The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-02-09
BY DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH.

L ing Oh Tap1d, an admirable ac-
count of General Smuts's British cam
paign in East Africa, has new book out,
a novel, The Crescent Noon, with It's set
ting IN the same region.
And The Crescent Noon is one Of the
best novels OF the season. it has origi-
nality, sincerity and considerable strength.
1t is more than mere story for entertain
ment, but in its style has a force and a
delicacy that are not commonly found III
first novels and that will make Mr..
Young's later work of interest to appre-
ciatiye readers.
The crescent No0n breaks away from
various conventions OF story writing, and
IS far from being an example ot the
standardized romance. 1t refuses to sac
ritice truth 10 happy ending for one
thing, but lets the events logically pro
ceed TO the predestined tragedy. Thereby
it achieves an effect such as the mechani
eally happy stores fail of. The despair
ing conclusion has something in it that re-
minds one of Mary Johnston's Prisoners
Of Hope.
TIE method Of narration, too, is indie
pendent, for the events are tranSpoSed
and the end is told in the beginning. The
piteons figure Of the girl, her grotesque
dress and her alien surroundings but
bringing out her beauty and her grief
more plainly, is shown in the first chap
Ter. Her story is gwen by peculiar
scheme, one which is on the whole effec
tive, but which has distinct disadvantages,
reconstructed partly from her recital OF
events and partly through the imagination
of the stranger in whom she contides.
Possibly the straightforward narration Of
incidents, from the authors angle of oh
servalion, would have been better. But
there is something of definite power
gained through this remote giimpsing of
the story.
The narrator says of Eva Burwarton:
Il didn't realize then what a child she
was Or hundredth part OF what she had
endured. / knew nothing about McCrac
(alios Ilare) or tiodoVlus, or of that
dreadful mission house on the edge of the
M'ssente Swamp. And If II hadn't been
for that fortunate vision of nine on the
station platform / don't suppose
should ever have known at all. The thing
would have passed me by, is | suppose
terrible and intense drama passes one
by every day of ones life. An amazing
thing. You would have thought
that a story of that kind would cry out
to the whole world from the face of
every person who had taken part in it,
that it simply couldn't remain hidden be
hind pale, childish face with puzzled
eyes"
The time is 1916, and Eva Bnrwarton
is one Of a group Of refugees from Ger
man rule. The scene is in East Africa.
where the tropical climate PLAYS strange
tricks with minds and souls, and where
dark morbidities lurk in the shadows.
The atmosphere of the story has some
thing of the sinister suggestiveness Of
certain of Arthur Machen's narratives.
The chief characters, and the only white
persons in the drama, are a young Eng
lish missionary, James BurwartOn, and
his sister Eva, their German neighbor,
Godovius, and fugitive Scotsman;
McCrae.
The place is made so visible and the
characters so individual that one feels
that the events must he actual despite
their wild remoteness from ordinary life.
The lonely mission house in the tropie
wilderness, the secretive, repellant abode
Of Godovius, the dark, mysterious depths
Of the forest, are made to seem real.
at is difficult to visualize the kind of
life which James was leading among
his Walugurl. Entering the forest by
one of those tawny paths Of sand which
triekfed down to it from the dry bush, he
must have passed into the still outer zone