Books: A Touch of the Sun

A Touch of the Son

THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE—Radclyffe Hall—Cape &; Ballon ($2.50). By means of a simple but elaborated style Authoress Hall diffuses throughout her book a balmy neo-Biblical atmosphere, like that of George Moore's The Brook Kerith. Like that book, The Master of the House treats of the Christ story; but Authoress Hall, longtime a Council member of the Society for Psychical Research, has ideas about Christ that would wilt Materialist Moore. She leaves the historic Christ alone, merely shows, how, in one of his characters, a boy chances to reincarnate the psychic Christ. In the little Provengal town of Saint Loup, steeped in sunshine and the Catholic faith, lives Jousé Bénédit, a woodworker, and his wife Marie. Their first child they name Christophe, and he grows up to be a simple boy after the whole town's heart. Goundran, his fisherman godfather, shows him how to sail, to fish. Eusebe, the lecherous old drunken cobbler, tells him fairy tales. Especially does half-witted Anfos, his father's apprentice, worship him, seem to recognize some mystery about the boy. But to his little brother Loup and his cousin Jan he is just a playmate and friend. Now & then something happens to change their minds. At the sight of suffering, Christophe is occasionally overwhelmed with an agony of pity. Once, when Jan strikes at a snake, a welt mysteriously appears across Christophe's back. At such moments of agony it seems to Christophe that he is seeing things already experienced by him long ago. He longs to speak the half-remembered words spoken by him then, but the words do not come, and the Galilean light dies away from the little town of Saint Loup.