MIRTHFUL HAVEN—Booth Tarkington—Doubleday, Doran ($2).
Booth Tarkington has never been a socially weighty writer, but his early books had a kind of restless threat in them. His sympathies were evidently with the young man who rebels against the machinery of money. As Tarkington grew older his sympathy with rebels thinned, mellowed or changed into a kind of bantering, gentle satire that implied less of particular criticism than of general tolerance. But in his latest book the criticism is less implied, more explicit, than ever before; his satire less tolerant, less gentle.
The scene of Mirthful Haven is Maine, where Tarkington has spent many a summer (at Kennebunkport) ; the principal characters are Maine natives. Villains of the piece are the "summer people." Edna Pelter is the pretty but declassee daughterof Long Harry, lobsterman and owner of a shack that summer visitors view as an eyesore and a disgrace. Visitors and villagers alike look down on the Pelters: the feeling is reciprocal. But the old Captain Embury, retired sailor, No. 1 citizen of Mirthful Haven, who could always make his voice heard above "the roarin' of the tem-pest," likes the Pelters, likes especially to watch young Edna as she comes out of school across the way. Neither Edna nor her father are particularly reputable, are thought to be light- fingered, but no one has ever got the better of their resourceful independence. Edna adores her father; he likes his dog Prince.
When Edna's step-grandmother offers to give her an education she leaves home unwillingly to be made into a lady. When, several years later, her step-grandmother dies and Edna comes home again, she has changed so much outwardly the villagers fail to recognize her. Complications follow almost immediately. In her absence her father has turned rumrunner; he never tells her, but she guesses it. Worse, in her new-found social world she has met and liked the two sons of her father's most implacable enemy among the summer people. They have never connected her with Mirthful Haven, as she is known "outside" by her mother's name. One of the boys, Gordon Corning, is in love with her. He meets her one day on a lonely part of the beach. Knowing her danger, she tries never to see him again. But she is very different now from the scornful little female Ishmael she has been. The temptation to be with boys and girls of her own age is too much for her; she meets Gordon sometimes, goes to an occasional party. But the dénouement is not far off. Pelter's enemy Corning discovers Pelter's secret, that all Mirthful Haven but no summer visitor knows. He tips off the revenue cutter. That night Pelter is led into a trap, tries to escape, is shot. Then everything comes out. Mrs. Corning rescues her son in the nick of time from his fishing-village demimondaine; he allows himself to be rescued, leaves without even saying goodbye. Instead, he sends his brother to make family apologies for her father's death. Later in the year, when the same brother comes to Mirthful Haven on business, he finds the whole village at a wedding. Eighty-year-old Captain Embury is marrying ig-year-old Edna Pelter.