ANOTHER COUNTRY. By H. de Coudray. (Philip Allan. 7s. 6d.)—The
masculine grip and the mature insight of this prize novel certainly do not suggest the amateur. It is a singular and ruthless analysis of the more contemptible side of humanity. Charles Wilson is a second officer in the Mercantile Marine. Stupid and awkward from childhood, he has developed an inferiority complex which paralyses him before all definite issues, and finally drags him into the vulgar crime of bigamy. Stranded in Malta in consequence of an illness, he becomes familiar with a group of Russian refugees. In this talkative, shiftless, uncritical crowd, he finds at last some social ease, and begins to enjoy the world. That he advances enough to realize beauty in it, is due to the presence of Marie Ivanovna, a pure and courageous girl who radiates a soothing bliss. Half yielding to suggestion, half terrified of losing Marie, Charles blindly marries her, and waits moodily for the inevitable catastrophe that will reveal him as already tied to a wife in London. Finally he leaves Malta, quite determined to clear things up in England, and return. It is too difficult for his ingrained apathy ; and, when Marie comes to England in a state of anguish, he brutally repudiates her. When she realizes that he is likely to suffer for a crime, she shoots herself. The early chapters give a clever and rather cruel account of the feckless Russian exiles. But the power and beauty of the book are concentrated in the figure of Marie Ivanovna, so much too fine for her dullard lover. She gathers tragic grace from her desolation, and walks in sad majesty to her sacrificial death in the poor Philistine room, which last shelter has just been refused her merely because she is noble, and wronged, and in infinite distress. The bitter conclusion is the more penetrating because the style remains quiet, even cynical.
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