Elinor Glyn - "His Hour"

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A. H. Leahy - "Heroic Romances of Ireland Volume 1"

Thomas Hardy - "Poems of the Past and the Present"

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




"Will she ever forgive me, George?" Warren asked one cool autumn
dawning when the two men were walking away from the hospital under
the fading stars. Warren had commenced an operation just before
midnight, it was only concluded now, and George, who had remained
beside him for sheer admiration of his daring and his skill, had
suggested that they walk for a while, and shake off the atmosphere
of ether and of pain.

"It's a time like this I miss her," Warren said. "I took it all
for granted, then. But after such a night as this, when I would go
home in those first years, and creep into bed, she was never too
sleepy to rouse and ask me how the case went, she never failed to
see that the house was quiet the next morning, and she'd bring in
my tray herself--Lord, a woman like that, waiting on me!"

George shook his head but did not speak. They walked an echoing
block or two in silence.

"George, I need my wife," Warren said then. "There isn't an hour
of my life that some phase of our life together doesn't come back
to me and wring my heart. I don't want anything else--our sons,
our fireside, our interests together. I've heard her voice ever
since. And I'm changed, George, not in what I always believed,
because I know right from wrong, and always have, but I don't
believe in myself any more. I want my kids to be taught laws--not
their own laws. I want to go on my knees to my girl---"

His voice thickened suddenly, and they walked on with no attempt
on either side to end the silence for a long time. The city
streets were wet from a rain, but day was breaking in hopeful
pearl and rose.

"I can say this," said George at last: "I believe that she needs
you as much as you do her. But Rachael's proud--"

"Ah, yes, she's that!" Warren said eagerly as he paused.

"And Warren, she has been dragged through the muck during the last
few years," George resumed in a mildly expostulatory tone.

"Oh, I know it!" Warren answered, stricken.

"She hates coarseness," pursued George, "she hates weakness. I
believe that if ever a divorce was justified in this world, hers
was. But to have you come back at her, to have Magsie Clay break
in on her, and begin to yap breezily about divorce, and how
prevalent it is, and what a solution it is, why, of course it was
enough to break her heart!"

"Don't!" Warren said thickly, quickening his pace, as if to walk
away from his own insufferable thoughts.

For many days they did not speak of Rachael again; indeed George
felt that there was nothing further to say. He feared in his own
heart that nothing would ever bring about a change in her feeling,
or rather, that the change that had been taking place in her for
so many weeks was one that would be lasting, that Rachael was an
altered woman.

Alice believed this, too, and Rachael believed it most of all.
Indeed, over Rachael's torn and shaken spirit there had fallen of
late a peace and a sense of security that she had never before
known in her life. She tried not to think of Warren any more, or
at least to think of him as he had been in the happy days when
they had been all in all to each other. If other thoughts would
creep in, and her heart grow hot and bitter within her at the
memory of her wrongs, she resolutely fought for composure; no
matter now what he had been or done, that life was dead. She had
her boys, the sunsets and sunrises, the mellowing beauty of the
year. She had her books, and above all her memories. And in these
memories she found much to blame in herself, but much to pity,
too. A rudderless little bark, she had been set adrift in so
inviting, so welcoming a sea twenty years ago! She had known that
she was beautiful, and that she must marry--what else? What more
serious thought ever flitted through the brain of little Rachael
Fairfax than that it was a delicious adventure to face life in a
rough blue coat and feathered hat, and steer her wild little sails
straight into the heart of the great waters?

She would have broken Stephen's heart; but Stephen was dead. She
had seized upon Clarence with never a thought of what she was to
give him, with never a prayer as to her fitness to be his wife,
nor his fitness to be the father of her children. She had laughed
at self-sacrifice, laughed at endurance, laughed at married love--
these things were only words to her. And when she had tugged with
all her might at the problem before her, and tried, with her
pitiable, untrained strength to force what she wished from Fate,
then she had flung the whole thing aside, and rushed on to new
experiments--and to new failures.

Always on the surface, always thinking of the impression she made
on the watching men and women about her, what a life it had been!
She had never known who made Clarence's money, what his own father
had been like, what the forces were that had formed him, and had
made him what he was. He did not please her, that began and ended
the story. He had presently flung himself into eternity with as
little heed as she had cast herself into her new life.

