Derrick Vaughan - Novelist | Page 7

alliance, and is perfectly independent of all human
sensibilities.'
"Let me think! You can certainly enjoy things a hundred times more
than I can--and as for suffering, why you were always a great hand at
that. Now listen to the great Dr. Johnson and see if the cap fits, 'The
true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined
in some particular direction.'
"'Large general powers'!--yes, I believe after all you have them with,
alas, poor Derrick! one notable exception--the mathematical faculty.
You were always bad at figures. We will stick to De Quincey's
definition, and for heaven's sake, my dear fellow, do get Lynwood out
of that awful plight! No wonder you were depressed when you lived all
this age with such a sentence unfinished!"
"For the matter of that," said Derrick, "he can't get out till the end of the
book; but I can begin to go on with him now."
"And when you leave Oxford?"
"Then I mean to settle down in London--to write leisurely--and
possibly to read for the Bar."
"We might be together," I suggested. And Derrick took to this idea,
being a man who detested solitude and crowds about equally. Since his
mother's death he had been very much alone in the world. To Lawrence
he was always loyal, but the two had nothing in common, and though
fond of his sister he could not get on at all with the manufacturer, his
brother-in-law. But this prospect of life together in London pleased him
amazingly; he began to recover his spirits to a great extent and to look
much more like himself.
It must have been just as he had taken his degree that he received a
telegram to announce that Major Vaughan had been invalided home,

and would arrive at Southampton in three weeks' time. Derrick knew
very little of his father, but apparently Mrs. Vaughan had done her best
to keep up a sort of memory of his childish days at Aldershot, and in
these the part that his father played was always pleasant. So he looked
forward to the meeting not a little, while I, from the first, had my
doubts as to the felicity it was likely to bring him.
However, it was ordained that before the Major's ship arrived, his son's
whole life should change. Even Lynwood was thrust into the
background. As for me, I was nowhere. For Derrick, the quiet, the
self-contained, had fallen passionately in love with a certain Freda
Merrifield.
Chapter II.
'Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning Pale and depart in a
passion of tears? Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning: Love
once: e'en love's disappointment endears; A moment's success pays the
failure of years.' R. Browning.
The wonder would have been if he had not fallen in love with her, for a
more fascinating girl I never saw. She had only just returned from
school at Compiegne, and was not yet out; her charming freshness was
unsullied; she had all the simplicity and straightforwardness of unspoilt,
unsophisticated girlhood. I well remember our first sight of her. We
had been invited for a fortnight's yachting by Calverley of Exeter. His
father, Sir John Calverley, had a sailing yacht, and some guests having
disappointed him at the last minute, he gave his son carte blanche as to
who he should bring to fill the vacant berths.
So we three travelled down to Southampton together one hot summer
day, and were rowed out to the Aurora, an uncommonly neat little
schooner which lay in that over-rated and frequently odoriferous
roadstead, Southampton Water. However, I admit that on that
evening--the tide being high--the place looked remarkably pretty; the
level rays of the setting sun turned the water to gold; a soft luminous
haze hung over the town and the shipping, and by a stretch of

imagination one might have thought the view almost Venetian.
Derrick's perfect content was only marred by his shyness. I knew that
he dreaded reaching the Aurora; and sure enough, as we stepped on to
the exquisitely white deck and caught sight of the little group of guests,
I saw him retreat into his crab-shell of silent reserve. Sir John, who
made a very pleasant host, introduced us to the other visitors--Lord
Probyn and his wife and their niece, Miss Freda Merrifield. Lady
Probyn was Sir John's sister, and also the sister of Miss Merrifield's
mother; so that it was almost a family party, and by no means a
formidable gathering. Lady Probyn played the part of hostess and
chaperoned her pretty niece; but she was not in the least like the aunt of
fiction--on the contrary, she was comparatively young in years and
almost comically young in mind; her niece was devoted to her, and the
moment I