SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1758, 24 May 1913, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

"THE STORY OF STEPHEN COMPTON." "I always feel safe in buying a Heinomann novel," said an inveterate novel reader to me the other day when I found him looking through somfi new fiction in a Lambton Quay shop. "Heinemann," lie added, "rarely publishes anything dull or trivial." I have just finished, and enjoyed, two recent additions to the Heinemann series—"The Story of Stephen Compton," by J. E. Patterson; and "A Runaway Ring," by Mrs. llenry Dudenoy (per George Robertson and Co.). Mr. Patterson, who has given us several excellent novels dealing with the sea and seafaring men, now strikes out into what is for him an entirely new line. The hero of his story starts life as a slum child in a busy Lan-cashire-town, where he achieves a certain local celebrity as a Socialist and Labour advocato. An ingenious invention brings him money, and he studies law and goes to London, eventually Incoming a barrister, and going on from one success to another in the political world until he becomes Prime Minister of England. Two women play important parts in his lifo; one, the companion of his youth, who does not share his Socialistic sympathies, and whose love for a time he loses; the other, a lady of good birth and education, whom he marries, and whose ambition it is to turn her Radical husband into a Conservative. Tho ambition is not realised, and it is to the faithful Martha that lie turns for true love and comfort 'when his wife dies. A worthless, dissipated younger brother is a constant thorn in tho politician's side, and is an exceptionally welldrawn, if unpleasant, character. The political interest in the novel is strongly developed as the story proceeds, but the best feature in the book is the realism with which the author depicts the everyday life and environment of''his leading characters. This is an exceedingly clever and forceful story, by far the best Mr. Patterson has yet written.

. "A RUNAWAY RING." Thoso who remember Mrs. Henry Dudeney's powerful story, "The Maternity of Harriett Wicken," will testify to tins author's ability in drawing women of outstanding force of character. In "A Runaway Ring" Mrs. Dudeney again describes a woman in revolt against the banalities, the soul-deadening conventions of middleclass English life. A more detestable collection of prigs than the Baigent family, into .which the heroine marries, I have raredy come across in fiction. In real life,, if originals ever existed, they must have baett simply unbearable. This is a story of contrasts, for tho girl, who marries Ninian Baigent, has been brought up in ail 'atmosphere of unconvenlionality. She is, although ignorant until after her marriage of the fact, the illegitimate daughter of a lady who passes as her .nmt, a' lady of Bohemian views and habits, and, alas, a secret drunkatd. To place such a revolutionary as Aunt Frusannali even temporarily in contact with tho Baigents, whose deity is Respectability, was_ a daring thing for the author to do, but it is the. poor daughter who suffers most, not the bibulous aunt. In a housesimply reeking with meanness, cant, suspicion, and jealousy, tho young wife is subjected to a purgatory against which she finally revolts, with what result my readers must, and I hone will, discover for themselves in Mrs. Dudene.v's pages. As a social satire, this storv is one of o.uito outstanding merit. Al'ke in. her pictures of tho life led by the Flontos in their Sussex village, or that of tho Baigents in their' smug suburban home, the author .is forcible and convincing, bn.t it is difficult to believe that Mamma Bailment's constant quotations from "The Wedlock Treasure," with their transparent inanity and mawkish sentimeht, could ever have been submitted to in silence and patience by even such hopeless priirs as were her children. Mrs. Dudeney's storv may, and probnb l * *vtf] be bv some, dubbed too cynical in rone, but it is an astonishingly clever nnd daring bqok—one completely out of the common. THROUGH THE CLOUDY PORCH. A quotation from Tennyson's "Love and Duty," "The cloudy porch oft opening in the sun," heads the first chapter of If. M. Edge's (Mrs. Caulfield's) latest novel, "Through the Cloudy Porch" (John Murray; per Whitcombe and Tombs), an exceptionally well-written story, the heroine of which, Naomi Hestling, sacrifices her comfort and happiness for some years in order to save her brother from ruin. Indeed, her sojourn in the "cloudy porch" is one long mental purgatory. Exactly how it comes about that Naomi passes herself off as her brother's wife, how the deception is discovered, who discovers it, an'd how it is ended with a promise of a glorious summer alid'autumn of life once the "cloudy porch" is safely passed, 1 must not say. Mrs. Caulfield has imagined a most ingenious and effective plot, and it would bo unfair to reveal its development. The background of the story is South Africa, the period that which preceded the introduction of Chinese labour on The Rand. A leading character is a mining engineer and manager of advanced democratic opinions, whose struggle against the great magnates of "Toburg" is described at. some length, and with considerable dramatic force. Naomi is a sweet-nalurcd, completely lovable herniuey and the minor characters are well drawn, although an over-amorous general is surely a caricature. The local colour is picturesque and convincing. Altogether (his is a novel much above the average, and one not to be overlooked. I prefer it even to the same author's "Tho Shuttles of the Loom," an Anglo-Indian storv which was very well reviewed when it was published now a year or two a?o. The South African engineer, Fenworth. who loves and wins Naomi, is well worthy of the pen which drew John Grange, the Indian Civil Servant.

