LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3467, 24 August 1920, Page 58

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES,

"Stayward's Vindication." By Harold Bindloss. London: Ward, Lock, and Co.

The action of this very interesting story belongs partly to England and partly to Canada, which Dominion has formed the stage for many previous stories by Mr Bindloss. The descriptions of mining life in the Wild West, of the terrible Canadian winter, of the breaking of the icebound river in springtime, testify to personal experience as well as to a gift for vivid writing. The first scenes are laid in Cumberland, where Stayward and his partner, Creighton, are engaged in a mining enterprise. The former is a good specimen of the "dour" northern tvpe—hard to himself and others, but "thoroughly genuine. Creighton is of quite contrary temperament, and his failings are aggravated by the extravagance of his wife. In difficulties, he is tempted to dishonest dealings, which practically robs his partner. The latter soon discovers the faud, renounces his connection with Creighton, and takes over as some indemnity the patent rights for an invention of Creighton's, paying him a small sum as legal security. Creighton goes to South Africa to seek his fortune in the mines there, leaving his wife in what she considers poverty—though she has taken care to draw for her own use money that should have gone to meet her husband's obligations, —and hi 3 daughter pursuing musical studies in Munich. The latter returns, and son after enters into a musical partnership with a friend in a shabby manufacturing town. We meet Creighton again later, when he appears in aji interesting and pathetic light. Stayward's nephew, Geoffrey Lisle, goes as mining engineer to take management of a mine in Western Canada. The descriptions of his career there, including his contests with the manager of an adjoining mine, will be to many readers the most interesting portion of the book. After some time he is summoned by his uncle's illness to England, and, in accordance with his uncle's dying wish, remains in Cumberland. There he sees much of Ruth Creighton, who for some time is unaware of his connection with Stayward, whom her mother has taught her to look on aa the heartless defrauder of her father. When she does learn she accepts her mother's view that she cannot accept the suit of the nephew and heir of the man who has swindled her father and driven him to his death; but Geoffrey is able to vindicate Stayward effectually, and to show Ruth that he himself has been her father's friend. Ruth is a fine example of a type of English girlhood common in modern novels—strong in physique and character, self-reliant, practical, and thoroughly genuine. Her friend, Maud Chisholm, is more striking, wj : .th her /idealism, her indifference to gain if only she can help forward poor pupils with a true gift for music, with the personal shabb'iness and ready acceptance of squalid surroundings that paradoxically seem so frequently associated with disinterested love of the beautiful in the artistic temperament. She seems Russian rather than British. The story possesses abundant interest, and is distinctly above the average in literary merit.

"Queen Vaiti." By Beatrice Grimsh&w, author of "Coral Queen" and "White Savage Simon."

Miss Grimshaw has a considerable reputation for stories of wild, lawless, savage life in the islands of the South Pacific, and this one no doubt will please those who care for stories of the kind. The adventures of the beautiful half-caste girl, who is introduced as Queen Vaiti of Liali, are picturesquely described. She loses her kingdom; goes through many adventures, in which she displays wonderful resource and daring and not a little shrewdness; forms a marriage of love, but a very stormy one, with Lieutenant Tempest (who has forfeited his rank in the British Navy) ; then together with him does and dares much more, till finally the cud tain goes down on a scene in keeping with their stormy, lawless natures. One little bit of narrative may be quoted. The Sybil (Vaiti and Tempest's vessel) arrives at an island group on the night of the birthday party annually given by the British Government to Kalavai, the former queen of the group. "It is by graceful acts such as these that British diplomacy plants the flag of Empire firmly in the remotest of her possessions. Circumstances beyond their control had reluctantly compelled the British' to take away her kingdom from Kalavai, but they gave her a salute from visiting warships, three hundred a year, and an annual birthday party instead—which, as everyone admitted, was doing the thing handsomely." Kalavai appears at the banquet, "tail, very fat, and suffering agonies of heat in a waistles gown of red furniture velvet decked with ponderous cables of strongly-scented flowers."