Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/179

MR. GRANVILLE BARKER AND AN ALIBI 153 frank and fatal conflict with the situation which his inhumanity and his faith have both produced, is a piece of technical construction beyond praise. Amy O'Connell's child would have lived if she had thought Trebell cared for her; but she was insignificant to hira beside his work : his fight for the future of the children of men, that is to say, actually destroyed his own offspring. But despite this diabolically deft dove- tailing much of the structure still remains abstract and cold. Mr. Barker's conscience couldn't rest until, in the name of honest craftsmanship, it had equipped Trebell with a credible Parliamentary Bill ; and I think that Bill proved too heavy. No audience could meet it. The dialogue in the opening Act, with a group of charming ladies growing coquettish about by-elections, and bridling over Nonconformity, has a quality of algebraic unreality far more bloodless and irritating than the intrigues in Ann Leete. It seems certain that the planks of a political platform make poor building material for a play. So that when we come to the end of this first book, when the curtain falls upon Waste, and we prepare to step across to The Madras Houses the question of whether Mr. Barker did right to follow Ann still remains largely unsolved. It was brave of our puzzled pierrot to resolve to face the facts of life, to be an honest realist and no mere elegant ; but so far the facts he has tackled have been terrible tough ones — Fabian facts, in short — economics and politics — desperate material for any save a born doctrinaire. Would the experience discomfit him ? Would he fall back on artifice, on eighteenth-century gardens and rapiers? Or would he press gamely forward in search of a subject at once romantic and real — as