A NO VEL.

Grey River Argus, 3 July 1922, Page 8

A NO VEL.

BY A NEW ZEALANDER. LONDON, May 32. ' There will doubtless be many who will feel that Miss Jane Mander, in her new novel “The Passionate Puritan" (John Lam, London ami New York) has done d <ee t o :he reput at ion of New Z On' the other hand, the author ias already a fame on account of her previous woik “The Story ox a New Zealand River, | must be considered as one of the t> I writers of the past 50 years who ha found it possible to handle the !• ■ I colour of the •• -kbloeks scene with | mastery which. ' ’>le to convince ti.>most famili 1 v ill* the country. Ag;i> her story is subdued, and she does a wonderful service to the Domi nion by making of her characters living modern people and not the raricai in ■ which the unthinking public too olnm expect from writers who arc dea -u ~ with the great open spaces of the Jan pire. It is this artistic handling which is going to make the present volume an important contribution to New Zealand literature. Sidney Carey, the passionate Puritan, is a young school teacher of Auckland, who has done well in her examinations and has also tried, but in vain, to evade the regulations and obtain a place in a City school instead of spend ! ing the regulation two years in the country. In spite of her friendship | with the chairman of the Education j Board, she is sent to take charge of a ■ new school at Puhipuhi, near Whanga rei. There she is r bsorbed into the routine life of the mill settlement. r l h■■ bush, the mill, and the surrounding country generally become very real in the fabric of the story, and are treat cd with just that incidental artistry which gives the book its greatest value. The lesser characters, too, are all very true and convincing. As to the main theme —the Passionate Puritan’s progress to tolerance of an easier standard of sex morality—it handled with equal dexterity. Sidney Ct rev eventually falls in love with Arthur Devereaux, an English stranger with the natural graces of a well-bred Englishmen, a generous na ture, and with an honest appreciation of his fellow men, which is often considered to be absent in the unattached wandering stranger from the Mother Country. He is still waiting for a divorce from a w/? in England. In the meantime, he has been entertaining himself with a liaison with Mana, the wife of a Maori interpreter who is much away attending the Native Law Courts. Mana, the artistic, the patrician, the friend of the Native Ministers and members of Parliament, is well painted. She is perhaps a little too well painted, as it were, but the in tention doubtless in the author’s mind is to counteract a delusion so often possessed by those abroard concerning the Maori race. With the rest of her accomplishments Mana has an enligh tened easy virtue, and so hrs Arthur Devereaux. How Sidney Carey adjusts her passionate nature to her Puritan prejudices in the long run by means of common sense and a sense of humour is the climax to an interest ing story. Having adjusted herself to the thought of f.l.- ' orccd wife, she stag gers one da' ■ more serious thin 1 s. ! For one th . • n recognises eaux’s blue ■ •- > ;■> iamas on tin* lino at Maun •firm. For num’ thing she sees a white baby in p ambulator on Mana’s verandah. : n | without waiting she returns to I ; horse and rides aw: y, her dreams : shattered. Lai- Sidney has an int view with Mana “Oh, Miss C v, I—l wanted to tell you not. to b jealous to m< —abmi. Mr Devereaux —it was all over lon - ago, and you—you must have made , mistake about th- baby . . that wasn’t my baby, Miss Carey. That was Mrs Allen’s baby. She came over from the camp to see if I could spare some fresh eggs. Her husband was very ill. My baby, was asleep inside, and 1 put hers in the pram on the verandah while we went to look for the eggs. So that is what it was, We wondered how yon could possibly have found out after it was all over. I have been so careful ’ ’ ‘She stopped, because Sidney had jumped from her chair and strode out side. For some seconds Sidney used language entirely unbecoming to a lady. Then she threw back her head and laughed a harsh and bitter laugh at the scvjrvy trick Fate and her own suspicions had played her. Poor Mana sat very uncomfortably, not knowing what to do. And she hardly dared look up when Sidney walked in again. “Mrna, I want to get all of this out of my system now, so I’m going to ask some more questions. You have evidently seen Mr Devereaux since I 1 saw him last. He must have told you also about the pyjamas, his blue pyjamas. I saw them on your line two or three weeks ago.’ Mana blushed under her tawny skin. “ *1 was wearing them, Miss Carey,’ she said, in great confusion. ‘I—T kept- them for a keepsake—l liked the colour —I know’ I ought to have sent them back’—she paused, looking at the floor. “As Sidney stood watching her, a flame of shame crossed her own face. ‘God! What a beast I am,’ she said.’’ It is an interesting story, but hardly an elevating one. One sentence in a review’ of the book in a leading London daily will perhaps show’ how it may be misunderstood: “As she approaches her curtain, Miss Mander becomes increasingly sportive in her handling of the moral issues of her heroine’s story. Take this tolerance as typical of the Southern clime, and compare it with the grim and rigid view of conduct in Canadian backblock fiction: the contrast illumines our sense of far-flung k Empire.’’