FICTION.
FOOL DIVINE.t
MR. LANCASTER'S story of the American tropics is very different from those Whimsical and fantastic tales of life in the small Latin Republics in which "0. Henry" excelled. Here there is no comic opera element, and none of the neatness of construction and ingenuity of plot which the author of Cabbages and Kings always had at command. Fool Divine is a brilliant but some- what 'hectic romance, exotic in setting, realistic in treatment, of what might be called deflected heredity. Christopher Gascoyne was the orphan son of unconventional, attractive, rputinous parents who was brought up by his uncle, a rich, close-fisted, blustering ship-chandler who was ready to give the boy a chance in his office if he stuck to business. But Christopher was an hereditary rebel. He had no reverence for the almighty dollar, did not want to be converted into specie, despised his pallid and flabby cousin, and took an early opportunity of cutting the painter which bound him to the counting-house, and sacrificing his business prospects in order to follow the call of romance. For he had fed on true stories of adventure "till the call of the Spanish Main had become heaven's own chanty to him and the savour of the old sea-dog mimes ran in his blood like hot wine." He knew them all, felt the hazards they ran, and "saw the devilish veiled Spirit crouching back of them all, reaching for them with skinny hands—that Yellow Fever which had held its own against an assailing horde through all the centuries, which had captured the imagination of this twentieth-century man as it had captured the bodies of those of an earlier day." Christopher had dabbled in tropical medicine, and the immediate objective of his voyage to Cuba was to get into touch with an Army Medical Commission in Habana—the period is just after the Spanish-American War. The • Highways and Byways in Wiltshire. By Edward Hutton. With Illustrations by Nelly ErIchsen. London : Macmillan and Co. Los. net.] I* Fool Divine. By G. B. Lancaster. London : Hodder and Stoughton. [Sc, net.]
sequel tells how the sinister gueuse partumie of his Vision became incarnate in the woman of his reality—Nevile del Varna, daughter of a wicked old Spaniard and an American mother, and the decoy of her brother, a professional insurrection-monger and intriguer of the most unscrupulous type. Nevile's past was lurid enough, and she had been the means of luring both Spaniards and Americans to their doom ; but she was hypnotized by her brother into a belief in the sanctity of the cause of Cuba ; 'she had fascination, and after a brief struggle the "fool divine" succumbed to her spells, married her, sacrificed his reputation for courage to save her face only to find her estranged, and then won her love for a brief space before she slipped back into the old thraldom. They part company for ever, and Nevile, outlawed after the collapse of a futile insurrection, is shot by a negro, leaving a child, who is brought up by an old friend of Christopher's, Christopher devoting himself to research expedi- tions and fighting the fever at Panama. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the story, in spite of its 'detailed descriptions of tropical life and its vivid portraiture, is largely an allegory, and that the mystery of Nevile's character must be read in the light of the scouter struggle between Nature and progressive man, rather than as a transcript from life.
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