Short Stories

The Clintons, and Others — By Archibald Marshall
The Surrender, and Other Happenings — By Mary Gaunt
A Bit at a Time — By Dion Clayton Calthrop

In our infant days we never thought to charge the teller of the story with being in league with the Dustman. page 168 They were two separate visitors, and the former was our friend, and the latter, who never failed in coming, was our enemy, but a gentle enemy. True, the teller of the tale always saw him coming long before we did, and informed us it was no use ‘going on’ ages—it seemed—before the soft poppy-dust descended. Still, we imagined that he hated to be overtaken as much as we did, and was trying his utmost, as we were, to ward off the fatal blow.

But with ‘The Clintons’ Mr. Archibald Marshall is Dustman to his own stories. They flow along so gently and so smoothly that the reader's mind is put to sleep, and asleep it stays while one episode merges into another. There is not a single jar or jolt in the whole book; there is not even an angle or a sharp outline. All is gently blurred as though we floated at twilight on a placid river through venerable English meadows, with many an ancient home of England half-glimpsed through the trees. For Mr. Marshall takes an especial delight in lingering over the mildly exquisite problems of family pride and family tradition, in tracing the fine inevitable line that divides your aristocrat from your common man, and in noting with almost a sympathetic shiver of apprehension what must happen when that line is invaded. ‘Kencote,’ ‘In That State of Life,’ ‘The Squire and the War,’ all belong to this kind; and even ‘Audacious Ann’ depends for its full success upon the fact that the little lady is high-born. The other two stories—one about a builder and the other about a disappointed bookkeeper—are so subdued in tone, we gain the impression that the author is determined to keep them in their place. He is lenient with them because they are poor, plain folk; the builder is not to blame because he puts up ‘abominations of desolation’ where the old houses used to stand—he knows no better; and the meek bookkeeper, sorrowing over one blot on the fair page of the great ledger, is a pitiful example of the ‘small man’ … ‘Thus the stream glideth.’

Far different is the climate of ‘The Surrender, and Other Happenings.’ In these exciting stories it is not page 169 only we who are kept awake; the characters sleep at their peril. If they are not fighting snow, there is a pack of timber-wolves, or an African swamp, or a mob of furious Chinamen or a horde of savages to be overcome. Mrs. Gaunt's method is—more or less—to think of an extraordinary background, double it, add one man, multiply by one terrible danger, keep on multiplying, subtract all possible means of escape, draw a line, add one absolutely unexpected means of escape and one sweet gentle girl. The result is extremely readable, for the author is far more interested in the surroundings of her stories than in the characters themselves—and so are we.

… Forty-five degrees below, perhaps it was more than forty-five degrees below, and he spat because he had read somewhere that spittle would crack as it hit the ground at fifty degrees below. But there was a sharp little sound almost under his nose, and he stood still for a second. It had cracked in the air! What did that mean? Nanook looked up at him gravely….

If such trimmings as these be provided the plainest of plain stories will content us. But does it really matter so little whether one loses one's toes or whether one doesn't? Mrs. Gaunt's heroes seem to shed them as light-heartedly as the Pobbles.

Mr. Dion Clayton Calthrop has chosen a happy title for the finest, best assorted tales contained in ‘A Bit at a Time.’ One cannot see the play for the chocolate box, but he must be a sweet-toothed reader who does not quarrel with the quality of the sweets, or who does not find the row of war-time specialities positively nauseating. Here is a small ‘humorous’ sample from the diary of an American airman:

If I'd found a Hun then I'd have boiled him alive in bread sauce and trussed him with red-hot skewers, tied him down to a white ants' nest and put a jug of water out of his reach.

Another shake of the box produces the war-time bride:

page 170

If you had put a pink rosebud to bed in silk handkerchiefs and put golden foam for hair, and a crumpled leaf for a hand, you could get nothing fairer.

It is the confectioner's mystery that, though the one should be so hard and the other so soft, the flavour of both these samples is identical.