"INTERPLAY."

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 425, 6 February 1909, Page 11

"INTERPLAY."

BEATRICE HARRADEN'S NEW NOVEL. "Interplay" has been hailed by English reviewers as tho best thing Mies Harraden has'done in recent years, equal they declare to the "Ships." which, passing m the night, brought her fame if, not fortune. It is bo long since that appeared, that one almost forgets the etorv, and only,remembers the skill with which Miss Harraden made her readers interest themsehes in her unusual characters and look at life for the moment from her own unusual point of view. Sho floes, just the same thing iu this now book. It is full of real'hve people, some of them rather odd, others seeming owing to the sincerity and originality of their treatments to be quite new acquaintances, though when one waits to" think about it one realises one knew them all long ago. , The two heroines are women of exceptional , character r and exceptional experiences. One is 'a divorcee who had run; off with a man who love'd her, to escape from the intolerable brutality of her husband, and who had only i been divorced on. the death of .her rescuer. She comes as'a healing. influence into the life' of the second heroine, Margaret, an old school friend'of hers, f Years afterwards when Margaret's brother comes to see her she tells him about it. . '^ \ "For, years I've knocked about in' ' lodgings," she says, ."working at a cheap rate, .wearing cheap clothes,, thinking cheap thoughts. I had no com- 1 fort on the physical side, no ment on tho "mental. My portion in life had always beeiy dead dulness. It was thought to be an unalterable law ; of nature that whatever happened to the other members of the family, Margaret ' should, remain poor and ah ays have a dull time. But one morning I woke up - with a N grim determination. I might have to continue bomg poor,"but I would v not go on being dull. So I threw up s what they called gentility, and I shipped off to Bio as a stewardess. Since tnen ' I've been, and I've done, all manner of things out in the big world. I've taken i iij washing, given French, German,i English literature lessons, I've tried my hand at massage, I've given dancing lessons, I've practised medicine and palmistry. Nothing paid so well as the palmistry. It had toube a very i-poorrtoHUKUiitho West lof'America where *h' could ''not Bhdvel in'"quite'a 'large rn"tfifibTorf)of"dollars m' tho course of two or s three dajs. Well, one morning when I was in San •Diego, iin Southern California," a-knock i camo.at my office door, r and m strolled a handsomely-dressed woman of queenly ' presence. 'I saw with a thrill of pleasure that sho was English. 'I've come to have my hands read,' she said. 'I hope you won't tell me very dreadful things i though.' Her English 1 voice seemed .familiar to me, I supposed, because it was English. But no. That wasn't the reason. We stared at each other. 'Margaret,' she cried. 'Harriet,' I cried. She was my old school-friend, Harriet Langton." , v "We did not much palmistry," Margaret wont on. "Sho wanted me to read her hands, but I'told her I , was not-seriously interested in the subi jectj and had.only taken it up because it was the easiest means of getting a livelihood, and because I -was i worn out and bored to death with all the humdrum ways. Then sho asked to hear my history, which told her. And whtit do you think she said 5 Ah, I shall never forget that morning. I was born again that morning. She said, 'Poor old girl, you Jiave had a dull time of it. Deadly, deadly dull. No wonder you don't care what becomes of you. But it must not go on. Throw up tho whole thing and become my companion: I myself am lonely. I'll give you £400 a year and something valuable in ""addition. For I'll make a promise never to tyrannise over you, nor pai''oruso you '" The story of howj'this promise works out, and of thr> effect prjiuced by the interplay of these strong characters with the characters of those ,around them is a very interesting one. There is a old lady, Margaret's wealthy aunt, who wraps herself round with luxury and disregards everybody's feelings, and literally crushes tho life out of her poor meek little companion, but even she is not k> nearly the villain of the piece as is Ermyntrude. the cultured lady whoso crinio is her over-culture and deficient sympathies. No one, had ever dreamed of challenging her , goodness, her wisdom, her culture, her criticism,'her sympathy, her methods., The cachet of her approval was invariably coveted on all momentous occasions." ',One would bo inclined to believe that this tiresome person was beyond tho reach of human improvement, and it is one of the best bits in the book that describes how she broadens under the influence, of Margaret and her friend Harriet,-until at last, when the biutal husband who had divorced her, offers Harriet an insult in a public hall, it is the him te flight ntrUde Wh ° rUffleS Up and puts Then there is an Arctio explorer and his charming niece, a doctor well on the wav to becoming an eminent fashionable physician , wjio'is.saved m tho nick of time and humanised, a,simple-witted mender of violins,,and Margaret's pious brother, all of them capitaUy described, and all forming a society whose Jrfctle experiences are more interesting than any ordinary, plot could be. The blot on the book is its wilfully unhappy ending which is quite as unnecessary as the c-eatn'of thu heroine (or was it the hero?) in tho "Ships that Pass," but, ovenm spito of that tragedy, the book is one to give pleasure , \

It-is rather cnrious that artillerymen BJiouH have as their patron a female saint Jμ it is.tho fact that St Barbara, whose festival falls is pretty universally recognised as the patron of gunners and sapv pors. According to the , ancient narratives, ]t came about'in this way. St. Barbara jas the , daughter of a riph heathen named IJioscorus, who, m order to preserve her from the outsMe world, kept her shut up'in a tower The time came when he h.id to go on a journey, and when ,he returned ho found that his daughter,, for all his precautions, had become a Christian. He took her before the Prefect, uho condemned her to death by beheading, and her father himself carried out the' sentence , On his way homo he was struck, by lightning' and his body consumed. This legend caused St Barbara to bo regarded as the saint to protect , one from .the dangers of thunderstorms and fire, and later, when artillerv i wai. invented, ■> by a curious analogy, as the patron of artillerymen and miners—the wielders,of thunder and lightning, as it nero