Emphatically therefore a
book for everyone to read who cares to know the best in the literature
of our great Ally.
* * * * *
MARGARET DELAND'S well-proved pen gives us a spirited sketch of a
modernist American woman in _The Rising Tide_ (MURRAY). I don't quite
know how this enigmatic sentence, which 1 have long puzzled over and
frankly given up, came to escape both author and reader: "Once Mrs.
Childs said to tell Fred her Uncle William would say it was perfect
nonsense." I feel sure it is not good American. However, _Freddy
Payton_ is a young girl who tells the inconvenient truth to everybody
about everything, and you may guess that such candour does not make
for peace. _Mrs. Payton_ elects to keep her idiot son in the house,
and _Freddy_ thinks an asylum is the proper place for him, and
says so. The late _Mr. Payton_ was a rake, and _Freddy_ derides her
mother's weeds on the ground that the widow is really in her heart
waving flags for deliverance, but daren't admit it. _Freddy_ offers
cigarettes to the curate, which is apparently a much greater crime
over there than here. _Freddy_ finally, carried along by the rising
tide, asks the man she loves to marry her, mistaking his friendship
for something stronger, and learns that, as the old-fashioned people
like her mother realise, men are essentially hunters and "won't bag
the game if it perches on their fists." I wonder! But _Freddy_ got
a better man--the diffident elderly man who was waiting round the
corner.
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