Though I enjoyed Broken Shackles (Methuen) in a mild degree, I hardly think that Mr. John Oxenham has here given us of his best. So little do I think this that I am the prey of a suspicion—probably quite unfounded—that the tale is either early work, or has been hastily put together since the beginning of August. Anyhow, it's about a young man named de Valle, an officer in the Eastern Army of France, who is married but lives apart from his wife. The time is the winter of 1870, and when the great surrender comes, and the army is forced over into Switzerland, de Valle is so sick of military muddles that he determines to settle down as a Swiss civilian and never go back any more. This (fortune helping him) he is enabled to do. He changes his name to Duval, and starts the simpler life with some pleasant folk who run a saw-mill in the Brunnen Thal. He even goes so far as to marry the maid of the mill. Which was rash of him, since he was still legally tied to his French wife, and (in fiction at least) the course of bigamy never did run smooth. Inevitably, therefore, not only did he encounter his wife again, coming out of the casino at Interlaken (she too has not been idle, having meanwhile married a Russian Prince), but the villain of the story also saw them both, and looked to make a good thing by it. But you know how quick and deep the Aar runs at Interlaken? Duval accordingly pushed the inconvenient blackmailer into the water, and everyone, with this exception, lived happy. The real merit of the book lies not in this improbable plot, but in its moving chapters upon a little treated phase of the last Franco-German fighting. These are well done.
Many gentle readers will be well pleased to hear that Agnes and Egerton Castle are giving them more news of that engaging heroine, Lady Kilcroney. True, in the new book Kitty herself plays but a subordinate part, but as her dainty mantle of insolence and charm appeals to have fallen on the shoulders of a worthy successor no one need grumble upon that score. The new book is called The Ways of Miss Barbara (Smith Elder), and I daresay that having said so much I might spare myself the pains of telling precisely what those ways were. Do you need to hear how Mistress Barbara (who was a kind of eighteenth-century Becky Sharp without the sting) was befriended by Lady Kitty and her susceptible lord? How the noble carriage was waylaid on its journey from Paris to the coast? How the highwayman was eventually brought to hook by the wiles of Barbara, who in the long run marries a duke, and is left preparing for permanent prosperity? Whether this last expectation will be fulfilled without preliminary troubles I take leave to doubt. Indeed, the situation as regards Barbara and her ducal spouse is left so full of intriguing possibilities that I could not but suspect those clever campaigners, the Egerton Castles, of having artfully arranged it as a kind of concrete foundation from which to attack the public sympathy later on. This is as may be. Meanwhile here is a pleasantly sparkling comedy with which, I vow, you are like to find yourself vastly well pleased.
GERMAN SPY REPORTS TO HEADQUARTERS.
"Have visited Army and Navy Stores. Find British Forces being supplied with many useless articles calculated to embarrass their movements."
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.