Mr. Crawford's to Leeward

IF any one asks, with a slow shake of the head, how Mr. Crawford can turn out long stories in such rapid succession, the simplest answer is the most conclusive : he has stories to tell. Any one with a head for figures can reckon how many working hours would be required for the mechanical labor of writing To Leeward,¹ his latest novel in book form ; and the calculation would probably show how much time Mr. Crawford gave to one novel. We know nothing whatever of Mr. Crawford’s habits of work; we judge simply from the book itself that it was written currente calamo, and it is this free, swift movement which gives a special charm to Mr. Crawford’s writing. When one really has a story to tell, and has the story-teller’s power of marching straight to the conclusion, his capacity to produce novels must practically be limited only by plain, mechanical conditions.

To Leeward is a story of the lives chiefly of four people of marked individuality, who act upon each other directly, under conditions which lead to a tragical conclusion. The lives of the characters are sketched with boldness ; their actions spring from motives clearly apparent, and the issue is logical. There is no exceeding subtlety of thought in the book; the passions are the elemental ones of love, hate, jealousy, and the moral lies deep in the very picture of life which is presented. Leonora Carnethy, daughter of an English father and Russian mother, tossed from the conventional morality of the father to the unreasoning superstition of the mother, lapses into a vague state of nihilistic irresponsibility, and while wearied with the perpetual conflict of ideas accepts as a possible refuge the love of an Italian marchese, Marcantonio Carantoni. Marcantonio loves her calmly and faithfully, but in making her his wife has been compelled to go counter to the wishes of his sister, Madame de Charleroi. The honeymoon passes, leaving Leonora dissatisfied with herself rather than with her husband, who is unexceptionable ; and now comes forward upon the stage Julius Batiscombe, an English journalist and author, whose shadow fell upon the first pages of the history, since he was in the doorway looking on when Marcantonio offered himself to Leonora.

The character of Batiscombe is well conceived. He is a man who cannot help falling in love with women ; who sees perfectly well beforehand to what issue his infatuation tends, and takes measures to protect himself by laying his reputation before him and looking at it sharply, then running away from the temptation, and, when overtaken by the tempter in an apparently accidental fashion, accepting as inevitable the fate which he has not avoided. Such a man, overpowered by his passion, and finding all circumstances, even to the unsuspecting hospitality of the husband, favorable to his designs, goes with the current, though he knows it will bring him on the rocks. Leonora, fascinated by him, drifts with him; and one sees them both, at first slowly, then more rapidly, yielding to the tide of their passions.

Diana, Madame de Charleroi, is one of the women whom Batiscombe had once vainly loved, and, discovering what the blind husband has not seen, she at first warns Batiscombe, and then her brother. Marcantonio does not now suspect his wife, for Diana has carefully shielded her; but the revelations of a spying servant open his eyes, and he is at once on the alert, casting an apparently impassable net about his wife. She discovers an opening in the mesh, makes her escape, joins Batiscombe, and flees with him. Thereupon the husband, mad with rage, becomes actually insane, and is watched over by his sister ; but he, too, eluding the guard, goes straight, with a maniac’s cunning, to the place where the lovers are passing their days, comes upon them, shoots at the man, and kills his wife, who throws herself in the way. The man escapes death. “He has the mark of a bullet in his throat, Marcantonio’s second shot, that was so nearly fatal to him. He stood aside from the world for a while, and lived a year or two among the monks of Subiaco ; he manifested some devotion for her sake who had died for him. And now he is writing novels, again, and smoking cigarettes between the phrases, to help his ideas and to stimulate his imagination.”

Such is a bare outline of a story which owes its power to the author’s clear perception of what results when two lives drift. There is scarcely a passage in the history where one does not feel that either man or woman could have arrested the fatal movement. It was the absence of will to check an evil course, the gathering volume of passion, which finally swept them away; and it is in the expectation of some deus ex machina that the reader hurries breathlessly forward, until he discovers how relentless is human passion and self-will. Mr. Crawford trusts mainly to the actions of his characters. Yet once, in a striking passage, he lifts the veil from the inner consciousness of the woman. She has thrown herself into this new relation vehemently ; she has drunk of the cup of pleasure with a full draught, and now finds the lees at the bottom.

“ And so it came to pass that after a little time the old tax-gatherer, Remorse, began to put Leonora in distress for his dues; and she was forced to pay them, or have no peace. He came in the gray of the morning, when she was not yet prepared, and he sat by her head, and oppressed it with heaviness and the leaden cowl of sorrow ; and each day she counted the minutes until he was gone, and each day they were more.”

It cannot be said that the author has succeeded in making Batiscombe as fascinating to the reader as he would have us believe him to have been to Leonora. Yet this may be due to Mr. Crawford’s intention of dealing with facts rather than with impressions. To have dwelt upon the nature of Batiscombe’s influence over Leonora might easily have led him into the perils of an emotional novel. Instead of that, he has told the tale of human sin and misery as one might record a history. The book is as outspoken as the ten commandments, and it is to the lasting praise of this artist that he has treated the whole theme in so direct and objective a manner. Here is no innuendo, or mincing hesitation, or heating concealment. The reader sees nothing which the whole world might not have seen ; he is invited to no secret interview with illicit love; and when he has laid the book aside, there remains in his mind the memory of a great wrong, a swift punishment; he bestows his pity and scorn in the right quarters, and he perceives that the author is one with him in the judgment which he passes.