Fergus Hume - "Madame Midas"

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A. Herbert Gray - "Men, Women, and God"

Sherwood Anderson - "Marching Men"

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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: A Laodicean

T >> Thomas Hardy >> A Laodicean




'Important business--what?'

'The capture of this lady, to be sure.'

De Stancy sighed impatiently. 'I wish you were less
calculating, and had more of the impulse natural to your
years!'

'Game--by Jove! You have lost again, captain. That makes--
let me see--nine pounds fifteen to square us.'

'I owe you that?' said De Stancy, startled. 'It is more than
I have in cash. I must write another cheque.'

'Never mind. Make it payable to yourself, and our connection
will be quite unsuspected.'

Captain De Stancy did as requested, and rose from his seat.
Sir William, though further off, was still in the churchyard.

'How can you hesitate for a moment about this girl?' said
Dare, pointing to the bent figure of the old man. 'Think of
the satisfaction it would be to him to see his son within the
family walls again. It should be a religion with you to
compass such a legitimate end as this.'

'Well, well, I'll think of it,' said the captain, with an
impatient laugh. 'You are quite a Mephistopheles, Will--I say
it to my sorrow!'

'Would that I were in your place.'

'Would that you were! Fifteen years ago I might have called
the chance a magnificent one.'

'But you are a young man still, and you look younger than you
are. Nobody knows our relationship, and I am not such a fool
as to divulge it. Of course, if through me you reclaim this
splendid possession, I should leave it to your feelings what
you would do for me.'

Sir William had by this time cleared out of the churchyard,
and the pair emerged from the vestry and departed. Proceeding
towards Markton by the same bypath, they presently came to an
eminence covered with bushes of blackthorn, and tufts of
yellowing fern. From this point a good view of the woods and
glades about Stancy Castle could be obtained. Dare stood
still on the top and stretched out his finger; the captain's
eye followed the direction, and he saw above the many-hued
foliage in the middle distance the towering keep of Paula's
castle.

'That's the goal of your ambition, captain--ambition do I
say?--most righteous and dutiful endeavour! How the hoary
shape catches the sunlight--it is the raison d'etre of the
landscape, and its possession is coveted by a thousand hearts.
Surely it is an hereditary desire of yours? You must make a
point of returning to it, and appearing in the map of the
future as in that of the past. I delight in this work of
encouraging you, and pushing you forward towards your own.
You are really very clever, you know, but--I say it with
respect--how comes it that you want so much waking up?'

'Because I know the day is not so bright as it seems, my boy.
However, you make a little mistake. If I care for anything on
earth, I do care for that old fortress of my forefathers. I
respect so little among the living that all my reverence is
for my own dead. But manoeuvring, even for my own, as you
call it, is not in my line. It is distasteful--it is
positively hateful to me.'

'Well, well, let it stand thus for the present. But will you
refuse me one little request--merely to see her? I'll
contrive it so that she may not see you. Don't refuse me, it
is the one thing I ask, and I shall think it hard if you deny
me.'

'O Will!' said the captain wearily. 'Why will you plead so?
No--even though your mind is particularly set upon it, I
cannot see her, or bestow a thought upon her, much as I should
like to gratify you.'



VI.

When they had parted Dare walked along towards Markton with
resolve on his mouth and an unscrupulous light in his
prominent black eye. Could any person who had heard the
previous conversation have seen him now, he would have found
little difficulty in divining that, notwithstanding De
Stancy's obduracy, the reinstation of Captain De Stancy in the
castle, and the possible legitimation and enrichment of
himself, was still the dream of his brain. Even should any
legal settlement or offspring intervene to nip the extreme
development of his projects, there was abundant opportunity
for his glorification. Two conditions were imperative. De
Stancy must see Paula before Somerset's return. And it was
necessary to have help from Havill, even if it involved
letting him know all.

Whether Havill already knew all was a nice question for Mr.
Dare's luminous mind. Havill had had opportunities of reading
his secret, particularly on the night they occupied the same
room. If so, by revealing it to Paula, Havill might utterly
blast his project for the marriage. Havill, then, was at all
risks to be retained as an ally.

Yet Dare would have preferred a stronger check upon his
confederate than was afforded by his own knowledge of that
anonymous letter and the competition trick. For were the
competition lost to him, Havill would have no further interest
in conciliating Miss Power; would as soon as not let her know
the secret of De Stancy's relation to him.

