SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1746, 10 May 1913, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

MRS. HUMPHREY WARD'S LATEST. Mrs. Humphrey Ward's new story, "The Mating of Lydia" (Macmillan and.Co.) exhibits this popular novelist's talents in a very striking: and pleasant way. As with most of Sirs. Ward's books, there" is an underlying ethical interest, provided, in this ease, by the refusal of an immensely wealthy, but incredibly selfish, and almost inhumauly heartless landowner, to repair his tenants' cottages, to give decent drainage to the villages, and s» forth. A more unpleasant personage than this gentleman, Mr. Edmund Melrose, could not well be found in recent fiction. Ho is a devoted collector of works of art and beautiful and costly curios, and Mrs. Ward, whose husband has written much on art, has evidently made a special study of the "collector" type, and some of her chapters aro apt to suggest some world-famous sale and those who attend it, cither as dealers or buyers, Melrose in early life marries an Italian wife, and treats her so vilely that the poor woman escapes to lior nativo Florence with her child, only to reappear, towards the close of the story, in the character of an avenging mangel. Meanwhile, Melrose makes the acquaintance of a young gentleman named l'averslmm, who is in lovo with the heroine, Lydia Pcnfold, his rival being a wealthy and good-natured young peer, Melrose's neighbour. l'aversham meets with an accident, and is taken to the Melrose mansion, during the absence of its owner. On his return "The Ogre" is wrathful, and insults the local doctor, but when he learns that his uninvited guest is the owner of a set of superb and unique engraved gems, long sought after by the collector, the latter at ones changes his tactics, gives the intruder the best rooms iu the house, and finally appoints him his land agent and manager generally of his affairs By this time Lydia has told the peer she cannot marry him, and is now formally engaged to l'aversham. The latter, however, is compelled by Melrose to refuse all assistance to the tenants of the rich man's cottages. Favqrsham's very soul revolts at tho ! dirty! work ho has to do, but Melrose makes him his heir, and the young man quietens his conscience with the thought ttut once the selfish and half-insane old man is dead lie will make full amends to the,victims of his tyranny. His position, however, is misunderstood by Lyaia, and there is an open, breach. In the end, Melrose is murde-ed by a r man whom he has wrongfully dispossessed of his holding, and laversliam inherits the property, but makes a deed of gift of the whole as a museum of art for tho North of England. Lydia _ accents him, the jolly young peer consoling himself with Melrose's longexiled daughter. Mrs. Ward's cleverest work is in 'her analysis of I'aversham's dual character. She clears him of the charge of personal greed by a very ingenious device, for the details of which I refer my readers to her book. Lydia, who takes so long to know lier own mind, and in whose platonic affection for tho rather shabbily -used young peer I find it difficult to believe, is a very pleasant heroine, and tliere are many excellent minor characters. The background is Cumberland, the same country as was desoribed in Mrs. Ward's earlier story, "Helbeck of Bannisdale," and the local colour and characters are both (excellent.

TWO "NEW" AMERICANS. Arthur Train's "C.Q.—ln the Wireless House" (N.Y, The Century Company; per Geo. Kobertson and Co.) is not only a highly exciting story, as a story, but it conveys in a very ngreeablo way, some very curious and interesting information upon the details of wireless working on the big Atlantic ferry steamers. The wireless operator on the Pavonia is tho hero, and a most engaging hero he is, young, handsome, and the nephew of a peer! Amongst the I'avonia's passengers are a young Englishman of good family, who has committed manslaughter, an embezzling bank clerk (interestingly consumptive), his pretty and devoted sister, and a fashionable Now York lady—a ladv with a past—who hopes to get a ,£IO,OOO pearl necklace past the vigilant eyes of Uncle Sam's Customhouse officers. Micky Fitzpatrick, tho wireless man, find himself entangled into the fortunes of tho three people who are waiting so anxiously to see Bartholdi's statue of "Liberty" como into sight, to say nothing of hoping to get ashore undisturbed by detectives and Customs men, but ho wins out in the end, plays tho "friend to need" to some purpose, and on his own account, ends up as a real live British peer and the husband of a very charming yomig lady whose parents have hitherto regarded him as the most dangerous of detrimentals. A. lively, amusing, and in places, highly sensational story. The illustrations, by E. M. Crosby, are excellent. Those who read Caroline Lockhart's highly sensational story, "Me-Smith," will give a hearty welcome to tho same author's new story, "The Lady Doc" (Lippincott and Co.; per George Robertson and Co.). Again the scene is the wild and woolly West, and again there is' a strongly dramatic interest in the plot, which centi-es round the attempt of a completely abominable woman, Dr. Harpo —a lady doctor as villain of the piece, is rather a novelty—to ruin the happiness of a simplc-henrtcd, jolly little country girl. The "Lady Doc" is certainly ail ugly specimen of feminine reality, and the inhabitants of the little town of Crowheart must have been much more guileless than Western Americans are generally supposed to be not to havo found her out to be what she is—a vulgar and unprincipled charlatan—long before they did. Miss Lockhart is inclined to be a little stagey and melodramatic, but she lias a distinct gift of humour, and her descriptions of the social amenities of Crowheart are vastly amusing. One of the best characters in the. book is the pushful and unscrupulous speculator, Andy P. Symes, who "runs" Crowheart, and has always .some cunning development scheme on hand wherewith to beguile Kastcrn capitalists to shower their dollars upon the town. Illustrations in colour and monochrome by Gaylo llosldns. BY THE AUTHOR OF "RAFFLES." After writing that really admirable story of public school life, "Fathers of Men"—a story, in its way, almost as good ns "Tom Brown's Schooldays"—Mr. K. W. Hornung, in his "Witching llill" (Ilodder and Stoughton; per S. and \V. Mackay), returns to the field of his early successes as the creator of that clever and humorously impudent "cracksman," Rallies. "Witching Hill" is a collection of stories strung together, as were tho Unifies yarns, by a connective link provided by a convenient narrator. In this case, instead of our old friend Bunny, we have a'young estate agent who manages a property, cut up into "band-nine building sites/' irom the .Witcliins Hill es-

