James Harrington - "The Commonwealth of Oceana"

Philip Gibbs - "Now It Can Be Told"

Mable Hale - "The Hero of Hill House"

Mark Rutherford - "Pages from a Journal with Other Papers"

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




Both in the instant impression it made, and under closest
analysis, Rachael Breckenridge's beauty stood all tests. Her
colorless skin was as pure as ivory, her dark-blue eyes,
surrounded by that faint sooty color that only Irish eyes know,
were set far apart and evenly arched by perfect brows. Her white
forehead was low and broad, the lustreless black hair was swept
back from it with almost startling simplicity, the line of her
mouth was long, her lips a living red. Her figure, as she sat
balancing carelessly on a chair-arm, showed the exquisite curves
of a woman slow to develop, who is approaching the height of her
beauty, and from the tip of her white shoe to the poppies on her
soft straw hat there was that distinction in her clothing that
betrayed her to be one of the few who may be always individual yet
always in the fashion. She was a woman, quick, dynamic, impatient,
who vitalized the very atmosphere in which she moved, challenging
life by endless tests and measures, scornful of admiration, and
ambitious, even in this recognized ambition of finding herself
beautiful, prominent, and a rich man's wife, for something further
and greater, she knew not what. She was an important figure in
this world of hers; her word was authority, her decree law. Never
was censure so quick as hers, never criticism so biting, or satire
so witty. No human emotion was too sacred to form a target for her
glancing arrows, nor was any affection deep enough to arouse in
her anything but doubt and scorn.

"I don't want any tea, thank you, Peter," she said now, in the
astonishingly rich voice that seemed to fill the words with new
meaning. "And I won't allow the Infant to have any--no, Billy, you
shall not. You've got a complexion, child; respect it. Besides,
you've just had some. Besides, we're here for only two seconds--
it's six o'clock. We're looking for Clarence--we seek a husband
fond, a parent dear--"

"Clarence hasn't showed up here at all to-day," said Peter
Pomeroy, stretching back comfortably in his chair, appreciative
eyes upon Clarence's wife. "Shame, too, for we had some good golf.
Course is in splendid condition. George beat me three up and two
to play, but I don't bear any malice. Here I am signing for his
highball."

"Well, then, we'll go on home," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without,
however, changing her relaxed position. "Clarence is probably
there; we've been playing cards at the Parmalees', or at least I
have. Billy and Katrina were playing tennis with Kent and--who's
the red-headed child you were enslaving this afternoon, Bill?"

"Porter Pinckard," Miss Breckenridge answered, indifferently,
before entering into a confidential exchange of brevities with
Miss Sartoris.

"I'll call him out, and run him through the liver," said Peter
Pomeroy, "the miserable catiff! I'll brook no rivals, Billy."

Billy merely smiled lazily at this; her eyes were far more
eloquent than her tongue, as she was well aware.

"Let her alone, Fascination Fledgerby!" said Mrs. Breckenridge
briskly. "Why can't we take you home with us, Elinor? We go your
way."

"You may," said Miss Vanderwall, rising. "You're dining at the
Chases', aren't you, Billy? So am I. But I was going to change
here. Where are you dining, Rachael?"

"Change at my house," Mrs. Breckenridge suggested, or rather
commanded. "I'm dining in my room, I think. I'm all in." But the
clear and candid eyes deceived no one. Clarence was misbehaving
again, everybody decided, and poor Rachael could not bespeak five
minutes of her own time until this particular period of
intemperance was over. Miss Vanderwall, settling herself in the
beautiful Breckenridge car five minutes later, faced the situation
boldly.

"Where's Clarence, Rachael?"

"I haven't the remotest idea, my dear woman," said Mrs.
Breckenridge frankly, yet with a warning glance at the back of her
stepdaughter's head. Billy was at the wheel. "He didn't dine at
home last night--"

"But we knew where he was," Billy said quickly, half turning.

"We knew where he was," agreed the older woman. "Watch where
you're going, Bill! He told Alfred that he was dining in town,
with a friend, talking business."

"I thought it was the night of Berry Stokes' dinner," suggested
Miss Vanderwall.

"He wasn't there--I asked him not to go," said Billy.

"Oh--" Miss Vanderwall began and then abruptly stopped. "Oh!" said
she mildly, in polite acquiescence.

They were sweeping through the April roadsides so swiftly that it
was only a moment later when Rachael, reaching for the door,
remarked cheerfully, "Here we are!"

