NOVELS.
IN THE SHADOW.*
THE abiding interest of the race problem in the United States is attested by the attention devoted to it by novelists as well as publicists. It cropped up in Mr. Wister's Lady Baltimore, recently noticed in this column, and it forms the central motive of Mr. Rowland's sombre melodrama, In. the Shadow. Internal evidences of style seem to indicate conclusively that the author is an American, though the scene of the Aug is largely laid in England, and the description of the great cricket match between the famous Cherrystone Cricket Club and the amateurs of Kent and Surrey is almost worthy of " Oujda." in her earliest manner. But though Mr. Rowland's knowledge of our pastimes may leave something to be desired, he is a most friendly and appreciative critic of English charac- ter and manners, while on the colour question he has grasped the attitude of the Britisher most fairly and honestly. The story opens at an English country house, where a young Carolina rice planter, Manning Moultrie, and his sister Virginia are on a visit to old family friends. Giles Maltby, the son of their host, Sir Henry Maltby, has fallen in love with Virginia; her brother, Sir Henry, and Lady Maltby all cordially approve of the match; but the interval before their marriage is clouded .by an extraordinary episodes by • In tho Shadow. By Henry C. Rowland. London: W. Heinemann. [60.3
turns grotesque, disconcerting, and tragic, which completely eclipses the normal " love interest " of the plot. Amongst Giles Maltby's contemporaries and friends at Oiford was a young Haytian, Count Aristide Dessaliues, a full-blooded negro, son of the President of the Black Republic, who at the moment is residing in the neighbourhood. Dessalines, who has been treated as an equal at Oxford, is rich, amiable, superficially well-educated, a good sportsman, and of Herculean strength.
He eaves the lives of Virginia and her lover in a boating
accident, and by his heroism places Manning Moultrie under- an intolerable obligation, for the Southerner has a violent physical aversion from the black man, and holds extreme and uncompromising views as to his political sub- jection. To make matters worse, his sister, while in great measure sharing his views, is fascinated by the per- sonality of her rescuer and attracted by his vague but. generous projects for the regeneration of his race. Her eyes are rudely opened to his limitations by a Dutch savant, Dr. Leyden, a man of almost miraculous attainments, will:power, and insight, who plays on Dessalines like a musical instrument, and reveals his underlying weakness and latent savagery. Moultrie and his sister return to America, where the wedding is to take place, and Dessalines, owing to the abdication of his father, finds himself free to carry out his scheme of overthrowing the Republic and founding a black sovereignty in Hayti. The invasion ends in a fiasco. Dessalines is betrayed by astute intriguers, who at the critical moment of his fortunes appeal with diabolical skill to hereditary instinct
and lure him back to the abyss of Voodooism. When he emerges, with his self-respect shattered, it is as a broken fugitive, and the last scene is in the cypress swamps of South Carolina, where he is mistaken for a negro criminal flying from justice and ruthlessly hunted down, despite all the efforts of his friends.
What, then, is the remedy ? The answer, so far as the author is concerned, is probably to be found in the epilogue in which Dr. Leyden soliloquises on the lessons of the tragedy:— "There can be in the nature of things no immediate remedy, for the only true remedy is time—time and infinite patience. The negro must be led upward, step by step, in the clear light of religion and education. He is from us a thing apart, a brother perhaps, but an infant brother, and as such fdo not think that he is entitled to a seat in the conference of those of us who are his seniors in evolution. He is our care, our responsibility, and our racial inferior. In this great country of light, these things are coming to be known ; the halls of learning are open to him, he is kindly entreated to enter and hear Tfuth ; and that sweet religion which has been from its birth the greatest civilising in- fluence in the history of the World is imparted to himby wise lips. And the mulatto with these others who by virtue of fractional quantities of negro blood still dwell in the shadow ? Once before, if you remember, I offended your sense of fitness by advocating the washing out of the yellow with the white. This is constantly being done, but not fairly, because the offspring of immorality come into the world with a heavy handicap. This washing out appears to me to be legitimate.and just. When the White steps down from his higher pedestal and mates with the Black who is beneath him, then does the White become responsible for the result of his degeneration. The mulatto is the white man's shame, not the poor black woman's. It is just that the white race should accept the burden. Ach ! But the remedy for all is time; time and charity, infinite patience, and the iron enforce- ment of the law of the land. Poor Dessalines ! Poor, poor Dessalines ! Poor negro ; poor, pathetic race ! Let us pray in our hearts that the God who has so chastened him may visit with wisdom the minds which govern the hands where rests his destiny."
This is not the place to discuss in detail the political sig- nificance of Mr. Rowland's novel. It is enough to say that, while preserving a laudable self-effacement, he has handled a problem of intense interest in a spirit which will commend itself to most English readers. Dessalines, the central figure, is finely conceived and powerfully portrayed : "a mixture of a little child and a good dog "; a giant in strength, but infirm of purpose ; eloquent, and even pious, but with an education that is largely vocabulary ; dreaming grandiosely, yet sincerely, of "a wise and honest autocracy, yet relapsing into barbarism at the first "call of the wild." There are also other characters in which a new note is struck, amongst whom one may especially mention the little French valet, a wholly, novel type of devotion, and Rosenthal, the Jewish adventurer.. Dr. Leyden, the good genius of the plot, borders too closely on the miraculous to be lifelike, and, though be talks for the most' part excellent' sense, his tone
is at times more that of the lecturer than the man of .the world. And this prOmpts us to remark that Mt'. Rowland's style is somewhat disfigured by the jargon of scientific terminology—" somatic " and " sem i-antohypnosis " may serve as instances of this defect—and a resort to strained epithets, as when he calls Dessalines' voice " amphorous." But for all these artistic blemishes, the book shows originality and power; its interest heightens as the narrative advances, and the terrible scenes in Hayti and the cypress swamp, gruesome as they are, yet lift the romance from the level of melodrama to that of real tragedy.
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