Derrick Vaughan - Novelist | Page 9

"We will have the same party on shore, and see if we can't
enjoy ourselves almost as well," he said in his hearty way; "the novel
will go all the better for it, eh, Vaughan?"
Derrick brightened visibly at the suggestion. I heard him talking to
Freda all the time that Sir John stood laughing and joking as to the
comparative pleasures of yachting and shooting.
"You will be there too?" Derrick asked.
"I can't tell," said Freda, and there was a shade of sadness in her tone.
Her voice was deeper than most women's voices--a rich contralto with
something striking and individual about it. I could hear her quite
plainly; but Derrick spoke less distinctly--he always had a bad trick of
mumbling.
"You see I am the youngest," she said, "and I am not really 'out.'
Perhaps my mother will wish one of the elder ones to go; but I half
think they are already engaged for September, so after all I may have a
chance."
Inaudible remark from my friend.

"Yes, I came here because my sisters did not care to leave London till
the end of the season," replied the clear contralto. "It has been a perfect
cruise. I shall remember it all my life."
After that, nothing more was audible; but I imagine Derrick must have
hazarded a more personal question, and that Freda had admitted that it
was not only the actual sailing she should remember. At any rate her
face when I caught sight of it again made me think of the girl described
in the 'Biglow Papers':
"''Twas kin' o' kingdom come to look On sech a blessed creatur. A
dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter.'"
So the train went off, and Derrick and I were left to idle about
Southampton and kill time as best we might. Derrick seemed to walk
the streets in a sort of dream--he was perfectly well aware that he had
met his fate, and at that time no thought of difficulties in the way had
arisen either in his mind or in my own. We were both of us young and
inexperienced; we were both of us in love, and we had the usual lover's
notion that everything in heaven and earth is prepared to favour the
course of his particular passion.
I remember that we soon found the town intolerable, and, crossing by
the ferry, walked over to Netley Abbey, and lay down idly in the shade
of the old grey walls. Not a breath of wind stirred the great masses of
ivy which were wreathed about the ruined church, and the place looked
so lovely in its decay, that we felt disposed to judge the dissolute
monks very leniently for having behaved so badly that their church and
monastery had to be opened to the four winds of heaven. After all,
when is a church so beautiful as when it has the green grass for its floor
and the sky for its roof?
I could show you the very spot near the East window where Derrick
told me the whole truth, and where we talked over Freda's perfections
and the probability of frequent meetings in London. He had listened so
often and so patiently to my affairs, that it seemed an odd reversal to
have to play the confidant; and if now and then my thoughts wandered
off to the coming month at Mondisfield, and pictured violet eyes while

he talked of grey, it was not from any lack of sympathy with my friend.
Derrick was not of a self-tormenting nature, and though I knew he was
amazed at the thought that such a girl as Freda could possibly care for
him, yet he believed most implicitly that this wonderful thing had come
to pass; and, remembering her face as we had last seen it, and the look
in her eyes at Tresco, I, too, had not a shadow of a doubt that she really
loved him. She was not the least bit of a flirt, and society had not had a
chance yet of moulding her into the ordinary girl of the nineteenth
century.
Perhaps it was the sudden and unexpected change of the next day that
makes me remember Derrick's face so distinctly as he lay back on the
smooth turf that afternoon in Netley Abbey. As it looked then, full of
youth and hope, full of that dream of cloudless love, I never saw it
again.
Chapter III.
"Religion in him never died, but became a habit--a habit of enduring
hardness, and cleaving to the steadfast performance of duty in the face
of the strongest allurements to the pleasanter and easier course." Life of
Charles Lamb, by A. Ainger.
Derrick was in good spirits the next day. He talked much of