Unknown - "The First 100,000 Prime Numbers"

Emile Zola - "The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Vol. 5"

Bram Stoker - "The Lady of the Shroud"

J. Cuthbert Hadden - "Haydn"

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




"Rachael, I'm dealing for you--come back here!" Gertrude might
call.

"Deal away!" Rachael, one hand on Warren's arm, would look saucily
at the others over his shoulder. "I like my beau," she would
assert brazenly, "and if you say a word more, I'll kiss him here
and now!"

They all shrieked derisively when the kiss was duly delivered and
Gregory Warren with a self-conscious laugh had escaped to his
shower. But Rachael saw nothing absurd; she told Warren that she
loved him, and let them laugh if they liked!

"Listen, dearest!" he said on the last night of their stay. "Will
you be a darling, and not trail round the links if we play to-
morrow?"

"Why not?" asked Rachael absently, fluffing his hair from her
point of vantage on the arm of his chair.

"Well, wouldn't you rather stay up on the porch with the girls?"

"If you men want to swear at your strokes, I decline to be a party
to it!" Rachael said maternally.

"I know. But, darling, it does rather affect our game," Warren
said uncertainly; "that is, you don't play, you see! And it only
gets you hot and mussy, and I love my wife to be waiting when we
come up. It isn't that I don't think you're a darling to want to
do it," he added in hasty concern.

No use. She was deeply hurt. She went to her dressing-table and
began her preparations for the night with a downcast face.
Certainly she wouldn't bother Warren. She only did it because she
loved him so. A tear splashed down on her white hand.

Next day she triumphantly accompanied the golfers. Warren had
petted and coaxed her out of her sulks, and she was radiant again.
When they had said their good-byes to Judy, and were spinning into
town in the car that afternoon, she made him confess that she had
not spoiled the game at all; he couldn't make her believe that
Frank and Tom and Peter had been pretending their pleasure at
having her go along!

But later in the summer she realized that Belvedere Bay was
smiling quietly at her bride-like infatuation, and she resented it
deeply. The discovery came about on a lazy summer afternoon when
several women, Rachael among them, were enjoying gossip and iced
drinks on the Parmalees' porch. Rachael had been talking of the
emeralds that Warren was having reset for her, and chanced to
observe that Tiffany's man had said that Warren's taste in jewelry
was astonishing.

"Rachael," yawned little Vivian Sartoris, "for heaven's sake talk
about something else than Warren?"

"I talk about him because I like him!" Rachael said. "Better than
anybody else in the world."

"And he likes you better than anybody else in the world, I
suppose?" Vivian said idly.

"He says so," Rachael answered with a demure smile. "Then that
settles it!" Vivian laughed. But she and several of her intimates
fell into low conversation, and the older women were presently
interrupted by Vivian's voice again. "Rachael!" she challenged,
"Katrina says that SHE knows somebody Warren likes as well as he
does you!"

"I did not!" protested Katrina, scarlet-cheeked and giggling,
giving Vivian, who sat next her on the wide tiled steps, a violent
push.

"Oh, you did, too!" one of the group exclaimed.

Katrina murmured something unintelligible.

"Well, that's the same thing!" Vivian assured her promptly. "She
says now that Warren DID like her as well, Rachael!"

"Well, don't tell me who it is, and break my heart!" Rachael
warned them. But her old sense of humor so far failed her that she
could not help adding curiously, "If Warren ever cared for anybody
else, he'll tell me!"

There was a general burst of laughter, and Rachael colored.

"No, it's nobody," Katrina said hastily. "It's only idiocy!" She
and the other girls laughed in a suppressed fashion for some time.
Finally, to Rachael's secret relief, Gertrude Whittaker
energetically demanded the secret. More giggling ensued. Then
Katrina agreed that she would whisper it in Mrs. Whittaker's ear,
which she did. Rachael saw Gertrude color and look puzzled for a
second, then she laughed scornfully.

"What geese girls are! I never heard anything so silly!" Gertrude
said. Several hours later she told Rachael.

She did not tell her without some hesitation. It was so silly--it
was just like that scatter-brained Katrina, she said. Rachael,
proudly asserting that nothing Katrina said would make any
difference to her, nevertheless urged the confidence.

"Well, it's nothing," Gertrude said at last. "This is what Katrina
said: she said that Warren Gregory had liked Rachael Breckenridge
as well as he liked Rachael Gregory! That was all."

Rachael looked puzzled in turn for a minute. Then she smiled
proudly, and colored.