Fortune as usual helped him in his dilemma. Entering Havill's
office, Dare found him sitting there; but the drawings had all
disappeared from the boards. The architect held an open
letter in his hand.

'Well, what news?' said Dare.

'Miss Power has returned to the castle, Somerset is detained
in London, and the competition is decided,' said Havill, with
a glance of quiet dubiousness.

'And you have won it?'

'No. We are bracketed--it's a tie. The judges say there is
no choice between the designs--that they are singularly equal
and singularly good. That she would do well to adopt either.
Signed So-and-So, Fellows of the Royal Institute of British
Architects. The result is that she will employ which she
personally likes best. It is as if I had spun a sovereign in
the air and it had alighted on its edge. The least false
movement will make it tails; the least wise movement heads.'

'Singularly equal. Well, we owe that to our nocturnal visit,
which must not be known.'

'O Lord, no!' said Havill apprehensively.

Dare felt secure of him at those words. Havill had much at
stake; the slightest rumour of his trick in bringing about the
competition, would be fatal to Havill's reputation.

'The permanent absence of Somerset then is desirable
architecturally on your account, matrimonially on mine.'

'Matrimonially? By the way--who was that captain you pointed
out to me when the artillery entered the town?'

'Captain De Stancy--son of Sir William De Stancy. He's the
husband. O, you needn't look incredulous: it is practicable;
but we won't argue that. In the first place I want him to see
her, and to see her in the most love-kindling, passion-
begetting circumstances that can be thought of. And he must
see her surreptitiously, for he refuses to meet her.'

'Let him see her going to church or chapel?'

Dare shook his head.

'Driving out?'

'Common-place!'

'Walking in the gardens?'

'Ditto.'

'At her toilet?'

'Ah--if it were possible!'

'Which it hardly is. Well, you had better think it over and
make inquiries about her habits, and as to when she is in a
favourable aspect for observation, as the almanacs say.'

Shortly afterwards Dare took his leave. In the evening he
made it his business to sit smoking on the bole of a tree
which commanded a view of the upper ward of the castle, and
also of the old postern-gate, now enlarged and used as a
tradesmen's entrance. It was half-past six o'clock; the
dressing-bell rang, and Dare saw a light-footed young woman
hasten at the sound across the ward from the servants'
quarter. A light appeared in a chamber which he knew to be
Paula's dressing-room; and there it remained half-an-hour, a
shadow passing and repassing on the blind in the style of
head-dress worn by the girl he had previously seen. The
dinner-bell sounded and the light went out.

As yet it was scarcely dark out of doors, and in a few minutes
Dare had the satisfaction of seeing the same woman cross the
ward and emerge upon the slope without. This time she was
bonneted, and carried a little basket in her hand. A nearer
view showed her to be, as he had expected, Milly Birch,
Paula's maid, who had friends living in Markton, whom she was
in the habit of visiting almost every evening during the three
hours of leisure which intervened between Paula's retirement
from the dressing-room and return thither at ten o'clock.
When the young woman had descended the road and passed into
the large drive, Dare rose and followed her.

'O, it is you, Miss Birch,' said Dare, on overtaking her. 'I
am glad to have the pleasure of walking by your side.'

'Yes, sir. O it's Mr. Dare. We don't see you at the castle
now, sir.'

'No. And do you get a walk like this every evening when the
others are at their busiest?'

'Almost every evening; that's the one return to the poor
lady's maid for losing her leisure when the others get it--in
the absence of the family from home.'

'Is Miss Power a hard mistress?'

'No.'

'Rather fanciful than hard, I presume?'

'Just so, sir.'

'And she likes to appear to advantage, no doubt.'

'I suppose so,' said Milly, laughing. 'We all do.'

'When does she appear to the best advantage? When riding, or
driving, or reading her book?'

'Not altogether then, if you mean the very best.'

'Perhaps it is when she sits looking in the glass at herself,
and you let down her hair.'

'Not particularly, to my mind.'

'When does she to your mind? When dressed for a dinner-party
or ball?'

'She's middling, then. But there is one time when she looks
nicer and cleverer than at any. It is when she is in the
gymnasium.'

'O--gymnasium?'

'Because when she is there she wears such a pretty boy's
costume, and is so charming in her movements, that you think
she is a lovely young youth and not a girl at all.'

'When does she go to this gymnasium?'