The car had entered a white stone gateway, and was approaching a
certain charming country mansion, one that was not conspicuous
among a thousand others strewn over the neighboring hills and
valleys, but a beautiful home nevertheless. Vines climbed the
brick chimneys, and budding hydrangeas, in pots, topped the white
balustrades of the porch. A hundred little details of perfect
furnishing would have been taken for granted by the casual
onlooker, yet without its lawns, its awnings, its window boxes and
snowy curtaining, its glimpse of screened veranda and wicker
chairs, its trim assembly of garage, stable, and servants'
cottages, its porte-cochere, sleeping porches, and tennis court,
it would have seemed incomplete and uncomfortable to its owners.

Rachael Breckenridge neither liked it nor disliked it. It had been
her home for the seven years of her married life, except for the
month or two she spent every winter in a New York hotel. She had
never had any great happiness in it, to be sure, but then her life
had been singularly lacking in moments of real happiness, and she
had valued other elements, and desired other elements more. She
had not expected to be happy in this house, she had expected to be
rich and envied, and secure, and she was all of these things. That
they were not worth attaining, no one knew better than Rachael
now.

The house was of course a great care to her, the more so because
Billy was in it so little, and was so frankly eager for the time
when she should leave it and go to a house of her own, and because
Clarence was absolutely indifferent to it in his better moods, and
pleased with nothing when he was in the grip of his besetting sin.
The Breckenridges did little formal entertaining, but the man of
the house liked to bring men down from town for week-end visits,
and Billy brought her young friends in and out with youthful
indifference to domestic regulations, so that on Rachael, as
housekeeper, there fell no light burden.

She carried it gracefully, knitting her handsome brows as the
seasons brought about their endless problems, discussing bulbs
with old Rafael in the garden when the snow melted, discussing
paper and paint in the first glory of May, superintending the
making of iced drinks on the hot summer afternoons, and in October
filling her woodroom duly with the great logs that would blaze
neglected in the drawing-room fireplace all winter long. The house
was not large, as such houses go; too much room was wasted by a
very modern architect in linen closets and coat closets, bathrooms
and hall space, dressing-rooms, passages, and nooks and corners
generally. Yet Rachael's guest-rooms were models in their way, and
when she gave a luncheon the women who came were always ready to
exclaim in despairing admiration over the beauty of the gardens,
the flower-filled, airy rooms, the table appointments, and the
hostess herself.

But when they said that she was "wonderful"--and it was the
inevitable word for Rachael Breckenridge-the general meaning went
deeper than this. She was wonderful in her pride, the dignity and
the silence of her attitude toward her husband; she had been a
wonderful mother to Clarence's daughter; not a loving mother,
perhaps--she was not loving to anyone--but a miracle of
determination and clearness of vision.

Who else, her friends wondered, could have cleared the social
horizon for Paula Breckenridge's daughter so effectively? With
what brisk resoluteness the new mother had cut short the aimless
European wanderings, cropped the child's artificially curled hair,
given away the unsuitable silk stockings and the ridiculous frocks
and hats. Billy, shorn and bewildered, had been brought home; had
entered Miss Proctor's select school, entered Miss Roger's select
dancing class, entered Professor Darling's expensive riding
classes. Billy, in dark-blue Peter Thompsons, in black stockings
and laced boots, had been dropped in among other little girls in
Peter Thompsons and laced boots, little girls with the approved
names of Whittaker and Bowditch, Moran and Merridew and Parmalee.

Billy had never doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the
new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed
with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and
discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied
little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress,
knew that Rachael was doing for his daughter far more than he
could ever do himself.

But Rachael, if she had expected reward, reaped none. Her husband
was a supremely selfish man, and his daughter inherited his
sublime ability to protect his own pleasure at any cost. Carol
admired her step-mother, but she was an indolent and luxury-loving
little soul, and even as early as her twelfth or fourteenth year
she had been deeply flattered by the evidences of her own power
over her father. Into her youthful training no reverence for
parents--real or adopted--had been infused; she called her father
"Clancy," as some of his intimate friends called him, and he
delighted to take her orders and bow to her pretty tyranny.

Before she was sixteen he began to take her about with him: to
dances, to the theatre, and for long trips in his car. He entered
eagerly into her young friendships, frantic to prove himself as
young at heart as she. He paid her the extravagant compliments of
a lover, and gave her her grandmother's beautiful jewelry, as well
as every trinket that caught her eye.

