THE BAZAAR.
TALES, sketches, fancies, apologues—it is a mixed collection that Mr. Martin Armstrong brings together in his new volume. Nineteen pieces, varying -in length from half-a-dozen-pages to fifty, and varying in kind from a jesting trifle to a careful study of character, make it hard for a• reader in search of a general impression to find what he is looking for. Some part of the book seems to:be -not more than easy. journalism, and this part obscuresthe. rest as one reads; for the rest is of-quite another order, aiming, at difficult effects of fine-drawn art. Wait, then, till the trifles drop off in memory ; and there is left at last an- impression . of a writer strongly attracted by queer fantasies of romance, by strange tales of 'lonely houses, by enigmatic glimpses of odd people, by shaddwy .things not entirely to be understood and wavering thoughts not clearly to be defined. It is a world in which one must not expect at any moment to know exactly where one is, or whether one wakes or dreams—so easily the real mixes with the unreal, the miraculous melts into the prosaic ; and it is a world which demands a peculiar skill and discretion of the author who proposes to write about it.
The peculiar skill is required for- the rendering of-what is called " atmosphere "—on which so much of the effect must depend. The romantic places, with their ambiguous popula- tion, maybegin to look thin and flat unless they are mysterious in unearthly dusk or poetic in a light that never was ; and the people too, -they may seem merely unintelligible unless they are somehow charged with unexpressed and- secret mean- ing. And as for all this, Mr. Armstrong probably has the right gift in good measure ; but it is perhaps attempting the impossible to undertake, as he does, to produce these effects within such narrow limits of space. Here, for instance, is the story called -" Helm Hall "—a night in a desolate old house, obscurely haunted; or "The Inn," a tale of sinister mystery ; or "Mrs. Lovelace," the picture of a woman who scattered gracious influences, more than human: these and others must rely chiefly on the artful- preparation of the setting, of the background, of the light and shadow in which the few fine incidents are shown. The incidents are incomplete in them- selves—it is the point ; they throw out suggestions that may be much more penetrating and expressive than a plain exhi- bition of the facts. But if little is to be told and much inferred, the ambient air must be attuned, must be quick to vibrate with the significance of the little that is told ; and this is a matter of many delicate touches and strokes in advance, so that the scene may be ready for the brief climax when it arrives. Can it be managed in three or four thousand words ? Mr. Armstrong grasps the difficulty and never wastes his words ; but nearly always it seems that he might have worked to better purpose in treble the space. The magazines, appar- ently incapable of-digesting -a full-grown talc, bear even more
heavily upon a writer of this quality than upon another ; and they have much to answer for, all round, in the art of the short story as it is cultivated nowadays.
More obvious is the peculiar discretion that is needed by the author who inclines to fantasy and romance. He needs it to resist the temptation always jumping at him from his material, to force his effects by being arbitrarily romantic and fanciful. Is the old man in the lonely house, is -the- sound on the stair at midnight, is the tale told by the traveller over the inn-fire—are all these to seem very curious and singular indeed, baffling you with their oddity? Well, it is very easy, and only too easy, to make them odd ; and a writer, let loose upon the limitless sea of what is not -natural, not probable, not verifiable—where he cannot be held to account, nor his story controlled—is always in danger of stretching his points with. arbitrary violence beyond their inner need. Here again the temptation is much increased by the necessity of keeping.within narrow bounds, where the story-teller has a difficulty in turning. comfortably round ; and it is notable that Mr. Armstrong, appears most at his ease in his longest piece, "Little Miss Millett," for which fifty pages and more are none too much. Here is a situation worked out with leisurely thbroughness, and it proves rewarding. Do let us hope that Mi. Armstrong. will regularly allow himself this much freedom in his next volume ; the undoubted reach and flexibility of his style
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