Tom and Manvers were sitting at the bottom of a punt in one of the upper reaches of the Thames on a September afternoon. Tom had taken out a fishing-rod, but it was too hot to do more than smoke. Smoke produces silence, and neither had spoken for some time. Manvers had arrived ten days ago, and was staying with Tom in a small house he had lately bought, in which he spent the summer months.

“It’s only three years since I saw you last,” he said at length, “but you look more than three years older.”

Tom took his pipe out of his mouth and blew away a cloud of blue smoke.

“I feel eighty-four,” he said. “Prosperity isn’t so soothing as I was led to believe. I think worrying and fighting would have kept me young. You are the only person who always remains twenty-five. How have you managed it?”

“Growing old is absolutely a matter of will,” said Manvers. “It is like Alice eating the mushroom to make her grow tall or short. You can eat which side of it you like: one side makes you old, the other keeps you young. No one need grow old unless he likes. The secret is to take nothing seriously. I only once took anything seriously, and it made me three years older in a single night. Consequently I am twenty-eight, not twenty-five.”

“What was that?” asked Tom, listlessly.

“I took Miss Wrexham seriously. I asked her to marry me. That was just three years ago.”

“Poor old boy! Why didn’t you tell me? Are you going to try your fate again? She is coming down here in a week.”

Manvers looked up.

“The deuce she is! No; the incident is closed.”

“Were you badly hurt?”

“I found everything distasteful for a time, but I recovered. Life is so amusingly improbable. Fancy my doing that sort of thing! However, it was very useful; I learned several lessons.”

“What did you learn?”

“I learned that nothing can really damage one’s capacity for enjoyment. Don’t think I wasn’t in earnest about it; I was in deadly earnest. The second was that homme propose. It is a truism, of course, but it is useful to find by experience that a truism is true. I have yet to learn who disposes,” he added. “I must say I have never personally experienced the last part of the proverb. By the way, I was talking to an old model the other day who was sitting to me for my ‘Fourth Act’—the thing of the woman with the fan—and she said, ‘Man appoints, God disappoints.’ But woman usually disappoints. And the third thing I learned was that the most foolish thing in the world is to be serious. While one can certainly amuse one’s self it is idle to forego that bird in the hand for a problematic bird in the bush.”

“I wish I could learn one thing a year,” said Tom, “as you have been doing. I should be getting confoundedly wise by now.”

“You always used to be learning things,” remarked the other. “I remember you used to discover the secret of life about every other day.”

“I have unlearned a good many things, unfortunately.”

“It’s my turn to catechise. What have you unlearned?”

“I have unlearned my theory that I could do all I wanted. I have unlearned my conviction that one made one’s own limitations—that one could ever be certain about anything. In a way, I have all a reasonable man could want. I have May, I have three healthy children, I have fame—fame of a damnable kind, it is true—but there was a time when I shouldn’t have been satisfied with anything. I longed to stretch out my arms round the whole world, to take the whole world into my grasp. But now I know I cannot do it, and, what is worse, I do not want to do it. I acquiesce in my own limitations. What can be sadder than that?”

“If you are happy nothing matters.”

“I might once have been happier. I gave up what I believed I could do, and what I believed was supremely well worth doing. I am an apostate. Apostates may be very happy—they are rid of the thumbscrew and the boiling lead—but I wonder if they ever lose that little cankerworm of shame.”

“My dear Tom, what nonsense! You tried to fly, and before you had succeeded some one took your apparatus away. Of course it is only natural for you to think that you might have flown if you had been left with your apparatus, but you never could have. Besides, you are rich now; you have your apparatus again.”

Tom frowned.

“Cannot you understand?” he said, impatiently. “Good God, it is so simple! Stevenson says somewhere that three pot-boilers will destroy any talent. I must have made twenty pot-boilers at least. Don’t you see that what I am regretting is that I no longer want to fly? The chances are a thousand to one that I never could have. But that blessed illusion that I could fly has gone.”

“You took it too seriously.”

