“No, no, no. What reason is there in this?” said Mr. Fletcher. “Why should we be baulked of the present books? You can read yours, surely, Richard, and then go on and finish it, before you get on to the other. And we must hear yours, Herrick; if not now, at some time very soon. Whatever has come to both of you?”
“I couldn’t read this one today,” said Bumpus. “William has put me off it, thrown me right back from it. I couldn’t get the other out of my head. I must go straight on to it. I am on it at this moment, in my mind. I shan’t be on this one again until the other is done. And it may have to be remodelled then, in the light of the old one. A man can’t do his own books entirely apart. I may have got some of the one into the other. The old one was so much a part of myself. But I dare say it isn’t so much good, really. I took things hard when I was young. Well, well, let us leave it all alone. How patient you all are! I must be getting away.”
“What insight we are getting into the minds of writers!” said Emily. “No wonder they are not much good at things that can’t so well be held up. Dickie and Nicholas have both proved that they are authors at heart. But what they are in any other way, we are not to know yet. Nicholas, you must work some more at your book, to make up for not having an extra one from your youth. It is such a pity you haven’t one. It makes you so inferior to Dickie now, and it left you so much time then for other things.”
“Oh, I think I shall leave my books to chance, and interest myself in Richard’s,” said Herrick.
“But are we not to have the books?” said Masson.
“You are not the one to complain,” said Emily. “You have had one of Dickie’s books to yourself, and no one else has had anything at all. And don’t be out of sympathy with the erraticisms of genius, because no one should be too far removed from it.”
“We are carrying it off very shamelessly,” said Bumpus.
“Are you?” said Emily. “That always seems to me the one thing authors are not, shameless. I think it would be better and safer for you to go, for fear we might bring it home to you. Peter and William were trying.”
“Two books in the hand, and now one in the bush,” said Theresa.
“Theresa, you are really the only genius here,” said Emily. “Genius is spontaneous, and the genius of Dickie and Nicholas doesn’t seem to be that. You had better go home, Nicholas dear, and leave Dickie and William on your way. You want a rest, and you can’t get that with greatness about. Dickie is great intellectually, and William morally. Moral greatness is the best, though I have always wondered if that was true. And I am going to talk to Theresa. Peter will walk with all of you, won’t you, Peter?”
“Isn’t it your birthday today, dear?” said Theresa, as the two women were left alone.
“Yes, so it is,” said Emily. “That is why I am out of spirits. I am fifty-one; and I don’t like getting to have so little life left. And yet I don’t much like living, which is absurd, and makes it impossible for things to be planned for me; because what can be done?”
“You don’t like living, dear?” said Theresa.
“No,” said Emily. “Of course I don’t like it. This has been the worst birthday of all the fifty.”
“What is it? What is it all?” said Theresa. “I see something, and yet I don’t know quite what to see.”
“Oh, Theresa,” said Emily. “Did you see? Did you see? Nobody else saw? The men didn’t see? I always thought I had a man’s mind, but I must have a woman’s instinct after all. At any other time I should be ashamed of that.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, dear.”
“No, but Nicholas has not much,” said Emily. “Why shouldn’t he have a book, when Mr. Crabbe was dead and didn’t want it? Dickie found that a book wasn’t any good to a dead friend. After thirty years of thinking about it, he found that. And what was Dickie doing, leaving a book about, when Nicholas wanted one so much, and couldn’t make one for himself? And Dickie knew he couldn’t. He always unkindly never deceived Nicholas about it.”
“Mr. Crabbe?” said Theresa. “Mr. Crabbe? I only half understand yet. Was the book Mr. Crabbe’s? I thought it was Richard who left the book in the room? Oh, your brother thought the book was Mr. Crabbe’s? Oh, I see now. I thought he did not guess whose it was. I see now. I see.”
“Yes, that is it, I am sure,” said Emily. “But do you see the other thing? Did you see about Dickie? That book that he left in the room, that he had to write again, was the same as his early book, that was buried with his friend! I believe it was. I am certain it was. Did you feel that, when William and he were talking? He couldn’t begin his book, because William had read it. Of course I am not sure. But then I am. That is why Dickie is putting it away for the time. It is a good thing the
