17 JUNE 1871, Page 20

A DAUGHTER OF HETH.*

WE wish we knew to whom we are indebted for this unique daughter of Heth, and her beautiful and touching story. Without much variety, a little slow, repeating itself overmuch, and perhaps not always quite natural in its incident, it is nevertheless very attractive. But why must the author tax us so heavily for the pleasure he confers ? Could he not have been generous, and left us the Coquette (a pet name, and a very inappropriate one, given, we are probably to conclude, in babyhood) of whom we have grown so fond, and her lover too, instead of taking them back again, as it were, greedily to himself, after the tantalizing glimpse he has given us ? And the wild and mischievous Whaup,—why, as soon as love has transformed him into the noble and tender husband, is he left to throw up his arms with the cry of agony, such as the young only can feel, over the grave of his young wife, and of the full joy and brightness of life and hope ? It would have been so easy to alter without losing anything of the melancholy beauty of the story, excepting at the very end. And we half believe the author is chuckling over a living and happy trio in some very different ending which he has kept for himself, as the ungenerous carver chuckles when he slips a couple of slices of the undercut into the gravy, while he ostentatiously helps his guests to the rest, and then turns the sirloin over. But it is not only in the winding up that the book is sad—we could have borne that better—there is a grey cloud of melancholy over the whole, from the very opening chapter, and one watches and waits in vain for the sunshine which shall warm and brighten the sad life into the rich beauty of full development, but which, after breaking over it only in cold gleams and fitful flashes, leaves the short day to grow darker and darker to its close. This cloud con- sists of the utter uucongenialness of the life of the young French girl—who would be so gay and happy if she could—transferred from her bright home on the banks of the Loire to a bleak Scottish moorland manse, and from light-hearted sympathizing parents (who have died) to the care of a grave Presbyterian minister and the com- panionship of a parcel of rough boys, and servants and neighbours with a national antipathy to the Frcnch, and who are more austere than their pastor, more bigoted in their horror of Catholics, more rigid in their sabbatarianism, and more severe in their rejection of the graces and even amenities of life. Accepting—on the score of a minister's unpractical absent-mindedness—the little likelihood that, with neither wife nor daughter and a house full of boys, the uncle should undertake so incongruor.., a charge as a young girl, the

• A Daughter of lief& Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.

pity which is akin to love is kindled at our very first meeting, when she is unwelcomed at the station in the far north, driven home by the minister's ungracious factotum, and received with a rude un- mannerly rebuke by a rough cub of an uncompromising big cousin. And though, in tyrannical boy-fashion, he soon becomes her valiant knight—upholding her cause against all comers, whether teazing plagues of brothers, or scandalized and preaching domestics—and some of the strangeness wears off for her, still we feel that the beauty and brightness which are a necessity of her southern nature are all wanting, and that though she is fostered by care and love, it is such fostering as a tropical plant might get from a melancholy prisoner in a northern fortress. All this we are meant to feel, and made to feel, and it is so delicately

done and with such a sensitive truthfulness that we do not wish to escape it. We only wish to end in smiles, instead of something even sadder than tears,—a touch of that despair we feel in real life

when a last hope dies out.

The special genius of the book is the conception of such a character as Coquette's,—without any conscious principle, with- out a religion, scarcely even moral in a conventional sense, yet exquisitely good, with a purity and self-forgetfulness that are angelic. Not actuated, or guided, or governed, or anything else that implies thought or a consent of the understanding, but moved by deep, unselfish love ; in fact, a religion of the heart, pure and simple. This is the clue to her carelessness of principle and apparent unmorality. And guided by this, we are not shocked at the leniency of her judgments, the readiness of her compliance, the sacrifice of her crucifix and her creed, or even at her views of marriage.

Such a character in ordinary hands would be weak and tame, but Coquette is anything but this. Her passion of longing for happiness for herself, which it never occurs to her to try to compass, and for all whom she loves, to which she surrenders herself with an utterly unthinking abnegation, and her deathless desire for her beloved Loire, borne with such sweet patience as to look almost like content, and the clearness of her judgment, due to the oneness of feeling to which all questions referred themselves, —does it tend to kindness or happiness or beauty—remove her very 1 ar from insipidity. But the book has other points that claim notice, and we must leave the pure, gentle Coquette—with whom we are half in love, and whom we shall long remember—passing over, of mecessity, her comical English slang, learnt from her father, and her naïf and unanswerable questions on the Scotch and their ways, their sabbaths and their music, and on the habits and enjoy- ments of boys, and of sportsmen, and a hundred other things, and glancing only at two passages at the opening and closing of her story, to see the same unfeigned and docile humility. Her uncle is shocked and puzzled to find her a Catholic :— "Coquette solved the difficulty in a second. 'If mamma were here, she said, 'she would go at once to your church. It never mattered to us —the church. The difference—or is it differation you do say in English ? —was nothing to us ; and papa did not mind. I will go to your church, and you will tell me all what it is right. I will soon know all your religion,' she added, more cheerfully, 'and I will sing those dreadful slow tunes which papa used to sing—to make mamma laugh.'—' My brother might have been better employed,' said tho Minister, with a frown ; but Coquette ran away, light-hearted, to dress herself to go with the others."

