TWO KISSES.*
Mn. HAWLEY SMART is a writer who seems to enjoy describing life under questionable aspects, with less propriety than pungency, more gusto than good grammar. Not that we have serious fault to find with his morals, for, although like many other novelists of the day, be has acquired the art of skating over thin ice with audacious ease, Mr. Smart is not one of those authors who be- come dull as soon as they attempt to be decorous.
Mr. Cla.xby Jenkens, a subaltern of artillery some five-and- twenty years before our story commences, eloped with the daughter of a Nottingham tobacconist, to the serious discomfiture of Samuel Turbottle, a young man in the girl's own rank of life. Jenkens's relations, whose patience he had almost exhausted by earlier escapades, took this opportunity of breaking with him, and Turbottle solaced himself by marrying his old sweetheart's sister. Soon after this, Mrs. Jenkens died, leaving her husband with one child, Cissey, the heroine of the novel. For the first ten years of her life her father entrusted her to the care of her aunt, Mrs. Turbottle. He then placed her in a convent at St. Ger- main's, which she left only to marry Mark Hemsworth, an English speculator, resident in Paris. During thisperiod Jenkens, or "Major Claxby Jenkens," as we are to call him, and Turbottle, who has become a widower, go on from bad to worse, and the former has
* Two Eissa : a Novel. By Hawley Smart. London: Bentley and Bon.
become a usurer's agent, the latter a "cheap Jack," by the time we are introduced into their society.
Mark Hemsworth, after cruelly ill-treating his young wife, has died, apparently bankrupt, but "the Major," in spite of the deep affection for his daughter with which Mr. Smart credits him, far from either seeing her or corresponding with her, has not even been at the pains to give her a standing address, so that upon learning of her husband's death by mere accident, after Mrs. Hemsworth had quitted Paris, he fails to ascertain her whereabouts until, by one of those remarkable coincidences by which the plot of Two Kisses is distinguished, he discovers her in a London church, in the very act of being united to her second husband, Montague Gore, a rising English barrister, who has succeeded in partially disen- tangling Mark Hemsworth's apparently hopeless affairs. Mrs. Paynter, the fashionable young wife of a fortunately phlegmatic Londoner, has had something to say to this marriage, for match- making comes almost as kindly to this singular being as flirtation, upon whose wings she sails very close to the wind. But let Mr. Smart speak for himself. "She has piratical tendencies ;" but although she lures "husbands and lovers from their allegiance," she never herself "gets hurt in this irregular warfare. Admirers would occasionally become earnest, too, and that was awkward She was a clever woman in her way, and rather enjoyed a 'scene,' providing there were no spectators." And yet, when her husband leaves her and her latest admirer, Captain Detfield, in a private box at the theatre, with Mrs. Hemsworth and Gore, she can at any rate carry on with the gallant captain to this extent,—" 'Poor Charlie, I'm so sorry to hear that it is true,' murmured the lady softly. It's well worth while being in the toils to hear you say so,' he rejoined, in a low whisper. Hush ! I want to hear this,' replied Lizzie ; and having flashed a responsive glance up into his face, she turned towards the stage."
Later on, Mrs. Paynter proves herself equally prompt at calling her male friends not only by their Christian, but even by their pet names. And yet Mrs. Paynter is not, we fancy, intended by Mr. Smart to be a vulgar as well as a fashionable woman, in spite of her declaration to her husband that Mrs. Hemsworth "had 'made Paris elysium to her," the centre of this " elysium," as explained to us by our author, being "a saloon, frequented by rods, gamblers on the Bourse, and at times invaded by ladies with reputations not altogether unsmirched." Perhaps, however, there are only too many so-called fashionable married women, better bred than Mrs. Paynter, whose behaviour towards men, their husbands perhaps excepted, is only too open to this charge of vulgar familiarity. For such conduct, apart from its incompatibility with the virtue of self-respect, cannot even pretend to "good taste," the sine quiz non of conventional ethics. And now, too, that the once inexorable doors of Fashion generously fly back before the golden key of wealth, and admit nouveaux riches and parvenus to the same carpet as the haute noblesse, it is only considerate to remind those who assume to be the leaders of society, that if such an unrefined relation between the sexes is to become the vogue in their little world, the new-corners will be best qualified to set the fashion of converting it into a bear-garden.
