S. O. Susag - "Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag"

T. S. Arthur - "Heart Histories and Life Pictures"

Azel Ames - "The Mayflower and Her Log, v1"

D. P. Thompson - "The Rangers"

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




"She is not his wife any more," Warren Gregory said, half aloud,
as he turned back to his car. "From now on she belongs to me! She
SHALL be mine!"




CHAPTER V


From that day on a bright undercurrent made bearable the trying
monotony of her life. Rachael did not at once recognize the rapid
change that began to take place in her own feelings, but she did
realize that Warren Gregory's attitude had altered everything in
her world. He was flirting, of course, he was only half in
earnest; but it was such delicious flirting, it was a half-
earnestness so wonderfully satisfying and sweet.

She did not see him every day, sometimes she did not see him for
two or three days, but no twenty-four hours went by without a
message from him. A day or two after the troubled Sunday on which
he had driven her home she stood silent a moment, in the lower
hall, one hand resting on the little box of damp, delicious
Freesia lilies, the fingers of the other twisting his card. The
little message scribbled on the card meant nothing to other eyes,
just the two words "Good morning!" but in some subtle way they
signified to her a morning in a wider sense, a dawning of love and
joy and peace in her life. The next day they met--and how
wonderful these casual meetings among a hundred gay, unseeing
folk, had suddenly become!--and on the following day he came to
tea with her, a little hour whose dramatic and emotional beauty
was enhanced rather than spoiled for them both when Clarence and
Billy and some friends came in to end it.

On Thursday the doctor's man delivered into Mrs. Breckenridge's
hand a package which proved to be a little book on Browning of
which he had spoken to her. On the fly leaf was written in the
donor's small, fine handwriting, "R. from G. The way WAS
Caponsacchi." Rachael put the book on her bedside table, and wore
June colors all day for the giver's sake. Greg, she thought with a
fluttering heart, was certainly taking things with rather a high
hand. Could it be possible, could it be POSSIBLE, that he cared
for a woman at last, and was she, Rachael Breckenridge, a
neglected wife, a penniless dependent upon an unloving husband,
that woman?

Half-forgotten emotions of girlhood began to stir within her; she
flushed, smiled, sighed at her own thoughts, she dreamed, and came
bewildered out of her dreams, like a child. What Clarence did,
what Carol did, mattered no longer; she, Rachael, again had the
centre of the stage.

Weeks flew by. The question of summer plans arose: the Villalongas
wanted all the Breckenridges in their Canadian camp for as much as
possible of July and August. Clarence regarded the project with
the embittered eye of utter boredom, Billy was far from
enthusiastic, Rachael made no comment. She stood, like a diver,
ready for the chilling plunge from which she might never rise,
yet, after which, there was one glorious chance: she might find
herself swimming strongly to freedom. The sunny, safe meadows and
the warm, blue sky were there in sight, there was only that dark
and menacing stretch of waters to breast, that black, smothering
descent to endure.

Now was the time. The pretence that was her married life must end,
she must be free. In her thought she went no farther. Rachael
outwardly was no better than the other women of her world;
inwardly there was in her nature an instinctive niceness, a hatred
for what was coarse or base. For years the bond between her and
Clarence Breckenridge had been only an empty word. But it was
there, none the less, and before she could put any new plan into
definite form, even in her own heart, it must be broken.

Many of the women she knew would not have been so fine. For more
than one of them no tie was sacred. and no principle as strong as
their own desire for pleasure. But she was different, as all the
world should see. No carefully chaperoned girl could be more
carefully guarded than Rachael would be guarded by herself until
that time--the thought of it put her senses to utter rout--until
such time as she might put her hand boldly in Gregory's, and take
her place honorably by his side.

The taste of freedom already began to intoxicate her even while
she still went about Clarence's house, bore his moods in silence,
and imparted to Billy that half-scornful, half-humorous advice
that alone seemed to penetrate the younger woman's shell of utter
perversity. Mrs. Breckenridge, as usual followed by admiring and
envious and curious eyes, walked in a world of her own, entirely
oblivious of the persons and events about her, wrapped in a
breathless dream too exquisitely bright to be real.

It was a dream still so simple and vague that she was not
conscious of wishing for Warren Gregory's presence, or of being
much happier when they were together than when she was deliciously
alone with her thoughts of him.

About a month after the Whittaker tea Rachael found herself seated
in the tile-floored tea-room at the country club with Florence.
There had been others in the group, theoretically for tea, but
these were scattered now, and among the various bottles and
glasses on the table there was no sign of a teacup.

