Philadelphia Story

THE SAVING GRACE (287 pp.)--Mc-Creody Huston--Lippincott ($3.50).

Change, as it must to all communities, has come to Philadelphia's Main Line, but along the Line can still be found French chateaux bordering colonial farmhouses, Moorish palaces nudging Scottish castles. And the old-style breed of Main Line aristocrat can still be found, holding on. In The Saving Grace, Novelist Mc-Cready Huston conducts a guided tour in the manner of a regional John P. Marquand. At the windup, Novelist Huston's poor but honest working girl has sidetracked her Main Liner into matrimony without even trying.

The girl is pretty Rose Martin, a blue-eyed brunette who comes from a coal patch in western Pennsylvania. The Main

Liner is Hume Probyne, a gentleman steeped in the genteel tradition. ("It had been a better world when John was John or Jack, he ruminated. If this fad for men's names in 'y' or 'ie' was not a sign of decay, it was, he thought, proof that male infancy was being prolonged.") They meet when Hume is sent to New York on a family mission: to pry his nephew from Rose, who is presumed to be using her assets to earn Main Line dividends. Since she is really trying to dissolve the partnership, Hume's mission is easily accomplished.

Soon Rose's job brings her to a Main Line mansion, and the Main Liners parade in their native habitat: Hume's father, a Victorian-minded patriarch who has always acted like a father "and not that odious distortion called a 'pal' "; Hume's mother, a forthright, witty woman with unpredictable ideas whose ironic attitude toward inheritance taxes is: "We'd be better off if we could take the taxes and let the government have the inheritance"; Hume's nephew, who wants a job to prove that, despite his wealth, he can do something useful and creative; a pretty, 17-year-old neighbor with a wooden head and a seven-ply body that is calculated to make "you understand why the universe continues in spite of wars, famines and pestilence."

Before Rose accepts Hume's offer of marriage, she has refused proposals from two other Main Liners. Her "simple unaffectedness" seems to be irresistible. As for Main Liners, Hume defends them against the common accusation of being lordly by firmly declaring, "We are plain people." Within Novelist Huston's one-dimensional range, they are so plain as to seem commonplace, but that may not be entirely the author's fault.

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