THE NOVEL OF THE WEEK.* WE cannot pronounce Mr. Gilbert
Parker's new novel to be by any means the best, though it is perhaps the most highly coloured, of the many picturesque romances that have come from his pen. But it stands out from among those with which we are immediately concerned by its faults as well as its excellences ; it raises many curious questions, ethical, religious, psychological ; it has movement, excitement, invention, and an excellent moral. In a word, to borrow a simile from the examination-room, it scores marks in so mazy subjects that we have few misgivings in preferring it to the place of honour over competitors more highly distinguished, it may be, in special spheres of merit.
The character and career of Beauty Steele, the hero of The Bight of Way, distinguish him even from the most eccentric modern representatives of that role. Charley Steele at the age of twenty-nine was a brilliantly clever but somewhat disconcerting young barrister in Montreal. He was a dandy : he was also a drunkard, and his brain never worked so smoothly as when he was drunk. In the opening scene, dead in the teeth of the evidence he hypnotises a jury and secures the acquittal of a poor French-Canadian farmer charged with murder. More than that, his triumph secures in open Court the avowal of her admiration from the beautiful Kathleen , Wantage, though she is really in love with the blameless Captain Thomas Fairing. Five years elapse, with results only to be anticipated from a loveless marriage with a drunkard. Yet this cynical hedonist, who neglects his beauti- ful wife for the company of an Amazonian barmaid in a jois drinking saloon, is even in his unregenerate days a crypt°. altruist of the most advanced type, and on the eve of the tavern brawl in which he disappears secures his wife's position by a generous transfer of property, and shields her worthless brother from the consequences of forgery and fraud. Wounded and thrown into the river, Charley Steele is miracu- lously preserved by the very man—Jo Portugais—whom he • The Right of Way. By Gilbert Pater. London W. Heinemann. N.] had saved from the gallows. Jo carries Charley off to the mountains and nurses him back to life ; but his memory is completely gone, and when it is restored after seven months by an operation performed by the cure's brother—a clever French surgeon on a holiday trip from Paris—the first news Charley Steele hears is that Montreal has written him down not only as a dead man but a swindler, and that his wife has already married her soldier-lover. His decision is swiftly taken ; he accepts his doom, and resolves to stay where he is, fight the curse of dipsomania, and regain his self-respect by a Life of toil amongst the habitants of Chaudiere. To this end he sinks his identity, changes his dress, apprentices himself to the village tailor under the assumed name of Charles Mallard, and settles down as a useful member of the com- munity. Naturally enough, the mystery attaching to his arrival, and his refined manners and appearance, pique the curiosity of the villagers, while his indifference to religion excites their mistrust, and even hostility. His homely life is chequered by strange, and even terrible, experiences. Louis Trudel, the old tailor, maddened by the discovery of his assistant's scepticism, steals a cross from the church, brands Charley with it as he lies asleep, and dies in delirium. Accused and acquitted of sacrilege, Charley saves the life of an itinerant showman, who turns out to be an ex-clergy- man from Montreal, a former partner in his orgies, whose faith he had sapped by his persistent questionings. The showman recognises him but flies from the village, and Charley, brought face to face with his old life, succumbs to the drink habit. Then, when the disclosure of his identity is imminent, the devotion of Rosalie Evanturel, the postmistress of the village, a beautiful girl of good birth and generous instincts, inspires him with a love that cannot be legally ratified. To crown all, he is murdered by his rascally brother-in-law, now turned highwayman, in a burglarious attempt to carry off the funds raised for rebuilding the church, in the burning of which—it had been set on fire by the showman—he had risked his life to save that of Rosalie. This is only an imperfect summary of the Odyssey of troubles and trials through which Charley Steele passes, and it must be admitted that in his effort to lend poignancy to the recital Mr. Gilbert Parker has piled the agony mountainously high and leant with dangerous frequency on the support of the long arm of coincidence. This is only another way of saying that the story is too highly melodramatic, too crowded with incident, to admit of a leisurely or convincing development of character. Besides, we find it just a little difficult to accept the conversion of Charley Steele, by the means of a knock on. the head, from the cynical vireur into such a monster of magnanimity as the heroic tailor of Chaudiere. Nemo repents fuit—sanctissi- mus. It may be replied that the change was not instan- taneous; that it was preceded by seven months' loss of memory and a tremendous operation on the brain. This in turn opens up the whole question whether character can be ameliorated by surgery. But we take it that Mr. Parker had no such object in view when he dipped his hero in the waters of Lethe and called in the Parisian expert to take him out. His aim was to exhibit the possibilities of regeneration that offer themselves to all natures in which there remains a remnant of soundness, in a strange and picturesque form, and in this aim he has abundantly succeeded.
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