A STORY OF THE STAGE, Novels dealing with theatrical life are plentiful enough nowadays, but most of them make but dull reading. An exception, however, is "Golden Vanity,'' by Maisio Bennett (Mills and Boon; per George Kobnrtson and Co.). The author Ims evidently a first-band acquaintance willi many and varied phases of shu;> life, and, what is more, has n decided " ; f; for character drawing. Her heroine, Jeannetto Pierce, brought up in a. charily school, has a hard struggle before she achieves success, and her experiences of the seamier side of stage life arc depleted with unsparing realism, tempered, however, by an appreciation of the humorous side of the profession, which iUiss Bennett employs very effectively. Iter .journalist lover is an excellent character, and the whole story is brightly written and entertaining. "Golden Vanity" is one of the best stories of theatrical life that I have read for some t.'.mc past. The experiences of the young journalist author when, partly in pique, and partly at Jeannetto's suggestion, ho sets out io malce a living handicapped by a self-inflicted poverty and social obscurity, of which he had hitherto been blissfully ignorant, are related in a most convincing way. If Mis- Bennett be a new writer, she has certainly made an excellent start with "Golden Vajiity„"

SHORTER NOTICES. Mark Allerton's "Let Justice Be Done" (Hurst and Blackett; per Whitcombo and Tombs) is a highly sensational story, in which no less a person than a Chief Justice deliberately murders a rascally blackmailer. It is truo that the blackmailer has threatened to ruin the Chief Justice's son, but I doubt whether all Mr. Allerton's readers will justify the father proceeding to such an extreme as calculated murder. Tlio story hag other sensational scenes, for the Chief Justice not only tries and condemns to death a man whom he knows to be innocent, and for whom his son is appearing, but is later a witness, bel'oro the Criminal Appeal Court, liven the most hardened student of sensational fiction should get -some new thrills from Mark Allerton's story.

Three recent additions to Mills and Boon's Colonial Library are: "The Call of the Siren," by Harold Spendn'; "A Marriage of Convenience," by Thomas Cobb; and "Cato's Daughter," by E. M. Channou (Stills and Boon, per Whitcombo and Tombs). Mr. Spender's story is immeasurably superior td the other two, and I regret that pressure on my space this week precludes the detailed appreciation it deserves. The plot turns upon the handicap under which a clever and ambitious young man suffers through the fact of his father, a. notorious financier, having ken exposed asan arrant rogue, and had shot himself. Oliver Martin is a very likeable fcro, but the strength of the book lies in an unsparing, almost brutal analysis of the character of a selfish and unprincipled woman, tlio wife of Martin's bosom friend, Jack Eardley, of tho Foreign Office. Alice Duljois is another Becky Sharp, but she "goes under" even more disastrously than did the fair-haired siren who beguiled Jos. Sedley and Eawdon Crawley, to say nothing of so many others, his Lordship of Steyiie included. "The Call of the Siren" is intensely modern—quite twentieth century, in fact—in ton?, and should not bo overlooked.

Mr. Cobb is an industrious and agreeable writer, but in "A Marriage of Convenience," although the dialogue is bright and one character at least, the snobbish but worldly-wise Mr. Flemmerton, quite aMittle triumph in social satire, the general interest is just a trifle two thin. Light and amusing in its way, but not up to Mt. Cobb's usual standard. Of Mrs. Chaunon's story, "Cato'.? Daughter," I feel impelled to say, at once, without beating about fir? bush, that it is one of the most trashy and illwritten productions it has even been my painful duty to wade through. Tlio heroima is a girl thrown on the world by this bankruptcy and death of her father. Her experiences as a govrness and companion are related at some length. The leading characters are either fools or rogues, and the story, as a story, is so ill-told that it is astonishing how it ever came to bo accepted by a leading firm of publishers. "Cato's Daughter" is a novel decidedly not worth buying. I would put the "not in italics, but that tlie linotype forbids such typographical emphasis. Headon Hill is a practised and able concocter of the mystery novel, and his latest yarn, "The Cottage on the Chine" (Ward, Lock and Co., per S. W. Mackay), is decidedly readable. The author, however, asks rather too much of his readers, when he .depicts a wealthy peer indulging in a vast system of smuggling in order to prove that the Government had acted foolishly in abolishing the coastguard service. There is a first-class villain, a bank-note forger, in the story, and a clever young journalist, the "Special Crime Commissioner" of tlio "Daily Lynx," makes an enjoyable hero. The background is the Isle of Purbcck. "Less than Dust," by Mary Agnes Hamilton (Heineniann, per George Robertson and Co.), is a clever if somewhat depressing studv of two sisters, the elder of whom tells the story. The younger, a frivolous, flighty, luxury-loviug, very pretty woman, is married to a rising young diplomat, a reserved and grave man, who is official zeal and ambition personified. The elder sister accompanies tier sister and brother-in-law, whom she fccretly loves, to Canada, where the frivolous Pansy soon becomes entangled in a dangerous flirtation with her husband's younger brother, a handsome idler. How tlio elder sister rescues the younger from ruin, at tho expense of her own happiness, is told very cleverly, and tho quality of the character drawing all through, the book is much above the average. But one puts down the book with a profound regret that the' ending is not, although it could not. well be, otherwise than it.is.

A breezily-written story of racing ami racing people is always sure of popularity with a certain—a very large—class of readers, both in Australia .and New Zealand, and the New South Wales Bookstall Company, a Sydney firm of publishers, displays considerable enterprise in meeting the demand. The most recent addition to their well-known shilling series, "In Racing Silk," by Gerald Baldwin, is an excellent example of the stylo of story made" popular by Nat Gould. The detestablo wire-stitching, however, renders its perusal very difficult.