"So glad to see you alone a moment, Rachael--one never does," said
Florence. "Tell me, do you go to the Villalongas'?"

"Clarence and Billy will, I suppose," the other woman said with an
enigmatic smile.

"But not you?"

"Perhaps; I don't know, Florence." Rachael's serene eyes roved the
summer landscape contentedly. Mrs. Haviland looked a little
puzzled.

"Things are better, aren't they, dear?" she asked delicately.

"Things?"

"Between you and Clarence, I mean."

"Oh! Yes, perhaps they are. Changed, perhaps."

"How do you mean changed?" Florence was instantly in arms.

"Well, it couldn't go on that way forever, Florence," Rachael said
pleasantly.

Rendered profoundly uneasy by her tone, the other woman was silent
for a moment.

"Perhaps it is just as well to make different plans for the
summer," she said presently. "We all get on each other's nerves
sometimes, and change or separation does us a world of good."

"Doctor Gregory! Doctor Gregory! At the telephone!" chanted a club
attendant, passing through the tea-room.

"On the tennis courts," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without turning
her head. "You had better make it a message: explain that he's
playing!"

"I didn't see him go down," remarked Florence, diverted.

"His car came in about half an hour ago; he and Joe Butler went
down to the courts without coming into the club at all," Rachael
said.

"I wonder what he's doing this summer?" mused the older lady.

"I believe he's going to take his mother abroad with him," said
the well-informed Rachael. "She'll visit some friends in England
and Ireland, and then join him. He's to do the Alps with someone,
and meet her in Rome."

"She tell you?" asked Mrs. Haviland, interested.

"He did," the other said briefly.

"I didn't know she had any friends," was Florence's next comment.
"I don't see her visiting, somehow!"

"Oh, my dear. Old Catholic families with chapels in their houses,
and nuns, and Mother Superiors!" Rachael's tone was light, but as
she spoke a cold premonition seized her heart. She fell silent.

A moment later Charlotte, who had been hovering uncertainly in the
doorway of the room, came out to join her mother with a brightly
spontaneous air.

"Oh, here you are, M'ma!" said Charlotte. "Are you ready to go?"

"Been having a nice time, dear?" her mother asked fondly.

"Very," Charlotte said. "I've been looking over old magazines in
the library--SO interesting!"

This literary enthusiasm struck no answering spark from the
matron.

"In the library!" said Florence quickly. "Why, I thought you were
with Charley!"

"Oh, no, M'ma," answered Charlotte, with her little air that was
not quite prim and not quite mincing, and that yet suggested both.
"Charley left me just after you did; he had an engagement with
Straker." She reached for a macaroon, and ate it with a brightly
disengaged air, her eyes, behind their not unbecoming glasses,
studying the golf links with absorbed interest.

"Anyone else in the library?" Florence asked in a dissatisfied
tone.

"No. I had it all to myself!" the girl answered pleasantly.

"Why didn't you go down to the courts, dear? I think Papa is
playing!"

"I didn't think of it, M'ma," said Charlotte lucidly.

"What a dreadful age it is," mused Rachael. "I wonder which phase
is hardest to deal with: Billy or poor little Carlotta?" Aloud,
from the fulness of her own happiness, she said: "Suppose you walk
down to the courts with me, Infant, and we will see what's going
on?"

"If M'ma doesn't object," said the dutiful daughter.

"No, go along," Florence said with vague discontent. "I've got to
do some telephoning, anyway."

Charlotte, being eighteen, could think of nothing but herself, and
Rachael, wrapped in her own romance, was amused, as they walked
along, to see how different her display of youthful egotism was
from Billy's, and yet how typical of all adolescence.

"Isn't it a wonderful afternoon, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte said, as
one in duty bound to be entertaining. "I do think they've picked
out such a charming site for the club!" And then, as Rachael did
not answer, being indeed content to drink in the last of the long
summer day in silence, Charlotte went on, with an air blended of
comprehension and amusement: "Poor M'ma, she would so like me to
be a little, fluffy, empty-headed butterfly of a girl, and I know
I disappoint her! It isn't that I don't like boys," pursued
Charlotte, the smooth and even stream of her words beginning to
remind Rachael of Florence, "or that they don't like me; they're
always coming to me with their confidences and asking my advice,
but it's just that I can't take them seriously. If a boy wants to
kiss me, why, I say to him in perfect good faith, 'Why shouldn't
you kiss me, John? When I'm fond of a person I always like to kiss
him, and I'm sure I'm fond of you!'" Charlotte stopped for a short
laugh full of relish. "Of course that takes the wind out of their
sails completely," she went on, "and we have a good laugh over it,
and are all the better friends! That is," said Charlotte,
thoroughly enjoying herself, "I treat my men friends exactly as I
do my girl friends. Do you think that's so extraordinary, Aunt
Rachael? Because I can't do anything different, you know--really I
can't!"