"But that's not true," she said presently. "For I have never seen
a man change as much since marriage as Warren! It's still a
perfect miracle to him. He says himself that he gets happier and
happier--"

"Oh, Rachael, you're hopeless!" Gertrude laughed, and Rachael
colored again. She flushed whenever she thought of this particular
visit.

Far happier were the days they spent with the Valentines at
Clark's Bar. Rachael loved them all dearly, from little Katharine
to the big quiet doctor; she was not misunderstood nor laughed at
here.

They swam, tramped, played cards, and talked tirelessly. Rachael
slept like a child on the wide, windbathed porch. To the great
satisfaction of both doctors she and Alice grew to be devoted
friends, and when Warren's holiday was over, Rachael stayed on,
for a longer visit, and the men came down in the car on Fridays.

On her birthday this year her husband gave Rachael Gregory, and
her heirs and assigns forever, a roomy, plain old colonial
farmhouse that stood near Alice's house, in a ring of great elms,
looking down on the green level surface of the sea. Rachael
accepted it with wild delight. She loved the big, homelike halls,
the simple fireplaces, the green blinds that shut a sweet twilight
into the empty rooms. Her own barns, her own strip of beach, her
own side yard where she and Alice could sit and talk, she took
eager possession of them all.

She went into town for chintzes, papers, wicker tables and chairs.
She brought old Mrs. Gregory down for the housewarming, and had
all the Valentines to dinner on the August evening when the
Gregorys moved in. And late that same evening, when Warren's arms
were about her, she told him her great news. There were to be
little feet running about Home Dunes, and a little voice echoing
through the new home. "Shall you be glad, Greg?" she asked, with
tears in her eyes; "shall you be just a little jealous?"

"Rachael!" he said in a quick, tense whisper, afraid to believe
her. And Rachael, caught in his dear arms, and with his cheek
against her wet lashes, felt a triumph and a confidence rise
within her, and a glorious content that it was so.

When the happy suspicion was a happy certainty she told his
mother, and entered at once into the world of advice and
reassurance, planning and speculation that belongs to women alone.
Mrs. Valentine was also full of eager interest and counsel, and
Rachael enjoyed their solicitude and affection as she had enjoyed
few things in life. This was a perfectly natural symptom, that was
a perfectly natural phase, she must do this thing, get that, and
avoid a third.

The fact that she was not quite herself in soul or body, that she
must be careful, must be guarded and saved, was a source of
strange and mysterious satisfaction to her as the quick months
slipped by. Her increasing helplessness shut her quite naturally
away into a world that contained only her husband and herself and
a few intimate friends, and Rachael found this absolutely
satisfying, and did not miss the social world that hummed on as
busily and gayly as ever without her.

Her baby was born in March, a beautiful boy, like his father even
in the first few moments of his life. Rachael, whose experience
had been, to her astonishment, described complacently by physician
and nurses as "perfectly normal," was slow to recover from the
experience in body; perhaps never quite recovered in soul. It
changed all her values of life--this knowledge of what the coming
of a child costs; she told Alice that she was glad of the change.

"What a fool I've been about the shadows," she said. "This is the
reality! This counts, as it seems to me that nothing else I ever
did in my life counts."

She felt nearer than ever to Warren now, and more dependent upon
him. But a new dignity came into her relationship with him:
husband and wife, father and mother, they wore the great titles of
the world, now!

He found her more beautiful than ever, and as the baby was the
centre of her universe, and all her hopes and fears and thoughts
for the child, the old bridal attitude toward him vanished
forever, and she was the more fascinating for that. His love for
her rose like a great flame, and the passionate devotion for which
she had been wistfully waiting for months enveloped her now, when,
shaken in body and soul, she wished only to devote herself to the
miracle that was her child.

When he was but six weeks old James Warren Gregory Third terrified
the little circle of his family and friends with a severe touch of
summer sickness. The weather, in late April, was untimely--hot and
humid--and the baby seemed to suffer from it, even in his airy
nursery. There were two hideous days in which he would take no
food, and when Rachael heard nothing but the little wailing voice
through the long hours. All night she sat beside him, hearing
Warren's affectionate protests as little as she heard the
dignified remonstrance of the nurse. When day came she was haggard
and exhausted, but still she would not leave her baby. She knelt
at the crib, impressing the tiny countenance upon mind and heart--
her first-born baby, upon whose little features the wisdom of
another world still lingered like a light!

Only a few weeks old, and thousands of them older than he died
every year! Fear in another form had come to Rachael now--life
seemed all fear.

"Oh, Warren, is he very ill?"

"Pretty sick, dear little chap!"

