"A DISCORD." *
SOMETHING more than ordinary praise is due to a story which has a leading idea of its own, and works it out steadily, yet without wearying the reader with excessive iteration or exaggeration. There are novelists who, having got something of real worth to write about, press it on their readers in season and out of season, id- one begins almost to sigh for the too familiar inanity
Aleph 1Villeson," an unknown pseudonym, which seems to in- dicate a new writer, is quite free from this fault. She never lets us forget the purpose of her story, but she tells it throughout with unfailing taste and self-restraint. There is nothing like a shriek from beginning to end, but we feel that we have been in the presence of great emotions, and one of those tragedies which are often enacted amid quite common-place circumstances.
Theresa Moore is the illegitimate daughter of a well-born gentleman. Her mother had not been deceived by any promises of marriage. A beautiful girl, whose head was turned by vanity, she had given to her lover, seducer he could hardly be called, all the affection of which her shallow nature was capable, and was content to be with him, living in the present, and careless of the future. Of course this had to come to an end. A wealthy marriage had been arranged for the young man, and the " en- tanglement " had to be got rid of as best it might. When our story opens this was a thing of the past. The mother was living with her uncle, a well-to-do jeweller in the town of Fenchurch, and Theresa, then a girl at school, made the third of the family. She is ignorant of the circumstances of her birth, but such secrets are not easily kept, and at last she hears it all from her great-uncle, who indeed gave all the thoughts that were not wanted for his business to the wrong that had been done to his * A Discord: a /rowel. By Aleph Willem. London: Samuel Tinsley. 1877. family. The young girl's feelings when she discovers who she is, the interest with which she hears of the kinsfolk who were in one sense so near, in another so far from her, are described with much power, always enhanced by the quietness with which it is used. The plot thickens. The old jeweller dies—her mother has, before this, made a good marriage, and disappeared from the scene—and leaves all his wealth to Theresa ; and this wealth is found to consist of mortgages, which virtually make her the possessor of Moreston, the seat of her father's fatally, then newly come, by his unexpected death, into the hands of young Robert More. We shall not pursue the story any further. Our readers will do well to follow out the ending for themselves ; and let them mark—and if they think with us, this is no trilling recommendation—that there is but one volume. But it would not be fair to pass without notice some scenes in which the writer has been peculiarly happy. Such is that in which, returning from a visit, itself admirably described, to Mr. Wychcote, her father's half-brother, who has always watched over her life, she meets the More family at the station, and receives some ordinary courtesy from the very hands of her un- conscious father. Such, too, are the very prettily described scenes between Theresa and young Robert More, when he comes as a subaltern with his regiment to Fenchnrch, and she contrives to do him, in his inexperience, some turns of sisterly kindness. And such, above all, is the visit to Moreston, when she has become acquainted with the position in which her uncle's will had placed her. Vir- tually, it is all hers, for she had only to foreclose mortgages which swallowed up the whole value of the place ; but "she would not touch a leaf herself,"—a little trait very true to nature, but such as not every one would have thought of.
A Discord reminds us of some of Miss Sewell's best works. We should almost be disposed to give it the preference, on the ground that the human interest is broader. Sometimes we see traces of another and well-known influence. Mr. Price, with "his face and figure all sloped away to the right, habit having fixed the attitude first assumed in order to look at precious objects in the beat light," is a person not unworthy of the great gallery of portraits which George Elliot has given to us. The same may be said of the farmer-folk, Theresa's kinsfolk on the mother's side. But Theresa herself, the central figure, is fairly the writer's own, and she is conceived and drawn with genuine power. There is something really noble about this girl, whose life is at once saddened and elevated by the secret of her birth. She has all the feeling of noblesse oblige, though this noblesse she never dreams of claiming for herself. She is conscious of the old knightly blood in her, but the consciousness gives her no pride, only she feels that she must be worthy of it. That is the only sense in which she can claim it as her own. Feeling this, what bad been the discord of her life becomes its sweetest har- mony. This is no common thought, and it is drawn out in no common way.
Previous page
