SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2641, 11 December 1915, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION

COLDEN CLORY. Sir Rider Haggard must look to liis laurels, for Mr. F. Horaco Rose's South African, story, "Golden Glory" (Hodder and Stoughton, per S. and W. Mackay), rivals tho best of the veteran novelist's South African yarns, and ■ emerges very successfully from tho test of comparison. Mr. Rose is, I understand, a South African journalist. His story is one of four prize-winners in Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton's £1000 All. British novel competition. It deals with the days • when Chaka, the great Zulu chief, . was playing tho part of an African Napoleon—a Napoleon plus an Atilla!_ The leading characters arft three friends, Napo, the Dwarf, Baroa, the Bushman, and Keshwan, the Giant, three as "fustclass fightin' men as ever Kipling's Tommy Atkins could have found amongst the Fuzzy-Wuzzies of the Sudan. ■ All three characters, especially the subtly, crafty Napo and his equally slim but, on occasions, heroically gallant, • comrade, Baroa, • are strongly drawn. _In Keshwan, the Giant with his superstitious belief in wizardry and witchcraft, . his chilish . vanity and lovo of boasting, but most'of all, perhaps, his exhibitions of almost supernatural strength, we. have a South African Porthos, plus a suggestion of certain figures m tho Allan Quartermaine . stories. ' Alto"The Golden Glory" is a noval of considerable merit: If it be a first effort it is full of promise for its author's future as a writer of sensational fiction. "THE SECRET SON." I always enjoy a novel by Mrs. Henry Dudeny,' whose Susses farmers and peasants nre almost as good in their way as Mr. Thomas Hardy's Wessex types, or the Dartmoor rustics of Mr. Eden Philp<>tts. Mrs. Diideny's latest story, _"The Secret Son" . (Methuen and Co.), is .an exceptionally powerful and interesting study of English rural life,' Having for its chief figure a.girl who, betrayed by a wealthy young land, owner, marries / her saturnino village lover, whom ' tho - seducer bribes, witli a sub- , stantial sum of money dud a long lease of a valuable farm:- When, the fruit of the pre-martial intrigue appears the husband,' by this . timo passionately, in. love .with tho girl, : . finds the strain of jealousy too great and drowns Mmsolf. Such is a mere, prologue to the story> proper, which deals with the curious repetition—a- double repetition—of almost precisely the same set of circumstances. There is real .tragedy in Nancy's long ami terrible struggle against an unkind fate, but never does tho story sink into melodrama. As. for its, setting, it is impossible to over-praite. its air of reality. Not oven nardy himself could better the'description of the rural back-, j, ground. But I would that Mrs. Dudeny had treated -her heroine more kindly. MARY MORELAND. ,- | Miss Mario Van Voorst's new story, "Mary. Moreland" (Mills and JBtfon, per =T: C. Lothian), constitutes a new departure for the author of the highly draniatic.and romantic "Big Tremaipe," 'in. which plot and incident were superior to characterisation. 11l ' "Jliss Van ! Voorst's new story tho plot is quite subsidiary to the carefully elaborated character studies. The heroine is a "typiste" to a Now York , financier who is none too happily married. The •employer dictates a letter to his wife, which lets; the stenographer, already in love with him", into, the sccrofc of tho rift in the domestic lute, and the girl is, for a time, sorely'tempted to yield to temptation and "go away" with tho mail she loves.; Buttliis sho docs not do, '; but resigns her.' situation, having afterwards a series of curious and trying .experiences with other, employers.' The jealous wife,, an intolerable egotist, eventually 1 dies, and the story ends, as it begins, in the dusty little city office up in the .skyscraper,, but . with tho promise of happiness rewarding , honour.' The heroine is an exceptionally attractive figure. One of hor employers stylfes her "ail ideal woman . . . the woman strong and yet pliant, unselfish, and yet full of character, noble and tender.',' As a study in egotism, tho financier's wife is admirable, and the heroine's mother, with her false gentility, her mania for shopping; and her silly extravagances generally, is quite a little masterpiece in, social satiro. "Mary,-Moreland" is one of the best American novels of character I- have road for: ' some time past. .