Two Short Ones

ALWAYS YOUNG AND FAIR (177 pp.)--Conrad Rlchfer--Knopf ($2).

THE TRIAL OF SOREN QVIST (256 pp.)--Janet Lewis--Doubleday ($2.50).

A simple story well told is the wheaten loaf of literature. There are traces of machine-kneading in both these short novels, but the ingredients are honest and the crust is tasty. Anybody who feels a trifle tired of classics, biographies, soothsayers and trash might enjoy either, with a cup of milk.

Most of Conrad Richter's story might have been written by Booth Tarkington. In a transparent and innocent style he tells of Lucy Markle, a beautiful smalltown girl at the turn of the century remembered "in an old yellow snapshot." Because she had remained faithful to her dead lover, people admired her, for death and dignity were taken seriously then.

Lucy became a rich spinster and a legend in the town, a legend that eventually woke up to itself and had the shakes. Richter's quiet sketching of the period after the Spanish-American War, and the life of the "better families" might seem merely nostalgic in intent, if it were not for the touches that finally bring bitter horror out of Lucy's narcissistic dream. At that point Richter actually makes a ghost (Lucy's dead father) walk.

Ordeal of Anger. Janet Lewis' setting is Denmark in the middle 17th Century and her writing, as clean as a peeled twig, traces a clear outline of a dark Scandinavian story. The fearless Pastor of Vejlby, Soren Qvist, prayed God to relieve him of the passion of anger. But when the insolent Morten Bruus asked for his only daughter in marriage, Soren hurled him to the ground. The title of the novel refers not only to the actual trial of the Pastor for murder, with which he was eventually charged, but to the spiritual ordeal that preceded it:

"The daily struggle of his spirit bred a daily exaltation, and common things assumed great meaning. Water, when he bathed his face or drank at the well, was extraordinary for its wetness and coldness; food, partaken of at his own board or in the field; the strength of his white mare that bore him up so loyally; the darkness of the night sky that brought him rest--these things were all extraordinary for themselves and, more so, for the greatness of the creation behind them. So that he was attended in those autumn days, not only by the demons, but by the glory of God."'

The conviction of Soren Qvist on circumstantial evidence is actually a famous case in Danish legal history. In Miss Lewis' telling of it, a remote and pastoral time is presented with sunlit freshness, but her characters lack the essential irony and ambiguity of flesh & blood.

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