Godmunder Kamban - "Hadda Padda"

Zane Grey - "The Man of the Forest"

Rafael Sabatini - ""

Anna Katherine Green - "The Mayor's Wife"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Native Born

I >> I. A. R. Wylie >> The Native Born




"I am sure I shall be delighted to do anything in my power," Colonel
Carmichael responded, "but I fear my knowledge of intricate business
details is not such as to make it of the slightest use to you."

"The business is not intricate," Travers went on. "Nor do I propose
drawing out this meeting to any tiring length. The heat must be very
trying for the ladies present, but my wish to keep what passes
between us, at any rate for the time being, entirely secret, makes it
essential to sit in closed rooms. I will be as brief as possible. Two
years ago the Marut Diamond Company first came into existence under
the protection of our friend, Rajah Nehal Singh. For some time
previous to this event it had been my great ambition to open out a
diamond field in which, thanks to favorable reports, I sincerely
believed. My position, however, and above all my lack of personal
means, made the scheme an impossibility so far as I was concerned.
Chance brought me the pleasure and misfortune of making your
acquaintance, Rajah. I say 'misfortune,' because, as events have
turned, I can not but feel that my casual observations led you to
enter into an enterprise before which another man, if I may say so,
with more experience and less impulse, would have hesitated.

"Your generosity and enthusiasm brought my half-conceived plans into a
reality almost before I had any clear idea as to whither we were all
drifting. You will remember, Mrs. Cary, I did my best to dissuade you
from any rash investment; and even there, as director of the company,
I felt that I was not acting with entire loyalty to the man who had
put me into that position. The responsibility of the whole matter
rested heavily on my shoulders, and grew still heavier as the circle
of share-holders without Marut increased. I felt that, should my first
hopes prove unfounded, my friends and many others would suffer losses
which they could ill afford to bear. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my
painful duty to tell you that the dreaded collapse has come. Mr.
Medway, here, the company's chief engineer and mining expert, informed
me yesterday that any continuation of the works was useless and a mere
waste of the share-holders' money. I therefore beg to announce to you
that the Marut Diamond Company Mine is definitely closed."

The Colonel clenched his teeth half-way through the first oath he had
ever allowed himself in the presence of ladies. He was not an
unusually egoistical man, but his first thought was one of unutterable
gratitude that in the moment of strong temptation his wife had held an
obstinate hand on the purse-strings.

The first person to speak was Mrs. Cary. She leaned half-way across
the table.

"And my money?" she said thickly and unsteadily. "Where's my money?
Where's my money? Tell me that!"

Travers shrugged his shoulders.

"I fear it has gone the way of mine and of the other share-holders',"
he said. "Nor can I hold out any hopes of its coming back. The
expenses of the mine have been terribly heavy, the workmen have been
extremely well paid--extremely well paid." There was a distinct note
of reproach in his voice, though he looked at no one.

Mrs. Cary sat down in her seat. It was a pitiful and almost terrible
sight to see her, all the florid, vulgar ostentation and sleek content
dashed out of her, leaving her with pasty cheeks and horror-stricken,
staring eyes to face the ruined future. Mrs. Berry burst into
ever-ready tears.

"Oh!" she sobbed. "What will my husband say! I told him it was such a
good thing--it isn't my fault. What will he say!"

The sharp, wailing tones broke through Mrs. Cary's momentary
paralysis. She sat up and brought her fat clenched fist down with a
bang upon the table.

"You!" she half screamed at the Rajah. "You--you black swindler--you
thief--it's you who have done it--you who have ruined us all with your
wicked schemes. You baited us with this clubhouse--you pretended you
wanted to do us such a lot of good, didn't you? And all the time you
meant to feather your own nest with diamonds and the Lord knows what.
Give us back our money, you heathen swindler! For you aren't a
Christian! You pretended that, too, just as a blind--"

Her flow of frightful coarse invectives came to an abrupt end. Colonel
Carmichael, who knew now why his presence had been required, leaned
forward and pushed her firmly down in her seat.

"For Heaven's sake, Mrs. Cary, hold your tongue!" he expostulated, in
a rapid, emphatic undertone. "You don't know what you are saying. You
are not in England. A little more of that sort of thing, and our lives
aren't worth an hour's purchase."

"I don't care," she retorted, with all the headlong brutality of her
origin. "It's true what I say! It's true!"

