THE EDDY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2805, 18 December 1907, Page 89

THE EDDY.

Bt Riccaedo Stephens.

wood* and Sons.

Edinburgh and London: William Black-

There is a considerable charm about this book owing to the ease and brightness of the writer's style as well as to the preservation of harmonious detail and the- entire naturalness both of plot and Characters. The first chapter deals with the first meeting of the two men whose fives shall thenceforth act and react upon one another until the closing tragedy separates them for ever. Socially the paths of K-enelm Baltye, heir presumptive to the Dukedom of Dareuth, charming man and successful playwright, and Dr Amory, the poor village doctor, lie far, very far apart. At their first meeting as 3octor and patient, Amory is called in -by Baltye, who has a "pulse" and a " temperature " which might be symptomatic of divers dreadful things, but which really only mean a chill, for which Amory promptLy prescribes, enabling Baltye to continue his journey next day. The two men take a sert of liking to one another — on Baltye's side induced by the feeling that .he has found in this country practitioner a man and a gentleman of intellect and culture, yet shadowed by poverty and embittered by circumstance or temperament ;•- on Amory's, prompted by the quick and grateful response which such a man naturally feels to one of his own class who, brilliant and fortunate, treats him as an equal. * """ Still, the really vital spark in Baltye's subsequent interest in Amory's character and career springs from the fact that the episode of illness and recovery, patient and physician, occurred on the journey which was undertaken in order to propose to Diana Le Quesne, who graciously accepts him.' Always, then, the poor and solitary doctor of Glen Aire is associated in Baltye's mind with that happy journey towards a happy consummation. The chronicle of courtship merges into that of marriage amid' pleasant surroundings of society and sport in country houses, "and in its course the reader enlarges his circle of acquaintances very pleasantly, meeting a number pf most charmingly natural and unaffected people, chief of* them Diana herself, most fascinating and fair.

Many ef the episodes of country life and sport are real gems of description, as the adventures of the great stag told in the chapters "Timone the Tartar" and "Sanctuary." Meantime the life of the country doctor fLow3 monotonously on, but it is with genuine concern that Baltye,on their infrequent meetings, ' sees signs of either greater .poverty or increasing carelessness, which either or both must, in a place like Glen Aire, mean deterioration. Yet Amory had assured him that it was only by choice he had chosen this backwater of observation, to fit him better for the return to life's full current of the. great cities later on. Gradually Baltye learns that it is not a backwater that Glen Aire has - proved to Araory, but an eddy, sucking him down to chill depths of destruction. But in what shape and how the one man's downfall made the black tragedy of the other's life and left him lifeless, childless, and alone is {or the reader to read: the reviewer is no spoil-sport, to kill with injudicious babblings a healthy, honest, natural tale.