I nodded assent and opened the sitting-room door--a strong smell of brandy instantly became apparent; the Major sat in the green velvet chair, which had been wheeled close to the hearth. He was drunk.
Derrick gave an ejaculation of utter hopelessness.
"This will undo all the good of Ben Rhydding!" he said. "How on earth has he managed to get it?"
The Major, however, was not so far gone as he looked; he caught up the remark and turned towards us with a hideous laugh.
"Ah, yes," he said, "that's the question. But the old man has still some brains, you see. I'll be even with you yet, Derrick. You needn't think you're to have it all your own way. It's my turn now.
You've deprived me all this time of the only thing I care for in life, and now I turn the tables on you. Tit for tat. Oh! yes, I've turned your d--d scribblings to a useful purpose, so you needn't complain!"
All this had been shouted out at the top of his voice and freely interlarded with expressions which I will not repeat; at the end he broke again into a laugh, and with a look, half idiotic, half devilish, pointed towards the grate.
"Good Heavens!" I said, "what have you done?"
By the side of the chair I saw a piece of brown paper, and, catching it up, read the address--"Messrs. Davison, Paternoster Row"; in the fireplace was a huge charred mass. Derrick caught his breath; he stooped down and snatched from the fender a fragment of paper slightly burned, but still not charred beyond recognition like the rest. The writing was quite legible--it was his own writing--the description of the Royalists' attack and Paul Wharncliffe's defence of the bridge. I looked from the half-burnt scrap of paper to the side table where, only the previous night, we had placed the novel, and then, realising as far as any but an author could realise the frightful thing that had happened, I looked in Derrick's face. Its white fury appalled me. What he had borne hitherto from the Major, God only knows, but this was the last drop in the cup. Daily insults, ceaseless provocation, even the humiliations of personal violence he had borne with superhuman patience; but this last injury, this wantonly cruel outrage, this deliberate destruction of an amount of thought, and labour, and suffering which only the writer himself could fully estimate--this was intolerable.
What might have happened had the Major been sober and in the possession of ordinary physical strength I hardly care to think. As it was, his weakness protected him. Derrick's wrath was speechless; with one look of loathing and contempt at the drunken man, he strode out of the room, caught up his hat, and hurried from the house.
The Major sat chuckling to himself for a minute or two, but soon he grew drowsy, and before long was snoring like a grampus. The old landlady brought in lunch, saw the state of things pretty quickly, shook her head and commiserated Derrick. Then, when she had left the room, seeing no prospect that either of my companions would be in a fit state for lunch, I made a solitary meal, and had just finished when a cab stopped at the door and out sprang Derrick. I went into the passage to meet him.
"The Major is asleep," I remarked.
He took no more notice than if I had spoken of the cat.
"I'm going to London," he said, making for the stairs. "Can you get your bag ready? There's a train at 2.5."
Somehow the suddenness and the self-control with which he made this announcement carried me back to the hotel at Southampton, where, after listening to the account of the ship's doctor, he had announced his intention of living with his father. For more than two years he had borne this awful life; he had lost pretty nearly all that there was to be lost and he had gained the Major's vindictive hatred. Now, half maddened by pain, and having, as he thought, so hopelessly failed, he saw nothing for it but to go--and that at once.