"It is true." The interruption came from the Rajah himself. He had
risen and stood before them, very pale, but calm and composed, his
eyes fixed with haggard resolution on the furious face of his accuser.
"It is true. I am a swindler. I have ruined you all. Why should you
believe it was done unwittingly? Yet that is true also. I, like my
poor friend here whom I used as my tool, believed that I was doing the
best for you all. But I have ruined you. I have done worse than
that--I have ruined my country, my people. You have friends who will
help you in your distress, but who will help my people? I pulled them
out of their miserable homes only to cast them into deeper misery. I
have taken their pitiful savings, meaning, without the use of charity,
to increase them tenfold. I have taken everything from them. I gave a
hope, and have left them with a deeper despair. Not all my wealth--and
not a stone, not a farthing piece shall be held back from your and
their just claims upon me--will fill up the ruin of those I wished so
well. It is true--I stand before you all a dishonored man."

There was a moment's petrified silence. Even Mrs. Cary's coarse nature
stood baffled before this pitiless, dignified self-accusal. Nor could
the Colonel find a word to say. He had been ready--knowing the native
character--to defend Mrs. Cary from the stroke of a revenging dagger.
His half-outstretched arm sank powerless before the stroke of these
few words, spoken with a calm which thinly covered a chaos of remorse
and broken-hearted grief.

"I have a question I should like to ask you, Mr. Travers."

There was a general uneasy start. Each shook off his brooding
considerations and turned with surprise to this unexpected speaker. It
was Beatrice, hitherto silent and apparently unmoved, who leaned
across to Travers. He himself felt the blood rise to his face. In his
absorbed state he had not noticed her presence, and now that he met
her cold eyes a curious discomfort crept over him--a discomfort that
was nearly fear.

"I will answer your question to the best of my ability," he said
quietly.

"The Rajah has spoken of you as his tool, and I think from your tone
that you think yourself aggrieved. In what way have you suffered? What
is your share of the losses?"

"I have lost all I have."

"All you have, no doubt. But your wife is very rich, and I believe has
grown richer within the last year. I am anxious to know if you intend
to follow the Rajah's generous example and meet your liabilities with
her fortune."

The Colonel, who had been staring vacantly at her, gave a start of
recollection.

"Yes!" he exclaimed energetically. "The settlement and Lois' own
money--what's become of it all? Has that gone, too?"

"Of course not." Travers' hand tightened instinctively upon the arm of
his chair. "I should never have dreamed of touching what was my wife's
personal property. Nor do I intend to do so now. I am no more than the
manager of the company--I am not responsible for its liabilities. Miss
Cary's suggestion is beside the mark, and I warn her, for her own
advantage"--there was a somewhat unpleasant note of warning in his
rough voice--"not to pursue her questions further."

Beatrice rose to her feet. She was calm and, save for the vivid color
in her cheeks, betrayed at first little of the seething storm of
indignation which rose gradually above the barriers of her self-control.
She did not look at the Rajah. She stared straight into Travers' face,
and once she pointed at him.

"You have been good enough to threaten me," she said. "It would be
best for you to know at once that your threats are quite useless.
There is nothing you can say about me which I am not ready to say
myself--and there is nothing you can do which will prevent me from
revealing the true facts of this case. You have feathered your nest,
Mr. Travers. That is what you told me to do, and now I understand what
you meant. You saw this ruin coming at the very time that you were
encouraging every one to partake further of the company's future
success. You honored me, as a sort of accomplice, with a private piece
of advice. Thank God, I did not take it, for then I should have been
your debtor.

"As it is, I owe you absolutely nothing--not even the wealthy husband
you promised me. There is a bottom to my depths. And even if I did owe
you something, I should not hesitate to speak. You can call me a
traitor if you like--I don't care. I am that--and I have been far
worse than that to a man who did not deserve it--and I have, anyhow,
not much reputation to lose. Besides, you have stood by without a
word and let an innocent man bear your burden, and for that alone
you have no right to claim loyalty from another."