“I did, much too seriously. I don’t take things seriously now; I have lost the trick. But how I long to be able to! I was mad, no doubt: you often told me so. But it was a very sweet madness. All enthusiasm is madness according to you. But according to enthusiasts, enthusiasm is the only sanity. I oughtn’t to complain. I sail closer to the shore. It is really much safer and pleasanter. Indeed, we are thinking of taking a house at Cambridge. It will be nice to have Ted near. If one wants to be happy, one ought to have no ill-balanced enthusiasms. They are very disturbing while they last, and they leave one as flat as a pancake. But when you have once tasted them, though you may have lost them entirely, you can never wholly forget their wonderful intoxication. One of those French enthusiasts says that one must be drunk on something—on life or love, or virtue or vice, it does not matter which.”

“I, too, am very catholic,” murmured Manvers, “I appreciate virtue as little as I dislike vice. It is all a question of temperament.”

“Yes, temperament. That is another thing I have unlearned. There was a time when I was convinced that no man need be in the clutch of his temperament. I believed that one was free. One is not. One is in endless, hopeless bondage to one’s temperament.”

“You are pessimistic this afternoon.”

“It is a relative term. I am really optimistic, though I allow my optimism would have seemed pessimism to me three years ago.”

“I don’t quite see from what standpoint you can be considered optimistic,” remarked Manvers.

“I appreciate fully all I have got. I think the lines are laid for me in pleasant places. That is surely the whole essence of optimism. I believe that everything is for the best, and that if the best seems second-rate to me, it is I who am wrong. I love May more than I love any one in this world, and she is my wife. I have money, which is a hateful necessity, but as necessary as it is hateful. And I have a good digestion.”

Tom leant back and beat out the ashes from his pipe against the side of the boat. They would not come out at first, but eventually the whole dottel of the pipe fell into the water with a subdued hiss. Some vague note of thought twanged in his brain, and he paused for a moment, frowning slightly, and trying to catch the remembrance which the sound had stirred. After a little he smiled rather sadly, and not with the completeness which a smile of pure amusement or of pure happiness has in it.

“I used to do that over King’s bridge at Cambridge,” he said irrelevantly; “and I thought it seemed so like what I was going to do myself. I meant to go through darkness, and then make a splash.”

“The end of your pipe made a very little splash,” said Manvers.

“Oh yes, a very little splash. All splashes are little; but splashes are rare. Most people slide into the water anyhow, and are content to be seen swimming.”

“The world would count you singularly happy.”

“Of course it would; it would be wrong if it did not. But—but what I mean is that I might have been happier, and May might have been happier.”

Manvers looked up in surprise.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Tom sat up and played rather nervously with the tassel of the cushion on which he was sitting.

“Surely it is simple enough,” he said. “I have acquiesced in limitations. May is devoted to me—as much devoted to me as I am to her, I think. But don’t you see there is less of me than there might have been. There is less of me to love and to be loved—God knows, it is all perfect enough in its own scale. But there might have been another scale. And now”—he dropped his hands and sat upright, looking at Manvers—“and now we are measured by yards, not by metres.”

A little wind stirred suddenly in the elm trees by the bank and ruffled the surface of the water. A fish rose in mid-stream beyond the boat, and the current carried the concentric ripples down with it. Behind, the little rambling red-brick house stood sunning its southern front, and on the lawn, in the shadow of a tall copper beech, they could see the glimmer of a figure in a white dress sitting in a low basket chair. Tom turned as he spoke and looked half involuntarily at it.

“Come,” he said; “May will be waiting for us. We are going to have tea early, and then go for a row up the river. We are going to do many pleasant things.”

The boat was anchored among some flowering rushes; a few strokes of the punt pole sent it back to the bottom of the lawn. They strolled up together to where May was sitting, and she welcomed them with that brilliant smile which was so natural to her.

“Tom has been so sombre this last day or two,” she said to Manvers. “I hope you have been cheering him up.”

“I don’t think there is much the matter with him,” said Manvers. “He says he feels optimistic.”

“Manvers called me pessimistic,” remarked Tom; “but that is only a most flagrant instance of his own pessimism. He sees everything through his own spectacles.”

May raised her eyebrows.

“What frightfully contradictory accounts,” she said. “Oh, Tom, by the way, there is a man here who has come from the station to have the carriage of the Demeter paid. It is fifteen pounds. Surely that is an awful lot. I thought I had better ask you before I paid it.”

Manvers looked inquiringly at Tom.

“Have you the Demeter here?” he asked.

“Yes; I bought it back from Lord Henderson. He was very nice about it. He saw I really wanted it, and he let me have it for what he had paid for it. He bought it, you know, as a piece of cultured lumber, perhaps also as a species of charity, and he has sold it for charity. It came two days ago. I told them to unpack it this morning. Where have you had it put, May?”

