MISS BRADDON'S NEW NOVEL.*
Miss BRADDON'S latest novel is, we believe, her thirty-first. If we have of late failed to give her successive works the attention which was aroused by Lady Audley's Secret, and kept alive by a series of clever successors to that exciting story, the excuse • An Open Verdict. By the Author of " Lady Audley's Secret." Loudon: John Maxwell and Co. must be found in their number. They ran on one's heels, so to speak, and one was obliged to shake them off, in order to get freedom and leisure to observe what other people were doing in the same department of literature,—a department in which her competitors were comparatively few when " Aurora Floyd" made the Temple Bar Magazine a success, but in which they are now so many that it is impossible for the reviewer to do more than pick one here and there out of the crowd.
We recognise with pleasure in An Open Verdict a novel quite worthy of the author of those which formerly were among the most widely read in the year's supply of fiction. Here are no signs at all that the writer of thirty-one novels has written herself out ; her powers of invention show themselves as fresh as ever, and if she no longer makes such lavish demand upon them as formerly she did, the change is manifestly a result of deliberate -choice and educated taste. The embarrassment of riches in the matter of plots has perhaps never been so amply illustrated as by Miss Braddon, when she had to turn Birds of Prey into two stories, and to throw away a whole series of complications in changing The Outcasts into Henry Dunbar. She has gained in skill since those novels were written, without losing in inventive- ness, and it is easy to discern in the present novel the point at which she has applied self-restraint, refraining from heightening incident into sensation, and relying upon the free and natural development of her story for its interest.
An Open Verdict is one of those novels on which it is impossible to comment intelligibly without divulging the nature of the plot, a proceeding which both the author and the reader are apt to resent, and with reason ; we are, however, less reluctant in the present instance to incur their displeasure than we 'usually are in such cases, because Miss Braddon's plot is as transparent as it is clever ; she takes her readers into her confidence all along, boldly placing her trust in the skill with which she handles the persons whom she brings in contact with circumstances in which there are indeed hidden things for them, but none for the observers. Thus she achieves success in the present instance by a process the opposite of that which first won her place among popular novelists,—by telling, instead of keeping, the -secret on which the story is to turn. To readers who care for more than the results of the story-teller's art, who are in. terested in its methods, this mode has a great attraction ; it is a study like that of the manufacture of Gobelins tapestry, where one sees the face of the design and the busy fabrication at the back of the canvas ; and a little con- sideration will show them that the maintenance of interest in a ready-revealed secret is a more difficult feat than the keeping alive of curiosity concerning a mystery around which one's readers play the children's game of "I burn" for the space of three. volumes. There is no great variety in the types of girlhood which Miss Braddon presents to us in this story ; the grand, tall, dark, unconventional Beatrix Harefield, and the pink-and-white, pretty, Dresden-china-like Bella Scratchell are old acquaintances, but not for that unwelcome. We know at once that the dark heiress is to be the injured angel and the pink-and-white protegee is to be the malignant traitress and intrigante of the story ; the one to be an example of the powerlessness of wealth to secure happiness, the other an example of the might of envy and covetousness to tempt and betray. Bella Scratchell is a village Becky Sharpe, with a possibility of redemption in her, because she has really the faculty of falling in love with a good man, the well-born and good-looking curate of the parish of Little Yafford. But this way of escape is closed by the obstacle of Cyril Culverhouse's love for Beatrix, the dark heiress ; and Bella is made more wicked and dangerous by the unconscious injury done her by the unsuspecting friend to whom she owes the education that has raised her above the vulgar level of her own family, the means of setting-off the