ENTANGLED.*
A WIFE'S discovery of a crime committed by her husband prior to her acquaintance with him, with the tremendous revolution effected in her life by the revelation, is a subject which affords a fair and fruitful field to novelists. It is also one that has not been overworked. A great many years ago Mr. G. P. R. James wrote a remarkable story, called Margaret Graham ; it was founded upon the supposed discovery of a husband's crime, on the evidence of certain pii:ces de convic- tion found by the wife in a desk to which she is sent by the supposed murderer himself in search of papers required in an emergency. hr this instance the real perpetrator of the murder is an idiot boy. Mrs. Oliphant's novel, The Minister's Wife, is a variation upon a similar theme ; but in this case, also, the supposed is not the real criminal. Of course, that is an easier as well as a more pleasant expedient ; the reader is not worked up to sympathy with a real malefactor ; the objectionable situation of Bulvfer's Eugene Aram, in which a man who has committed a peculiarly vile crime, from a detestably base motive, is elevated into an ideal of senti- ment, refinement, and intellectual fascination, is avoided, and it remains possible for the story-teller to bestow upon her people a fairy-godmother benediction in the end. But the author undertakes a difficult task who chooses the bolder, harsher, more tragical conception ; depicting the love, pride, and confidence of a young girl, into whose life the knowledge of grave evil, far less any idea of crime, as among the possibilities of the system of which she forms a part, has never come ; startling, destroying, devas- tating all these by a revelation of guilt and horror, and dealing with the revolutionised relations of the two between whom the ghastly spectre of a crime of the past has risen. In such a case, the writer does not appeal to the same sentiments as in that of an unjustified suspicion, strongly supported by compromising circumstances ; but the purely tragic element comes into play, and, as few writers are capable of using that element with the force and effect which belong to it of right, so it is acceptable to only a minority of read,za. Cir- cumstantial evidence must be misleading, to have the .cal fascination which a favoured few among the French, and a much smaller number of English, novelists have lent it. The detection of the right man, in the first instance, has the tameness of a foregone conclusion. But such a design as we have indicated, in competent hands, has large capabilities of interest ; and in those of the author of Entangled it is not ill worked out. Miss Fairfax Byrrne has not quite enough strength of hand, or singleness of purpose, to make her " study" of the really powerful situation which she creates, all that it ought to be. She encumbers herself with minor characters on a more or less dead-level, and she fails to combine the various interests involved in the story with the art-concealing art which the blending of them would require. But she has written a remarkable story, one which develops itself so well after its discouraging beginning, that we forgive her for the flagrant imitation of Miss Broughton's and Miss Mather's heroines, which we find in 1E83 Heldise Woodworth. The young lady is
* Entangled. By E. Fair' fax Byrrne. London : Hurst and Blaekett.
endowed with a taste for climbing trees, rare, we hope, at nine- teen, and is " discovered " by Aurelius Brackenbay under the following gymnastic conditions :—
"The contact of the rough bark pleased her—so did her airy pos- ture; she clasped the tree with arms and soft white fingers, her limbs lay along the trunk, her bosom and cheek pressed it ; she blinked her eyes and caught effects of colour from the bracken forest ; clinging so closely to the wood, she seemed to be carved out of it, and looked like a dryad asleep. Suddenly she tired, and springing up, drew herself together in a heap, and sliding on to the point of the tree where it recovered itself and grew upwards, sat with her feet swing- ing and one arm clinging to the trunk."
That "as fine-looking a young fellow as ever pressed the mossy sod with a goodly pair of leather boots" should stand amazed at the sight of a lovely girl up in a tree, who, " springing up, drew herself together in a heap," is not surprising. The fine-looking young fellow not only wears " goodly " boots, but has a "strong, shapely throat," which rises " tower-like " above his collar, giving him "a wild grace, as of a fawn- like creature, untutored to severe social sameness," — (though how anything can be invested with more severe social sameness than a "modern collar" with "a tie and stiff white rim" we are at a loss to imagine),—and he falls in love with the "dryad," one, we are bound to suppose, of the modern order, and well tied-back. To this we do object. If there be any " situation " which would effectually impede the tender passion in our own case, it would be that in which Aurelius discovers Helolse. However, so it is, and to any reader of Entangled who seriously inclines to shut the book at page 81 of the first volume we say, "Don't." The story rises much above this silly chapter, "aptly named, unceremoniously introduced," and is well worth reading. The mingled weakness and strength of Heloise's character ; her rather unpleasant passionateness, with the lack of dignity therein involved ; the contrast presented to her by Dolores, the other young lady of whose fortunes the story treats ; the way in which these contrasted characters work out the respective destinies of the girls, are cleverly drawn. The three-volume superstition obliges the writer to resort to futile digressions and needless descriptions, and to dilute by delaying the interest of the story ; but that interest is genuine, and the third volume is free from the affectations which in the first and second attend the evident parrying and putting-off of the serious business of the book. There are certain digressive passages, which do not constitute errors either of construction or of style ; they are those in which "the Colonel," the father of poor Heloise, discourses of Egypt and India, and airs some opinions respecting the rights of the natives of those countries, and the meaning and interest of their
ancient religions that are very much to our mind. Unequal in execution, and injured by a want of simplicity, this novel is nevertheless one which raises the reputation of the author, and leads us to hope for much better work from her when she takes pains,—not more diligently, for she is not at all a careless writer,—but in some other directions.
Previous page