“In your study, dear, where you said you wanted it. They unpacked it to-day. But surely fifteen pounds is too much for the carriage, Tom?”

Tom’s eyes wandered over the lawn, but came back to May.

“Yes, it seems a good deal. But I wanted it, you know, and one pays anything for what one wants; in fact, one often pays a good deal for what one doesn’t want.”

“You can’t say that that speech is optimistic,” said Manvers, triumphantly.

“No, I don’t defend it,” said Tom. “May dear, let’s come in and have tea now. It is getting much cooler, and then we can start in half an hour.”

May rose and walked with Manvers towards the house. Tom strolled on a few steps ahead of them. As they reached the terrace which ran along the front of the house he turned.

“I don’t think you ever saw the Demeter finished,” he said to Manvers. “Come with me and look at it.”

“Yes, let’s all go and see it,” said May. “It looks so nice in that corner, with the dark red paper behind, Tom. I went to see it just before I came out.”

Tom’s room opened out of the hall, opposite the drawing-room. Just as they got to the door he stopped and spoke to May without looking at her.

“Then will you have us told when tea is ready, dear?” he said.

May had intended to come in with them, but something in Tom’s voice made her hesitate.

“Yes; don’t be long,” she said; “and don’t get to talking shop about it. We shall never start if you do.”

Tom opened the door for Manvers and shut it again after they had entered. The sun was already getting low, and a great blaze of light came in almost horizontally through the open window and shone full on the statue. Tom sat down opposite it, and Manvers stood near him. In the ruddy glow of the evening the white marble was flushed with delicate red, and for the first time Manvers really appreciated the noble conception of it—about the execution he had never had any doubt.

They sat there in silence for some time, and then Tom got up.

“Do you see,” he said rather huskily, “do you see what I mean when I say that I might have—might have——”

He turned abruptly. On the floor was lying the sheet in which the statue had been wrapped. He took it up quickly and flung it over it.

“We all have ghosts in our houses,” he said; “but we can at least veil them a little. Besides,” he added, “to go back to what I was saying about my optimism, I have had three crises, three revelations—unimportant little revelations no doubt—in my life. I think I told you and Maud Wrexham about them one evening, oh, ever so long ago!”

“I remember,” said Manvers.

“Well, to have had a crisis is in itself a most delightful experience, but if your crisis remains, so to speak, critical, you ought to be perfectly happy. Two of my crises were still-born. The crisis I had when I saw the Hermes at Olympia has come to nothing.”

“Do you call that nothing?” said Manvers, pointing to the shrouded Demeter.

“Worse than nothing. It is a dead child. It had better never have been born. And the crisis I had, or thought I had, when the baby was born is—is yet unfulfilled. But my third crisis remains critical. I met May, I loved her, I love her. But the ghosts, the ghosts——”

They left the room. In the hall was the three-year-old Thomas, being towed sideways across the hall by his nurse, going out for a walk. Tom took the youngster up in his arms and turned to Manvers with a smile.

“I am a fool if I cannot lay my ghosts,” he said.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

September, 1896.

31 & 32, Bedford Street,
Strand, W.C.,
September, 1896.

NOVELS AND FICTION PUBLISHED BY

A. D. INNES & CO.

NEW ONE-VOLUME NOVELS.

By E. F. Benson.

Limitations.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By Francis Gribble.

The Lower Life.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By Eden Phillpotts.

Lying Prophets.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By G. B. Burgin.

Tomalyn’s Quest.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By Roma White.

The Changeling of Brandlesome.

Illustrated by Sydney Cowell. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By Howard Kerr.

Leeway.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By W. L. Alden.

The Mystery of Elias G. Roebuck.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By C. R. Coleridge and Helen Shipton.

Ravenstone.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By Nellie K. Blissett.

The Wisdom of the Simple.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

By Esther Miller.

The Sport of the Gods.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

NEW AND CHEAPER EDITIONS OF TWO POPULAR NOVELS.

By Anthony Hope.

Comedies of Courtship.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d.

“In this volume Mr. Anthony Hope is at his happiest in that particular department of fiction in which he reigns supreme.”—Speaker.

“Delightful farcical comedies.... The whole book bears the impress of Mr. Hope’s happiest manner.”—Glasgow Herald.