'Not so much as she used to. Only on wet mornings now, when
she can't get out for walks or drives. But she used to do it
every day.'

'I should like to see her there.'

'Why, sir?'

'I am a poor artist, and can't afford models. To see her
attitudes would be of great assistance to me in the art I love
so well.'

Milly shook her head. 'She's very strict about the door being
locked. If I were to leave it open she would dismiss me, as I
should deserve.'

'But consider, dear Miss Birch, the advantage to a poor artist
the sight of her would be: if you could hold the door ajar it
would be worth five pounds to me, and a good deal to you.'

'No,' said the incorruptible Milly, shaking her head.
'Besides, I don't always go there with her. O no, I
couldn't!'

Milly remained so firm at this point that Dare said no more.

When he had left her he returned to the castle grounds, and
though there was not much light he had no difficulty in
discovering the gymnasium, the outside of which he had
observed before, without thinking to inquire its purpose.
Like the erections in other parts of the shrubberies it was
constructed of wood, the interstices between the framing being
filled up with short billets of fir nailed diagonally. Dare,
even when without a settled plan in his head, could arrange
for probabilities; and wrenching out one of the billets he
looked inside. It seemed to be a simple oblong apartment,
fitted up with ropes, with a little dressing-closet at one
end, and lighted by a skylight or lantern in the roof. Dare
replaced the wood and went on his way.

Havill was smoking on his doorstep when Dare passed up the
street. He held up his hand.

'Since you have been gone,' said the architect, 'I've hit upon
something that may help you in exhibiting your lady to your
gentleman. In the summer I had orders to design a gymnasium
for her, which I did; and they say she is very clever on the
ropes and bars. Now--'

'I've discovered it. I shall contrive for him to see her
there on the first wet morning, which is when she practises.
What made her think of it?'

'As you may have heard, she holds advanced views on social and
other matters; and in those on the higher education of women
she is very strong, talking a good deal about the physical
training of the Greeks, whom she adores, or did. Every
philosopher and man of science who ventilates his theories in
the monthly reviews has a devout listener in her; and this
subject of the physical development of her sex has had its
turn with other things in her mind. So she had the place
built on her very first arrival, according to the latest
lights on athletics, and in imitation of those at the new
colleges for women.'

'How deuced clever of the girl! She means to live to be a
hundred!'



VII.

The wet day arrived with all the promptness that might have
been expected of it in this land of rains and mists. The
alder bushes behind the gymnasium dripped monotonously leaf
upon leaf, added to this being the purl of the shallow stream
a little way off, producing a sense of satiety in watery
sounds. Though there was drizzle in the open meads, the rain
here in the thicket was comparatively slight, and two men with
fishing tackle who stood beneath one of the larger bushes
found its boughs a sufficient shelter.

'We may as well walk home again as study nature here, Willy,'
said the taller and elder of the twain. 'I feared it would
continue when we started. The magnificent sport you speak of
must rest for to-day.'

The other looked at his watch, but made no particular reply.

'Come, let us move on. I don't like intruding into other
people's grounds like this,' De Stancy continued.

'We are not intruding. Anybody walks outside this fence.' He
indicated an iron railing newly tarred, dividing the wilder
underwood amid which they stood from the inner and well-kept
parts of the shrubbery, and against which the back of the
gymnasium was built.

Light footsteps upon a gravel walk could be heard on the other
side of the fence, and a trio of cloaked and umbrella-screened
figures were for a moment discernible. They vanished behind
the gymnasium; and again nothing resounded but the river
murmurs and the clock-like drippings of the leafage.

'Hush!' said Dare.

'No pranks, my boy,' said De Stancy suspiciously. 'You should
be above them.'

'And you should trust to my good sense, captain,' Dare
remonstrated. 'I have not indulged in a prank since the sixth
year of my pilgrimage. I have found them too damaging to my
interests. Well, it is not too dry here, and damp injures
your health, you say. Have a pull for safety's sake.' He
presented a flask to De Stancy.

The artillery officer looked down at his nether garments.

'I don't break my rule without good reason,' he observed.

'I am afraid that reason exists at present.'

'I am afraid it does. What have you got?'

'Only a little wine.'

'What wine?'

'Do try it. I call it "the blushful Hippocrene," that the
poet describes as

"Tasting of Flora and the country green;
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth."'

De Stancy took the flask, and drank a little.

'It warms, does it not?' said Dare.