Ah, but there had been a difference there! She had loved there,
and been awakened by great love. Her child's crumpled, rosy foot
had come to mean more to her than all the world had meant before.
The smile, or the frown, in her husband's eyes had been her
sunshine or her storm. Through love she had come to know the
brimming life of the world, the pathos, the comedy that is ready
to spill itself over every humble window-sill, the joy that some
woman's heart feels whenever the piping cry of the new-born sounds
in a darkened room, the sorrow held by every shabby white hearse
that winds its way through a hot and unnoticing street. She had
clung to husband and sons with the tigerish tenacity that is the
rightful dower of wife and mother; she had thought the world well
lost in holding them.

And then the sordid, selfish past rose like an ugly mist before
her, and she found at her lips the bitter cup she had filled
herself. She was not so safe now, behind her barrier of love, but
that the terrible machinery she had set in motion might bring its
grinding wheels to bear upon the lives she guarded. She had flung
her solemn promise aside, once; what defence could she make for a
second solemn promise now? The world, divorce mad, spun blindly
on, and the echo of her own complacent "one in twelve" came
faintly, sickly back to her after the happy years.

"Divorce has actually no place in our laws, it isn't either wrong
or right," Rachael said one autumn day when they were walking
slowly to the beach. Over their heads the trees were turning
scarlet; the days were still soft and warm, but twilight fell
earlier now, and in the air at morning and evening was the
intoxicating sharpness, the thin blue and clear steel color that
mark the dying summer. Alice's three younger children were in
school, and the family came to Clark's Hills only for the week-
ends, but Rachael and her boys stayed on and on, enjoying the rare
warmth and beauty of the Indian Summer, and comfortable in the old
house that had weathered fifty autumns and would weather fifty
more.

"In some states it is absolutely illegal," Rachael continued, "in
others, it's permissible. In some it is a real source of revenue.
Now fancy treating any other offence that way! Imagine states in
which stealing was only a regrettable incident, or where murder
was tolerated! In South Carolina you cannot get a divorce on any
grounds! In Washington the courts can give it to you for any cause
they consider sufficient. There was a case: a man and his wife
obtained a divorce and both remarried. Now they find they are both
bigamists, because it was shown that the wife went West, with her
husband's knowledge and consent, to establish her residence there
for the explicit purpose of getting a divorce. It was well-
established law that if a husband or wife seek the jurisdiction of
another state for the sole object of obtaining a divorce, without
any real intent of living there, making their home there, goes, in
other words, just for divorce purposes, then the decree having
been fraudulently obtained will not be recognized anywhere!"

"But thousands do it, Rachael."

"But thousands don't seem to realize--I never did before--that
that is illegal. You can't deliberately move to Reno or Seattle or
San Francisco for such a purpose. All marriages following a
divorce procured under these conditions are illegal. Besides this,
the divorce laws as they exist in Washington, California, or
Nevada are not recognized by other states, and so because a couple
are separated upon the grounds of cruelty or incompatibility in
some Western state, they are still legally man and wife in New
York or Massachusetts. All sorts of hideous complications are
going on: blackmail and perjury!

"I wonder why divorce laws are so little understood?" Alice mused.

"Because divorce is an abnormal thing. You can't make it right,
and of course we are a long way from making it wrong. But that is
what it is coming to, I believe. Divorce will be against the law
some day! No divorce on ANY GROUNDS! It cannot be reconciled to
law; it defies law. Right on the face of it, it is breaking a
contract. Are any other contracts to be broken with public
approval? We will see the return of the old, simple law, then we
will wonder at ourselves! I am not a woman who takes naturally to
public work--I wish I were. But perhaps some day I can strike the
system a blow. It is women like me who understand, and who will
help to end it."

"It is only the worth-while women who do understand," said Alice.
"You are the marble worth cutting. Life is a series of phases; we
are none of us the same from year to year. You are not the same
girl that you were when you married Clarence Breckenridge--"

"What a different woman!" Rachael said under her breath.

"Well," said Alice then a little frightened, "why won't you think
that perhaps Warren might have changed, too; that whatever Warren
has done, it was done more like--like the little boy who has never
had his fling, who gets dizzy with his own freedom, and does
something foolish without analyzing just what he is doing?"

"But Warren, after all, isn't a child!" Rachael said sadly.

