Chapter 4

I enjoyed at a pleasant sitting the whole of Mr. FRANK SWINNERTON'S _Nocturne_ (SECKER). I don't quite know (and I don't see how the author can quite know) whether his portraits of pretty self-willed _Jenny_ and plain love-hungry _Emmy_, the daughters of the superannuated iron-moulder, are true to life, but they are extraordinarily plausible. Not a word or a mood or a move in the inter-play of five characters in four hours of a single night, the two girls and "_Pa_," and _Alf_ and _Keith_, the sailor and almost gentleman who was _Jenny's_ lover, seemed to me out of place. The little scene in the cabin of the yacht between _Jenny_ and _Keith_ is a quite brilliant study in selective realism. Take the trouble to look back on the finished chapters and see how much Mr. SWINNERTON has told you in how few strokes, and you will realise the fine and precise artistry of this attractive volume. I can see the lights, the silver and the red glow of the wine; and I follow the flashes and pouts and tearful pride of _Jenny_, and _Keith's_ patient, embarrassed, masterful wooing as if I had been shamefully eavesdropping.

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_Fool Divine_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) stands to some extent in a position unique among novels in that its heroine is also its villainess, or at least the wrecker of its hero. _Nevile del Varna_, the lady in question, is indeed the only female character in the tale, and has therefore naturally to work double tides. What happened was that young _Christopher_, a superman and hero, dedicate, as a volunteer, to the unending warfare of science against the evil goddess of the Tropics, yellow fever, met this more human divinity when on his journey to the scene of action, and, like a more celebrated predecessor, "turned aside to her." Then, naturally enough, when _Nevile_ has gotten him for her husband and when love of her has caused him to abandon his project of self-sacrifice, she repays him with scorn. And as the unhappy _Christopher_ already scorns himself the rest of the book (till the final chapters) is a record of deterioration more clever than exactly cheerful. The moral of it all being, I suppose, that if you are wedded to an ideal you should beware of taking to yourself a mortal wife, for that means bigamy. Incidentally the book contains some wonderfully impressive pictures of tropical life and of the general beastliness of existence on a rubber plantation. At the end, as I have indicated, regeneration comes for _Christopher_--though I will not reveal just how this happens. There is also a subsidiary interest in the revolutionary affairs of Cuba, which the much-employed _Nevile_ appears to manage, as a local Joan of Arc, in her spare moments; and altogether the book can be recommended as one that will at least take you well away from the discomforts of here and now.

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