By Max Pemberton.

A Gentleman’s Gentleman.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d.

“Is a selection of the adventures—daring, ludicrous, and pathetic—of these two worthies. Seven exploits are recounted, and they are interesting enough to make one wish they were seven times seven.... It is impossible for one to refrain from the wish that Sir Nicholas Steele, Bart., and Hildebrand may foregather

RECENT POPULAR 6s. NOVELS.

By X. L., Author of “Aut Diabolus aut Nihil.”

The Limb.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

Mr. Gladstone writes: “Pray accept my thanks.... I was so imprudent as to open it at once, and since that act have found great difficulty in laying it down.”

The Glasgow Herald says: “An excellent, sometimes even entrancing, novel.... Full of the deepest interest.”

The Birmingham Daily Gazette says: “‘The Limb’ is unquestionably one of the most fascinating books of the season.”

By Roma White.

A Stolen Mask.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“A capital story, and Mrs. Roma White tells it with a delicate humour and a spontaneous brilliancy as rare as they are delightful. ‘A Stolen Mask’ is a novel that stands high above the average, and can be strongly recommended. It is a long time since we have come across anything so thoroughly fresh and bright.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“A powerful and fascinating story.”—Daily Telegraph.

“A novel of very remarkable originality, insight, and talent.”—Guardian.

By Francis Gribble.

The Things that Matter.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“Is an extremely clever psychological study.”—The Times.

“It is a very amusing novel, full of bright satire directed against the new woman and similar objects.”—Speaker.

“The book is extremely interesting, and brightly and swiftly told.... Full of crisp epigrams.”—The Queen.

By G. B. Burgin.

The Judge of the Four Corners.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“A delightfully humorous sketch, full of the purest fun, and irresistibly laughable.”—Saturday Review.

“A tale which is well worth reading, and few who begin the idyll of ‘Old Man’ Evans and Miss Wilks will lay aside the book unfinished.... Instinct with humour, pathos, and a firm grasp of character.”—National Observer.

“A more stirring and fascinating tale has not been told for many a day.”—Daily Telegraph.

By Eden Phillpotts.

My Laughing Philosopher.

Illustrated by George Hutchinson. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“We commend to the notice of any one wanting a good laugh ‘My Laughing Philosopher,’ whose varied character sketches amply prove Mr. Eden Phillpotts to be endowed with those two excellent gifts of humour and imagination.”—Spectator.

“The book will be welcome to every one who likes a book from which a man can get a good laugh.”—Scotsman.

By Norma Lorimer.

A Sweet Disorder.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“Has freshness, vivacity, variety of scene, some very good character-sketching, excellent dialogue, and plenty of epigram.... Ought to be a success.”—Literary World.

“One feels quite safe in predicting a wide popularity for the book.”—Queen.

By F. M. White.

The Robe of Lucifer.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“Extravagant, whimsical, and delightfully ingenious.”—Manchester Guardian.

“Undeniably ingenious—full of power and interest.”—Daily Telegraph.

By Leslie Keith, Author of “The Chilcotes,” “Lisbeth,” etc.

For Love of Prue.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“Plot and incident in this present story are alike remarkable.... Altogether we heartily commend ‘For Love of Prue’ as a sensible, humorous, and thoroughly wholesome book.”—Speaker.

“Some words of appreciative and cordial praise must be accorded to Leslie Keith’s new story ‘For Love of Prue,’ which is fresh and wholesome throughout, and teems with charming contrasts of pathos and humour.”—Daily Telegraph.

By Dorothea Gerard.

Lot 13.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“A bright, buoyant, and bustling story, with plenty of local colour derived from the scenery and the society, black and white, of a West Indian plantation.”—Times.

“Delightfully fresh and original in plot, character, and incident, and it has the charm that Miss Gerard’s work never lacks of an atmosphere of imagination and poetry.”—Guardian.

By the late Mrs. J. K. Spender, Author of “Thirteen Doctors,” etc.

The Wooing of Doris.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

“Has much to commend it to novel readers. A clever plot; well-drawn characters—such are the leading features of a novel by which the reputation of its much regretted writer is fully sustained to the last.”—World.

“A charming and wholesome story, it is full of human interest.”—Sheffield Daily Telegraph.

THREE SUCCESSFUL ROMANCES.

By J. C. Snaith.

Mistress Dorothy Marvin.