-.-"GENTLEMEN.-OF. THE SEA." ■'■ A "strong plot is always to be expected from Mr. Paul"Trent,'whose "Foundling" was such a well-planiied aiid dramatic story, and "Gentlemen of the Sea" (Ward, Lock and Co., per Wli itcombe and Tomb's) has an equally ingenious motif. A young British naval officer is wrongfully suspected of having disposed, of certain important plans to a German agent—the period is just previous to the outbreak of war—and to prove his innocence has to act as a spy, in which capacity he renders notably valuable service to the British Admiralty, completely hoodwinking the Teuton Baron who mistakenly deems the young man his faithful agent. Interwoven with the secret service experiences of GuyHallam is his love for a girl Vhom, in the "acting of his new Tole, he has to protend to desert, and the passionate attadiment to the young officer _ of a second lady, also an English girl, who to fulfil a vengeance bequeathed by her mother, becomes a German spy, but -repents in time to assist Guy in hoodwinking the Baron. Mr. Trent's new story never flags in interest for a moment, and is a decidedly readable production. THE HOPE OF THE HOUSE. From Mr. and' Mrs. Egerton Castle, the authors of "The HoDe of the House" (Casseir and Co., per S. and W. Maciajv> we usually expect the lightest of factional fare, _ gay and sparkling comW-. their latest novel, However, the interest is of a muoh more serious character, as befits what is a war story, winch deals with the love of- a Welsh landowner, David Owen, for a destitute Belgian refugee, Viviamie. The, poor Sir] has behind her a peculiarly horTible . experience, the secret agony of its over present memory; weighing down upon her young soul like some hideous nightmare. David's love story does not run too'smoothly, but it ends very happily, and is told -with a charm which is most -fasoinatnig.. Owen himself,' with his. chivalrous sdlf-sacrifice iri favour or- 'his much 6-poilt younger brother Johnnie, who. alas, diesinhisfirst.battie, and the delicacy of his love makiiic is a likeable hero, and Vivianne, "with her secret sorrow, her long and, to her associates, inexplicable fits of sileift moodiness, is an exceptionally welldrawn character.. The story is 0110 of to-day, a war story, not dealing with battles and bloodshed, but with the psychological effects of a more horrible side ot war than even carnage oan bo. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE DOP DOCTOR." u by "Richard Dehan (William Heinemami, per George Robertson and Co.), is the title:of a c um lOn -r? S ll or ' l stories by the author of The Dop Doctor," "Tlie Man of Iron" and "Between Two Thieves." The stories are of unequal merit, tho title story, for uistaftco, heing quite one of tho weakest in tho book, and are marked one andl all by an exuberant fluency which becomes in places' almost irritating. Susceptible and silly , young peers, with houris of tho ballet and chorus, arc frequently to bo met wihli in these stories, in somo of which I seem to detect :i suggestion of tho lato and, by a certain jila-as sf reader—numerous

days than it was won to be a few years, ago—much lamented Ouida. At other times Richard Dehan, or to bo more precise, Miss Clothildo Graves, seems to emulate Georgo Augustus Sala-l'ake, for instance, such a sentence as tho following" If not absolutely a nincompoop Gerald Delaurier Gandelish, of SwcHingham Mansions, Piccadilly, Under tho Roso Cottage, Sunningwater, Berks, and Horshumdon Abbey, Millshire, was undoubtedly a type of the genus homo recently classified by a distinguished K.C. as "a soft-mind-ed gentleman." I had fondly imagined that this sort of writing went out of fashion in the. later, seventies or earlier eighties of the last, century, but apparently it survives 111 Richard Delian's stories. Their quite Victorian artificiality notwithstanding they cannot bo denied a certain sprightlinesß, and here and there, as in "Susanna and Her Elders," a touch of lightest and genuine comedy. But Richard Dehan is not altogether at his (or her I suppose I should say) best in tho short story. I muoh prefer this author in a "three-decker," such as "The Dop Doctor" or "Between Two Thieves."