Thornton W. Burgess - "Old Granny Fox"

Charles Dickens - "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572"

Horatio Alger - "Hector's Inheritance"

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 Heart of Rachael

K >> Kathleen Norris >> The Heart of Rachael




Then it would be September, and everything would end as suddenly
as it began. The Villalongas would go to Europe, or to Newport,
Vera loudly, joyously, insistently urging everyone to visit them
there if it were the latter. In November they would be in their
town house with new paintings and new rugs to show their guests: a
portrait of Vera, a rug stolen from a Sultan's palace.

Everybody said that Vera Villalonga did this sort of thing
extremely well; indeed she had no rival in her own particular
field. The weekly society journals depended upon her to supply
them with spectacular pictures of a Chinese ball every November
and a Micareme dance every spring; they sent photographers all the
way up to her camp that their readers might not miss a yearly
glimpse of the way Mrs. Villalonga entertained.

But Rachael, who had spent a portion of six summers with the
Villalongas, found herself, in her newly analytical mood,
wondering just who got any particular pleasure out of it all. Vera
herself, perhaps. Certainly her husband, who would spend all his
time playing poker and tennis, would have been as happy elsewhere.
Her two sons, tall, dark young men, in connection with whose
characters the world in general contented itself merely with the
word "wild," would be there only for a week or two at most. Billy
would wait for Joe Pickering's letters, Clarence would drink, and
watch Billy. Little Mina Villalonga, who had a minor nervous
ailment, would wander about after Billy. The Parmalees would come
up for a visit, and the Morans would come. Jack Torrence, spoiled
out of all reason, would promise a week and come for two days;
Porter Pinckard would compromise upon a mere hour or two, charging
into the camp in his racing car, introducing hilarious friends,
accepting a sandwich and a bottle of beer, and then tearing off
again. Straker Thomas, silent, mysterious, ill, would drift about
for a week or two; Peter Pomeroy would go up late in July, and be
adored by everyone, and take charge of the theatricals.

"The maids probably get any amount of fun out of it," mused
Rachael. Vera was notably generous to her servants: a certain pool
was reserved for them, and their numbers formed a most congenial
society every summer. "I don't believe I'll go to Vera's this
year," Mrs. Breckenridge said aloud to her husband and
stepdaughter.

"I'm not crazy about it," Billy agreed fretfully.

"Might as well," was the man's enthusiastic contribution.

"Oh, I'm GOING!" Billy said discontentedly. "But I don't see why
you and Rachael have to go."

"Don't you?" her father said significantly.

"Joe Pickering's going to be in Texas this whole summer, if that's
what you mean!" flamed Billy.

"I'm glad to hear it," Clarence commented.

"Anyway, you might depend upon Vera to take absolute good care of
Bill," Rachael said soothingly. "It's time you both got away to
some cooler place, if you are going to fight so about nothing! Why
do you do it? Billy can't marry anyone for eleven months, and if
she wants to marry the man in the moon then you can't stop her. So
there you are!"

"And I'm capable of running my own affairs," finished Billy with a
look far from filial.

"You only waste your breath arguing with Clarence when he's got
one of his headaches," Rachael said to her stepdaughter an hour or
two later when they were spinning smoothly into the city for the
planned shopping. "Of course he'll go to Vera's, and of course
you'll go, too! Just don't tease him when he's all upset."

"Well, what does he drink and smoke so much, and get this way
for?" Billy demanded sullenly.

"What does anybody do it for?" Rachael countered. And a second
later her singing heart was with Gregory again. He did not do it!

She entered into Billy's purchasing perplexities with great
sympathy; a successful hat was found, several deliciously
extravagant and fragile dresses for camping.

"You're awfully decent about all this, Rachael." Billy said once;
"it must be a sweet life we lead you sometimes!"

Something in the girl's young glance touched Rachael strangely.
They were in the car again now, going toward Mrs. Gregory's
handsome, old-fashioned house on Washington Square. Rachael was
inspired to seize the propitious second.

"Listen, Bill," she said, and paused. Billy eyed her curiously.
Obtuse as she was, a certain change in Rachael had not entirely
escaped the younger woman.

"Well?" she asked, on guard.

"Well--" Rachael faltered. Motherly advice was not much in her
line. "It's just this, Bill," she resumed slowly, "when you think
of marriage, don't think of just a few weeks or a few months;
think of all the time. Think of other things than just--that sort
of--love. Children, you know, and--and books, don't you know?
Things that count. Be--I don't say be guided entirely by what your
father and lots of other persons think, but be influenced by it!
Realize that we have no motive but--but affection, in advising you
to be sure."

