Tainted

THE BABYONS -Clemence Dane -Doubleday, Doran ($5.00).

Babyon Court had been "lived in, lived in, until it could go on living all by itself." So violently did each generation lead its own life that the Black Babyons lived forever in the whispered tales of villagers and gypsies, forever in the portraits that glared fiercely from the dusky walls of the manor gallery. Tainted with madness, each generation warped and haunted the next, till between them their evil eye withered the fruit of the womb, and ended the line. Vivid, self-willed, fascinating, they had persisted through four ages:

Georgian. Hariot Babyon affianced her flashing black beauty and fabulous fortune to her Cousin Jamie. But "she was a black woman on a red ground ... a sight he should have seen last year, on his tour, not now, home in safe sunny England." Terrified, he ran off with Menella, fair-haired handmaiden in "rose linen sprigged with small corn flowers and carnations." They swore to be true "till death us do part." Hariot's death, by her own jealous hand, did part them, and haunt them, till Jamie rode to his own frenzied death, and thus joined the siren he had jilted.

Late Georgian. Menella's children by Jamie were twins. Ludovic married sensibly enough; but Isabella roved the woods, or sought out her brother's foils in the attic, and spent hours "fencing with unstable shadows cast by the candles that she lit in the dusk." When Ludovic killed her lover, a beautiful and outcast Jew, Isabella in turn killed her brother, and fled with a gypsyman to whom she bore seven sons and a daughter.

Early Victorian. This daughter had a daughter -out of wedlock -by a respectable village merchant, who kept the child, gentle Mary Anne, and lavished on her wealth, breeding, everything but a legitimate name. Queer, handsome Charles, heir to the Babyons, gave her that, and a son who adored her.

Edwardian. This son, Nicholas, married a spirited girl who brought to Babyon Court a virile zest for life, but lost it in the murky shadows of the portrait gallery. Frightened by the black sneer of Hariot and Isabella, she rushed from the gallery, fell stumbling down the broad staircase, and lost her unborn child. She never had another, for Nicholas, last of the Babyons, was old and bitter and resigned, given to eerie moods.

The chronicle is complete -a tragic tale of fatality done into poetic prose. Dramatic in sweep, The Babyons is a distinguished piece of writing that glows with colorful finesse of concrete detail. Clemence Dane (Will Shakespeare, and A Bill of Divorcement) lives deep in Devonshire, where she feeds her guests cold ham for breakfast.