"Just be natural--that's the best way," said Rachael from the
depths of an icy boredom.

"Of course, some day I shall marry," the girl added in brisk
decision, "because I love a home, and I love children, and I think
I would be a good mother to children. But meanwhile, my books and
my friends mean a thousand times more to me than all these stupid
boys! Why is it other girls are so crazy about boys, Aunt
Rachael?" asked Charlotte, brightly sensible. "Of course I like
them, and all that, but I can't see the sense of all these notes
and telephones and flirtations. I told Vivvie Sartoris that I was
afraid I knew all these boys too well; of course Jack and Kent and
Charley are just like brothers! It all"--Charlotte smiled, signed,
shook her disillusioned young head--"it all seems so awfully SILLY
to me!" she said, and before Rachael could speak she had caught
breath again and added laughingly: "Of course I know Billy doesn't
agree with me, and Billy has plenty of admiration of a sort, and I
suppose that satisfies her! But, in short," finished Charlotte,
giving Rachael's arm a squeeze as they came out upon the tennis
courts, "in short, you have an exacting little niece, Auntie dear,
and I'm afraid the man who is going to make her happy must be out
of the ordinary!"

Rachael sighed a long deep sigh, but no other answer was demanded,
for the knot of onlookers welcomed them eagerly to the benches
beside the courts, and even the players--Gardner Haviland, Louis
Chase, a fat young man in an irreproachable tennis costume; Warren
Gregory and Joe Butler found time for a shouted "Hello!"

"How do you do, Kent?" said Charlotte to a young man who was
sprawling on the sloping grass between the benches and the court.
The young man blinked, sat up, and snatched off his hat.

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? I didn't know you were here," he
said enthusiastically. "Some game--what?"

"It SEEMS to be," said Charlotte with smiling, deep significance.
Both young persons laughed heartily at this spirited exchange. A
silence fell. Then Mr. Parmalee turned back to watch the players,
and Charlotte, who had seated herself, leaned back in her seat and
gave a devoted attention to the game.

Gregory came to Rachael the instant the game was over; she had
known, since the first triumphant instant when his eyes fell upon
her, that he would. She had seen the color rush under his brown
skin, and, alone among all the onlookers, had known why Greg put
three balls into the net, and why he laughed so inexplicably as he
did so. And Rachael thought, for the first time, how sweet it
would be to be his wife, to sit here lovely in lavender stripes
and loose white coat: Warren Gregory's wife.

"You mustn't do that," he said, sitting down on the bench beside
her, and wiping his hot face.

"Mustn't do what?" she asked.

"Mustn't turn up suddenly when I don't expect you. It makes me
dizzy. Look here--what are you doing? I'm going up to the pool.
I've got to get back into town to-night. When can I see you?"

"Why"--Rachael rose slowly, and slowly unfurled her parasol--"why,
suppose we walk up together?"

They strolled away from the courts deliberately, openly. Several
persons remembered weeks later that they went slowly, stopped now
and then. No one thought much of it at the time, for only a week
later Doctor Gregory took his mother to England, and during that
week it was ascertained that he and Mrs. Breckenridge saw each
other only once, and then were in the presence of his mother and
of Carol Breckenridge and young Charles Gregory as well. There was
no tiniest peg for gossip to hang scandal upon, for where old Mrs.
James Gregory was, decorum of an absolutely puritanic order
prevailed.

Yet that stroll across the grass of the golf links was a milestone
in Rachael Breckenridge's life, and every word that passed between
Gregory and herself was graven upon her heart for all time. The
aspect of laughter, of flirtation, was utterly absent to-day. His
tone was crisp and serious, he spoke almost before they were out
of the hearing of the group on the courts.

"I've been wanting to talk to you, Rachael; in fact"--he laughed
briefly--"in fact, I am talking to you all day long, these days,"
he said, "arguing and consulting and advising and planning. But
before we can talk, there's Clarence. What about Clarence?"

Something in the gravity of his expression as their eyes met
impressed Rachael as she had rarely been impressed in her life
before. He was in deadly earnest, he had planned his campaign, and
he must take the first step by clearing the way. How sure he was,
how wonderfully, quietly certain of his course.

