NOVELS.
THE PEDESTAL.* ENTERING the lists as the author of a very entertaining and original school-story, Mr. Coke has shown sagacity as well as ingenuity in evading the dangers which beset authors who, by reason of the peculiar qualities of an initial success, find them- selves their own most formidable competitors, it is by no means an easy thing to write a good story of school life, but the necessary equipment is no guarantee for success in other departments of fiction; the perils of sequels are notorious, and to repeat the experiment generally spells failure. Mr. Coke, fully alive to the difficulties of the situation, has surmounted them with great skill. In The Comedy of Age he gave us a story of University life ; but the standpoint adopted was not that of the undergraduate, but of the middle-aged don who, realising that he had, lost touch with the junior members of his College, endeavoured with more zeal than tact to recapture the oppor- tunities be had let slip of influencing the young barbarians. The situation, though not widely typical of University life, was at any rate perfectly possible, and it was developed with a freshness and kindly humour which relieved the tragical significance of the plot and justified the title. In the novel before us a good deal of space is devoted to pictures of school life, but the interest of them is quite subsidiary to the main motive of the plot. They furnish the scene for the occurrence of a crucial incident, but the phase of life on which the author really concentrates his energies is domestic rather than educational. The Pedestal deals not so much with the relation between boys and their schoolfellows, though this is not overlooked, as between boys and their mothers, and it is to mothers first and foremost that the excellent lesson it conveys is primarily addressed.
The story opens prosperously,—so prosperously as to inspire misgivings. Sir Arthur Fothergill is rich, young, happily married to a beautiful wife, and the father of a delectable infant. An unsuccessful but unembittered suitor stands godfather at his christening, and when Sir Arthur is killed in a hunting accident a few years later, he discharges the responsibilities of his post with discretion and magnanimity. Lady Fothergill, it should be explained, is no early or mid- Victorian mother. She neither flirts nor gives occasion for gossip, but she is greatly in request, and her social engage- ments involve the delegation of maternal duties to such an extent that, white intermittently idolising her son, she never tries to understand him or to realise his weaknesses until it is too late. The tragedy of Bernard's youth is that out of sheer
* The Pedestal. By Desmond Coke. London: Chapman and HaU. [6s. J loyalty to a cousin, a boy of a certain magnetism but no character, he places himself in a position in which the real culprit evades discovery and the mere tool is heavily punished. It is at this crisis, precisely when her son was most in need of support, that Lady Fothergill reveals herself in her worst colours. Bitterly disappointed in the idol of her own making, she takes no trouble to elicit the truth, or rehabilitate the boy's self-respect, and hastily jumps at the idea of shipping him off to the Colonies. The situation. however, is saved by the godfather, who not only penetrates the armour of Bernard's heroic reticence, but opens his mother's eyes to her callous egotism. This is only a very rough sketch of a most interesting and by no meal's exaggerated study of modern motherhood. The Pedestal is essentially a story without a hero or a heroine; but Mr. Coke. though be may be indisposed to glorify humanity, is equally exempt from the desire to blacken it unduly. Lady Fother- gill's behaviour is highly reprehensible; yet we are always made to realise that she was a very charming woman. Wherein exactly she failed is best set forth in the frank and homely words of Dick Armytage ;— "‘ What I really mean is this, Ruth ;—you won't mind ? You worshipped him, I know, but don't you think it was chiefly because you were proud of him, because he was a success, and brought you credit and admiration ? There's a sort of love, ; mean, that really is only a kind of proprietary pride, and I don't think real love could ever have turned into hate—or not the mother-love, I mean. You'd have loved him all the more, because he was frail and human.'—` Loved him because he was a thief ? she asked in withering scorn.—' No, loved him because all the world had turned against him. It's so easy to love a success, when everybody envies you for being his mother, but in the time of trouble is the real moment for a mother's love, and that moment belongs all to her, alone. Poor Bar needs love now!— ' Poor Bar!' she repeated, bitterly. 'You don't pity me. He did it; it was his own action, but what have I done to deserve all this ? '—` I do pity you, Ruth—you know I do ; but we're talking about Ber. He wasn't born a thief.'—' How does that affect the argument? You can't blame me, in any cafe. You won't say that I made him one P'—He spoke very seriously. In the 91(.1 days, before—this happened, did you ever strengthen him for this sort of temptation, sit on his bedside and listen to his little difficulties, or did you always take it for granted that he couldn't do wrong, and just flatter him and save trouble by that sort of idea ? It wasn't to save trouble, Dick. How can you be so unkind ? I tried to set him an ideal, to show him how perfect I thought him, and to make him feel that he must never disappoint me.'—' What's the use of that to a kid—unless he's madly in love with his mother ? "rhe cruel words had slipped out before he knew, but happily she did not seem to notice, and he hurried on. • He wants something practical to hold to; some one who'll always understand, who'll never either hurt him or yet spoil him, who'll show him the right path, without any cant or pi-jaw, and make him strong enough to take it. . . . My dear old Mum was never cruel to me, never snubbed my little ideas or told me to "go away a little"; always seemed as though she had nothing to do except to be pleased to see me (though I know, now, she had to slave to keep me going, bless her !), but she was stern, when she had to be. We were the best of °friends, and if she had to punish me, we were exactly the same tea minutes afterwards, because she was always just and never lectured me. She never said I was a sinner—but then she never said I was a saint; she treated me just as an ordinary boy, some- times good, sometimes very bad, and told me if I thought I was worse than the others (all kids get morbid, sometimes), it IVILIS because I had a conscience, and that we couldn't all be perfect, but if we fought honestly and did our best, that was all God could or would expect from US. I've always remembered that ; it's been my sort of creed, and it's kept nie from feeling too much of a worm, sometimes. . . . And the result of her self-sacrifice—for that's what it was, I see now, but it was done so smoothly, I thought nothing of it at the time—the result is she's kept me straight, so far as any one's done that, she and her memory ; and do you know, Ruth ?—don't laugh at me—I still say my prayers, every night, because she asked me to ; pray every night of my life that she may be getting the reward I never understood sufficiently to give her, if I could. I think, perhaps, that's something to her, even now."
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