NOVELS.
THE GLADE IN THE FOREST.*
lama politics are too absorbing a pursuit to be combined, as a rule, with the cult of belles-lettres. Still, there hAve been exceptions in the pest—notably that of Mr. Justin McCarthy— and we are glad to think that Mr. Stephen Gwynn is not yet disposed to allow his political engagements to interfere with his allegiance to letters. The volume which he has just published deals to a considerable extent with Ireland and the Irish; but party politics play no part in the contents. They simply furnish fresh and agreeable proof of the versatility of an accomplished writer who has already achieved distinc- tion a a critic, essayist, and poet.
The story which gives its title to the collection originally appeared in the Cornhill, and we are glad to see it again, for it bears the test of re-reading. In Tbe Glade in the Forest" the principal characters engaged, if not typical of to-day, are at least reconcilable with modern conditions. But the spirit and atmosphere of the whole are essentially romantic. The love affairs of popular contemporary actreszes—jadging, from the newspapers—are too often a matter of squali.1 * Tao GIJ in tha Fret, and other Stories. Vt4P11034 GIMP* Pui4Ny
bargaining. But here we have a young lady, suddenly famous for her impersonations of Ibsen and Echegaray, who is the innocent and unconscious cause of a quarrel between two of the best swordsmen at a fencing club,—the one a soldier of fortune and the other a poet. By luck as well as good management, Ida Yelverton is enabled to intervene not only in the duel which grows out of the quarrel, but in the second meeting which is the result of her apparent preference
for one of the combatants. The plot is a trifle fantastic, but the resources of modern civilisation are ingeniously applied to secure a happy ending. The heroine disturbs the first rendezvous on her bicycle. As for the second, to quote her own words : "I drive forty miles an hour through the
night in a ball-dress on a wild motor-car to prevent two people making fools of themselves." Mr. Gwynn has given us a very pretty blend of modernity and romance, in which the swordplay of the rivals is matched by the dexterous thrust and parry of the dialogue. If we are reminded at times of Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Anthony Hope, it is only in a general way. Subject and treatment alike exclude invidious com- parisons. It is a sudden and abrupt change from the delicate mock-heroics of the first story to the homely pathos of "Splendide Mendax." An old Irish peasant woman, dependent on the bounty of a married daughter in America, discovers
that her son-in-law grudges the contribution, and promptly instructs the neighbour who writes her letters to inform her daughter of her death. Her argument for the deception is heroic: "Sure, what call has a man, that has a wife and child
to keep, to be sending money to a useless ould crathur that he never seen ?" In "Cross Purposes" we have a comedy of courtship in a London parish, telling how the daughter of the
vicar became engaged to an Anglican curate "with the highest principles and the broadest views," and why she changed her mind. Miss Marchmont was a highly emanci- pated young woman. "She had not yet formulated her
beliefs; she thought there was a great deal of truth in the New Testament, and a great deal in the writings of Mr. Walter Pater ; and she was decidedly of opinion that dogmatic Christianity needed to be supplemented by a course of Maeterlinck." The joint efforts of this enterprising pair to reorganise the parish bring them into conflict. They are both of the 'managing" type, and Miss Marchmont's sudden discovery that the curate is an incor-
rigible prig induces her, not without some natural tears, to give him his conge, and at the same time to limit the sphere of her own spiritual directorship. Three of the remaining four stories deal with various phases of Irish life. Of these by far the most striking is "St. Brigid's Flood," a grim story of an
injured woman, her curse, and its comprehensive fulfilment. The text is given in a saying of the narrator : "It's only in the country that hatreds really ripen," and the illustration loses nothing in the telling. We cannot better close our notice of Mr. Gwynn's book than by quoting the final scene of this sombre episode. A whole family had been wiped out by land- slip and flood, and one of the neighbours suggested throwing the woman who had cursed them into the river :—
" It's a horrible thing to say ; but when I thought of that old woman sitting crouched there by the fire, as if she was gloating ever the defeat of her enemies, the man's words seemed natural. There wasn't much time to think, though. The priest was standing there, a big, red-faced, coarse-looking man, as you could see. He took a step over, and he caught M'Cormick by the throat, and shook him like a rat. Would you dare !' he said, ye bad Christian ? Would you dare, then!' Then he threw the man from him, and he faced round, gathering the whole crowd in front of him with a sweep of his arm. Then he made the sign of the cross in the air, and raised one hand. Go down on your knees, every one of you, and pray for the souls of them that God has cut off without warning in their sins.' It was the strangest thing I ever saw, the change in him from a red-faced bully into the shepherd of his people. The fashion of his countenance changed, as the Bible says. And he prayed there standing over the dead bodies, while the men knelt round him in the twilight—rolling out the Latin words that neither I nor they understood, in his great Connaught brogue. Then he stopped and spoke to them again. 'Now you will say one more Pater- noster for the help of a soul that is maybe in worse danger nor theirs, and in saying it you will pray humbly to Almighty God that He may not bring down upon your heads the fulfilment of your own evil desires. And you will leave to the judgment of God the one that invoked God's judgment.' He began again in Irish now, kneeling himself, and they said the prayer after him, sentence by sentence, kneeling there on the wet sod. Then he stood up and shook himself. Away with you down the river, boys, and search every eddy and back-water, and get nets and dredge the holes. There's ten bodies needing Christian burial; and that's the last good turn ever you'll do them.' They broke up in a minute. The priest, watched them scatter, some going back to the bridge, some following down the bank. Then he turned up the hill to the woman's house. I know no more about it; but I couldn't understand the confidence with which he faced that job when he started up across the heather at a slow pace, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and reciting prayers to himself; for I could see his lips moving. I have often speculated since on the scene there must have been. However, as I said, I know nothing of what happened—except that Biddy O'Hea was always a pattern Christian from that day, and the neighbourhood re- garded her with fear certainly, but with a kind of veneration. They were vastly civil to her, I need not tell you—and, what is more, to judge by what I heard since, they are rather proud of her as a local celebrity."
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