Derrick Vaughan - Novelist | Page 9

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 Major Vaughan, wondered whether the voyage home had restored his health, discussed the probable length of his leave, and speculated as to the nature of his illness; the telegram had of course given no details.
"There has not been even a photograph for the last five years," he remarked, as we walked down to the quay together. "Yet I think I should know him anywhere, if it is only by his height. He used to look so well on horseback. I remember as a child seeing him in a sham fight charging up Caesar's Camp."
"How old were you when he went out?"
"Oh, quite a small boy," replied Derrick. "It was just before I first stayed with you. However, he has had a regular succession of photographs sent out to him, and will know me easily enough."
Poor Derrick! I can't think of that day even now without a kind of mental shiver. We watched the great steamer as it glided up to the quay, and Derrick scanned the crowded deck with