GLADYS PANE.*
MR. REID has written a very good novel, though, strange to sap, he has made a more living picture of his heroine than of his hero. We greatly prefer the wild and headstrong girl whose waywardness is so absolute a riddle to the conventional and squirearchical family into which she is born, to the sternly romantic Radical, who suppresses the story of his unhappy marriage, to his own great injury and that of others into whose company he falls, and who, though possessed of such overflowing power of will, has not the strength of mind to avoid either paying attentions he cannot justify, or fighting a duel against his own principles, without any conceivable advan- tage to anybody except his adversary, whose vindictiveness.
he gratifies, and therefore feeds, by his own fall. Rea Mansfield seems to us a melodramatic figure, without much substance or vividness ; but though we regard the hero as. little better than a failure, we regard the novel as as decided success,—lively and truthful in many of its characters, full of interest in its narrative, dramatic in its situations, and, graphic without long-windedness in its scenic effects. Mr:_ Fane, the father of the heroine, and one of the heavy Tory squires who are included by Mr. Disraeli in the Tory Adminis- tration of 1874-1880, is a slight, indeed, but an admirable sketch.; as is also the second wife, whom he so deeply offends his daughter by marrying, in order that he may give her a proper chaperone. The outline, for it is no more, of Lady Jane Craigallen, afterwards Lady Jane Fane, is no common one. It is both con- ceived and executed with an originality that raises our hopes of the story,—in this respect partly disappointed, for Lady Jane soon disappears, and is seen no more. In. one or two of, the secondary figures, notably in Prime- Bessarion,—and' perhaps in Mrs. Wybrowe and Lord Lostwithiel,—the same. power of skilful etching is seen again; but in others of the minor characters, like Mrs. Carmichael and Mr. and Mrs. Lor- • Gladys less: a Story of Two Lives. By T. Wemyse Bold. London: T. Fisher Unwin. -rimer, where life-like sketches would have added greatly to the effect of the story, we have nothing given us but the ordinary shadows of the modern novel. The vigour of the tale, which is considerable, depends chiefly on Gladys Fane, and the realism with which her home, her provocations to leave it, and her rash -escapades after she has left it, are painted; though the picture of the accomplished Roumanian Prince, with his curious mixture of polish and brutality, his fierce gambling instincts, his dignified air, his insolence when foiled, his craft and his -candour, his condescension to the swindler whom he used, and his murderous prematureness in firing at the rival whom he feared, greatly enhances the vivacity of a story which would otherwise depend almost wholly on Gladys Pane and her adventures.
The story of two lives' refers, of course, to the lives of Gladys and of Rex. But so far as the interest of the reader is concerned, the two lives whose images are likely to remain in his memory sxe those of Gladys Pane and Prince Bessarion. Rex Mans- field is melodramatic even in his view of the Press, which, potent as it is, and conscious of its responsibility for its right discharge -of its duties as it ought to be, is, we think, both less and more than Rex Mansfield here describes it :—
"Ho was a journalist himself, and proud, justly proud of his vocation. It was one, he knew, which gave those who followed it a more potent influence for good or evil than any other which lay within the reach of the great mass of educated men. The newspaper Press of to-day, he had often thought within himself, is not merely what Carlyle called it in the past generation, the new Church ; it is the new Parliament wherein the great problems that trouble a nation's life are threshed out more thoroughly than they can ever be upon the floor of the House of Commons ; and it is the final Court of Appeal, in which the judgment of public opinion is pronounced upon every question, great or small, that engages the attention of the world. He himself was a mere subaltern in the great army of journalists. He had never wielded the editorial power. But he felt, as strongly as the most prominent of the great writers and editors of his day 'could do, the weight of that burden of responsibility that rests upon those to whom is committed, in even the humblest degree, the control of this mightiest of modern forces. Often as he sat, pen in hand, engaged in treating, with his large knowledge and masculine common- sense some of those questions of the day in which he was more immediately interested, there would rise up before his eyes a vision -that for a moment almost paralyzed his mind, until it stimulated it to fresh vigour ;—a vision of the thousand homes into which these words of his were to go, as the voice of the unseen but not unheard teacher and guide, of the innumerable varieties of men and women upon whom he MS to make some impression, however slight, and over whom of necessity he must exercise some influence, be it little or great, for good or for evil."
Yet this deep sense of responsibility which Rex Mansfield feels for his lightest words, he hardly feels for those far more -effective deeds which, in their power of inspiring or discouraging others, go far beyond the most heartfelt words. These are his thoughts as he goes to keep an engagement of a kind which his principles wholly condemn,—so far at least as the scepticism hinted at in the concluding sentence has left him any principles, —to pick a duelling quarrel with Prince Bessarion
" Death ! it struck him with a strange, weird sense of the triviality of most of the things of this world, that in very truth he was per- haps nearer to death now than any other of the men and women who surrounded him in that city of pleasure. To-morrow the moon would once more be shining high up in the heavens, shedding its glory as it was now doing upon sea and land, upon fronded palm and golden. fruited orange tree. And in all that world of mystery and sorrow upon which it would then pour its rays, it might be that there would no longer be one among the sons of men who answered to his name. Yet had not this grey earth lived for ten thousand years before he appeared upon it; and what difference would his going make to any human soul among all the hundreds of millions who breathed and toiled and suffered upon it to-day ? He had left the Avenue de la Buffa behind him, and, taking a short cut, had reached the shore. It
still wanted nearly an hour to the appointed time for his meeting with Bessarion. He spent that hoar in slowly walking by the side of the sea, the solemn melody of whose waves harmonised well with his thoughts. Those thoughts bad now travelled far, far away from all the faces and the scenes of these latter days. They had taken him
back to the time when' as a little child, he nestled beside his mother's knee, and drank in there with the unquestioning faith of childhood some of those truths for the full acceptance of which, alas ! the simplicity and innocence of childhood are needed."
The story, however, of Gladys Pane has nothing in it of similar unreality. How it is that Mr. Wemyss Reid has managed to con- ceive his heroine so much better than he has conceived his hero, we hardly know. He must have, we think, some touch of the poet in him, to be able to do so, for it is a mark of poetic feel- ing in men to pourtray women truly, and make the feminine -essence of their nature really visible. From her first escapade, when she compels the old coachman to follow her to the meet of the hound.s, up to her last, when she makes Prince Bessarion's stakes for him in the gambling-house at Monte Carlo, Gladys Pane is always herself, and always the first interest of the reader. The beautiful and terse descriptions of scenery which we find in this story themselves suggest a genuine poetic element in Mr. Wemyss Reid, whose study of Charlotte Brontii long ago rendered his name familiar to the literary world. We heartily welcome his success in this new field, even though we frankly recognise such deficiencies as we have indicated in his pleasant and fascinating story. We may well hope that this promising novel may be succeeded by others of still higher general power and still more vivid execution.
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