THE BLOSSOMING OF AN ALOE.* Tun longer of these stories,
"The Blossoming of an Aloe,"— which, being interpreted, means the tardy bursting into bloom
of a plant which for many a long year has grown into nothing but leafy spears and swords, better adapted to pierce than to brighten life,—is a very effectively conceived and for the most part effectively executed tale, a tale more or plot than of character, though two or three of the characters are skilfully and even beauti- fully painted ; a tale, which, though it drags a little towards the middle of the second volume, both opens and closes with great spirit. Perhaps a rather larger amount of strange coincidence goes to make up the story than is strictly probable in any human life, even judging probability by that much more liberal standard than the standard of actual experience, to which the better fiction has accustomed us. No one of the incidents so skilfully dove-tailed. together in Mrs. Cashel Hoey's tale is separately at all strikingly improbable, and most of them are of every year's occurrence. It is only the complicated combination necessary for the denouement which is in a high degree improbable, and that is a kind of im- probability which all romance-writers have, we suppose, a right to use ; for if the average life of fiction did not in some way or other exceed the interest of the average life around us, it would hardly be the fascinating subject it is. Even the most realistic of writers, even Miss Austen herself, leaves out of her stories a vast deal of those common dullnesses of life by which the materials she selects for delineation would ordinarily be diluted, if not almost swallowed up. And if the leading interest of a tale is to lie in the plot, then it is obvious that a great many more of the surprises and coin- cidences of life must concur in a single story, than would be at all likely to concur even in a combination of all that is unusual in fifty ordinary lives. All art endeavours to leave out of account what is monotonous and insignificant, and to accu- mulate what is touching, beautiful, interesting, or elevating, in its presentation of human nature. And all romance-writers re- gard it as their privilege to avail themselves of the capacities of circumstance for giving a more complete and intelligible wholeness to the fates of human beings, than the external story of men's The Blossoming of an Aloe and the Queen's Token. By Mrs, Cashel Huey. 3 vols. London: Hurst and Blackett. Lives would usually present if looked at by any eye than their own. Hence it is a stupid though common critical mistake to apply anything like the same laws of probability to the com- binations of a romance, which you would apply to the same combinations if they came before you in the narrative 'of a real person whose trustworthiness you did, not know and were anxious to test. Just as music professes to combine together only the harmonious sounds, and painting or sculpture to delineate only what tells on the particular effect desired, and to exclude everything which tends to mar it, so fiction, whether it chiefly deals in incident or in the exhibition of character, must deliberately accumulate enough of strong light and shadow for its purpose, even though in doing so it renders itself liable,—as, from some point of view or other, it always must,—to the charge of selecting freely all that is to its purpose, and excluding a vast deal which.is nevertheless of the very essence of ordinary experience. And of course, this is much more true of the novels of incident than of the novels of character. No one of Sir Walter Scott's most spirited :tales was perhaps ever exactly paralleled in any actual life, how- ever adventurous and exciting. Not but what many human beings have gone through even more perilous adventures, but not adventures which show such a rhythm of converging pur- pose in them,—which conspire together so wonderfully for the end 'in view. The real unity of life is from within, not from without ; and the use of external coincidence to give the predominant colour and meaning to human life, though it is a delightful contrivance for our amusement, is not, on the whole, at all justified, in fact, by our experience. Truth that is "stranger than fiction" is often to be heard of ; but even in truth that is stranger than fiction, you rarely find remarkable combina- tions of mere coincidences, such as the epic poet and the romance- writer, who mould their artistic unity out of the lights and shadows of circumstance, habitually use. In reading a romance we must begin by assuming that circumstance will be used so as not only to be exciting, but to supply an effective perspective of its own,—a perspective harmonising the close of the tale with its beginning, and rounding off the resisting medium of rebellious fortunes into a consistency and beauty conferred by their pictorial adjustment. That is the axiom of all romances, and it is this which makes them less true to life than novels of character— where the only artistic contrivance necessary for effect is the suppression of what is non-expressive and tedious in real life, not the invention of anything partly fictitious. But in all romances Tou must exaggerate greatly the rhythmical unity discoverable in external fortunes ; you must have recourse to coincidences which are most rare, as if they were most natural ; you must assume that the unity of life is in a great measure impressed on it by the conspiracy of external events,—which is seldom indeed true,— instead of by the unity of individual purpose or failure of purpose, which is always true.
