NOVELS OF THE WEEK.* WHEN " John Oliver Hobbes "
published vo School for Saints in the autumn of 1897, she promised.ua a continuation, , and in Robert Orange that promise is redeemed,.and, what is more, redeemed with _a measure of success•-rare in sequels.. Though less prodigal of incident and description, the present volume is far superior to its predecessor in concentration and intensity, dealing as it does with the, culminating episode i# • the. life-history. so discnrsiyely, treated in . the earlier • book. At the close of 'The School for Saints it may be remeisibered that. Robert, Orange, the brilliant and many-sided idealigt, had become engaged to the beautiful Mrs. Parflete, the daughter, by 11 morganatic marriage, of . an. Archduke and an actress. The vohime before .us unfolds the tragic cense- quences of that. marriage. for Orange and , his Mends. ,a. greater tangle .of amorous cross-purposes , than that presented at the. outset could hardly be imagined..., 13etween Robert Orange and his Brigit. (Mrs. Parflete) there is perfect mutual affection, but at least ..two other women are deeply. in . love with Robert,—Lady Fitz Rewes, a charming, amiable widow, who accepts the situation with gentle .resignation, and . Lady Sara de Treverell, a high-spirited, audacious creature, tortured by the pangs of unrequited love, yet never betraYing herself in Robert's presence. It should be added that these two ladies know each other's secret. Then we have Lord Reckage —Robert's friend and former' patrOn-7who is really, in• leve with' Lady...Sara, but ha's . engaged himself to- Miss Carillon, . who is in love with David Rennes, the painter:. Very early in the book Robert is married to Mrs. Parflete, and starts for the Continent, only to be pursued by the news that Mr.. Parflete is still alive. The unhappy pair, after a brief and agonising moment of rebellion, part company, Brigit finding ' an anodyne for her grief in the exercise 'of her hereditary histrionic talent, while Robert, after killing in a duel a man who had grossly insulted Mrs. Parfiete, quits the' political arena and enters the PriesthOod. Brigit, receives a letter indi, eating this intention the day after her husband's death;-but refuses to blunt her lover's resolve by telling him of her freedom. Meantime Lord Reckage, freed from his engage- ment by the opportune elopement of Miss Carillon with the
*
(1.) Robert Orange. By; John Oliver Hobbes.. Londoh : Fisher Unseln. [6A] -,-(2.) A. Millionaire of Yesterday. By E. Phillips Oppenhehn. 'London : Wahl, Lock, and Co. [es.]--(3.) The Monk and the Dancer. By Arthur Cosslett Smith. London : Downey and Co. (Be, Od.]—(4.) The Avenging of Ritthanna. By Mrs. Coulson nernahan. London : John Long. [Ss.)—(5,) An American Countess. BY Mrs. Urban Hawkeswood. .London : John Macqueen. [es.]—(6.) The ranishing of Tem. 13y-'Fergus Hume. London : F. V. White. [es.]—(7. ).A•Girt of the North. By Helen Mliecete. London : - Craening and Co. (ts.F--(8.) Should She have gpokeu By. Eicher. Miller. London :"Ward, Lock, and Co. [Ss. 6d.]—.-(9.) The -Ilan-Stealers. By 3L. P. Shiel. London: Hutchinson and Co. (6s.)—(10.) The Yellow Danger. By M. P. :Wel. New Edition; London : Giant Richards. [3s. 613.]—(11:) Son: of the State. By W. Pett Ridge. London : Methuen and Co. [31. 6d.] .. painter, makes violent love to Lady Sara. She, however, while fascinated by his personal magnetism, is fully alive to his selfishness, and, resenting a contemplated act of treachery on his part to Orange, has decided to give him his congg when he meets with fatal injuries by being thrown from his horse. A letter from Disraeli, supposed to be written some ten years later, gives us the subsequent history of the principal characters. Mrs. Parflete has remained faithful to the stage ; Robert Orange, leading a life of great simplicity and seclusion, has died of overwork ; Lady Sara has become a Carmelite nun. This brief outline of the plot takes no account of sundry theological and political digressions, or of the appear- ances of Disraeli, who, as in the earlier book, exerts a para- mount political influence on the principal characters, to say nothing of his literary influence on the author's style. It is, we think, a flaw in the story that Robert Orange is over- shadowed by the unscrupulous, masterful, yet engaging Lord Reckage, just as Brigit is far less interesting and less human than the indiscreet yet fascinating Lady Sara. The struggle between Robert's ambition and his idealism, between the earthly and spiritual side of his complex nature, is cleverly rather than convincingly portrayed. It must be added that this brilliant novel is written with a distinction unfamiliar in contemporary fiction. It is rare in these democratic days to encounter a book in which the existence of the masses is barely hinted at; it is not unwelcome, after the tyranny of slum realism, to be for once in a way completely relieved from the contemplation of squalid emotions and underbred unhappiness.
