FROM AN INKWELL

Southland Times, Issue 20044, 4 December 1926, Page 13 (Supplement)

FROM AN INKWELL

SWEET AS THE SPRING (By “Brunnhilde.”) In these days of ultra-feminism it is refreshing to pek up the story of a good woman neither conscious of enforced virtue nor unconscious of the existing evils. It is refreshing and peculiarly reassuring after the morbid fancies of the erotic and starved young men and women who present us with our novels have steeped their women in sex and left them to dry on a sea of cynicism. The modern heroine sways too closely to the demi-monde to sport anything resembling a halo of purity, lack of which is attributed partly to the lesser radiance of the sun, party to the popular mode of hair-dressing, partly to the primary cause in the law of supply and demand —haloes have had their day, and the demand (or them is practically negligible. A coronet of jewels is so much more effective, and can be removed, moreover, when its weight is cumbersome. What our young novelists need, and those bewhiskered gentlemen betraying the tendencies of the young, is a good emetic before they start. In their contempt for chivalry our Mr Huxleys, our Mr Arlens and our Mr Lawrences have lost the way to truth, and their women, curiously enough, are the ones who suffer. Which suggests that in women there is more truth than man cares to admit he has lost.

The book I came across during the week, with no indication of the pleasure I was to receive from it. I have read nothing else of Elizabeth Finley Thomas, nor have I any knowledge that she has written anything before or since. The House of Cassell has published it amongst their new autumn novels, and apart from that there are no threads of information about which one can weave anything tangible. The title "Rendezvous” suggests nothing of what the book contains, and it is not until the last page that its application is felt. The dedication is—

To you. Life is the veil between us, except for that flashing moment of exultant recognition, granted but once. Was it a promise or a consummation? A beginning or an end? You said it was a beginning, and your words shine in my memory. They are the stars by which I walk towards Death, who holds the answer. It is somewhat daring, this dedication, when one has a story to tell. It smacks over a little of the fervid outpouring of an emotional woman. One is inclined to read the first chapter rather sceptically. There is no doubt that the author has read and benefited by the advice of Anatole France, whose house in the Villa Said was only a few doors from that of her Aunt Lily when in Paris. There are none of the extravagances in her style which generally weaken the work of women. She writes simply, lucidly, smoothly, leaving in her wake a story as immaculate as snowy linen. It is not a sentimental story, yet the outstanding characters breathe as surely as it is necessary to live. If it falters occasionally at the beginning it is not because of uncertainty of procedure but rather because of indecision in the treatment. In places she suggests an outlook adopted from the years of which she writes; but gradually she assumes more conviction and presents her childhood through the knowledge that the years have brought.

There is something tragic in the clear gaze of a child, a demand for reality which knows no barriers. There is the same quality in the direct simplicity of the story of Effie Carrington, a fatalistic thread in something of the purity of a nun.

She is not a prude, nor is she prudish. She has merely achieved a degree more of honesty than the people about her. Early in her tale, when Gracie Marvel with whom she was “best friends” at Miss Nott’s School for Young Ladies (this was in Connecticut, where Effie and her mother lived with her grandmother) took her favourite doll home and hid it under her mattress, she strikes a little bitter note: “Thus the very first time that Gracie entered my life it was to rob me of something that I loved.” Later, when she discovered her husband with Gracie at the time of his death-stroke, she still maintains the direct actions of a child. In the church at his funeral she says, “I did not glance towards Gracie. Once I drew my skirt away when it touched her.” Later, — Next morning I sent for Gracie. Her face was as blank as usual. A scientific use of cosmetics concealed the ravages of an emotion which had been of fear rather than grief. She was pale, but her hands trembled nervously. “I was coming to-day to explain to you,” she began. Her eye turned out more than I had ever seen it. “I wanted to explain to you how Win happened—” she began again. The sword of my gaze must have pierced her shallow soul at last. She dropped her eyes. “It’s no use,” I said. “It’s a long time since that first day when you stole my doll, and now I know you through and through, and I hate and despise you as I’ve never hated or despised anyone. We are hideously bound together by circumstances. Junior and J.C. and dear Mrs Bisbee are worth what it will cost me. What it cost you I do not care. It may be your purgatory. You deserve it. I intend to meet you as usual in public and to receive you here when necessary. I have spoken my last word to you in private. Now go!”

That is what one would expect from the little Effie. There is no hint of conscious righteousness in her. She makes no gigantic decisions, nor does she constitute herself a reforming agent of massive stainlessness. She is just Effie, the impulsive, the loving, the brave of heart.

Something of the bigness that is in her she must have had in common with her Aunt Lucy, drawn with fewer strokes, startlingly clear. Rather a tragic figure, beautiful, flashing, for whom it was “love, love, love which makes the world go round.” Aunt Lucy’s life wound round her own inevitably, and Aunt Lucy’s Raoul de Segonvilliers. Leaving them, as she did, on discovering the nature of their relationship, she did not condemn where she did not chose to tread. There was more of the instinctive cleanliness of an animal in her than prudery. When she found herself losing the love of her husband she set out to rouse his jealousy. “For the first time I tried to be charming to other men. I even employed the feminine wiles and tactics which I had been used to despise, since real love had been so little efficacious

.... But handsome young Romans in their thirties don’t care for placid waters. My efforts to arouse Win’s jealousy or to awaken him in any way from the lethargic dullness into which he had fallen had failed completely and pathetically.” It is strange how little egotism she has uncovered in the pages of her chronicle. Her big, handsome, temperamental Win, mean little Gracie, Aunt Lily of the demi-monde, Mrs Fellows Paige, student of Man, the pernicious Gaston, even withered old Aunt Augusta—they have their niches, she has i their points of view. But on herself she

spends little time, scorning those explanations of oneself which one would deem necessary in like circumstances. “That’s been your trouble always,” Win told her—- “ You’ve idealised, man doesn’t want to be idealised, he wants to be understood. He likes a woman who will call to the little pet devil of whom he’s most ashamed and pat it on the head when it comes out, not try to shove it back out of sight, or kill it, or merely forgive it. I don’t know whether I want to be St. Paul, Casabianca and St. Francis of Assisi rolled into one.” Instead of following this with fervent defences, it was characteristic of her to close the incident with “Despite this outburst, Win seemed fairly well satisfied with our life most of the time.” She did not realise the sacrifice she was to make until her son came back from the war, anxious to hear the details of his father’s death, reverent before the pictures she had drawn of his innate chivalry, of his deep and lasting affection. “It’s what you were to each other, what you are to each other,” he told her, “that kept me from going under many a time. . . . Into

my mind kept coming the thought of you and father. Of course most American women of our class are good women though not many are as fine as you; but it’s most of all a man’s father that counts.” Then “Till the dawn came 1 sat alone, Beloved, till the fire was spent and the greying ashes were turned to white, till all the passion and the grief were burned away. For I had builded better than I knew, 00 well that I had walled myself and my old life in. I knew now that I could never pull down what I had erected, stone by stone, with bleeding hands and aching heart. It must stand, that wall, for ever and for ever, a monument to all that I had loved in Win, to all that Jack still loved and honoured.” Whether Elisabeth Finley Thomas is Effie Carrington or not it would be impossible to say. Whether she has expended the whole of her ability in chronicling this story is equally uncertain. The fact remains that she has achieved what many greater writers than she have failed to do—she has imprisoned vibrant life within, th* cardboard covers of a book.