A ROSE IN JUNE.*
MRS. Ournalcr's range of subjects in her works of fiction is not considerable, and she is never more at fault than when she relies for her readers' interest on startling incidents or sensational episodes ; her true power lies in the delineation of the finer shades of character, not of outward circumstance, but of the minor motives which fashion the man and mark him from his fellows. Who does not judge more justly the Tozers of his acquaintance from the remembrance of her inimitable sketch, while even the Phcebes are rescued from contempt, and we may be sure it is no mean art which discovers beauty in the essentially common-place.
In the story before us—a very slight one—we have an admirable sketch, drawn with a very fine pencil, but as good in its way, we think, as anything Mrs. Oliphant has yet done. It was scarcely possible to depict the special type of comfortable, ease-loving, soft - handed rector, which is given us in Mr. Damerel, without one touch of scorn to stamp the lines in deeper, but Mrs. Oliphant has succeeded ; if the temptation was very present to her, it has been resisted. It is open to no one to accuse her of exaggeration. It is not her fault if Mrs. Damerel did not quite see her husband with the same eyes with which the world—that is, his parish—and his friends saw him. No • one who is at all acquainted with Mrs. Oliphant's graver writings can for a moment doubt the estimation in which she holds the men— and they are not few—who have done or are doing good service in the ranks of the Christian ministry, but unfortunately she is not able to be ignorant that the Damerels are more plentiful than the It is a pleasant scene with which the story opens. Who does not recognise it? The rectory, with its close-cut lawn and wide- spreading garden, the scent of flowers everywhere ; the rector sitting under the shady tree in his easy, rustic chair, his eldest child, his "Rose in June," at his feet. He is not idle, at least he does not think himself so ; "For what occupation," he was wont to say, "could be more ennobling than to watch those gleams and shadows,—all nature spread out before you and de- manding attention, though so softly that only they who have ears
• A nose in June. By Kra Oliphant. London : Hurst and Blackett. 1874. hear." And then he wants so little, only that that same garden and lawn should be in perfect order, "his table not heavily loaded with vulgar English joints, but daintily covered, and oh ! so daintily served ; the linen always fresh, the crystal always fine, the ladies dressed as ladies should be ; to have his wine, of which he said he took very little, always fine, of choice vintage, and -with a bouquet which rejoiced the heart." Plenty of new books, and an absence of all the petty cares of life, such as bills, worries about tradesmen, and the noise of children, for instance. This was all he required; "surely never man had tastes more moderate, more innocent, more virtuous and refined." In this busy, bust- ling world, is it not refreshing that there should be such men,— men with no mnndane cares to disturb their learned leisure? It is true, to Mrs. Damerel's eyes, the leisure is more patent than the learning ; but then is she not clergywoman as well as wife, and even in the interests, as she thinks, of that religion of which her husband's life should be the embodi- ment, she will disguise the truth. It is she, not he, who has so often told those "exquisite little romances about his health and his close study, and the mental occupations which kept him from little necessary duties." Half wifely love, half an instinct, that the real truth would do moral harm to those in whose eyes she imagined the Rector must and ought to be regarded as the pattern of all Christian virtues. The world, her world, took her at her word ; for was he not one of the most charming of men, 4‘ kindly and courteous to everybody, gentle or simple, who comes in his way ?" His wife, with her anxious face and ever busy hands -and small cares (there are eight children, and—considering the Rector's tastes—a very slender purse), is a common-place wife "for such a man." It is a chance if he himself be not more deceived than anybody. Perhaps one reason why the families of the clergy, apparently so carefully trained, so often turn out ill, lies in this,—that the wife has really loved not the man, but the priest, and is bending all her energies, Heaven help her ! that the world may be the better for believing in her ideal, as she once believed in him. The children of such a household grow up in an atmosphere of half-unconscious falsehood, the worst moral atmosphere iii which a soul can live. Mr. Damerel does not preach often, but when he does, "the educated people of his congregation feel that very choice fare is *et before them." For the poor and the uneducated, there is the -curate. By the way, Mrs. Oliphant does no part of her work better than the curate in these pages. "A bony man, loosely strung together, in a long coat, with rather a wisp of a white tie," 'with a capacity for work and kindliness, and a general uncon- sciousness that it is he, and not his Rector, who would be missed -out of the world. We come upon him in a most prosaic manner, in the various turns of the story ; but we have made his acquaint- *axe, most of us, in other scenes, and probably shall meet him -again, while disease and penury and sorrow remain to be dealt with still,—a man who had looked at misery and evil, not cleverly, -or wisely, or critically, but near enough to be sorry, and to lend -a kindly, if a clumsy hand. "Whoever was the offender, Mr. Nolan was always sorry for that one ; his sympathies did not go so much with the immaculate and always virtuous, but he was -sorry for whosoever had erred or strayed, and was repenting of the same." But we are wandering from our refined Rector, -with his wathetic tastes and charming manner. We do not wonder his unbroken serenity had at times a somewhat irritating .effect upon his wife, who, in half-loving, half-depreciating banter, he invariably calls "Martha," but reason is, as Mrs. Oliphant .observes, "when a man must not be