The stumbling, uncertain words were unlike Mrs. Breckenridge's
usual certain flow of reasoning. But in spite of this, or because
of it, Billy was somewhat impressed.

"I had an aunt in California," Rachael continued, "who cried, and
got whipped and locked up, and all the rest of it, and she carried
her point. But she was unhappy. ..."

"You mean because Joe is divorced?" Billy asked in a somewhat
troubled voice.

The scarlet rushed to Rachael's face.

"N--not entirely," she answered in some confusion.

"That is, you don't think divorced people ought to remarry, even
if the divorce is fair enough?" Billy pursued, determined to be
clear.

"Well, I suppose every case is different, Bill."

"That's what you've always SAID!" Billy accused her vivaciously.
"You said, time and time again, that if people can't live together
in peace they OUGHT to separate, but that it was another thing if
they married again!"

"Did I?" Rachael asked weakly, adding a moment later, with obvious
relief in her tone: "Here we are! It's only this, Bill," she
finished, as they mounted the brownstone steps, "be sure. You can
do anything, I suppose. Only be sure!"

Mrs. Gregory would be down in a few minutes, old Dennison said.
Rachael murmured something amiable, and the two went into the
dark, handsome parlors; the house was full of parlors; on both
sides of the hall stately, crowded rooms could be glimpsed through
open doors.

"Isn't it fierce?" Billy said with a helpless shrug. Rachael
smiled and shook her head slowly in puzzled consent. "Don't you
suppose they ever AIR it?" pursued the younger woman in a low
tone. The air had a peculiarly close, dry smell.

"It wouldn't seem so," Rachael said, looking at the life-size
statues of Moorish and Neopolitan girls, the mantel clock
representing a Dutch windmill, the mantel itself, of black marble,
gilded and columned, with a mirror in a carved walnut frame
stretching ten feet above it, the beaded fire screen, the
voluminous window curtains of tasselled rep, and the ornate walnut
table across whose marble top a strip of lace had been laid.
Everything was ugly and expensive and almost everything was old-
fashioned, all the level surfaces of tables, mantel, and piano top
were filled with small articles, bits of ivory carving from China,
leather boxes, majolica jars, photographs in heavy frames,
enormous illustrated books, candlesticks, and odd teacups and
trays.

Smiling down--how Rachael knew that smile, half-quizzical and
half-tender--from a corner of the room was a beautiful oil
portrait of Warren Gregory, the one really fine thing in the room.
By some chance the painter had caught on his face the very look
with which he might, in the flesh, have studied this dreadful
room. Rachael felt a thrill go to her heels as she looked back at
the canvas, and far down in the deeps of her being the thought
stirred that some day her hand might be the one to change all
this--to make the woodwork colonial white, and the paper rich with
color, to have the black marble changed to creamy tiles, and the
rep curtains torn away. Then how charming the place would be when
visitors came in from the hot street!

"A million apologies--all my fault!" said Doctor Gregory in the
doorway. His mother, in rustling black silk, was on his arm. She
had given up her cane to-day to use the living support, and no
lover could have wished to appear more charming in his lady's eyes
than did Warren Gregory appear to Rachael as he lowered the frail
old figure to a chair and neglected his guests while he made his
mother comfortable.

"He would have you think, now, that I was the cause of the delay,"
said the old lady in a sweet voice that betrayed curiously the
weakness of the flesh and the strength of the spirit. "But I
assure you my beauty is no longer a matter of great importance to
me!"

"So it was Greg who was curling his hair?" Rachael asked, with one
swift and eloquent glance for him before she drew a much-fringed
hassock to his mother's knee and seated herself there with the
confidence of a captivating child. "I always thought he was rather
vain! But let's not talk about him, we only make him worse. Tell
me about yourself?"

Mrs. Gregory was a rather spirited old lady, and liked to fancy,
with the pathetic complacency of the passing generation, that her
sense of humor quite kept up with the times. Rachael knew her
well, and knew all her stories, but this only made her the
pleasanter companion. She quickly carried the conversation into
the past, and was content to be a listener; indeed, with a hostess
far removed in type from herself it was the only safe role to
play. The conversation was full of pitfalls for this charming and
dutiful worldling, and Rachael was too clever to risk a fall.

