FICTION.
CONCERNING- A VOW.• Miss RHODA BROUGHTON loses none of her skill in expressing
shades of character among well-bred people. She has played her game so long that by this time certain types
would have emerged bearing the distinctly Broughton mark if she had been capable of drawing types. But that, to her credit, is just what she is not capable of doing. Hundreds of other novelists may be "careful of the type," but Miss
Broughton hammers out something fresh every time—if it be fair to use the word "hammer" of a process that is above all
things easy and, as it were, without noise. But there is a grievance against Miss Broughton, neverthebtss. An author who can observe people so narrowly and discover such refine- ments of motive in them ought to be able to relate the principal action of the story more intelligibly to the characters. A and B should act in this or that way at a critical time because A and B are persons of just such an ,ethical mould or
have just such a temperament as the author has indicated. Miss Broughton in her new story seems first to have thought of a plot, and then into this framework to have fitted the yield of her social note-book ; and one can say only that, while some of the characters fit in very well, at least one, and
that the most important one, does not fit in at all. Let us not appear to condemn a story written "for the story's sake," or to recommend the kind of novel in which the characters run away with the plot and take charge of the author. All we mean is that when a plot is invented the art of the novelist —the only recognizable novelist's art—requires that the characters in the rough should at the same time be imagined in such a way that their action will be, if not inevitable, at least natural. Miss Broughton, in allowing mechanical devices to weigh so heavily in the scale of events, places herself in the second division of novelists, though in that division she
will always have a place of honour.
By far the best character in her new novel is that of Anne a girl who has a complete armoury of diplomatic.fibbing, with which she contrives to make life tolerable for her rather tire- some parents as well as for herself. The mother, with a peevish
but pointed irony (between which and Miss Broughton's own charmingly innocent malice there is a fruitful reciprocity);
the father, with his pride in his figure and his clothes and his impregnable satisfaction with his dull performance of social duties; the daughter, always acting as go-between and giving each parent in turn the gratification of feeling that he or she is generous in patience or restraint—these are excellent. And the culmination of this particular comedy is the best and truest part of it
" 'Mrs. Hippisley never looked up after her husband's death, which was very odd, considering how cruelly eke snubbed him while he was alive,' was the comment made by her acquaintances upon the widow's so speedy_folloiving to the grave of him whom she had seemed to prize so little while she had him. It was odd, but it was true. When tfidre was no longer any need for regulating the hours at which he might appear in her drawing- room, no longer any dull, affectionate prattle to irritate her nerves, or silly little vanities to provoke her Seers, she fell into a fixed melancholy, unsoffened by any of the soothing fictions which often make the survivor of an ill-matched couple believe that no flaw had ever marred the perfection of their union. No,' she siould say to Anne in her little, clear, ringing voice, 'you are wasting your breath in trying to persuade me to the contrary ! He did bore me to extinction times out of mind! and F did show it. If I had him back I have no doubt that he would bore • Concerning a Vow. By Rho& Broughton. London; Stanley Paul and Co.
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me again, and that I should again show it! And yet—I do not quite see how I am to go on living without him.' It was only for three months that she did so."
Unhappily, nothing of primary importance in the story depends upon the character of Anne. The vow which gives its name to the story was made by Sally to her dying sister Meg. Sally vowed that she would never marry the man who had jilted them both. We cannot take this preposterous TOW seriously enough for Miss Broughton's purpose. It is not easy to say whether Sally's bitter dismissal from her mind of her dead sister's memory is due more to the feeling that she has not yet seen the last of Edward Bromley, or to the feeling that the sister has laid an insulting obligation on her. In the latter case excuses might surely be made for the perversity of a scarcely responsible dying person, and Sally must have been even more disagreeable and more jealous than Miss Broughton tells us not to make some allowances. In the former case the vow might or might not hold good, according to the degree of one's sensitiveness or common-sense in interpreting a vow which was in effect made under duress. The control of the dead band is odious, and we should have been prepared sympathetically to hear it argued that Sally was not bound in any sense. But here is Miss Broughton's defect: she cuts the whole argument by a mechanical device. We suddenly learn that Sally has solved the problem absurdly by going off with Bromley and waiving the formality of marriage. As to the stages of their recon- ciliation, or the metaphysical adjustments of their views about the nature of vows, we are told absolutely nothing. The drastic coincidence of a motor accident in the streets throws Bromley unconscious at Sally's feet, and the problem thus made urgent is not. further treated—an unsatisfactory silence, since this problem is, or ought to be, the real subject of the whole story. As Sally's character is not demonstrated in its workings at this crucial point, we confess that we do not care very much what her character may be.
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