SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2652, 24 December 1915, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION

» . . ■ "CUY AND PAULINE." •If only for the fascination of. its style —surely no English novelist has greater girts of felicitous expression—Mr. Compton Mackenzie's latest' story is well worthy reading. In "Guy and Pauline" '(Martin,' Seeker.; per. Whitcombe and Tombs), there is practically aio plot, at least none worth, speaking of. It is a love story pure and simple, the story of the loves of Guy Haziewood, a most modern young man, and Pauline Grey, the daughter of a country vicar. Guy leaves Oxford with no special distinctions save the capacity for writing verse.' Ho refuses the request of his father, the very/sensible headmaster of a profitable private school, to assist in running the paternal venture, for has he not a private income of about £150 a year, and does he not feel that .he has in him the makings of a second Shelley or Keats, to say nothing of a Tennyson? So-lie rents a delightful old-world house, Plasher's Mead, and settles down, with his small income, and his fairly largo library (for most of which he "is still in debt at Oxford), and dreams of future fame. The local atmosphere is soporific so far as literary work is con* cerned, and it is only 'when he falls in love with the delightful Pauline that hi? begins to recognisc the unpleasant fact that he is merely an amiablo dawdler, that his income is not sufficient to meet his expenses, and that something must.be done. At last sufß- ■ cient material for a slim book of verse is accumulated, and then there is a visit to a London publisher—and disillusionment. After, eighteen months of lovemaking the yonng man decides that he must abjure poetry as a career, tho engagement is broken off, and tho poetlover goes a\vay .on some mysterious commission, which is to investigate some equally vague affair in Macedonia. I am quite sure that-after the war Mr. Mackenzie-will bring tho two loyers together again. If lie does not, I for Lone shall be sadly, disappointed, for Guy..

although, according to present-day lights, under some suspicion of being a slacker, is a likeable young fellow, and Pauline is so be witching—though perhaps just a little silly—a heroins that it would be cruelty to leave the romance without a sequel. As in Mr. MackenJiie's previous stories, the minor characters are excellent. The dear old vicar, who ignores everything outside his, garden, the heroine's mother and sister, Guy's Oxford friends (including the Michael Fane and Maurice Avery to whom we were flrst introduced in "Sinister Street"), and a humorous old housekeeper, aro all characters of whom any novelist might well be proud. The type of young Englishman represented by the hero may be present. again after the war, but I doubt it very much. Meanw'lnle Mr. Mackenzie's analysis of that type is astonishingly acute. A NAPOLEONIC NOVEL. Baroness Orczy's iatest novel, — "Tho Bronze Eagle" (Hodder and Stoughton; per Whitcombe and Tombs), is a story of The. Hundred Days, a well-written, stirring romance, in which Napoleon is a leading figure, but in which a very cliarming love intorcst is interwoven in tho general narrative of great political and military events. Baroness Orczy's hero is a young Englishman, Bobby Clyifurde, who, in courage and resourcefulness, and, above all, in. lovemaking, js a worthy rival of the novelist's earlier and famous hero, tho Scarlet Pimpernel. Tho heroine, Crystal de Cambray, is a fitting mate for her handsome and plucky young lover ; and the conclusion of her romance, which is readied while yet the cannon'roar of Waterloo has scarce died out of the air, should be eminently satisfactory to all who like to read of young pcoplo being made supremely happy. CHARLES QUANTRILL'. Miss Evelyn Apted's story, "Charles Quantrill" (Methuen), is somewhat disappointing. The. hero husband is a business man. who fritters his money away, and, worse _ still,' flirts with a married lady. ' His wife might have been much more sensible than she was, but ends by boing wise enough to recognise that hubby's philanderings were best forgiven_ and -forgotten. AKo, thero is a pair of lovers in -whom at first we are mildly interested, but who provokingly drop out of sight • when they marry and go to India, and some long descriptions of counting-house society ajid fishing trips to Norway. The story is not ill-told, but most of tho characters talk too much and too often