THE SILVER CORD.*

Mn. SHIRLEY BROOKS'S best works always leave behind them a feeling of regret. He could have done them so much better. There is a perfect lavishness of power in some of his stories, which in these days of intellectual sterility it is most pleasant to recognize and applaud, but it is a power as yet beyond its possessor's capacity to regulate. There is no one quality of the novelist—originality, or in- sight into character, or facility in dialogue, or trenchant terseness, or dramatic force—which lie does not possess in good measure, and yet the result of his work leaves always a sensation of disappointment. He gives the impression of an athlete doing fine work, and utterly embarrassed by a strength which he has learnt to put out to the full but never to restrain. His stories are crowded with by-plots which impede the narrative, unnecessary characters not drawn, but washed in, and suggesting possibilities it is an annoyance to see forgotten,— scenes written because they are admirable scenes and not because they have any business there. This error of prodigality was visible even in "Aspen Court," which still remains the best, because the most artistic of his works. The entire episode of Angela and her relation to Lord Rookwood is a mere nuisance of no use to the story, suggesting a whole novel soithis the one the author was writing, and, greatest mistake of all, suggesting one wholly different in style, class, and meaning from that in which it appeared. The " Gordian Knot" in the same way is overlaid with incidents not arranged, but shovelled out in basketfuls. Very excellent most of them are, and such as very few story-writers can devise, but one half of them have no business there at all, and the effect of the whole is to make an admirable book seem very weari- some. This perverse application of force is carried in the book before us to its extreme length. It would be impossible even for Mr. Shirley Brooks to crowd more characters, more incidents, or more scenes into a single story. The characters are all, with perhaps one exception, carefully drawn ; the incidents interest, which is all they are required to do i and the scenes are many of them simply admirable. But there are infinitely too many of them all. There are three plots t6 begin with, all absolutely distinct, though linked by the appearance in each of the devil of the piece, Mr. Ernest Adair, and employing no less than thirteen or fourteen characters, each of

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whom might have been the hero or heroine from the interest he or she excites, and the amplitude of detail with which they are described. We have, first, Bertha,weak and evil heroine; 2nd, Laura, strong and cm

competent heroine; 3rd, Beatrice, wifely and English heroine; 4th, Mrs. Berry, utterly wicked heroine ; and 5th, Henderson, heroine, lady's- aid, and intrigante. These ladies are supported by a crowd of

/1 gentlemen : Mr. E. Adair, a devil of the French type; Urquhart, an English engineer in France, and husband of the weak heroine; Arthur Lygon, the lay-figure hero, very feebly drawn ; Mr. Hawkesley, a type English gentleman and dramatic author ; Aventayle, a theatrical manager; Silvain, a sentimental French pen-aquier ; and an army of French police officials, agents, and ruffians. The incidents we cannot profess to number, though we believe one to every two pages is an estimate which leaves, as the engineers say, a wide margin for unex- pected requirements. But it is in scenes that Mr. Brooks's lavish- ness is most apparent. There are at least fifty in the book, any one of which would carry off a three-act play. Such a wealth of wasted comediettas was never seen. We can recal on the instant at least eight—the discovery of the lady'i-maid Henderson, the duel between the barber and Ernest Adair, the interview between Bertha add Adair in prison, the passage of arms between Adair and the police agent Chantal, the extraction of Arthur Lygon's secret by Mrs. Berry, her death scene, the reconciliation of hero and heroine, and the punishment of Adair—all of which might be placed on the stage almost without adaptation and with the most brilliant effect. They are as brilliant in the novel, but they are not as effective, simply be- cause a succession of scenes no more make a good novel than a succes- sion of figures make a good picture without background, foreground, or connexion with each other. The endless succession, without break, or pause, or relief from description, wearies the attention, and though the reader, once fairly engaged, cannot refuse to go through with the story, he quits it with the sense of relief with which he terminates any other mental labour. Much of this multiplication of scenes is doubtless due to the form in which the Silver Cord originally ap- peared. To an author with Mr. Shirley Brooks's facility of invention, the temptation to make each weekly number striking by itself must be almost irresistible, and the effect is fatal to artistic perfection. But much more is due to an unrestrained habit of lavishness, a prodigality of invention, of which, as few men are capable, so no one, as con- scious as Mr. Brooks of the true requirements of his art, should • The Biker Cord. By Skhley Brooks. Published by Bradbury sad Evans.

permit himself to be guilty. No painter, whatever his skill, can tell three stories in one picture without confusing the spectator.