"But Warren is in some ways; that's just it," Alice said eagerly.
"He has always been singularly--well, unbalanced, in some ways.
Don't you know there was always a sort of simplicity, a sort of
bright innocence about Warren? He believed whatever anybody said
until you laughed at him; he took every one of his friends on his
own valuation. It's only where his work is concerned that you ever
see Warren positive, and dictatorial, and keen--"

Rachael's eyes had filled with tears.

"But he isn't the man I loved, and married," she said slowly. "I
thought he was a sort of god--he could do no wrong for me!"

"Yes, but that isn't the way to feel toward anybody," persisted
Alice. "No man is a god, no man is perfect. You're not perfect
yourself; I'm not. Can't you just say to yourself that human
beings are faulty--it may be your form of it to get dignified and
sulk, and Warren's to wander off dreamily into curious paths--but
that's life, Rachael, that's 'better or worse,' isn't it?"

"It isn't a question of my holding out for a mere theory, Alice,"
Rachael said after a while; "I'm not saying that I'm all in the
right, and that I will never see Warren again until he admits it,
and everyone admits it--that isn't what I want. But it's just that
I'm dead, so far as that old feeling is concerned. It is as if a
child saw his mother suddenly turn into a fiend, and do some
hideously cruel act; no amount of cool reason could ever convince
that child again that his mother was sweet and good."

"But as you get older," Alice smiled, "you differentiate between
good and good, and you see grades in evil, too. Everything isn't
all good or all bad, like the heroes and the villains of the old
plays. If Warren had done a 'hideously cruel' thing deliberately,
that would be one thing; what he has done is quite another. The
God who made us put sex into the world, Warren didn't; and Warren
only committed, in his--what is it?--forty-eighth year one of the
follies that most boys dispose of in their teens. Be generous,
Rachael, and forgive him. Give him another trial!"

"How CAN I forgive him?" Rachael said, badly shaken, and through
tears. "No, no, no, I couldn't! I never can."

They had reached the beach now, and could see the children, in
their blue field coats, following the curving reaches of the
incoming waves. The fresh roar of the breakers filled a silence,
gulls piped their wistful little cry as they circled high in the
blue air. Old Captain Semple, in his rickety one-seated buggy,
drove up the beach, the water rising in the wheel-tracks. The
children gathered about him; it was one of their excitements to
see the Captain wash his carriage, and the old mare splash in the
shallow water. Alice seated herself on a great log, worn silver
from the sea, and half buried in the white sand, but Rachael
remained standing, the sweet October wind whipping against her
strong and splendid figure, her beautiful eyes looking far out to
sea.

"You two have no quarrel," the older woman added mildly. "You and
Warren were rarely companionable. I used to say to George that you
were almost TOO congenial, too sensitive to each other's moods.
Warren knew that you idolized him, Rachael, and consequently, when
criticism came, when he felt that you of all persons were
misjudging him, why, he simply flung up his head like a horse, and
bolted!"

"Misjudging?" Rachael said quickly, half turning her head, and
bringing her eyes from the far horizon to rest upon Alice's face.
The children had seen them now, and were running toward them, and
Alice did not attempt to answer. She sighed, and shrugged her
shoulders.

A dead horseshoe crab on the sands deflected the course of the
racing children, except Derry, who pursued his panting way, and as
Rachael sat down on the log, cast himself, radiant and breathless,
into her arms. She caught the child to her heart passionately. He
had always been closer to her than even the splendid first-born
because of the giddy little head that was always getting him into
troubles, and the reckless little feet that never chose a sensible
course. Derry was always being rescued from deep water, always
leaping blindly from high places and saved by the narrowest
possible chance, always getting his soft mop of hair inextricably
tangled in the steering-gear of Rachael's car, or his foot
hopelessly twisted in the innocent-looking bars of his own bed,
always eating mysterious berries, or tasting dangerous medicines,
always ready to laugh deeply and deliciously at his own crimes.
Jim assumed a protective attitude toward him, chuckling at his
predicaments, advising him, and even gallantly assuming the blame
for his worst misdeeds. Rachael imagined them in boarding-school
some day; in college; Jim the student, dragged from his books and
window-seat to go to the rescue of the unfortunate but fascinating
junior. Jim said he was going to write books; Derry was going--her
heart contracted whenever he said it--was going to be a doctor,
and Dad would show him what to do!

