Chapter 4

Mr. ALEXANDER MACFARLAN'S new story, _The Inscrutable Lovers_ (HEINEMANN), is not the first to have what one may call Revolutionary Ireland for its background, but it is by all odds the most readable, possibly because it is not in any sense a political novel. It is in characters rather than events that the author interests himself. A highly refined, well-to-do and extremely picturesque Irish revolutionary, whom the author not very happily christens _Count Kettle_, has a daughter who secretly abhors romance and the high-falutin sentimentality that he and his circle mistake for patriotism. To her father's disgust she marries an apparently staid and practical young Scotch ship-owner, who at heart is a confirmed romantic. The circumstances which lead to their marriage and the subsequent events which reveal to each the other's true temperament provide the "plot" of _The Inscrutable Lovers_. Though slender it is original and might lend itself either to farce or tragedy. Mr. MACFARLAN'S attitude is pleasantly analytical. It is indeed his delightful air of remote criticism, his restrained and epigrammatic style queerly suggestive of ROMAIN ROLAND in _The Market Place_, and his extremely clever portraiture, rather than any breadth or depth appertaining to the story itself, that entitle the author to a high place among the young novelists of to-day. Mr. MACFARLAN--is he by any chance the Rev. ALEXANDER MACFARLAN?--may and doubtless will produce more formidable works of fiction in due course; he will scarcely write anything smoother, more sparing of the superfluous word or that offers a more perfect blend of sympathy and analysis.

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_Susie_ (DUCKWORTH) is the story of a minx or an exposition of the eternal feminine according to the reader's own convictions. I am not sure--and I suppose that places me among those who regard her heroine as the mere minx--that the Hon. Mrs. DOWDALL has done well in expending so much cleverness in telling _Susie's_ story. Certainly those who think of marriage as a high calling, for which the vocation is love, will be as much annoyed with her as was her cousin _Lucy_, the idealist, at once the most amusing and most pathetic figure in the book. I am quite sure that Susies and Lucys both abound, and that Mrs. DOWDALL knows all about them; but I am not equally sure that the Susies deserve the encouragement of such a brilliant dissection. Yet the men whose happiness she played with believed in _Susie's_ representation of herself as quite well-meaning, and other women who saw through her liked her in spite of their annoyance; and--after all the other things I have said--I am bound, in sincerity, to admit that I liked her too.

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You could scarcely have given a novelist a harder case than to prove the likeableness of _Cherry Mart_, as her actions show her in _September_ (METHUEN), and I wonder how a Victorian writer would have dealt with the terrible chit. But FRANK SWINNERTON, of course, is able to hold these astonishing briefs with ease. Here is a girl who first turns the head of _Marian Forster's_ middle-aged husband in a pure fit of experimentalism, and then sets her cap with defiant malice at the young man who seems likely to bring real love into the elder woman's life. And yet _Marian_ grows always fonder of her, and she, in the manner of a wayward and naughty child, of _Marian_. Insolence and _gaucherie_ are on the one hand, coolness and finished grace on the other, and, although there are several moments of hatred between the two, their affection is the proper theme of the book. As for _Nigel_, he is impetuous and handsome, and falls in love with _Marian_ because she is sympathetic, and with _Cherry_ because she is _Cherry_, and also perhaps a little because the War has begun and the day of youth triumphant has arrived. But he does not make a very deep impression upon me, and as for _Marian's_ husband, who is big and rather stupid, and always has been, I gather, a bit of a dog, he scarcely counts at all. _Marian_, however, is an extremely clever and intricate study, and for _Cherry_--I don't really know whether I like _Cherry_ or not. But I have certainly met her.

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Mr. Punch has pleasure in calling attention to two small volumes, lately issued, which reproduce matter that has appeared in his pages and therefore does not need any further token of his approbation: to wit, _A Little Loot_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN), by Captain E.V. KNOX ("EVOE"); and _Staff Tales_ (CONSTABLE), by Captain W.P. LIPSCOMB, M.C. ("L."), with illustrations, now first published, by Mr. H.M. BATEMAN. Also to _A Zoovenir_ (Dublin: The Royal Zoological Society of Ireland), by Mr. CYRIL BRETHERTON ("ALGOL"), a book of verses which have appeared elsewhere and are being sold for the benefit of the Dublin Zoo.

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