FICTION.
MISS VELAITTY'S DISCLOSURE.*
Tins is at once a very curious, interesting, and well-written book, by, so far as we know, a newcomer in the field of fiction.. In one sense, she is, consciously or unconsciously, a disciple of Mr. Conrad, for she has adopted his oblique method of narration, a method, we may observe, which is much truer to life than the ordinary straightforward narrative which presupposes the miracle of the writer being constantly present at every stage in the life of the personages depicted. Here the events that really. matter reach us at a double or even treble remove. There is the, shadowy character of the person, who only appears in thoprologue, and epilogue, whose name is never mentioned, and who has never met or even seen the central figure of the narrative ; and there is Miss Velanty, who makes her " disclosure " to the nameless' one, first orally and then apparently also in written form, but who again has only been intermittently in contact with the chief personage of the -story, and is for the rest depen-. dent upon letters, and information from third persons— a sehoolfellow, friends, associates, and employers of Gretchen Meyer, the German girl whose strange history is the theme of these pages. Incidentally and by the process of self-revela- tion we arrive at a pretty thorough knowledge of Miss Velanty herself, the kindly, amiable, but vigilant lady, whose intuitions are seldom at fault, and whose generosity goes hand in hand with a curiously detached interest in the vagaries of human nature. But it is Gretchen who really counts; and it is on her complex temperament, engrossing rather than attractive, that the attention of the reader is focussed from beginning to end. Gretchen Meyer is an orphan, practically adopted while still a child by an English lady, Mrs. Davison, who had known and respected her mother and sympathized with her in her troubles. The father had been a handsome scamp, an artist, and a bad husband, and the marriage had ended in disaster and separation. The narrative. opens with Gretchen's last days at the boarding-school for young ladies kept by Miss _Flinch, a rigidly orthodox instructress of youth, under whose roof Gretchen had spent a few years of suppressed discontent, despising her teachers, and unpopular with her schoolfellows. Her only friend is a maidservant who is under a cloud. Miss Flinch!s practice of ending the term with a series of admonitions to-her pupils gives Gretchen her chance, and she breaks in upon the Head-Mistress's monologue with a torrent of rebellious 'clitieism, crowning her defiance by quitting the school secretly at night. The mood of exaltation soon passes ; she even harbours thoughts of suicide, but is diverted from her purpose by a timely meeting with an old German musician married to an English wife, at whose house she takes refuge, accompanying them to London. It is while she is at their dingy lodging that a chance encounter brings her into touch with Miss Velanty, who takes her in and escorts her to the Davisons. Gretchen dreads the change, and not unnaturally, for her benefactors live in a small provincial town, and Mr. Davison is a religious fanatic, the head of an obscure sect known as the Sojourners, who look askance on all gaiety and social entertainments: Mr. Davison is a half-educated man, but not devoid of a certain magnetic influence; and it is only after a severe struggle that Gretchen avoids being subjugated by the force of his will. Once again the story of mutiny is repeated. She finds relief in the • Miss l'clataty's Disclosure., By Evelyn Bransaombe Patter. London: Cbapman and Stall. 1.65.1 society . of Mrs. Davison's brother, who returns on. a long visit to England from British Columbia--a widower old enough to be her father—but she refuses his offer of marriage for lack of love. Mr. Harwood acquiesces in her decision, recognizing that it might not be in him to satisfy her exacting, tempestuous nature. Thenceforth the friction steadily increases, culminating in a breach with the Davisons, as the result of a flirtation with a sus- cePtible solicitor—a married man—and in Gretchen's flight from their house.. She becomes the secretary of a lady of advanced feminist views at a seaport town, and falls in with a friend of her father's, a German named von Busing, who had inspired her with repulsion in earlier years ; but her friendlessness and, his admiration work on her feelings, and when her employer resents the intimacy, she marries him out of hand. Fritz von Bitsing has wealth at his command, and for a few months Gretchen tastes of luxury. Then she discovers that he has a deserted wife, and leaves him. Again Miss Velanty comes to the rescue, and while her guest Gretchen meets and falls in love with a young Englishman. But her delay in acquainting him with her antecedents lands her in a false position, and when she-makes a clean breast of it, it is too late. Her lover is already on the trail of von Busing, and his investigations lead to discoveries which prove Gretchen to have been his willing accomplice in the work of espionage. Gretchen plays her last card, her love, against what she chooses to regard as his fetish-worship of honour, and fails. This is on the very eve of the war ; for what happened to Gretchen, her lover, and Fritz von Busing we must refer our readers to the book itself.
The minor characters are, without exception, very well drawn. Miss Flinch, the Head-Mistress ; Davison, the angular, fierce evangelist ; old Firsche, the German bandsman ; the genial philosopher from British Columbia ; the golf-playing Colone?, his witty, irresponsible wife, and their charming son. Of Miss Velanty we have already spoken. But Gretchen fills the canvas. and though we readily admit that the author has made her a vivid and. arresting figure, and invited. our compassion as well as our distrust, it is a curious fact that while her German birth and antecedents and certain sentimental adhesions to the country of her birth are emphasized, her character is in no respect typi- cally German. She has none of the docility, the pertinacity, and the thick-skinnedness of the Teuton woman. Psychologically she is much more akin to the Slay. She is farouche, mutinous, independent, aggressive, sensitive, fastidious, and intolerant. It is true that she has.reasons for regarding England as a step- mother, but the motives for her plunge into the espionage business do not seem adequate. In the choice of so. character- istically Jewish a name as Meyer for her patronymic there may have been some subtle intent on the part of the author, but she is-as devoid of the accommodating and ingratiating qualities of the Hebrew race as she is of the simplicity and sympathy of her namesake in Faust. In fine, as a cosmopolitan freak Gretchen is a powerfully conceived and elaborately executed character. As a study of race attributes she is somewhat bewildering, and the topical twist given to the end of the story impairs its artistic merit. But with all deductions, this is a first novel'of exceeding promise.
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