She was afraid of the crippled little gentlewoman in the big
chair, and Warren Gregory was afraid, too. Some mysterious element
in her regard for them made luncheon an ordeal for them both,
although Billy's healthy young eyes saw only an old woman,
impotent and alone; the maids were respectful and pitying, and
young Charles Gregory, who joined them at luncheon, Was obviously
unimpressed by his grandmother's power, but was smitten red and
inarticulate at the first glimpse of Billy.

This youth, after silently disposing of several courses, finally
asked in a husky voice for Miss Charlotte Haviland, and relapsed
into silence again. Billy flirted youthfully with her host,
Rachael devoted herself to the old lady.

She had always been happy here, a marked favorite with old Mrs.
Gregory to whom her audacious nonsense had always seemed a great
delight before. But to-day she was conscious of a change, she
could not control the conversation with her usual sure touch, she
floundered and contradicted herself like a schoolgirl. One of her
brilliant stories fell rather flat because its humor was largely
supplied by an intoxicated man--"of course it was dreadful, but
then it was funny, too!" Rachael finished lamely. Another flashing
account won from the old hostess the single words "On Sunday?"

"Well, yes. It was on Sunday. I am afraid we are absolute pagans;
we don't always remember to go to church, by any means!" Rachael
began to feel that a cloud of midges were buzzing about her face.
Every topic led her deeper into the quicksand. There was a
definite touch of resentment under the gracious manner in which
she presently said her good-bye, and they were no sooner in the
motor car than she exclaimed to Billy:

"Didn't Mrs. Gregory seem horribly cross to you to-day? She made
me feel as if I'd broken all the Commandments and was dancing on
the pieces!"

"What do you know about Charles asking for Charlotte?" was Billy's
only answer. "Isn't he just the sort of mutt who would ask for
Charlotte!"

"Isn't she quite lovely?" said Mrs. Gregory from over the fleecy
yarn she was knitting, when the guests had gone.

"Carol?" the doctor countered.

"Yes, Carol, too. But I was thinking of Mrs. Breckenridge. Do you
see her very often, James?"

"Quite a bit. Do you mind my smoking?"

"I often wonder," pursued the old lady innocently, "what such a
sweet, gay, lovely girl could see in a fellow like poor Clarence
Breckenridge!"

"Great marvel she doesn't throw him over!" Warren said casually.

"It distresses me to hear you talk so recklessly, my son," Mrs.
Gregory said after a brief pause,

"Lord, Mother," her son presently observed impatiently, "is it
reasonable to expect that because a girl like that makes a mistake
when she is twenty or twenty-one, that she shall pay for it for
the rest of her life?"

"Unfortunately, we are not left in any doubt about it," the old
lady said dryly. And as Warren was silent she went on with
quavering vigor: "It is not for us to judge her husband's
infirmities. She is his wife."

"Oh, well, there's no use arguing it," the man said pleasantly
after a sulphurous interval. "Fortunately for her, most people
don't feel as you do."

"You surely don't think that _I_ originated this theory?" his
mother asked quietly after a silence, during which her long
needles moved a little more swiftly than was natural.

"I don't think anything about it. I KNOW that you're much, much
narrower about such things than your religion or any religion
gives you any right to be," Warren asserted hotly. "It is nothing
to me, but I hate this smug parcelling out of other people's
affairs," he went on. "Mrs. Breckenridge is a very wonderful and a
most unfortunate woman; her husband isn't fit to lace her shoes--"

"All that may be true," his mother interrupted with some
agitation.

"All that may be true, you say! And yet if Rachael left him, and
tried to find happiness somewhere else--"

"The law is not of MY making, James," the old lady intervened
mildly, noting his use of the discussed woman's name with a pang.

"But it IS of your making--you people who sit around and say
what's respectable and what's not respectable! Who are you to
judge?"

"I try not to judge," Mrs. Gregory said so simply that the man's
anger cooled in spite of himself. "And perhaps I am foolish,
James, all mothers are. But you are the last of my four sons, and
I am a widow in my old age, and I tremble for you. When a woman
with beauty as great as that confides in you, my child, when she
turns to you, your soul is in danger, and your mother sees it. I
cannot--I cannot be silent--"

Rachael herself, an hour ago, had not used her youth and beauty
with more definite design than was this other woman using her age
and infirmity now. Warren Gregory was almost as readily affected.

"My dear Mother," he said sensibly and charmingly, "don't think
for one instant that I do not appreciate your devotion to me. What
has suddenly put into your head this concern about Mrs.
Breckenridge, I can't imagine. I know that if she were ever in any
trouble or need you would be the first to defend her. She is in a
peculiarly difficult position, and in a professional way I am
somewhat in her confidence, that's all!"