She turned for the first time to Nehal Singh, and met his gaze boldly and
recklessly. "Do not stand there and call yourself a dishonored man!" she
exclaimed with increasing force. "You are not dishonored. Do not call
Mr. Travers your 'tool.' He is not your tool, and never has been. You
are his tool,--his and mine!" She paused, catching her breath as she saw
him wince. Then she went on: "Don't burden yourself with the consciences
of us all, for we have not got any; and what has been done we have done
knowingly and wilfully. Do you remember that evening when you found me in
the temple? You thought it was--chance--or--or the hand of God. Why,
Mr. Travers hired one of your old servants to slip me through by the
secret path, and I had on my prettiest frock and my prettiest smile and
my prettiest ways--as I told them all afterward at a dinner-party--pious
goodness, with a relieving touch of the devil--just to tempt you out of
your cloister and make you do what we wanted.

[Illustration: "Do not call yourself a dishonored man!"]

"You followed like a lamb. It took five minutes to wheedle the
club-house out of you--five minutes, I think you told me, Mr.
Travers?--and the other things went just as smoothly. Do you remember
that ride we had together after Mr. Travers' dance? He had broached
the subject of the mine, but the next day something or other seemed
to have shaken your implicit belief in our integrity and general
holiness. At any rate, you asked me for my advice--my honest advice. I
gave it you. I told you to go ahead--that Mr. Travers was an angel of
goodness and perfection. That was what he suggested I should say, in a
note he had sent me an hour before. So you went ahead. You did the
dirty work for him, and took his responsibility upon your shoulders.
You have ruined a few of us incidentally, but above all things you
have ruined yourself and your people. Mr. Travers is unharmed. He has
his wife's money."

She paused to gather her strength for a final effort. "So much for Mr.
Travers' and my partnership. I did my share of the work to shield
myself and my mother from a trouble which must now go its way. But
after that, I played my own game. I did not want to lose you--even
though I knew quite well that you cared for me, and that I should
never marry you. Months before I had made up my mind to marry a man
with a high position and money. It was just a game I was playing with
you. Even when you forced things to a head, I kept it up. I pretended
innocency and high motives--because I wanted to feel you at my
apron-strings always. We all treated you more or less badly, but I was
the worst. I fooled you--for--for--"

"For what?"

His voice burst from him, harsh and terrible as though it had been
torn from the bottom of a tortured soul.

"For the fun of the thing."

Among the seven present there was no movement, no sound. Scarcely one
seemed to breathe or be alive except the woman who stood there, her
breast heaving, a twisted smile of wild self-mockery on her ashy lips.

Nehal Singh turned and went to the door. There he stopped and looked
back at her and the little group of which she formed the central
figure. Then he made a gesture--one single gesture. He raised his hand
high above his head and brought it down, palm downward. In that
movement there was a contempt, a scorn, a bitterness so profound that
it seemed to mingle with a terrible pity; but above all there was a
final severing, a breaking of the last link which bound them. The next
minute the door closed behind him.

How long the silence that followed lasted no one knew. It was broken
by Mrs. Cary, who flung herself face downward on the table, and burst
into wild, uncontrollable sobs.

"Oh, Beaty!" she moaned. "Our reputations--our good name! How could
you have told such wicked stories about yourself and poor Mr. Travers!
How could you!"

Colonel Carmichael shook his head. He was overwhelmed by a cross-current
of conflicting emotions to which he could give no name.

"True or not true, your--eh--statement has got us into a pretty mess,
Miss Cary," he said. "You have played with fire. Pray Heaven that it
has not set light to Marut!"

She turned and looked at him. In that pale face upon which had sunk
the light of a sudden peace the Colonel read something which sent his
blunt instinct searching wildly for a solution.

"I did what I had to do, Colonel Carmichael," she said. "Come, mother,
we must go home."




CHAPTER III

A FAREWELL


John Stafford sat at his table by the open door which looked on to the
garden. The room behind him was bare of all graceful or even tasteful
ornament--a few native weapons, captured probably during small
frontier wars, hung on the wall, but nothing else relieved its blank,
whitewashed monotony. The one photograph of his father which had once
been fastened above the mantelpiece had been taken down months before
and the hole made by the nail carefully and methodically filled and
painted over. The room typified the man in its painful order, its
painful whitewashed cleanliness, its rigid plainness. But the garden
was the symbol of the hidden possibility in him, the corner of warm,
impulsive feeling which the world had never seen. The roses grew up to
the very steps of the verandah; they had been trained to clamber over
the trellis-work as though seeking to gain entrance to his room; they
spread themselves in rich, glowing variety over the little patch of
ground, and one of their number, the most lovely and fullest blown,
hung her heavy head in splendid isolation from the vase upon his
table.

