The Sisters-in-Law
by . New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. 1921. 12mo, pp. 341. Cloth, $2.00; Paper $1.50.
MRS, ATHERTON is again on her native heath of California in The Sisters-in-Law. Moreover, it is California raised to its highest power, with the earthquake and the subsequent fire and the world-war in the foreground, and a background of truly Californian class-distinctions, with their rivalries and envyings, and a special type of Socialism, promising a general leveling down of social grades, and a glorious avenging of social slights and condescensions by means of taxes and confiscations.
The book opens with the earthquake. It is a tribute to the tacit agreement into which all Californians have entered, that one page is given to a description of the earthquake, — which everyone not of California eagerly desires to have described at length, — and some sixty pages to the fire, though fires have been worn threadbare by novelists in want of sensation. No true citizen of San Francisco wastes words on his earthquake. Anybody may be the victim of a fire; but there appears to be a sort of personal responsibility for an earthquake, which no one cares to assume.
The love story involves four persons: Mortimer Dwight and his sister Gora — of good family in New York but of no social importance in San Francisco; Alexina Groome, aristocrat of the aristocrats in San Francisco; and a young Englishman, Gathbroke, with whom both Gora and Alexina are eventually in love. On her way to her grand passion, Alex is misled by a brief infatuation for Mortimer Dwight, who has good looks and a light foot in the dance. Alex marries him before she discovers that her heart has been given to the Englishman. Naturally, things go wrong with the marriage. Her husband proves a failure in business, and incidentally steals his wife’s and sister’s money in a vain attempt to save his tottering credit. His guilt is discovered by the victims, but by no one else, so he escapes punishment. Meanwhile, Alexina’s passion for Gathbroke grows apace, fed only on fancy and some meagre memories.
The war carries both women to France as nurses. Gora is always a. little vague beside the impulsive, achieving Alexina. It is not surprising to the reader that, though Gora nursed the wounded hero, it is to Alexina that he turns on his recovery. The Armistice finds Gathbroke taking possession of the heart that has long been his. It is a curious comment on twentieth-century romance, that it apparently suffers no soil from the chance that it cannot come to fruitage until the heroine has secured a divorce from her dull husband. The author does not even trouble to tell us what is to be the ground of the divorce. However, we must suppose that the late-united lovers will live happy ever after.
The novel has many pages of brilliant and entertaining writing, and some keen analysis of human weakness and folly. Perhaps this very surface brilliancy accounts for the lack of vitality in the characters. We have no tears for their sorrows, and their joys leave us a little cold. By the same token, one is not deeply moved because the two rival ladies are connected with each other by the bloodless tie uniting sisters-in-law.
H. E. H.