"I should think she could do something with Clarence," the old
lady said, somewhat mollified. "Interest him in something new;
lead him away from bad influences."

"Clarence is rather a hopeless problem," Warren Gregory said. The
talk drifted away to other persons and affairs, but when they
presently parted, with great amiability on both sides, Warren
Gregory knew that his mother's suspicions had in some mysterious
way been aroused, and old Mrs. Gregory, sitting alone in the heat
of the afternoon, writhed in the grip of a definite apprehension.
Absurd--absurd--to interpret that married woman's brightly
innocent glances into a declaration of love, absurd to find
passion concealed in Warren's cheerfully hospitable manner. But
she could not shake off the terrified conviction that it was so.

"Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Moulton of England have rented for the
season the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge, at
Belvedere Bay," stated the social columns authoritatively. "Mr.
Breckenridge and Miss Carol Breckenridge will leave at once for
the summer camp of Mrs. Booth Villalonga, at Elks Leap, where Mrs.
Breckenridge will join them after spending a few weeks with
friends."

Rachael saw the notice on the morning of the last day that she and
Clarence were together. In the afternoon Billy and Clarence were
to leave for the north, and Rachael was to go to Florence for a
day or two. She had been unusually indefinite about her plans for
the summer, but in the general confusion of all plans this had not
been noticed. She had superintended the packing and assorting and
storing of silver and linen, as a matter of course, and it was
easy to see that certain things indisputably her own went into
certain crates. Nobody questioned her authority, and Clarence and
Billy paid no attention whatever to the stupid proceeding of
getting the house in order for tenants.

On this last morning she sat at the breakfast table studying these
two who had been her companions for seven years, and who suspected
so little that this companionship was not to last for another
seven years, for an indefinite time. Billy was in a bad temper
because her father was not taking Alfred and the car with them to
the camp, as he had done for the two previous years. Clarence,
sullen as always under Billy's disapproval, was pretending to read
his paper. He had a severe headache this morning, his face looked
flushed and swollen. He was dreading the twenty-four hours in a
hot train, even though the Bowditches, going up in their own car
to their own camp, had offered the Breckenridges its comparative
comfort and coolness for the entire trip.

"Makes me so sick," grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in
a Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; "every time I want
to move I'll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car! No fun at
all!"

"Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear," Rachael said
pacifically. She was quivering from head to foot with nervous
excitement; the next few hours were all-important to her. And,
under the pressure of her own great emotions, Billy seemed only
rather pitiful and young to-day, and even Clarence less a
conscious tyrant, and more a blundering boy, than he had seemed.
She bore them no ill will after these seven hard years; indeed a
great peace and kindliness pervaded her spirit and softened her
manner toward them both. Her marriage had been a great
disappointment, composed of a thousand small disappointments, but
she was surprised to find that some intangible and elementary
emotion was about to make this parting strangely hard.

"Yes, but it's not the same thing," Billy raged. Rachael began a
low-voiced reassurance to which the younger woman listened
reluctantly, scowling over her omelette, and interposing an
occasional protest.

"Oh, yap--yap--yap! My God, I do get tired of hearing you two go
on and on and on!" Clarence presently burst out angrily. "If you
don't want to go, Billy, say so. I'm sick of the whole thing,
anyway!"

"You know very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And
because, being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she
perversely dreaded it, she pursued aggrievedly, "I'd EVER so much
rather have gone to California, Dad!"

How sure the youngster was of her power, Rachael thought, watching
him instantly soften under his daughter's skilful touch.

"For five cents," he said eagerly, "I'd wire Vera, and you and I'd
beat it to Santa Barbara! What do you say?"

"And if Rachael promised to be awfully good, she could come, too!"
Billy laughed. But the girl's gay patronage was never again to be
extended to Rachael Breckenridge.

"You couldn't disappoint Vera now," she protested.

"Oh, Lord! make some objections!" Clarence growled.

"My dear boy, it's nothing to me, whatever you do," Rachael said
quickly. "But Vera Villalonga is a very important friend for Bill.
There's no sense in antagonizing her--"

"No, I suppose there isn't," Billy said slowly. "But I wish she'd
not ask us every summer. I suppose we shall be doing this for the
rest of our lives!"

She trailed slowly from the room, and Clarence took one or two
fretful glances at his paper.

