George Eliot - "The Mill on the Floss"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555 59"

Samuel Johnson - "Preface to Shakespeare"

St. George Rathborne - "The House Boat Boys"

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




"Come have some tea, Greg," she said, indicating the empty chair
beside her.

"Thank you, dear," he answered, his head close to hers for a
moment as he sat down. The little word set Rachael's heart to
hammering again. She glanced quickly to see if Mrs. Moran had
overheard, but that lady had at last caught sight of the maid with
the hot toast, and her ample back was turned toward the teatable.

Indeed, in the noisy, disordered room, which was beginning to be
deserted by straggling groups of guests, they were quite
unobserved. To both it was a delicious moment, this little
domestic interlude of tea and talk in the curved window of the
dining-room, lighted by the last light of a spring day, and sweet
with the scent of wilting spring flowers.

"You make my heart behave in a manner not to be described in
words!" said Rachael, her fingers touching his as she handed him
his tea.

"It must be mine you feel," suggested Warren Gregory; "you haven't
one--by all accounts!"

"I thought I hadn't, Greg, but, upon my word---" She puckered her
lips and raised her eyebrows whimsically, and gave her head a
little shake. Doctor Gregory gave her a shrewdly appraising look,
sighed, and stirred his tea.

"If ever you discover yourself to be the possessor of such an
organ, Rachael," said he dispassionately, "you won't joke about it
over a tea-table! You'll wake up, my friend; we'll see something
besides laughter in those eyes of yours, and hear something
besides cool reason in your voice! I may not be the man to do it,
but some man will, some day, and--when John Gilpin rides--"

The eyes to which he referred had been fixed in serene confidence
upon his as he began to speak. But a second later Rachael dropped
them, and they rested upon her own slender hand, lying idle upon
the teatable, with its plain gold ring guarded by a dozen blazing
stones. Had he really stirred her, Warren Gregory wondered, as he
watched the thoughtful face under the bright, cherry-loaded hat.

"You know how often there is neither cool reason nor any cause for
laughter in my life, Greg," she said, after a moment. "As for
love--I don't think I know what love is! I am an absolutely
calculating woman, and my first, last, and only view of anything
is just how much it affects me and my comfort."

"I don't believe it!" said the doctor.

"It's true. And why shouldn't it be?" Rachael gave him a grave
smile. "No one," said she seriously, "ever--ever--EVER suggested
to me that there was anything amiss in that point of view! Why is
there?"

"I don't understand you," said the doctor simply.

"One doesn't often talk this way, I suppose," she said slowly.
"But there is a funny streak of--what shall I call it?--
conscience, or soul, or whatever you like, in me. Whether I get it
from my mother's Irish father or my father's clergyman
grandfather, I don't know, but I'm eternally defending myself. I
have long sessions with myself, when I'm judge and jury, and
invariably I find 'Not Guilty!'"

"Not guilty of what?" the man asked, stirring his untasted cup.

"Not guilty of anything!" she answered, with a child's puzzled
laugh. "I stick to my bond, I dress and talk and eat and go about-
-" Her voice dropped; she stared absently at the table.

"But--" the doctor prompted.

"But--that's just it--but I'm so UNHAPPY all the time!" Rachael
confessed. "We all seem like a lot of puppets, to me--like Bander-
log! What are we all going round and round in circles for, and who
gets any fun out of it? What's YOUR answer, Greg--what makes the
wheels go round?"

"'Tis love--'tis love--that makes--etcetera, etcetera," supplied
the doctor, his tone less flippant than his words.

"Oh--love!" Rachael's voice was full of delicate scorn. "I've seen
a great deal of all sorts and kinds of love," she went on, "and I
must say that I consider love a very much overrated article!
You're laughing at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it. Clarence
loved Paula madly, kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all
that, but I don't know how much THEIR seven years together helped
the world go round. He never loved me, never once said he did, but
I've made him a better wife than she did. He loves Bill, now, and
it's the worst thing in the world for her!"

"THERE'S some love for you," said Doctor Gregory, glancing across
the room to the figures of Miss Leila Buckney and Mr. Parker Hoyt,
who were laughing over a cabinet full of ivories.

"I wonder just what would happen there if Parker lost his money
to-morrow--if Aunt Frothy died and left it all to Magsie Clay?"
Rachael suggested, smiling.

The doctor answered only with a shrug.

