NOVELS.
THE LEADING NOTE.*
AT a time when people are discussing what is the right length of a novel, we have no doubt that the admirers of quantity may be disposed to find fault with Miss Murray for the short- ness of her measure. Speaking for ourselves, we are rather inclined to applaud her for confining this modest venture—her first, if we mistake not—within a narrow compass: It deals not with a life-history, but a short episode. But novels are not to be judged by the number of words they contain, though genius has a tendency to exuberance,—/es meilleurs auteurs parlent trop. In fiction, as elsewhere, there is room for the art of the miniaturist. Finally, if a novel is sufficiently interesting to induce a reviewer to read it twice over, it may be at least counted the equivalent of one twice as long, a single perusal of which amply suffices. Judged by this test, The • The Leading Nate. By Rosalind Murray. London : Sidgwiek and Jackson. [3s. 601.1 Leading Note compares favourably with the normal eighty- thousand-words novel.
Modern life tends to uniformity, but few people escape all contact with lives diametrically opposed to their own. The 'disturbing effect of such contact is the motive of Miss Murray's story. Carola Beaufort is the only daughter of a rich English widower, who is immersed in the study of the higher mathematics. She has been her own mistress from the age of sixteen, has never known unkindness from a living soul, and has led a perfectly happy, sheltered life until a young Cambridge friend of her father's brings a Russian exile named Ortskoff to stay at the Beauforts' country house. Carola enjoys life intensely, her lot having been always cast in pleasant places,—her father has a villa on the Riviera as well as a place in England. She loves beauty and colour ; has a nice gift for music and letters ; and has never come to close quarters with suffering humanity. The advent of Ortskoff, whose brother was exiled to Siberia, and whose friends have been imprisoned or shot, strikes the first jarring note in her harmonious life. Ortskoff, it should be explained, though not unromantic in his exterior, is not a melodramatic figure. He is neither a terrorist nor a revolutionary, but a gentle Tolstoyan; and while Carole is moved to sympathy by the story of his shattered home and the exile and death of his friends, she is repelled by his ascetic ways, his con- tempt for art as mere self-indulgence, his disregard of beauty, and his theory of individual insignificance. Thus when Ortskoff leaves her father's house we find her piqued by his courteous indifference, which seems to veil a disapproval of her mode of life ; perturbed by the new light he has thrown on the duties of man to his brethren; impressed, in spite of herself, by his strength of character ; and vaguely fascinated by his personality. Before they meet again on the Riviera, Carola has striven hard to justify her antagonism to his theories. She basks in the sunshine like a lizard, plunges into innocent dissipations with her frivolous, pleasure- loving Italian friends, and extracts a fearful joy from a visit to the gambling-tables at San Remo. But now and again the cold fit of dissatisfaction seizes her; she cannot blind herself to the presence of sorrow and suffering, and when Ortskoff returns, she falls more than ever under his spell. An accident which disables Ortskoff for a while brings them into closer relations, and she mistakes the friendlier tone of his conversation for a requital of the love which she has persuaded herself she now feels for him, And so it comes about that when he is suddenly summoned back to Russia, in a fit of impulsive enthusiasm she begs him to take her with him. Ortskoff is not in the least in love with Carola; he has no reason to believe that she could endure to share a lot for which she is utterly unprepared ; and be gives her the only answer possible to a man of honour and common-sense. Carola is left to drain the cup of her humiliation alone, but the reader will have no serious misgivings as to her future. With her temperament, her youth, and her surroundings, the prospect is far from hopeless, though " nothing could ever be the same again."
Miss Murray has chosen a difficult theme, but her handling of it is marked by simplicity and delicacy. The conflicting ideals are set forth with an impartiality rare in a young writer. The Leading Note, in fine, is a vivid commentary on the French saying that one chooses one's friends but on cubit l'amour, and it excites pleasurable anticipation of further work from the same pen.
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