NOVELS.
OUR LADY OF THE BEECHES.*
THE Baroness von Hutten, who gave us an extremely bright and unconventional story in Pam, slightly impaired the im- pression created by her first venture through yielding to that worst infirmity of novel-writers,—the temptation to gratify curiosity as to" what became of" her heroine. But she erred in excellent company, and her new book will go some way to redeem what is after all a venial lapse. It is very short and slight in texture, but as a study of that most wonderful product of modern civilisation—the American woman—it is at once illuminative and entertaining. It will not discount the pleasure of perusal if we baldly set down a few facts about the heroine. Her maiden name is not given, but she was born in America, and when we meet her had been married for several years to Count Bela Zerdahelyi, a young Hungarian nobleman, tall, handsome, aged thirty-four, very fond of his wife, and passionately fond of horse-flesh. He had a place • Oar Lady of the Beeches. By the Baroneeeyou Hutten. "ElhOat ITerele London W. Heinemann. Et&I about two hours from Buda-Pest; but Le hated it for its loneliness, and ran about aU over Europe big-game shooting and racing. His wife did not go with him always, as it bored her terribly. She knew nothing about horses, and loved, or imagined that she loved, solitude. Winifred Zerda- holyi was twenty-nine ; beautiful, though her face looked worn at times, and beautifully dressed. In England her portrait was done by a great English painter, and it flattered her. (Parenthetically we may observe that the frontispiece of Our Lady of the Beeches is a charming portrait of the Baroness von Hutton, by Mr. William Nicholson.) In St. Petersburg she walked a quadrille with a King and supped with an Emperor.
The social accomplishments and activities of the Countess, however, have little bearing on the story : we only give them as a sort of dossier. Here we are concerned with her in the character of a modern hamadryad, with a passionate love of Nature and living things—she owns, however, to having never seen a blackbeetle—and an interest in philosophy and meta- physics. The perusal of a philosophical work entitled 27te Breviary of a Pessimist impels her to open an anonymous correspondence with the author, a brilliant American man of science ; but as she furnishes him with an address from which his letters will be forwarded to her, her desire to preserve her incognito cannot be taken very seriously. To turn to the other partner in this "disembodied friendship," Richard Saxe, it is satisfactory to learn that he was not altogether unworthy of the attention of the superb Countess. At the age of forty-two he was not only distinctly presentable, if not handsome, but a man of world-wide reputation as a researcher and philosopher. Unfortunately he was unmarried, for, being of a decidedly impressionable character, he speedily fell in love with the fair unknown, in spite of her candid assurances that she had an excellent husband. They nearly met in Paris, where Saxe came over for an affaire de Sorbonne; but the ultimate meeting was brought about by a strange coincidence. Saxe was in the habit of periodically camping out in the wilds of Maine, and of taking for his guide an attractive old scamp of a French-Canadian, who turns out to be the missing husband of the Countess's nurse Annette. The old lady having resolved to cross the Atlantic in order to rejoin her husband and visit the grave of their only child, the Countess con- siderately accompanies her, and a dramatic meeting takes place between the philosopher and l'inconnue on the one hand, and the long-estranged couple on the other. The Countess stayed for a month at a neighbouring hotel, but most of her time was spent at the camp, fishing and con- versing with the susceptible philosopher. Naturally enough, in view of the fact that Saxe's expectations of the beauty and attractiveness of the lady of the beech-woods were completely fulfilled, they soon got into deep waters. Count Bela, who had so effectually interfered on a former occasion when a friend of his proposed to elope with his wife, was thousands of miles away. And the Countess was fascinated by the philosopher. To say more would be to pass beyond the true province of the novel-reviewer, which is to stimulate rather than satisfy curiosity. It may suffice, however, to say that Count Bela did not meet with a fatal accident while bear. shooting in Russia, that the Countess proved that she had a conscience, and that Saxe showed no affinity with his notorious namesake the Marshal. As a study of character, perhaps the best thing in the book is the picture of the old French- Canadian Leduc, with his perfect manners and primitive instincts; but the whole of this fantastic adventure in friend- ship is treated with a lightness of touch which makes it very pleasant reading. We are not believers in sequels, yet, at the risk of being thought inconsistent, we confess that we should greatly like to hear Count Bela's side of the story.
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