Ah, how proud Warren might have been of them, she thought, walking
home to-day, a sandy hand in each of hers, Derry hopping on one
foot, twisting, and leaping; Jim leaning affectionately against
her, and holding forth as to the proper method of washing wagons!
What man would not have been proud of this pair, enchanting in
faded galatea now, soon to be introduced to linen knickerbockers,
busy with their first toiling capitals now, some day to be
growling Latin verbs. They would be interested in the Zoo this
winter, and then in skating, and then in football--Warren loved
football. He had thrown it all away!

Widowed in spirit, still Rachael was continually reminded that she
was not actually widowed, and in the hurt that came to her, even
in these first months, she found a chilling premonition of the
years to come. Warm-hearted Vera Villalonga wrote impulsively from
the large establishment at Lakewood that she had acquired for the
early winter. She had heard that Rachael and Greg weren't exactly
hitting it off--hoped to the Lord it wasn't true--anyway, Rachael
had been perfectly horrible about seeing her old friends; couldn't
she come at once to Vera, lots of the old crowd were there, and
spend a month? Mrs. Barker Emery, meeting Rachael on one of the
rare occasions when Rachael went into the city, asked pleasantly
for the boys, and pleasantly did not ask for Warren. Belvedere Bay
was gayer than ever this year, Mrs. Emory said; did Rachael know
that the Duchess of Exton was visiting Mary Moulton--such a dear!
Georgiana Vanderwall, visiting the Thomases at Easthampton,
motored over one day to spend a sympathetic half morning with
Rachael, pressing that lady's unresponsive hand with her own
large, capable one, and murmuring that of course--one heard--that
the Bishop of course felt dreadfully--they only hoped--both such
dear sweet people--

Rachael felt as if she would like to take a bath after this well-
meant visitation. A day or two later she had a letter from
Florence, who said that "someone" had told her that the Gregorys
might not be planning to keep their wonderful cook this winter. If
that was true, would Rachael be so awfully good as to ask her to
go see Mrs. Haviland?

"The pack," Rachael said to Alice, "is ready to run again!"




CHAPTER VII


November turned chilly, and in its second week there was even a
flutter of snow at Clark's Hills. Rachael did not dislike it, and
it was a huge adventure to the boys. Nevertheless, she began to
feel that a longer stay down on the bleak coast might be unwise.
The old house, for all its purring furnace and double windows, was
draughty enough to admit icy little fingers of the outside air,
here and there, and the village, getting under storm shutters and
closing up this wing or that room for the winter, was so
businesslike in its preparations as to fill Rachael's heart with
mild misgivings.

Alice still brought her brood down for the week-ends, and it was
on one of these that Rachael suddenly decided to move. The two
women discussed it, Rachael finally agreeing to go to the
Valentines' for a week before going on to Boston--or it might be
Washington or Philadelphia--any other city than the one in which
she might encounter the boys' father. Alice had never won her to
promise a visit before, and although Rachael's confidence in her--
for Rachael neither extracted a promise from Alice as to any
possible encounter with Warren, nor reminded her friend that she
placed herself entirely at Alice's mercy--rather disconcerted
Alice, she had a simple woman's strong faith in coincidence, and
she felt, she told George, that the Lord would not let this
opportunity for a reconciliation go by. Mrs. Valentine had seen
Warren Gregory now, more than once, and far more potent than any
argument that he might have made was his silence, his most
unexpected and unnatural silence. There was no explanation; indeed
Warren had little to say on any subject in these days. He liked to
come now and then, in the evening, to the Valentine house, but he
would not dine there, and confined his remarks almost entirely to
answers to George. Physically, Alice thought him shockingly
changed.

"He is simply broken," she said to George, in something like
fright. "I didn't know human beings could change that way. Warren-
-who used to be so positive! Why, he's almost timid!"

She did not tell Rachael this, and George insisted that, while
Rachael and the boys were at the house, Warren must be warned to
keep away; so that Alice had frail enough material with which to
build her dreams. Nevertheless, she dreamed.

It was finally arranged that Rachael and little Jim should go up
to town on a certain Monday with Alice; that Rachael should make
various engagements then, as to storage, packing, and such matters
as the care of the piano and the car, for the winter. Then Jim,
for the first time in his life, would stay away from his mother
overnight with Aunt Alice, Rachael returning to Clark's Hills to
bring Mary and Derry up the next day in the car. Jim was to go to
the dentist, and to get shoes; there were several excellent
reasons why it seemed wise to have him await his mother and
brother in town rather than make the long trip twice in one day.
Mary smuggled Derry out of sight when the Monday morning came, and
Rachael and her oldest son went away with the Valentines in the
car.