"We are facing a miserable situation, but it's a commonplace one,
after all," said Warren Gregory, as she did not speak. "I--you can
see the position I'm in. I have to ask you to be free before I can
move. I can't go to Breckenridge's wife---"

The color burned in both their faces as they looked at each other.

"It IS a miserable position, Greg," Rachael said, after a moment's
silence. "And although, as you say, it's commonplace enough,
somehow I never thought before just what this sort of thing
involves! However, the future must take care of itself. For the
present there's only this. I'm going to leave Clarence."

Warren Gregory drew a long breath.

"He won't fight it?"

"I don't think he will." Rachael frowned. "I think he'll be
willing to furnish--the evidence. Especially if he has no reason
to suspect that I have any other plans," she added thoughtfully.

"Then he mustn't suspect," the doctor said instantly.

"Nor anyone," she finished, with a look of alarm.

"Nor anyone, of course," he repeated.

"I don't know that I HAVE any other plans," Rachael said sadly. "I
won't think beyond that one thing. Our marriage has been an utter
and absolute failure, we are both wretched. It must end. I hate
the fuss, of course--"

He was watching her closely, too keenly tuned to her mood to
disquiet her with any hint of the lover's attitude now.

"And just how will you go about it?" he asked.

"I shall slip off to some quiet place, I think. I'll tell him
before he goes away. My attorneys will handle the matter for me--
it's a sickening business!" Rachael's beautiful face expressed
distaste.

"It's done every day," Warren Gregory said.

"Of course divorce is not a new idea to me" Rachael presently
pursued. "But it is only in the last two or three days--for a
week, perhaps--that it has seemed to have that inevitable quality-
-that the-sooner-over-the-better sort of urgency. I wonder why I
didn't do it years ago. I shall"--she laughed sadly--"I shall hate
myself as a divorced woman," she said. "It's a survival of some
old instinct, I suppose, but it doesn't seem RIGHT."

"It's done all the time," was the doctor's simple defence. "And
oh, my dear," he added, "you will know--and I will know--we can't
keep knowing--"

She stopped short, her lovely face serious in the shade of her
parasol, her dark-blue eyes burning with a sort of noble shame.

"Greg!" she said quickly and breathlessly. "Please---Let's not--
let's not say it. Let me feel, all this summer, that it wasn't
said. Let me feel that while I was living under one man's roof,
and spending his money, that I didn't even THINK of another man.
It's done all the time, you say, that's true. But I HATE it.
Whether I leave Clarence, and make my own life under new
conditions, and never remarry, or whether, in a year or two--but I
won't think of that!" And to his surprise and concern, as she
stopped short on the grassy path, the eyes that Rachael turned
toward him were brimming with tears. "You s-see what a baby I am
becoming, Greg," she said unsteadily. "It's all your doing, I'm
afraid! I haven't cried for years--loneliness and injustice and
unhappiness don't make me cry! But just lately I've known what it
was to dream of--of joy, Greg. And if that joy is ever really
coming to us, I want to be worthy of it. I want to start RIGHT
this time. I want to spend the summer quietly somewhere, thinking
and reading. I'm going to give up cards and even cocktails. You
smile, Greg, but I truly am! Just for this time, I mean. And it's
come to me, just lately, that I wouldn't leave Clarence if he
really needed me, or if it would make him unhappy. I'm going to be
different--everything SEEMS different already--"

"Don't you know why?" he said with his grave smile, as she paused.
It was enchanting to him to see the color flood her face, to see
her shy eyes suddenly averted. She did not answer, and they walked
slowly toward the clubhouse steps.

"There's only one thing more to say," Warren Gregory said,
arresting her for one more moment. "It's this: as soon as you're
free, I'm coming for you. You may not have made up your mind by
that time, Rachael. My mind will never change."

Shaken beyond all control by his tone, Rachael did not even raise
her eyes. Her flush died away, leaving her face pale. He saw her
breast rise on a quick breath.

"Will you write me?" he asked, after a moment.

"Oh, yes, Greg!" she answered quickly, in a voice hardly above a
whisper. "When do you go?"

"On Wednesday--a week from to-day, in fact. And that reminds me,
Billy says you are coming into town early next week?"

"Monday, probably." Rachael was coming back to the normal. "She
needs things for camp, and I've got a little shopping to do."

"Then could you lunch with Mother? Little Charley'll be there: no
one else. Bring Billy. Mother'd love it. You're a great favorite
there, you know."

