Meantime, besides re-writing ‘At Strife,’ he was accumulating material for his next book and working to very good purpose. Not a minute of his day was idle; he read much, saw various phases of life hitherto unknown to him, studied, observed, gained experience, and contrived, I believe, to think very little and very guardedly of Freda.
But, on Christmas Eve, I noticed a change in him--and that very night he spoke to me. For such an impressionable fellow, he had really extraordinary tenacity, and, spite of the course of Herbert Spencer that I had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things which to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well the arguments we used to have on the vexed question of ‘Free-will,’ and being myself more or less of a fatalist, it annoyed me that I never could in the very slightest degree shake his convictions on that point. Moreover, when I plagued him too much with Herbert Spencer, he had a way of retaliating, and would foist upon me his favourite authors. He was never a worshipper of any one writer, but always had at least a dozen prophets in whose praise he was enthusiastic.
Well, on this Christmas Eve, we had been to see dear old Ravenscroft and his grand-daughter, and we were walking back through the quiet precincts of the Temple, when he said abruptly:
“I have decided to go back to Bath to-morrow.”
“Have you had a worse account?” I asked, much startled at this sudden announcement.
“No,” he replied, “but the one I had a week ago was far from good if you remember, and I have a feeling that I ought to be there.”
At that moment we emerged into the confusion of Fleet Street; but when we had crossed the road I began to remonstrate with him, and argued the folly of the idea all the way down Chancery Lane.
However, there was no shaking his purpose; Christmas and its associations had made his life in town no longer possible for him.
“I must at any rate try it again and see how it works,” he said.
And all I could do was to persuade him to leave the bulk of his possessions in London, “in case,” as he remarked, “the Major would not have him.”
So the next day I was left to myself again with nothing to remind me of Derrick’s stay but his pictures which still hung on the wall of our sitting-room. I made him promise to write a full, true, and particular account of his return, a bona-fide old-fashioned letter, not the half-dozen lines of these degenerate days; and about a week later I received the following budget: