Horatio - "Love's Final Victory"

Harold Brighouse - "Hobson's Choice"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1587"

Charles Edward Stowe - "The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe"

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




The women were even more frank; Clarence's name was often
mentioned in her presence; she was quite simply congratulated and
envied.

"My dear," said Mrs. Cowles, at a women's luncheon, "you were
extraordinarily clever, of course, but don't forget that you were
extremely lucky, too. Clarence making no fuss, taking all the
trouble to provide the evidence, and Greg being only too anxious
to step into his shoes, made it easy for you!"

"I'm no prude," Rachael smiled, over a raging heart. "But I
couldn't see this coming, nobody did. All I could do was to break
free before my self-respect was absolutely gone!"

"Go tell that to the White Wings, darling," laughed Mrs.
Villalonga, lazily blowing smoke into rings and spirals.

"Seriously, Vera, I mean it!"

"Seriously, Rachael, do you mean to tell me that you hadn't the
SLIGHTEST idea--" Mrs. Villalonga roused herself, to smilingly
study the other woman's face as she asked the question. "Not a
word--not a HINT?"

"Ah, well--" Rachael's face was flaming. She would have put her
hand in the fire to be able to say "No." The others laughed
cheerfully.

"Nobody misunderstands you, dear: you were in a rotten fix and you
got out of it nicely," said fat Mrs. Moran, and Mrs. Villalonga
added consolingly: "Why, my heavens, Rachael, I'd leave Booth to-
morrow for anyone half as handsome as Warren Gregory!"

In March the Gregorys sent out cards for their first really large
entertainment, a Mardi-Gras ball. Rachael and Warren spent many
happy hours planning it: the studio was to be cleared, two other
big rooms turned into one for the supper, music for dancing,
musical numbers for the entertainment; it would be perfect in
every detail, one of the notable affairs of the winter. Rachael
hailed it as the end of the season. They were to make a flying
trip to the Bermudas in April, and after that Rachael happily
planned a month or two in the almost deserted city before Warren
would be free to get away to the mountains or the boat. It was
with a delightful sense of freedom that she realized that her
first winter in her new role was nearly over. Next winter her
divorce and remarriage would be an old story, there would be other
gossip more fascinating and more new, she would be taken quite for
granted. Again, she might more easily evade the social demand next
winter without exposing herself to the charge of being fickle or
changed. This year her brave and dignified facing of the world had
been a part of the price she paid for her new happiness. Now it
was paid.

And for another reason, half-defined, Rachael was glad to see the
months go by. She had been Warren Gregory's wife for nearly six
months now, and the rapture of being together was still as great
for them both as it had been in the first radiant days of their
marriage. For herself, indeed, she knew that the joy was
constantly deepening, and even the wild hunger and passion of her
heart could find no flaw in his devotion. Her surrender to him was
with a glorious and unashamed completeness, the tones of her
extraordinary voice deepened when she spoke to him, and in her
eyes all who looked might read the story of insatiable and yet
satisfied love.




CHAPTER II


Plans for the big dance presently began to move briskly, and there
was much talk of the affair. As hostess, Rachael would not mask,
nor would Warren, but they were already amusing themselves with
the details of elaborate costumes. Warren's rather stern and
classic beauty was to be enhanced by the blue and buff of an
officer of the Revolution, fine ruffles falling at wrist and
throat, wide silver buckles on square-toed shoes, and satin ribbon
tying his white wig. Rachael, separately tempted by the thought of
Dutch wooden shoes and of the always delightful hoop skirts,
eventually abandoned both because it was not possible historically
to connect either costume with the one upon which Warren had
decided. She eventually determined to be the most picturesque of
Indian maidens, with brown silk stockings disappearing into
moccasins, exquisite beadwork upon her fringed and slashed skirt,
feathers in her loosened hair, and a small but matchless tiger
skin, strapped closely across her back, to lend a touch of
distinction to the costume.

On the Monday evening before the dance she tried on her regalia
and appeared before her husband and three or four waiting dinner
guests, so exquisite a vision of glowing and radiant beauty that
their admiration was almost a little awed. Her cheeks were crimson
between her loosened rich braids of hair; her eyes shone deeply
blue, and the fantastic costume, with its fluttering strips of
leather and richly colored wampum, gave an extraordinary quality
of youth and almost of frailty to her whole aspect.

"The woman just sent this home. I couldn't resist showing you!"
said Rachael, in a shower of compliments. "Isn't my tiger a
darling? Warren went six hundred and seventy-two places to catch
him. Of course there never was a stripey tiger like this in North
America but what care I? I'm only a poor little redskin; a
trifling inconsistency like that doesn't worry ME!"