Granting Mrs. Cashel Hoey the assumption of every romance- writer, that events conspire to give a wholeness and unity to human life which it would not inherently possess without such a power impressed on it from without, both these stories,—both "The Blossoming of an Aloe" and "The Queen's Token,"—are specimens of very considerable skill in this moulding of external events into a distinct drift, a proper beauty, and a significance of their own. If the two stories had filled only two some- what larger volumes instead of three smaller ones, they would have been still more successful,—since something like a third part of the second volume drags at the point between the first and second act of the longer story. Even the authoress herself was probably conscious of this dragging. She forgets now and then her own version of minor elements of the story, an d puts off the blossom- ing of the aloe, sufficiently tardy in itself, to a period even later than that to which her own most authentic statement assigns it, making in one place her heroine forty at the close of the tale, whereas she is certainly either thirty - seven, or according to a third date, inconsistent with both the others, thirty- eight. She states on page 103 that her hero had not been induced even by his father's death to take leave of absence during the entire time of his service in India, and on page 114 that "he went home on leave when his father died." The little inconsistency is of no importance whatever, except as showing that there was a real difficulty in filling up the central region of the tale, which made its incidents at this part unim- pressive even to its wsithor, so that she repeated them in different and inconsistent forms. This is really the only defect in the exceedingly well-woven and forcibly exhibited wcb of circum- stance, the opening and close of which are painted with so much spirit. If about eighty pages of the second volume had been com- pressed into eight, as they might easily have been, the first story as a story would have been as compact as it is ingenious and exciting. The way in which the incidents of the Crimean war and of the railway accident are interwoven to bring about the catastrophe is exceedingly. skilful, and we have seldom read a plot with more interest. The characters of the tale are in some respects secondary, but Mrs. Hoey has painted one or two of them, and those the characters on which the turn of the incidents chiefly depends, with great force and delicacy. Lady Mervyn, the mother of the hero, to whose pride and reserve the main develop- ment of the plot is due, is a thoroughly living sketch, and though she seems to us to mellow almost unduly at the end, considering the apparently unrepented and certainly unrepaired guilt of her duplicity, that may perhaps be a touch of true nature which only a priori moral considerations make us deem unnatural.. The other character on which the development of the plot chiefly turns, that of David Mervyn's young wife, Lucy, is painted, not indeed with more force, but with even greater delicacy. The softness, weak- ness, and beauty of the character are delineated with strokes of true genius. Indeed nothing in the story seems to us at all to equal the beauty of the scene in which David Mervyn presses on his poor young wife, before he leaves for the Crimea, the duty of telling his parents of the marriage, while she, in the extremity of her grief, resists the proposal solely on the ground that it will be hard enough for her to live through his absence and danger in any way, and impossible if she is not to rest among her own people :— "Lucy has gone through every imaginable phase of mental anguish, from wild, rebellious, loud incredulity, the refusal to credit the pos- sibility of such a horror befalling her, to abject, cowering, pitiable despair ; and she has writhed in all the physical expressions of heart- torture, from the paroxysms of hysterical suffocation to the prostration that is but little removed from death. There have been intervals of motionless, mute misery almost more agonising to witness, so agonising to David that now he feels a frantic longing to be gone, to be alone with his own sorrow on the sea, and anon he clasps her in his arms, with swift remorse for the momentary temptation springing from their intolerable pain. In the press of preparation, he is necessarily absent from her often, and each time when he returns, her joy and her anguish are terrible to him. He has spoken with Mrs. Ferris about the arrange- ments which she is to make for his wife and child after his departure, and has told her that he hopes his mother and sister will shortly take charge of them, for that he is going to Scotland to reveal his marriage, and to recommend the dear ones he is leaving to them. Mrs. Ferris has commended this intention, but added that she will do all in her power for her sister, and that she fears she would hardly got on with ' strangers ' under such circumstances. And when David, who finds Lucy calmer than usual, for she has worn herself out with weeping, tells her the same thing, she amazes him by the earnestness of her entreaties that he will abandon his intention. Huddled -up close to him, her hands clasped about his neck, and her bright hair lying loose upon his breast, her stiffened, tear-stained eye-lids closed with pain, resting against his cheek, she pours out her impetuous prayer ; while he listens, with knitted brow, and a world of doubt, misgiving, and anxiety in his face. 'Don't, David ; pray, pray, don't, my darling husband ! I could not bear it, indeed I could not ! Let me live all alone here with my sister, and exist through the awful, awful time, as well as I can. Think how awful it must be to me under any circumstances, and don't make it worse by either sending me among strangers, or bringing down upon me the anger and hatred of your father, mother, and sister?— ' Anger and hatred, dearest! Do you think they would have such feelings towards my love, my wife,—now?'—' No; I am wrong ; I did not moan that ; I did not mean to say a word against them ; I only mean that I should be too ,wretched.'— ' Do not think that they would blame you for the concealment, my treasure, my darling! I would make them understand clearly that it was all my doing, that you had no thought in our marriage but for me alone.'