Derrick Vaughan - Novelist | Page 6

"And how many, I
wonder, get beyond?"
"Few enough," I replied moodily. Then, remembering my role,--"But
Derrick will get through; he has a thousand things to help him which
others have not,--you, for instance. And then I fancy he has a sort of
insight which most of us are without."
"Possibly," she said. "As for me, it is little that I can do for him.
Perhaps you are right, and it is true that once in a life at any rate we all
have to go into the wilderness alone."
That was the last summer I ever saw Derrick's mother; she took a chill
the following Christmas and died after a few days' illness. But I have
always thought her death helped Derrick in a way that her life might
have failed to do. For although he never, I fancy, quite recovered from
the blow, and to this day cannot speak of her without tears in his eyes,
yet when he came back to Oxford he seemed to have found the answer
to the riddle, and though older, sadder and graver than before, had quite
lost the restless dissatisfaction that for some time had clouded his life.
In a few months, moreover, I noticed a fresh sign that he was out of the
wood. Coming into his rooms one day I found him sitting in the
cushioned window-seat, reading over and correcting some sheets of
blue foolscap.
"At it again?" I asked.

He nodded.
"I mean to finish the first volume here. For the rest I must be in
London."
"Why?" I asked, a little curious as to this unknown art of novel-
making.
"Because," he replied, "one must be in the heart of things to understand
how Lynwood was affected by them."
"Lynwood! I believe you are always thinking of him!" (Lynwood was
the hero of his novel.)
"Well, so I am nearly--so I must be, if the book is to be any good."
"Read me what you have written," I said, throwing myself back in a
rickety but tolerably comfortable arm-chair which Derrick had
inherited with the rooms.
He hesitated a moment, being always very diffident about his own
work; but presently, having provided me with a cigar and made a good
deal of unnecessary work in arranging the sheets of the manuscript, he
began to read aloud, rather nervously, the opening chapters of the book
now so well known under the title of 'Lynwood's Heritage.'
I had heard nothing of his for the last four years, and was amazed at the
gigantic stride he had made in the interval. For, spite of a certain
crudeness, it seemed to me a most powerful story; it rushed straight to
the point with no wavering, no beating about the bush; it flung itself
into the problems of the day with a sort of sublime audacity; it took
hold of one; it whirled one along with its own inherent force, and drew
forth both laughter and tears, for Derrick's power of pathos had always
been his strongest point.
All at once he stopped reading.
"Go on!" I cried impatiently.

"That is all," he said, gathering the sheets together.
"You stopped in the middle of a sentence!" I cried in exasperation.
"Yes," he said quietly, "for six months."
"You provoking fellow! why, I wonder?"
"Because I didn't know the end."
"Good heavens! And do you know it now?"
He looked me full in the face, and there was an expression in his eyes
which puzzled me.
"I believe I do," he said; and, getting up, he crossed the room, put the
manuscript away in a drawer, and returning, sat down in the
window-seat again, looking out on the narrow, paved street below, and
at the grey buildings opposite.
I knew very well that he would never ask me what I thought of the
story--that was not his way.
"Derrick!" I exclaimed, watching his impassive face, "I believe after all
you are a genius."
I hardly know why I said "after all," but till that moment it had never
struck me that Derrick was particularly gifted. He had so far got
through his Oxford career creditably, but then he had worked hard; his
talents were not of a showy order. I had never expected that he would
set the Thames on fire. Even now it seemed to me that he was too
dreamy, too quiet, too devoid of the pushing faculty to succeed in the
world.
My remark made him laugh incredulously.
"Define a genius," he said.
For answer I pulled down his beloved Imperial Dictionary and read him

the following quotation from De Quincey: 'Genius is that mode of
intellectual power which moves in alliance with the genial nature, i.e.,
with the capacities of pleasure and pain; whereas talent has no vestige
of such an