"Me taky you my wikiup-HUH!" said Frank Whittaker invitingly. "You
my squaw?"

"Come here, Hattie Fishboy," said her husband, catching her by the
arm. His face showed no more than an amused indulgence to her
caprice, but Rachael knew he was pleased. "Well, when you first
planned this outfit I thought it was going to be an awful mess,"
said he, turning her slowly about. "But it isn't so bad!"

"Isn't so bad!" Mrs. Bowditch said scornfully; "it's the loveliest
thing I ever saw. I'll tell you what, Rachael, if you come down to
Easthampton this summer we'll have a play, and you can be an
Indian--"

"I'd love it," Rachael said, and making a deep bow before her
husband she added: "I'll be Squaw-Afraid-of-Her-Man!"

She heard them laughing as she ran upstairs to change to a more
conventional dress.

"Etta," said she, consigning the Indian costume to her maid, "I'm
too happy to live!"

Etta, one of those homely, conscientious women who extract in some
mysterious way an actual pride and pleasure from the beauty of the
women whom they serve, smiled faintly and dully.

"The weather's getting real nice now," she submitted, as one who
will not discourage a worthy emotion.

Rachael laughed out joyously. The next instant she had flung up a
window and leaned out in the spring darkness. Trees on the drive
were rustling over pools of light, a lighted steamboat went slowly
up the river, the brilliant eyes of motor cars curved swiftly
through the blackness. A hurdy-gurdy, guarded by two shadowy
forms, was pouring out a wild jangle of sound from the curb. When
the window was shut, a moment later, the old Italian man and woman
who owned the musical instrument decided that they must mark this
apartment house for many a future visit, and, chattering
hopefully, went upon their way. The belladonna in the spangled
gown, who had looked down upon them for a brief interval,
meanwhile ran down to her guests.

She was in wild spirits, inspired with her most enchanting mood;
for an hour or two there was no resisting her. Mrs. Whittaker and
Mrs. Bowditch fell as certainly under her spell as did the three
men. "She really HAS changed since she married Greg," said Louise
Bowditch to Mrs. Whittaker; "but it's all nonsense--this talk
about her being no more fun! She's more fun than ever!"

"She's prettier than ever," Gertrude Whittaker said with a sigh.

The next afternoon, a dreary, wet afternoon, at about four
o'clock, Warren Gregory stepped out of the elevator, and quietly
admitted himself to his own hallway with a latchkey. It was an
unusual hour for the doctor to come home, and in the butler's
carefully commonplace tone as he answered a few questions Warren
knew that he knew.

The awning had been stretched across the sidewalk, caterers' men
were in possession, the lovely spacious rooms were full of
flowers; the big studio had been emptied of furniture, there were
great palms massed in the musicians' corner; maids were quietly
busy everywhere; no eye met the glance of the man of the house as
he went upstairs.

He found Mrs. Gregory alone in her own luxurious room. No one who
had seen her in the excited beauty of the night before would have
been likely to recognize her now. She was pale, tense, and visibly
nervous, wrapped in a great woolly robe, as if she were cold, and
with her hair bound carelessly and tightly back as a woman binds
it for bathing.

"You've seen it?" she said instantly, as her husband came in.

"George called my attention to it; I came straight home. I knew"--
he was kneeling beside her, one arm about her, all his tenderness
and devotion in his face--"I knew you'd need me."

She laid an arm about his neck, sighed deeply, but continued to
stare distractedly beyond him.

"Warren, what shall we do?" she said with a certain vagueness and
brokenness in her manner that he found very disquieting.

"Do, sweetheart?" he echoed at a loss.

"With all those people coming to-night," she added, mildly
impatient.

"Why, what CAN we do, dear?"

"You don't mean," Rachael said incredulously, "that we shall have
to GO ON with it?"

"Think a minute, dearest. Why shouldn't we?"

"But"--her color, better since his entrance, was waning again--
"with Clarence Breckenridge dying while we dance!" she shuddered.

"Could anything be more preposterous than your letting anything
that concerns Clarence Breckenridge affect what you do now?" he
asked with kindly patience.

"No, it's not that!" she answered feverishly. "But--but for any
old friend one would--would make a difference, and surely--surely
he was more than that!"

"He WAS more than that, of course, but he has been less than
nothing to you for a long time!"

"Yes, legally--technically, of course," Rachael agreed nervously.
She sat silent for a moment, frowning over some sombre thought.
"But, Warren, they'll all know of it, they'll all be THINKING of
it," she said presently. "I--really I don't think I can go through
it!"