Mr. Oppenheim, who is in danger of becoming the victim of a dangerous fertility, takes for the theme of his new novel the always engrossing topic of the quest and attainment of boundless wealth. Scarlett Trent, the hero of A Millionaire of Yesterday, is an ex-Board-school boy who has drifted to West Africa, tnd in partnership with a broken-down and bibulous aristo- crat secured a valuable mining concession on the Congo.
With his dying breath Trent's partner entreats him to befriend his daughter, but, had not Ernestine come across the mil- lionaire professionally as a lady interviewer, it is to be feared he would never have thought of fulfilling his promise. The remainder of the story is concerned with the regeneration of the Napoleonic hero under the influence of his passion for the refined and gracious lady journalist. Disgusted with his
rowdy and vulgar associates, the West African Colossus is initiated into the usages of polite society by the angelic inter,
viewer, to whom, after various vicissitudes, he is in the end happily united. It only remains to be added that her father, whom Trent had treated with a good deal of brutality and left as dead in the pestilent swamps of the Congo, is miraculously restored to life, respectability, and affluence.
The Monk and the Dancer, the longest and most ambitious of the tales in Mr. Cosslett's collection, handles an abnormal theme with no little skill and a fair measure of artistic reticence. The hero is a young Trappist monk, punished for speaking to a beautiful visitor. When the Abbot goes at midnight to the offender's cell to reveal the fact that he is Brother Angelo's father, he finds him flown. The lady, a famous Spanish dancer, soon tires of her unworldly lover, and deserts him for a bull-fighter, and when Brother Angelo, after tramping from Venice to Paris, has realised the hopelessness of his quest, the story closes with the return of the truant to the monastery at the moment when the Abbot was about to resign his post in order to seek and rescue his son. The remaining stories exhibit a tendency in the direction of the fantastic and the macabre not always regulated by unim- peachable taste, but are marked by undeniable audacity of invention and vigour of expression.
Mrs. Coulson Kernahan, unlike many modern novelists, has generally something to say when she writes a book. In The Avenging of Ruthanna the theme is not very attractive, although, to give him his due, the hero only sins against Ruthanna's peace of mind. That is, Cecil Calverley has the grace to run away from further temptation when he has made poor little Ruthanna fall hopelessly in love with him. Cecil Calverley is a clever piece of character-drawing, but to the present writer most of the personages of the drama are so odious that its perusal is more of a penance than a pleasure.
An American Countess relates how Lord Hawkhurst marries su unfortunate American girl for her money,—to please his mother and restore the family fortunes. To please himself, he sets up at the same time a separate establishment, with his mother's maid as its mistress. The maid, who is a lady by birth, does not know of her lover's marriage, and is repre- sented as so beautiful and virtuous that the reader cannot understand why she yields to her lover's desire that she should become his wife " morally " and not legally. However, the moral of the book is not antinomian, since the leading characters all prepare an awful legacy of " death and mad- ness" for themselves. The book is readable rather than attractive, and leaves a decided after-taste of depression.
Mr. Fergus Hume having presumably exhausted the passions of people who are supposed to be civilised, boldly takes a South Sea Islander as his heroine in The Vanishing of Tera. This young lady, the Tera who vanished, is a so-called convert to Christianity, and her one idea is to marry her sailor lover —for she has been imported to England—and return to her home, and probably to her gods. About her and her adven- tures, about the minister who is her guardian, and about the murder of a gipsy with whom Tera changes clothes, Mr. Fergus Hume weaves a rather exciting story. The book will interest people who like a new flavouring added to Mr. Hume's popular receipt for detective literature.
" The North" in Miss Milecete's story means Canada, and the few glimpses of Canada which the author vouchsafes us are well drawn. But she is not quite so original when she transports her characters to London. Even there, however, the story is of average interest, though people are becoming
rather common in fiction who, like Mrs. Phillips, try experi- ments with their conjugal relations in order to avoid the monotony of married life.
What " she " (presumably the heroine of Should She Have Spoken ?) could possibly have said if she had spoken, the reader is at a loss to imagine. When a young lady finds on the eve of her wedding day that her husband's first wife is after all not dead, and when the said husband walks in his sleep to such purpose that he pops a bloody knife into a bag, and the said first wife is found murdered in the morning, there does not seem much left to say. However, " truth will out," and the real murderer is discovered at the end of the book. The hero's first marriage turns out to have been no marriage on the part of the first wife, and all is well. It is curious how many virtuous gentlemen have their happiness restored in fiction by finding out that their first marriage was bigamous. The book is not at all a bad specimen of its class, the quiet subsidiary plot and love affair which the author introduces being handled with no little skill.
Mr. Shiel finds congenial scope for his talents in The Man-Stealers, a highly sensational imaginary episode in the life of the great Duke. We may note at the same time the opportune reissue of the same writer's lurid romance, The Yellow Danger, and the appearance in a 3s. 6d. edition of Mr. Pett Ridge's admirable story, A Son of the State, originally published in Messrs. Methuen's sixpenny " Novelist" series. Bobbie Lancaster is a most delightful character, and richly deserves his promotion.
Previous page
