Captain Daughter

Captain's Daughter

CAPTAIN ARCHER'S DAUGHTER--Mar-garet Deland--Harper ($2.50). Starting at a gallop Authoress Deland's novel, her first since 1926, slows down when she forces the story round the same track twice, in order to reiterate its theme. Even with this change of pace the story is worth telling; its author's graceful, polished competence makes the telling true to romance.

Experiences at sea had freed old Captain Archer of local New England trammels, just as experiences on shore had left his wife tradition-bound. Between these two influences their only child, Mattie. grew up, strait-laced and windy-willed at the same time. After her mother's death Mattie is free to do as she pleases, but nothing happens until the Ladybird and its blue-eyed Captain Isadore Davis put in to Bowfort. At the sight of free-&-easy Isadore, Mattie's blood goes wild. Out to sea she sails with him, without letting her father know. Her father philosophically consoles himself with the thought that he had always wanted grandchildren.

For a while Mattie's new-found wildness amuses Isadore. She can dance like a gypsy; but she is only another woman, liable to babies, after all. He deserts her in Barbados where she bears her son. He never returns, and Mattie, too proud to go home without him, takes care of the unwanted child until news comes of its father's death.

Captain Archer takes her in as if nothing had ever happened. But Mattie is moonstruck with too much trouble, and her son adds more. After his engagement to the wealthy Richards girl, he turns around and marries Bessie Casey, a poor fisherman's daughter. Mattie vaguely senses that he is repeating her own headlong mistake, but she encourages him in memory of the brief bliss she once knew. Bessie Casey, though no equal, will make a good wife. Captain Archer consoles himself with the thought that great-grand-children were what he wanted most.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.