And Billy accepted his attentions with a finished coquetry that
was far from childlike, a flush on her satin cheek, a dimple
puckering the corner of her mouth, and silky lashes lowered over
her satisfied eyes. She was inevitably precocious in many ways,
but she was young enough still to fancy herself one of the
irresistible beauties and belles of the world, and to flaunt a
perfectly conscious arrogance in the eyes of all other women.

All this was bewildering and painful to Rachael. She had never
loved her husband--love entered into none of her relationships--
her marriage had been only a step in the steady progress of her
life toward the position she desired in the world. But she had
liked him. She had liked his child, and she had come into the new
arrangement kindly and gallantly determined to make the venture at
least as profitable to them both as it was to her.

To be ignored, to be deliberately set aside, to be insulted by a
selfishness so calculating and so deliberate as to make her own
attitude seem all warmth and generosity by comparison, genuinely
astonished her. At first, indeed, a sort of magnificent impatience
had prevented her from feeling any stronger emotion than
astonishment. It was too ridiculous, said the bride to herself
tolerantly; it could not go on, of course, this preposterous
consideration of a child of ten, this belittling consideration of
her own place in the scheme as less Clarence's wife than Billy's
mother. It must adjust itself with every week that they three
lived together, the child slipping back to her own life, the
husband and wife sharing theirs. When Clarence's first fears for
his daughter's comfort under the new rule were set at rest, when
his confidence in the wisdom and efficiency of his wife was fully
established, then a normal relationship must ensue. "Surely
Clarence wouldn't ask a woman to marry him just to give Billy a
home and social backing?" Rachael asked herself, in those first
puzzled days in Paris.

That was seven years ago. She knew exactly that for truth now.
Long ago she had learned that whatever impulse had moved Clarence
Breckenridge to ask her to marry him was quickly displaced by his
vision of Billy's need as being greater than his own.

It had been an unpalatable revelation, for Rachael was a woman
proud as well as beautiful. But presently she had accepted the
situation as it stood, somehow fighting her way, as the years went
by, to fresh acceptances: the acceptance of Billy's ripening
charms, the acceptance of Clarence's more and more frequent times
of inebriated irresponsibility. Silently she made her mental
adjustments, moving through her gay and empty life in an
unsuspected bitterness of solitude, won to protest and rebellion
only when the cold surface she presented to the world was
threatened from within or without.

It was distinctly threatened now, she realized with a little sick
twist of apprehension at heart, when her casual inquiry to a maid
upon entering was answered by a discreet, "Yes, Mrs. Breckenridge,
Mr. Breckenridge came home half an hour ago. Alfred is with him."

This was unexpected. Rachael did not glance either at her guest or
her stepdaughter, but she disposed of them both in a breath.

"Someone wants you on the telephone, Billy," she repeated after
the maid's information. "Take it in the library. Run right up to
my room, Elinor, and I'll be there in two minutes. I'll send some
one in with towels and brushes; you've time for a tub. Take these
things, Helda, and give them to Annie, and tell her to lookout for
Miss Vanderwall."

The square entrance hall was sweet with flowers in the early
spring evening, Oriental rugs were spread on the dull mirror of
the floor, opened doors gave glimpses of airy colonial interiors,
English chintzes crowded with gay colored fruits and flowers,
brick fireplaces framed in classic white and showing a brave gleam
of brass firedogs in the soft lamplight. Not a book on the long
tables, not an etching on the dull rich paper of the walls, struck
a false note. It was all exquisitely in tone.

But Rachael Breckenridge, at best, saw less its positive
perfections than the tiniest opening through which an imperfection
might push its way, and in such an hour as this she saw it not at
all. Her mouth a trifle firm in its outline, her face a little
pale, she went quickly up the wide white stairway and along the
open balcony above. There were several doors on this balcony,
which was indeed the upper hall. Mrs. Breckenridge opened one of
them without knocking, and closed it noiselessly behind her.

The room into which she admitted herself presented exactly the
picture she had expected. The curtains, again of richly colored
cretonne, were drawn, a softly toned lamp on the reading table,
and another beside the bed, cast circles of pleasant light on the
comfortable wicker chairs, the cream-colored woodwork, and the
scattered books and magazines. Several photographs of Carol,
beautifully framed, were on bookcase and dresser, and a fine oil
painting of the child at fourteen looked down from the mantel. On
the bed, a mahogany four-poster, with carved pineapples finishing
the posts, the frilled cretonne cover had been flung back; Mr.
Breckenridge had retired; his blond head was sunk in the pillows;
he clutched the blankets about him with his arms, his face was not
visible.

