FICTION

SHOCKS AND SERENITY

Inner Circle. , By Ethel Colburn Mayne. (Constable. 6s. net.) FOR the most part the ordinary, unambitious " practised hand " can write a much better melodramatic novel than the

" man of letters." Indeed, we might almost issue a Warning : Beware of the sophisticated shocker ! The plot will be too much ornamented ; the joys of rapid action and continual violence will be lacking ; the whole thing will be too good by half.

But Mr. John Masefield is an exception. He keeps a naive enthusiasm for his plots ; and we can see that his gentle spirit is pining for adventure and physical hardships. Joseph Conrad took plots that were certainly melodramatic, but he used them as though they were complex and stay-at-home ; his novels are never pure excitement. Mr. Francis Brett Young is a match for the good hack-novelists in excitement ; and he finds room for subtler dexterities, too. In Sea Horses there are fights with knives, with rifles and revolvers, there are abductions and betrayals, there are storms and tornadoes ; there is a lovely heroine in distress, and m the corrupt and vicious Portuguese colony, Panda, we can rely upon the incor- ruptible and gallant Glanvil, who, thank heaven, is an English. man. The necessities of the story are never out of mind ; but Mr. Brett Young is all the time making his novel a much better thing than a mere shocker.

His success comes because he does not waste his oppor- tunities. After all, even the hack-writer must have some sort of mise en scene for his plot ; violence is not the whole of an exciting novel. Mr. Brett Young's subsidiary touches are ingenious and +11-observed. "We have to transport our characters from Europe to Africa ; and we need a boat for it. Anynovelist would need a boat. But in Sea Horseilhe boat is genuine. It is a trader that is just returning front a long voyage. The ship's officers have grown rather touchy with each; other from the tedium of being, always together ; and they' are anxious to be home again. But the Company charters the boat to a Neapolitan, and they are compelled to set out again before they have caught a glimpse of England. It takes no longer to tell us this than in an ordinary novel it would take to tell us nothing at all ; but we are already given a feeling of reality, the tale has already a body. At Panda, of course, we are due to meet the villain. We meet him before any of the crew have landed ; for he conies on board, :seeks out the captain, and hands him his card :--

BOMBA.

" The General sympathetic Undertaker builder for the living and the dead Contractor, etc. Refuge and refreshing Bungalow,

52 Avenida da Reliublica, Panda. . bury your dead by easy system only be honest to our Sympathetic last friend. Bomba's Advice—Do not live like a fool and die like a big fool. Eat and drink, pay all your honest debts—that's .gentlemen. Always be praying for a happy death then a decent coffin by Bomba. Will Bury the dead Book of Tobias I'll feed the living, that's Bombs. Contracts taken for Carpentry, Masonry, Painting, Tombstones, etc., at moderate charges.

BIMBO BOMBA alias FERNANDO SOUZA."

Never has a villain made a more impressive entry.

But one complaint must be written. Mr. Brett Young is beginning to show himself fascinated by the pale, mysterious superman of evil, who has more than mortal intelligence and capacity, who is as strange and horrifying as a devil. The central figure of Cold Harbour was something in that fashion ; and we meet another in Sea Horses. But it needs a great expense of power and of faith to make us shiver nowadays. Mr. Masefield failed hopelessly in Sard Harker ; and Mr. Brett Young is a good deal too casual in .Sea Horses.

Mr'. Martin Armstrong's talent is th'at of the " man of letters " ; and in The Goat and Compasses he has an excellent subjeCt for his quiet, easy, accomplished style. Crome is a sea-side village, once a large and prosperous town. Visitors come occasionally to Crome ; but we are occupied mainly with the inhabitants. Most of the action centres in' the village public-house, an abiding institution, second only to the graveiard in the number of villagers who come to it. Old Dawes, who does gardening jobs, has been regular in his attendances for nearly sixty years, and he calculates with . pride that, at the rate of a pint an evening, he has now con- sumed a hundred and twenty-seven eighteen-gallon casks of beer. We begin high up in air, at the top of the church steeple, and catch our characters off their guard. Rose Jorden is engaged in more intimate conversation with George Prentice than her mother would approve, for Young George is a nice enough boy, but he has no money and no prospects.

Bella, an older daughter, a fine, handsome, self-confident woman, suffers the indignity of having her apron blown over her head by an irreverent gust of wind. Captain ('rump is puffing ferociously along the street, the Vicar Is walking awkwardly and absent-mindedly. And when we are well introduced to the characters we are started upon the com- plexities and interactions of their love affairs. These are chronicled with such a natural decorum that at the end we are surprised to recall that most of them were hardly respect- able. *There is humour and good humour in the book ; and when more serious emotions are to be roused Mr. Armstrong has sufficient mastery of style to carry US with him. For all its variety The Goat and Compasses reads ." all of a piece " ; perhaps it may be best described as "sound."

Miss Ethel Colburn Mayne's manner of writing is as quiet

as Mr. Armstrong's, but in comparison it is rather a hot-house quietness. Her stories are stories of introversion and an almost pathologically tender sensitiveness. . None the less they ;are extremely good ; Inner Circle is a notable volume. " The Shirt of Nessus " is especially pitiful and affecting ; and in it we have a typical example of the difference which modern p'sychology and the habit of identification have brought to the short story. A madman in the old days ran raving through the streets and gnashed his teeth. So, perhaps, does Miss Mayne's chief character in this story ; but we see him through his own logical mind, and his mind is dissociated from his actions • " Don't you hear him ? " Linton asked. "That fellow laughing like a madman "

" Yes, I hear him," said his brother, and he put his face between his hands and seemed upset.

" Oh well,- it's not so bad as that," cried Linton cheerfully. " He's finished now," he added in a moment, but his brother stared at him in a distracted way.

It wasn't me, you know !." said. Linton. " Lord ! he's off again ! ,

Sometimes the stories are hard to follow ; so much is told : by implication ; but Miss Mayne's tact in words' and her steadiness of hand are unfailing.