Miss Kaye-Smith's Ploughmen Plod on Feet of Clay

The Story. The George was King George III. The Crown was Queen Anne's Crown. They faced each other across the only street of Bullockdean in Sussex-the one a dilapidated pub for sharkies and such, the other a tavern frequented by the county quality.

Tom Shearer, whose wife, sharp of nose and tongue, came from Peche `a Agneau in the island of Sark, ran the George. Daniel, his son, was the friend of Ernley Munk, the heir to the Crown.

When Belle Shackford, the lovely, tawdry, easy daughter of a failing tenant farmer, became engaged to Daniel after Ernley had thrown her over, she was only following precedent. People who were not good enough for the Crown went to the George. But, one day, just as she was about to sit down to victuals in the George, she swooned; and when her swain brought her to with a nip of the house's brandy, she told him that she was going to bear Ernley's child.

Daniel pleaded with her to marry him "natheless." She bade him "adone." It seemed beside the point, she indicated, for her to marry anyone but the child's father. Although Daniel was too ashamed and she too proud to inform Ernley of her plight, the fellow learned it from her parents; married her like a gentleman.

There was no comfort for Daniel in Bullockdean with the girl he loved in another man's bed across the street. So he said good-by to his mother, who had never cared much for him, and went to live with her people, the laughing citizens of Sark. One night, on a haymaker's holiday, he visited a dance hall, found there a girl who was about to go on the streets. Reflecting that she might as well appropriate the tatters of his own dereliction, he took her to wife in a cottage fronting the golden fields, walled by the knightly cliffs, of Brittany. Incredible happiness kindled his life until she died in childbirth and he returned to England to lay the ghost of his new grief with the kindliness of an old, companionable sorrow.

The George had succumbed to creditors and the Gambling Laws, but the Crown, onetime tavern, had turned into a thriving hotel; Belle, onetime wanton, into a good mother; Ernley, onetime lover, into a paunchy philanderer. As Daniel supported himself cleaning out the local Rector's pigsty, he felt that his past was coming back to choke him. Belle, outraged by her husband's unfaithfulness, conducted Daniel to a lodging house in Newhaven. He realized that it was anger that had made her surrender herself. She expected him, that night, to kill the last of her love for Ernley. In the morning, she would wake up empty of love, a wanton again. Daniel Shearer sat by the window, wrestled all night with his soul. He was, he realized at last, the kind of man whom women sacrificed. Aghast at her angry love, he sent her back to Ernley. Things like love were for the Crown; marriage was enough for the George.

The Significance. Two of the world's oldest peasantries mingle their blood in Daniel Shearer to produce, not a figure of earth, but one whose brogans plod in the path of righteousness, leaking clay at every seam. Miss Kaye-Smith is deeply sensitive to the countrysides of Sussex and Brittany; she has skilfully turned to her use the brooding decay of the one, the rugged gaiety of the other. Yet these old lands seem merely to have influenced the characters they should have created; they are backdrops painted in oils against which rustics, less adeptly created, posture in a polite charade, salting their phrases with "by gar!" ''howsomedever," " 'un," " -ud," " 'adone," stepping out of sight now and then, to sprinkle dirt on their overalls.

The Author. Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith (wife of a Sussex clergyman, the Rev. Theodore P. Fry) was born, reared in St. Leonard's, Sussex. She is fond of clothes, food, manners, that are fine-grained. She has set herself to write a novel as notable as Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Her books include: Tamarisk Town, The End of the House of Alard, Joanna Godden, Green Apple Harvest.

*THE GEORGE AND THE CROWN -Sheila Kaye-Smith-Harper ($2.00).