"More than that," pursued Rachael, "suppose that Parker woke up
to-morrow morning and found his engagement was all a dream, found
that he really hadn't asked Leila to marry him, and that he was as
free as air. Do you suppose that the minute he'd had his breakfast
he would go straight over to Leila's house and make his dream a
heavenly reality? Or would he decide that there was no hurry about
it, and that he might as well rather keep away from the Buckney
house until he'd made up his mind?"

"I suppose he might convince himself that an hour or two's delay
wouldn't matter!" said the doctor, laughing.

"If you talk to me of clothes, or of jewelry, or of what one ought
to send a bride, and what to say in a letter of condolence, I know
where I am," said Rachael, "but love, I freely confess, is
something else again!"

"I suppose my mother has known great love," said the man, after a
pause. "She spends her days in that quiet old house dreaming about
my father, and my brothers, looking at their pictures, and reading
their letters--"

"But, Greg, she's so unhappy!" Rachael objected briskly. "And
love--surely the contention is that love ought to make one happy?"

"Well, I think her memories DO make her happy, in a way. Although
my mother is really too conscientious a woman to be happy, she
worries about events that are dead issues these twenty years. She
wonders if my brother George might have been saved if she had
noticed his cough before she did; there was a child who died at
birth, and then there are all the memories of my father's death--
the time he wanted ice water and the doctors forbade it, and he
looked at her reproachfully. Poor Mother!"

"You're a joy to her anyway, Greg," Rachael said, as he paused.

"Charley is," he conceded thoughtfully, "and in a way I know I am!
But not in every way, of course," Warren Gregory smiled a little
ruefully.

"So the case for love is far from proved," Rachael summarized
cheerfully. "There's no such thing!"

"On the contrary, there isn't anything else, REALLY, in the
world," smiled the man. "I've seen it shining here and there; we
get away from it here, somewhat, I'll admit"--his glance and
gesture indicated the other occupants of the room--"and, like you,
I don't quite know where we miss it, and what it's all about, but
there have been cases in our wards, for instance: girls whose
husbands have been brought in all smashed up--"

"Girls who saw themselves worried about rent and bread and
butter!" suggested Rachael in delicate irony.

"No, I don't think so. And mothers--mothers hanging over sick
children--"

The women nodded quickly.

"Yes, I know, Greg. There's something very appealing about a sick
kiddie. Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a
little thing she looked, with her hair all cut! And that DID--now
that I remember it--it really did bring Clarence and me
tremendously close. We'd sit and wait for news, and slip out for
little meals, and I'd make him coffee late at night. I remember
thinking then that I never wanted a child, to make me suffer as we
suffered then!"

"Mother love, then, we concede," Doctor Gregory said, smiling.

"Well, yes, I suppose so. Some mothers. I don't believe a mother
like Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving.
However, there IS mother love!"

"And married love."

"No, there I don't agree. While the novelty lasts, while the
passion lasts--not more than a year or two. Then there's just
civility--opening the city house, opening the country house,
entertaining, going about, liking some things about each other,
loathing others, keeping off the dangerous places until the crash
comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky ones, doesn't come!"

"What a mushy little sentimentalist you are, Rachael!" Gregory
said with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "You're too dear and sweet
to talk that way! It's too bad--it's too bad to have you feel so!
I wish that I could carry you away from all these people here--
just for a while! I'd like to prescribe that sea beach you spoke
about last night! Wouldn't we love our desert island! Would you
help me build a thatched hut, and a mud oven, and string shells in
your hair, and swim way out in the green breakers with me?"

"And what makes you think that there would be some saving element
in our relationship?" Rachael asked in a low voice. "What makes
you think that our love would survive the--the dry-rot of life?
People would send us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of
engraving, and barrels of champagne, and newspaper men trying to
cross-examine the maids, and caterers all over the place, but a
few years later, wouldn't it be the same old story? You talk of a
desert island, and swimming, and seaweed, Greg! But my ideas of a
desert island isn't Palm Beach with commercial photographers
snapping at whoever sits down in the sand! Look about us, Greg--
who's happy? Who isn't watching the future for just this or just
that to happen before she can really feel content? Young girls all
want to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be
young; this one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that
one--like Florence--is worrying a little for fear the girls won't
quite make a hit! Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about
Clarence--"

"I worry about you!" said Doctor Gregory as she paused.

"Of course you do, bless your heart!" Rachael laughed. "So here we
are, the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world,
having a cloudless good time!"

