FICTION. -
THE IVORY CHILD.*
IT is pleasant to find that the divided allegiance paid of late years by Sir Rider Haggard to the call of romance and the needs of British agriculture has not caused him to forget his cunning as a provider of high-spirited adventurous fiction. We have to congratulate him on the eve of his departure on a patriotic mission to the oversea Dominions on the appearance of quite one of the best of the series which began just thirty years ago with King Solomon's Mines, and in which our old friend Allan Quater- main once more figures as protagonist as well as. narrator. Allan Quatermain needs no introduction to the ingenuous youth of this generation, but we may note that, apart from the dangers which he courts and overcomes, his character is very consistently and clearly maintained throughout the series. Ho is, as two generations of his admirers know well by now, a great hunter, and a doughty fighter, and endowed with all the manly virtues of courage, honour, truth, and chivalry ; but, as the volume before us makes abundantly clear, his resource- fulness and sagacity are confined to the sphere of action. He has lived too long in the wilds to be versed in the arts of a sophisti- cated society. He is no carpet knight ; his excursions into the realm of speculation prove him to be a very child in the hands of unscrupulous financiers"; while his unconventional manners render him suspect to the magnificent menials of English-country houses. Ho is, in short, a very pimple-minded as well as a magnanimous person, and his consciousness of his limitations is so naively expressed as to lend piquancy to the
recital. -
The 'story opens quietly enough with a pheasant shoot in the coverts of Lord Ragnall, a young nobleman of varied accom- plishments and great possessions, at which Allan delights his host, " wipes the eye " of a shady financier, and excites mingled feelings in the breasts of the gamekeepers by his unorthodox methods. But wo have not to wait long for excitement of a more full-blooded quality. Two mysterious Arabs invade Lord Ragnall's stately mansion, with the double purpose of invoking the aid of " Macumazana " to assist their tribe in -Central Africa, which • is rent by intestine dissensions, and kid- napping Lord Ragnall's fiancee. From their point of view, their motive was quite intelligible, indeed laudable ; but their pro- cedure, coupled with a liberal display of black magic, la' open to considerable suspicion. The prologue ends wi frustration of their attempt by Allan Quatermain, who afterwards returns to South Africa. When the curtain is two years later, the entire dramatis personae—somewhat the fashion of the second act of a musical' comedy—has transferred to the Dark Continent. Allan Quatermain has lost all his savings in a gold mine, and contemplates an elephant- hunting excursion in the " perilous lands forlorn " inhabited by the Kendah tribe—from whom Hart and Marht, the Arab e)rcerers, came as emissaries to England—to fill his depleted exchequer; and the strange information which he gleans from his Hottentot factotum Hans as to the dangers of venturing into their territory and the mysterious rites which they practise only whets his thirst for the great emprise. At this juncture -Lord Ragnall opportunely arrives at Durban. The interval has proved even more disastrous to him than to Allan Quater- main, for he has lost not merely his first-born but his wife. The child was killed in such horrifying circumstances that Lady Ragnall lost her reason for a time. Then, while travelling in Egypt with her husband, she disappeared into space. After all efforts to trace her had failed, the unhappy husband bethought him of Quatermain's invitation, and made his way to Natal to find distraction in hunting. He could not have had a happier inspiration, for, as we have seen, Allan had just gathered a quantity of information which furnished a most valuable clue to the possible whereabouts of the vanished lady. Moreover,
• The Ivory Child. By H. Rider Haggard. London : Cassell and Co. _Mc'
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,Lord Ragnall, whose wealth was beyond the dreams of avarice, was magnificently equipped with a tremendous battery of lethal weapons and all manner of camp equipment. So with the least possible delay Allan and his friend—who has with invincible generosity placed the finances of the great hunter on a sound basis—set off on their great adventure. To describe its details would obviously be to discount the fearful joys of perusal ; it is enough to say that when Allan Quatermain, in the opening =sentence of his narrative, speaks of this as " one of the strangest of all the adventures which have befallen me in the course of a life that so far can scarcely be called tame or humdrum," he is well within the mark. Why Lady Ragnall was irresistibly drawn towards Africa ; why she was called Luna ; who was Jana and what the source of dissension between the White and the Black Kendah ; these and other interesting problems have to be solied, and solved they are, to an accompaniment of mystery and magic; hairbreadth escapes and desperate hand-to- hand fighting, "handled in Sir Rider Haggard's best manner. We have spoken of Allan Quatermain as the protagonist, but the real hero of the story is the old Hottentot Hans, who crowns his many acts of devotion to his master with the sacrifice of his life. The tribute paid to him by Allan Quatermain is generous and characteristic :-
" The truth is that after the death of Hans, like to Queen Sheba when she had surveyed the wonders of. Solomon's court, there was no more spirit in me. For quite a long while I did not seam to care at all what happened to me or to anybody else. We buried him in a place of honour, exactly where he shot Jana before the gateway of the second court, and when the earth was thrown over his little yellow face I felt as though half my past had departed with him into that hole. Poor drunken old Hans, where in the world shall I find such another man as you were ? Where in the world shall I find so much love as filled the cup of that strange heart of yours ? I dare say it is a form of selfishness, but what every man desires is something that cares for him alone, which is just why we are ho fend of dogs. New Hans was a dog with a human brain and he cared for me alone. Often our vanity makes us think that this has happened to some of us in the instance of one or more women. But honest and quiet reflection may well cause us to doubt the truth of such supposings. The woman who as we believed adored us solely has probably in the course of her career adored others; or at any rate other things. - To take but one instance, that of Mameena, the Zulu lady whom Hans thought he saw in the Shades. She, I believe, did me the honour to be very fond of me, but I am convinced that she was fOnder still of her ambition. Now Hans never cared for any living creature, or for any human- hope or object; as he cared for me. There was no man or woman whom he would not have cheated, or even murdered for my sake. There was no earthly advantage, down to that of life itself, that he world not, and in the end did- not forgo for my sake ; witness the case -of his little fortune which he invested in my rotten gold mine and thought nothing of losing—for my. sake. That is love in exec./els, and the man who has succeeded in inspiring it in any creature, even in a low, bibulous, old HOttentot, may feel proud indeed. At -least I am proud and as the years go by the pride increases, as the hope grows that somewhere in the quiet of that great plain which ho saw in his dream, I may find the light of Hans's love burning like a beacon in the darluiess, as he promised I should do, and that it may guide and warm my shivering, new-born soul before I dare the adventure of the Infinite."
Our only complaint against Sir Rider Haggard is that he is somewhat too prodigal in the early part of the story of hints and anticipations ; in other words, that he is not a master of the art of suspense, as he is of vigorous, forthright narrative. But it may-be urged in his defence that this more subtle method would have been out of place in the mouth of so straight- forward and unsophisticated a narrator as Allan Quatermain.
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