H. Rider Haggard - "Nada the Lily"

Oscar Wilde - "Lady Windermere's Fan"

William Wordsworth - "Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1"

Col. Robert Green Ingersoll - "Lectures Of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I"

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




By this time the digging babies were gone, the beach was almost
deserted. Little office clerks, men and women, coming down for the
two weeks of rest that break the fifty of work, still arrived on
the late train Saturday, and went away on the last train two weeks
from the following Sunday, but there were no more dances at the
one big hotel, and some of the smaller hotels were closed. The
tall, plain, attractive woman--with the three children and the
baby, who drove over from Clark's Hills every day, and, who, for
all her graying hair and sun-bleached linens, seemed to be of
Rachael's own world--still brought her shrieking and splashing
trio to the beach, but she had confided to Mrs. Dimmick, who had
known her for many summers, that even her long holiday was drawing
to a close. Mrs. Dimmick brought extra blankets down from the
attic, and began to talk of seeing her daughter in California.
Rachael, drinking in the glory of the dying summer, found each day
more exquisite than the last, and gratified her old hostess by
expressing her desire to spend all the rest of her life in Quaker
Bridge.

She had, indeed, come to like the villagers thoroughly; not the
summer population, for the guests at all summer hotels are alike
uninteresting, but for the quiet life that went on year in and
year out in the little side streets: the women who washed clothes
and swept porches, who gardened with tow-headed babies tumbling
around them, who went on Sundays to the little bald-faced church
at ten o'clock. Rachael got into talk with them, trying to realize
what it must be to walk a hot mile for the small transaction of
selling a dozen eggs for thirty cents, to spend a long morning
carefully darning an old, clean Nottingham lace curtain that could
be replaced for three dollars. She read their lives as if they had
been an absorbing book laid open for her eyes. The coming of the
Holladay baby, the decline and death of old Mrs. Bird, the narrow
escape of Sammy Tew from drowning, and the thorough old-fashioned
thrashing that Mary Trimble gave her oldest son for taking a
little boy like Sammy out beyond the "heads,"--all these things
sank deep into the consciousness of the new Rachael. She liked the
whitewashed cottages with their blazing geraniums and climbing
honeysuckle, and the back-door yards, with chickens fluffing in
the dust, and old men, seated on upturned old boats, smoking and
whittling as they watched the babies "while Lou gets her work
caught up".

October came in on a storm, the most terrifying storm Rachael had
ever seen. Late in the afternoon of September's last golden day a
wind began to rise among the dunes, and Rachael, who, wrapped in a
white wooly coat and deep in a book, had been lying for an hour or
two on the beach, was suddenly roused by a shower of sand, and sat
up to look at the sky. Clouds, low and gray, were moving rapidly
overhead, and although the tide was only making, and high water
would not be due for another hour, the waves, emerald green,
swift, and capped with white, were already touching the landmost
water-mark.

Quickly getting to her feet, she started briskly for home,
following the broken line of kelp and weeds, grasses, driftwood,
and cocoanut shells that fringed the tide-mark, and rather
fascinated by the sudden ominous change in sea and sky. In the
little village there was great clapping of shutters and straining
of clotheslines, distracted, bareheaded women ran about their
dooryards, doors banged, everywhere was rush and flutter.

"D'clare if don't think th' folks at Clark's Hills going to be
shut of completely," said Mrs. Dimmick, bustling about with
housewifely activity, and evidently, like all the village and like
Rachael herself, a little exhilarated by the oncoming siege.

"What will they do?" Rachael demanded, unhooking a writhing
hammock from the porch as the old woman briskly dragged the big
cane rockers indoors.

"Oh, ther' wunt no hurt come t'um," Mrs. Dimmick said. "But--come
an awful mean tide, Clark's Bar is under water. They'll jest have
to wait until she goes down, that's all."

"Shell I bring up some candles from suller; we ain't got much
karosene!" Florrie, the one maid, demanded excitedly. Chess, the
hired man, who was Florrie's "steady," began to bring wood in by
the armful, and fling it down by the airtight stove that had been
set up only a few days before.