He looked at the rose and he looked at the garden, on which lay the first
clear rays of the rising sun. In him stirred a rare wistfulness, a rare
melancholy. For to him all the gentler, softer forms of sorrow were rare.
In the last year he had suffered, but in his own way--rigidly, coldly,
unbendingly. His lips, even in the loneliness of his own room, had always
been tight closed over the smothered exclamation of pain. He had gone on
steadily and conscientiously with his work. He had never for one moment
"given way to himself," as he expressed it. But this morning he was in
the power of that strange "atmosphere"--call it what you will--which we
feel when still only half awake, and which, independent of all outward
circumstances, destines our day's mood of cheerfulness or depression.
Strangely enough, he had made no struggle against it--he had yielded to
it with a sense of inevitableness.

The inevitable compassed him about and numbed his stern, merciless
system of self-repression. Fate, irresistible and unchangeable,
obscured the clear path of duty which he had marked out for himself,
and held him for the moment her passive victim. It was no idle fancy.
He was not a man in whose thought-world fancy played any part. Nor was
it the gloomy impression which a lonely twilight might have stamped
upon a mind already burdened with a heavy weight of trouble. The young
day spread her halo of pure sunshine over a world of color; the red
rose upon his table bowed her head toward him in the perfection of a
mature beauty which as yet hid no warning of decay. But in the
sunshine he saw the shadow; the daylight foretold the night; his eyes
saw the withered petals of the rose strewn before him. In vain he had
striven to see beyond the night to the as inevitable to-morrow; in
vain he had pictured the rose which his careful hand would bring to
replace her dead sister. The future was a blank dead wall whose
heights his foresight could not scale.

Before him on the table lay a closed and sealed envelope. It contained
his will, which half an hour before he had signed in the presence of
two comrades. He wondered what the world would say when it was
opened--and when it would be opened.

Presently the curtains behind him were pushed quietly on one side. He
did not turn around. He supposed it was his native servant with the
cup of coffee which formed his early morning refreshment; but the soft
step across the uncarpeted floor, the rustle of a woman's dress
startled him from his illusion. He turned and sprang to his feet.

"Beatrice!" he exclaimed.

She came toward him with outstretched hand.

"May I speak with you for a few minutes, John?" she asked.

His first impulse to protest against her reckless disregard of
propriety died away on his lips. Something on her white earnest face
touched him--all the more perhaps because it linked itself with his
own mood. He brought a chair--his own, for the room boasted of but
one.

"Are you angry?" she asked again, looking up at him.

"At your coming? No. At another time I might have warned you that it
was not wise, but I feel sure you would not have run so much risk
without a serious and adequate reason."

She nodded.

"Yes, I have a very serious reason," she said. "Have you time to
spare?"

"All the morning."

"Were you on duty last night?"

"For the best part."

"Is that why you look so tired and ill?"

He smiled faintly.

"I might reply with a _tu quoque_. But that doesn't matter. You have
some trouble to tell me. What has happened?"

"You have heard nothing?"

"Nothing whatever." He drew a stool toward him and seated himself at
her side. "You know, I am not a person to whom gossip drifts quickly."

"It's not gossip--it's truth. The Marut Diamond Company is closed--for
good and all."

"You mean--it has gone smash?"

"Completely--and we with it."

He sat silent for a moment, his head resting thoughtfully on his hand.

"I suppose it had to come," he said at last. "Somehow, it always
seemed to me that the concern was doomed. The foundations weren't
honest. The Rajah was more or less beguiled into it--" He broke off,
turning crimson with vexation. "I beg your pardon, Beatrice. I forgot
that that was one of your--escapades."

She looked at him steadily, and he was struck and again strangely
moved by her pale beauty. He had never seen her so gentle, so free
from her cold and mocking gaiety.

"You must not apologize. And do not smooth over a mean, low trick with
the name of an escapade. It was not an escapade, for an escapade is
the overflow of high and reckless spirits, and what I did was done in
cold blood and with a purpose. I have come to tell you about that
purpose."

He could not repress a movement of surprise.

"Surely you have something more serious on your mind than that? If, as
you say, your--your financial position has been rendered precarious by
this failure of the Marut Company, would it not be advisable to hurry
on our marriage at once? Of course, in the meanwhile, if I can do
anything to help your mother--"

She touched him gently on the arm.