A quiet manservant, who was by turns butler, chauffeur, and valet,
was stepping softly about the room. Rachael interrogated him in a
low tone:

"Asleep, Alfred?"

"Oh, no, ma'am!" the man said quickly. "He's been feeling ill. He
says he has a chill."

"When did he get home?" the wife asked.

"About half an hour ago, Mrs. Breckenridge. Mr. Butler telephoned
me. Some of the gentlemen were going on--to one of the beach
hotels for dinner, I believe, but Mr. Breckenridge felt himself
too unwell to join them, so I went for him with the little car,
and Mr. Joe Butler and Mr. Parks came home with him, Mrs.
Breckenridge."

"Do you know if he went to bed last night at all?"

"No, ma'am, he said he did not. All the gentlemen looked as if
they--looked as if they might have--" Alfred hesitated delicately.
"It was Mr. Berry Stokes' bachelor dinner," he presently added.

At this moment there was a convulsion in the bed, and the red face
of Clarence Breckenridge revealed itself. The eyes were
bloodstained, the usually pale skin flushed and oily, the fair,
thin hair tumbled across a high and well-developed forehead.
Rachael knew every movement of the red and swollen lips, every
tone of the querulous voice.

"Does Alfred have to stay up here doing a chambermaid's work?"
demanded the man of the house fretfully. "My God! Can you or can't
you manage--between your teas and card parties--to get someone
else to put this room in order?" He ended in a long moan, and
dropped his head again into the pillows.

"Do you know what he wants?" Rachael asked the man in a quick
whisper. "Go down and get it, then!"

"I'm co-o-old!" said the man in the bed, going into a sudden and
violent chill. "I've caught my death, I think. Joe made a punch--
some sort of an eggnog--eggs were bad, I think. I'm poisoned. The
stuff was rotten!" He sank mumbling back into the pillows.

Rachael, who had been hanging his coat carefully in the big closet
adjoining his room, came to the bedside and laid her cool fingers
on his burning forehead. If irrepressible distaste was visible in
her face, it was only a faint reflection of the burning resentment
in her heart.

"You've got a fever, Clarence," she announced quietly. The answer
was only a furious and incoherent burst of denunciation; the
patient was in utter physical discomfort, and could not choose his
terms. Rachael--not for the first nor the hundredth time--felt
within her an impulse to leave him here, leave him to outwear his
miseries without her help. But this she could not do without
throwing the house into an uproar. Clarence at these times had no
consideration for public opinion, had no dignity, no self-control.
Much better satisfy him, as she had done so many times before, and
keep a brave face to the world.

So she placed a hot-water bag against his cold feet, went to her
own room adjoining to borrow a fluffy satin comforter with which
to augment his own bed covering, laid an icy towel upon his
throbbing forehead, and when Alfred presently appeared with a
decanter of whisky, Rachael watched her husband eagerly gulp down
a glass of it without uttering one word of the bitter protest that
rose to her lips.

She was not a prude, with the sublime inconsistency of most women
whose lives are made the darker for drink; she did not identify
herself with any movement toward prohibition, or refuse the
cocktails, the claret, and the wine that were customarily served
at her own and at other people's dinner-tables. But she hated
coarseness in any form, she hated contact with the sodden, self-
pitying, ugly animal that Clarence Breckenridge became under the
influence of drink.

To-night, when he presently fell asleep, somewhat more comfortable
in body, and soothed in spirit by the promise of a visit from the
doctor, Rachael went into her own room and sinking into a deep
chair sat staring stupidly at the floor. She did not think of the
husband she had just left, nor of the formal dinner party being
given, only half a mile away, to a great English novelist--a
dinner to which the Breckenridges had of course been asked and
upon which Rachael had weeks ago set her heart. She was tired, and
her thoughts floated lazily about nothing at all, or into some
opaque region of their own knowing, where the ills of the body
might not follow.

Presently Miss Vanderwall, clothed in a trailing robe of soft
Arabian cotton, came briskly out of the bathroom, her short dark
hair hanging in a mane about her rosy face.

"Why so pensive, Rachael?" she asked cheerfully, pressing a button
that lighted the circle of globes about the dressing-table mirror,
and seating herself before it. But under her loose locks she sent
a keen and concerned look at her hostess' thoughtful face.

"Tired," Rachael answered briefly, not changing her attitude, but
with a fleeting shadow of a smile.

"How's Clancy?"

"Asleep. He's wretched, poor fellow! Berry Stokes' bachelor
dinner, you know. That crowd is bad for him."

