One More Galsworthy

ONE MORE RIVER--John Galsworthy-- Scribner ($2.50).

Though the late good John Galsworthy has been dead nearly a year, this posthumous novel, says Publisher Scribner, was finished six months before his death (in January 1933). One More River winds up the Charwell (pronounced Cherrell) saga neatly enough, though Author Galsworthy had the serial habit too strongly not to leave a few threads dangling. Better than its two predecessors (Maid in Waiting, Flowering Wilderness), it should remind even impatient critics of Galsworthy that, in the words of one of his characters, "he may be an old buffer, but he's a nice one."

Dinny Charwell is keeping a stiff upper lip over her late disastrous love-affair with her Byronic poet (Galsworthy enthusiasts will remember with a shudder that he was also an apostate). This time it is her sister Clare who is in a mess. After 18 months of married life she has come back from Ceylon with the news that her able husband is a sadist. On the boat home young Tony Croom has fallen in love with her. Clare's husband follows her to England, tries to make her come back with him, and when he fails, warns her to take the consequences. The consequences are that she is shadowed, discovered in more than one compromising situation with young Tony, and her husband institutes divorce proceedings. Clare and Tony, who are really innocent, defend the suit, but lose --much the best thing, for now Clare can become Tony's mistress with a clear conscience, perhaps marry him when she is divorced. Meantime Dinny has been as helpful as possible. Worthy Eustace has been courting her quietly but unsuccessfully till she gets news that her poet is safely dead in Siam. Then she makes the best of her bargain, marries Eustace.

Not only Galsworthy admirers will find >a touching appropriateness in the book's last sentences: 'The silence in my room, when I got up here at last, was stunning, and the moonlight almost yellow. The moon's hiding, now, behind one of the elms, and the evening star shining above a dead branch. A few other stars are out, but very dim. It's a night far from our time, far even from our world. Not an owl hooting, but the honeysuckle still sweet. And so, my most dear, here endeth the tale! Good-night!''

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