We must endeavour to give some sketch of the story, though its infinite ramifications render it no easy task, in order to point out one or two defects in its structure. The book opens with an utterly im- probable incident. Mr. Arthur Lygon, clerk in Somerset House, and the only badly drawn figure in the tale, returns home one day to Brompton to find that his wife has flown, leaving him a note to say that pursuit is hopeless. Of course, though full-of confidence in his wife, the husband pursues, and the hunt is the chain upon which the incidents are hung. Mrs. Lygon has fled to France to fight the villain of the piece, M. Ernest Adair, a French devil, whose acts and conversation unpleasantly suggest a severe study of Dumas the Elder. This man has been a French tutor in England, and seduced one of three sisters, Bertha, a most admirable sketch of a woman who would be utterly wicked if she had only courage, brains, or purpose. Adair, driven from England, becomes a police spy, and the sisters are married ; Laura to Arthur Lygon, and Bertha to an upright but stern engineer, whom she dreads with the abject fear of such a nature. Adair, who is a gambler and a profligate, wants money incessantly, and obtains it by threatening Bertha with exposure to her husband. Bertha, half mad with fear and selfishness, summons her able sister to her aid, and Mrs. Lygon, whose letters to a friend of Adair are in the villain's hands, flies secretly to her sister's side. She dare not warn her husband, because the letters, though merely the folly of an innocent girl, would convince him that he was not her first love, and prepares to contend with the danger alone. Life does not go on that way at Brompton, and the glaring improbability of a woman of Laura Lygon's character deserting her husband in that style is throughout an annoyance to the reader, increased when she still flies him after ascertaining that he knows her object and her sister's story. The circumstances granted, an Englishwoman would either have left her sister to en- dure the effect of her own errors, or so far trusted her husband as to secure his assent to her expedition. Indeed, where Laura obtained money or passports for a long continental ramble is a point never satisfactorily explained. Adair has placed a spy near his victim in the shape of a lady's-maid, and Mrs. Lygon's first task is to win over this agent. Extreme danger and a sense of cruel wrong have made her unscrupulous, and the scene in which she en- counters and defeats the accomplice is a masterpiece of stage effect. It is a little long, but it is the best illustration we can give of Mr. Brooks's power of arranginc.a incidents, and will bear, what most of his incidents will not, to be detached from the context. The sisters are discussing their position in Bertha's dressing-room : "'Yon are a bad dissembler, Bertha, and I am glad of it. But you are very false to me now. I know that it is so—why not spare me the pain of proving it to you? I can.'

"' I do not understand you in the least,' said Bertha, reddening.

" 'I suppose that my faculties are sharpened by danger,' replied Mrs. Lygon, still preserving her calmness, ' or I might not have 'Noticed tile uneasy looks which you have been casting that way'—and she pointed--' while we have been speaking about him.' "Bertha coloured, painfully, to her very hair. " There,' said her sister, there ought to be nothing unkind between ns. His spy is concealed in that wardrobe. Call her out.' "Mrs. Urquhart burst into tears, and hid her face in her fair hands. Mrs. Lygon rose, and would have opened one of the wings of the piece of furniture in question, when the other opened, and Henderson stepped out. " She did not say a word upon the subject of her concealment, but, dropping a respectful curtsey to Mrs. Lygon, went over to the toilette-table, took a bottle of

perfume, and brought it to her mistress, at the same time giving her a handker- chief, and, in short, tending her in as orderly a manner as if it were in obedience to a regular summons. Having done this, the girl was about to leave the room, when Mrs. Lygon stopped her.

