Lady Jekyll & Hyde

THE VICTORIAN CHAISE LOMGUE (119 pp.)--Marghanlfa Laski--Houqhton Mifflin ($2.75).

British book reviewers are immune to the virus of British understatement. When Marghanita Laski's The Victorian Chaise Longue was published in London six months ago, the Manchester Guadian hailed it as showing "almost ferocious power." Said Time and Tide: "[Miss Laski] stacked every card against herself to make her final really-grand slam more miraculous."

Her British fans notwithstanding, Author Laski (a niece of the Labor Party's late Grey Eminence. Harold Laski) bids and makes no slams in The Victorian Chaise Longue, only a. quiet rubber game. She deals out a tidy horror story with a psychological flavoring of Jekyll & Hyde.

Melanie Langdon is the adoring, child-like wife of a rising lawyer in present-day London, the doting mother of an infant son and a happy patient who has just been told that the worst is over in her seven-month siege of TB. Pleasantly contemplating a happy future, she falls asleep on a Victorian chaise longue, a cherished trophy from an antique-buying safari. She wakes up neither in her drawing room nor in her century nor in her own body.

Devilish Fantasies. She is still on the same chaise longue. but the year is 1864, the drawing room is stuffy, cluttered, sealed against a breath of air. In this world, she finds, her name is Milly Baines, she is a total invalid, and she has a priggish, self-righteous sister who hates her. When she tells a visiting pastor that she is a woman of the future who doesn't belong in 1864, he denounces her claims as devilish fantasies.

She begins to think that she has perhaps been sent back to the 19th century on a curative mission, to teach the healing values of fresh air and sunshine, but the doctor who attends her will not hear of such madness. Meanwhile, old parallels crop up between her life as Melly and her life as Milly.

The Final Secret. She is much reminded of her husband by a ruddy-faced, curly-haired visitor. As he kneels at her side, she instinctively knows that he once made love to her on the chaise longue. A more terrible parallel occurs when she starts spitting blood into her handkerchief and realizes that as Milly, she will die of TB.

As she tightens the suspense screws on her plot, Author Laski also adds a shocker or two, e.g., poor Milly outrages her Victorian surroundings by bearing an illegitimate child. The final secret of whether Melanie ever makes her way back to the 20th century is a matter Author Laski deserves to share directly with her readers.

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