It was a fresh, sweet morning in the early winter, and both women,
furred to the eyes, enjoyed the trip. The children, snuggled in
between them, chattered of their own affairs, and Rachael
interrupted her inexhaustible talk with Alice only to ask a
question of the driver now and then.

"I shall have to bring my own car over this road to-morrow, Kane,"
she explained. "I have never been at the wheel myself before in
all the times I have done it."

"Mar-r-tin does be knowin' every step of the way," suggested Kane.

"But Martin hasn't been with me this summer," the lady smiled.

"I thought I saw him runnin' the docther's car yesterda' week,"
mused Kane who was a privileged character. "Well,'tis not hard,
Mrs. Gregory. The whole place is plasthered wid posts. But the
thing of it is, ma'am," he added, after a moment, turning back
toward her without taking his eyes from the road, "there does be a
big storm blowin' up. Look there, far over there, how black it
is."

"But that won't break to-day?" Rachael said uneasily, thinking of
Derry.

"Well, it may not--that's thrue. But these roads will be in a
grand mess if we have anny more rain--that's a fact for ye," Kane
persisted.

"Then don't come until Wednesday," suggested Alice.

"Oh, Alice, but I'll be so frantic to see my boy!"

"Twenty-four hours more, you goose!" Alice laughed. Rachael
laughed, too, and took several surreptitious kisses from the back
of Jimmy's neck as a fortification against the coming separation.

Indeed, she found it unbelievably hard to leave him, trotting
happily upstairs with his beloved Katharine, and to go about her
day's business anticipating the long trip back to Home Dunes
without him. However, there were not many hours to spare, and
Rachael had much to do. She set herself systematically to work.

By one o'clock everything was done, with an hour to spare for
train time. But she had foolishly omitted luncheon, and felt tired
and dizzy. She turned toward a downtown lunchroom, and was held at
the crossing of Fifth Avenue and one of the thirties idly watching
the crowd of cars that delayed her when she saw Warren in his car.

He was on the cross street, and so also stopped, but he did not
see her. Martin was at the wheel, Warren buttoned to the neck in a
gray coat, his hat well down over his eyes, alone in the back
seat. He was staring steadily, yet with unseeing eyes, before him,
and Rachael felt a sense of almost sickening shock at the sight of
his altered face. Warren, looking tired and depressed, looking
discouraged, and with some new look of diffidence and hurt,
besides all these, in his face! Warren old! Warren OLD!

Rachael felt as if she should faint. She was rooted where she
stood. Fifth Avenue pushed gayly and busily by her under the
leaden sky. Furred old ladies, furred little girls, messenger boys
and club men, jostling, gossiping, planning. Only she stood still.
And after a while she looked again where Warren had been. He was
gone. But had he seen her? her heart asked itself with wild
clamor. Had he seen her?

She began to walk rapidly and blindly, conscious of taking a
general direction toward the Terminal Station, but so vague as to
her course that she presently looked bewilderedly about to find
that she was in Eighth Avenue and that, standing absolutely still
again, and held by thought, she was being curiously regarded by a
policeman. She gave the man a dazed and sickly smile.

"I am afraid I am a little out of my way," she stammered. "I am
going to the station."

He pointed out the direction, and she thanked him, and blindly
went on her way. But her heart was tearing like a living thing in
her breast, and she walked like a wounded creature that leaves a
trail of life blood.

Oh, she was his wife--his wife--his wife! She belonged there, in
that empty seat beside him, with her shoulder against that gray
overcoat! What was she doing in this desolate street of little
shops, faint and heartsick and alone! Oh, for the security of that
familiar car again! How often she had sat beside him, arrested by
the traffic, content to placidly watch the shifting crowd, to wait
for the shrill little whistle that gave them the right of way! If
she were there now, where might they be going? Perhaps to a
concert, perhaps to look at a picture in some gallery, but first
of all certainly to lunch. His first question would be: "Had your
lunch?" and his answer only a satisfied nod. But he would direct
Martin to the first place that suggested itself to him as being
suitable for Rachael's meal. And he would order it, no trouble was
too much for her; nothing too good for his wife.