NOVELS.'
TONY UNREGENERATE.*
Miss DODGE'S study of artistic and unconventional tempera- ments in one respect marks a welcome advance on the efforts of previous explorers of this field. The principal male character is a pianist and composer, but his hair was " smoothly brushed" and "hie physique alone would have placed him without query in the ordinary athletic category that passes among other nations as essentially British." It is true that his mother was Polish, that his countenance was "pale but slightly dusky," and that "the acute sensitiveness of his nature could be seen quivering on the delicately arched. nostril, or on the drooping eyelids that veiled the profoundly dreaming eyes," but there was nothing eccentric about his appearance or get-up, and it is expressly mentioned that he smoked a pipe, worshipped Beethoven, and played his later works in masterly style. But while Maurice Beverly was a serious student of his art, it cannot be maintained that he was a normal member of society. Though still quite a. young man, ho had jilted one eligible young lady and thrown over a second to marry a third for no satisfactory reason. His marriage proved ill-assorted and tempestuous, and we gather that he was only rescued from appearing in the courts by his wife's opportune loss of reason. It is with such a record that, while staying with his friends the Prague at their villa near Siena he is thrown into daily companionship with Antonia Markby, an emancipated young woman of twenty-three, whose orphaned youth has been spent in more or less open revolt against the tutelage of her orthodox aunts. Antonia is attractive, unconventional, and extremely inexperienced. The warnings that she has received from her devoted cousin, Julian Middleton, an excellent normal young man, who has only too good reason to distrust Beverly, have only predisposed her to support the romantic pianist in his rebellion against social conventions. She is herself artistic, intensely sus- ceptible to music, and naturally flattered by the discovery that her sympathy stimulates Maurice to play and compose his best. But while prepared to sacrifice herself on the altar of his egotism, she fails to recognize, first., that he is incapable of a continued attachment ; and, second, that he has not the grit to face out any awkward consequences of his defiance of convention. Antonia begins by believing that " anybody who could make you feel Beethoven like that must be all right at bottom." Having fallen head over heels in love with Maurice, she cuts herself adrift from her friends and family, feeling that so long as she is hurting nobody but Mrs.
• Tony Unregenerate. By Janet Dodge. London: Duckworth and CO. tega
Grundy, she is "at perfect liberty to lead a free and unfettered life," and to pursue her own ideas of right.
In a few short months she learns that Maurice is a social coward who was dependent " on the sort of incitement to work that comes from merely falling in love." He was, as she told him at their final interview, not inde- pendent of outward circumstances, but simply at their mercy.
After hearing these and other excellent home truths, Maurice is run over and killed instantaneously by a motor-oar, and Antonia, on recovering from a severe illness, during which her child dies, learns for the first time of her lover's death—or suicide. With all respect for Miss Dodge, the elimination of Maurice does not correspond with the hard facts of life. These self-protective egotists belong to the class of people of whom it was bitterly said that, while they are of no use in this world, they are not wanted in the next. The vampire breed is not given to suicide or to getting in the way of motor-cars they generally go on vampiring at the expense of inexperienced and infatuated women like Antonia. For Antonia, though fully alive to the weakness of Maurice, continues to glory in her unavailing sacrifice; and when her faithful cousin renews his suit frankly informs him that she would do the same again if she had the chance. In short, while admitting that she has made a muddle of her life, she remains "unregenerate " and impenitent. It is only fair to Miss Dodge to add that she makes no attempt to justify
Antonia or to hold her up to admiration. She is an ineffectual rebel, no more able peccare fortiter than her lover, and the best comment on such characters is that put into the mouth of the benevolent Dr. Strauss : "In order to live what you call a free and unfettered life, a life in which nothing is sacrificed to convention, a person must be peculiarly fitted by nature and circumstances. He or she must either be unusually thick-
skinned or super-humanly courageous, or else he must have no other occupation in life. At least no occupation that cannot be sacrificed to the Cause at a moment's notice." But Antonia had no Cause, and never professed to be a reformer. She discarded an honest and devoted lover for a worthless weakling with a bad record. All that can be urged in her defence is summed up in the old saying, " One chooses friends but yields to love." At most she inspires a mitigated compassion. Her honesty in endeavouring to choke off Julian is creditable, but his persistence fills us with grave misgivings as to his future.
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