“I don’t know why he should want two kinds of credit,” said Theresa. “Not Richard.”
“That is beautiful of you towards him,” said Emily. “Why shouldn’t he want two kinds of credit? You wouldn’t ask that if you lived with Nicholas. Living with Peter must be so ennobling. There are Lydia and Peter coming up the road. It is nice to see Peter in innocent company again. I can’t meet them, Theresa. I am going home to write it all in my diary. I keep a diary, because I think I have that kind of personality. I must put in my will that it is to be destroyed at my death. For fear somebody should read it, and publish it, and pretend they had written it. Unless I leave it to Nicholas, so that he can have written a book after all. I hope he will outlive me. I would commit suicide, except that now I believe in religion, and religion does not allow that. And I am not single for the sake of Nicholas. I read in a book that no woman could love a man she did not make sacrifices for. But there is so much falseness about books. Too much, I think.”
“Emily is worth a thousand Lydias,” said Theresa, as her husband entered the study alone.
“Oh, you are too wise to talk of some people in terms of others, my dear. Emily is rare, of course.”
“Oh, you see that, do you, Peter?”
“Yes, I see that, my dear. I see.”
Theresa looked at her husband, and did not speak.
Emily went back to her brother, and found him sitting by his fire, dreamy and unoccupied.
“Well, darling,” she said. “So you have given up your book! Have you done away with it?”
“Yes, I have destroyed it,” said Herrick, smiling at her. “Destroyed it, my Emily. I don’t like books, and that is the truth. I am quite put off them. Do you know, dear old Bumpus made a confession to Masson and me? He confessed that he had remembered his old book, called it up to his mind again, the one that was supposed to be in his friend’s grave, that is actually there; and made out that it was this new one. This one he was to have read tonight. The one that was destroyed in old Crabbe’s room. And to own that up before Masson and Fletcher! I couldn’t have done it, Emily. And I don’t think it is incumbent upon a man to keep nothing of his secret doings to himself.”
“Neither do I,” said Emily. “We should be afraid of having anybody talk to us. And we certainly couldn’t talk to anybody. I don’t mean it wasn’t wonderful of Dickie. But what he had done wasn’t enough to be a tax on anybody. For his very worst.”
“No,” said Herrick. “There was no great harm in it. But I confess I don’t readily follow a stretch of doubleness like that. A sudden temptation and yielding to it! That I understand. I think the highest type of person might be prone to it.”
“Everyone can understand that,” said Emily. “And the lowest type of person would be even more prone to it. But everything else just follows from it. That does want a little more cleverness to understand, or else experience. But I am sure you understand it, darling. Did William and Peter say anything?”
“They neither of them said a word,” said Herrick. “But they will not in the future. It is all over for Bumpus. Well, I don’t like books, to bring old Bumpus to that. Dear old Bumpus! It was a fine thing of him, when he was a young man, and a fine thing of him now to tell us of it. He told us to tell you, Emily. He remembered your making the suggestion that he should rewrite the book. It was not easy to him, I think, to have you told. I think he found me the easiest. And I confess I like to think that.”
“So should I,” said Emily. “You were rather unkind about me. I suppose I have proved that I should have done the same in Dickie’s place. I don’t know why he should find me difficult.”
“Dear old Bumpus!” said Herrick. “My dear old gifted, erring friend! Well, well, we all err. And this kind of thing, this literary ambition, is the thing that most of all leads men to error, I think. Do you know, Emily, I think that the best achievement of a man, the highest and largest thing, is to feel tolerance and generous love for a man who can do what is denied to himself to do. I do indeed. As I feel for Bumpus tonight. As I feel for my friend. I do indeed feel it, Emily.”
“Nicholas, you really are a genius,” said Emily.
VII
“Miss Basden, just come and put a stop to all this, will you? Here is Mother, getting all into a state, with nobody thought of coming! I wish this dinner-party was at the bottom of the sea. Just see that she gets a breathing space, Miss Basden, will you?”
“Yes, I will, Mr. Merry. I have got fairly tidy myself betimes, on purpose to prevent such naughtiness,” said Miss Basden, who wore a remote expression, for which her toilet was responsible.
“Yes, Miss Basden, how we depend on you! And what a thing, all of this! All this fuss and change, and nobody coming who can do any good to the school! All this pretending that we do not