"But, Warren, you don't think--"

"My darling, I don't know!"

She turned desperately to George Valentine when that good friend
came in his professional capacity at five o'clock.

"George, there's been a change--I'm sure of it. Look at him!"

"You ought to take better care of your wife, Greg," was Doctor
Valentine's quiet almost smiling answer to this. "You'll have her
sick next!"

"How is he?" Rachael whispered, as the newcomer bent over the
baby. There was a silence.

"Well, my dear," said Doctor Valentine, as he straightened
himself, "I believe this little chap has decided to remain with us
a little while. Very--much--better!"

Rachael tried to smile, but burst out crying instead, and clung to
her husband's shoulder.

"Let him have his sleep out, Miss Snow," said the doctor, "and
then sponge him off and try him with food!"

"Oh--yes--yes--yes!" the baby's mother said eagerly, drying her
eyes. "And you'll be back later, George?"

"Not unless you telephone me, and I don't think you'll have to,"
George Valentine said. Rachael's face grew radiant with joy.

"Oh, George, then he is better!" She was breathing like a runner.

"Better! I think he'll be himself to-morrow. Console yourself, my
dear Rachael, with the thought that you'll go through this a
hundred times with every one of your children!"

"Oh, what a world!" Rachael said, half laughing and half sighing.
But later she said to Warren, "Yet isn't it deliciously worth
while!"

He had persuaded her to have some supper, and then they had come
back to the nursery, to see if the baby really would eat. He had
awakened, and had had his bath, and was crying again, but, as
Rachael eagerly said, it was a healthy cry. Trembling and smiling,
she took the little creature in her arms, and when the busy little
lips found her breast, Rachael felt as if she could hardly bear
the exquisite incoming rush of joy again.

Warren, watching her, smiled in deep satisfaction, and Miss Snow
smiled, too. But before she gave herself up to the luxury of
possession the mother's tears fell hot on the baby's delicate gown
and tiny face, and from that hour Rachael loved her son with the
passionate and intense devotion she felt for his father.

Years later, looking at the pictures they took of him that summer,
or perhaps stopped by the sight of some white-coated baby in the
street, she would say to herself,--with that little heartache all
mothers know, "Ah, but Jim was the darling baby!" After the first
scare he bloomed like a rose, a splendid, square, royal boy who
laughed joyously when admitted to the company of his family and
friends, and lay contentedly dozing and smiling when it seemed
good to them to ignore him. Rachael found him the most
delightfully amusing and absorbing element her life had ever
known; she would break into ecstatic laughter at his simplest
feat--when he yawned, or pressed his little downy head against the
bars of his crib and stared unsmilingly at her. She would run to
the nursery the instant she arrived home, her eager, "How's my
boy?" making the baby crow, and struggle to reach her, and it was
an event to her to meet his coach in the park, and give him her
purse or parasol handle with which to play. Often old Mary, the
nurse, would see Mrs. Gregory pick up a pair of tiny white shoes
that still bore the imprint of the fat little feet, and touch them
to her lips, or catch a crumpled little linen coat from the
drawer, and bury her face in it for a moment.

Even in his tiny babyhood he was companionable to his mother,
Rachael even consenting to the plan of taking him to Home Dunes in
June, although by this arrangement she saw Warren only at week-end
intervals until the doctor's vacation came in August. When he came
down, and the big car honked at the gate, she invariably had the
baby in her arms when she came to meet him.

"Hello, Daddy. Here we are! How are you, dearest?" Rachael would
say, adding, before he could answer her: "We want you to notice
our chic Italian socks, Doctor Gregory; how's that for five
months? Take him, Greg! Go to Daddy, Little Mister!"

"All very well, but how's my wife?" Warren Gregory might ask,
kissing her over the baby's bobbing head.

"Lovely! Do you know that your son weighs fifteen pounds--isn't
that amazing?" Rachael would hang on his free arm, in happy wifely
fashion, as they went back to the house.

"Want to go with me to London?" he asked her one day in the late
fall when they were back in town.

"Why not Mars?" she asked placidly, putting a fresh, stiff dress
over Jimmy's head.

"No, but I'm serious, my dear girl," Warren Gregory said
surprised. "But--I don't understand you. What about Jim?"

"Why, leave him here with Mary. We won't be gone four weeks."

Rachael smiled, but it was an uneasy, almost an affronted, smile.

"Oh, Warren, we couldn't! I couldn't! I would simply worry myself
sick!"

"I don't see why. The child would be perfectly safe. George is
right here if anything happened!"