The wind began to howl about the roof; trees in the dooryard
rocked and arched. Darkness fell at four o'clock, and the
deafening roar of the ocean seemed an actual menace as the night
came down. Chess and Florrie, after supper, frankly joined the
family group in the sitting-room, a group composed only of Rachael
and Mrs. Dimmick and two rather terrified young stenographers from
the city.

These two did not go to bed, but Rachael went upstairs as usual at
ten o'clock, and drifted to sleep in a world of creaking, banging,
and roaring. A confusion and excited voices below stairs brought
her down again rather pale, in her long wrapper, at three. The
Barwicks, mother, father, and three babies, had left their beach
cottage in the night and the storm to seek safer shelter and the
welcome sound of other voices than their own.

After that there was little sleep for anyone. Still in the roaring
darkness the clocks presently announced morning, and a neighbor's
boy, breathless, dripping in tarpaulins, was blown against the
door, and burst in to say with youthful relish that the porches of
the Holcomb house were under water, and the boardwalk washed away,
and folks said that the road was all gone betwixt here and the
lighthouse. Rain was still falling in sheets, and the wind was
still high. Rachael braved it, late in the afternoon, to go out
and see with her own eyes that the surf was foaming and frothing
over the deserted bandstand at the end of the main street, and got
back to the shelter of the house wet and gasping, and with the
first little twist of personal fear at her heart. Suppose that
limitless raging green wall down there rose another ten--another
twenty--feet, swept deep and roaring and resistless over little
Quaker Bridge, plunged them all for a few struggling, hopeless
moments into its emerald depths, and then washed the little
loosely drifting bodies that had been men and women far out to sea
again?

What could one do? No trains came into Quaker Bridge to-day; it
was understood that there were washouts all along the line.
Rachael sat in the dark, stuffy little sitting-room with the
placid Barwick baby drowsing in her lap, and at last her face
reflected the nervous uneasiness of the other women. Every time an
especially heavy rush of rain or wind struck the unsubstantial
little house, Mrs. Barwick said, "Oh, my!" in patient, hopeless
terror, and the two young women looked at each other with a quick
hissing breath of fear.

The night was long with horror. There were other refugees in Mrs.
Dimmick's house now; there were in all fifteen people sitting
around her little stove listening to the wind and the ocean. The
old lady herself was the most cheerful of the group, although
Rachael and one or two of the others managed an appearance at
least of calm.

"Declare," said the hostess, more than once, "dunt see what we's
all thinkin' of not to git over to Clark's Hills 'fore the bar was
under water! They've got sixty-foot elevation there!"

"I'd just as soon try to get there now," said Miss Stokes of New
York eagerly.

"There's waves eight feet high washin' over that bar," Ernest
Barwick said, and something in the simple words made little Miss
Stokes look sick for a moment.

"What's our elevation?" Rachael asked.

"'Bout--" Mr. Barwick paused. "But you can't tell nothing by
that," he contented himself with remarking after a moment's
thought.

"But I never heard--I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a
whole village!" Rachael hated herself for the fear that dragged
the words out, and the white lips that spoke them.

"Neither did I!" said half a dozen voices. There was silence while
the old clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight
strokes. "LORD, how it rains!" muttered Emily Barwick.

Nine o'clock--ten o'clock. The young women, the old woman, the
maid and man who would be married some day if they lived, the
husband and wife who had been lovers like them only a few years
ago, and who now had these three little lives to guard, all sat
wrapped in their own thoughts. Rachael sat staring at the stove's
red eye, thinking, thinking, thinking. She thought of Warren
Gregory; his steamer must be in now, he must be with his mother in
the old house, and planning to see her any day. To-morrow--if
there was a to-morrow--might bring his telegram. What would his
life be if he might never see her again? She could not even leave
him a note, or a word; on this eve of their meeting, were they to
be parted forever? Should she never tell him how dearly--how
dearly--she loved him? Tears came to her eyes, her heart was wrung
with exquisite sorrow.

