YOU HAVE MURDERED A LIFE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2610, 18 September 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

YOU HAVE MURDERED A LIFE.

MRS HUMPHREY WARD’S NEW NOVEL DEALS WITH THE PROBLEM OF EASY IN THE STATES.

Mrs Humphrey Ward’s new story, “Daphne; or, Marriage a la Mode," is a powerful indictment of free-and-easy divorce in the United States, and as worked out by her in terms of Daphne and Roger Barnes is grim with tragedy. When the marriage has been broken (by the wife, and only occording to American law), and when both man and wife have failed to keep their equanimity, and when reunion seems to be the only balm for broken hearts and lives, Mrs Ward sounds the irrevocable bell of “too late, too late, ye. cannot enter now.” DAPHNE FLOYD.

And yet the book begins so fairly and serenely. When Roger Barnes first saw Daphne Floyd he and she were at Mount Vernon, that beaut/ful spot where Washington died. (“There flashed into his mind a vison of the December evening on which Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds breathing round the house and over the snowbound landscape outside, and the dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisiblv. the generations of the future.”) Daphne Floyd, on this occasion, “was dressed witn great simplicity. A white muslin drees, a la Romney, with a ’•’‘rose at the waist, and a black-and-white Romney hat deeply shading the face beneath—nothing could h:\vc been plainer; yet it was a simplicity not to be had for the asking, a calculated, a Parisian simplicity. STEEPED IN PERSONALITY.

“Her talk was young and vivacious, nothing more. But all she said came steeped in personality, a personality so energetic, so charged with movement, and with action, that it arrested the spectators—not always agreeably.' She “was the orphan daughter of an enormously rich and now deceased lumber-king of the State of Illinois. He had finally left his daughter and only child in possession o£ a good fortune generallv estimated at more than a million sterling. The money was now entirely in the girl’s power. ROGER BARNES.

Roger, on the other hand, was the poor Englishman, whose chief endowment was his good looks. When Miss Floyd observed him for the first time she saw that he was indeed handsome —“a magnificent figure of a man, in height- and breadth and general proportions; and, in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. ... In the freedom of outdoor dress and move- , ruent he seemed to her a physical king of men; and at the same time, his easy manner showed him conscious of his advantages.” ' Then the usual thing happened. “They gravitated to each other, and whatever chance combination might he formed during the walk, it always ended for a time in the flight ahead of the two figures, the girl in the rosecolored sash and the tall, handsome youth.” MRS. VERRIER’S TRAGEDY.

‘ ‘The presence of a Mrs Verrior, an American girl-widow, soon brought up the question of divorce for. discussion, for Mrs. Verrier had married a Jew, and, because she ceased to be received in society with open arms os before, divorced him ; and then he ended his life in the whirlpool of Niagara. And one of the most dramatic parts of the book is the subsequent death of his widow in the hotel within sound of the Falls, to which she had betaken herself possessed by the idea- that, fiei dead husband was calling to her. Ine obsession so worked upon her nerves that it and remorse for her action killed her. THE DIVORCE QUESTION.

“You’ll find, Mr. Barnes, that Amercan girls ” said Daphne. Well, we*know all about old ideas, and wo know also too well that there’s only one life and -wo don’t mean to have that one’ spoilt. The old notions of marriage—your English notions-, cried the girl, facing him—“make it tyranny! Why should people stay together when they see it’s a mistake? We sav everybody shall have their chance. And not one chance only, but more than one. People find out in marriage what they ■. couldn’t find out before, and so—— | Roger’s uncle put his view of the matter in another way—“lt’s astounding the tales one hears in the smokingroom after dinner. In Wyoming apparently six months’ residence, and there you are. You prove a little cruelty, the husband makes everything perfectly easy, you say a civil good-bye and the thing’s done. Well they 11 pay for it. Nobody ever yet trilled with the marriage law with impunity. “THESE ENGLISH BACKWATERS.” So Daphne and Roger married and settled in an English home, and Betty was born. But the devil of misunderstanding came between them. Daphne’s Southern blood rebelled against events. “Three months (had been ■enough to show her. . . the hopeless barrenness and Philistinism of these English backwaters. What did these ■small squires and country clergy know rof the real world, and the wor.d that mattered to her, where people had free -minds and progressive ideas ? . . Ihe ’nearer she came to the English Me, the more certain forces in her. deeply infused, rose up and made their protest. The Celtic and Latin strains Oiat were mingled in their natural sympathies and repulsions, which had been Indistinct in the girl, overlaid by the deposits of the current American world, were becoming dominant in the woman.” They gained the mastery aided by jealousy. Jealousy led her bribery, and sh,e secured an American divorce which still left her Roger’s legal wife in the United, Kingdom and prevented him from re-marrying. Little fifty, whom Roger had worshipped, died,' and the man went down. “ YOU HAVE MURDERED A LIFE.” Then she was told—“ You have murdered a life,” and the saying could not bo unsaid, and so she came back to England, and when she saw Roger, she found that he was drinking, an been unfaithful, and was the victim of phthisis. “All the noble line and proportion was still there, but f° r 0 who had known him of old the effect was no longer beautiful, but ghastly. Daphne stared at him hi dismay.

: “She looked at him. In nature the great deeps were breaking lip. She saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And at last, what she had done was plain to her.” “With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed her' hand in his. ‘Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you,’ she panted. ‘I didn’t understand. Let me be your friend. Let me help!”

TOO LATE. But lie would not listen. /‘You see, when a, man knows lie’s going to die —well”—he turned away—“lie gets uncommonly curious as to what’s going to come .next. . . Marriage is a big thing. If it doesn’t make us, it ruins us. . . . I loved you. . . Now it’s all rooted up and done with. Women like to think such things can be mended, but they can >t—they can’t, indeed.” “Daphne sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. He drew a long and painful breath. ‘l’m afraid I must go,’ he said, waveringly. ‘I — I can’t stand this any longer. __ Goodbye, Daphne, good-bye.” “‘I shan’t come back till you have gone.’ _ • - “She heard him cross the room, his steps on the verandah.” AMERICAN CRITICISM OF THE STORY. The New York “Independent” has a very savage review of this book, which, it says, “is the least flattering, most insulting estimate of American womanhood that has yet been offered to the public.” The New York “Outlook, ’ however, says that “Mrs. Ward has done three things: .she has chosen as her motive the working out of free-and-easy divorce, and has shown, as only a novelist could show, its frightful demoralisation of ethical standards, its vulgarisation of domestic relations, and the moral tragedy inherent in its operation on a large scale in society.”