AMONG THE BOOKS. JARWICK, THE PRODIGAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2623, 22 June 1904, Page 76

AMONG THE BOOKS. JARWICK, THE PRODIGAL.

By Tom Gallon;

London and Melbourne: Waiid, Lock and Co. Dunedin : Braitln-aite's Book Arcade.

There is a natural tendency, especially among women, to exhibit towards "the Prodigal Son," whether of greater or less degree, of high or of humble life, tenderness and sympathy. "Jarwick"' should, we think, prove one of the exceptions necessity to prove tho rule. He is utterly unluv.'ble ; from the first page to the last he f.ifis to aw3.ke':i one tin-ill of sympathy. In the whole history of the one amazing v ■ ok which, lie lias favoured us with, and in vh:cli he varks the role of Jarwick, the criminal and goal bird, by the assumption of Jarwick the prodigal, there is not one incident in which hs appeals to our genuine interest. The ?onof a viflainoiK father, who governs with the iron rod of a merciless- and entirely selfish naUire his gang of criminal associates, Randal Jarwick is educated in crime from childhood. A touch of picturesquere^s is imparted to the portrait of old .Simon Jaiwick by the fact that hs is stone blind. After several minor convictions, Rynda.l receives a long sentence for forgery, but succeeds in, escaping from prison before his term is up. On the second' night of his houseless wanderings he selects a large country house, standing alone in its own ground, a likely place for concealment. Successfully climbing by the ivy to an upstairs window, and effecting an entrance, he stumble- 1 ? upon a tragedy. Having cautiously lit a match, he finds the room already tenanted. With head punk upon his outstretched arms, a man sits at a table ccvered Tiith bottle*, glares, and cards, while the floor around him is littered with cards and overturned furniture. A drunken gambler — the more easily relieved of his winnings, reflects Randal, and, advancing cautiously, touches the still figure. ... A glance at the battered skull drives him to the utmost limit of the room in horror ; the man is dead — murdered ! He waits, trying to recover his nerve in the darkness, and as he waits the silent house echoes to a sound familiar to him from childhood. "It was the tap of a stick. In the- dread silence of the place I could heaa- that stick feeling its way, as it were. . . . two taps- on the floor, and then one-, softer, on. the wall be&ide." With the entrance of the elder Jarwick — a curious proceeding, by the way, this blind man making a. pilgrimage io the dark room in which he knew sat a dead man — the spinning of the web begins. The arrival of his son is most opportune to the plans of the elder rascal, and before the day has fairly dawned old Jarwick has coaxed and bullied R-andal into undertaking an impei'sanatioai of "the Prodigal Son" which wil, he hopes, successfully carry through the most, complex and brilliant scheme he has yet conceived. The murdered man in that deserted upper chamber is one Wyatt Daulby, a member of Jarwick's gang whoJiad confided to old Simon, his plans for personating the longlost son of a wealthy landowner in the neighbourhood — Mr Nathaniel Rowley. Daulby was unpardonably selfish, and disinolined to shace the profits fairly, to the righteous disgust of his blind chief. It happen^, then, that in a prolonged sitting at caids Owen Barnifon, a mere boy, sole heir to an enormously wealthy maiden aunt, and deeply in love with Nathaniel Rowley's Lik'ce, accuses Daulby of cheating ; a quarrel ensues, and Bar-mson, in. a drunken fury, deah Daalbv a fatr.l blow v. kh a Leavy chair. At least this is the miserable sLory which old Simon Jarwick wakens Owen Barnison at grey dawn to tell him. To Randal the boy seems more like one who has been drugged than drunk, so^ utter is his oblivion of the events of that fatal night. Dazed and horror-stricken, he is persuaded that fox the sake of those who

T love him flight and subsequent self -eft ieemean are the only course open to him ; and ,so departs leaving the field clear for Simon's great scßeme. j RancUl Jarwick at ones begins the sometvhat complicated study of his new position as (Jeorge Bowley, the long-lost prodigal son, from papers collected by the unfortunate Daulby, and before the day is over finds himself successfully installed as the only son of Rowley, of Rowley Park. Impossible, unreal, and melodramatic as ali this i*. it is a mere nothing to the wild nbsurdities of the ensuing week. Stage rasj cals and melodramatic villains msh in and out of the quiet well-ordained country house at all hours of the day and night, without ! exciting either suspicion or comment : any I slackness in the incidents is filled in by j the dragging on and off the stage of a cerI tain horrible che^ in which is packed the | crumpled up body of the murdered man : every mle of probability is defied, every canon of literary art disregarded. One merit; only pertaiiTs to this farcic-il study of a criminal — there is never one spark of sympathy or one atom of fascination shed over the villains or their viMainy. The reader's interest is ps perfunctoiy as blatant unI re a ity can make it.