Beatrice Lovelace belonged to a family that had come down in the world, and were now Reduced County. So far reduced, indeed, that Beatrice lived with her cross aunt Anastasia and one little maid-of-all-work in a tiny house in a very dull suburb, where the aunt would not allow her to be friends with the neighbours. However, one fine day two things happened. Beatrice got to know the young man next door, and the little servant (whose name, by a silly coincidence which vexed me, happened to be Million) was left a million dollars. So, as the house was already uncomfortable by reason of a row about the young man, Beatrice determined to shake the suburban dust from her shapely feet and take service as maid to her ex-domestic. That is why the story of it is called Miss Million's Maid (Hutchinson). An excellent story, too, told with great verve by Mrs. Oliver Onions. I could never attempt to detail the complicated adventures to which their fantastic situation exposes Beatrice and Million. Of course they have each a lover; indeed, the supply of suitors is soon in excess of the demand. Also there is an apparent abduction of the heiress (which turns out to be no abduction at all, but a very pleasant and kindly episode, which I won't spoil for you), and a complicated affair of a stolen ruby that brings both heroines into the dock. It is all great fun and as unreal as a fairy-tale. For which reason may I suggest that it was an error to date it 1914? Such nonsensical and dream-like imaginings are so happily out of key with the world-tragedy that its introduction strikes a note of discord.
I have just finished reading a distinguished book, One of Our Grandmothers (Chapman and Hall), by Ethel Colburn Mayne—a book full of a delicate insight and very shrewd characterisation. It probes to the heart of the mystery of girlhood—Irish girlhood in this case. I certainly think that Millicent, who was a sort of prig, yet splendidly alive, with her gift of music (which, contrary to custom in these matters, the author makes you really believe in), her temperament, her temper and her limitless demands on life, would have given young Maryon, of the Royal Irish Constabulary, a trying time of it; but it would have been worth it. That, by the way, was Jerry's opinion, common, horsey, true-hearted, clean-minded little Jerry, who was the father of Millicent's coarse and something cruel stepmother. I have rarely read a more fragrant chapter than that in which this queer, sensitive, loyal little man tries to cut away the girl's ignorance while healing the hurt that a rougher hand (a woman's), making the same attempt, had caused. Perhaps Miss Mayne was really trying to trace to its source the stream of modern feminism. She is a rare explorer and cartographer.
A Rich Man's Table (Mills and Boon) is one of those stories that I find slightly irritating, because they appear to lead nowhere. Perhaps this attitude is unreasonable, and mere fiction should be all that I have a right to look for. But in that case I confess to wishing a little more body to it. Miss Ella MacMahon's latest novel is somehow a little flat; not even the splintered infinitive on the first page could impart any real snap to it. The rich man was Mr. Bentley Broke, a pompous person, who had one child, a son of literary leanings named Otho. Perhaps I was intended to sympathise with Otho. It looked like it at first; but later, when he left home and married, without paternal blessing, the daughter of his father's great rival, he developed into such a fool—and objectionable at that—that I became uncertain on the matter. Especially as the pompous parent, lacking nerve to carry out a matrimonial venture on his own account, relented and behaved quite decently to the rebellious pair. So the rich man's table would have, as all tables should, more than one pair of legs under it again. Nothing very fresh or thrilling in all this, you may observe. But the characters, for what they are, live, and are drawn briskly enough. And there is some skill in the contrast between a dinner of herbs in Fulham, and a stalled ox, with fatted calf, at the rich man's table in Portman Square. Perhaps this is the point of the story.
So often have I read and admired the novels of "M. E. Francis" that to praise her work has become a habit which it irks me to break. But I am now bound to say that Penton's Captain (Chapman and Hall) has not added to my debt. And the cause of the trouble—as of so many other troubles—is the War. In her own line Mrs. Blundell is inimitable, but here she is just one of a hundred or a thousand whose fiction seems trivial beside the facts of life and death. Apart from this defect, her story is absolutely without offence, a simple tale of love and misunderstandings and war and heroism, and the curtain falls upon a scene of complete happiness. Her only fault is that she has been tempted, excusably enough in these days of upheaval, to wander from her element, and I am looking forward to the day when she returns to it and I can again thank her with the old zest and sincerity.
As a painstaking study of lower middle-class life The Progress of Kay (Constable) is to be remarked and remembered. That is not, however, to say that it is exciting, for Kay's progress consisted so much in just getting older that I suspect Mr. G. W. Bullett's title to be ironical. As a child Kay had some imagination and a sense of mischief; as an adult he would have been all the better for a little military training, and there is no disguising the fact that as a married man and a father he was a dreary creature. I can well believe, from the air of truth which these pages wear, that there are plenty of Kays in the world to-day; and to confess that I was not greatly intrigued by this particular sample when he grew to man's estate is in its way a compliment to his creator. For however much you may like or dislike the mark at which Mr. Bullett has aimed there is no doubt that he has hit it. Villadom, by his art, takes on a revived significance, and Kay's career encourages reflection touched by a vague sadness.