New-York tribune., 1909-07-31
COMEDY And TRAGEDY.
T5co Ne7c and Interesting Stories by
Lucas Mdlet.

THE SCOPE BY Lucas MaIet, cIrs. Mary st.
& Go.
II is pleasant to hear again from Lucas Nalet
The book which has done more than any other
TO attract attention to her name, The History
Of Sir Richard Calmady," was published eight
or nine years ago, and nothing of the same
resting character has since appeared from her
pen. The two stories which she now brings to-
gether stories OF some length though tech
nicaily to be described as short" hardly on
a level with her best known book. but neither,
on the other hand will they lessen her repute
One is in a vein Of comedy, with an element OF
seriousness in it, The other is tragic, perhaps
a shade too tragic.
"Out in the Open presents three human be-
ings in a rather exciting situation, and embodies
also a suggestive study of the artistic tempera-
ment as it is possessed by a popular actress
This lady, who is not only beautiful and clever
but has some intellectual power, is staying at
a hotel on the British coast. where she is Wis
tied by the author of the play in which she is
next to appear. He is a little in love with her
but would, perhaps, never get to the point Of
telling her so If II were not that the inevitable
third person comes to spur him This IS
young politician. masterful. artess, the very
type of youthful success The actress is genu-
inely interested in LuciTs Denier Indeed. she
is not sure but that she is in love with him.
At any rate, when he comes fresh from a politi-
cal triumph to ask her to marry him the mildly
enarnoured playwright is put incontinently out
Of mind. But is the problem thus solved?
Hardly, and this is where Lucas Malet finds
her opportunity She confronts her actress with
the latters own nature, and there ensues a bat
tie of the emotions which makes decidedly en-
tertaining reading.
The distraught woman has lived all her life in
cities When she has to interrogate her own
soul in a graver crisis thal any she has ever
known she is surrounded by the subtle irfiu-
ences of wild nature. In the darkness Of night.
overwhelmed by sea and sky, her mood is un-
expectedly complicated for her. She passes
through some curious transitions. which the
author analyzes at once with shrewdness and
delicacv. 1t is skilful bit of work that Lucas
Malet has here put to her credit. But it Is diff
cult to see why writer of her resources should
have thought ii necessary TO give her heroine
the name of Poppy St John. That is the kind
of name that has been worked TO death In
cheap fiction, and in the present instance 1t is so
incongruous as TO seem silly.
The second story, "Miserere Nobis." loses
something of the effect intended through the
fact that the suppostitious narrator is dying
man. Deathbed confessions in fiction become
unconvincing when they are long drawn out.
The parricide whose life history is here resumed
provokes in the reader a most irreverent desire
that the point might be hastened. There is
something in the tale, too OF overwrought.
neIodramatic strain Yet we persist with keen
curiosity to the precise manner IN which
the little play is to be worked out. Though
when we know we are not perhaps very deeply
impressed. and are little inclined to smile
over the touch meant to be grim at the end we
must confess TO having been kept fairly ab-
sorbed.