GOOD IN PARTS.*
Tins novel of Mr. Blaker's is so unequal in its parts, so dis- appointing as a whole, that it might almost have been written by two persons : the one gifted in the perception and pre- sentation of the emotional nuances of a situation, the other decidedly his inferior both in vision and technique. Mrs. Tagney, the enchanting but neurotic heroine of the story, is escorted by young Geoffery Castleton, then a Tourist Agency's clerk, to Russia. The occasion is a tragic- one, for Mrs. Tagney has every reason to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Ridge, her brother-in-law and her sister, have been murdered by a band of looters in their home at Baku. Gcoffery's duty is to take care of Mrs. Tagney, combat her disposition to melan- cholia, and alleviate her loneliness as best he can. This duty involves constant personal supervision ; the strangely assorted pair, the lovely languid woman and the twenty-year-old boy, share intimately all the rigours and anxieties of the journey. The intoxication, the high romance of the adventure, as seen through Geoffery's eyes, is suggested with much charm and skill, the boy's chivalry, devotion, and infinitely respectful solicitude reacting to the woman's beauty and mystery. They become friends (the stages of this becoming excite the reader's pulse), and, the adventure happily over, return to England, she to her husband, he to his office. By now lie is desperately in love. At this point the quality of the book abruptly changes. The more familiar Geoffery becomes with his beloved Catherine, the less seductive, the more commonplace she appears—not to Geoffery himself, but to the reader. The two become lovers ; the wife is divorced ; Geoffery, after a struggle with himself, enlists in the Artillery and goes to war. On his return he finds that Catherine has deserted him. Here the second abrupt change occurs. We are rushed across time and space in order to sec something of Geoffery's boyhood in India ; to be introduced to Qucenie, his first love ; and to learn what it was that drove him to England. A fatal blunder in technique, for with the best will in the world we cannot share the author's interest in these antecedent events. As for Qucenie, whom Geoffery Castleton ultimately marries—we will have none of her. GERALD BULLETT.
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