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There are qualities in _The Bird of Life_, by GERTRUDE VAUGHAN (CHAPMAN AND
HALL), which cause me to look forward to this lady's future work with very
considerable interest. In the present novel she sets out the life story of
_Rachel_ up to a point boldly given as being beyond the conclusion of the
War, in which, by the way, both her husband and the man whom she ought to
have married are killed on the same day. The first eighty-four pages of the
book raised my hopes very high. They describe with great simplicity and
sympathy the thoughts and feelings, the romances and difficulties, of an
affectionate and lonely little girl living with her _Uncle Matthew_ and her
_Aunt Elizabeth_, and loving them both with a childlike fervour. There is
no exaggeration; the writing goes true to its mark, and the effect designed
by the writer is admirably well made. Then _Uncle Matthew_ dies and
_Rachel_ finds a new home in the Vicarage of _Mr. Venning_, a family man if
ever there was one, for he has fifteen children. From this point the
interest is slightly diluted, and the excellence of the book diminishes.
One does not recognise in the more mature _Rachel_ the girl one had
expected to find after one's initiation into the secrets of her baby mind.
She marries _Edward Venning_, and finds too late that he is, like his
father, made up of convention and narrowness. She plans a disappearance,
and leaves some of her belongings on the edge of a bottomless tarn. Then,
being hypothetically dead, she begins to live her life in her own way.
Later on she returns to _Edward_, "on approval for six months"; but this
period was apparently not sufficient to break the chain that bound her to
Another, and, the War intervening, she is left almost doubly widowed. I
feel that I have not quite done justice to Miss VAUGHAN'S book, but, on the
other hand, I am sure that she has not quite done justice to her
unquestionable talent.