LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3234, 8 March 1916, Page 74

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. 'Captain, the Cure. By Margaret Baillie 'Saunders. London: H odder and Stdughton. (Cloth; 3s 6d.) This is a story of gallant Belgium, her suffering, heroism, and unbending endurance. It begins in Louvain a few days before the arrival of the German troops, and gives a charming picture of that quaint old town basking in the hot sunshine of the early autumn, with its contented population moving quietly about the sunny streets. A great procession in honour of the Virgin is in progress, and the women and girls of all ages are busily preparing for it, arranging their dresses, their flowers, their positions in the procession, all under the authoritative direction of their priest, Xavier Hermande de Bethune van' Susterens, a native of Bruges, with more than a touch of Spanish blood in his veins, intensely proud of his name and race and all that it means, and prouder still of his ecclesiastical position and all that that means—a proud man, a proud priest, scarcely a Christian as one would understand that word. Among the celebrities of Louvain specially introduced to the reader are Dr Oyyens* and his two daughters—MarieUrsule and Ottilie—and Jodoc Vintmeyer, the lawyer, a close friend and neighbour. The men talk "ravely and earnestly, yet without fear, for though Belgium has been many times in the hands of an enemy, the neutrality of its people has generally been respected, and, "Are we not in the twentieth century in the hands of the most civilised people in the world 1" The two girls are beautiful exceedingly, the belles of Louvain. Marie-Ursule is a white saint, a perfect blonde, whoso thoughts are already turning to a convent life and the gathering of the roses of Paradise. Ottilie is a brilliant, mischieyous hoyden, full of life and spirits, longing for gaiety, amusement, and pleasure of all hinds, always ready to tease her sedate elders and to make fun even of the Cure himself. Happy, gay, light-hearted child! There were thousands like her in Belgium on that August 15, 1914. Then follows the entrance of the Germans and their kindly reception by non-combatant citizens, who had not yet learnt the lesson of "frightfulness." Quickly come the orders from Berlin for "wholesale murder, torture, outrage, rape, and sacrilege amidst orgies of wine-drinking and looting," for the citizens of Louvain had been marked down at headquarters to pay for the misdoings and mortification of Liege as well as to strike terror into the hearts of thft people of Brussels and Antwerp. The family of Oyyens are betrayed by a German spy, passing as an American who had lived for a year or more quite near to them, and made surreptitious love to the brilliant Ofillie. The fate of this family is awful beyond description; the parents are shot on their own doorstep, the girls are carried off. Ottilie, a mere child, full of the joy of life, onlv half understanding the position and carried away by the appeal to the senses, plays with, dances for, and cajoles her captors, finally accepting one Teuton lover as a protection against many; but Marie-Ursule, that Saint of God, is done to death, and her dead body is found by the Cure Susterens amid a- heap of other victims, in the little public garden which forms the centre of the square of the Place de la Gare. Maddened by the sight, wl ich comes as a climax of 48 hours of incredible sufferings of mind and body, the young priest tears off his cassock and his collar, blasphemes the name of his God, Who permits such horrors, and vows himself to a pitiless revenge. He raves, not knowing what he says :

"Marie-Ursule, the white, the spotless, to bo done to death like this. Through what horrors, what nameless orgies had she passed, through what had she not been dragged at the hands of those fiends to come to this. There was a wound in her breast, but she had died of shame. , . . lie must kill, raze, annihilate those Avho had done this foul thing. Ho must fight them, lacerate them, hack at their throats, their eyes. . . ." He raved on. He did not know what" he was saying, raving alone in the square garden under the still heavens. A huge, overmastering wave of passion had surged up in him from some unknown depths of his nature and was over-running the whole of his being; some fierce, barbarian force of rage,

maddenly magnificent in its riot of pain and fury. It was the savage, which

is in every man rising to the ascendant for the first time in all his enclosed, cut-and-clipped, •well-ordered Seminarist life. His priesthood, his obligations, all his long devotion to little images and little forms, were caught up and swept away in that great red tide of rage and ' human indignation and passionate revenge. When next we hear of him, he has enlisted in the Belgian army, is already a corporal, and has made for himself a terrible name as a veritable Scourge of God; devising endless death-traps, killing and maiming with his own hands, utterly given over to hatred, revenge, and bloodshed. "Men say that he has a devil. He refuses to go to Mass. He chants to himself in curses instead." None know his history. The name of Susterens is common enough. His comrades regard him with fearful admiration in their quiet, somewhat stolid natures. Ho lives almost without food or sleep, with no desire but vengeance—a vengence never sated, which grows with what it feeds on. And wherever he went he always looked out for Ottilio and for the naturalised German who had betrayed her and her family. At last he finds her, crushed and ragged, disguised as a peasant boy driven by flogging to act as a spy, tho betrayer of her own people. The priest is now a captain, and to save the sister of MarieUrsule from the death of a spy _ he marries her, nnd takes her to a little house on tho dunes, within earshot of the fighting to which his life is devoted. Hero

she is pursued by her implacable enemy ; here she learns to love the fierce man who saved her from an awful fate; here, too, the lust of vengeance falls from the foresworn priest; he awakens from his madness and learns once more to trust the God, Whom he had so furiously blasphemed. How these things are brought

about wo leave the readers of this powerful novel to discover for themselves. The whole story is a fsplendid tribute to the gallantry of our little ally, and a lasting souvenir of those crimes which must never be forgotten ; while as for the priest-captain "A Belgian is often very like an Englishman—before you can wake the saint in him you have to rouse the devil."