paltry beauty she prizes so highly, and a relief from her uncongenial and sordid home. Beatrix Harefield is the neglected daughter of a man of morose temper, who made her mother miserable by his jealousy .during her lifetime, and broods over his fancied injuries after her death, leading a solitary life, meeting all attempts at neighbourli- ness with rude rebuff, treating his only daughter with cold aver- sion, and determined on but one line of action, which has her welfare for its object. Beatrix shall never marry a man of wealth inferior to her own, because she shall be saved, if he -can save her, from the misery of believing that she is loved for herself, and discovering too late that she has been married for her money. There is some vagueness about the death of this mono- maniac's wife, and there is a little mystery about a certain
Antonio," of whom Beatrix has an indistinct remembrance ; but
the reader is not mystified, he knows that the original of the minia- ture which Beatrix discovers in her mother's room (on the only occasion when she is lucky enough to find the key in the door-lock) will turn up and dispel the widower's doubts, all too late for his peace,—and so it happens. The complication of trifles by which Beatrix Harefield is brought into the terrible position which forms the central incident of the story is remarkably clever. We cannot call to mind a more skilfully linked chain of circumstan- tial evidence than that which begins with Beatrix's outburst of anger and complaint against her father,—uttered to her clerical lover after Mr. Harefield has refused his consent to their marriage, and informed them that he will leave her penni- less if that marriage takes place without his consent ;- winds itself round the girl with every hour and incident, until the discovery by her of her father's body, in her dead mother's un- used room, and the proof that the cause of death is poison ; and is finally rivetted by the act of base treachery perpetrated, on the impulse of the moment, by Bella Scratchell, who conceals the letter in which Mr. Harefield has explained the motive of his suicide. All these scenes are exceedingly interesting, and written with great skill. Then come the questions,—Could a man like Cyril Culverhouse entertain a suspicion of the guilt of such a woman as Beatrix—loving her the while—or renounce her as he renounces her because, though he might stifle the suspicion, he cannot make his wife one who is liable to be suspected, in con- sequence of the " open verdict " of the coroner's jury ? And could a girl like Bella Scratchell calculate upon his renouncing his love as the result of her own suppression of the exculpatory evidence ? The 'situation' has a far-fetched look, but we think Miss Braddon's readers will be of opinion that she removes that incongruity by her treatment of it ; that Cyril Culverhouse is just the man to act as Miss Braddon makes him act, and that Bella Scratchell, who knows her curate, as she knows all the people about her — thoroughly — is capable of the calculation upon which she proceeds, and which is successful, until the fates begin to move in the direction of her punishment. Miss Braddon is as remorseless in one instance as the fates themselves, and con- ducts the issues of her story to a conclusion of irony which they could hardly outdo. This is not in her dealings with Bella, who gets her deserts from a source altogether independent of the lovers whom she has injured after so treacherous a fashion, but in her treatment of the cousins, Sir Kenrick Culverhouse, and Cyril, respectively. The out-at-elbows baronet is worth a dozen of the priggish, scrupulous, estimable curate. We entirely agree with the Vicar's wife, delightful Mrs. Dulcimer, that " Kenrick would be a splendid match for Beatrix ;" be holds Mr. Harefield in justi- fiable contempt, he is not to be wheedled by Bella, and it never occurs to him as a possibility for an instant to suspect, or to believe that any sane person could suspect Beatrix of having poisoned her father. He is a fine, manly, soldierly fellow, —and of course, his cousin is preferred to him. He is always decisive, Cyril is always vacillating, and he loses his promised bride on the eve of their marriage, and is killed in India. Cyril succeeds to the bride, the fortune, and the title, and though he goes on doing clergyman's work at Bridport, and is as exemplary as he is fortunate, we rather grudge it all to him, and we never thoroughly like him.
