. NOVELS OF THE. WEEK.* MRS. WILFRID WARD'S' novel, which
describes the events of seven weeks, has taken her seven years in the making, and was practically completed three years back, a fact which she does well to mention in a prefatory note, otherwise inde fatigable parallel-hunters might have sought to represent One Poor Scruple in the light of a counterblast to Helbeck, of Bannisclale, and hid stress on the fact that in either novel the plot culminates in the suicide of a woman. Such comparisons, however, being purely otiose, the novel before us can safely be considered on its own merits, of which the unimpressive title affords little indication. The opening chapters are a little heavy ; the preliminary explanations cumbrous ; the post- cript is an excrescence, and, to descend to mere minutiae of technique, Mrs. Ward's habit of alluding to the Duchess of A, the L—s, and the B—s revives an aggravating conven- tion which we hoped had long since become obsolete. In the contrivance of incident, again, the author is not always happy ; the references to Mrs. George Riversdale's cigarette might be reduced to advantage ; and, to note a far more serious defect, the male characters, with the exception of Fieldes, the glorified literary tame cat, are decidedly dis- appointing. But when critical detraction has done its worst we have to thank Mrs. Ward for a singularly interesting and stimulating novel, in which, though the Roman Catholic standpoint of the author is never concealed, anything savouring of aggressiveness or proselytism is scrupulously avoided, while the cardinal thesis of the book, that modern women cannot dispense with Christianity, can hardly fail to commend itself even to Mr. Kensit. The scenery and surroundings of the plot. are admirably choaen to bring the leading personages into strong relief.' Thus in the opening chapters, where the action takes place at the house of an old Roman Catholic fox-hunting Squire, we find the little pleasure-seeking Irish adventuress, who is the central-figure of :the Story, her intellectually emancipated cousin, daughter of a convert, and the sympathetic literary CO One Poor Scruple: a Seven Weeks' Story. .13y Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. Lon- don : Longinans and Co. [6s.)--,-(2.) Racial. By Jane H. Findlater. London : Methuen and Co. [6s.]—(8.) A Millionaire's Daughter. By Percy White. London : C. A. Pearson. [Gs.]—(1.) The Story of Ohl kbrt Loudon. By Charles Egbert Craddock. London : Macmillan and Ca. [6s.1—(5.) l'he Drones .3f nst Dia By Max Nordau. London : William Heinemann. (as.)-(G.) The Pride of the Family. By Ethel F. tietidle. London: Joule; Bowden.. [H. ,6d.]---(7.) Thi Silent House in Pimlico. Bk Fergus Hume. London : John' Long. [8s. ad.] —(8.) Comrades of the.Black-Oves. By Hume. Nisbet. London : F. V. White - and Co. Os. Cd.)—(9.) The White Laity of Khaminaratka : a Story of the Ukraine. By Richard Henry Savage. London : O. RbaUedge and Sons. ON. Gd.) --(W.) The Mistake of Konica. By Sella Parker. London : G. Routledge and Bons. [es.] agnostic vividly contrasted with-the simple intolerance of the mistress of the house, the wide charity of the Squire, and the unerring-judgment of character shown by hisdaughter. The story practically resolves itself into a duel to the death between Mrs. George Riversdale, the widow of the Squire's reprobate son, and Cecilia Rupert, a wild, brilliant, pagan society beauty, for the hand of an immensely wealthy Peer. The situation may. be summed up thus, that Mrs. Riversdale is more enamoured of the position than the man, while her rival is really in love. Lord Bellasis, however, is in- eligible in one particular,—he is an "innocent divorcee," an . inseparable obstacle to Mrs. Riversdale as long as she adheres to the Roman Catholic faith. On the other hand, though ho admires Cecilia more for her wit, and audacity, and accom- plishments, he realises that Madge Riversdale would make him a more useful wife. Finally, Madge yields to the argu- ments of her evil genius, Mrs. Hurstmonceaux, and becomes secretly engaged to Bellasis, who still continues to encourage Cecilia in the belief that his affections are engaged. Cecilia, meanwhile, has become convinced that she is threatened with the incurable malady of which her aunt is dying, and, on learning of her rival's triumph from Mrs. Hurstmonceaux, goes home and commits suicide. Yet even before the news reaches Madge, the resolute intervention of her sister-in-law, the Squire's daughter, has induced her to break off her engage- ment. The moral of the book is to be found in the comments of the literary man addressed to a leader of society shortly after the catastrophe:— "You know," he says, "that Cecilia Rupert was entirely without faith. She was brought up to disbelieve in the Christian dogmas, in Christian ethics, in Christian views of life. She did not like some of us, grieve deeply over the greatest loss that man or woman can sustain. I think a woman's mind cannot resign itself to dwell among shadows. It craves after a completeness
