SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 27, 26 October 1918, Page 11

SOME RECENT FICTION.

"Interlude," ■ "Interlude," by S. P. B. Mais (Chapman and Hall, per S. and W. Mackay), is a novel which may offend not a few people by ccrtain'of its scenes, but will please others by Ihe extreme "modernity" of its principal incidents. In writing this story ol a young schoolmaster and his all too numerous "love passages," the author tells us, in his preface, that he has "simply tried-to show what a. man constituted, like Shelley would have made if. his life had he. been alive in 1917." At. the same time lie assures us that "those who search for any resemblance in 'Rosemary or Audrcy"'to Harriet Westbrook or Mary | Godwin or anybody else, alive or dead,will he sadly disappointed. . . .' \Xo ; one of my characters has ever existed outside the kingdom of my brain. . . ." I confess that the last sentence con-' side.rably relieves my -mind, for no more abominably selfish, egotistical, and ''unmoral" young man surely ever existed than the "hero" .of the story, Mr. Geoffrey Bnttcrsby. He leaves his .wife, a, clover and really distinguished woman, with her newly-born child, to go off on a holiday to London, where he meets an old flame in the person of a pretty shop girl, with whom lie contracts a tempo-, rary and morganatic union. His innate caddishness is proved by his coinparison of the phvsical charms of the legitimate and the left-hand spouse, iuid yet tho'author paints this pitiful fellow as a clever man.of letters, a typical "'modern," a highly-cultured English gentleman. A second and equally fleeting 1 union is contracted with another girl, as hopelessly and indeed proudly defiant of conventional decency as is the latterday Shelley himself. In/ tho end, after making a hit with a first novel, the hero poses as the apostle of a new social and educational evangel, and meet- j ing his wife whom he-had callously dcr j serted is forgiven, the pair resuming their old life. The scene is laid partly in London and partly in Cornwall. The vivacity' of the author's descriptions of latter-day Loudon life, is undeniable, but a curioiislv artificial and unwholesome tone, pervades the story, . which leaves a nasty taste on the palate. As in "April's Lonely Soldier," an earlier' work from the same pen, the dialogue is bright and occasionally even sparkling. Mr. Mais has a distinct gift of clever character drawing. But to pnlm nIT such a poor rrenlure as Geoffrey Batlersby as a twentieth .century Shelley is quite impossible. Shelley may have been wayward in his loves, but he'was never, the' supercilious, selfindulgent, and downright-caddish .fellow who is the principal figure in "Interlude."

"The Pendulum." In "The Pendulum" (Cassoll and Co., per f>. and W. Maekay), that clever novelist, Mrs. Elinor Mordaunt, of whose "Lu of the Ranges." "The Family," and that original and most entertaining story "Simpson" many of my readers will have agreeable memories, gives us by far the strongest and best work she has yet produced. The story is well constructed, but its <droiiff point is the excellence of its' character-drawings, in which Mrs. Mordaunt displays a fine gift of psychological analysis \md fc'roat firmness and sureness of touch. ' The hero, the sou of an Irish father who is of aristocratic birth, but who lias sadly degenerated, and a mother who is of "the people," but who possesses a. splendid quality of determination, is a young man of great ambition. The boy'had often listened to his wastrel; 'drimlcen father's stories of a youth passed'amid scenes far different from the. low social environment to which he has descended, and of a title which is, he contends, his by right of birth. Young Michael'determines to restore the family fortunes in his own person. The ambition to accom* nlish this becomes the one dominant influence iu his life, and to its realisation he sacrifices both family and love, for the old Irish castle "and the Droofs of his right to tho title prove' but. dead-sea fruit. I'or a time the background ,is .Australia, where tho hero is engaged iu the timber trade. Victorian politics play an important part in the story, the aristocratic, spirit inherited on (he father's side clashing with the democratic maternal influences. Sirs. Mordaunt has never given us a more finished mul convincins portrait Ihau that of the hero's mother. "The Pendulum" is a story much' above the average of latterday fiction. .