New-York tribune., 1901-08-11

DOOM CASTLE 4 Romance. BY Neil Munro
12mo pp 3S5. Doubleday, Page * 90.
The first chapter of Quality Corner raises
expectations which in the second threaten u pe
6ashed to the ground. The third IS almost cont
n,.telv discouraging Then matters mend, and
nv the time the novelist has really warmed u
her work the reader is in mood to follow the
story to the end. In fact the interest Keeps
steadilv increasing Possibly the unsymmetrlcai
character of the book is due to its opening on
a note suggestive of melodrama and continuing
in vein of analysis. a young artist, stroiiing
homeward just after midnight, is asked py d
man at a window in poor street to tel MIN
the time What is going on inside the house:
To that question Mrs. Antrobus will return no
answer for some time, thus creating an atmoS-
phere of mystery extremely useful to the devei-
Opment of her plot Mark Parhtt is the artist
DIR. James Cassilis is the man at the window.
and he has just committed murder. 1t is not
an ordinary murder, however, and when, ten
years later he settles down in the little town of
RingWay, occupying one of the houses in the
group known as Quality Corner, the action or
Nemesis-who is impersonated by Mark Parhtt,
of course-is not along the lines which we eX-
pect in the average novel dealing with crime
and punishment The man is happy, and he
pays his debt in the loss of his new found con-
tentment but it is by no fear of the gallows that
he is pursued The exposure to which he draws
nearer and nearer would not. had it finally oc-
Cured, have brought in its train the penalties
of which the vulgar criminal stands in dread
The point to this novel lies in its portrayal of
a nature far from vulgar, actuated in the first
place by a most curious concatenation of mental
and physical circumstances. and destined to
suffer retribution beside which that embodied
in the usual operations of the law would seem
merely merciful. DR.. Cassls himself speaks
when he feels that longer concealment would
be uncomfortable, and with a keen perception OF
the manner in which human affairs sometimes
fly in the face of precedent Mrs Antrobus de-
clines to make his confession to a single listener
preliminary to more public proceedings. In the
long run, one says Dr. Cassilis need not have
confessed. Even the enmity of Mark Parfitt
could not have prevailed against the goodwill
of the criminals Ringway neghbOrs.
In all this the author is very close to nature.
Whether in providing the unhappy doctor with
a confidante in the person of his victims daugh-
ter she has abused the law of probability not
is a question impossible altogether to ignore;
yet it may be granted that in this matter she
has given very effective touch to her story;
it may not be sound in human principle, but at
any rate, it is good fiction The closing pages
of this book, indeed, with their striking stua-
tons, including that in which the doctor
meets his end, interesting that one al
most forgets the less satisfactory passages
which have gone before. Those passages will
remain, though to the cool critic. Mr..
Bassett, the elderly eccentric, who contributes
a great deal of entertainment to the book, is
sometimes, for all his pretty. paradoxical wit,
a little of a bore; and his adopted daughter,
Thea-the recipient of the murderer's last rev.
elations-is of those Intellectual figures in
which novelist tries to exhibit dainty idea
and fails through sheer excess of daintness.
Thea's love of flowers and literature, of the
poetic, fairy like charm of sylvan places, is in
tended to make her delightful, but there is too
much of her. and she ends by impressng us
as kind of female prig, woman without the
faintest hint of reality in her terribly pict-
uresque ways. The conversation in Quality
Corner, in which Thea is constantly taking
part is also of dubious value At times it is
amusing more often il is conversation of The
obviously manufactured sort. But with all de-
ductiOns made this is still a novel of more than
average interest.
Mr.. Munro has grave lesson to teach he
writes simply to amuse. Doom Castle" is a
lively, romantic tale, dealing with the fortunes
of a gallant young Frenchman who visits Scot
land in search of a spy With that gentleman
he has double quarrel Drimdarroch the OBJ
ject of his quest, had not only sold the Jacobtes
to the Hanoyerans, and the latter to the former,