t; but at a given point she learns that a gentleman whom she has
known all her life as "Cousin Ralph" is in reality her father. She has a
middle-aged suitor, Colonel Ford, whom she is very willing to marry; but
at the end of the second act she refuses him, because she shrinks from
the idea, on the one hand, of concealing the truth from him, on the
other hand, of revealing her mother's trespass. This is not, in itself,
a very strong situation, for we feel the barrier between the lovers to
be unreal. Colonel Ford is a man of sense. The secret of Agatha's
parentage can make no real difference to him. Nothing material--no point
of law or of honour--depends on it. He will learn the truth, and all
will come right between them. The only point on which our interest can
centre is the question how he is to learn the truth; and here the
authors go very far astray. There are two, and only two, really dramatic
ways in which Colonel Ford can be enlightened. Lady Fancourt must
realize that Agatha is wrecking her life to keep her mother's secret,
and must either herself reveal it to Colonel Ford, or must encourage and
enjoin Agatha to do so. Now, the authors choose neither of these ways:
the secret slips out, through a chance misunderstanding in a
conversation between Sir Richard Fancourt and the Colonel. This is a
typical instance of an error of construction; and why?--because it
leaves to chance what should be an act of will. Drama means a thing
done, not merely a thing that happens; and the playwright who lets
accident effect what might naturally and probably be a result of
volition, or, in other words, of character, sins against the fundamental
law of his craft. In the case before us, Lady Fancourt and Agatha--the
two characters on whom our interest is centred--are deprived of all
share in one of the crucial moments of the action. Whether the actual
disclosure was made by the mother or by the daughter, there ought to
have been a great scene between the two, in which the mother should have
insisted that, by one or other, the truth must be told. It would have
been a painful, a delicate, a difficult scene, but it was the obligatory
scene of the play; and had we been allowed clearly to foresee it at the
end of the second act, our interest would have been decisively carried
forward. The scene, too, might have given the play a moral relevance
which in fact it lacks. The readjustment of Agatha's scheme of things,
so as to make room for her