"I told you I had come on a serious matter," she said. "Won't you let
me tell you what it is?"

"Of course, Beatrice, of course. Only I thought that was the serious
matter."

"It is perhaps for my mother, but not for me. Things have changed
their value in my life. Just now I feel there is only one thing that
has any value at all, and that is freedom."

"From what? I do not understand. Do you mean from debt?"

She smiled sadly.

"Yes, from debt. John, I want to ask you an honest question honestly.
Why did you ask me to become your wife?"

He moved uneasily.

"Why do you ask? Surely we understand each other."

"We did, perhaps, but I have told you that things have changed. Won't
you answer me?"

"I asked you--because I wished you to be my wife," he returned
stubbornly.

"John, isn't that rather a lame equivocation?"

He stared at her with heavy, troubled eyes.

"Yes, it was. But the truth might hurt you, Beatrice."

"No, it wouldn't. Nothing can hurt so much in the end as lies and
humbug."

"Well, then, I asked you to become my wife because I believed that my
conduct had put you into a wrong and painful situation in the eyes of
the world."

"Nothing else?"

"I wished to prove to Lois that I could never be her husband."

"You were afraid that she would see through your pretense to your
unchanged affection for her?"

He started.

"Beatrice, how do you know?"

"Look in your own glass, John. Yours isn't the face of a man who has
shaken off an old attachment."

He rose and stood with his back half turned to her, playing idly with
the papers on the table.

"You are partly right," he said, after a moment's silence, "but not
quite. I have more on my shoulders than that; I have a heavy
responsibility--a debt to pay."

"You, too?" she asked, with a return of the half-melancholy, half-bitter
smile. "Have you also a debt?"

"Not of my making," was the answer. The voice rang suddenly stern and
harsh, and Beatrice saw him look up suddenly, as though instinctively
seeking something on the wall. "Beatrice, you must know that my
actions are dictated by motives which I can not for many reasons give
to the world. For one thing, I have given my promise; for another, my
own judgment tells me that it is better for every one that I should be
silent. But I am free to say this much to you--I am not a
dishonorable man who has played lightly with the affections of an
innocent girl. I have acted toward Lois as I believe will be for her
ultimate happiness--I have shielded her from a misfortune, a
punishment I might say, which would have fallen unjustly on her
shoulders. I have taken a burden upon my shoulders because I love
her--and I have the right to love her--but chiefly because it is my
duty to do so. Where there is sin, Beatrice, there must also be
atonement, otherwise its consequences can never be wiped out. I have
chosen to atone."

Beatrice made no attempt to question him. Her eyes fell thoughtfully
on the gaunt face, and for the first time she appreciated to the full
what was great and generous in the nature she had condemned all too
often as narrow and unbending. Whatever else he was, this man was no
Pharisee. If he was narrow, he allowed himself no license; if
unbending, he was at least least of all relenting toward his own
conduct. She pitied him and she respected him, even though she could
not understand his motives nor guess the weight of the responsibility
which he had taken upon himself.

"I can not reproach you with deception," she said at last. "You never
pretended that you loved me, and on my side I think the matter was
pretty clear. I intended to marry you for your position. Afterward
money added a further incentive. I saw the loss of our own fortune
coming. Travers warned me on the same day that we became engaged."

A dark flood of indignant blood rushed to Stafford's forehead.

"The man is an unscrupulous adventurer--no doubt he has safeguarded
his own interest carefully enough," he exclaimed bitterly.

"You are quite right. His wife has all the money, and he has taken
care that it should be well tied up and out of reach. That is what my
father did."

He turned to her again.

"Your father?"

"Yes, my father," she repeated, meeting his eyes gravely and
unflinchingly. "He tried to do what Travers did. But he wasn't quite
so clever. He ran too close to the wind, as he said himself, and they
put him in prison. He died there."

He stood looking at her with a new interest. He too, was beginning to
understand. The bitter line about the mouth was not the expression of
a hard, unfeeling heart after all, then, and the sharp, mocking laugh
which had jarred so often on his ears was not the echo of a shallow,
worthless character? They were no more than the deep wounds left after
a rough battle with a world that knows no pity for those branded with
inherited shame and dishonor. He had misjudged her. There were
unlimited possibilities of nobility and goodness in the beautiful face
lifted to his. But he said nothing of the thoughts that flashed
through his mind. In moments of crisis we always speak of what is
least important.