FICTION.
MRS. MARDEN.t
Me. lItCHENS has essayed in his new novel to show the effect of the war on the minds of those who, without being aggressively irreligious, cynical, or unkindly, were unconsciously sceptical and materialist in their outlook, lived luxuriously, and were -suddenly brought face to face with the realities by the loss of their dearest. Mrs. Harden is a rich widow, young for her years and still handsome, with an only son, her best comrade, and, like herself, a genial lover of gaiety and good cheer. On the outbreak of the war he goes to the front, with the serene conviction, go happily shared by many other young men, that he will come through unscathed. His mother is not so sure, but is infected and sustained by his confidence. During his absence she finds her chief occupation in " war work " of a purely social kind—selling programmes at matinees, &c.—in which her good looks, pleasant manners, and smart frocks win for her a resounding popularity. On the news of her son's death, she awakens to the futility of her life, but cannot at first realize her loss. Her composure and self-restraint make her wonder whether she has a heart, but the wound is far deeper than she knows. It is only by degrees that she learns her capacity for suffering. Religion brings her neither solace nor comfort. Brooding over her grief in the naked desolation of her soul, she yields to the persuasion of a friend, who had suffered a similar bereavement, and begins to attend spiritualistic seances, passing from a mood of detached and rather con- temptuous curiosity to one of interest, and finally of belief in the genuineness of the manifestations and the messages from her son. But just when she is beginning to derive consolation from spiritualism, her hopes are shattered by the exposure and confession of the medium. The sequel describes how this mood of black and embittered despair is turned by the mystery of pain into a sure hope of immortality and a belief in the existence of a God whom she had hitherto been unable to conceive, but whom now she learnt to feel in herself. Apart from the sympathy and reverence with which the growth of this con- viction is traced, the story is remarkable for the moderation with which the author deals with the spiritualistic episodes, his disinclination to exclude a residue of inexplicable phenomena, and his readiness to admit that practitioners of the occult arts may combine benevolence with charlatanry, and may be to some extent the slaves of powers which they do not understand and cannot control. Peter Orwyn, the medium, is a subject for compassion rather than contempt. The other characters who attend the seances, ranging from blind credulity to open- mindedness and implacable hostility, are acutely analysed, • Gospei of Comradesh;p : an Answer to en Inarticulate Demand. By E, S. G. Wickham, London : Nisbet, [es. net.] t Mrs. Marden. By Robert 'lichens. London: Cassell. [7s. net.] and there is a strange human touch in the jealousy and est•rar ges meat of the friend who introduced Mrs. Harden to the medium, when she found that more messages were forthcoming for the newoomer. The exotic atmosphere which suffuses so many of Mr. 'lichen's romances is here absent, but he has never written anything wiser and kinder and saner than Mrs. Marden.
Previous page
