SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1860, 20 September 1913, Page 11

SOME RECENT FICTION.

LU OF THE RANCES.

One of the best novels I have read for some time past—certainly the bestwritten novel with an Australian background which has been published for some years—is Eleanor Mordaunt's "Lu of the Kanges" (Win. Heineraann; per George Robertson and Co.). It is the lifo story of an uneducated, uncultured orphan girl, who is left with the charge of two young brothers in a wild "way-back" country, and is on tho ■ point of starvation when there comes to the rescue a middle-aged Englishman, Julian Orde, who lives by collecting the skins of various animals and birds. Orde is a highly-educated man, with a mysterious past, an egotist and a dreamer, who, however, tempers his selfishness by occasional* outbursts of generous feeling. ■ He is attracted by Lu Tempest's curious yet fascinating personality, the girl, an untutored savage, on her side conceiving a violent passion for the stranger, and in the end becoming his willing victim, for, although fighting hard against wrongdoing, Orde eventually takes advantage of the girl's ignorance and primitive passion. He leaves for England, and poor Lu has to face the consequences of her weakness. The bravery with which she fights out her battle against the world is singularly pathetic. Finally, after an experience on a back-blocks dairy farm, amidst'surroundings of almost indescribable sordidity, she finds her way to Melbourne. In her description of a poor girl-mother's trials in the great city, where Orde's child is born, Sliss Mordaunt is relentlessly and painfully realistic. At her wits end to gain a living for herself and the child she so passionately loves, Lu suddenly recalls the fact that as a child she had been famous for her imitations of certain birds, and invents a new dance, into which these are introduced. She gets a hearing from a sceptical theatrical manager, .succeeds in being given a trial, and, in time, becomes a stage celebrity. Surrounded by temptations, which she sternly resists, she lives only for the boy, amassing in time quite • a respectable little fortune. Then, weary-* ing of the tinsel and tawdriness—and worse—of her surroundings, rejecting with scorn the offers of wealthy admirers, her soul longs for a clearer, cleaner atmosphere, and she takes a small dairy farm, and works like a nigger, the boy being well-educated, and ever the object of his mother's passionate adoration. Time after time a honest young farmer asks her to marry him, but she remains truo to Orde's memory. Then Orde returns,'a broken, penniless man, suffering from an incurable internal disease. Lu takes him in, comforts and succours him, but resists _ all the man's proposals—for he is an incurable sensualist—to resume the old fatal relations. There is a combat between father and mothor for tho boy's affection, but in the end Orde dies, and by this time Lu, completely cured of her old infatuation, will, so it is made fairly clear to the reader, accept and longsuffering firmer-lover. I hnvo given but a mere skeleton outline of a story which is brimful of human passion, and which contains passages of outstanding literary merit. Some .readers thero may be who may bo shocße-tl at tho unsparing resiism of certain _ incidents. But hero one feels, is the picture of a true woman,- no mere creature of - sentiment, and one rises from the book with a feeling of almost unstinted admiration for the heroine. Orde is a more conventional and unconvincing figure, but some of the hiittor characters are drawn with compelling strength, and the author seems equally at home in her descriptions of the hush or city lifo. I can warmly commend "Lu of tho Bangcs" as a brilliant and convincing novel, immeasurably above tho average ruck of present-day fiction.

IN THE TROLLOPE VEIN. A novel which I can heartily, quito unreservedly, commend to those who like a novel in what I might call tlie Trollope Trollope vein brought up to elite —is Mr., Archibald Marshall's very charming story, "Tho Honour of tho Clintons" (.Stanley, Paul and Co.). Mr. Marshall, whose excellent novel, "lixtoii Manor," will be gratefully remembored by some of my readers, has a distinct) gift for. describing. the life, trend of thought, and general atmosphere of English county society. Tho interest of the story centres -round the robbery of a valuable pearl jiecldaco and a diamond star, which takes place at a nobleman's house, at which the youngest daughter of Squire Clinton, of ICencote, is spending a week-end. Poor Joan Clinton finds herself a most unwilling witness in a police court, much to the disguost of her father. Later on it is discovered that the real culprit,'so far as the necklaco is concerned, has been the Squire's daughter-in-law, and the unfortunate country gentleman is ruthlessly blackmailed. The Squire is tho principal figure in the book, and the author is singularly successful in describing ' the poor gentleman's anguish of mind and sense of wounded ' honour. ' His extrication, with honour untarnished, from a very difficult and dangerous situation, is effected by a device which is quite in the Trollopiau style The chief merit of the book, however, lies not so much, in its plot, but in its characterisation. There is not one really negligible character in tho story; all aro essentially human in their faults and virtues. _ Tho picture of the honest, God-fearing squire, with his pride of race a.nd position, humbling himself as lie does to save the fair name of his son, is full of a pathetic dignity which is most striking. "The Honour of tho Clintons" is not only a fins pieco of literary craftsmanship. It bears ovidence of a most wholesome outlook on life, and has a moral which, though not insisted upon by tho author, is none the less admirable.

"RISING DAV/N." That clever writer, Harold Begbie, gives us. in' his latest book, "Rising Dawn" (Plodder and Sloughton, per S. and W. Mackay), a, long, fullblooded, and eminently readable romance of English life in the closing years of the fourteenth century. His hero, a good honest Sussex yeoman, Andrew Mallot, is converted to the Gospel of Wycliffe, and enters the service of John of Gaunt. To trace his adventures in detail would take moro spaco than I can spare this week, but suffice it to say that his career is compact with gallant exploits, sore trials, of both heart and body, and that ho ends the hst of tho,"Kussel Priests" preaching from tho English Bible in his native, county. Mr. Bogbio dares not a little in introducing such men as Wycliife, Chaucer, Langland, and John Ball in his story, but, on the whole, ho emerges with success, for the stprv, which possesses a fino romantic flavour aud a heroine, Fhilippa, of whom oven Charles Reado might have been proud, goes throughout with a fino swing, ana is undoubtedly a quite notablo achievement in semi-historical fiction.