"It's too bad, of course," Warren Gregory said with his arm still
about her. "I'd give ten thousand dollars to have had the poor
fellow select some other time. But you've had nothing to do with
it, and you simply must put it out of your mind!"

"It was Billy's marriage, of course!"

"Of course. She was married yesterday, you see, the day she came
of age. Poor kid--it's rather a sad start for her, especially with
no one but Joe Pickering to console her!"

"She was mad about her father," Rachael said in a preoccupied
whisper. "Poor Billy--poor Billy! She never crossed him in
anything but this. What did you see it in?"

"The World. How did you hear it?"

"Etta brought up the paper." She closed her eyes and leaned back
in her chair. "It seemed to jump at me--his picture and the name.
Is he living--where is he?"

"At St. Mark's. He won't live. Poor fellow!" Warren Gregory
scowled thoughtfully as he gave a moment's thought to the other
man's situation, and then smiled sunnily at his wife with a brisk
change of topic. "Well," he said cheerfully, "is anyone in this
place glad to see me, or not, or what?"

"It just seems to me that I CANNOT face all those people to-
night!" Rachael said, giving him a quick, unthinking kiss before
she gently put him away from her, and got to her feet. "It seems
so wrong--so coarse--to be utterly and totally indifferent to the
man who was my husband a year ago. I don't love him, he is nothing
to me, but it's all wrong, this way. If it was Peter Pomeroy or
Joe Butler, of COURSE we'd put off our dance--Warren," she turned
to him with sudden hope in her eyes, "do you suppose anybody'll
come?"

"My dear girl," he said, displeased, "why are you working yourself
into a fever over this? It's most unfortunate, but as far as
you're concerned, it's unavoidable, and you'll simply have to put
a brave face on it, and get through it SOMEHOW! I am absolutely
confident that when you've pulled yourself together you'll come
through with flying colors. Of course everyone'll come; this is
their chance to show you exactly how little they ever think of you
as Breckenridge's wife! And this is your chance, too, to act as if
you'd never heard of him. Dash it! it does spoil our little party,
but it can't be helped!"

"Do you suppose Billy's with him?" Rachael asked, her absent,
glittering eyes fixed upon her own person as she sat before her
mirror.

"Oh, no--she and Pickering sailed yesterday for England--that's
the dreadful thing for her. Clarence evidently spent the whole
night at the club, sitting in the library, thinking. Berry Stokes
went in for his mail after the theatre, and they had a little
talk. He promised to dine there to-night. At about ten this
morning Billings, the steward there, saw old Maynard going out--
Maynard's one of the directors--and asked him if he wouldn't
please go and speak to Mr. Breckenridge. Mayn went over to him,
and Clarence said, 'Anything you say--'"

Rachael gave a gasp that was like a shriek, and put her two elbows
on the dressing-table, and her face in her hands. It was
Clarence's familiar phrase.

"Oh, don't--don't--don't--Greg!"

"Well, that was all there was to it," her husband said, watching
her anxiously. "He had the thing in his pocket. He stood up--
everybody heard it. Fellows came rushing in from everywhere. They
got him to a hospital."

"Florence is with him, of course?"

"Florence is at Palm Beach."

"Then who IS with him, Greg?"

"My dear girl, how do I know? It's none of my affair!"

Rachael sat still for perhaps two minutes, while her husband,
ostentatiously cheerful, moved about the room selecting a change
of clothes.

"To-morrow you can take it as hard as you like, sweet," said he.
"But to-night you'll have to face the music! Now get into
something warm--it's a little cool out--and I'll take you for a
spin, and we'll have dinner somewhere. Then we'll get back here
about eight o'clock, and take our time dressing."

"Yes, I'll do that," Rachael agreed automatically. A moment later
she said urgently: "Warren, isn't there a chance that I'm right
about this? Mightn't it be better simply to telephone everyone
that the dance is postponed? Make it next week, or Mi-Careme--
anything. If they talk--let them! I don't care what they say.
They'll talk anyway. But every fibre of my being, every delicate
or decent instinct I ever had, rebels against this. Say I'm not
well, and let them buzz! I know what you are going to say--I know
that it would SEEM less sensitive, less fine, to mourn for one man
while I'm another man's wife, than to absolutely ignore what
happens to him, but you know what's the truth! I never loved him,
and I love every hair of your head--you know that. Only--"

She stopped short, baffled by the difficulty of expressing herself
accurately.

"If you really love me, do what I ask you to-night," Warren
Gregory said firmly.

