“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.