the novel watermeads (1916), particularly welcome to me because the friend who wore a grotesque mask in upsidonia showed his healthy, agreeable, english face again, opens characteristically with the entire family gathered around the tea-table in a sunlit room in an old manor house. this story is mainly concerned with the waxing and waning of a marriage-engagement; the rich fiancée seems well enough among her own people and in her own environment; her lack of breeding appears with steadily increasing emphasis when she is brought into the circle of the squire's household. the restraint shown by mr. marshall in contrasting her with the people among whom she is expected to live is worthy of the highest praise. there is nothing exaggerated, not a trace of burlesque; little touches, shades of speech and conduct, the expression at the corners of the girl's mouth when she is displeased or unsatisfied, all combine to lower the temperature in her lover's heart. nor is there anything snobbish in this increasing coldness.[41] no matter how important may be a difference in manners or social breeding, love could make a happy fusion; it is, however, not in one act of villainy, but in many trifles light as air that the young woman is finally, even to the myopic eyes of passion, revealed as wholly selfish.

two accidents—youth and cash—give to this girl an assurance that finally makes her odious; but women who have neither can be equally offensive. her prospective mother-in-law, the squire's wife, parades the decline in the family's finances so obtrusively that she becomes as tiresome as a flapping curtain. when lord kirby is shown by her through the ancestral home, he escapes with a sense of enormous relief, saying to his wife, "that's an awful woman. you hear about people being purse-proud, but she seems to be empty-purse-proud, and i don't know that that isn't worse. if people are as hard up as that they ought to hide it."

in abington abbey (1917) and the graftons (1918) we have really one book, and the last page of the sequel makes me hope that the history of this charming family may be continued—i don't care through how many volumes. mr. grafton is a gentleman, and the way in[42] which he settles the various problems of family discipline and the affairs of the estate springs from his unerring good sense. his daughters adore their widower-father, but each in her own manner. and though they are all attractive, i know which one i like the best.

mr. marshall published with the graftons an exceedingly interesting introduction, containing a defense of his methods which is not needed by intelligent readers, but which may enlighten those who do not understand what he is about. in a personal letter, however, he expressed himself in words that i like better than his printed apologia. "the grafton family isn't so rich in varied interest as the clinton family, but i hope they will make their friends. i think they are as 'nice' a family as any i've drawn. i set out simply to show them in their country home, and make their country neighbours display themselves in the light of their critical humour, without much idea of a story. it turned into something rather different, and i'm not quite sure about it yet. and it has taken two books to work it out."

now the reason why i like this ink-epistle better than the formal preface is because in the latter mr. marshall seemed to think it nec[43]essary to reply to those critics who said he ought to discuss in his novels the economic questions concerned with the tenure of the land. if he should by some evil temptation make economic questions the basis of his stories of english country life, he would commit the cardinal sin that has corrupted so much of contemporary fiction, the sin that i condemned at the outset of this essay. the most conspicuous element in his art is charm. if some one should persuade him that he ought to become more "serious," his novels would lose their atmosphere; and he might find himself writing like that earnest student of modern movements, mrs. humphry ward.

i am aware that the most insulting epithet that can be applied to a book, or a play, or a human being is the word "puritan"; and i remember reading a review somewhere of abington abbey which commented rather satirically on the interview between grafton and lassigny, and most satirically of all on the conclusion of the interview, which left the stiff, prejudiced, puritanical british parent in possession of the field. but once more, mr. marshall is not trying to prove a thesis; he is representing the englishman and the french[44]man in a hot debate, where neither is right and neither is wrong, but where each is partly right and partly wrong. each says in the heat of the contest something injudicious, even as men do when they are angry. but when lassigny literally takes french leave, we do not care who has scored the most points; the real winner is the one who is not present—the girl herself. for when two men fight about a woman, as they do somewhere every day, the truly important question is not, which man wins the fight? the only real question is, does the woman win?

it will never do to make generalizations from merely one of mr. marshall's novels. if we had only abington abbey, we might imagine that he detested the clergy, for the clergyman in this book is surely detestable; but in the greatest of these there are two clergymen who are admirable characters, and a third who is by no means wholly or even mainly evil. like an honest student of life, mr. marshall never considers a man as a representative of a business, but as a human being. no man is good because he is a clergyman; but it would be well perhaps if every member of that highest of all professions were a clergyman because he was good.