In none of Miss Braddon's former novels has she male her minor characters more effeetive than in this. The selfish and cold-hearted governess, Miss Scales ; the pious, fussy mother of the infidel artisan whom Cyril Culverhouse converts to Christi- anity by an act of heroic Christian charity ; the members of the Scratchell household ; the first Mrs. Piper, who never could rise to the level of her husband's self-made prosperity, but worried herself about the butcher's bill and the wastefulness in the kitchen to the end of her life ; the Vicar, who could read Bishop Berkeley and answer his wife's questions simultaneously without committing himself ; Mr. Piper, with his sound sense and horrid vulgarity, who " grudges nothing " that is to be expended in show, but fondly be- lieves that his wife has bought a famous thorough-bred hunter, and " put something in her pocket for a new gown," out of a cheque for one hundred pounds,—all these are admirably drawn. The gem of the book, however, is Mrs. Dulcimer, the Vicar's wife. We do not remember any more 'amusing personage in all the well- filled portrait gallery which we owe to Miss Braddon. For well. meant, but invariably mischievous meddling, Mrs. Dulcimer may compare with Miss Austen's inimitable Mrs. Norris ; for invete- rate match-making, and a happy faculty of hitting on the wrong persons for her schemes, she is on a par with Miss Austen's Emma Woodhouse. She is the kindest, most benevolent, most self- complacent of blunderers, the most imperturbable of meddlers, and her conviction that nobody can manage the poor as well as she can, and that the innermost recesses of human character are penetrable by her unfailing sagacity, leads to a great deal that is very amusing in the story. Mrs. Dulcimer is as clay in the hands of the potter in those of Bella Scratchell, whom she observes in church, sitting with Beatrix Harefield, and instantly begins to scheme about. What a capital thing it would be to get the poor pretty thing, who had such a hard life of it at home, married to some one ! Here are the cogitations which set the whole story is motion :-
"' wish I could think of some one to suit ber,' said Mrs. Dulcimer, to herself. And then her glance roamed absently to the reading-desk, where Cyril's crisp brown hair and strongly-marked brow showed above the open Prayer-book. The very man!' Mrs. Dulcimer ejacu- lated inwardly, in an ecstasy of good-nature. It is so delightful to feel oneself the providence of one's neighbours. Poor Mrs. Dulcimer's mind was distracted during the rest of the service. Vainly did the busy soul try to pin her mind to the Prayer-book. She could not get her thoughts away from the suitability of a match between Cyril and Bella. There was a remarkable fitness about it. Neither of them had any money of their own. That made it so nice. They couldn't feel under any obligation to each other. Cyril would, of course, get on well in tho Church. And then, what an admirable wife Bella would make for a poor man,—a girl who had been brought up to pinch, and contrive, and deny herself, and make sixpence do the work of a shilling ! It never occurred to Mrs. Dulcimer that this long apprenticeship to self-denial might have induced in Bella a craving for the good things of this life, and an ardent desire for the opportunity of self-indulgence. By the time Cyril went up into the pulpit to preach his sermon, Mrs. Dulcimer had married him to Belle, and settled them in a modest, but comfortable living, with the prettiest and most rustic of vicarages, where the housemaid's pantry would afford ample scope for Bella's domestic talents, while the ignorance of an agricultural parish would give full play to Cyril's energy and earnestness."
Mrs. Dulcimer does a great deal of diversified mischief through- out the story, unvisited by any compunction, and the reader leaves her perfectly satisfied with herself, and convinced that it is she who has made the match between Cyril and Beatrix (calmly ignoring the entire episode of Sir Kenrick) because she had always said that Beatrix must be Lady Culverhouse ! Of less importance to the story, and more slightly, but very cleverly drawn, is Miss Coyle, a spiteful spinster, who urges upon the society of Little Yafford the fall import of the "open verdict" as an accusation of Beatrix Harefield, whom, while she is always taking credit to herself for the unblemished gentility of her own small means, Miss Coyle mortally detests, because she is nich.
She is admirable ; her ruthless imputation of toadyism to every one who stands by poor Beatrix, the wonderful French in which she endeavours to put Miss Harefield's dame de compagnie on her guard against that young lady, her little tea-parties, and the way in which she impresses her dignity and her claims upon the society of little Yafford, are really touches of high comedy. The closing paragraph of the book disposes of her :—" Miss Coyle has departed 'this life, in the odour of sanctity, and her memory lives in the minds of Yafford people as that of a highly genteel person, who paid ready-money for all her small requirements, was strict in her attendance at the services of her church, never carried a parcel, and was never seen out of doors without her gloves ?"
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