"I may not always be a favorite there," Rachael said with a rueful
smile.

"Don't worry about Mother," Warren Gregory said with a confidence
that in this moment of excitement and exhilaration he almost felt
was justified. "Mother's a dear!"

That was all their conversation. When they entered the clubhouse
Doctor Gregory turned toward the swimming pool and Rachael was
instantly drawn into a game of bridge. She played like a woman in
a dream, was joined by Billy, went home in a dream, and presently
found herself and her husband fellow guests at a dreamlike dinner-
party.

Why not?--why not?--why not? The question drummed in head and
heart day and night. Why not end bondage, and taste freedom? Why
not end unhappiness, and try joy? She had done her best to make
her first marriage a success, and she had failed. Why not, with
all kindness, with all generous good wishes, end the long
experiment? Who, in all her wide range of acquaintances, would
think the less of her for the obviously sensible step? The world
recognized divorce as an indispensable institution: one marriage
in every twelve was dissolved.

And remarriage, a brilliant second marriage, was universally
approved. Even such a stern old judge as Warren's mother counted
among her acquaintances the divorced and remarried. To reappear,
triumphant, beloved, beautiful, before one's old world--

But no--of this Rachael would not permit herself to think. Time
alone could tell what her next step must be. The only
consideration now must be that, even if Warren Gregory had never
existed, even if there were no other man than Clarence
Breckenridge in the world, she must take the step. Better poverty,
and work, and obscurity, if need be, with freedom, than all
Clarence could offer her in this absurd and empty bondage.

Once firmly decided, she began to chafe against the delays that
made an immediate announcement of her intentions unwise. If a
thing was to be done, as well do it quickly, thought Rachael, as
she listened patiently to the vacillating decisions of Carol and
her father in regard to the Villalonga camping plan. At one time
Clarence completely abandoned the idea, throwing the watchful and
silent Rachael into utter consternation. Carol was alternately
bored by the plan and wearily interested in it. Their
characteristic absorption in their own comfort was a great
advantage to Rachael at this particular juncture; she had been
included in Mrs. Villalonga's invitation as a matter of course,
but such was the life of the big, luxurious establishment known as
the "camp" that all three of the Breckenridges, and three more of
them had there been so many, might easily have spent six weeks
therein without crossing each other's paths more than once or
twice a week. It never occurred to either Carol or her father to
question Rachael closely as to her pleasure in the matter. They
took it for granted that she would be there if no pleasanter
invitation interfered exactly as they themselves would.

An enormous income enabled the sprightly Mrs. Villalonga to
conduct her midsummer residence in the Canadian forests upon a
scale that may only be compared to a hotel. She usually asked
about one hundred friends to visit her for an indefinite time, and
of this number perhaps half availed themselves of the privilege,
drifting in upon her at any time, remaining only while the spirit
moved, and departing unceremoniously, perhaps, if the hostess
chanced to be away at the moment, with no farewells at all, when
any pleasanter prospect offered.

Mrs. Villalonga was a large, coarse-voiced woman, with a heart of
gold, and the facial characteristics that in certain unfortunate
persons suggest nothing so much as a horse. She sent a troop of
servants up to the woods every year, following them in a week or
two with her first detachment of guests. She paid her chef six
thousand dollars a year, and would have paid more for a better
chef, if there had been one. She expected three formal meals every
day, including in their scope every delicacy that could be
procured at any city hotel, and also an indefinite number of
lesser meals, to be served in tennis pavilion, or after cards at
night, or whenever a guest arrived.

By the time she reached the camp everything must be complete for
another summer, awnings flapping gently outside the striped canvas
"tents" that were really roomy cabins provided with shower baths
and wide piazzas. The great cement-walled swimming pool must be
cleaned, the courts rolled, the cars all in order, the boats and
bath-houses in readiness. A miniature grocery and drug store must
be established in the building especially designed for this use;
the little laundry concealed far up in the woods must be operating
briskly.

Then, from the middle of June to the first of September, the camp
was in full swing. There were dances and campfires and theatricals
and fancy-dress affairs innumerable. Ice and champagne and
California peaches and avocados from Hawaii poured from the
housekeeping department in an unending stream; there were new
toothbrushes and new pajamas for the unexpected guest, there were
new bathing suits in boxes for the girls who had driven over from
Taramac House and who wanted a swim, there were new packs of cards
and new boxes of cigars, and there were maids--maids--maids to run
for these things when they were wanted, and carry them away when
their brief use was over.