which to us others seems unattainable She broke down under our present conditions of life. She was developed by all that Christianity has claimed for women, the highest education and a spiritual equality with man. Give this highly developed, sensitive organisation and take away from it all that makes suffering en- durable and all that restrains the thirst for immediate happiness. Cecilia coolly counted up what was worth having—love, success, pleasure She played her game. She had, you know, one great wish—you know, too, how it was thwarted. At the same time there grew upon her a suspicion that great bodily pain might be in store for her. Now, does it seem to you wonderful that she
should choose death rather than wait for it to come ? We are not surprised at her thinking that she should never recover her disappointment, her broken heart, as she thought it. We have known many women like that but we have not known many women who hold nothing sacred but their own happiness. We shall get to know them, Lady L. Twenty years hence you and I may have met many other Cecilias. Only it is to you and such as you that we look to diminish the numbar, to extend the circle of faith and light, and to prevent such tragedies as that of last night."
That is finely put, and the force of the argument is not im- paired by the fact that Cecilia, spite of everything, commands more respect than the wretched little human butterfly whose rescue and repentance are due to cowardice rather than con- viction. We have only to add that Mrs. Ward's pictures of the race for pleasure in modern fashionable society are en- livened by many humorous and satirical touches. We have only space to quote one happy passage from the letter of the intellectual ingenue to her mother, describing the company at a dinner-party :—" Then besides Cecilia Rupert and Marina- duke, there was a Lord James something whom they all called ' Tim,' and who lives by selling cigars and getting people to insure their dogs. But he told Cecilia that he had serious thoughts of becoming a dressmaker." The elaborate portrait of the literary man, acutely critical yet ludicrously inefficient in action, furnishes a salutary commentary on a recent speech of Sir George Trevelyan's.
A week or two back we noticed a new and extremely clever novel from the pen of Miss Mary Findlater. It is now our pleasant duty to say no less of Rachel, the work of her sister Jane, already favourably known as the author of The Green 'Graves of Balgowrie. As a study of Scottish clerical life some thirty or forty years ago—for such we take to be the date—it may be disfigured by sundry anachronisms, while the boldest and most striking personage in the story is not alto- gether consistently conceived. Many of the situations, again, are extremely improbable. But Miss Findlater's improbabili- ties are never exasperating. Alike in those scenes which are obviously transcribed from actual observation—such as the death-bed of the farmer, in which the wife, in her husband's presence, grimly forecasts her status as a widow—as welt as in those in which she has drawn on her invention, Miss Findliter shows an instinctive appreciation of the. niaconven- tional and ther uncommon—without lapsing into-the denian of the abnormal, or the bizarre. Her characters are all intensely human.: indeed, we have seldom encountered a more faulty heroine thin Rachel herself, a woman, as one of her lovers lightly describes her, "with brave wits and a dear sharp tongue." . One cannot help loving Rachel, in spite of her rude- ness, her wOrldliness, and her Bohemian aspirations, in view of her perfect honesty, her loyalty to her friends, her charm of manner and love of -freedom. When the poor gipsy minister —half visionary, half charlatan—whom she had loVed and lost had passed for Over from her ken, she describes her feelings at his merciful release. in the following touching story:— " I remember when I was a child there. was a woman in the village who kept a lark in a cage. It stood on a little square of turf with all its feathers rumpled, and gazed tip at the sun through the bars. I used to cry to see it. Well, one day as I passed, the woman put her arm out of the window to take in the cage. and I suppose the door hadn't been rightly fastened, for it sprang open, and the bird flew out, and how it went up and up I I ran and danced all the way home, and all day I sang and sang.at the pitch of my shrill voice, till my poor, long-suffering uncle asked me at last why in all the world I was singing like that ? Ok, just along
Mrs. Thamoon's lark, uncle,' I said, and I thought it quite a sufficient
explanation."