"Gosh, how you do love to spoil things!" he said bitterly to his
wife in a sudden burst.

Rachael did not answer. She rose after a few moments, and carried
her letters into the adjoining room. When Clarence presently
passed the door she called him in.

"Now or never--now or never!" said Rachael's fast-beating heart.
She was pale and breathing quickly as he came in. But Clarence,
sick and headachy, did not notice these signs of strong emotion.

"Clarence, I need some money," Rachael said simply.

"What for?" he asked unencouragingly.

The color came into his wife's face. She did not ask often for
money, although he was rich, and she had been his wife for seven
years. It was a continual humiliation to Rachael that she must ask
him at all for the little actual money she spent, and tell him
what she did with it when she got it. Clarence might lose more
money at poker in a single night than Rachael touched in a month;
it had come to him without effort, and of the two, she was the one
who made a real effort to hold the home together. Yet she was a
pensioner on his bounty, obliged to wait for the propitious mood
and moment. Under her hand at this moment was Mary Moulton's check
for one thousand dollars, more than she had ever had at one time
in her life. She could not touch it, but Clarence would turn it
into bills, and stuff them carelessly into his pocket, to be
scattered in the next week or two wherever his idle fancy saw fit.

"Why, for living, and travelling expenses," she answered, with
what dignity she could muster.

"Thought you had some money," he grumbled in evident distaste.

"Come in here a moment," Rachael said in a voice that rather to
his surprise he obeyed. "Sit down there," she went on, and
Clarence, staring at her a little stupidly, duly seated himself.
His wife twisted about in her desk chair so that she could rest an
arm upon the back of it, and faced him seriously across that arm.

"Clarence," said she, conscious of a certain dryness in her mouth,
and a sick quivering and weakness through-out her whole body, "I
want to end this."

"What?" asked Clarence, puzzled and dull, as she paused.

"I want to be free," Rachael said, stumbling awkwardly over the
phrase that sounded so artificial and dramatic. They looked at
each other, Clarence's bewildered look slowly changing to one of
comprehension under his wife's significant expression. There was a
silence.

"Well?" Clarence said, ending it with an indifferent shrug.

"Our marriage has been a farce for years--almost from the
beginning," Rachael asserted eagerly. "You know it, and I know it-
-everyone does. You're not happy, and I'm wretched. I'm sick of
excuses, and pretending, and prevaricating. There isn't a thing in
the world we feel alike about; our life has become an absolute
sham. It isn't as if I could have any real influence over you--you
go your way, and do as you please, and I take the consequences. I
realize now that every word I say jars on you. Why, sometimes when
you come into a room and find me there I can tell by the
expression on your face that you're angry just at that! I've too
much self-respect, I've too much pride, to go on this way. You
know how I hate divorce--no woman in the world hates it more--but
tell me, honestly, what do we gain by keeping up a life like this?
I used to be happy and confident and full of energy a few years
ago; now I'm bored all the time. What's the use, what's the use--
that's the way I feel about everything--"

"You're not any more tired of it than I am!" Clarence interrupted
sullenly.

"Then why keep it up?" she asked urgently. "You've Billy, and your
clubs, and your car, to fill your time. There'll be a fuss, of
course, and I hate that, but we'll both be away. We've given it a
fair trial, but we simply aren't meant for each other. Good
heavens! it isn't as if we were the first man and woman who--"

"Don't talk as if I were opposing you," Clarence said with a weary
frown.

Rachael, snubbed, instantly fell silent.

"I've got my side in all this dissatisfied business, too," the man
presently said with unsteady dignity. "You never cared a damn for
me, or what became of me! I've had you ding-donging your troubles
at me day and night; it never occurs to you what I'm up against."
He looked at his watch. "You want some money?" he asked.

"If you please," Rachael answered, scarlet-cheeked.

"Well, I can write a check--" he began.

"Here's this check of Mary Moulton's for July," Rachael said,
nervously adding: "She wants to pay month by month, because I
think she hopes you'll rent after August. I believe she'd keep the
place indefinitely, on account of being near her mother, and for
the boys."

Clarence took the check, and, hardly glancing at it, scrawled his
slovenly "C. L. Breckenridge" across the back with a gold-mounted
fountain pen. Rachael, whose face was burning, received it back
from his hand with a husky "Thank you. You'll have to furnish the
grounds, I presume--there will be a referee--nothing need get out
beyond the fact that I am the complainant. You--won't contest?
You--won't oppose anything?" She hated herself for the question,
but it had to be asked.