FICTION.
FAR-AWAY STORIES.•
TN a graceful dedicatory epistle to the reader Mr. Locke explains and lastifies his title. The title of a volume of short stories, he observes, is always a difficult matter. " It ought to indicate frankly the nature of the book, so that the unwary purchaser shall have no grievance (except on the score of merit, which is a different affair altogether) against either author or publisher. In my title I have tried to solve the problem. But why ' Far-away' ? Well, the stories cover a long stretch of years, and all were written in calm days far away from the present convulsion of the world." Mr. Locke will lose little by his frankness. There are a good many people who turn to fiction as an anodyne against present troubles, and they will find nothing in this collection to add to their anxieties. And if the stories included in it do not represent the ripest fruit of Mr. Locke's engaging talent, they are thoroughly typical of his methods and his outlook on life, and they seem to explain his success and popularity. That outlook might perhaps be best expressed as an inversion of the famous Latin saying, tnedio de fonle leporum surgit amari aliquid. Mr. Locke is an incorrigible optimist. From the most unpromising materials he extracts the most surprising treasures of felicity. The gloomy teachings of heredity are repeatedly and triumphantly defied in his stories. Miracles of goodness and gentleness are revealed in the most unexpected quarters. The odiously self-satisfied and tyrannical county magnate who bullies his wife into her grave and disowns his son and daughter is converted into a paragon of unselfishness at the ago of fifty-six. His wife, who brought him all his money, leaves it to her children and bequeaths him the sum of fifteen shillings to buy a scourge to do penance for the arrogance, un- charitableness, and cruelty with which he had treated her and her children for thirty years. Mutat pellem Aethiops. Surprise and indignation yield rapidly to misgiving, and misgiving to a conviction of his shortcomings. He goes to Italy, instals himself in a cheap hotel near the scene of his earliest act of uncharitableness to his wife, lives frugally, practises philanthropy, and devotes his leisure to compiling an ex- haustive autobiographical record of his shortcomings. But Mr. Locke does not let him pass away in penury and obscurity. His son and daughter find him out just in time—for he had fallen dangerously ill— and the curtain drops on a scene of complete reconciliation and domestic felicity. In another story we are introduced to three world-worn celebrities—a famous man of science, a great Orientalist, and a weary Empire-builder—united by their common contempt for domesticity in general and Christmas gatherings in particular, who are journeying down to Cornwall to spend Christmas with the latest counter- parts of Mr. and Mrs. Leo Hunter. None of the three wants to go, or can satisfactorily explain why he is going. The journey is tedious, the weather detestable, and, to crown all, their friend's sumptuous motor breaks down badly in a snowstorm miles from their destination. While the chauffeur goes for assistance they repair to a neighbouring cottage, to find the owner lying dead at the door and his wife dying in childbirth within. The parallel suddenly strikes them, purges them of their intellectual arrogance, and " these three wise, lonely, childless men who, in furtherance of their own greatness, had cut themselves adrift from the sweet and simpler things of life, and from the kindly ways of their brethren, and had grown old in unhappy and profitless wisdom, knew that an inscrutable Providence had led them, as it led three Wise Men of old, on a Christmas morning long ago, to a nativity which should give them a new wisdom, a new link with humanity, a new spiritual outlook, a new hope." It is an ingenious fantasy, handled with reverence, and yet not free from artificiality in the con- trivance of incident, and the abruptness of the conversion of the modern wise men. Music generally allures the sentimentalist, and two of the most sentimental stories deal with musicians. In " The Song of Life " we have the not unfamiliar tragedy of the semi-articulate genius, an Italian violinist and composer, who has fallen on evil days and lodges with some kindly Russians at Peckham. His magnum opus has never been performed, and he has sold the score as waste-paper. In his old age he finds solace in teaching the violin to an English boy of extraordinary gifts, who carries off all the prizes at Milan, and returns to England to win fresh triumphs as a composer. When his new symphony is hailed with acclamation at the Queen's Hall, it turns out to be a glorified version of his master's sonata. Here are the materials for a real tragedy, but the sequel is entirely characteristic of Mr. Locke's method. The pupil had bought the MS. of the unpublished sonata and unconsciously absorbed the themes, but the result was so transcendently superior to the original that the old Italian, so far from resenting its use, • Par-Away Stories. By William J. Locks. London : John lane. Les.] dies of joy at finding the seed which was born and died in him, reborn gloriously and immortally in his pupiL If any one wishes to read the tragedy of the musical genius born before his time, lot him turn to the pages of that astonishingly prescient story, Balzao's Gambara, published in 1837. But tragedy is not Mr. Locke's forte; his excellence is rather in the ingenious evasion of it when it seems inevitable. Thus we have the romance of the amiable, admirable, and scholarly country gentleman whose features were so terribly disfigured by burning in childhood that people fled from him in the streets. For the rest, he was a perfect saint. So when he falls in love with a beautiful young lady who is blind, the claims of poetic justice seem to be satisfactorily met. They marry and live in ideal happiness until an eminent oculist, visiting their house by chance, holds out prospects of the restoration of her sight. Tho husband is then confronted with the dreadful possibility of his wife's affection being converted into repulsion, but heroically acquiesces, and is rewarded for his unselfishness. The operation is successful, but his wife's disregard of the surgeon's instructions leads to a relapse before she is allowed to see her husband, and she becomes stone-blind—and perfectly happy. For the purely tragic possibilities implicit in such a situation wo may refer readers to that powerful and painful story by the late Mr. Stephen Crane—The Monster. But, as we have already said, this is not Mr. Locke's way. He plucks intermittently at our heart-strings, but almost invariably relents. And though the cumulative effect of so much suavity is somewhat enervating, its tranquillizing influence in these dark days is not without its value.
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