Fiction
CRANMER PAUL.' By Rolf Bennett. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.)—This is an unflinching portrait of an unusual type. There is power in Cmiimer Paul, first Mate on 'a cargo boat, but neither grace nor pathos. Forces he cannot understand convulse him and make him ,sulky. , Overcome by a, sudden ppaassssion of pity, he offers to marry the young .:prostitute Lily "Crane ;- but 'soon 'repents of the 'offer. Leaving her in a black temper, he is transferred so 'suddenly to the deekS of the passenger ship Tatiana that he can arrange nothing. The steamer has been chartered by a company of pleasure- seekers, and Cranmer Paul is shocked, and disturbed by the lophisticatiOns of the Voyagers. He yields, half in loathing, to the degenerate Estelle RiVerS ; and diseciYers through a strange exaltation that he is at last in love—with Dorothy, an artist girl with a religious temperament. It is dirty weather in his soul when Dorothy is engaged to the padre on the ship. But the illness of the captain throws on him the responsibility of command ; and on his return the company offers him the early: prospect of a vessel of his own. Cranmer has become convinced that it is a kind- of mystical and clarifying necessity to keep his Word to Lily, When :he finds her happily married to ancither, 'sailor, he returns in. a black frustration to the cargo boats and the fierce bodily labour he can comprehend. The conversations on -board the Tatiana ' betiveen Doctor, Padre; Paul; and Smith the Socialist are vigorous, - though profane ; and the seaman's -mind,- crudely at grips with problems of love, death, and God, is exposed -in its. angry bewilderment. Baffled, seething, egotistical, brutal, Cranmer Paill leaves the reader with`a regretful sense of waste energy. The book is grim ; but it is alive.
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