Submerged Triangle

STOKER BUSH--James Hanley--Macmillan ($2.50).

Geometry is not class-conscious. The pons asinorum is free to all comers and even the eternal triangle's points are true for either hemisphere. On such a Euclidean axiom James Hanley posits his latest diatribe, in novel form, against the race that calls itself human but shows itself English. Readers who fear the proletarian author even when he is writing about love can safely pocket their qualms: Author Hanley complains of nothing more subversive than the fact that stokers, too, have hearts and flea-bitten wenches can make them bleed.

Chris was a good lad, according to the dim lights of his submerged world. Married seven years, father of two, and still in love with his Anne, he thought himself in luck to have a steady job as stoker on a transatlantic liner, to spend one blissful week at home out of every hard month. It never occurred to his simple mind, nearly as calloused as his hands, that Anne might not be contented as he was. His boozy father-in-law hinted, neighborhood gossip spoke plainer, Anne herself as good as told him that something was wrong. The most Chris could bring himself to believe was that it was nothing much. He did the proper thing, according to his lights, in beating Anne nearly dead, then scotching the gossip and his doubts by forgiving her and himself in hearty stoker fashion. Feeling still somehow inadequate, he promised her that after the next trip he would get a job ashore, not leave her so much alone.

Unluckily for Chris's simple Q.E.D., Anne's true love landed just after Chris had sailed. The letter that told him what she had not been able to met him in Manhattan, made him jump ship there and stow away on the first liner he could find. His will to get back to Anne was strong enough to survive a shipwreck in mid-Atlantic, but not omnipotent enough to keep his wife from running away with a more compelling man.

So faithful is Author Hanley to his apparently, humble thesis that only once or twice does he let his consciousness of higher triangles appear. When he does, his thesis does not appear so humble. Author Hanley's awkwardly compressed style (he seems to have a scunner against both definite and indefinite articles) is not calculated to please readers of any class: "He, being conscious of battery of stares from inquisitive people, only drew himself higher, proud, like greatest King in land." But Hanley's matter is meaty enough for those but the fullest fed.

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