He modified his pace a little. "Why is it," he exclaimed, "that every other profession can be taken seriously, but that a novelist's work is supposed to be mere play? Good God! don't we suffer enough?
Have we not hard brain work and drudgery of desk work and tedious gathering of statistics and troublesome search into details? Have we not an appalling weight of responsibility on us?--and are we not at the mercy of a thousand capricious chances?"
"Come now," I exclaimed, "you know that you are never so happy as when you are writing."
"Of course," he replied; "but that doesn't make me resent such an attack the less. Besides, you don't know what it is to have to write in such an atmosphere as ours; it's like a weight on one's pen. This life here is not life at all--it's a daily death, and it's killing the book too; the last chapters are wretched--I'm utterly dissatisfied with them."
"As for that," I said calmly, "you are no judge at all. You can never tell the worth of your own work; the last bit is splendid."
"I could have done it better," he groaned. "But there is always a ghastly depression dragging one back here--and then the time is so short; just as one gets into the swing of it the breakfast bell rings, and then comes--" He broke off.
I could well supply the end of the sentence, however, for I knew that then came the slow torture of a tete-a-tete day with the Major, stinging sarcasms, humiliating scoldings, vexations and difficulties innumerable.
I drew him to the left, having no mind to go to the top of the hill.
We slackened our pace again and walked to and fro along the broad level pavement of Lansdowne Crescent. We had it entirely to ourselves--not another creature was in sight.
"I could bear it all," he burst forth, "if only there was a chance of seeing Freda. Oh, you are better off than I am--at least, you know the worst. Your hope is killed, but mine lives on a tortured, starved life! Would to God I had never seen her!"
Certainly before that night I had never quite realised the irrevocableness of poor Derrick's passion. I had half hoped that time and separation would gradually efface Freda Merrifield from his memory; and I listened with a dire foreboding to the flood of wretchedness which he poured forth as we paced up and down, thinking now and then how little people guessed at the tremendous powers hidden under his usually quiet exterior.
At length he paused, but his last heart-broken words seemed to vibrate in the air and to force me to speak some kind of comfort.
"Derrick," I said, "come back with me to London--give up this miserable life."
I felt him start a little; evidently no thought of yielding had come to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past, surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I looked at my companion's pale, tortured face, and thought of the life he had elected to lead in the hope of saving one whom duty bound him to honour. After all, which life was the most worth living--which was the most to be admired?
We walked on; down below us and up on the farther hill we could see the lights of Bath; the place so beautiful by day looked now like a fairy city, and the Abbey, looming up against the moon-lit sky, seemed like some great giant keeping watch over the clustering roofs below. The well-known chimes rang out into the night and the clock struck ten.
"I must go back," said Derrick, quietly. "My father will want to get to bed."
I couldn't say a word; we turned, passed Beckford's house once more, walked briskly down the hill, and reached the Gay Street lodging-house. I remember the stifling heat of the room as we entered it, and its contrast to the cool, dark, winter's night outside. I can vividly recall, too, the old Major's face as he looked up with a sarcastic remark, but with a shade of anxiety in his bloodshot eyes.
He was leaning back in a green-cushioned chair, and his ghastly yellow complexion seemed to me more noticeable than usual--his scanty grey hair and whiskers, the lines of pain so plainly visible in his face, impressed me curiously. I think I had never before realised what a wreck of a man he was--how utterly dependent on others.
Lawrence, who, to do him justice, had a good deal of tact, and who, I believe, cared for his brother as much as he was capable of caring for any one but himself, repeated a good story with which he had been enlivening the Major, and I did what I could to keep up the talk. Derrick meanwhile put away the chessmen, and lighted the Major's candle. He even managed to force up a laugh at Lawrence's story, and, as he helped his father out of the room, I think I was the only one who noticed the look of tired endurance in his eyes.