She thought of Billy--poor little Billy--who had never had a
mother, who needed a mother so sadly, and of her own mother, dead
now, and of the old blue coat of thirteen years ago, and the rough
blue hat. She thought of her great-grandmother in the little
whitewashed California cottage under the shadow of the blue
mountains, with the lilacs and marigolds in the yard. And colored
by her new great love, and by the solemn fears of this endless
night, Rachael found a tenderness in her heart for all those
shadowy figures that had played a part in her life.

At midnight there came a thundering crash on the ocean side of the
house.

"Oh, God, IT'S THE SEA!" screamed Emily Barwick. They all rushed
to the door and flung it open, and in a second were out in the
wild blackness of the night. Still the roaring and howling and
shrieking of the elements, still the infuriated booming of the
surf, but--thank God--no new sound. There was no break in the
flying darkness above them; the street was a running sheet of
water in the dark.

Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted.
Rachael presently said that no matter what was going to happen,
she was too cold and tired to stay up any longer, and went
upstairs to bed. Miss Stokes and Miss McKim settled themselves in
their chairs; Emily Barwick went to sleep with her head against
her husband's thin young shoulder. Somebody suggested coffee, and
there was a general move toward the kitchen.

Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly
the position she had taken when she crept into bed the night
before. For a few minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely
room, and at the clock ticking briskly toward nine.

"Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly. No
need to ask of the storm with this celestial reassurance flooding
the room. But after a few moments she got up and went to the
window. The trees, battered and torn, were ruffling such leaves as
were left them gallantly in the wind, the paths still ran yellow
water, the roadway was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling,
and everywhere was the drip and splash of water. But the sky was
clear and blue, and the air as soft as milk.

As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was
out in the new world. The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into
her face; the whole of sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing.

Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a
wreck; and the ocean, when she came to the shore, was still
rolling wild and high. But it was blue now, and the pure sky above
it was blue, and there was utter protection and peace in the sunny
air. Landmarks all along the shore were washed away, and beyond
the first line of dunes were pools left by the great tide, scummy
and sinking fast into the sand, to leave only a fringe of bubbles
behind. Minor wreckages of all sorts lay scattered all along the
beach: poles and ropes, boxes and barrels.

Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by
the fresh glory of the singing morning. Presently she would go
back, and there would be Warren's letter, or his telegram, or
perhaps himself, and then their golden days would begin--their
happy time! But even Warren to-day could not intrude upon her mood
of utter gratitude and joy in just living--just being young and
alive in a world that could hold such a sea and such a sky.

A full mile from the village, along the ocean shore, a stream came
down from under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating
children had often proved to their own satisfaction, that rose in
a small but eminently satisfactory cave. The storm had washed
several great smooth logs of driftwood into the cave, and beyond
them to-day there was such a gurgling and churning going on that
Rachael, eager not to miss any effect of the storm, stepped
cautiously inside.

The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was
further made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the
high tide. Straw and weeds and rubbish of every description choked
its course, and little foaming currents and backwaters almost
filled the cave with their bubbling and swirling.

Rachael, with a few casual pushes of a sturdy little shoe,
accomplished such surprising results in freeing and directing the
stream that she fell upon it in sudden serious earnest, grasping a
long pole the better to push obstructing matters aside, and
growing rosy and breathless over her self-imposed and senseless
undertaking.

She had just loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had
straightened herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief,
as the current rushed it away, when a shadow fell over the mouth
of the cave. Looking about in quick, instinctive fear, she saw
Warren Gregory smiling at her.

For only one second she hesitated, all girlhood's radiant shyness
in her face. Then she was in his arms, and clinging to him, and
for a few minutes they did not speak, eyes and lips together in
the wild rapture of meeting.

"Oh, Greg--Greg--Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the
words together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell
me--tell me all about it!" But before he could begin to answer her
their eager joy carried them both far away from all the
conversational landmarks, and again they had breath only for
monosyllables, instinct only to cling to each other.

"My girl, my own girl!" Warren Gregory said. "Oh, how I've missed
you--and you're more beautiful than ever--did you know it? More
beautiful even than I remembered you to be, and that was beautiful
enough!"

