Of all his characters, perhaps those that the reader will remember with the highest flood of happy recollection are the twins, Joan and Nancy. In the first novel, this wonderful pair are aged thirteen; in the second, they are fifteen; in the third, they are twenty-one. Mr. Marshall is particularly skilful in the drawing of young girls; and after one has read Ann Veronica, I can think of no better antidote than these Clinton books. Whatever may be woman's place in the future, whatever she may drink or smoke or wear or say or do, there is one kind of girl that can never become unattractive; and the Clinton twins illustrate that kind. They are healthy, modest, quick-witted, affectionate, high-spirited; when they come in laughing and glowing from a game of tennis, and take their places at the family tea-table, they bring the breath of life into the room.
In The Eldest Son, which of the four delightful books dealing with the Clinton family, I find most delightful, there is a suggestion of the author's attitude toward humanity in the procession of candidates for governess that passes before the penetrating eyes of Mrs. Clinton. Her love for the old Starling—one of the most original of Mr. Marshall's creations—has not blinded Mrs. Clinton to the latter's incompetence for the task of training so alert a pair as the twins. Of the women who present themselves for this difficult position, not one is wholly desirable; and it is plain that Mrs. Clinton knows in advance that this will be the case. She is not looking for an ideal teacher, for such curiosities are not to be found on our planet; the main requisite is brains, and she selects finally the candidate whom many society women would immediately dismiss as impossible, the uncompromising, hard-headed, sexless Miss Phipps, who has about as much amenity as a steamroller. Miss Phipps bristles with faults; but they are the faults that spring from excess of energy, from a devotion to scholarship so exclusive that the minor graces and minor pleasures of life have received in her daily scheme even less than their due. But the twins already possess everything lacking in the composition of their teacher; what they need is not a sweet, sympathetic companion, what they need is what nearly every one needs, mental discipline, mental training, and an increase in knowledge and ideas. In this dress-parade of candidates we have a miniature parade of humanity in the large; no one is faultless; but those who have an honest mind and an honest character have something essential. And who knows but what the shrewd and deep-hearted Mrs. Clinton did not also see that in the association of this mirthless expert with two young incarnations of vitality and vivacity, both parties to the contract might learn something of value? Miss Phipps is about to discover that the country-side in winter has resources entirely unguessed at by her bookish soul; that there are many of her countrymen and country-women who find in outdoor sport a secret of health and happiness.
Her bedroom was in the front of the house, and she had heard, without much heeding them, the wheels and the beat of horse-hoofs and the voices outside. Now she began to be a little curious as to what was going on, and rose and drew up her blind and looked out.
The scene was quite new to her, and in spite of herself she exclaimed at it. Immediately beyond the wide gravel sweep in front of the house was the grass of the park, where the whole brave show of the South Meadshire Hunt was collected. It is doubtful if she had ever seen a pack of hounds in her life, and she watched them as if fascinated. Presently, at some signal which she had not discerned, the huntsman and the whips turned and trotted off with them, and behind them streamed all the horsemen and horsewomen, the carriages and carts, and the people on foot, until the whole scene which had been so full of life and colour was entirely empty of all human occupation, and there was only the damp grass of the park and the big bare trees under the pearly grey of the winter sky. She saw the Squire ride off on his powerful horse, and admired his sturdy erect carriage, and she saw Dick and Virginia, side by side, Humphrey, the pink of sartorial hunting perfection, Mrs. Clinton in her carriage, with Miss Dexter by her side and the twins opposite to her, and for a moment wished she had accepted her invitation to make one of the party, although she did not in the least understand where they were going to, or what they were going to do when they got there. All this concourse of apparently well-to-do and completely leisured people going seriously about a business so remote from any of the interests in life that she had known struck her as entirely strange and inexplicable. She might have been in the midst of some odd rites in an unexplored land. The very look of the country in its winter dress was strange to her, for she was a lifelong Londoner and the country to her only meant a place where one spent summer holidays.
VII
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. 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 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.