Derrick Vaughan - Novelist | Page 5

stuck between the banisters in the gallery; come
quick, mother, come quick!"
She ran up the little winding staircase, and there, sure enough, in the

musician's gallery, was poor Derrick, his manuscript and pen on the
floor and his head in durance vile.
"You silly boy!" said my mother, a little frightened when she found that
to get the head back was no easy matter, "What made you put it
through?"
"You look like King Charles at Carisbrooke," I cried, forgetting how
much Derrick would resent the speech.
And being released at that moment he took me by the shoulders and
gave me an angry shake or two, as he said vehemently, "I'm not like
King Charles! King Charles was a liar."
I saw my mother smile a little as she separated us.
"Come, boys, don't quarrel," she said. "And Derrick will tell me the
truth, for indeed I am curious to know why he thrust his head in such a
place."
"I wanted to make sure," said Derrick, "whether Paul Wharncliffe could
see Lady Lettice, when she took the falcon on her wrist below in the
passage. I mustn't say he saw her if it's impossible, you know. Authors
have to be quite true in little things, and I mean to be an author."
"But," said my mother, laughing at the great earnestness of the hazel
eyes, "could not your hero look over the top of the rail?"
"Well, yes," said Derrick. "He would have done that, but you see it's so
dreadfully high and I couldn't get up. But I tell you what, Mrs.
Wharncliffe, if it wouldn't be giving you a great deal of trouble--I'm
sorry you were troubled to get my head back again--but if you would
just look over, since you are so tall, and I'll run down and act Lady
Lettice."
"Why couldn't Paul go downstairs and look at the lady in comfort?"
asked my mother.

Derrick mused a little.
"He might look at her through a crack in the door at the foot of the
stairs, perhaps, but that would seem mean, somehow. It would be a pity,
too, not to use the gallery; galleries are uncommon, you see, and you
can get cracked doors anywhere. And, you know, he was obliged to
look at her when she couldn't see him, because their fathers were on
different sides in the war, and dreadful enemies."
When school-days came, matters went on much in the same way; there
was always an abominably scribbled tale stowed away in Derrick's desk,
and he worked infinitely harder than I did, because there was always
before him this determination to be an author and to prepare himself for
the life. But he wrote merely from love of it, and with no idea of
publication until the beginning of our last year at Oxford, when, having
reached the ripe age of one-and-twenty, he determined to delay no
longer, but to plunge boldly into his first novel.
He was seldom able to get more than six or eight hours a week for it,
because he was reading rather hard, so that the novel progressed but
slowly. Finally, to my astonishment, it came to a dead stand- still.
I have never made out exactly what was wrong with Derrick then,
though I know that he passed through a terrible time of doubt and
despair. I spent part of the Long with him down at Ventnor, where his
mother had been ordered for her health. She was devoted to Derrick,
and as far as I can understand, he was her chief comfort in life. Major
Vaughan, the husband, had been out in India for years; the only
daughter was married to a rich manufacturer at Birmingham, who had a
constitutional dislike to mothers-in-law, and as far as possible
eschewed their company; while Lawrence, Derrick's twin brother, was
for ever getting into scrapes, and was into the bargain the most
unblushingly selfish fellow I ever had the pleasure of meeting.
"Sydney," said Mrs. Vaughan to me one afternoon when we were in the
garden, "Derrick seems to me unlike himself, there is a division
between us which I never felt before. Can you tell me what is troubling
him?"

She was not at all a good-looking woman, but she had a very sweet,
wistful face, and I never looked at her sad eyes without feeling ready to
go through fire and water for her. I tried now to make light of Derrick's
depression.
"He is only going through what we all of us go through," I said,
assuming a cheerful tone. "He has suddenly discovered that life is a
great riddle, and that the things he has accepted in blind faith are, after
all, not so sure."
She sighed.
"Do all go through it?" she said thoughtfully.