MR. YATES'S NEW STORY.* THE first half of this story
is nearly as good as the Black Sheep— by far the best of Mr. Yates's novels—but the second seems to us not only inferior to that, but to its author's less successful pro- ductions. Up to her marriage, Marian Ashurst, the heroine of the narrative, and the only figure iu it of any importance to the critic, —though two or three of the subordinate personages, particularly a " Red " birdstuffer named Byrne, may interest the reader,—is a marked and original character, the result, we should imagine, of long and patient analysis ; but after it she becomes suddenly an ordinary woman, of a hard and insolent type, as disagreeable as she is common-place. The daughter of a not very successful school- master, Marian has displayed from childhood the capacity of a woman of business, a desire for the acquisition of knowledge, a spirit of order and of economy, a passion for doing things and doing them well which has made her the idol of her father's heart and the real mistress of the establishment. Combined with these merits was, however, one bad quality, a kind of avarice not un- common among women, and singularly well described by Mr. Yates, an avarice which is not avarice pure and simple, but is a compound of the desire for power, the desire for luxury, and the desire to be doing business, to be engaged in real work, substantial affairs, such as produce profit and income, and give one a sense of success. This desire is often strong with women, sometimes, from the repression it encouuters from our social system, becomes of unnatural strength, as indeed any re- pressed intellectual faculty is apt to do. Marian, for instance, takes real pleasure in managing business not her own, in helping a friend to get through complicated accounts, in taking stock for him, seeing where the money lies, studying the ramifica- tions of his investments, and aiding him to disentangle confused, though profitable, speculations. Thus engaged, Marian is by no means an unpleasing figure. A little too desirous of wealth, a little too savage at its want, those faults might be excused in one who felt the capacity to defeat poverty, yet had seen her father die from inability to pay 130 guineas for an operation ; who loved him and her mother dearly, who never interfered with or courted people she did not like, and who had fallen heartily in love with a poor man, though in this last case her love is mixed with a feeling that Walter Joyce is worthy of it because he is sure to get on, to win position, and money, and friends, and so raise her. That does not, granting the love itself, seem to us either an un- natural or an unworthy thought, for we see no reason why women, because they are women, are to cease to be ambitious, and ambi- tion for a lover is hardly selfish, even in one who is to share his promotion. Marian and her mother are, however, invited to stay with Mr. Cresawell, the rich man of the village, and her tact, efficiency, and grace—without being beautiful, she has the grace of the efficient—so win on her host that he makes her a proposal. Walter Joyce in the interim has not succeeded, is still seeking a career, and has only to offer her himself and £400 a year, which he is at last promised as Berlin correspondent of the Comet. Marian, still loving him, makes up her mind to accept Mr. Cress- well, whom, we should add, she distinctly likes—Mr. Yates seldom makes the mistake of piling the agony too high—and writes to the lover she has betrayed the following striking letter :- " . . . . I have no excuse to make. I have tried, and tried hard, to live in the position of life in which I have been placed. I have struggled with poverty, and tried to face the future—which would have been worse than poverty, penury, misery, want perhaps—with calmness. I have failed. I cannot help it, it is my nature to love money and all that money brings, to love comforts and luxuries, to shrink from privation. Had I gone straight from my father's deathbed to your house as your wife, I might perhaps have battled on ; but we came here, and—I cannot go back. You will be far happier without me when your first shock is over. I should have been an impossible wife for a poor man, I know I should—complaining, peevish, irritable ; ever repining at my poverty, ever envying the wealth of others. You are better without me, Walter, you are indeed ! Our ways of life will bo very different, and we shall never come across each other in any probability. If we should, I hope we shall meet as friends. I am sure it will not be very long before you recognize the wisdom of the course I am now taking, and are grateful to me for having taken it. You are full of talent, which you will now doubtless turn to good account, and of worthy aspirations, which you will find some one to sympathize with, and share
By Edmund Yates. 3 vole. London: Chapman and Hall.
* the upward career which I am sure is before you. I thought I could have done as much at one time, but I know now that I could not, and I should be only acting basely and wickedly towards you, though you will not think it more basely and wickedly than I am now acting with you if I had gone on pretending that I could, and had burdened you for life with a soured and discontented woman. I have no more to say."
The whole of the letter is literally true, and its writer must have been, as through the first volume and a half she is, a strong resolute woman, of coarse moral fibre, unaffectionate but truthful, and, except in business, not hard or oppressive. The instant she is married, however, her character changes. Instead of becoming softer with success, as such a woman would have done, enjoying her wealth and its results, and disposed to tolerant patronage, she becomes harsh, insolent, and unladylike, grossly insults an old doctor who has been one of her warmest friends, compels her husband to turn his two nieces out of the house, tries to bribe everybody, Walter Joyce included ; and finally, when her husband dies, proposes herself to Joyce, is rejected, and flits about England a wealthy, joyless, heart-broken widow. All that later part of her career seems to us utterly inconsistent with her character. It is care- fully explained all through that genuine avarice, inability to part with money without pain, enters into Marian's composition ; yet she twice offers large bribes without a regret for the money, and with a coarse directness from which her clear brain would certainly have preserved her. She would have indicated the possibility of such offers, not made them, would have tolerated and ruled the nieces,—who were, by the way, pretty nearly unbearable, though Mr. Yates seems to think that for some unexplained reasons he was bound to bear them,—and above all, would, as a widow, some- how or other have rivetted herself again to the world. She was not ardently in love with Joyce when she made the second offer, and a wealthy woman of business, full of administrative power, clear-headed and truthful to herself, would very soon have found occupation for her energies. The moral, of course, is im- proved by her failure ; but poetical justice is not the lot of women like Marian Ashurst, who, moreover, half redeems herself by the frank courage of her self-analysis.
As for Walter Joyce, who seems to be a favourite with his author, he strikes us as a vindictive cad, whom even success cannot cure of spitefulness. Marian's letter, though it showed her to be selfish, ambitious, or what you will, was at least truthful ; her marriage, if base, was not treacherous ; and no man with the qualities of head and heart ascribed to Walter Joyce would have regarded his desertion as excuse for a spite of years, a spite which leads him to contest a seat with Mr. Cresswell, who was entirely innocent in the matter, being ignorant of the pre-engagement, and to reject Marian's offer of herself with ungentlemanly con- tumely. There is something false or unnatural both in his con- duct and Marian's after their breach, which spoils the effect of what would otherwise have been a most careful study of an original and interesting phase of female character. Mr. Yates deserves credit, weary novel-readers will say the very highest credit, for stepping out of the well-worn track of love stories, for depicting women under the influence of passions other than love and with ends other than marriage, and for some 404 pages we can congratulate him on his success. Marian Ashurst is never Harriet Routh, that strangely attractive figure whom Balzac might have painted, a woman in whom a righteous but dominant love had killed conscience, but she is, nevertheless, up to her marriage, one whom the student of character can watch with pleasure, if not with admiration, as a real being ; but after that she is conventional, a mere vulgar woman, with a bad temper and no head, a woman into whom the girl could not have declined. Had Mr. Yates written the first half and Mrs. Trollope the second, we should have had much such a picture, though Mrs. Trollope's Marian would, we suspect, have been a great deal more successful. Her efficient people usually managed their lives better than that.
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