Never can I forget the cruelty and malevolence with which his bloodshot eyes rested on Derrick, or the patience with which the dear old fellow bore his father's scathing sarcasms. It was while I was sitting by the bed that the landlady entered with a telegram, which she put into Derrick's hand.
"From Lawrence!" said the dying man triumphantly, "to say by what train we may expect him. Well?" as Derrick still read the message to himself, "can't you speak, you d--d idiot? Have you lost your d--d tongue? What does he say?"
"I am afraid he cannot be here just yet," said Derrick, trying to tone down the curt message; "it seems he cannot get leave."
"Not get leave to see his dying father? What confounded nonsense.
Give me the thing here"; and he snatched the telegram from Derrick and read it in a quavering, hoarse voice:
"Impossible to get away. Am hopelessly tied here. Love to my father. Greatly regret to hear such bad news of him."
I think that message made the old man realise the worth of Lawrence's often expressed affection for him. Clearly it was a great blow to him. He threw down the paper without a word and closed his eyes. For half an hour he lay like that, and we did not disturb him. At last he looked up; his voice was fainter and his manner more gentle.
"Derrick," he said, "I believe I've done you an injustice; it is you who cared for me, not Lawrence, and I've struck your name out of my will--have left all to him. After all, though you are one of those confounded novelists, you've done what you could for me. Let some one fetch a solicitor--I'll alter it--I'll alter it!"
I instantly hurried out to fetch a lawyer, but it was Saturday afternoon, the offices were closed, and some time passed before I had caught my man. I told him as we hastened back some of the facts of the case, and he brought his writing materials into the sick room and took down from the Major's own lips the words which would have the effect of dividing the old man's possessions between his two sons. Dr. Mackrill was now present; he stood on one side of the bed, his fingers on the dying man's pulse. On the other side stood Derrick, a degree paler and graver than usual, but revealing little of his real feelings.
"Word it as briefly as you can," said the doctor.
And the lawyer scribbled away as though for his life, while the rest of us waited in a wretched hushed state of tension. In the room itself there was no sound save the scratching of the pen and the laboured breathing of the old man; but in the next house we could hear someone playing a waltz. Somehow it did not seem to me incongruous, for it was 'Sweethearts,' and that had been the favourite waltz of Ben Rhydding, so that I always connected it with Derrick and his trouble, and now the words rang in my ears:
"Oh, love for a year, a week, a day, But alas! for the love that loves alway."
If it had not been for the Major's return from India, I firmly believed that Derrick and Freda would by this time have been betrothed. Derrick had taken a line which necessarily divided them, had done what he saw to be his duty; yet what were the results? He had lost Freda, he had lost his book, he had damaged his chance of success as a writer, he had been struck out of his father's will, and he had suffered unspeakably. Had anything whatever been gained?
The Major was dying unrepentant to all appearance, as hard and cynical an old worldling as I ever saw. The only spark of grace he showed was that tardy endeavour to make a fresh will. What good had it all been? What good?
I could not answer the question then, could only cry out in a sort of indignation, "What profit is there in his blood?" But looking at it now, I have a sort of perception that the very lack of apparent profitableness was part of Derrick's training, while if, as I now incline to think, there is a hereafter where the training begun here is continued, the old Major in the hell he most richly deserved would have the remembrance of his son's patience and constancy and devotion to serve as a guiding light in the outer darkness.
The lawyer no longer wrote at railroad speed; he pushed back his chair, brought the will to the bed, and placed the pen in the trembling yellow hand of the invalid.
"You must sign your name here," he said, pointing with his finger; and the Major raised himself a little, and brought the pen quaveringly down towards the paper. With a sort of fascination I watched the finely-pointed steel nib; it trembled for an instant or two, then the pen dropped from the convulsed fingers, and with a cry of intolerable anguish the Major fell back.
For some minutes there was a painful struggle; presently we caught a word or two between the groans of the dying man.
"Too late!" he gasped, "too late!" And then a dreadful vision of horrors seemed to rise before him, and with a terror that I can never forget he turned to his son and clutched fast hold of his hands: "Derrick!" he shrieked.
Derrick could not speak, but he bent low over the bed as though to screen the dying eyes from those horrible visions, and with an odd sort of thrill I saw him embrace his father.
When he raised his head the terror had died out of the Major's face; all was over.