As a study of a modern mystic the book is less successful than as an illustration of how the rigours of Pharisaic Calvinism enforced on unwilling subjects tend to defeat their aim.
Mr. Percy White's enviable gifts of humour and high spirits are most pleasantly displayed in A Millionaire's Daughter. The story is told by the millionaire's private secretary and trustee, an honest, indolent, amiable, and humorous personage, whose quixotic attitude to the daughter of his late master fills his worldly sister-in-law with perpetual irritation. Lady Durward is delightfully impatient and indiscreet, but it must be admitted that Lawrence is at times unbearably exasperating. The millionaire's widow, again, is excellent, and the daughter a most' engaging heroine. Abounding in humorous and ludicrous situations, this self-effacing lover's narrative of his trusteeship is one of the most entertaining comedies of courtship we have read for a long time.—Miss Murfree's romance of old Tennessee apparently forms one of a series of " Stories from American History," and gives a striking picture of the trials and sufferings- of the settlers of a hundred and twenty years ago. Miss Murfree has spared no trouble or research in her efforts to give an accurate historical background to her story of the tragic fate of the garrison of Fort Loudon at the hands of the treacherous Cherokees, but the tale, though told with Miss Murfree's strenuous picturesqueness, is almost too depressing to be readable.—Max Nordau's novels are far leas interesting than his sociological polemics. The Drones Must .Die, in which bourgeois Germans resident in Paris occupy the leading rifles, and the chief interest resides in the operations of financiers on the Bourse, reminds one of a diluted Balzac. It is written with ability, considerable rhetorical vigour and mastery of mere- tricious decoration, and an . entire lack of charm and distinc- tion.—Miss Heddle handles in The Pride of Me Family the familiar theme of new men and old acres in a thoroughly contemporary spirit. The hero is a bicycle-making millionaire from Coventry who is sent to the same. place by the haughty heroine, whose father's place he has purchased. Subsequently she rescues him from drowning, and takes to typewriting for a livelihood, while her aristocratic aunt's dangerous attack of influenza paves the way for the final reconciliation between the two families. If Miss Heddle could have worked.in golf and bimetallism, the story wonld have been- a compendium of modernity. As it stands it is a pleasant tale on conventional lines.—It only seems the other day when The Mystery of a Hansom Cab appeared, and now Mr. Fergus Hume has forty novels to his credit. His latest venture, The Silent House in Pimlico, is a very fair specimen of his constructive skill, but calls for no special comment or commendation. Along with Mr. Fergus Hume's detective story may be noticed Mr. Hume Nisbet's Comrades of the Black Cross, "a romance of love and crime" in which the chief role is sustained by an escaped con- vict from Dartmoor with a beautiful tenor voice and ascetic features, who passes himself off as a clergyman, represents his faistrea4 to be his sister, and abuses his opportunities as a minister of religion to concert and :carry out his. criminal schemes. The bookisthoronghlzyulgay as as. ttistele:13; indeed, almost the only thing -in ita fainniz.is the author's some= what unnecessary announcement that it is entirely:fictitious from beginning to end.—Colonel Savage in hiS.Stciry of the Ukraine is as lavish of dashes. and notes -of exclamation as ever. His breathless style often reminds us of Mr. -Jiritle; while his touching, reliance on the aid - of the .Violelat 'epithet may be illustrated by the 'following paragraph : "lief piqUalit face lit up. with a mocking curiosity as the dashing beauty tore open the letter of her vengeful adniirei_WhO swayed the doors of the temple of J anus." .T1te.d(istake- of Monica is the story of a. most. unhappy marriage, but the painfulness of the recital is redeemed in great Measure, by the manner of its telling. The elimination of the undesirable husband by n bicycle accident is somewhat abrupt—nay; almost grotesqUe—but the reader will readily oyeileok the means which secures to the sorely tried heroine 'her Indian summer of happiness. . - .
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