disturbed about bills, lEis -wife must be, and doubly ; when a man cannot bear the noise of children, his wife must, and doubly ; and even when a clergyman --dislikes poverty, and unlovely cottages, and poor rooms, which are less sweet than the lawn and the roses, why, his wife must, -and make up for his fastidiousness." Nor der we wonder that it -did not altogether please this exceedingly well-sketched wife to see her eldest daughter following so closely in her father's steps. There is no scene, perhaps, quite so perfect to the eye, for apparent quiet happiness and ease, as a well-to-do English country rectory—all the wheels of life seem oiled, and to move -without the wear-and-tear of other lives—but there is, perhaps, no home more rudely broken up by the hand of death, or where the seed that has been sown bears for good or evil such quickly apparent result. Mr. Damerel could not be expected to be fond of poor people in the abstract. He di&ikea "everything that is unlovely, and, alas ! there are a great many unlovely things in poverty." But in the midst of a quiet walk, his curate steps across his path to tell him& poor creature is dying of fever, and has a fancy to see
"I have done all I could to pacify her," adds the good man
apologetically, "but she says she knew you in better days ;" the whole scene is a fine one, the two men standing as under a white light. But the Rector is not a man to like the uneasy conscience or the unpopularity which would follow refusal. The sequel is easy to guess, but whether it be a tribute to Mrs. Oliphant's skill or no, every reader will indulge in speculation as to the Rector's catch- ing that fever. Did he catch it, or was it already in his system, or did his nervous dread of disease and dirt hasten the catas- trophe? We cannot tell, but he had taken his last walk in the pleasant parish, and the next fifty pages, in which Mrs. Oliphant describes him in his last illness, we can maintain without hesita- tion to be among the finest she has ever written. It is difficult to give extracts, yet we would place the scene before the reader if we could. The dying man is speaking :— "At death's door," he said, reflectively ; "yes, that's a good expres- sion—at the door of something unknown. Somehow it does not seem possible. One can believe it for others, not for one's-self. The idea is very strange." Mrs. Damerel was a good, religious woman, and her husband was a clergyman. She did not feel that this was how ho ought to speak at such a moment, and the thought wrung her heart. "Dearest," she said, growing more tender in her grief and pity, "it is a thing we must all think of one time or another; and to you, who have served God faithfully, it must be something else than ' strange:— " What else ?" he said, looking up at her. "I might say confusing, be- wildering. To think that I am going I know not where, with no cer- tainty of feeling that I shall ever know anything about it—that I sin no longer a free agent, but helpless, like a leaf blown into a corner by the wind—I who for very nearly fifty years have had a voice in all that was done to me. My dear, I don't know that I ever realised before how strange it was." "But—you are—happy, Herbert ?" she said, in a low, imploring voice.—"Happy, am I? I don't know—why should I be happy? I know what I am leaving, but I don't know what I am going to. I don't know anything about it. Something is going to happen to me, of which I have not the least conception what it is. I am not afraid, my dear, if that is what you mean," he said, after a momentary pause.
Mr. Damerel was no sceptic, but "neither was there anything religious in the organisation of his mind." His reason was not impaired, neither was he afraid, but his nature, which had always loved ease and leisureliness, was at leisure now "to survey the strange, unexpected situation in which he found himself,—going to die without knowing what dying was, or how it could affect him, or where it would place him." He was departing alone, the first of his generation, curious and solitary, not knowing where he was going. "To God's presence. Ah, yes ! but what did that mean ?" And he rouses himself to consider the more immediate interests which had hitherto seemed so important to his wife, so little to himself. Now their places were reversed :— "Oh, Herbert! God is very merciful," said his wife, who was crying softly by his side.—" Yes, yes, that is quite true; but that is not what I was thinking of. I ought to have thought of what would follow in ease of this happening which is about to happen. I ought to have tried to gave; but how could I have saved out of the little pittance we had ?" "You may be sure every man is like me, more or less," said Mr. Damerel. "We know we must all die ; only it is impossible in respect to one's-self. I am myself, you perceive, just as much as ever ; and yet to-morrow, perhaps, or next day—there's the wonder. It makes one feel giddy now and then. About the boys; I have always felt that, one time or other, we should have to decide something for the boys."
"Then, he added, in the musing tone which to his anxious watchers seemed almost a gentle delirium, "But think, my dear I to be sent even into a new place, a strange town, in the dark—without any direction—without knowing where to go, right hand or left !" He gave a little, soft, broken laugh. "It is the strangest way of dealing with curious, inquisitive creatures like men. I never realised it-before."
But isolated sentences like these give but a very inadequate idea of a most singular and powerfully described scene.
We have not spoiled Mrs. Oliphant's story by revealing the Rector's death. The slight tale for which ordinary novel-readers will care is left untouched. It has few incidents, scarcely any plot. We have not the faintest interest in Rose, who, we scarcely think, would have made Mr. Incledon's life so "homely sweet" as Mrs. Oliphant imagines ; to us, she seems both selfish and hard. But Mrs. Oliphant's writing has regained in these pages the incisiveness and raciness which we have more than once missed of late.
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