"George--but George isn't his mother!" Rachael fell silent, biting
her lip, a little shadow between her brows. "What is it--the
convention?" she presently asked. "Do you HAVE to go?"

"It isn't absolutely necessary," Warren said dryly. But this was
enough for Rachael, who opened the subject that evening when
George and Alice Valentine were there.

"George, DOES Warren have to go to this London convention, or
whatever it is?"

"Not necessarily," smiled Doctor Valentine. "Why, doesn't he want
to go?"

"I don't want him to go!" Rachael asserted.

"It would be a senseless risk to take that baby across the ocean,"
Alice contributed, and no more was said of the possibility then or
at any other time, to Rachael's great content.

But when the winter season was well begun, and Jimmy delicious in
his diminutive furs, Doctor Gregory and his wife had a serious
talk, late on a snowy afternoon, and Rachael realized then that
her husband had been carrying a slight sense of grievance over
this matter for many weeks.

He had come in at six o'clock, and was changing his clothes for
dinner, half an hour later, when Rachael came into his dressing-
room. Her hair had been dressed, and under her white silk wrapper
her gold slippers and stockings were visible, but she seemed
disinclined to finish her toilette.

"Awful bore!" she said, smiling, as she sat down to watch him.

"What--the Hoyts? Oh, I don't think so!" he answered in surprise.

"They all bore me to death," Rachael said idly. "I'd rather have a
chop here with you, and then trot off somewhere all by ourselves!
Why don't they leave us alone?"

"My dear girl, that isn't life," Warren Gregory said firmly. His
tone chilled her a little, and she looked up in quick penitence.
But before she could speak he antagonized her by adding
disapprovingly: "I must say I don't like your attitude of
criticism and ungraciousness, my dear girl! These people are all
our good friends; I personally can find no fault with them. You
may feel that you would rather spend all of your time hanging over
Jim's crib--I suppose all young mothers do, and to a certain
extent all mothers ought to--but don't, for heaven's sake, let
everything else slip out of your life!"

"I know, I know!" Rachael said breathlessly and quickly, finding
his disapproval almost unendurable. Warren did not often complain;
he had never spoken to her in this way before. Her face was
scarlet, and she knew that she wanted to cry. "I know, dear," she
added more composedly; "I am afraid I do think too much about Jim;
I am afraid"--and Rachael smiled a little pitifully--"that I would
never want anyone but you and the boy if I had my own way!
Sometimes I wish that we could just slip away from everybody and
everything, and never see these people again!"

If she had expected him to endorse this radical hope she was
disappointed, for Warren responded briskly: "Yes, and we would
bore each other to death in two months!"

Rachael was silent, but over the sinking discouragement of her
heart she was gallantly forming new resolutions. She would think
more of her clothes, she would make a special study of dinners and
theatre parties, she would be seen at the opera at least every
other week.

"I gave up the London trip just because you weren't enthusiastic,"
Warren was saying, with the unmistakable readiness of one whose
grievances have long been classified in his mind. "It's baby--
baby--baby! I don't say much--"

"Indeed you don't!" Rachael conceded gratefully.

"But I think you overdo it, my dear!" finished her husband kindly.
Clarence Breckenridge's wife would have assumed a different
attitude during this little talk, but Rachael Gregory felt every
word like a blow upon her quivering heart. She could not protest,
she could not ignore. Her love for him made this moment one of
absolute agony, and it was with the humility of great love that
she met him more than halfway.

"You're right, of course, Greg, and it must have been stupid for
you!" Stupid! It seemed even in this moment treason, it seemed
desecration, to use this word of their quiet, wonderful summer
together!

"Well," he said, mollified, "don't take what I say too much to
heart. It's only that I love my wife, and am proud of her, and I
don't want to cut out everything else but Jim's shoes and Mary's
day off!" He came over and kissed her, and Rachael clung to him.

"Greg, as if I could be angry with you for being jealous of your
son!"

"Trust a woman to put that construction on it," he said, laughing.
"You like to think I'm jealous, don't you?"

"I like anything that makes you seem my devoted adorer," Rachael
answered wistfully, and smiling whimsically she added, "and I am
going to get some new frocks, and give a series of dinners, and
win you all over again!"

"Bully!" approved Doctor Gregory, cheerfully going on with his
dressing. Rachael watched him thoughtfully for a moment before she
went on to her own dressing-room.