The following passage needs no explanation of the context :— " Then, on the last evening of his visit, they were sitting together in the hushed parlour, speaking in low tones, so as not to disturb the read-

ing of the Minister. do think it is a great misfortune that you are so fond of me,' she said looking at him with a peculiar tenderness in her -eyes ; but it seems as if the world were all misfortune, and if it will make you happy for me to marry you, I will do that; for you have al- ways been very kind to me—and it is very little that I can do in return —but if this will please you, I am glad of that, and I will make you as good a wife as I can.' That was her reply to his entreaties; and, in token of her obedience, she took his hand and pressed it to her lips. There was something in this mute surrender that was inexpressibly ttenc,hing to the Whaup ; and for a moment his conscience smote him, and he asked himself if he were not exacting too much of a sacrifice from this tender-hearted girl, who sat pale and resigned even in the moment of settling her marriage day. Coquette,' said he, 'am I robbing you of any other happiness that you could hope for ? Is there any other prospect in life that you are secretly wishing for?'—' There is not,' she said, calmly.--' None ?'—'None.'—' Then I will make this way of it as happy for you as I possibly can.'"

The Whaup (a term apparently for a wild young fellow, but this and a few other words seem to require a foot-note of explanation) claims notice, too; for though we have met with him or some- thing like him, both in life and books, we have never before seen him live in the latter as he does in this. His dare-devil pranks, his leadership of his brothers, over whom he lords it with a will, _yet for whose welfare he is watchful as an able general, his affection for his stern grave father, and his deference to his com- mands, yielded, however, in so bold and daring a way as to be very slightly removed from impertinence, his ironical contempt and pity for courteous men of the world, his open warfare with the ancient servants, the schoolmaster, and the neighbours, and his rude, authoritative way with his gentle cousin, telling her what " won't do here," sneering at her womanishness, and jeering her for her mistakes, and yet for ever glancing sideways, as it were, to be sure that he has not made her unhappy, patronizing her with a boy's grand condescension, protecting her with a boy's fierce one- sidedness, and jealous of her love with a boy's sullen doggedness towards all possible rivals, all this is spirited, amusing, and admirably true. And very touching, later on, is the tender- ness of the lover, the magnanimous manliness of the proposal, and the devotion and despair of the husband. We cannot resist the temptation of quoting the Whaup's audacious method of passing the long Sunday afternoons in the Sabbatarian manse :— " The Whaup sat down at the table—the Minister was seated at the upper end of the room, in his arm-chair—and the third volume of Jose- phus was opened. Coquette perceived that some mystery was abroad. The boys drew more and more near to the Whaup, and were apparently more anxious to see the third volume of Josephus than anything else. She observed also that the Whaup, keeping the board of the volume up, never seemed to turn over any leaves. She, too, overcome by feminine curiosity, drew near. The Whaup looked at her—suspiciously at first, then he seemed to relent. 'Have ye read Josephus?' he said aloud to her.—' No,' said Coquette.—' It is a most valuable work,' said the Minis- ter from the upper end of the room (the Whaup started), as giving corroboration to the sacred writings from one who was not an advocate of the truth.' Coquette moved her chair in to the table. The Whaup carefully placed the volume before her. She looked at it, and beheld— two white mice ! The mystery was solved. The Whaup had daringly cut out the body of the volume, leaving the boards and a margin of the leaves all round. In the hole thus formed reposed two white mice, in the feeding and petting of which he spent the whole Sunday afternoon, when he was supposed to be reading diligently. No wonder the boys were anxious to see the third volume of Josephus ; and when any one of them had done a particular favour to the Whaup, he was allowed to have half an hour of the valuable book. There were also two or three leaves left in front ; so that, when any dangerous person passed, these leaves could be shut down over the cage of the mice."

The Earl is a prominent, but not a remarkable character, and we have met with him in a hundred novels before ; and the Countess mars the unity of the book by her—short it is true, but—horrible and unnecessary appearance on the stage ; otherwise the principal actors are well supported by the subordinate ones. The absent- minded pastor, stern and tender, the old manservant not to be mollified, the pompous schoolmaster, and the veteran soldier are all good ; and the quaint courtesy and conceit with which the latter avoids, before Coquette, any reminiscence of his favourite Waterloo lest he should hurt the kind French girl's feelings, is both humorous and true.

But we have not yet come to the end of the charms of this book, its descriptions of the scenery of the West of Scotland are delight- ful, exciting all our old longing for the fjords and mountains of the western Highlands. In storm and sunshine, at dawn or sun- set, in raw mist or hot haze, on the mountains or by the shore, our author is equally at home, and equally an artist and a poet ; weav- ing into his descriptions, moreover, that thread of human interest which the unhappy loves of Coquette and the two rivals supply. Amongst the many beautiful pictures is the following one of sun- rise, which closes a very graphic account of the adventures of a night party amongst the rocks, told off to shoot seals, and to the truth of which those can testify who have witnessed the sunrise over the mountains, late in the autumn, from islands lying off a western coast :—

" And now, with a strange and rapid transition, as if the world had begun to throb with the birth of the new day, there arose in the eastern sky a great smoke of red,—a pink mist that rose and spread as if from some great conflagration beyond the line of the sea. All in the west— by the far shores of Knapdale, and up the great stretch of Loolifyne- lay a dense grey fog, in which hills and islands lay like gloomy clouds; but out there at the eastern horizon there was a glow of rose-coloured smoke, which ti 1 yet had no reflection on the sea. And while they looked on it—hi 'f forgetting the object of their quest in the splendour of this sight—the perpetual wonder and mystery of the dawn—the red mist parted, and broke into long parallel lines of cloud, which were touched with sharp, jewel-red lines of fire ; and as the keenness of the crimson waxed stronger and stronger, there came over the sea a long and level flush of dull salmon-colour, which bathed the waves in its light, leaving their shadows an intense and dark green. The glare and the majesty of this spectacle lasted but a few minutes. The intensity of the colours sub- sided; the salmon-coloured waves grew grey and green ; a cold twilight spread over the sky, and with the stirring of the wind Came in the new life of the day,—the crowing of some grouse far up in the heather, the chirping of birds in the bushes, the calling of some solitary goat on the hill, and the slow flapping of a pair of herons coming landward from the sea."