THE BUBBLE REPUTATION.*
LN this novel, which, while it has some of the characteristics of those that have already won for its author an honourable place among writers of fiction, is very different from and vastly superior to them, Miss Katharine King treats a difficult theme with much spirit and skill. Whether she is always correct in the technical military details of her story we are not certain, being in no posi- tion to measure her knowledge ; but we arc equally indifferent on that point, for it in no way affects the deep and touching interest of a story which is romantic without being extravagant, and which catches one's sympathies with the close and tenacious grip of truth.
The hero of Miss King's story is a soldier, a young Irishman, Owen Bourke, and the curtain rises upon him "risen from the ranks,"—a situation which suggests to the least imaginative much contention of feeling and not a little difficulty mingling with its pride, pleasure, and success. And then a brief sketch of his past is given, which skilfully indicates his character, with its fine qualities, its defects, and the underlying, heroic strain that has asserted itself in the deed which has brought Owen Bourke his good-fortune, and is in itself a stirring tale of the terrible Indian Mutiny.
The boy has resolved to enlist that he may escape the tyranny of his step-father, and a portion of his motive is that he may relieve his mother from the misery of witnessing his unhappiness. To the scene of his departure from home his thoughts return, when he is sitting alone in his new quarters in an Indian cantonment, on the evening of the first day of his new rank :—
" Owen said farewell to his mother late one evening, promising that he would surely return some day, in such a manner that his stepfather's animosity would be smothered in his presence, and that they should be free to love each other, and be as much to each other as they had been before the time when she rashly contracted a second marriage. Mother and son were standing alone by the moonlight in the little garden, the evening when his mother and he parted. Owen, a small, slight boy of eighteen, looked a mere child, as he stood with his arms folded round his weeping mother, trying to choke back his tears, and to show her that he had a man's courage and self-control, though he had not a man's strength. But when she con- tinued weeping, and would not be comforted by his bright pictures of • The Bubble Reputation. By Katharine King, Author of "The Queen of the Regiment," dm. London: Hurst and Blackett
I future happiness, nor appear to believe his predictions of a glorious I career, he began to get vexed. Why should she grieve so, because he was going out into the world to work out his own life, and make for himself a place among his fellows, as it was right he should do ? Women's tears are futile and weak, and it angered him that they should be wept over him at the very outset of his career ; he drew himself away from the clasp of her clinging arms, and said, 'Give over crying, mother. Sad tears sweeten no man's drink. You will be safe and quiet at home, and you have no call to take on, when I, that am turning out to look for my luck, say nothing.' 'Oh! Owen,' she sobbed, holding him fast, it is just because I have to sit at home and wait, while you are up and doing, that makes the separation hard to bear. I shall be always thinking,—thinking; plaguing myself for fear harm should come to you. If there should be war, and you should be killed, Owen, or if you are sent to the Ingies, and die there, what shall I do then, my child ?' The thought that, instead of winning the glory of which he had dreamed, he might only gain an obscure soldier's grave, sobered Owen for a minute ; but he was young, and there was excite- ment and rapture in the thought of escape, and in the sense of wide freedom of choice that lay before him. As he was about to answer, Mick Riley's voice, calling his mother, made itself heard. One more embrace passed between them, celiveying, in the strength of her lingering clasp, a revelation of the force of a mother's love, revealing in his warm, yet hurried response, the feeble, facile affection of a childish heart."
Of course the boy soon learns the fallacy of all his dreams, but he substitutes for them a high purpose ; he avails himself of every chance of education, he develops great talent as an inventor, and. then comes an occasion which brings out the heroism of his character, and wins its reward. But the newly-made officer does not deceive himself with any notion that the social gulf between him and the gentlemen who are now formally his- " brothers " has been bridged over by his receiving her Majesty's- commission, and the first hours of his triumph are full of bitter- ness as well. The young man has both friends and foes among these brother-officers, and the scenes of regimental life are re- markably well drawn, full of ease and animation ; while we are skilfully attracted towards a certain Captain Lacy, the firm and zealous friend of Owen Bourke, but who is destined to play a part in the young man's future which puts to rout the anticipations of the most practised novel-reader. We must not tell Miss King's story, but we may comment on its origi- nality, on the charm of the unexpected that distinguishes it, and
on the very beautiful and lofty ideal which she sets up in the- character of Owen Bourke, but without being tempted into
making him faultless. There is entire consistency in the conduct, in the feelings, and indeed, we may add, in the fate of the gallant fellow, who has it, as the Easterns say, "written upon his fore- head" that his career shall be brilliant and sad, and of whom, the reader feels from the first, the ardent and daunt- less heart will be the betrayer. We have stronger sympathy with the men than with the women in this novel, which is so much superior to the ordinary fictions of the day that its people can be seriously spoken of as inspiring distinct sentiments ; but the woman are very real, too. Not until he has been raised from the ranks, and brought into the society of ladies, does love come to trouble Owen Bourke ; and then it is not very wonderful that he should be dazzled by a woman in whom there is more glitter than gold, and we know that on that side of his. fortunesthere is to be no success for him. But here, again, Miss King treats her readers to the utterly unexpected ; the mode in which all the future promise of Bourke's military career is obscured, and all its past achievement is undone, is startling in its suddenness, and highly dramatic in its effect.
The second epoch in the life of the young Irishman, whose
"bright, grave face" is a reflection of his nature, is less full of stirring incident, but is conceived and worked out with complete originality. The heroic soldier, the devoted friend, and the high- souled lover is seen now as the studious, laborious, and successful inventor, and his adventures in Prussia form the subject of a portion of the story which bears honourable testimony to Miss King's conscientious notions of work and painstaking getting- up of her subject. The author of the Pays des Milliards himself has hardly looked more closely into Prussian life and customs than the chronicler of Count von Mittsdorf's brilliant rise to- fame, fortune, and rank ; of the love of women, false and true, for him ; of the external glory and the internal struggle of his life, and of what it was he found when he sought "the bubble reputation, even in the cannon's mouth."
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