tate, formerly tho property of a wicked old aristocrat. Something uncanny and unpleasant is continually happening to the tenants, and by a clever employment of the supsrnatural each ■ calamity or crime is traceable to tho malign influence of tha wicked old Lord Mulcaster. An original idea is worked out with distinct cleverness by Mr. Hornung, tho "strange happenings" only ceasing when a young fellow called Delavoye, a friend of tho agent's, and a descendant of the Mulcasters, succeeds in "laying tho ghost," as the old storytellers used to put it. How this is achiovod, and how the tenants of the snug Queen Anne villas on tho Witching Hill estate ■ finally throw off the Muleaster curse my readers must find out 'for themselves in the pages of Mr. Hornung's entertaining book. NO OTHER WAY. The heroine of Mr. Louis Tracy's latest novel, "No Other Way" (Ward, Lock, and Co.; per S. and W. Mackay), is an amiablo young lady, who divorces her husband, Sir Claude Waverton. . Sir Claude is reported as having been killed on tho Riviera in a motoring accfdei/t, but 'to the astonishment of his widow comes, apparently, at least, to life again in the person of a highly-reformed, indeed, quite spotlessly proper, Sir Claude. Tho "widow's" heart softens as sho hears of Sir Claude's reform, for her husband had been a worthless roue and drunkard, but although she seeks an interview, with a view to reconciliation and remarriage, the gentleman persists in evading a meeting. Tho mystery is deepened by the supposed fact that Sir Claude had actually been murdered, and that tho husband of tho adventuress who had been his mistress had apparently been poisoned. Two detectives—the inevitable detectives!—now begin to play a prominent part in the story, which closes with the discovery that Sir Claudo was really dead, and that his "double" was a cousin who had effacd himself for some years in the West Indies in order to save his namesake's reputation. Needless to say, Sir Claudo Number Two had always loved his cousin's wife, and the final "chapter finds them happily married. A good sample of the sensational "detective" yarn still so popular with a large class of readers. i "THE CELEBRITY'S DAUGHTER." There is no denying Miss Violet Hunt's novels the merit of cleverness. She lias a docided gift foi characterisation, and displays great ingenuity in devising striking situations..' Her dialogue, too, is "smart," to the verge of being almost too sparkling, and in describing the wealthy, idle, and pleasure-loving section of society, she is always at ease. But 1 do wish sho would choose some wholesome and ordinarily decent people to write about. In her latest novel, "The Celebrity's Daughter" (Stanley Paul and Co.) there is hardly a character in the book who is not either a fool, or a rogue, or a combination of both. Selfishness governs most of the men and women—tho heroine included—in the story,' and some of the characters aro much worse than merely selfish. The heroine's father, an artist, has been divorced by his wife and lives with another woman, receiving, nevertheless, an allowance from his wife! As for the licroina sho is quite willing to sell herself for a title and wealth, and, indeed, finally does so, after having just escaped social ruin as tho result of an elopement—which doesn't como off—with another man.' We are in "smart" society all the time, and Miss Hunt describes in great detail, and, I must admit. in a delightfully satiric vein, the daily occupations, meals, and amusements of such society.- Tho dialogue is very clever, and the story, as a' whole, told with great spirit. But somehow it leaves a very nasty taste in tho mouth. THE COURT OF THE GENTILES. "The Court of the Gentiles," by Mrs. Ptn/iloy Wrench '(Mills and Boon, per Whitcombe and Tombs), is a decidedly clever novel, in which the principal characters are writing people, but. not, as are so many of the paper-staining heroes and heroines in novels, given to posing and priggishness when not going to the other extreme and defying Society's laws in.. theatrical attempts at "Bohemianism." The later scenes of the story are laid in Morocco and Algeria, two of the principal characters travelling together to the Biskra, made famous in "The Garden of Allah." There is more than a suspicion of Hichens in the desert scenes, and Arab love, jealousy, and criminal instincts, nlay no small part in the love story of Rachel Challdner and Stephen Mandalay. The dialogue is frosh and brisk, and the whole story brightly told and most entertaining. But Mrs. Wrench should not writo "Balsac" for Balzac, a mis-spelling by the way, which is becoming lamentably frequent in English novels. There is an immensity of difference between' the "s" and the "z" in French, and Balzac himself was wont to fly into a rage whenever he noticed tho difference ignored in the case of his own name.