NOVELS.
THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS.*
Mag. MANN'S literary baggage is already of considerable dimensions, but happily there is no sign of any deterioration in its quality. Indeed, we doubt whether she has ever written a cleverer or more amusing novel than The Sheep and the Goats. Hitherto her chief successes have been won in delineations of rusticity in which realism and charm have gone hand-in-hand. But in her new venture, the scene of which is laid in a county town dominated by a great school, she enters more or less
into competition with Trollope, and carries on the traditions of that faithful observer with a freshness and zest that it would be difficult to overpraise. To call Mrs. Mann a great writer would be to overshoot the mark ; but within the modest limits she has set herself there are very few living writers who achieve more conspicuous or consistent success. Without resort to literary artifice, she writes in an excellent unaffected style, free from padding or pretence; her dialogue is natural, her narrative alert and vivacious, and her characterisation shrewd and incisive. Mrs. Mann is very far from being an idealist. She is wholly incapable of unlimited hero-worship, and shows a perfect genius for revealing the imperfections of average humanity. But she is equally incapable of painting an un- mixed rogue. The amari alig aid in her case is an agreeable sub-acidity which lends pungency to her native optimism. Like the charming but far from perfect Amanda in her story, she is often flippant, but never ill-natured. She has a real reverence for goodness along with a merciless contempt for snobs and hypocrites. There are some writers who are quite distressingly in love with their characters, and labour in vain to infect their readers with a similar emotion; but Mrs. Mann, just because she is under no illusions, is far more successful in enlisting interest, sympathy, and even affection. In some of the cleverest modern novels there is not a single character that a normally constituted person would go one step out of his way to meet in real life. Now there are at least half-a- dozen people in The Sheep and the Goats who would be worth a day's journey to encounter in the flesh. We have mentioned Amanda, and must in honesty admit that Amanda was a bit of a scalp-huntress. As the relentless Mrs. Mann observes,—
" As a sportsman is stirred by the sight of a partridge running across the road, or a pheasant flying heavily over a hedgerow, and, although the time to kill has not come, although the game is his neighbour's and not his own, must put himself in attitude to slay, must bring a fancied gun in pantomime to shoulder, and close a sportive eye, so Amanda, in and out of season, never forgot her sporting proclivities. Although she intended no harm to him, she must never let a man forget that she was his natural enemy, and that he must beware."
This passage is quite near the beginning of the story, and it is fully borne out by the context. Amanda was a siren,—at
* The Sheep and the Goats. By Mary E. Mann. London : Methuen and Co. [tie.]
times almost a minx ; but, after all, her "sweet artfulness" was only a husk, and as the story progresses we are agreeably surprised to find beneath it not only humour and courage, but a woman's heart. As the French proverb has it, one chooses friends, but on subif rumour, and Amanda's experiences were almost enough to wreck her belief in human nature. After a series of ineffectual flirtations, her affections were seriously engaged by a male charmer, an assistant-master at the public school at Wynborough, who had almost everything to recommend him—good looks, accomplishments, and wit—but character. Unfortunately Amanda did not discover his worth- lessness until she was already pledged, and even when she had proof of his fickleness, remained for a long time loyal to her word. Meantime she had beeh reluctantly convinced of the immense superiority of her lover's rival, Harold Fisher, the rector of Wynborough, the son of a retired draper. But by a strange irony of fate the same girl who had enslaved Aubrey Poole's fickle fancy was also destined to thwart the realisation of her second thoughts on matrimony. The position was humiliating, for Daisy Meers, the girl in question, was low-born, vulgar, untruthful, greedy, slovenly, brainless, and heartless. The career of Daisy, who sets all Wynborough by the ears, is a painful illustration of the susceptibility of the civilised male to mere good looks. Aubrey Poole admired her as an artist ; but the situation becomes much more serious when Daisy is socially outlawed, and by that very fact appeals to the quixotry of the rector, who, as a self-made man, is keenly bent on overthrowing the barriers of class. The plot resolves itself into a duel between Amanda and Daisy for the possession of the rector. It is quite unconscious on Daisy's part, but she has great advantages in her limpet-like tenacity, her helplessness, the claim of kin, and, above all, in Harold Fisher's chivalrous disinterestedness. We must not dis- count the pleasures of perusal by revealing the sequel, but may say that the progress of this comedy enables Mrs. Mann to give a series of vivid pictures of the caste system as it works out in a county town. Many of its manifestations are frankly odious, but Mrs. Mann treats them with such a light band and with such a keen eye for the ludicrous that the result is continuously entertaining. It must not be supposed, however, that she indulges her satiric bent without restraint. Though essentially a comedy, the story has no lack of serious relief. The relations of the rector and his mother are beautifully drawn, and Mrs. Mann shows herself a true student of human nature by bringing out unexpected traits of goodness in unattractive persons. An obvious criticism is that she has exaggerated the innocent indiscretions of the rector to serve the purposes of the plot, and that it is a pity that the most powerful and aleing impression should be created by the portrait of the dreadful Daisy. With this reservation, we can commend her new book as. a first-rate instance of that welcome rarity, a modern novel which is at once clever, cheerful, wholesome, and amusing.
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