Audrey makes an instant appeal to the £reader. The story is one of the slightest that was ever spun into three volumes; yet, for all its slightness, it cannot be said to be tedious. The Deceased Wife’s Sister who presides over the destinies of Audrey is too actively present in the story to permit our sympathy for her victim to slumber. She it is who has in the Indian Civil Service shooting tigers or enjoying hair- I breadth escapes in the days of the Mutiny. At Haileybury, some ten years before the Mutiny, John Bolt was a gay and careless student, fonder of gun and dogs than of mathematics and Oriental languages. His reformation is effected by a young lady and a small terrier. On one of his sporting excursions lie saves the terrier from certain destruction from the jaws of his bullterriers, and becomes engaged to the grateful and beautiful Gertrude Clavering, ” who took young Bolt by storm at once,” and was herself taken by his gallant demeanour. Henceforth he took to his books, with a wet handkerchief about his head, drank much strong tea and coffee, ” passed by the skin of his teeth,” went to India, and there slew wild beasts in the jungle. There also he met the man who was to rob him of his Gertrude, a certain Captain Douglas, who is described as “an Adonis” of the irresistible kind. On a visit to India Douglas meets and fascinates the fair Gertrude. It was a case of Cajsar’s Thrasonical brag over again. He came, he saw, he conquered. Quite useless was the awful warning of a certain maiden aunt, who told Gertrude the lamentable story of her experience of the faithless father of the Douglas. If, as this excellent lady said, the father of Captain Douglas was a false, mercenary man, the son was certainly as bold and bad as he. But the aunt had not reckoned with the resourceful Adonis. Under an assumed name he cunningly took passage in the very steamer that was to convey the distracted Gertrude, with her chaperon, to the lovesick Bolt. Once on board, all was plainest sailing to the hardy Douglas. He managed to drug the unwary chaperon, out of sheer exuberance of villanv, it would seem; then he made love to Gertrude, and took her to Colombo, where they were married. Nothing was left to the despairing Bolt but to take up hard work and slay more wild beasts, until some ten years later, after performing prodigies of valour in the year of Mutiny, he met the dying and penitent Gertrude, who left her only daughter in his charge. Douglas, the wicked and wily Adonis, had been shot by his own Sepoys, and his wife had fled to die in the wretched hut where Bolt found her. And here the story begins anew, exactly where it should end. Undeterred by the past, and with no maiden aunt at hand with wholesome counsel, in the fulness of time Bolt marries the second Gertrude. History repeats itself. Gertrude’s reckless, yet innocent, flirtation with a gay and handsome lord leads at length to a scene like that between Lord Steyne and Rawdon Crawley. The scene leads to a separation; the separation ends in reconciliation, and John Bolt dies an edifying, though by no means premature, death.
doomed the unhappy Audrey from infancy to rebellious nineteen
to be mewed in a lonely Cumberland house, with no society but a crusty, indolent, old guardian widower, full of imaginary ailments, and a scolding old servant, who bullies the poor girl with benevolent intent the long day through. Kept rustically at home, Audrey yearns for freedom. At the opening of the story she is a pretty, wayward, ignorant Broughtonian miss, who scales walls to escape the vigilant housekeeper, strolls away over the fells, and overtakes the young village doctor, who is mightily smitten of her beauty. Had he been a man of action, he could have won the fair creature; but he delayed matters, in his leisurely, country way, till his chance was taken from him by the arrival of Audrey’s second guardian, a shrewd, good-lookin lawyer, with the saintly name of Lawrence. It is a little odd, by the way, that this much-tyrannized young lady should have two guardians appointed to her while both her parents were yet alive. That she was too much governed was all through the Deceased Wife’s Sister. In the moonlight she and Lawrence discuss ways and means, and, so affected is she by his kindness, he is terribly afraid she is about to cry. “He had never seen a girl cry,” this experienced young lawyer, and his spirit was shaken at the prospect. But she does not cry, and is only determined to run away to London. And, when the old termagant of a servant begins to chatter about the impropriety of visiting the young country doctor, she takes train to London, is met by Lawrence, and consigned by him to the care of “the nicest woman of his acquaintance,” who lives at Campden Hill, where so many nice ” live. At Miss Harrington’s she enjoys her new life—“such lots of people, as the books say”—and from that £ angel she hears the story of her father and the Deceased Wife’s Sister, her mother. They married in Australia, and in course of time he became heir to a rich uncle in England, who urged him to separate from his wife that he should inherit the property. “And my father agreed: ” exclaimed Audrey, with a flash of scorn leaping into her eyes. “Yes, it came to that at last,” said Miss Harrington. “My father! He broke my mother’s heart, then,” the indignant girl remarked, which is, of course, what would have happened if the novelist were not under the spell of the Deceased Wife’s Sister, whereas the lady found consolation in marrying another man, who took her out to India. How she managed this, being a married woman already in Australia, we are not told, though we are not surprised to find, when the affectionate Audrey discovers her, that she is a contemptible creature, still ready to sacrifice her daughter, and fearful of being found in her company. Fortunately for the spirited Audrey, who at once spurns the assistance of guardians and all concerned in the unworthy compact, the arrival of a wealthy Australian admirer of her mother restores her to enviable independence. In her new position as the heiress of this person there is one drawback that threatens her happiness, and skilfully is the suspense of it prolonged by the author. The scrupulous Lawrence, now that she is nobody’s ward and somebody’s heiress, neglects her so far that he very nearly plays into the hand of the pertinacious country doctor, for whom she cares nothing. In the end it all comes right, though it is by a mere chance. Indeed, a luckier lawyer than this Lawrence we have never met in fiction. John Bolt is one of those stories that are still beginning, never ending. After one volume and a half have been devoted to the adventures of the hero, we start afresh with “Here our story again commences. It is a fine summer morning, &c.” At this point John Bolt should be a battered septuagenarian, such is the impression the history of his exploits leaves with us; but, in fact, he is ten times more vigorous than when he was employed
fynm 