"I KNEW it must have been an orgy!" Miss Vanderwall declared
vivaciously. "That was a silly slip of mine in the car. Billy
doesn't know he went, I suppose?"

"No, he promised her he wouldn't. But everyone was at the dinner.
Some of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept
quiet, because Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I
suppose," Mrs. Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it
was just an impromptu affair. Billy and Aline of course have no
idea what a party it was. But Clarence says that poor Berry was
worse than he, and a few of them are still keeping it up. It's a
shame, of course--"

Her uninterested voice dropped into silence.

"Men are queer," Miss Vanderwall said profoundly, busy with ivory-
backed brushes, powders, and pastes.

"The mystery to me--about men," mused Mrs. Breckenridge, her
absent eyes upon the buckled slipper she held in her hand, "is not
that they are as helpless as babies the moment anything goes wrong
with their poor little heads or their poor little tummies, but
that they work so hard, in spite of that, to increase the general
discomfort of living. Women have a great deal of misery to bear,
they are brave or cowardly about it as the case may be, but at
least they endure and renounce and diet and keep early hours--or
whatever's to be done--they TRY to lessen the sum of physical
misery. But men go cheerily on--they smoke too much, and eat too
much, and drink too much, and they bring the resulting misery
sweetly and confidently to some woman to bear for them. It's
hopeless!"

"H'm!" was Miss Vanderwall's thoughtful comment. Presently she
added dubiously: "Did you ever think that another child might make
a big difference to Clarence, Rachael? That he might come to care
for a son as he does for Billy, don't you know--"

"Oh, I wasn't speaking of Clarence," Mrs. Breckenridge said
coldly. And Elinor, recognizing a false step, winced inwardly.

"No, I didn't suppose you were!" she assented hastily.

"If there's one thing I AM thankful for," Rachael presently said
moodily, "it's that I haven't a child. I'm rather fond of kiddies-
-nice kiddies, myself; and Clarence likes children, too. But
things are quite bad enough now without that complication!" She
brushed the loosened hair from her face restlessly, and sighed.
"Sometimes, when I see the other girls," said she, "I think I'd
make a rather good mother! However"--and getting suddenly to her
feet, she flung up her head as if to be rid of the subject--
"however, my dear, we shall never know! Don't mind me to-night,
Elinor, I'm in a horrible mood, it will take nothing at all to set
me off in what Bill used to call a regilyer tant'um!"

"Tantrum nothing," said Elinor, in eager sympathy, feeling with
the greatest relief that she was reinstated in Rachael's good
graces after her stupid blunder. "I don't see how you stand it at
all!"

"It isn't the drinking and headaches and general stupidity in
themselves, you know," Rachael said, reverting to her original
argument, "but it's the atrocious UNNECESSITY of it! I don't mind
Clarence's doing as other men do, I certainly don't mind his
caring so much for his daughter"--her fine brows drew together--
"but where do _I_ come in?" she demanded with a quizzical smile.
"What's MY life? I ask only decency and civility, and I don't get
it. The very servants in this house pity me--they see it all. When
Clarence isn't himself, he needs me; when he is, he is all for
Billy. I must apologize for breaking engagements; people don't ask
us out any more, and no wonder! I have to coax money out of him
for bills; Billy has her own check-book. I have to keep quiet when
I'm boiling all over. I have to defend myself when I know I'm
bitterly, cruelly wronged!"

Neither woman had any scruples about the subject under discussion,
but even to Elinor Rachael had never spoken so freely before, and
the guest, desperately attempting to remember every word for the
delectation of her family and friends later on, felt herself at
once honored and thrilled.

"Rachael--but why do you stand it?"

Mrs. Breckenridge threw her a look full of all conscious
forbearance.

"Well, what would YOU do?"

"Well. I'd"--Miss Vanderwall arrested the hand with which she was
carefully spreading her lips with red paste, to fling it, with a
large gesture, into the air--"I'd--why don't you GET OUT? Simply
drop it all?" she asked.

"For several reasons," the other woman returned promptly with a
sort of hard, bright pride. "One very excellent one is that I
haven't one penny. But I tell you, Elinor, if I knew how to put my
hand on about a thousand dollars a year--there are little towns in
France, I have friends in London--well"--and with a sudden
straightening of her whole body Rachael Breckenridge visibly
rallied herself--"well, what's the use of talking?" she said. But,
as she rose abruptly, Elinor saw the glint of tears on her lashes,
and said to herself with a sort of pleased terror that things
between Clarence and Rachael must be getting serious indeed.