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Novels and Novelists

The Plain and the Adorned

The Plain and the Adorned

The Outlaw — By Maurice Hewlett
Evander — By Eden Phillpotts

‘The Outlaw’ is the fifth volume of Mr. Hewlett's ‘Sagas Retold.’ It is the story of how one Gisli, a quiet, peace-loving man, was forced for honour's sake to take part in quarrels that were not his, to fight other people's battles, and to waste all the strength and resourcefulness of his manhood in escaping from his enemies. For a long time he is successful, but there is one foe—and that is a spear called Grayflanks—from whom there is no hiding, and he comes to a tragic end. This spear had been fashioned out of a sword that was taken away from its lawful owner and used against him, and so there was a curse upon it.

Perhaps, according to Norse ideas, it was not enough that a man should live snugly and peacefully as Gisli desired to do with his wife Aud. And yet he was by no means an idle man. Even in his very young days he was ‘forever at work, building, smithing, quarrying, timber-felling.’ When Norway got too hot to hold his family he made a great ship and took them to Iceland, and, once there, he it was who built a fine roomy house for them all. We should have supposed that there was place and to spare for such a man in a world of fighters, but he made the fatal mistake of asking no credit for what he did, and ‘as for his temper—it was perfect.’ It was, doubtless, this last characteristic that egged them on against him, for a perfect temper is as aggravating to witness as a fire page 134 that burns brisk and quiet, never needing the bellows or the poker, never roaring away and setting us at defiance or—reduced to a melancholy flutter—imploring our aid.

In reconstructing the ancient story Mr. Hewlett has chosen to couch it in a style of great simplicity. He explains in a prefatory note that his version is based on a literal translation published in 1869 and a dramatic version published some thirty years later. ‘I have added nothing to the substance, and have left out many of the accidents, including (without exception) all the bad verses.’ We cannot help wishing that he had been a great deal more lenient with himself—that he had added materially to the substance and included a number of good verses. For the tale, as it stands, is so exceedingly plain, and the rights, murders, escapes and pursuits described upon so even a breath, that it is hard to believe the great, more than life-size dolls minded whether they were hit over the head or not. It is as though one hero deals another a tremendous blow that sends him crashing down like a tree, and as he dies he says: ‘This is a bad day for me.’ And the murderer replies: ‘And for me, too,’ and goes off to tell his wife:

‘So-and-so is dead.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well!’ said she, and her face got red.

This is, of course, an exaggeration, but there are passages in ‘The Outlaw’ which are very nearly as bald.

There is no doubt that the very large number of words of one syllable help to keep the tone low. They have a curious effect upon the reader. He finds himself, as it were, reading aloud, spelling out the tale, and this is helped by such sentences as: ‘He was quiet, shy, what we call a dark horse.’ That ‘we’ seems to belong to a god-like world of pastors and masters who are explaining the dark horse to us for the very first time. The story itself is full of incident, but it moves us as little as a page 135 pageant without music or colour. True, we cannot expect these huge heroes, with their peaked helmets, their heavy shields and spears, to break into a dance; but were the horns of warm wine never tossed down to a vocal accompaniment, or did the ladies never sing as they served? Even in the account of the great game upon the ice our chief impression is of the solemnity of the participants rather than their skill.

From these lean days we turn to the days full of fatness described in Mr. Eden Phillpotts' new book, ‘Evander.’ The scene is Italy, and the time—perhaps the early spring of every year. Not the wild, boisterous early spring that leaps over the winter fields in England, but early spring in the South, and if we were not too timid to say so—in the heart of man. There is a moment when, stepping into the air, we are conscious that the earth is young again and glittering with little flowers and streams and laughter; our soul flies out of its hiding-place, looking for a playfellow, and it refuses to be nourished any longer upon serious foods. It wants to be talked to in the language of Fancy, and it fully expects a song or a dance, or at least a few verses, in the course of the smallest conversation. Modern writers for whom a new exercise-book means perforce a new novel look with a cold eye upon the creature while it is in this giddy state of exuberance, and refuse to give it their attention until it has sobered down; but Mr. Phillpotts has taken exquisite pity on it, and provided a festa where those superfluous and enchanting things for which it hungers are given their rightful importance.

The story is simple. Livia, the daughter of a peculiarly engaging washerwoman, is married to a young woodman, Festus. One day while she was carrying his dinner she stopped in the forest, playing with the panisci, and she was attacked by wolves. The tiny creatures, who realized they would get no more little honey-cakes if she was eaten, urged her to call upon Apollo to save her. And in a moment the God of Light appeared, marvellously beautiful, frightened off the animals, and rescued her. But page 136 when she explained to him that she didn't really worship him at all—that before her marriage she had worshipped Venus, and since she had adopted her husband's god, Bacchus—he was extremely offended, and commanded her to tell her husband that he expected both of them to worship him in future, and ‘if you would hear more concerning me, command my servant, Evander, to your humble board.’ This last piece of advice nearly proved the undoing of Livia, for she found Evander so attractive that, after making Festus' life a perfect misery, she ran away with him. Evander was an intellectual. Young, ardent, not unlike Apollo in looks, a great talker, and a man held in high esteem by the village people for his learning and his dignified behaviour, he was nevertheless as cold-hearted as a trout and totally lacking in a sense of humour. Livia bore with him as long as she could, then she escaped, and swimming across the lake returned to her aged mother's cottage. This so infuriated Apollo that he set forth to kill her, but Bacchus, to whom Festus had explained the whole situation, waylaid him, and after a long argument dissuaded him from his purpose. Livia and Festus thereupon took up their life together and were happier than before. But Evander, although he derived some comfort from the composition of pessimistic verses, was left disconsolate, not because of Livia's forsaking him, but because of the way the affair had gone.

This takes place upon the borders of a lake among purple mountains covered with chestnut bloom and carpeted with flowers. Little baby fauns run in and out of the story; an oread, a minor poet, wanders through, always looking for somebody to whom she can recite her verses; in the moonlight the naiads, tired of the water springs, come down to the lake to swish and sing.

But the delicate, bright atmosphere in which this enchanting book is bathed must be left for the reader to enjoy.

(January 2, 1920.)