“I don’t know that I could either,” said Mr. Burgess.
“Oh well, Mr. Burgess, it wouldn’t be too much on you,” said Mr. Merry. “We should see to that. It would be all fitting in together for you, you know.”
Mr. Burgess looked towards the window.
“I could always do with what had to be done with,” said Miss Basden. “But the boys are quite mistaken, if they think that is any indication that they are needed by anyone. It is they who do the needing, I think.”
“Yes, Miss Basden,” said Mr. Merry, nodding his head. “It is indeed. They who do the needing! I should think so. I should be glad to be told of something they don’t need. Because I don’t know of anything, and that is the truth. I have just been hearing what is good enough for them. And I don’t see anything about them that seems to call for it. I don’t, indeed.”
II
“This is a good room to come back to,” said Herrick. “That hall and the woman, and poor Merry shuffling up to do his duty! It made me shiver.”
“The sight of duty does make one shiver,” said Miss Herrick. “The actual doing of it would kill one, I think.”
Emily Herrick was a tall, dark woman of fifty, half-sister to Herrick, with a face that somehow recalled an attractive idol’s, iron-grey hair wound in plaits about her head, and a quick, deep voice.
“Merry knows what the duty is,” said Herrick. “For my life, I don’t.”
“One couldn’t know what that duty was,” said Miss Herrick. “It could only be felt, and perhaps you have too good a brain to do things in that way.”
“Let us leave it at that,” said Herrick.
“To think that you made the school!” said Emily. “For it was you who made it. But of course you would do the creative part.”
“Yes, yes. And I could go on with it,” said Herrick.
“Of course you could,” said Emily. “Wouldn’t it be dreadful if you had to? Or if you did? It is almost dreadful that you could.”
“Yes, yes, it is,” said Herrick. “I am an ordinary man.”
“I didn’t mean that, darling,” said Emily. “They say that teachers are born, not made. I know that schoolmasters are. And it was for a schoolmaster that we wanted Mr. Merry.”
“It is for a schoolmaster we have him, anyhow,” said Herrick, sitting down at his desk.
“We must get out of the way of talking as if we were not honest, Nicholas,” said Emily. “Anyone dishonest beside Mr. Merry would be such a waste, and wastefulness in a school is so unwise. And Mr. Merry has such charm in all that he does.”
“Merry is as open as the day,” said Herrick.
“Of course,” said Emily. “That is what I meant. What charm could there be in dishonesty apart from that? Ought you to write any more today, dear? You have written more than usual, after being up all night.”
“I must go on separating my papers from old Crabbe’s,” said Herrick. “I found some things of his to go through, and I took some of my own to deal with. I knew it would be a long night. And he did not want much looking to, poor old Crabbe! Eighty-nine if he was a day, and a long sinking, as if he were not done out enough to die! He did not suffer, or hardly, and Masson and Bumpus and I watched by him at the end. Well, may we all do as well, die at ninety, easily, and with our friends round us. I had rather have friends than children. Men with the same outlook, not people looking for their main spell after we are gone! Well, Emily, I hope you will watch by me one day, as I watched by my old friend last night.”
“How beautifully you speak, darling!” said Emily, putting up her glass to look at her brother. “And what a lot of good you have done! But I don’t think you have made very kind plans for me. But perhaps you have left my deathbed to Mr. Merry. There is no reason why he shouldn’t take all your responsibilities. And to carry out your scheme for yourself for an outsider, is very rare of you. It could hardly be expected for one of your own family.”
“Ah, Emily,” said Herrick. “You are twenty years younger than me. That is a thing we don’t reckon with, but it is there. You don’t look back or forward yet. We can’t look forward really; but I think I can look back, and see my life as not lacking.”
Herrick lived in his disappointment that in letters he had done only critical work.
“I never look back on my life,” said Emily. “It seems to be lacking in too much. You are so brave. There are William and Richard coming in. Guests must not be torn between admiration and anxiety, like people in the house.”
William Masson was a tall, large man in late middle age, with loose limbs and loose clothes, and a weather-beaten, high-boned face. He seemed an example of all the uneasinesses combined into ease.
His companion was a little, dark man about fifty-six, with eyes sunk deeply in a working face.
The two were Fellows and dons at Herrick’s college, and had meant romance for each other in youth. They had watched with Herrick at the deathbed of an old don, who had outlived his friends.
“Well, well,” said Herrick, “so he is gone, the old man! We shall all be in his place one day. I am fortunate in having you all younger than me. I have not to think of dying, surrounded by no one who is of my own kind and age. I can’t help being glad that it is I who will have to look to you at the end, and not you to me.”
“He has been explaining to me,” said Emily, “how I must die, unattended, while he has everybody kept alive