But to return to Mr. Smart's story. Mrs. Paynter has assisted at Mrs. Hemsworth's marriage to Montague Gore with an excellent grace, considering that this gentleman has invariably ignored her attractions ; but when Captain Detfield, whom we left just now fast in her toils, becomes so much more deeply entangled with the Jews that it becomes necessary for her to connive at his marrying for money, the self-sacrifice involved appears too much even for her heroic nature. For Major Jenkens has planned a match between the unhappy Detfield and a Miss Stanbury, of Islington, whom her guardian is anxious to dispose of. "If you've an impoverished swell in band," writes this Mr. Roxby to Jenkens, "we might make up a match." But Roxby, who has outwitted Jenkens more than once already, means more than this, as the Major well knows. Ile wants an "impoverished swell" who won't ask questions that would be awkward for a fraudulent trustee to answer. The Major likes the Captain, and favours this scheme for his extrication, the more so because he believes Roxby will find a more honourable man in Detfield than he bargains for. Finding that the Captain obstinately objects to this arrangement, he has the effrontery to call on Mrs. Paynter, to whom he is a perfect stranger, but whose influence with Detfield is known to him, and ask for her assistance in bringing her refractory admirer to his senses on the subject. She finally consents to consider the ques- tion, meets and is satisfied with her scrutiny of the supposed heiress, who proves neither young nor attractive enough to excite her jealousy, and Detfield is encouraged by her to pay his ad-
dresses to Miss Stanbury, the maiden aunt. To return to our other dramatis person. Gore and his wife get on well at first, in spite of her extravagant taste in dress, but her father, Claxby Jenkens, soon gets her into trouble by insisting on her silence about him, meeting her without her husband's knowledge, and finally giving her the first of the "Two Kisses" in the Un- suspected presence of Mr. Fox Brine, Montague Gore's best friend, a would-be literary man, who is at the time assisting Gore to discover some clue to the evidence supposed to exist of a settlement on his wife by Mark Hemsworth.
Brine's adventures as an amateur detective are not a little laughable, and his chambers in Hare Court, Temple, are the scene of some really sparkling repartee between Detfield and himself. But the Temple also witnesses the second of the "Two Kisses," exacted from Gore by Lizzie Paynter, as a fee for giving him the good news that his wife, whom he believed to be indifferent to him, has betrayed the deepest affection for him. This fatal kiss Mrs. Gore of course sees through a glass door, and runs away from her husband without an explanation, and apparently elopes with Claxby Jenkens, whose real relations are not yet made known to society. The inevitable brain-fever follows, Gore being its victim, but after a few more common-place com- plications the Major explains matters in full conclave, and also unmasks the hypocritical Roxby, in consequence of which Detfield, after some experience of a sponging-house, marries not Miss Stanbury, senior, but her charming niece, Bessie, and is rewarded by the discovery that she is, after all, the heiress, and not her aunt Clem, a discovery which the exigeante TAzzie Paynter alone cannot relish. Gore of course recovers, and is made happy by his wife.
This improbable plot is certainly redeemed by some clever characterisation and smart dialogue, and occasional evidence of a high feeling and freshness of fancy that almost surprise us amid such surroundings. For with Detfield and Lizzie Paynter we can have no sympathy ; the villain Roxby, too, and the unscrupulous Jenkens are extremely unsightly black-sheep, however well painted. Yet Bessie Staid:mu is a bright, buoyant girl, who tyrannises very charmingly over her maiden aunts, and the aunts them- selves are pleasantly conceived and skilfully contrasted char- acters. The irrepressible Turbottle, too, and Fox Brine, "a prodigal in promises, a miser in fulfilling," are humorous studies. We have to make good our charge of bad grammar against Mr. Smart. Here are a few specimens of his English :—" Did you ever guess what was wrong between Montague and I?" "It is singular, at times, how averse the relations of a man's first wife are to his marrying again." "Though a little shook, he had sense enough left to roll clear." "I'm froze for a cigar." But as a writer of his own language, Mr. Smart is, upon the whole, more careless than incorrigible. His style is, as a rule, so easy and natural, that we are startled at such a passage as this. Gore and his wife are having a difference. "On your head be it, then," he rejoined roughly, "if my trust is shaken. . . . . . Suspicion is a canker that makes love die apace." "You are right," she rejoined sharply, as she lit her candlestick [how did she manage that, by the way] "The man who cannot trust his wife is stuffing his couch with thorns, believe me. Good night."
"You might have deemed she retired an outraged wife, had you seen that exit." And our author's choice of words in his sentimental passages is often as unfortunate as in his sub- limer ones :—" He drew her to himself and kissed her, and as she buried her blushing face in his waistcoat, whispered into her ear, Mine, are you not ?' " But in justice to Mr. Smart, we must add that there are many passages in Two Kisses that we should be glad to have sufficient space to quote,—passages that convince us that its author has the power, if he has only the patience, to write a thoroughly fresh and unaffected novel.
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