"You know, it's a shame to eat this way--ruin our dinners!" said
Mrs. Moran, suddenly entering the conversation. "Stop flirting
with Greg, Rachael, and give me some more tea. One lump, and only
about half a cup, dear. Tell me a good way to get thin, Greg!
Agnes Chase says her doctor has a diet--you eat all you want, and
you get thin. Agnes says Lou has a friend who has taken off forty-
eight pounds. Do you believe it, Greg? I'm too fat, you know--"

"You carry it well, Judy," said Rachael, still a little shaken by
the abruptly closed conversation, as the doctor, with a conscious
thrill, perceived.

"Thank you, my dear, that's what they all say. But I'd just as
soon somebody else should carry it for awhile!"

"Listen, Rachael," said their hostess, coming up suddenly, and
speaking quickly and lightly, "Clarence is here. Where in the name
of everything sensible is Billy?"

"Clarence!" said Rachael, uncomfortable premonition clutching at
her heart.

"Yes; you come and talk to him, Rachael," Mrs. Whittaker said, in
the same quick undertone. "He's all right, of course, but he's
just a little fussy--"

"Oh, if he wouldn't DO these things!" Rachael said apprehensively
as she rose. "I left him all comfortable--Joe Butler was coming in
to see him! It does EXASPERATE me so! However!"

"Of course it does, but we all know Clarence!" Mrs. Whittaker said
soothingly. "He seems to have got it into his head that Billy--You
go talk to him, Rachael, and I'll send her in."

"Billy's doing no harm! What did he say?" Rachael asked
impatiently.

"Oh, nothing definite, of course. But as soon as I said that Billy
was here--he'd asked if she was--he said, 'Then I suppose Mr.
Pickering is here, too!'"

"He's the one person in the world afraid of talk about Billy, yet
if he starts it, he can blame no one but himself!" Rachael said,
as she turned toward the adjoining room. An unexpected ordeal like
this always annoyed her. She was equal to it, of course; she could
smooth Clarence's ruffled feelings, keep a serene front to the
world, and get her family safely home before the storm; she had
done it many times before. But it was so unnecessary! It was so
unnecessary to exhibit the Breckenridge weaknesses before the
observant Emorys, before that unconscionable old gossip Peter
Pomeroy, and to the cool, pitying gaze of all her world!

She found Clarence the centre of a small group in the long
drawing-room. He and Frank Whittaker were drinking cocktails; the
others--Jeanette Vanderwall, Vera Villalonga, a flushed, excitable
woman older than Rachael, and Jimmy and Estelle Hoyt--had refused
the drink, but were adding much noise and laughter to the
newcomer's welcome.

"Hello, Clarence" Rachael said, appraising the situation rapidly
as she came up. "I would have waited for you if I had thought you
would come!"

"I just--just thought I would--look in," Clarence said slowly but
steadily. "Didn't want to miss anything. You all seem to be
having--having a pretty good time!"

"It's been a lovely tea," Rachael assured him enthusiastically.
"But I'm just going. Billy's out here on the porch with a bunch of
youngsters; I was just going after her. Don't let Frank give you
any more of that stuff, Clancy. Stop it, Frank! It always gives
him a splitting headache!"

The tone was irreproachably casual and cheerful, but Clarence
scowled at his wife significantly. His dignity, as he answered,
was tremendous.

"I can judge pretty well of what hurts me and what doesn't, thank
you, Rachael," he said coldly, with a look ominous with warning.

"That's just what you can't, dear," Mrs. Whittaker, who had joined
the group, said pleasantly. "Take that stuff away, Frank, and
don't be so silly! If Frank," she added to the group, "hadn't been
at it all afternoon himself he wouldn't be such an idiot."

"Greg says he'll take us home, Clarence," Rachael said, in a
matter-of-fact tone. "It's a shame to carry you off when you've
just got here, but I'm going."

"Where's Billy?" Clarence asked stubbornly.

"Right here!" his wife answered reassuringly. And to her great
relief Billy substantiated the statement by coming up to them, a
little uneasy, as her stepmother was, over her father's
appearance, yet confident that there was no real cause for a
scene. To get him home as fast as possible, and let the trouble,
whatever it might be, break there, was the thought in both their
minds.

"Had enough tea, Monkey?" said Rachael pleasantly, aware of her
husband's sulphurous gaze, but carefully ignoring it. "Then say
day-day to Aunt Gertrude!"

"If Greg takes you home, send Alfred back with the runabout for
me," Billy suggested.

"So that you can stay a little longer, eh?" said Clarence, in so
ugly a tone and with so leering a look for his daughter that
Rachael's heart for a moment failed her. "That's a very nice
little plan, my dear, but, as it happens, I came over in the
runabout! I'm a fool, you know," said Clarence sullenly. "I can be
hoodwinked and deceived and made a fool of--oh, sure! But there's
a limit! There's a limit," he said in stupid anger to his wife.
"And if I say that I don't like certain friendships for my
daughter, it means that _I_ DON'T LIKE CERTAIN FRIENDSHIPS FOR MY
DAUGHTER, do you get me? That's clear enough, isn't it, Gertrude?"

"It's perfectly clear that you're acting like an idiot, Clancy,"
Mrs. Whittaker said briskly. "Nobody's trying to hoodwink you; it
isn't being done this year! You've got an awful katzenjammer from
the Stokes' dinner, and all you men ought to be horsewhipped for
letting yourselves in for such a party. Now if you and Rachael
want to go home in the runabout, I'll send Billy straight after
you with Kenneth or Kent--"

"I'll take Billy home," Clarence said heavily.

By this time Rachael was so exquisitely conscious of watching eyes
and listening ears, so agonized over the realization that the fuss
Clarence Breckenridge made at the Whittakers' over Joe Pickering
would be handed down, a precious tradition, over every tea and
dinner table for weeks to come, so miserably aware that a dozen
persons, at least, among the audience were finding in this scene
welcome confirmation of all the odds and ends of gossip that were
floating about concerning Billy, that she would have consented
blindly to any arrangement that might terminate the episode.

It was not the first time that Clarence had made himself
ridiculous and his family conspicuous when not quite himself. At
almost every tea party and at every dance and dinner at least one
of the guests similarly distinguished himself. Rachael knew that
there would be no blame in her friends' minds, but she hated their
laughter.

"Do that, then," she agreed quickly. "Greg, will bring me!"

"By George," said Clarence darkly to his hostess, "I'd be a long
time doing that to you, Gertrude! If you had a daughter--"

"My dear Clarence, your daughter is old enough to know her own
mind!" Mrs. Whittaker said impatiently.

"And you're only making me conspicuous for something that's
ENTIRELY in your own brain!" blazed Billy. As usual, her influence
over her father was instantaneous.

"Because I love you, you know that," he said meekly. "I--I may be
TOO careful, Billy. But--"

"Nonsense!" said Billy in a nervous undertone close to tears. "If
you loved me you'd have some consideration for me!"

"When I say a thing, don't you say it's nonsense," Clarence said
with heavy fatherly dignity. "I'll tell you why--because I won't
stand for it!"

"Oh, aren't they hopeless!" Mrs. Whittaker asked with an indulgent
laugh and a glance for Rachael.

"Well, I won't be taken home like a bad child!" flamed Billy.

"I'd like to bump both your silly heads together," Rachael
exclaimed, steering them toward the porch. "Yes, you bring the car
around, Kent," she added to one of the onlookers in an urgent
aside. "Come on, Bill? get in. Get in, Clarence! Don't be an utter
fool--"

In another moment it was settled. Billy, looking fretty and sulky,
said: "Good-bye, Aunt Gertrude! I'm sorry for this, but it's not
my fault!" Frank Whittaker almost bodily lifted his somewhat
befuddled guest into the car, the door of the runabout went home
with a bang. Billy snatched the wheel, and Clarence, with an
attempt at a martyred expression, sank back in his seat. The car
rocked out of sight, and was gone.

Rachael, in silent dignity, turned about on the wide brick steps
to reenter the house. Where there had been a dozen interested
faces a moment ago there was no one now except Gertrude Whittaker,
whose expression betrayed her as tactfully divided between
unconcern and sympathy, and Frank Whittaker, who was looking
thoughtfully at the cloudless spring sky as one anticipating a
change of weather.

Rachael caught Mrs. Whittaker's eye and shrugged her shoulders
wearily. She began slowly to mount the steps.

"It was nothing at all!" said the hostess cheerfully, adding
immediately, "You poor thing!"

"All in the day's work!" Rachael said, on a long sigh. And turning
to the man who stood silently in the doorway she asked, with all
the confidence of a weary child, "Will you take me home, Greg?"

Her glance and the doctor's met. In the last soft, brilliant light
of the afternoon long shadows fell from the great trees nearby.
Rachael's green and white gown was dappled with blots of golden
light, her troubled, glowing eyes were of an almost unearthly
beauty, and her slender figure, against the background of colonial
white paint and red brick, had all the tremulous, reedy grace of a
young girl's figure. In the long look the two exchanged there was
some new element born of this wonderful hour of spring, and of the
woman's need, and the man's nearness. Both knew it, although
Rachael did not speak again, and, also in silence, the doctor
nodded, and went past her down the steps for his car.