—' I know, I know ; but that would make no difference. Oh, David ! it is not of that I tun thinking ; it is not for them I care, though I pity them, I pity them awfully—for you are going away from them too. I am only thinking of myself, of my own unspeakable misery, and that I shall be able to bear it better alone than if they should take me to be with them, and be ever so kind to me. Don't refuse me, David, don't refuse me this one only consolation, to be quite alone when— when you are gone.'—' But, my darling,'—he remonstrated, with painful hesitation, for he dreaded to present to her the idea which he was forced - to assign in explanation of his strongest motive,—,it is my bounden duty to provide, for your recognition as my wife ; to insure your pro- tection by my family, if—if I should not return to you, Lucy.' She pressed herself still closer to him, twisting the fingers behind his neck as if they writhed with pain, and gasped out, 'Don't say it ; don't utter the word ; I cannot bear it ; it could not be l'—' I must speak of the possibility, and my wife—a soldier's wife—must listen, and try to be reasonable and submissive. I may be killed in this war, dearest, and you and the child must not be unknown and unprotected. Think of what I should suffer from the knowledge that you were here in a dubious position, and with no means of securing your rights, except asserting them for yourself.' She raised herself a little, so that she could see his face, and said, more calmly than she had yet spoken: 'Our marriap,,e was quite right and regular, was it not P--.0f course it was.' —‘ It is registered: James Ferris and ray brother witnessed it. The church and the clergyman are there, and it is easy to prove that I am your wife. Yield to me in this, dearest David ; and I promise you that if I lose you, I will at once apply to your mother for recognition as your wife. Your colonel is a great friend of yours, you have told me.'—' He Then, after you have sailed tell him about our marriage, and let lam promise that if—if it should be so—he will make my fate known to me. Do this for me ! It is the only thing that can make my lot more endurable now. And when you come home—when you come home— then tell them. They will not mind, in their joy. They will forgive you, and me too, when they see you safe.' Her poor attempt at a smile vanished in a spasm of agony ; her composure ended in a fit of weeping, which left her in a state of complete prostration. But she had gained her point ; and no farther discussion disturbed their last days together."
The whole episode of the secret marriage, including the sketch of the wife's relations as well as the wife, is admirable, and many degrees higher in conception than anything else in the story, ex- cept perhaps the character of the proud and reserved Lady Mervyn. For the hero we honestly confess that we care nothing, and though the principal heroine has a certain gentleness and sweet- ness that is not wholly conventional, and though we prefer her greatly to Mrs. Hoey's somewhat similar character, Marcia, in Out of Court, we cannot say that we care for her very much. Take away Lady Mervyn, and Lucy, David Mervyn's wife, and the in- terest of the story would be, for us, almost wholly one of inci- dent, but of incident very skilfully contrived and drawn out. The spirit with which the whole story is told, barring the loose links between the first and second acts of the tale, is remarkable. On the ingenuity of the tale itself it would be unfair to enter.
"The Queen's Token" is a picturesque little tale,—again in two acts, but this time with centuries between the acts,—in which Mrs. Hoey makes much freer use of the romance-writer's privilege of so mouldi g incident as to give events a poetical rhythm of their own, than even in the first tale. The first act tells how a treasure intended to be spent in the service of Mary, Queen of Scots, by one of the infatuated adorers whose devotion she used so freely, came to be secreted under the cloisters of the Abbey of Kilferran till it should be called for by Mary Stuart ; and how the French nobleman, by whom it was devoted to her service, perished before he could convey to the Queen, then in captivity in England, that he had done her will. The second part narrates how the treasure was found centuries after- wards, and found by the bearer of the very jewel which was to have been "the Queen's token" to the Prior of Kilferran Abbey, to convey that the treasure there concealed was to he given to him who should display it. The charm of the story is wholly a romantic one. The characters are all romantic rather than real, in keeping with the romantic shaping of the incident ; and the artistic ingenuity with which the events are made to mould themselves into a picturesque and semi-tragic whole is remark- able, the total effect being one of rich colouring and imaginative harmony, which, though rather unreal, is very taking. Mrs. Hoey loves romance, and has a good deal of natural skill for it. in days when romances were far more popular than novels of character, she would have distinguished herself greatly in the race. But probably her art has not lost, but gained in effect by her effort to combine with it the skilful development of living character. The second of these tales has no doubt a completeness of structure which is partly wanting in the first, but it is the completeness of a painted window, as distinguished from the completeness of a modern painting. The glass is rich and mellow, the streams of colour fall harmoniously, but the figures are but symbols of men and women, not men and women themselves. The first story has at once something of modern romance, and something also of true delineation ; the romance of the story is very spirited and effective in its kind, but it is inferior in kind to dramatic truth. The picture of the cold, re- served, worldly, but in her way, self-sacrificing mother, and still more of the fragile, weak, lovely, loving, and devoted wife, are, to our minds, worth more than all the artistic skill, consiicuous as that is, with which in both tales incident is made to conspire for the production of a given effect, and the sentiment of the catastrophe to confirm and fulfil the sentiment of the opening tale.
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