MISS STUART'S LEGACY.* Wu incline to think that Miss Stuart's
Legacy, which bears on its title-page the name of a now writer, is one of the best Indian, novels which have so far been written. It is remark- ably clever ; it is written in a style which has ease, dignity, grace, and quick responsiveness to the demands of the theme ; it has passages of arresting power and fine reticent pathos; and it displays a quick eye for character and a power of depicting it with both force and subtlety ; but in speaking of it as one of the best examples of the class to which it belongs, we are thinking rather of the scope and range of its general interest than of any qualities—however admirable they may be—of its mere intellectual and literary workmanship. It is not too much to say that the greater number of so-called Indian novels are in reality only ordinary English novels to which their authors have chosen to give an Oriental back- ground,—that is, they are pictures of life in India, rather than of Indian life. There may be plenty of local colour, and the nntravelled English reader often finds a bewildering super- fluity of local terms ; but the life is practically that with Ul Misn Sluart'n Ily Fin1.11, ATIl . lie 811'01, 3 VON. M"Millan la On, which we are familiar at home, or differs from it only by the necessary modifications of an unfamiliar enviroutnent—the native, with his inner and outer world, is a picturesque accessory, and nothing or very little more. The value and interest of Mrs. Steel's novel are largely due to the fact that she has broken away from this tradition of insularity, and has produced a book which is from first to last racy of the Indian soil.
Three Englishmen and one Englishwoman are, indeed, the characters in the story in whom the interest is mainly concentrated ; but the native is not a mere shouting or -banner-bearing supernumerary; he enters into the action of the narrative-drama on terms of equality with the leading performers. The wily, obsequious, unscrupulous usurer, Shunker This; the Pathan soldier, Afzul Khan, with his craft, his cruelty, and his curious instinct of the kind of honour that belongs to personal loyalty ; the poor, proud, invincibly faithful veteran, Mahomed Lateef ; and the wronged, mutilated woman, Kirpo, redeemed from dull nonentity by an overmastering lust of revenge,—are masterly studies of native character by a writer who has evidently made it her business to understand those strange complexities of Oriental human nature which the ordinary purveyor of Anglo-Indian fiction is wont to regard with insular contempt, —the very contempt which in 1857 all but lost for us our Indian Empire. Shunker DAs, the born lover of crooked paths - that led the wayfarer either to rupees or to revenge, is the most highly elaborated of these portraits ; but the sombre savage, Afzul, for whom a murder is simply a casual incident, but to whom unfaithfulness to an implicit trust never once suggests itself as a possibility, is not less successful. There is, however, no example of this sympathetic rendering of native character more conveniently quotable than the little vignette of the young Mahommedan journalist, Murghub Alnnad, the fiery fanatic and the tender, loving son :— "Murghub Ahmed, with nothing on but a waist-cloth, his high, narrow forehead bedewed with the sweat which ran down his hollow cheeks like tear-drops, was fanning the flame of his own • virtue with windy words in the dark outhouse which he desig- nated the editor's room. Four square yards of court beyond con- stituted the printing office of the Jelad, a hi-weekly paper of extreme views on every topic under the sun. For the proprietors of The Light of /s/.1m, having a wholesome regard to the expense of libels, had dispensed with the young man's eloquence as being too fervid for safety. So Heaven knows by what pinching and paring, by what s rvation-point of self-denial, the boy had saved and scraped enough to buy a wretched, rotten hand-press and two us ed- up lithographic stones. With these implements, and a heart and. brain full of the fierce fire of his conquering race, he set to work with the utmost simplicity to regenerate mankind in general, and the Government of India in particular, by disseminating the smudged result of his labours on the poor old press among his fellow-subjects : for the most part, it is to be feared, free, gratis, and for nothing. Poor old press ! No wonder it creaked and groaned under Murghub Ahniad's thin straining arms ; for it had grown old in the service of Government and on the side of law and order Perhaps the change was too much for its con- stitution; certain it is that it became daily more and more unsatisfactory in regard to the complicated Arabic words with which the present owner loved to besprinkle his text. Then the damp, overworked stones refused to dry, even under the boy's hot, feverish hands ; and he lost half his precious time in chasing the shifting sunlight round and round the narrow courtyard in order to sot the ink. Something there was infinitely pathetic about it all; especially on the days when, with the look of a St. Sebastian on his young face, the lad could stay his hard labour for a while, and rest himself by folding the flimsy sheets within the orthodox green wrapper, whore a remarkably crooked crescent was depicted as surrounded by the beams of the rising sun.. False astronomy, but excellent sentiment! Then there was the addressing for the post. Most . of the packets bore the inscription, bearing ; but one, chosen with care and cunningly corrected with a deft pen, never failed to carry the requisite stamp above the quaint address :—To my respectable and respected loather, Khan Mahomed Lateef Khan, in the house of the Khan of Khurtpore, Sudr Bazaar, Paizapore. Which is much as though one should address a Prince of the Blood to Tottenham Court Road."
