SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2606, 30 October 1915, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION

THROUGH 'STAINED CLASS. A couple of years or so ago there was published a "first novel," "Home" by name, which was very warmly commended by English and American reviewers, special attention being directed to the picturesquely exotic Background—Brazilian—of certain of the, leading incidents. Mr. Chamberlain's second novel, "Through Stained Glass" (Allen ami Unwin) again has a Brazilian scenario —in its opening chapters—and again the author is conspicuously successful in investing his local colour with a quite noticeable fascination. The leading characters are an American gentleman, an amateur sculptor of some distinction, his illegitimate son, whom the father, after having long ignored his very existence, seeks out in Brazil and takes to London, and a delightfully fresh and charming girl, the childhood's playmate ana sworn chum of the young man. The father is delighted to find that the son inherits the parental artistic gifts, and takes the young fellow to Paris, where ho studies under a sculptor of European renown —this character is clearly, I should say, drawn from life—and becomes himself, a sculp-' tor of the first rank. In Paris the young man, hitherto curiously naif in sexual matters, is on the verge of falling a victim to the charms of a sprightly, and shapely model when the much experienced father, however, cleverly spoils the young lady's game and hurries his, son to London. Here, after a time the young man beoomes desperately enamoured of a beautiful but selfish musical-comedy star.. A .trip to America, however, results-iii a meeting with the girl chum, of his youth, and her he eventually marries; So ' much for tho plot, if plot it can be called, of a very cleverly- written story, the principal fault in which is the author's positively desperate effort to make the worldly wise father a;; perambulatory ■ 'epigram factory. Some of the epigrams arovery smart, 'some are strained, some are mere banal travesties of much hackneyed efforts in the "verbal fireworks" line.; On the whole, however, the father ;i6 suchva good fellow -that-his littlo tricks of theatricality may well be pardoned him. The young man and his sweetheart are pleasant young people, and in the opening .chapters there aro some well-drawn minor figures with whom the reader must be sorry to part. Altogether, a story well out of the ruck of ordinary everyday fiction, one decidedly well worth reading. "THREE CENTLEMEN FROM NEW CALEDONIA." "Three Gentlemen from New Caledonia," by R, D. Hemingway and Denry De Halsalle (Stanley Paul and Co.), is a well planned and well written story, which won the first prize, £300, in a-"first novel" competition initiated by the. publishers. The three "gentlemen" are long-sentence convicts, in New Caledonia, whence they escape as the,result of the ingeniously laid scheme ! of their leader, a cosmopolitan criminal, who, in his younger days, had been beloved by a woman of high birth in his native Paris. /This lady, whose infatuation for the romantic scoundrol, Andre, survives her disgust at discovering- her lover to be a- desperate criminal, provides the-money wiu'ch ensures the presence of a small brig off the coast at the very time the three rascals succeed in cluding the vigilance of their guards. The scene now changes to Paris and England,- the- leader of the gang now calling himself Heron, and dividing his time between planning and carrying out various sensational robberies and searching diligently for one Courtois, an exassociate in crime, to whose treachery the trio of convicts had owed their . exile. Courtois is at length run to earth in. a quiet little English village, where he is living undo- the name of Gautil. , Having heard that Gautil possesses some -v aluable pictures—stolen from the Louvre—the gentlemen from New. Caledonia plot the spoliation of their old associate, of whose real identity they are for a time The situation is complicated by certain transactions which Andre has with a cunning old Dutch fence at Rotterdam, and by the tracking down of the gang by a famous French detective. Other disturbing elements are the fact that Andre's old love is befriended by Gautil's wife , and daughter, who have no idea that their husband and father is a famous thief ;and that Gautil's daughter is beloved by_ a»wealthy young man living in tho neighbourhood. As the story proceeds sensation follows sensation with amazing rapidity, but the plot never falls away into tenuity, as is so often the case x with this class of novel. The denouement, in the Dutch fence's house at Rotterdam, is a particularly well managed bit of melodrama. Altogether, in its own class, "The Three Gentlemen from New Caledonia" is an unusually spirited and' successful production, which I can warmly commend to lovers of sensational fiction.

THE AUCTION MART. Jacqueline Cartmell, the' heroine of Sydney Treniain's story, "llho Auction Mart" (John Lane), is a highspirited, clever, and well-meaning girl, the illegitimate daughter of an ex-roue and present dilletante, ivho, after a somewhat bit'ter experience of life —an experience largely, I should say, his own fault—deliberately and with odious cynicism, 'teaches tho girls to repaid tho world as her-oyster. That scntimont or impulse must .never enter into "lior calculations is tho parental advico. to Jacqueline, and for a time at least the girl exhibits,an inclination to bo oven more selfish than her father. Eventually, however, she becomes disgusted with her position, leaves her father ,and proceeds to Paris, there to dance —with a male partner—at a night' restaurant at the certainly not meagro fee of £'10 a night. Her relations with tho clever but morally unwholesome Caver aro laudably platonic, but, naturally, are apt to bo misconstrued, and tho girl has a somewhat trying time before a highly proper and conveniently well-to-do young Englishman, the Jtr. Right for whom, for.so long, she has bccu unconsciously waiting, iwu* MiawA.Mf.ircm dapgars

which perhaps sho only half understood. 'A lively, well-told story. HONOUR IN PAWN. Mr. H. Maxwell's new story, "Honour in Pawn" (London, Jolm Lang), introduces us to a heroine who scarccly deserves the good fortune which oventually falls to her lot. For the poo* - but luxury-loving Nancy starts on the road to a rich marriage—with a man much too good for her —by an act cf quite contemptible meanness, virtuaVy a very impudent theft 1 . When, however, tho young wifo is blackmailed l"y -tho unscrupulous Mrs. Fortescuo, who, with hor brother, keeps an old curiosity shop which is in reality the receiv-ing-house for a gang of clever thieves, it is impossible not to feel sorry for her. The plot is highly sensational, hut tho story is told with no small skill, and will serve to dispel the ennui of a wet evening or the tedium of a long railway journey.