FOUR GOOD ONE-VOLUME NOVELS.* A YOUNG lady's feverish, helter-skelter pursuit
after some one, under the mistaken impression that he is her husband in a state of mental aberration, is the theme of Singularty Deluded, which is a very clever and fresh tale, though not perhaps altogether exempt from the charge of " nightmarishness," because of the breathlessly rapid succession of obstacles, great and small, that hinder the plucky heroine, and cause her to be again and again disappointed when apparently on the verge of success. Her exciting adventures certainly give forcible emphasis to the author's remark that, "were we ourselves placed in circumstances which, in a book, just suffice to fix our attention, they would probably land us in a lunatic asylum." But although it would be to the last degree un- likely for all these adventures to fall to the lot of any one individual, yet, considered separately and in themselves, they have little or no intrinsic improbability ; and the two things that are the greatest tax upon credulity in the whole book are her extraordinary power of endurance in keeping on as she did at high-pressure without breaking down— which not one woman in a thousand could have done —and her having been so sanguine as to imagine that there was still a possible chance of a Judgeship for a person mentally afflicted as she supposed Mr. Somers to be. The delightful unexpectedness with which things occur, and an entire absence of padding, are marked features in the tale, which is told vigorously, concisely, and with a graphicness of description indicating either actual experience of what is described, or else a describer possessed of imaginative powers beyond the common. An account of a fire at sea is especially noteworthy, both because of the skill shown in blending together elements heroic, tragic, and ludicrous, and also because of the effectiveness of the few slight strokes employed in painting traits of character brought out by mortal peril,—as, for instance, in the two Sisters of Charity who, having made up their minds to martyrdom, are seriously grieved at being saved in their own despite ; and the gallant young fellow who lets go of a life-belt when he finds that his hold on it endangers another person's life, and drowns with a courteous apology on his lips. This episode of the fire is as good as anything of the kind we know, and we should recom- mend the book to readers for that alone, even if it had no other merit. Whether Gertrude would have been as singularly lucky as she was in meeting everywhere with good Samaritans had she been plain instead of pretty, may probably be doubted ; but at any rate she thoroughly deserved all the kindness that was lavished upon her, and the fact of her receiving it gives one a glow of pleasure that adds no little to the book's charm. Two morals are clearly to be derived from its pages,—First, do not leave your wife tied up to a telegraph-post lest some accident should prevent your going back to release her ; secondly, de not trust to amateur detectives when you want to trace what (1.) Singularly Deluded. By the Author of "Ideals." London and Edinburgh: W. Blaokwood nud Sons.—(2 Philip Methuen. By Mrs. J. Needoll. London : F. Warne and Co.--(3.) A Moral Mumma By Annie Thompson. London: Lougmans and Co.—(4.) A Deplorable Affair. By W. N. Norris. London Methuen and Co.
has become of a missing person. And having given this much insight into what the story is about, we conclude by advising our readers to get it, and find out the rest for them- selves. The writer chooses for the present to remain anony- mous, but if her—we conjecture that this pronoun is the right one to use—name should hereafter appear in the front rank of novelists, we shall not 'be surprised.
That a spirit of steadfast self-surrender to whatever is believed to be God's will, may achieve missionary work and martyrdom as much amongst civilised men and women as amongst "unsavoury savages of the Corea," and that a genuinely saintly vocation will manifest itself as effectually in a sphere of worldly ambitions as in the cloister, is the moral conveyed by Philip Methuen. And as this moral is made apparent throughout the pages, imparting some degree of method and order to what would be otherwise a chaos of purposeless troubles, it has the effect of a strain of solemn music sweeping again and again through a medley of harsh, jangling sounds, to resolve discords and reduce them to some kind of harmony. Philip is a young man forced to abandon his cherished hopes of becoming a priest, in consequence of the death of a cousin, whereby the responsibilities of heirship to property are unexpectedly imposed upon him ; and the person who, after wrecking his happiness and inflicting prolonged torture, finally takes his life, is a sort of strange and beautiful fiend to whom he has been the kindest of benefactors, and in whose evil nature the one approach to a saving spot is her passionate love for himself. Though it must in fairness be said that she acts the part of executioner unknowingly, yet the combination of titter epicureanism, egotism (as he truly says, "No weapons are so irresistible as those of a relentless selfishness "), and passion unrestrained by consideration for others or by religion, that is presented by her character, makes it doubtful whether she would have behaved differently even had she known what she was about. The false position which causes him to marry her is contrived with an ingenuity that we can only call cruel because, as it was simply his goodness that made him consent to become her husband, one feels as if there must almost be something wrong about goodness itself when it makes neces- sary so odious a result as this marriage. Yet it is hard to see where the flaw lies either, or what other possible way there was for him out of the dilemma without being false to his principles,—though more hard-hearted people in similar cir- cumstances might perhaps have thought it better to sacrifice the bad rather than the good, and to leave Anna to suffer the consequences, however unpleasant, to which she had chosen deliberately to expose herself. There is more substance, both as to matter and bulk, in the single volume of which the novel is composed, than is usually found in stories of double that length ; and the proofs of thought, power, and purpose that it contains show Mrs. Needell to be a writer above the average of merit.
