LEAP-YEAR.* WE do not remember to have read a novel
founded upon the traditional privilege of leap-year before this one, which is painful, but clever and well sustained. It is, however, marred by the writer's incessant efforts to be pictorial. She has strong situations, real human passions and emotions, and plainly defined characters to deal with ; but she weakens the first, and impairs the effect of all the others, by the constant intrusion of millinery, upholstery, and jewellery, and the perpetual posing of her principal figures for the parts they act. The consequence is that the figures themselves fail to strike the reader, and that the attitudes and the drapery attract more attention than the incidents of the narrative. Unfortunately, too, this is the first thing that strikes the reader when, on the Valentine's Day of a leap-year, he is introduced to Minna Franse as she sits among the bonnets in the millinery division of a large London shop, painfully revolving the problem of her fate, and he has then to make out the meaning of the following passage, which ensues upon half a page of description of the bonnets :—
" As the lady sat, leaning her head upon her hand, she could look through rows of them, and see herself reflected in that attitude, and in that company, in the two feet of glass beyond. It was a curious framework for a face, but a more changeless one than at first sight appeared ; for though the bonnets in the dim room roused by the com- pany, seemed to be staring darkly behind them at the glass, and though the rows of them, even through the gloom, shone, and fell, and quivered, and raised themselves upwards, and dropped as if to see more clearly, the glass that reflected each and all showed no differ- ence in their expression as they looked."
A change of expression in bonnets roused by company ! Un- deterred by these bewildering sentences, we read on and find the story, as we extract it from its drapery, interesting and original. There always is something attractive about matrimonial mis- understandings in a novel, although, or perhaps because, most people would carefully keep clear of them in real life ; and the particular misunderstanding which forms the story of Leap.Year is an uncommon one. The manner of the extrication of Minna Franse from the situation on which she sadly meditates among the unaccountable bonnets, is so new that the author deserves credit for it. The young lady, whose face is rather oddly said to possess "slender charms," and whose antecedents,
• Leap•Year. By M. A. Cartels. London: Remington and Co.
including a card-sharping father, and a lover ruined at play and driven to suicide, leave much to be desired, sees a servant talking to a person in the shop, recognises him as Lord Ferules groom, is suddenly reminded that it is Valentine's Day, and then and there writes to Lord Farnim a note which she sends by the groom. This is the note :—" I am more miserable than an orphan, for my father has deserted me. In all the world I have no hope or friend if I have not both in you. You may, perhaps, remember the promise you made to me last June. I appeal to it now." She waits in the shop among the expressive bonnets; and the groom, after a considerable delay, brings back the answer to her note. It is short and satisfactory, but not sweet. Lord Farnim writes :—" You may tell your uncle that I will call on him to-morrow. I will keep my word to you." So Lord Farnim and Minna Franse are married on February 29th, and go abroad on their wedding- tour, of which we hear little. The home-coming is described with great minuteness ; and then comes a brief interview be- tween the husband and wife, which might have been made a . really powerful scene if the author would only have left out the furniture, the clothes, and the attitudes, but which, as it is reminds us of a second-rate actress in a crisis giving a side-look at the set of her train, and arranging it with her foot. Lady Farnim's triumph is complete ; then the blow falls. " Minna," says her husband to her when they are alone, " it is time to end this farce. I said, I told myself, that I would hold out until we came to this. We separate now ; I will not pass a night within this home of mine with you."
We have no intention of telling any more of the story ; this is enough to show that it begins well, in the novel-reader's sense. The writer makes some blunders (for instance, Lord Farnim signs a note to his lawyer " L. Farnim "), and she talks of " titled loneliness ;" but she tells the story of what comes after that abrupt parting well, with sufficient pathos (in spite of the clothes) to make us feel truly sorry for poor Minna, who is " not good," and wish that her story might have had a happier termination than that which we do not propose to reveal. The author is true to the pervading, though not obtruded, moral purpose of her story, and suffers no one in it who has planted the thorn and sown the thistle to gather grapes and figs in har- vest time. The story of Amy Merse (the author is not happy in her names), interwoven with Minna's, is also well contrived ; and as there is not the same temptation to over-adorn the simple young girl from a doctor's home in a crowded part of London, she is allowed to create an impression by her individuality. The sketch of the Merse family is very good ; that of the Man- than household is also commendable. Lord Farnim is not, we think, a natural character; he is too hard, and not hard enough ; he marries a woman whom he despises because he will not break his word ; but he does not hesitate to break his marriage vow, although there has been nothing in his wife's conduct to afford him the slightest excuse for doing so, and he knew all about ber past when he married her. There is cold, calculated cruelty in his sedulous attention to her, during their wedding tour; his minute provision for her comfort on their journey ; his splendid gift of the things which he despises her for covet- ing, and in his sudden announcement of his resolve to leave her immediately after he has ceremoniously inducted her into her rightful position in his house. We hope there is no life-model for the eminently respectable brute to whom poor Minna pro- posed in that fatal leap-year.
Against the second leap-year there is nothing to be said. The fair proposer's motives are of an unimpeachable kind, and no reader will doubt that the result of the experiment was successful.
Previous page