'Too much,' said De Stancy with misgiving. 'I have been taken
unawares. Why, it is three parts brandy, to my taste, you
scamp!'

Dare put away the wine. 'Now you are to see something,' he
said.

'Something--what is it?' Captain De Stancy regarded him with
a puzzled look.

'It is quite a curiosity, and really worth seeing. Now just
look in here.'

The speaker advanced to the back of the building, and withdrew
the wood billet from the wall.

'Will, I believe you are up to some trick,' said De Stancy,
not, however, suspecting the actual truth in these
unsuggestive circumstances, and with a comfortable
resignation, produced by the potent liquor, which would have
been comical to an outsider, but which, to one who had known
the history and relationship of the two speakers, would have
worn a sadder significance. 'I am too big a fool about you to
keep you down as I ought; that's the fault of me, worse luck.'

He pressed the youth's hand with a smile, went forward, and
looked through the hole into the interior of the gymnasium.
Dare withdrew to some little distance, and watched Captain De
Stancy's face, which presently began to assume an expression
of interest.

What was the captain seeing? A sort of optical poem.

Paula, in a pink flannel costume, was bending, wheeling and
undulating in the air like a gold-fish in its globe, sometimes
ascending by her arms nearly to the lantern, then lowering
herself till she swung level with the floor. Her aunt Mrs.
Goodman, and Charlotte De Stancy, were sitting on camp-stools
at one end, watching her gyrations, Paula occasionally
addressing them with such an expression as--'Now, Aunt, look
at me--and you, Charlotte--is not that shocking to your weak
nerves,' when some adroit feat would be repeated, which,
however, seemed to give much more pleasure to Paula herself in
performing it than to Mrs. Goodman in looking on, the latter
sometimes saying, 'O, it is terrific--do not run such a risk
again!'

It would have demanded the poetic passion of some joyous
Elizabethan lyrist like Lodge, Nash, or Constable, to fitly
phrase Paula's presentation of herself at this moment of
absolute abandonment to every muscular whim that could take
possession of such a supple form. The white manilla ropes
clung about the performer like snakes as she took her
exercise, and the colour in her face deepened as she went on.
Captain De Stancy felt that, much as he had seen in early life
of beauty in woman, he had never seen beauty of such a real
and living sort as this. A recollection of his vow, together
with a sense that to gaze on the festival of this Bona Dea
was, though so innocent and pretty a sight, hardly fair or
gentlemanly, would have compelled him to withdraw his eyes,
had not the sportive fascination of her appearance glued them
there in spite of all. And as if to complete the picture of
Grace personified and add the one thing wanting to the charm
which bound him, the clouds, till that time thick in the sky,
broke away from the upper heaven, and allowed the noonday sun
to pour down through the lantern upon her, irradiating her
with a warm light that was incarnadined by her pink doublet
and hose, and reflected in upon her face. She only required a
cloud to rest on instead of the green silk net which actually
supported her reclining figure for the moment, to be quite
Olympian; save indeed that in place of haughty effrontery
there sat on her countenance only the healthful sprightliness
of an English girl.

Dare had withdrawn to a point at which another path crossed
the path occupied by De Stancy. Looking in a side direction,
he saw Havill idling slowly up to him over the silent grass.
Havill's knowledge of the appointment had brought him out to
see what would come of it. When he neared Dare, but was still
partially hidden by the boughs from the third of the party,
the former simply pointed to De Stancy upon which Havill stood
and peeped at him. 'Is she within there?' he inquired.

Dare nodded, and whispered, 'You need not have asked, if you
had examined his face.'

'That's true.'

'A fermentation is beginning in him,' said Dare, half
pitifully; 'a purely chemical process; and when it is complete
he will probably be clear, and fiery, and sparkling, and quite
another man than the good, weak, easy fellow that he was.'

To precisely describe Captain De Stancy's admiration was
impossible. A sun seemed to rise in his face. By watching
him they could almost see the aspect of her within the wall,
so accurately were her changing phases reflected in him. He
seemed to forget that he was not alone.

'And is this,' he murmured, in the manner of one only half
apprehending himself, 'and is this the end of my vow?'

Paula was saying at this moment, 'Ariel sleeps in this
posture, does he not, Auntie?' Suiting the action to the word
she flung out her arms behind her head as she lay in the green
silk hammock, idly closed her pink eyelids, and swung herself
to and fro.




BOOK THE THIRD. DE STANCY.



I.