Long afterward she remembered that this conversation marked a
certain change in her life; it was never quite glad, confident
morning again, although for many months no definite element seemed
altered. Alice and old Mrs. Gregory had told her, and all the
world agreed, that the coming of her child would draw her husband
and herself more closely together, but, as Rachael expressed it to
herself, it was if she alone moved--moved infinitely nearer to her
husband truly, came to depend upon him, to need him as she had
never needed him in her life before. But there was always the
feeling that Warren had not moved. He stood where he had always
been, an eager sympathizer in these new and intense experiences,
but untouched and unaltered himself. For her pain, for her
responsibility, for her physical limitations, he had the most
intense tenderness and pity, but the fact remained that he might
sleep through the nights, enjoy his meals, and play with his baby,
when the mood decreed, untroubled by personal handicap.

Rachael, like all women, thought of these things seriously during
the first year of her child's life, and in February, when Jimmy
was beginning to utter his first delicious, stammering
monosyllables, it was with great gravity that she realized that
motherhood was approaching her again, that at Thanksgiving she
would have a second child. She was wretchedly languid and ill
during the entire spring, and found her mother-in-law's and Alice
Valentine's calm acceptance of the situation bewildering and
discouraging.

"My dear, I don't eat a meal in comfort, the entire time!" Alice
said cheerfully. "I mind that more than any other phase!"

"But I am such a broken reed!" Rachael smiled ruefully. "I have no
energy!"

The older woman laughed.

"I know, my dear--haven't I been through it all? Just don't worry,
and spare Greg what you can--"

Rachael could do neither. She wanted Warren every minute, and she
wanted nobody else. Her favorite hours were when she lay on the
couch, near the fire, playing with his free hand, while he read to
her or talked to her. She wanted to hear, over and over again,
that he loved no one else; and sometimes she declined invitations
without even consulting him, "because we're happier by our own
fire than anywhere else, aren't we, dearest?" "Don't tell me about
your stupid operations!" she would smile at him, "talk about--US!"

She went over and over the details of her old life with a certain
morbid satisfaction in his constant reassurance. Her marriage had
not been the cause of Clarence's suicide, nor of Billy's
elopement; she had done her share for them both, more than her
share!

Summer came, and she and the baby were comfortably established at
Home Dunes. Warren came when he could, perhaps twice a month, and
usually without warning. If he promised her the week-ends, she
felt aggrieved to have him miss one, so he wired her every day,
and sent her books and fruit, letters and magazines every week,
and came at irregular intervals. Alice and George Valentine and
their children, her garden, her baby, and the ocean she loved so
well must fill this summer for Rachael.




CHAPTER III


The beautiful Mrs. Gregory made her first appearance in society,
after the birth of her second son, on the occasion of Miss Leila
Buckney's marriage to Mr. Parker Hoyt. The continual postponement
of this event had been a standing joke among their friends for two
or three years; it took place in early December, at the most
fashionable of all the churches, with a reception and supper to
follow at the most fashionable of all the hotels. Leila naturally
looked tired and excited; she had made a gallant fight for her
lover, for long years, and she had won, but as yet the returning
tide of comfort and satisfaction had not begun in her life. Parker
had been a trying fiance; he was a cool-blooded, fishlike little
man; there had been other complications: her father's heavy
financial losses, her mother's discontent in the lingering
engagement, her sister's persisting state of unmarriedness.

However, the old aunt was at last dead. Parker had dutifully gone
to her side toward the end, and had returned again, duly, bringing
the casket, and escorting Miss Clay. And now Mamma was dressed,
and Edith was in a hideously unbecoming green and silver gown, and
the five bridesmaids were duly hatted and frocked in green and
silver, and she was dressed, too, realizing that her new corsets
were a trifle small, and her lace veil too heavy.

And the disgusting caterer had come to some last-moment agreement
with Papa whereby they were to have the supper without protest,
and the florist's insolent man had consented to send the bouquets
at last. The fifteen hundred dreadful envelopes were all
addressed, the back-breaking trying-on of gowns was over, the
three hundred and seventy-one gifts were arranged in two big rooms
at the hotel, duly ticketed, and the three hundred and seventy-one
dreadful personal notes of thanks had been somehow scribbled off
and dispatched. Leila was absolutely exhausted, and felt as pale
and pasty as she looked. People were all so stupid and tiresome
and inconsiderate, she said wearily to herself, and the awful
breakfast would be so long and dull, with everybody saying the
same thing to her, and Parker trying to be funny and simply making
himself ridiculous! The barbarity of the modern wedding impressed
itself vaguely upon the bride as she laughed and talked in a
strained and mechanical manner, and whatever they said to her and
to her parents, the guests were afterward unanimous in deciding
that poor Leila had been an absolute fright.