The main story, for which, we think, Belle Stuart and her Lovers would have been a more appropriate title, deals with a woman's illusions and her painful deliverance from them,— illusions created partly by the irony of circumstance and partly by the ignorance and trustfulness of a single-eyed nature. Belle Stuart—who goes out from an English school to the Indian home of her father, and cannot be brought to realise that the object of her girlish idolatry is a lazy, drunna ,ken, unprincipled good-for-nothing—belongs to the family of Ge. of :or ge Eliot's Dorothea Brooke. She has, however, less of imagm idealism than the heroine of Middleniareh, and the deficit, .1;tni vo proves both a gain and a loss. Belle's vision of the actual fact is quicker than Dorothea's, but sometimes she sees only the fact; and the evidence by which she is induced to forsake her true helper, Marsden, for her false helper, Raby, would have been ineffective had she possessed something of Doro- thea's slowly awakened but trustworthy intuition. On the other hand, even while she is under the dominance of illusion, this lack of imaginative activity prevents her from idealising Raby in the same way that Dorothea idealised Casaubon, and therefore the discovery of the real nature of the man she has chosen and of the man she has scorned, though it brings her face to face with a perplexing problem of duty, does not lay her ideal world in rains around her as Dorothea's world was laid when she found that she had given her worship to an egoistic charlatan. Belle's greatest trouble is not her growing suspicion of her husband; it is not even the dawning know- ledge that she has chosen brass instead of gold ; it is the fear that Raby, as acting partner in the Indigo enterprise, which is supported by Marsden's money, should be robbing the man she honours of the possession that he values more than wealth. She has come to know of the hostility roused in the minds of their neighbours by the erection of the dam which Shunker DA,s's agent has persuaded them will divert the river from their poor fields. At last she despairingly appeals to her husband, and taxes him with what seems to her treachery to their friend and benefactor "'I quite admit it, my dear girl,' he was saying calmly. Marsden has written to me on the subject several times, and I have replied as I thought fit. It is quite possible I may have given him the impression I was willing, or even that I was going,
to do more than has really been done. What then ? Only this,' she replied hotly ; that you have degraded him in the
oyes of those people. He promised inquiry, and He bad no business to promise anything. He referred it to ine, and be has no right to complain of my decision.'—' He does not complain ! When has he ever complained P' she interrupted, trying hard to keep the passion from her voice. You can read what ho says, if you like. He thinks—I do not ask how—that you have done your best.'—' Exactly ! hare done my best for the business.'—' He did not mean that. Oh, John, the shame of it will kill me ! To take everything from a man, even hie honour and good mune.'—' Yon don't appear to be so much concerned about mine. But I promised to pay Philip hack his money in two years, and I mean to do it. Be reasonable, my dear child. Some one must take the responsibility ; some one must take the odium which is unfortunately inseparable from success. Why should you complain because I take it cheerfully?' —Bello crushed the letter closer in vexed despair. I oan never make you understand ! Do you not see it is a question of right and wrong P You have taken his money and are using it as he would hate to have it used. You have—I do not say deceived him—but kept the truth from him ; and even if you succeed, what will you be doing but giving him money gained as be would have scorned to gain it ? '—Her llusband laughed a very ugly laugh, and for the first time his face showed some emotion. I always knew you thought Marsden perfect, but I wasn't aware of your estimate of my comparative virtue. I cannot say I'm flattered by it.'—`I can't help it,' she said, almost with a sob, 'I can't see things in the light you see them," This is an example of Mrs. Steel's treatment of a situation which, in the hands of a novelist of the baser, or even of the commoner sort, .would have provided welcome opening for mawkish if not absolutely unwholesome sentiment. Mrs. Raby knows that Major Marsden had been her lover in former days ; she knows, too, that but for something very much like treachery, she might have given her love for his. Now he is again by her side ; but there is none of the nauseous nonsense of the writers who seem to take it for granted that a woman in such a situation must be tempted, whether she yields to or resists the temptation. Belle's great concern is not with her feelings for Marsden or Marsden's feelings for her; these things are unimportant in comparison with the necessity that justice shall be done—that the man who has suffered one wrong by which her husband and she are gainers shall not be wronged still more foully. The crisis calls into action, not her emotional sensibilities, but her moral instincts ; the moment she discerns the true issue she is prepared to fight,—if need be, even to rebel ; but the rebel- lion will not be for herself, or even for Marsden, but for the point of honour. This vigorous sanity of handling is every- where present in Miss Stuart's Legacy, and its purely literary qualities are hardly less conspicuous. Mrs. Steel can render action as well as character,—witness the heroic death of poor Dick Smith, the religions riot, the fateful attack upon the dam, which are all masterly pieces of work. Indeed, from whatever point of view it be regarded, Miss Stuart's Legacy is an exceptionally admirable novel.
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