The problem presented by A Moral Dilemma is this. A man, wrongfully accused of forgery and theft, is returning to England with papers to establish his innocence, and lay the blame on the right shoulders, when death overtakes him, and he dies on the voyage, after having entrusted his exculpatory proofs to a friendly fellow-passenger, John, who swears that he will deliver them to a specified person, and see that the victim's character is cleared. Subsequently, John, however, finding that the young lady he loves is not only engaged and intensely devoted to the real criminal, but also convinced of her fiances absolute perfection, takes upon him to break his oath lest he should disturb her happiness. And the question is, did, or did not, the circumstances of the case justify his conduct P In our opinion they did not, because, putting aside the not unimportant question of breach of trust to the dead man, we doubt its being for a girl's interest to let her marry a scamp under the belief that he is a paragon of virtue, and we think the best and most honest course (both as regarded the dead and living) would have been for John to abide by his oath, and leave to Mary's own decision whether or not she still cared to marry Gavin when she knew what sort of a person he really was. But, at any rate, whether John's action in the matter be approved of or not, readers are sure to be very willing to listen to the account of any dilemma that is made as pleasant and in- teresting as is his. Dissimilarity of character in two girls inhabiting the same home and having a common basis of goodness, is depicted successfully in the two heroines, Mary and Kate. Which of the two to prefer, depends on individual taste, for while some will like best the sweet and not alwa3 s over-wise Mary, others will pronounce in favour of the more sharp-tempered and sharp-witted Kate ; yet, if evil that people have power to do and abstain from doing, is to be credited as positive and not merely negative merit, then we think the palm should be accorded to Kate, whose superiority in respect of wits necessarily meant superiority in capacity for mischief also, if she had allowed bad inclinations to get the upper hand.
Mr. Norris has the gift of being readable, and the ease of a practised writer ; and any one seeking half-an-hour's quiet entertainment without fatigue, is very likely to attain that object by a perusal of A Deplorable Affair, notwithstanding the conventional nature of the materials from which it is con- structed, and also of the manner in which they are treateel. The actors are a rich old lady with an eligible bachelor nephew, and a poor but beautiful niece who is her paid com- panion; an unknown male adventurer who has a mysterious and compromising acquaintance with the niece ; and a his- torian of their proceedings in the shape of an inquisitive old bookseller, whose proprietorship of a lending-library and reading-room give exceptional facilities for gratifying his thirst for information about other people's business, and who evidently considers the justification of himself from a possible charge of undue curiosity, to be nearly as important a matter as the discharge of his self-appointed task of nar- rator. The sky is overcast for a while by clouds containing possibilities that may warrant their being considered gloomy ; but as they are never really felt to be so, and are finally dis- persed in an instant by the appearance, in a newspaper, of a telegram from New York, the appropriateness of the de.- pressing adjective in the title is not unreasonably open to question. Genuine deplorability, however, is obviously not to be expected from the pen of a kind-hearted narrator who de- clares that he would never sit down to write about events leading to painful results, because the world is, in his opinion, so full of troubles, sorrows, and irreparable mistakes, that one would fain behold no more of them than one is absolutely forced to contemplate. Is not the aforesaid telegram, by-the- by, rather unnaturally lengthy, considering what the tele- graphic charges are between England and the United States P
Previous page
