LITERATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3339, 13 March 1918, Page 53

LITERATURE

BOOK NOTICES. " The Head of the Family." By Mrs Henry Dudeney. London: Methuen and Co. (ss, 2s 6d.) Again Mrs Dudeney is true to her Sussex proclivities, and in '' The Head of the Family " she uses the old country town of Lewes and its vicinity as the background of a drama of passion and frustrated hopes. The story begins with the notices of three deaths, occurring within a short period of each other, and, although at first sight utterly unconnected, still in their results bearing a very important mutual result. For each of these persons left one solitary mourner, heir to a small property and strong heredity; and these three are brought into close relations, which affect the whole aftercurrent of their lives. As the eternal trio —two women and one man—the drama of their lives plays itself out to a very unexpected denouement, which is to Our thinking the only unnatural thing in the book. As in most lives, heredity bears a very important part in this story. Beausire Fillery, the heroine, has been adopted in childhood, and sedulously trained by her aunt (now deceased) in the traditions of an old English county family, in which the elder Miss Fillery served for more than 50 years, and by whom she was pensioned. Beau sire is " almost -a lady" in manner and appearance, so that she excites the envy of persons of her own class (these class distinctions are very strongly defined in the English counties), while scarcely daring to aspire to a position in the class above that. She is, in fact, " too good for the servants' hall, and not good enough for the parlour." Moreover, she is young, and .has suffered more than she knew from the cramping orthodoxy of her aunt's traditional ideas. Her sudden freedom has an intoxicating effect; she feels that she ought to. grieve; but the surge of life and the sense of freedom are too strong to allow her to sorrow overmuch. In this mood she meets William Linkhorn, son of a farmer just deceased, who has left him nothing but debts, bankruptcy, and a taste for strong drink. William is a splendid figure of a man physically—tall, broad-shouldered, with a wonderful red beard and the temperament that goes with it; but he is weak and vacillating in his disposition, ignorant and untrained in mind, and coarse in manner; but Beausire falls in love with him at first sight, and does her best to arouse an answering passion. William, however, prefers Phoebe-Louisa Bleach, who has just to her father's business as a greengrocer, and needs "a man to drive her cart," put up her shutters, and make himself generally useful. Linkhorn applies for the position, and is accepted, thus acquiring a good comfortable home and a wife able and willing to 'keep him, though he' always comes second to her business and her own personal pride and self-esteem. So the stage is set. Beausire loves William with silent and unreasoning passion; William loves PhcebeLouisa nartly, but not entirely, for what she can give him; Phcebe-Louisa loves herself. When a son is born to the Linkhorns, the wife, no longer young, becomes an incurable cripple, and vents her disappointment and rage upon her husband, refusing to speak to him or take any notice of the child. Goaded to madness, William takes the baby and disappears for something over 20 years. Beausire also leaves Lewes for a time, but returns to look after the crippled woman, on whose death Linkhorn returns, but finds no welcome from Beausire. who has by this time learned what a poor creature he is. The tale is original in its treatment, deeply interesting—an admirable picture of Sussex life and manners, its superstitions, and its picturesque beauties of sweeping downs and fertile valleys. It is as goopl as anything that Mrs Dudeney has yet written, which is in itself high praise.

"The.. Spy in Black." By J. Storer C'louston. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood an'l Sons. (ss, 2s 6d.) This is a delightfully humorous story in Mr Storer Clouston's best vein. Bafnling in its intention, full of surprises, altogether comic in treatment, relating the adventures of a German spy, Lieutenant von Belke, in those far northern islands where our Grand Fleet finds a secure rest-ing-place, called in this narrative, lest the censor object, the. "Windy Isles." Here Belke is mysteriously landed from a submarine, together with his motor cycle. A spy on a motor cycle is somewhat incongruous, and so the young lieutenant found it. The cycle gives him much trouble, and its phut-phut-phut along the exposed roads of the wind-swept islands arouses much suspicion. He hides, and his hiding-places are continually discovered, or almost discovered, bait at last he reaches his destination—a manse, the last occupant of which has left the island, the successor of which has not yet been appointed, but which is occasionally tenanted by candidates for th.e pastoral position. One of these, Belke's colleague, to whom he has been sent with despatches, is " The Spy in Black," then in temporary residence. This man, Tiel by name, receives Belke with effusion, but maintains a certain reserve in all his communications, keeping Belke at a distance and in an isolation not unlike a kind of honourable captivity, ultimately introducing him to a British naval officer, who, for reasons of private revenge for supposed slight, is willing to betray the movements of the Grand "Fleet. This is the secret which Belke has come to learn, and, when learned, it will enable the German submarines to obtain an easy prey. Belke wishes to hurry back with this information to his commander, but Tiel objects for some reason or other. He wishes to keep him where he is. Now the plot thickens. A very charming

young lady, who poses as Tiel's sister, appears on the scene, and soon plays havoc with the lieutenant's susceptible heart. She, too, is in the German Secret Service, and is willing to run any risks in the service of her country. She plays the two men off skilfully, one against the other, takes an intense interest in the scheme for crippling the British fleet, and ultimately convinces Belke that his duty is to remain where he is and witness the success of the plot. The young lieutenant, while feeling that the delay will probably be his death warrant, cannot but yield to her blandishments. He writes a report, with instructions and charts. Tiel borrows a motor car from "someone," and drives him by night to meet his submarine and her commander. The lady goes with him and secures his return. He returns and awaits the catastrophe with a gathering sense of impending tragedy. Torn with love for Eileen, he questions how " a high and wellborn von " can offer marriage to a secret service agent. And, again, "Why does Tiel want me to stop? I'm of no use here." Then the blow falls. What the exact nature of that blow is we leave our readers to discover for themselves. To tell it is to give away the whole ingenious story. Suffice it to say that it comes upon the English reader with as great a sense of shock as it came oil the German lieutenant, and it is some minutes before he can adjust himself to the new position. The tale is written partly in the first person by Lieutenant von Belke himself, and partly in the third by " the editor."