"Oh, hush!" she said, laughing, her fingers over the mouth that
praised her, his arm still holding her tight.

"I'll never hush again, my darling! Never, never in all the years
we spend together! I am going to tell you a hundred times a day
that you are the most beautiful, and the dearest--Oh, Rachael,
Rachael, shall I tell you something? It's October! Do you know
what that means?"

"Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed, and colored exquisitely,
drawing herself back the length of their linked arms.

"Do you know what you're going to BE in about thirty-six hours?"

"Now--you embarrass me! Was--was anything settled?"

"Shall you like being Mrs. Gregory?"

"Greg--" Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she
said in a whisper.

They sat down on a great log, washed silver white with long years
of riding unguided through the seas, and all the wonderful world
of blue sky and white sand might have been made for them.
Rachael's hand lay in her lover's, her glorious eyes rarely left
his face. Browned by his summer of travel, she found him better
than ever to look upon; hungry after these waiting months, every
tone of his voice held for her a separate delight.

"Did you ever dream of happiness like this, Rachael?"

"Never--never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few
months!"

"What--didn't trust me?"

"No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't
think of the future or the past. It was all present."

"With me," he said, "it was all future. I've been counting the
days. I've not done that since I was at school! Rachael, do you
remember our talk the night after the Berry Stokes' dinner?"

"Do I remember it?"

"Ah, my dear, if anyone had said that night that in six months we
would be sitting here, and that you would have promised yourself
to me! You don't know what my wife is going to mean to me, my
dearest. I can't believe it yet!"

"It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said
seriously. "I mean to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving
counts--"

"Do you mean that?" he said eagerly. "Say it--do you mean that you
love me?"

"Love you?" She stood up, pressing both hands over her heart as if
there were real pain there. For a few paces she walked away from
him, and, as he followed her, she turned upon him the
extraordinary beauty of her face transfigured with strong emotion.

"Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've
heard it called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is
ME! It is burning in me like flame, it is consuming me. To be with
you"--she caught his wrist with one hand, and with her free hand
pointed out across the smiling ocean--"to be with you and KNOW you
were mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end it
all, and be glad--glad--glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday,
but what is this to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in
your arms!" Her voice broke on something like a sob, but her eyes
were smiling. "All my life I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm
awake now--I'm awake now! I begin to realize how helpless one is--
to realize what I should have done if you hadn't come--"

"My darling," Gregory said, his arms about her "what else--feeling
as we feel--could I have done?"

Held in his embrace, she rested her hands upon his shoulders, and
looked wistfully into his eyes.

"It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me?
You--you love me?"

Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm
strong beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all
her glowing and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most
exquisite moment of his life. Her youth, her history, her
wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all a
girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these
combined to enthrall the man who had admired her for many years
and loved her for more than one.

"Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with
such a delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath.

"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give
myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly
have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife,
and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down
into harness--one year, five years--ten years married! Oh, you
don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit
being nearly forty. Forty--doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate--
and that's what I want. I--I shall love getting gray, and feeling
that you and I don't care so much about going places, don't you
know? We'll like better just being home together, won't we? We're
older than most people now, aren't we?"

He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its
restored beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this
new phase of girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times
more charming than he had dreamed. It was hard to believe that
this eager girl in a striped blue and yellow and purple skirt, and
rough white crash hat, was the bored, the remote, the much-feared
Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and virginal
had come back to her, or been born in her. She was like no phase
of the many phases in which he had known her; she was a Rachael
who had never known the sordid, the disillusioning side of life.
Even her seriousness had the confident, eager quality of youth,
and her gayety was as pure as a child's. She had cast off the old
sophistication, the old recklessness of speech; she was not even
interested in the old associates. The world for her was all in him
and their love for each other, and she walked back to Quaker
Bridge, at his side, too wholly swept away from all self-
consciousness to know or to care that they were at once the target
for all eyes.

A wonderful day followed, many wonderful days. Doctor Gregory's
great touring car and his livened man were at Mrs. Dimmick's door
when they got back, an incongruous note in little Quaker Bridge,
still gasping from the great storm.

"Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?"

"Yesterday. I put up at Valentine's--George Valentine's, you know,
at Clark's Hills."

"Oh, that's my nice lady--gray haired, and with three children?"
Rachael said eagerly. "Do you know her?"

"Know her? Valentine is my closest associate. They meet us in town
to-morrow: he's to be best man. You'll have to have them to dinner
once a month for the rest of your life!"

The picture brought her happy color, the shy look he loved.

"I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!"

They were at the car; she must flush again at the chauffeur's
greeting, finding a certain grave significance, a certain
acceptance, in his manner.

"Wife and baby well, Martin?"

"Very well, thank you, Mrs. Breckenridge."

"Still in Belvedere Hills?"

"Well, just at present, yes, Madam."

"You see, I am looking for suitable quarters for all hands,"
Doctor Gregory said, his laugh drowning hers, his eyes feasting on
her delicious confusion. She was aware that feminine eyes from the
house were watching her. Presently she had kissed Mrs. Dimmick
good-bye. Warren had put his man in the tonneau; he would take the
wheel himself for the three hours' run into town.

"Good-bye, my dear!" said the old lady, adding with an innocent
vacuity of manner quite characteristic of Quaker Bridge. "Let me
know when the weddin's goin' to be!"

"I'll let you know right now," said Doctor Gregory, who, gloved
and coated, was bustling about the car, deep in the mysterious
rites incidental to starting. "It's going to be to-morrow!"

"Good grief!" exclaimed Mrs. Dimmick delightedly. "Well," she
added, "folks down here think you've got an awfully pretty bride!"

"I'm glad she's up to the standard down here," Warren Gregory
observed. "Nobody seems to think much of her looks up in the
city!"

Rachael laughed and leaned from her place beside the driver to
kiss the old lady again and to wave a general good-bye to Florrie
and Chess and the group on the porch. As smoothly as if she were
launched in air the great car sprang into motion; the storm-blown
cottages, the battered dooryards, the great shabby trees over the
little post office all swept by. They passed the turning that led
to Clark's Bar, and a weather-worn sign-post that read "Quaker
Bridge, 1 mile." It was not a dream, it was all wonderfully true:
this was Greg beside her, and they were going to be married!

Rachael settled back against the deep, soft cushions in utter
content. To be flying through the soft Indian summer sunshine,
alone with Greg, to actually touch his big shoulder with her own,
to command his interest, his laughter, his tenderness, at will--
after these lonely months it was a memorable and an enchanting
experience. Their talk drifted about uncontrolled, as talk after
long silence must: now it was a waiter on the ocean liner of whom
Gregory spoke, or perhaps the story of a small child's rescue from
the waves, from Rachael. They spoke of the roads, splendidly hard
and clean after the rain, and of the villages through which they
rushed.

But over their late luncheon, in a roadside inn, the talk fell
into deeper grooves, their letters, their loneliness, and their
new plans, and when the car at last reached the traffic of the big
bridge, and Rachael caught her first glimpse of the city under its
thousand smoking chimneys, there had entered into their
relationship a new sacred element, something infinitely tender and
almost sad, a dependence upon each other, a oneness in which
Rachael could get a foretaste of the exquisite communion so soon
to be.

They were spinning up the avenue, through a city humming with the
first reviving breath of winter. They were at the great hotel, and
Rachael was laughing in Elinor Vanderwall's embrace. The linen
shop, the milliner, a dinner absurdly happy, and one of the new
plays--a sunshiny morning when she and Elinor breakfasted in their
rooms, and opened box after box of gowns and hats--the hours fled
by like a dream.

"Nervous, Rachael?" asked Miss Vanderwall of the vision that
looked out from Rachael's mirror.

"Not a bit!" the wife-to-be answered, feeling as she said it that
her hands, busy with long gloves, were shaking, and her knees
almost unready to support her.

"It must be wonderful to marry a man like Greg," said the
bridesmaid thoughtfully. "He simply IS everything and HAS
everything--"