SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 3, 28 September 1918, Page 11

SOME RECENT FICTION.

"Wynnegate sahib." It is with H grateful remembrance of that fine Anglo-Indian story, "Ivavanagh of Kultaun," that I turn to Miss Jean Sutherland's latest novel, "AVynncgato Sahib". (Hodder and Stougliton), which, let it be said at once, is a singularly arresting and admirable story. • In the prologue wo meet a brilliant and fashionable young iurgeon who is threatened with professional and social' ruin' through a most .unfortunate incident in which an insane lady patient plays a prominent role. The story proper opens at a military station in the Xorth-AVestern Frontier Provinces, where, .'■ome years later, we find AVynucgate, the surgeon of the prologue, acting as a military doctor with the rank of captain. To Kala Ismail Khan, the station in question, comes Delphinc Molyneux. tho daughter of the very woman who had been tho cause of the hero's voluntary exile. Sho falls in love with him and ho with her, but both at first conceal their affection, for each • knows that the girl's mother had die.d in a mental hospital and dreads that her insanity t may prove to be inherited by the I daughter. A cholera visitation—described with it realistic power not even excelled in Kipling's fine story "William the Conqueror"—serves to exhibit AVynucgate in a splendidly heroic character, and the lovers eventually find'it impossible to conceal their mutual passion. The skeleton in the Molyneux cupboard, however, prevents their marrying.- and tho girl returns to England for a time. Eventually the truth is made known, namely, that Dolphine is not after all tho daughter of ait insane mother, and although, almost to the end, her father opposes her marriage with a. man whom ho had unjustly believed to have been his wife's lover, he finally consents to the union. Tho story is peculiarly strong in local colour—iudced its pictures of AngloIndian military life are of quite exceptional excellence. . The love .story of Deiphine .Molyneux and Captain AA'ynnegato is told with a combined power and delicacy which will make a specially strong appeal lo feminine readers, .fly all means pur. "VV'yiiuegafe Sahib" on tho next order list you send lo your bookseller. "The Sunshine Settlers." To all who have war worries, "cost of living" worries, or'worries of any ;iml, who suffer from ennui, who are 'hipped" and desire some temporary

relief from tlie small ills find woes of cvery-diiy- life, let me warmly commend :i perusal of Mr. Ciosbio Garstiu's vastly amusint; sketches of South African liio and ehiiractcr, "The Sunshine Settlers" (T. Fisher Uiiwiti). Jlr. Stephen Leacock must certainly look to his laurels—indeed, in my humble opinion, tho South African humorist is in some ways the superior of the Canadian writer as a. fun-maker. Many of tho sketches have a Khotlcsian background, and the humorous side of the "now chum's life" in South Africa is always well to tho I'oro. To read the sketch entitled "Audiikcture," or that in which an inexperienced motorist chronicles his experiences, and refrain' from some good, honest chuckling, not to say downright hearty laughter, would surely be impossible. Mr. G'arstiu's long.gallery of character portraits includes old or "salted" residents, beginners, at ranching "out Bnhiwayo way,". Dutch farmersf* Jew storekeepers, publicans, and every variety of native, from tho haughty Zulu to the meanest kind of Hottentot. This is ;t most enjoyable book, which, coming so soon after tho same author's capital little vohnno of war studies, "Mud Larks" (reviewed iji these columns a week or two ago), should firmly establish Mr. Garslin's reputation as •a humorist of no mean order. The author's natural, high spirits aro irresistibly contagious, and underlying tho exuberant fun of the stories thoro is much Bound. and_ interesting information as to the delights and woes of the Hhodcsiaii settler's life, especially in the earlier stages, of his colonial career. Emphatically a book not to be overlooked is "Tho Sunshine Settlers."' "Mary Plantagenot," It is certainly somewhat awkward for a real, live duke, especially a wearer lof the sacred strawberry leaps' m dukedom who is so proud of tiie dignity of his order as is His Grace-of Jh'idport, to find that his colonial heir prefers to marry a musical-comedy heroine to wedding with a daughter, of tho famous house of Dinneford, in the ■person of one of his nieces.' Biit it is more awkward still when the duke discovers that the young lady who has captured his heir's affections is none other than his own daughter! His Grace's first wife, having been an eminently stodgy, though stately, person, who had borne him no child, and with whom ho had been persistently miserable, His, Grace had found consolation in a, second marriage with his handsome housekeeper, a born lady so far as virtue and good manners go, albeit her sister had married a fullblown constable (Kelly by name)' ot tho Metropolitan Police Force. T{ is not until almost the lust chapter of Mr. J. C. Snaith's clover and very entertaining : novel "Mary riautagenet" (Cassell and Company; per ■S. and W. Mack'ay) that the all-important discovery that tho heroino is his daughter is made by His Grace, who, however,had had a pock of trouble with various haughty 'feminine' relatives—ono of them well enough drawn to suggest a typical . Thackerayan character—who detest tliq mysterious, but evidently powerful, influence exerted at Bridport House by Mrs. Sanderson. A special word of praise is duo to tho author for his admirable portrait of the heroine, a character whoso pluck, common sense, and genuine womanhood will make her as great a favourito with readers of the story as sho was with that exceedingly lucky young gentleman, Mr.-Jack Dinneford. Mary's theatrical friends are almost as good as if they had stepped out of ono of Leonard Merrick's stories of tho stage, which is saying not a little, and there is a certain pushful young Scot who, starting life as a constable, is left at tho end of tho story a full-blown knight and It'adical M.P. (whoso however, docs not forbid his marriago into a ducal family). Ho is a decidedly original and'vastly entertaining figure iu the pleasant little comedy-drama. Mr. Snaitb has given us a capital story, not, perhaps, so strong a story as that masterpiece of his, "Broke, of Covcnden," nor that yet more powerful noveL "The Sailor," but nevertheless a story which is far away out of the ordinary everyday ruck of fiction.

The mean German I In his hook "Behind the Scenes in. the Jieichstag," the ex-Alsatian deputy the Abbe S. Wettcrle describes a nocturnal "tasting" of Alsatian wines which was organised, in ICOB, in tho Reichstag building with a view to advertising .the wino industry of the province which He'rtling recently declared was "German through and through at heart." Ministers and deputies drank 1400 bottles of wir.e between 8 p.m. and i a.m., and although, sav,s the Abbe, "they were astonished tliere were no headaches, not a single new order went to the annexed provinces."