His wife sat as if turned to stone for only a few seconds. When
she spoke it was naturally and cheerfully.

"I'll be ready in no time, dear. Where are we to dine?" She
glanced at her little crystal clock as she spoke, as if she were
computing casually the length of the drive before dinner. But what
she said in her heart was, "At this time to-morrow it will all
have been over for many hours!"

A few days later the Gregorys sailed for Bermuda, Rachael with a
sense of whipped and smarting shame that was all the more acute
because she could not share it with this dearest comrade and
confidant. Warren thought indeed that the miserable episode of the
past week had been dismissed from her mind, and delighting like a
boy in the little holiday, and proud of his beautiful wife, he
found their hours at sea cloudless. With two men, whose
acquaintance was made on the steamer, they played bridge, and
Rachael's game drew other players from all sides to watch her
leads and grin over her bidding. They walked up and down the deck
for hours together, they lay side by side in deck chairs lazily
watching the blue water creep up and down the painted white ropes
of the rail; but they never spoke of Clarence Breckenridge.

The Mardi-Gras dance had been like a hideous dream to Rachael. She
had known that it would be hard from the first sick moment in
which the significance of Clarence's suicide had rushed upon her.
She had known that her arriving guests would be gay and
conversational, that the dance and the supper would go with a dash
and swing which no other circumstance could more certainly have
assured for them; and she knew that in every heart would be the
knowledge that Clarence Breckenridge was dying by his own hand,
and his daughter on the ocean, and that this woman in the Indian
dress, with painted lips and a tiger skin outlining her beautiful
figure, had been his wife.

This she had expected, and this was as she had expected. But there
were other circumstances that made her feel even more acutely the
turn of the screw. Joe Butler, always Clarence's closest friend,
did not come to the dance, and at about twelve o'clock an innocent
maid delivered to Warren a message that several persons besides
Warren heard: "Mr. Butler to speak to you on the telephone, Doctor
Gregory."

Everyone could surmise where Joe Butler was, but no one voiced the
supposition. Warren, handsome in his skirted coat, knee breeches,
and ruffles, disappeared from the room, and the dancing went on.
The scene was unbelievably brilliant, the hot, bright air sweet
with flowers and perfume, and the more subtle odors of silk and
fine linen and powder on delicate skin. Warren was presently among
them again, and there was a supper, the hostess' lovely face
showing no more strain or concern than was natural to a woman
eager to make comfortable nearly a hundred guests.

After supper there was more dancing, and an augmented gayety.
There were no more telephone messages, nor was there any definite
foundation for the rumor that was presently stealthily
circulating. Women, powdering their noses as they waited for their
wraps, murmured it in the dressing-rooms; a clown, smoking in the
hall, confided it to a Mephistopheles; a pastry cook, after his
effusive good-nights, confirmed it as he climbed into the motorcar
that held the Pierrette who was his wife: "Dead, poor fellow!"

"Dead, poor Clarence!" said Mrs. Prince, magnificent as Queen
Elizabeth, as she and Elinor Vanderwall went downstairs. She had
once danced a fancy dance with him more than twenty years ago.
"Awful!" said Elinor, shuddering.

After the last guest was gone Warren telephoned to the hospital,
Rachael, a little tired and pale in the Indian costume, watching
and listening tensely. She was sick at heart. Even into the
library, where they stood, the Mardi-Gras disorder had penetrated:
a blue silk mask was lying across Warren's blotter, a spatter of
confetti lay on the polished floor, and on the reading table was a
tray on which were two glasses through whose amber contents a lazy
bubble still occasionally rose. The logs that had snapped in the
fireplace were gone, only gray ashes remained, and to Rachael, at
least, the room's desolation and disorder seemed to typify her own
state of mind.

She could tell from Warren's look that he found the whole matter
painful and distasteful to an almost unbearable degree; on his
handsome serious face was an expression of grim endurance, of hurt
yet dignified protest against events. He did not blame her, how
could he blame her? But he was suffering in every fibre of his
sensitive soul at this sordid notoriety, at this blatant voicing
of a hundred ugly whispers in a matter so closely touching the
woman he loved.

"Dead?" Rachael said quietly, when his brief conversation was
over.

Warren Gregory, setting the telephone back upon the desk, nodded
gravely.

Rachael made no comment. For a moment her eyes widened nervously,
and a little shudder rippled through her. Then silently she
gathered up the leather belt and chains of beads that she had been
loosening as she listened, and slowly went toward the door.

They did not speak again of Clarence that night, although they
chatted easily for the next hour on other topics, even laughing a
little as the various episodes of the evening were passed in
review.

