FICTION.
APRIL FOLLY.• Ma. Sr. Joins Lucas is one of the very best of our short-story writers, to say nothing of his excellent anthologies of French and Italian verse and his graceful original poems. He has also achieved distinction as a
• Apra Potty. By St. aotur -Lucas. London : Methuen and Co. Ma. eet:1 novelist, and if his latest venture—a sequel to The First Round—is not Calculated to enhance his reputation, that is largely due to his choice of subject and the prevailing mood of the mom-ent. As that admirable exponent of orthodox tradition, Lady Hythe, remarked to the hero at their first meeting : " Of comae there are plenty of bad soldiers, and stupid soldiers, and pompous empty soldiers, but the best soldiers are the best men, brave and modest and self-sacrificing. There doesn't seem to be Much scope for self-sacrifice if you're an artist." We take a regretful pleasure in reading of the "old, far-off, and happy things and joys of long ago "—to take a liberty with Wordsworth's famous lines. But there is no denying the fact that for the moment studios of the artistic temperament are rather at a discount, and the plain person has not much use for people, however amiable and Quixotic, who devote themselves to things which seem futile—such, for example, as practising the pianoforte for six hours a day. Denis Yorke is a charming fellow, but as his robust and saner fellow- artist Noel observes of him in a spasm of impatience : "Oh, Denis isn't a man ! He's only a walking musical box. When he pretends to be a human being, the results are ghastly." This is a harsh saying, but faithful are the wounds of a friend, and there is a certain core of truth in the criticism. For Denis, with all his gifts, was not out out to be even a thoroughpaced Bohemian; he was not a saint, but he was unable reccare fortitcr. It is only by one of those tours de force of which Mr. 6t. John Lucas possesses the knack that his erector is able to enlist and retain the interest of the reader in a character essentially weak and wavering.
The story, as we have said, is a sequel to The First Round, and describes the return of Denis Yorke, after spending eighteen months with his father during the latter's last illness, to the practice of his art among his friends in Chelsea. The scene is laid in Bah mian, artistic London in the late " nineties," so that, even with the Boer War impending, Denis was under no pressing obligation to redeem his ineffectual youth by adopting the calling of arms. There was nothing for him to do but to go on with his music, and Mr. St. John Lucas gives us an admirable picture of the conditions of the art world in England at the time. But the story is not swallowed up in musical technique or the jargon of the art schools. It is rather a study of the emotional vicissitudes of a young man who happened to have considerable musical gifts ; who was at once susceptible and fastidious, and, as such, was bound to suffer many disillusionments. His attachments were many. His relations with his early flame Rosalind had been altered by a tragic episode in which he had taken no part, and the tender feeling had given place to admiration. Miss Maisie Deno, the exuberant popular vocalist, who sang Brahms's songs and royalty ballads with serene impartiality, soon jarred on his refined sensibilities. Rachel Hythe, the sanest, most wholesome and broad-minded of his girl friends, was in love with him, but her mother was firmly resolved that no child of hors should marry an artist, and Donis had not sufficient force of character to defy that resolute old patrician. Besides, he had become entangled with one of his pupils, an exotic siren, estranged from an unsympathetic husband, and prepared to go all lengths to secure Denis. Yet to her credit it must be confessed that when she discovered that Denis's feelings towards her were inspired more by Quixotry than passion she gave him his congi. From this rough outline it may bo gathered that the central figure of the plot is not by any means an heroic person. His friend Noel is a far more engaging character, and Noel's talk excellently illustrates what we read of " his gift of making merry at any moment with people whom he met every hour of the day and week." And there are plenty of other attraztive whimsical people who talk well but not all alike, for Mr. St. John Lucas avoids the monotony of uniform cleverness which marks the dialogue of some excellent novelists. He is judicious, too, in skating over thin ice, for you cannot write of Bohemia without touching on its squalid fringes as well as its hearty camaraderie. We may note in conclusion that while the story is written by an artist, with a lively sympathy for artistic ideals, he is so impartial in dealing with normal and even Philistine people that we come away with a heightened respect for them.
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