"The Immortal Gymnasts." By Marie Cher. London: W. Heinomann. Melbourne, etc. : G. Bobertson and Co. ((3s 6d, 2s 6d.) A certain learned doctor of Harley street has written a book, announcing that in his work as a nerve specialist he has run across an order of beings whose conduct is regulated by certain Cloud Currents just as our own lives are regulated by certain Earth Currents. The doctor long susnected the existence of these beings, and although he has not yet been ableTo lay "his long, supple white hand" on any of them, he is so convinced of their existence that he has written a book to prove it. This book Miss Marie Cher appears to have appropriated with its singular nomenclature, the earth folk being called Cubes (or solids) and the more ethereal being, inhabitants of Clondland or the Fourth Dimension. Three Cloudlanders—Pantaloon, Harlequin, and Columbine —Immortal Spirits of Comedy—are here represented as dwelling, for a time, in Cubical disguise, whilo still exercising their Cloudland heritage by means of which they can enter into the thoughts and actions, past, present, and future, of thoso with whom they come into sympathetic accord. Quin (Harlequin) possesses this power to the greatest extent, the other two getting it only occasionally, and in this way he, and the reader through him, gains much intimate knowledge of the ways and works of the actors in the drama of the three love stories which form the cubical basis of Miss Mario Cher's extraordinary romance. For practical purposes the three wanderers from Cloudland take common cubical name and live in a Loudon suburb, where the dainty shop of dairy produce of Miss Bina'Banta (Columbine) forms the centre of attraction where she ministers to her reputed father (Pantaloon), and receives the constant attentions of her age-old, yet ever youthful, lover Quin (Harlequin). This is truly an "other world" story of most unusual type, which will no doubt appeal to many jaded novel-readers.

" Lady Bridget in the Ncver-Never Land." By Mrs Campbell Praed. London: Hutchinson and Co. (3s 6d, 2s 6d).

In writing of Australia Mrs Campbell Praed is entirely in her element, and every bit of description in her present volume will meet with hearty appreciation from those best qualified to pass an opinion. The story itself is bright and fairly convincing. The heroine, Lady Bridget O'Hara, a fascinating, unconventional Irish girl, scorns the marriage system as practised in conventional homo circles, and goes to Australia in search of other distractions than love. Hero she meets Colin M'Kcith, a very admirable specimen of the Australian squatter of small means. Lady Bridget is at once- attracted by tho man's personality, and Alio out-door life of freedom and aaventiu; *s which he offers to her. She is absolr ely ignorant of what it all moans; of tho jivations she must necessarily undergo; of I to lonely life of hard work which must 1 j the lot of every pioneer's wife—a lot onl .rendered endurable by the deepest love i >d sympathy. At first Bridget has neither. She is like a child venturing into the unknown, so that the Nover-Never Land, in her case, justifies its name. It is true of the O'Hara's, as of many other old Irish families, that they leap first and look out after. Bridget marries in haste and sets forth lightheartedly and ignorantly on her great adventure. What follows is an admirable version of "a conflict between a daughter of tho old civilisation and a son of the new, with its unfettered outlook and ideals." Colfm's great mistake is that of keeping his wife in ignorance of his truq position. He is not rich, but he desires to give her everything of tho best. He has trouble with unionists, leading to the destruction of hi." cattle and desertion of his men; ho has trouble with the blacks, and resolutely keeps away from the station all but two, whom he thinks that he can trust. To crown all, a terrible drought threatens complete ruin and destruction' of nil his pastoral ambitions. Bridget misjudges him on all these'counts, and increases all his difficulties. The division between them seems hopeless, and the little rift in the lute threatens to make all the music mute; when tho great remedy of absence comes to tho rescue. Lady Bridget is called Home to receive a legacy from a rich aunt. M'Keith accepts the parting as final, but it is only the preparation for a better understanding ; and Bridget returns to him at the very moment when his fortunes and his hopes are at tho lowest ebb. " The Kangaroo Marines." By Captain R. W. Campbell. London: Caesell and Company, (ts net.) Those who road with pleasure the admirable story of tho adventures of "Private Spud Tamson" will be disappointed with the narrative of "Tho Kangaroo Marines," by tho same author. From the fact that ho has lived in Australia and Now Zealand, Captain Campbell claims "at least tho right" to write aboutthe deeds of the Australasians on tho Gallipoli peninsula. It is not necessary for anyone to have lived under the Southern Cross in order to possess such a right, but Captain Campbell's story, excepting in the. respects in which it is founded on fact in tho notable achievements of tho "Anzaos" in the tragic events of tho Dardanelles, does not ring true, anch indeed, present* a more or less distorted picture.

" Pretty Maids All in a Row." By Justin Huntley M'Carthy. London t Hurst and Blackett. (3s 6d, 2s 6d. Mr Justin M'Carthy returns to the adventures of his favourite hero, Francois Villon, tho great poet and petty thief of tho

fifteenth century, whose wonderful love ditties and amorous adventures afford a perfect mine of material for tho romancist of all succeeding ages. The new romance " Pretty Maids All in a Row," goes back in time, and tells the story of the tragic and fantastic youth of Villon, tracing the almost inevitable fall of tho poet from the high ideals, and delicate spiritual romance of early days to the dreamy useless vagabondage of later years. In tile com-

pass of the present story is continued the tale of a high and worthy passion, and of tho sinister influence which lured or forced a high-spirited, goodhearted, romantic youth from the highway leading to tho " Garden of the Rose into the byways that carry the traveller to the Court of Miracles," where the lowest scoundrels of the city find their abiding place.