But Rachael did not sleep, nor did she sleep during the long hours
of the following night. On the third night she wakened her husband
suddenly from his sleep.

"Greg--Greg! Won't you talk to me a little? I'm going mad, I
think!"

"Rachael! What is it?" stammered the doctor, blinking in the dim
light of Rachael's bedside lamp. His wife, haggard, with her rich
hair falling in two long braids over her shoulders, was sitting on
the side of his bed. "What is it, darling--hear something?" he
asked, more naturally, putting his arm about her.

"I've been lying awake--and lying awake!" said Rachael, panting.
"I haven't shut my eyes--it's nearly three. Greg, I keep seeing
it--Clarence's face, you know, with that horrible scar! What shall
I do?"

Shivering, gasping, wild-eyed, she clung to him, and for a long
hour he soothed her as if she had been an hysterical child. He put
her into a comfortable chair, mixed her a sedative, and knelt
beside her, slowly winning her back to calm and sanity again. It
was terrible, of course, but no one but Clarence himself was to
blame, unless it was poor Billy--

"Yes, I must see Billy when she comes back!" Rachael said quickly,
when the tranquillizing voice reached this point. If Warren
Gregory's quiet mouth registered any opposition, she did not see
it, and he did not express it. She was presently sound asleep,
still catching a long childish breath as she slept. But she woke
smiling, with all the horrid visions of the past few days
apparently blotted out, and she and Warren went gayly downtown to
get steamer tickets, and buy appropriate frocks and hats for the
spring heat of Bermuda.

In midsummer came the inevitable invitation to visit old friends
at Belvedere Bay. Rachael was pleased to accept Mrs. Moran's
hospitality for a glorious July week. Warren, to her delight, took
an eightdays' holiday, and while he looked to his racquet and golf
irons she packed her prettiest gowns. Belvedere Bay welcomed them
rapturously, and beautiful Mrs. Gregory was the idol of the hour.
Mrs. Moulton, giving a tennis tea during this week, duly sent Mrs.
Gregory a card. But when society wondering whether Rachael would
really be a guest in her own old home, had duly gathered at the
Breckenridge house, young Dicky Moran was so considerate as to be
flung from his riding-horse. Neither the Gregorys nor the Morans
consequently appeared at the tea, but Rachael, meeting all
inquirers on the Moran terrace, late in the afternoon, with the
news that Dicky was quite all right, no harm done, asked prettily
for details of the affair they had missed.

She told herself that the past really made no difference in the
radiant present, but she knew it was not so. In a thousand little
ways she had lost caste, and she saw it, if Warren did not. A
certain bloom was gone. Girls were not quite as deferentially
adoring, women were a little less impressed. The old prestige was
somehow lessened. She knew that newcomers at the club, struck by
her beauty, were a little chilled by her history. She felt the
difference in the very air.

In her musings she went over the old arguments hotly. Why was she
merely the "divorced Mrs. Gregory?" Why were these casual
inquirers not told of Clarence, of her long endurance of neglect
and shame? More than once the thought came to her, that if other,
events had been as they were, and only the facts of her divorce
and remarriage lacking, she would have been Clarence's widow now.

"What's the difference? It all comes out the same!" commented
Warren, to whom she confided this thought.

"Then you and I would have been only engaged now," said Rachael,
smiling. "And I would like that!"

"You mean you regret your marriage?" he laughed, his arms about
her.

"I'd like to live the first days over and over and over again,
Greg!" she answered passionately.

"You are an insatiable creature!" he said. But her earnestness was
beginning to puzzle him a little. She was too deeply wrapped in
her love for her own happiness or his. There was something almost
startling in her intensity. She was jealous of every minute that
they were apart; she made no secret of her blind adoration.

Warren had at first found this touching; it had humbled him.
Later, in the first months of their marriage, he had shared it,
and their mutual passion had seemed to them both a source of
inexhaustible delight. But now, even while he smiled at her, his
keen sensitiveness where her dignity was concerned had shown him
that there was in her attitude something a little pitiful,
something even a little absurd.

Judy and Gertrude and little Mrs. Sartoris listened interestedly
when Rachael talked of Greg, of his likes, his dislikes, his
favorite words, his old-maidish way of arranging his ties, his
marvellous latest operation. But Warren, watching his wife's
flushed, lovely face, wondered if they were laughing at her. He
smiled uncomfortably when she interrupted her bridge game to come
across the club porch to him, to ask him if the tennis had been
good, to warn him that he would catch cold if he did not instantly
get out of those wet flannels, to ask Frank Whittaker what he
meant by beating her big boy three sets in succession?