"' I wish to speak to you, with your mistress's permission,' said Laura. " Henderson was all respectful attention. " In an English village,' said Mrs. Lygon, addressing her in a grave, kind tone, there live an old couple who gave their daughter an education above her station, because they loved her better than she deserved. They had her taught French, and otherwise made her fit to be a lady's trusted attendant. They hope,

some day, to see her again in their village, and to kiss her as the wife of some good, honest man—perhaps they hope to see her children growing up around them. It will be bad news for the old father, and worse for the old mother, when they hear that their daughter has become a street-walker in France.'

"Henderson's black eyes flashed out with fire at the last words, and her plebeian face became elevated in expression by the manifestation of her genuine indignation. " It is false, Madame,' she said, passionately. "Mrs. Lygon took her seat, and, sorely constraining her nature, forced her beautiful mouth into a smile of as much contempt as she could manage to assume.

" The smile stung the girl to the quick, as it was intended to do. " It is false,' she repeated, wickedly false. You may sit there smiling, Madame, but it is false.'

" Mrs. Lygon remained silent. " It was the best course, for in a moment or two the girl flung herself upon her knees in a passion of tears."

The rest of the scene may be imagined. Ernest Adair had said nothing of the kind, but the story was effective, and the lady's-maid throughout the story is an effective ally of Mrs. Lygon. Adair, how- ever, is too clever a scoundrel to be duped, and M. Silvain, an admirer of the lady's-maid, tries in vain in two admirable scenes to wound him in a duel, or shut him up for swindling at cards. There are, however, stronger personages who have an interest in the affair. The French police, who play the part in modern novels which supernatural agency played in old dramas, and who are becoming intensely tire- some in consequence, have determined to drive Mr. Urquhart from France. He stands in the way of a French contractor who has bribed the chief of police, and the latter, knowing something of the story, is determined to use it to expel his friend's rival, Mr. Urqu- hart, who, detecting Mrs. Lygon in a falsehood, believes her capable of all evil, is informed of the truth, and attacks Adair, who stabs him to the 'heart. The police, who throughout are represented as motive- less demons, who order murders when convenient, protect Adair, and the letters stolen by Henderson are restored to Mrs. Lygon. All this while Lygon is hunting his wife; a third sister and her husband are aiding in the search, and a wilderness of characters are engaged in endless incidents, with more or less bearing on the main plot. Arthur Lygon, aware of the existence of letters, which are something more than love letters, believes them written by his wife, and casts her off, and the peace of all characters seems for ever destroyed. Mrs. Berry, however, the wife of an old friend of Lygon's, a character of strange and unpleasant power, palpably sketched from that of an accused murderess in a late Scotch trial, reveals ou her death-bed that she forged the letters to punish Laura for having, as she fancied, supplanted her with Adair. Laura cleared, is reconciled to her hus- band, and Ernest Adair is slain in London by order of the French police. Experienced novel-readers will easily imagine the wealth of incident and dialogue which may be hung upon that thin chain, the plots of the police, the adventures of the three families all hunting vainly for each other and the letters. When they have doubled the quantity they deem possible, they will have some idea of the contents of the Silver Cord. There is not a moment of repose, scarcely a page of description, not a rest from sharp incisive dialogue in the whole story. The effect is not pleasant, the machinery is old, and the story itself verges on the forbidden land which French novelists so often cross, but the critic can only murmur at the waste of genuine unmistakable literary power, lament that the pen which has drawn figures like Laura Lygon, Beatrice Hawkesley—a gem of a woman, who redeems the author altogether from the charge of dealing only with the evil or the exceptional in character—and Aventayle, the manager, should be so recklessly guided.

All real power is a gain to the world, and Mr. Brooks's is real. He will perhaps acquit us of impertinence if we say that he is strong enough to make it the interest of literature as well as of his own re- putation that he should do differently. Let him only remember that he can do without French horrors, that he can make real life more interesting than melodrama, that his necessity is to restrain, not to force, a teeming imagination, and he may produce a book which will live a life not granted to the best sensation novel of a season.