A tale of the Seventeenth Century. Being Excerpta from the Memoirs of Sir Edward Armstrong, Baronet, of Copeland Hall, in the County of Somerset.

With Illustrations by S. Cowell. Crown 8vo, buckram, 6s.

“The author has succeeded in making his story intensely interesting.... One of the very best adventure stories we have had for a long time past.”—Speaker.

“Full of the most thrilling adventures and terrific fights.... But through the story there runs the thread of as tender and rare a love between man and maid as the most romantic reader could desire.... A story intensely interesting and powerfully exciting. It cannot be put down when once taken up till it has been read from cover to cover.”—Church Times.

“‘Mistress Dorothy Marvin,’ most delightful and winsome of women, and one of the freshest and most unhackneyed heroines whose acquaintance we have had the pleasure of making for a very considerable period.... Mr. Snaith has a great gift of observation, and his book is a remarkable picture of the age it is intended to depict.”—World.

By Frank Barrett, Author of “The Admirable Lady Biddy Fane.”

A Set of Rogues: Namely, Christopher Sutton, John Dawson, the SeÑor don Sanchez del Castillo de CastelaÑa, and Moll Dawson. Their Wicked Conspiracy, and a True Account of their Travels and Adventures.

With Illustrations by S. Cowell. Crown 8vo, buckram, 6s.

“He has related the adventures of a set of rogues ... with so pleasant a tongue and in such attractive fashion that it is impossible for mere flesh and blood to resist them. His set of rogues have won our entire sympathy, and his narrative our hearty approval.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“Another capital story.... Strongly recommended. Stirring tale this, without a dull chapter in it, and just enough human sentiment in it to soften down the roguery.... Let the honest reader procure the book.”—Punch.

“Most excellent story.... In the whole book there are no dull pages, and the plot is worked out with a care that leaves nothing to be desired.... We can only recommend the book to our readers as being in all respects a most satisfactory and admirable bit of work.”—Speaker.

By Stanley Weyman.

My Lady Rotha.

A Romance of the Thirty Years’ War. With 8 Illustrations by John Williamson. Crown 8vo, buckram, 6s.

“No one who begins will lay it down before the end, it is so extremely well carried on from adventure to adventure.”—Saturday Review.

“A novel which everybody must read and enjoy as such books are meant to be read and enjoyed.”—Speaker.

“Exhibits in high degree and ample abundance the qualities which have so certainly and so fast brought Mr. Weyman to the front; the excellence of the narrative style, the skill with which the historical element is introduced, the adequacy for romantic purposes of the character drawing, and above all the quick invention in incident and situation.”—St James’s Gazette.

SCARLET NOVELS.

A SERIES OF POPULAR NOVELS BY WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS.

Crown 8vo, uniform scarlet cloth, 3s. 6d. each Volume.

By Anthony Hope.

Comedies of Courtship.

[Just added.

“He is undeniably gay in the best sense of the word, now and then almost rollicking. An admirable example of what we mean by gaiety in fictional literature.”—Daily Telegraph.

Half a Hero.

“The book is delightful to read, and an excellent piece of work.”—Standard.

Mr. Witt’s Widow. A Frivolous Tale.

“A brilliant little tale.... Exhibits unborrowed ingenuity, plausibility, and fertility in surprises.”—Times.

“Excellent fooling. From first to last the story is keenly and quietly amusing.”—Scotsman.

By Max Pemberton.

A Gentleman’s Gentleman.

[Just added.

“This is very much the best book that Mr. Max Pemberton has so far given us.”—Daily Chronicle.

By Richard Pryce.

The Burden of a Woman.

“Mr. Richard Pryce has worked a fresh vein of realistic romance, and has done so with eminent success. The story which the author has here presented so artistically is both a powerful and a beautiful one, told with mingled strength and delicacy, enriched with admirable character-drawing, and marked by real distinction of tone and style. Mr. Pryce has conferred a benefit upon novel readers by the production of so noble and interesting a book as ‘The Burden of a Woman.’”—Speaker.

By C. R. Coleridge.

Amethyst. The Story of a Beauty.

“Extremely amusing, interesting, and brightly written.”—Guardian.

By F. Frankfort Moore.

Two in the Bush and Others elsewhere.

“Carry the reader on from page to page till criticism is forgotten in enjoyment.”—Daily Graphic.