go back,” said Derrick, quietly. “My father will want to get to bed.”

I couldn’t say a word; we turned, passed Beckford’s house once more, walked briskly down the hill, and reached the Gay Street lodging-house. I remember the stifling heat of the room as we entered it, and its contrast to the cool, dark, winter’s night outside. I can vividly recall, too, the old Major’s face as he looked up with a sarcastic remark, but with a shade of anxiety in his bloodshot eyes. He was leaning back in a green-cushioned chair, and his ghastly yellow complexion seemed to me more noticeable than usual—his scanty grey hair and whiskers, the lines of pain so plainly visible in his face, impressed me curiously. I think I had never before realised what a wreck of a man he was—how utterly dependent on others.

Lawrence, who, to do him justice, had a good deal of tact, and who, I believe, cared for his brother as much as he was capable of caring for any one but himself, repeated a good story with which he had been enlivening the Major, and I did what I could to keep up the talk. Derrick meanwhile put away the chessmen, and lighted the Major’s candle. He even managed to force up a laugh at Lawrence’s story, and, as he helped his father out of the room, I think I was the only one who noticed the look of tired endurance in his eyes.