Captain De Stancy was a changed man. A hitherto well-
repressed energy was giving him motion towards long-shunned
consequences. His features were, indeed, the same as before;
though, had a physiognomist chosen to study them with the
closeness of an astronomer scanning the universe, he would
doubtless have discerned abundant novelty.

In recent years De Stancy had been an easy, melancholy,
unaspiring officer, enervated and depressed by a parental
affection quite beyond his control for the graceless lad Dare-
-the obtrusive memento of a shadowy period in De Stancy's
youth, who threatened to be the curse of his old age.
Throughout a long space he had persevered in his system of
rigidly incarcerating within himself all instincts towards the
opposite sex, with a resolution that would not have disgraced
a much stronger man. By this habit, maintained with fair
success, a chamber of his nature had been preserved intact
during many later years, like the one solitary sealed-up cell
occasionally retained by bees in a lobe of drained honey-comb.
And thus, though he had irretrievably exhausted the relish of
society, of ambition, of action, and of his profession, the
love-force that he had kept immured alive was still a
reproducible thing.

The sight of Paula in her graceful performance, which the
judicious Dare had so carefully planned, led up to and
heightened by subtle accessories, operated on De Stancy's
surprised soul with a promptness almost magical.

On the evening of the self-same day, having dined as usual, he
retired to his rooms, where he found a hamper of wine awaiting
him. It had been anonymously sent, and the account was paid.
He smiled grimly, but no longer with heaviness. In this he
instantly recognized the handiwork of Dare, who, having at
last broken down the barrier which De Stancy had erected round
his heart for so many years, acted like a skilled strategist,
and took swift measures to follow up the advantage so tardily
gained.

Captain De Stancy knew himself conquered: he knew he should
yield to Paula--had indeed yielded; but there was now, in his
solitude, an hour or two of reaction. He did not drink from
the bottles sent. He went early to bed, and lay tossing
thereon till far into the night, thinking over the collapse.
His teetotalism had, with the lapse of years, unconsciously
become the outward and visible sign to himself of his secret
vows; and a return to its opposite, however mildly done,
signified with ceremonious distinctness the formal acceptance
of delectations long forsworn.

But the exceeding freshness of his feeling for Paula, which by
reason of its long arrest was that of a man far under thirty,
and was a wonder to himself every instant, would not long
brook weighing in balances. He wished suddenly to commit
himself; to remove the question of retreat out of the region
of debate. The clock struck two: and the wish became
determination. He arose, and wrapping himself in his
dressing-gown went to the next room, where he took from a
shelf in the pantry several large bottles, which he carried to
the window, till they stood on the sill a goodly row. There
had been sufficient light in the room for him to do this
without a candle. Now he softly opened the sash, and the
radiance of a gibbous moon riding in the opposite sky flooded
the apartment. It fell on the labels of the captain's
bottles, revealing their contents to be simple aerated waters
for drinking.

De Stancy looked out and listened. The guns that stood drawn
up within the yard glistened in the moonlight reaching them
from over the barrack-wall: there was an occasional stamp of
horses in the stables; also a measured tread of sentinels--one
or more at the gates, one at the hospital, one between the
wings, two at the magazine, and others further off. Recurring
to his intention he drew the corks of the mineral waters, and
inverting each bottle one by one over the window-sill, heard
its contents dribble in a small stream on to the gravel below.

He then opened the hamper which Dare had sent. Uncorking one
of the bottles he murmured, 'To Paula!' and drank a glass of
the ruby liquor.

'A man again after eighteen years,' he said, shutting the sash
and returning to his bedroom.

The first overt result of his kindled interest in Miss Power
was his saying to his sister the day after the surreptitious
sight of Paula: 'I am sorry, Charlotte, for a word or two I
said the other day.'

'Well?'

'I was rather disrespectful to your friend Miss Power.'

'I don't think so--were you?'

'Yes. When we were walking in the wood, I made a stupid joke
about her. . . . What does she know about me--do you ever
speak of me to her?'

'Only in general terms.'

'What general terms?'

'You know well enough, William; of your idiosyncrasies and so
on--that you are a bit of a woman-hater, or at least a
confirmed bachelor, and have but little respect for your own
family.'

'I wish you had not told her that,' said De Stancy with
dissatisfaction.

'But I thought you always liked women to know your
principles!' said Charlotte, in injured tones; 'and would
particularly like her to know them, living so near.'