FICTION
By FORREST REID 8s. 6d.) The Nutmeg Tree. By Margery Sharp. (Barker. 7s. 6c1.)
The Rhubarb Tree. By Kenneth Allott and Stephen Tait. (Cresset Press. - 7S. 6d.)
The Wild Goose Chase is a very strange romance, in the quality of its imagination recalling here and there to some slight degree the early tales of Mr. H. G. Wells: But the book is entirely original both in its shaping and incidents: It is an allegory ; it is an extremely exciting story ; while at the same time, suppose, it is democratic propaganda. The Wild GoOie is a symbol, though what exactly it means I do not know. Intel- lectual and spiritual freedom perhaps : we are never really told, nor does the end of the book bring the end of the adven- ture. It begins with the three brothers of old-fashioned fairy tale. Rudolph, David and George set out one after the other in pursuit of the Wild Goose, and, as in a fairy tale, it is the youngest brother who achieves most. They have nothing to guide them except the knowledge that the first step in their journey must be to cross the frontier, and even what that frontier is remains a Mystery ; beyond it time and space are viewed otherwise than they are by us.
The ironic introduction describes the send-off of the brothers by their fellow-townsmen. Many years pass, and then a man returns, unrecognisable, half mad, who declares he is George, but disappears again before his identity can be established. And it is from the things told by this man that the actual story is pieced together—fantastic, incredible, frightening— while his behaviour and appearance suggest that there has been a sequel to it of which we learn nothing. At all events we gather that the ending of the search, if it is ended, has brought him neither happiness nor peace.
The main adventure, among many minor adventures, is a tale of revolution, of the struggle beyond the frontier between country and town, between the masses and a tyrannical govern- ment. George throws himself into the cause of freedom, while always remembering his private quest. He is obstin- ately determined to enter the town, though he is warned against this by his friends, and when he accomplishes his purpose it is very nearly the ending of him. This visit to the town is the strangest part of the book. It is not pleasant ; it is a blending of nightmare with reality ; but it is just that peculiar quality which makes the story so absorbing. The sinister football match is like something one might actually have watched in an uneasy dream. It is followed by George's arrest and mock trial, by his appeal to the King, and by his final escape. But the adventure is not over. George returns to the revolutionaries and the battle really begins. It ends, against all probabilities, in the triumph of freedom.
At least, that is as far as we go ; for the King escapes, the Wild Goose still is not found, and there is that disquieting glimpse of the brief return of George to his native land. Much is clear, but much is left to the imagination. This is, I suspect, the kind of book which reveals a good deal more on a second reading than on the first. Behind the excitement of the story there is a meaning, a philosophy. One may violently disagree with certain sides of it, but it remains none the less vivid and stimulating.
Mr. Charles Williams' Descent into Hell is also a novel with a purpose—one so prominent, indeed, that at times the story reads perilously like a tract. Wentworth descends into Hell because cause he deliberately encourages the passions of jealousy, self-delusion, and self-pity, because he refuses to face reality and to seek his happiness in the happiness of others. Pauline and Stanhope are saved because they live for others. It is Stanhope, the poet and mystic, who is the chief expounder of the author's views. He finds Pauline in trouble, persuades her to let him take over her trouble, and when she consents all is well. The idea of substitution, of taking over and bearing one another's burdens, is repeated again and again, yet somehow one feels that it is a poetic idea, conceived in a mood of spiritual tranquillity, not the product of experience. It is too simple, too easy : in real life there is only one cure for unhappiness. " Water of time for passion
of the heart." I borrow the recipe from Andrew Lang, who borrowed it from an old cookery book, where " time " meant only " thyme," and " passion " an indigestion. The ,novel is a ghost story woven against a background of social comedy, but it is everywhere overweighted by its ``' message."
There is at any rate no room for preaching in Miss Royth. Smith's For Us in the Dark, which is a crime story treated realistically. It is a rather dreadful book, because its subject is dreadful, and no attempt is made to conceal the sordidness or mitigate the horror. At the centre of an evil circle is Francie, a girl of sixteen, innocent, unworldly, unselfish. Spiritually she is of a fineness that nothing can spoil or smirch; but she can suffer, and because she has been left a fortune by her grandfather she becomes the prey of as odious a group of persons as I have ever encountered in a novel. With the possible exception of Canon Retarrier—who at least has sufficient astuteness to keep out of reach of the law—they are not even clever. They bungle their schemes, they overreach themselves, the mur- ders are ill-planned, and in the end seem inspired more by sheer savagery than by anything else.. It is a long book, with a complicated plot, and it is very well done except for what occasionally strikes one as a note of exaggeration, a wilful piling of . horror upon horror. Some of the details in the ugly scene of Francie's wedding night, for instance, might have been spared us, and also in the scene of the brutal killing of her dog. But this is a " shock " story, and the fascination it possesses is the fascination of the sub-human and abnormal. The better characters gradually drop out of Francie's life ; the others draw ever closer ; while once she is married and in the clutches of the terrible Retarrier family we know that she is doomed. After all there is a moral. Evil begets evil, crime begets crime, and this story, which begins with a comparatively harmless deception, ends in a perfect shambles. Readers with stout nerves and a curiosity to meet the criminal soul face to face will not be disappointed.
With Miss Margery Sharp's The Nutmeg Tree we leave all darker shadows behind us, and enter a world of sentimental comedy. Not that Miss Sharp herself is in the least sentimental ; it is only Julia, her middle-aged heroine, who has such weak- nesses. And Julia is delightful. So, for that matter, is the novel— an unusually attractive one, neither high-brow nor low-brow, but very human and very intelligent. I shall not tell the story. It is concerned with Julia and her daughter Susan, their reunion after a period of sixteen years, during which the girl has been brought up by her grandparents and educated at Girton. Susan is earnest, intellectual, and a prig. Julia, who has been educated by life, is a Bohemian, a third-rate theatrical artist who walks on in the chorus of musical comedies and revues, whose morals are easy and good-natured, who is naturally generous, and possesses the peculiar charm inseparable from humour. Her principles are not nearly so high as her daughter's, and her practice is infinitely higher. The contrast is amusing, illuminat- ing, and convincing. Of course it is all in favour of Julia—or so it seemed to me, for it is a question of the letter and the spirit, and the Susans I dare say -will prefer Susan. Miss Sharp can write ; she definitely has talent ; from beginning to end the novel is alive. I strongly recommend it : there is not a dull or fiat passage in it; not a sign of effort, not a false note.
The Rhubarb Tree leaves me more dubious. It, too, is a comedy—indeed a farce. All the characters are guyed and all the incidents of a knock-about order. There is little plot, but the whole may be regarded as the adventures of young William Sykes, manager of the Acanthus Press, who in mistake for the dramatist Felix Apsley is conveyed against his will to an expensive mental home run by the celebrated Dr. Rumble, disciple of the still more celebrated psycho-analyst, Professor Siegfried Bluffheim of Munich. Bluffheim himself is intro- duced, and a score of other characters or caricatures, the most amusing of whom is Lancelot de Villiers, an American theatrical magnate, who puts on Apsley's modern miracle play, intro- ducing a bedroom scene of his own contrivance to ensure its popularity. The fun is sometimes tinged with satire, and that is all to the good ; but more frequently it is pure burlesque, which is perhaps why I felt it palling a little before the end was reached.
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