"Too bad!" Mrs. Whittaker said, coming back from a brief
disappearance beyond the doorway. "But such things will happen!
It's too bad, Rachael, but what can one do? Are you going to be
warm enough? Sure? Don't give it another thought, dear, nobody
noticed it, anyway. And listen--any chance of a game tonight? I
could send over for you. Marian's with me, you know, and we could
get Peter or Greg for a fourth."

"No chance at all," Rachael said bitterly. She had always loved to
play bridge with Greg; under the circumstances it would be a
delicious experience. She layed brilliantly, and Greg, when he was
matched by partner and opponents, became absorbed in the game with
absolutely fanatic fervor. Rachael had a vision of her own white
hand spreading out the cards, of the nod and glance that said
clearly: "Great bidding, Rachael; we're as safe as a church!"

Clarence did not play bridge, he did not care for music, for
books, for pictures. He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and
often golf; a selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared
only for his own play and his own score, and paid no attention to
anyone else.

Gregory's great car came round the drive. "Good-bye, Gertrude,"
said Rachael with an unsmiling nod of farewell, and Mrs. Whittaker
thought, as Elinor Vanderwall had thought the night before, that
she had never seen Rachael look so serious before, and that things
in the Breckenridge family must be coming rapidly to a crisis.

Doctor Gregory, as the lovely Mrs. Breckenridge packed her striped
green and white ruffles trimly beside him, turned upon her a quick
and affectionate smile. It asked no confidence, it expressed no
sympathy, it was simply the satisfied glance of a man pleased with
the moment and with the company in which he found himself. To
Rachael, overwrought, nervous, and ashamed, no mood could have
been more delicately tuned. She sank back against the deep
upholstery luxuriously, and drew a long breath, inhaling the
delicious air of early summer twilight. What a sweet, clean, solid
sort of friend Greg was, thought Rachael, noticing the clever,
well-groomed hands on the wheel, the kindly earnestness of the
handsome, sun-browned face, the little wrinkle between the dark
eyes that meant that Doctor Gregory was thinking.

"Straight home?" said he, giving her a smiling glance.

"If you please, Greg," Rachael answered, a sudden vision of the
probable state of affairs at home causing her to end the words
with a quick sigh.

Silence. They were running smoothly along the lovely country roads
that were bowered so generously in fresh green that great feathery
boughs of maple and locust brushed against the car. The birds were
still now, and the sunlight gone, although all the world was still
flooded with a soft golden light. The first dew had fallen,
bringing forth from the dust a sweet and pungent odor.

"Thinking about what I said to you last night?" asked the doctor
suddenly.

"I am afraid I am--a little," Rachael answered, meeting his quick
side glance with another as fleet.

"And what do you think about it?" he asked. For answer Rachael
only sighed wearily, and for a while they went on in silence. But
when they had almost reached the Breckenridge gateway Doctor
Gregory spoke again.

"Do you often have a scene like that one just now to get through?"

The color rushed into Rachael's face at his friendly, not too
sympathetic, tone. She was still shaken from the encounter with
Clarence, and still thrilling to the memory of her talk with
Warren Gregory last night, and it was with some new quality of
hesitation, almost of bewilderment, that she said:

"That--that wasn't anything unusual, Greg."

Doctor Gregory stopped the car at the foot of her own steps, the
noise of the engine suddenly ceased, and they faced each other,
their heads close together.

"But since last night," Rachael added, smiling after a moment's
thought, "I know I have a friend. I believe now, when the crash
comes, and the whole world begins to talk, that one person will
not misjudge me, and one person will not misunderstand."

"Only that?" he asked. She raised her glorious eyes quickly,
trying to smile, and it brought his heart to a quick stop to see
that they were brimming with tears.

"Only that?" she echoed. "My dear Greg, after seven such years as
I have had as Clarence's wife, that is not a small thing!"

Their hands were together now, and he felt hers cling suddenly as
she said:

"Don't--don't let me drag you into this, Greg!"

"This is what I want you to believe," Warren Gregory told her,
"that you are not his wife, you are nothing to him any more. And
some day, some day, you're going to be happy again!"

A wonderful color flooded her face; she gave him a look half-
frightened, half-won. Then with an almost inaudible "Good-night,"
she was gone.

Warren Gregory stood watching the slender figure mount the steps.
She did not turn to nod him a fare-well, but vanished like a
shadow into the soft shadows of the doorway. Yet he was enough a
lover to find consolation in that. Rachael Breckenridge was not
flirting now, forces far greater than any she had ever known were
threatening the shallow waters of her life, and she might well be
troubled and afraid.