MISS MOLLY.* Tars is a charming little tale, of a
slight kind, but without a flaw in it. We do not say that it proves genius, or even very great talent in the author. There is no great breadth of character- painting in it, for 'Miss Molly' is about the only person in it whom we really know when the tale is done, but then there is no par- ticular reason why we should know more. It is in her that the whole charm of the story centres, and one does not much expect or desire to understand the other figures, except so far as their relation to her is concerned, and that is easily understood without understanding the details of their own indi- vidual natures. Perhaps the twin-sister Genie might have been
made a little more of an individual study, without diverting any of the interest that is centred on Miss Molly ; but if that be so, it is the only criticism we have to make on the tale. Miss Molly it is who fills the reader's mind,—even almost to the comparative exclusion of her betrothed, Captain Burnaby, and his sad fate,—
from beginning to end; and the story is so short, and so full of the glow, at first of her saucy happiness, and then of her tender de- votedness, that one never wants to look away from her to any other character. Captain Burnaby can be lively enough, too, as his admirable criticism on Sunday-schools proves, before the great catastrophe which befalls him drives everything but gloom out of his life for a time. But Captain Burnaby, in spite of his lively badinage, is a dim figure to us, compared to Miss Molly.
Nevertheless, we will give his criticism on Sunday insti- tutions, to show how pleasant is the vivacity of this story. Miss Butt has both the requisites for writing a good novelette ; she can amuse you, and she can make you enter into the heart of a true and tender passion. Let us give our specimen of Captain Burnaby's admirable rattle :-
" Church and the early dinner over, Rex declared his intention of taking a walk—a walk which he graciously invited Molly to share. 'I cannot stand Sunday afternoons at home,' he remarked, when they were outside ; ' for what with school and church, there is such intense con- fusion that I have no time for thought—and thought is what Sunday is meant for, is it not?' Molly laughed. ' I always toll Winifred,' he went on, she should ask her visitors to leave on Saturday night, for I think it positively wrong to let them in for each a wearying day as our Sabbath, without due preparation. As to Sunday-schools, I think they are one of the most cruel institutions of the realm. All my time is taken up while on leave trying to argue Winifred out of her taste for them.'—'Useless waste of breath, I should think,' remarked Molly. —' Quite. You would never think, to hear her hold forth on the subject, that she, equally with myself, has known the fall horrors of Sunday teaching. Were you ever catechised in church, Molly ?'—' No; I should pity any one who had the task of catechising me.'—' Well, I have been, when I was young and innocent. We had a brother of my father's as rector here, and he talked over my people into letting me stand up with the Sunday-school in church. " Such a good example," &c. To their sore grief they found their attempt anything but successful, as I was the one who -never knew anything. My uncle bore with me as long as he could ; but at last, one day having been just commanded to repeat the Collect, in the pause that ensued while I was trying to recollect it, and the next boy to whisper it to me, a bag of nuts that I had, and which I had in my agony got hold of, I drew from my pocket, and with- out a moment's warning the ground was strewed with them. How it happened, I know not ; but anyhow, it was too much for the gravity of the boys around, and in somewhat of a hurry my worthy uncle had to request we would return to our places. The way those nuts clattered and fell, each one separately, down on to the stone pavement, and the sur- prised looks of the congregation, who heard the noise and could see nothing, I shall never forget. It seemed to me years that they went on rolling. My uncle never forgave that offence, and never gave me a birthday present after, I remember.' "
Unfortunately, we cannot, without spoiling this fascinating little story, give our readers any adequate insight into the charms of Miss Molly. If we gave them a picture of her before her troubles begin, they would think too little of her ; and if afterward s, they would miss the real beauty of the sketch, the mingled contrast and harmony between her gaiety and the depth of her devotion.
But this we may, perhaps, say, that considering the incident on which the story turns, it is not quite likely that Miss Molly should not have given rather more consideration than she appears to have done to the moral question as to the intrinsic guilt of the deed for which her lover is so near losing her. It seems to be assumed throughout that though Miss Molly's instincts lead her perfectly right in keeping her true to her lover, in spite of his crime of manslaughter and the long imprisonment it involves, she would have been also perfectly right to give him up, on account of the disgrace which the crime and the imprison-
• Miss Moity. By Beatrice May Butt. Edinburgh and London : Blackwood 4 Sou.
ment involved ; and her mother, who is painted as everything that a mother should be, evidently desires earnestly this result. Now, no doubt, it is for some reasons very necessary that society should impress even an artificial stamp of guilt on any crime which puts an end to human life, even though the excuses be as great as they are in this case. Still the utility of that conventional view lies in its generally repressive influence on crimes of violence, and this repressive influence would not be the less effectual if its range were limited, as it ought to be, to thegeneral public, who necessarily take a superficial view of the morality of actions with whose authors they are not acquainted, and if it did not extend itself to those who know the guilty persons from the inside, as it were, and who can and ought to measure the guilt by a higher and purer standard. It seems to us not merely that Miss Molly decided rightly in holding true to Captain Burnaby through the manslaughter and its con- sequences, but that she would have been a poor creature, worth very little indeed, if she had not. From her point of view the only right estimate of the act concerned its intrinsic moral char- acter. And the true moral estimate of such a manslaughter would have been that though the act of giving such a loose to passion as necessarily endangered, and in this case terminated, life, was a true sin, yet in the circumstances of the case it was a sin involving far less moral culpability than an indefinite number of little selfishnesses and insincerities which are passed over every day,—than Gwendolen Harleth's refusal, for instance, in George Eliot's new story, to disturb herself in bed, in order to get her mother the drops which would have relieved her pain. Captain Burnaby tried to knock a brother officer down for retailing a scandalous story which really endangered the social reputation of a brother to whom be was warmly attached. Instead of knock- ing him down, he 'knocked him against a heavy piece of furni- ture, and the violent fall killed him. But the passion which actuated him was not wholly or chiefly selfish, and it was, of course, a mere accident that it terminated as it did. In short, the sin was the sin of giving loose to a feeling of just indig- nation, when the man who felt it ought to have mastered that feeling sufficiently to keep control of himself,—no doubt a loss of self-command of the greatest peril, and as experience often shows, of terrible consequences, but still not to be compared in moral disgracefulness to little sins which go unpunished and almost unobserved every day of our lives. We do not deny that the consequences being so terrible, it is desirable to attach a sort of fictitious guilt to sins of this class, and that those who commit them should have to fear a degree of horror and social displeasure which are not displayed and not needful for sins of graver intrinsic character but very much less serious results to other people. But what we do deny, is that any one who pro- fesses personal love for another has any right at all to share this conventional view of the world's. Love should weigh in other scales than those of conventional precaution, in scales of true justice, at least,—and it seems to us that Captain Burnaby's sister in this novel is as untrue to herself in the estrangement she allows to grow up between her and him, as Miss Molly is true to herself. Indeed, the fault we have to find with the book, is that the conventional view which the world and the law necessarily take, if only by way of precaution, of such sins of violence, should be admitted as if it were at least prima facie just, by those who can see far deeper into the heart of the culprit, and know how much he might have done which would have been no offence against law at all, yet infinitely more discrediting to him, and infinitely more of a nature to alienate true love, than the crime which he actually committed. With this one slight qualification, we have nothing but appreciation for the charming story of Miss Molly.
Previous page
