Nut-Brown Pantheist

THE FIELD OF MUSTARD--A. E. Coppard--Knopf ($2.50). Short-Storyteller Coppard, nut-brown pantheist, transcribes life in hedgerow England with a simplicity that seems accurate and genuine. His overtones are of something dark, gentle, gypsyesque. Some themes: an errant stag and a hearty poacher; lusty village women, lying in a mustard field after fagot-gathering, wish that love could return; the noblesse oblige of a lonely schoolmaster and a proud lady; two aging, air-plant spinsters and how one of them nearly took root in village soil.