Derrick Vaughan - Novelist | Page 6

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 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