FICTION.
OUT OF THE WRECK I RISE.*
Miss HA.NBADEN, in the very interesting study of mixed characters which she has given us in her new novel, has, like many another author, achieved a success which is foreign to her purpose. The central figure, whose chequered career lends point to the title, and on whose mingled strength and weakness sto has lavished her best energies, is quite eclipsed in freshness, vitality, and unfamiliarity by more than one of the remaining dramatis personae. In par- ticular she has given us in the person of Tamar Scott, the Jewess who keeps a curio shop and deals in jewels, a really engrossing and new character in fiction. With a happy accumulation of expressive touches she brings before us the sulky charm of this strange woman, regal in aspect, yet with "no manners except for minerals ": not devoid of natural affections, yet "always dismissing people instantly from her brain when her commercial instincts exacted from her an imperious and concentrated attention." By nature proof against pathos, always stimulated by any prospect of plunder "not only for the sake of accumulating money easily, but also for the mental enjoyment of the scheming involved in securing the plunder," she handled her customers with a serene indifference which effectively masked her greed, assum- ing unconsciously a " dreamy poetical tone of voice " whenever she was cheating. Laconic and reticent as a rule, she could become eloquent and brilliant on the subject of precious stones : how good is her saying of the opal, "through no fault of its own, losing its ancient glory and being falsely accused in later days of bringing bad luck." The fascination of jewels and gems is well known, bat we do not remember to have ever seen it more powerfully illustrated in fiction before. Indeed, as we read of Tamar's obsession, we are minded of the passage in Marlowe's Jew of Ma/fa :— "alive me the merchant of the Indian mine;
That trade in metal of the purest mould ; The wealthy Moor, that in the eastern rocks Without controul can pick his riches up, And in his house heap pearl like pebble stones ; Receive them free, and sell them by the weight, Rags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds, Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,
And seld seen costly stones of so great price,
As one of them indifferently rated, And of a carat of this quantity, May serve in peril of calamity To ransom great Kings from captivity. This is the ware wherein consists my wealth: And thus, methinks, should men of judgment frame Their moans of traffic from the vulgar trade, And as their wealth increaseth, so inclose
Infinite riches ima little room."
To Tamar Scott the price of rubies was far above that of virtuous women or men, while her detachment from aotuality is finely described in the following passage :—
" Tamar had always taken it for granted that no one except herself had any affairs to transact. So far as she was concerned, nothing of any importance was happening in the great world out- side her dimly lit shop. Kings might die or be crowned, revolu- tions might be making headway, the Church might be perishing, Ireland might be having Home Rule, women enjoying their hardly won citizenship, comets might be losing their tails, Tamar, amidst all these events, remained unchanged, dateless, belonging, even as the jewels which she worshipped, to all and any time.'
But no one is consistent right through, and there is one weak spot in the armour of Tamar's inhumanly. Years before the • Out OMB Wreck I Rise. By Beatrice Harraden. London : T. Nelson and Bons. [2s. net.] opening of the story she had been in love with Adrian Steele, and though he had married and passed out of her life hie influence still remained to stimulate and provoke her: Even his depreciation had been fruitful, and to prove that De was mistaken in believing her incapable of piecing together all her fragments of information, she had devoted seven years to writing a masterly work on precious stones. In the interval Adrian had achieved brilliant success and prosperity in business, but at the opening of the story we find him confronted with the exposure of extensive frauds against his clients. In his extremity he turns to the two women who had loved him—for his wife is a blameless nonentity. The one we have already described ; the other is Nell Silberthwaite, a woman of fine character and high aims, who had passed under the spell of his personality, hut, when he wearied of exercising his mental ascendancy over her, had recovered her independence of spirit, made a happy marriage, and on the death of her husband had thrown herself with great energy into practical philanthropy. To her he turns first, but his invincible reticence and the knowledge that she stood on a different moral plane prevent him from making confession of his misdeeds. He then revisits Tamar, and, though here again he fails to make a clean breast of his guilt, her own plundering instinct gives her the clue. They had character- istics in common ; he had even cheated her in the past; but she thought none the worse of him for that.
The sequel describes how these two women, leagued by their common devotion to the man by whom they had been fasci- nated and deserted, agree to forget their rivalry and labour to rescue him from impending ruin. Their motives are widely different.' Nell is chiefly moved by the fact that it was Adrian who first interested her in slum work and the uplifting of sub- merged humanity ; Tamar, by her fellow-feeling for one subject to temptations which had beset her in her own calling, and by her sympathy with his line of defence—that his clients had owed more to him than he to them ; in short that he had not swindled but merely " taxed" them. Tamar's attitude is not only intelligible ; it is perfectly consistent with her record. As for the motive of her ally, that is plausible enough ; but we own to finding some difficulty in reconciling Adrian Steele's benevolent interest in the poor with the callousness which, we are expressly told, he displayed in his relations with his intimates. The methods adopted by Nell and Tamar in their campaign of rescue are thoroughly in keeping with their antecedents and characters. Nell employs moral suasion on Adrian's principal creditor and succeeds ; Tamar endeavours to bribe and buy off his most relentless enemy and overreaches, herself. But whether from an instinct of self-protection, or from a tardy spirit of repentance, having once deviated into generosity she begins to pay conscience money to her customers, and her furtive benevolence to a poor clergyman marks a further stage on the path of reluctant well-doing- lip to a certain point the story is extremely interesting, but the catastrophe is abruptly contrived. Adrian Steele does not really "rise out of the wreck." He is provided with a life-belt by his friends, but throws it away when he is within easy reach of land, and.we are left in the dark as to the effect of his disappearance on the careers of the three persons—Nell, Tamar, and the clergyman—who have laboured so hard in their different ways to save the situation. A much more serious objection to the book is the fact that the main outlines of a recent painful episode, well known to the literary world of London, have been reproduced in its pages in such a way as inevitably to recall events which all those concerned have the. best reasons for wishing to forget as well as to forgive.
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