THE VINEYARD.*
THOUGH we may not always be quite certain of what she is driving at, Mrs. Craigie is one of those writers who can always be relied on to provide an interesting mixed entertainment. But she has seldom, if ever, written anything more calculated to mystify, perplex, and disconcert the ordinary plain puzzle- headed reader than this brilliant, unconvincing, paradoxical study of middle-class life in a small provincial English town of to-day. The title itself cannot be said to be exactly illumi- native, in spite of the reference to that chapter of Job from which it is drawn,—the chapter which tells how though "wickedness goeth often unpunished, there is a secret punish- ment for the wicked." But the plot, in its outlines at any rate, is straightforward enough. Gerald. Federan, a superbly handsome and extremely susceptible young country solicitor of moderate means and expensive tastes, after various in- effectual flirtations, falls passionately in love with Jennie • The Fiimerd. By Joint Oliver Molkes (Mrs. Craig:e). London: T. Pfahet vnwiu (8s..1
Sussex, a Baronet's daughter, now teaching in a girls' school, and living as a paying guest in the house of Federan's maiden aunts. Regarding wealth as indispensable to happiness, Federan is persuaded by a dismisssed employs of his father's to form a syndicate for the purchase of a small estate on the strength of a private report that coal is to be found there. The estate belongs to a young but valetudinarian
heiress, who invites Jennie to become her companion; and while Federan urges his fiancee to avail herself of her oppor-
tunities to further his plans, he not only allows the heiress to make love to him, but, when she taxes him with it, denies his engagement to Jennie. Then when his evil genius levants with the purchase-money of the estate, when the syndicate's cheque is dishonoured, and Federan him- self is threatened with ruin and exposure, he consents without much ado to be rescued by the lovesick heiress, and offers her marriage while Jennie is still in the house.
Gerald Federan's behaviour is not rendered any easier of comprehension by the catalogue of his traits, achievements,
and accomplishments. Though frequent insistence is laid on his provincial mind, and even lack of breeding, yet we find that he was acquainted with the works of Seneca. Though his character was undermined by "yearnings for luxury, idle- ness, sensuous refinements and disguised sensuality," yet " he was the finest rider in the county; he had won the Victoria Cross in Africa and the Challenge Cup of the Frampshire Steeplechase,"--a combination which is almost worthy of " Ouida " in her undisciplined youth. He is acquitted of vulgarity, though his jealousy prompts him to say to Jennie when she receives a letter from an old friend : " I'll burn to- night every letter I possess,—if you will only tear up this one." But it would be an endless as well as an unfair task to multiply
instances in which Federan, and, indeed, other characters in the novel, fail to live up to their labels. Mrs. Craigie has never emulated the arduous example of those writers who are content to let their characters reveal themselves in speech and action, and we would not have her otherwise, since it is in her descriptive passages and comments that she is most suggestive and entertaining. Take, for example, the family history of the heroine, whose grandfather " had impoverished himself by contributing too heavily to the Conservative party funds, in the hope, it was said, of obtaining a peerage," while her father had a post " found for him in the Foreign Office, where it was the work of two earnest officials to keep him excusably employed," but " died suddenly of over-anxiety
about his work He had, it seemed, great ideas which he could not formulate, and immense ambitions for which he knew himself unfit." It is impossible to make people live up to such paradoxical summaries, and it is not in consistent or lifelike portraiture or well-knit plot that the very considerable attraction of Mrs. Craigie's novels resides. Let us be content that we have in the volume before us some very caustic social
satire, plenty of shrewd and witty sayings, and at least one excessively clever study of a morbid and exotic temperament, —that of the sentimental heiress. The passage in which Rachel Tredegar is introduced to the reader is worth quoting:
" She had a languid body but an exuberant imagination, which, instead of expressing itself through the medium of some art, wove visions of such overpowering force that they were more enervating, and certainly more insidious, than the realities of life. Before she had reached her twenty-sixth year, she had passed through so many histories, suffered so many emotional crises of the fancy, she had thought so much, felt so much, thrilled so much, and lived so long in the world of her own creation, that she was like a feeble flame in a closed cupboard. The faintest breath of fresh air from the open will put it out. Women twice her age, who had met life face to face from day to day, were not so satiated, bitter, fatigued and irritable as this girl who had never known an hour of real pain, of actual grief, or genuine pleasure. Having alienated, by her egoism, the few friends who were connected with her family, she lived alone with her mother at Franton Manor, where she indulged to the full her passion for solitude and her curious extravagance in dress. It was her favourite amusement to pretend that she was two persons—the chivalrous lover and the capricious mistress—and she would maintain long silent dialogues and adventures for weeks at a stretch between herself and some hero from a novel by Paul Bourget, or Flaubert, or the younger Dumas, or de Maupassant."
Rachel Tredegar certainly lives up to her label, and, in view of her amazing sophistication, one cannot help feeling that there Is a subtle poetic justice in the arrangement by which she is paired off with that superb but unscrupulous centaur, Gerald Federan. The average man, baffled by the devious workings of Mrs. Craigie's elusive irony, will pronounce Federan a "mean hound"; but, on the other hand, Jennie had three strings to her bow, and her treatment of the angular but devoted Harlowe decidedly impairs the compassion, which the gentle reader would have otherwise bestowed on her. It would be futile to attempt to extract any solid moral from this brilliant but somewhat irritating fantasia on the polyga- mous tendencies of civilised man and the capacity for, rapidly consoling herself possessed by the modern woman. Like many novels of the day, it suffers from the absence of a character inspiring either affection or respect ; but it is pro- digiously clever, admirably written, and often extremely amusing. The artist who has contributed the unequal but occasionally graceful illustrations certainly deserved better of author and publisher than to be allowed to languish in anonymity.
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