Talbot Mundy - "The Ivory Trail"

Charles de Bernard - "Gerfaut, v1"

Woodrow Wilson - "On Being Human"

Horatio - "Love's Final Victory"

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 Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

W >> William J. Locke >> The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne




"He said he loved me," said Carlotta, "and he kissed me, and he
told me I must go away with him to Paris and marry him. And I
felt all weak, like that--" she dropped her arms helplessly in an
expressive gesture, "and so what could I do?"

"Didn't you think, Carlotta, that I might be sorry--perhaps
unhappy?" I asked as gently as I could.

"He said you would be quite happy with the other woman."

"Did you believe him?"

"That's why I said I have been very wicked," Carlotta answered,
simply.

She went on with her story--an old, miserable, detestable,
execrable story. At first all went merrily. Then she fell ill
in Paris. It was her first acquaintance with the northern
winter. Her throat proved to be delicate and she was laid up
with bronchitis. To men of Pasquale's type, a woman ill is of no
more use than a spavined horse or a broken-down motor-car. More
than that, she becomes an infernal nuisance. It was in his
temperament to perform sporadic acts of fantastic chivalry. It
appealed to something romantic, theatrical, in his facile nature.
But to devote himself to a woman in sickness--that was different.
The fifteenth century Italian hated like the devil continued
association with pain. He would have thrown his boots to a
beggar, but he would have danced in his palace over the dungeons
where his brother rotted in obscurity.

So poor Carlotta was neglected, and began to eat the bread of
disillusion. When she got well, there was a faint recrudescence
of affection. Has not this story been written a million
miserable times? Why should I rend my heart again by retelling
it? Wild rages, jealousies, quarrels, tears--

"And then one day he said, 'You damned little fool, I am sick to
death of you,' and he went away, and I never saw him again. He
wrote and he sent his valet to put me in the pension."

"And yet, Carlotta," said I bitterly, "you would go back to him
if he sent for you?"

She sprang forward and gripped me by the arm--I was sitting quite
close to her--and her face wore the terror-stricken expression of
a child frightened with bogies.

"Go back? After what he has done to me? You would not send me
back? Seer Marcous, darling, you will keep me with you? I will
be good, good, good. But go back to Pasquale? Oh, no-o-o!"

She fell back in her sofa-corner, and fixed her great, deep
imploring eyes on me.

"My dear," said I, "you know this is your home as long as ever
you choose to stay in it--but--" and I stroked her hair gently--"
if he comes back when your child is born--his child--"

She drew herself up superbly.

"It is my child--my very, very own," cried Carlotta. "It is
mine, mine--and I shall not allow any one to touch it--" and then
her face softened--"except Seer Marcous."



CHAPTER XXIII


Behold Carlotta again installed in my house which she regarded as
her home. Heaven forbid that I should sow any doubt thereof in
her mind.

I had learned perhaps one lesson: the meaning of love. The love
that is desire alone, though sung in all romance of all the ages,
is of the brute nature and is doomed to perish. The love that
pardons, endures through wrong, contents itself in abnegation, is
of the imperishable things that draw weak man a little nearer to
the angels. When Carlotta wept upon my shoulder during those few
first moments of her return I knew that all resentment was gone
from my heart, that it would have been a poor, ignoble thing.
Had she come back to me leprous of body and abominable of spirit,
it would not have mattered. I would have forgiven her, loved
her, cherished her just the same. It was a question, not of
reason, not of human pity, not of quixotism; not of any argument
or sentiment for which I could be responsible. I was helpless,
obeying a reflex action of the soul.

The days passed tranquilly. In spite of pain I felt an odd
happiness. I had nothing selfishly to hope for. Perhaps I had
aged five years in one, and I viewed life differently. It was
enough for me that she had come home, to the haven where no harm
could befall her. She was my appointed task, even as her husband
was Judith's. I recognised in myself the man with the one
talent. The deep wisdom of the parable can be taken to inmost
heart for comfort only by men of little destinies. With infinite
love and patience to mould Carlotta into a sweet, good woman, a
wise mother of the child that was to be--that was the inglorious
task which Providence had set me to accomplish. In its
proportion to the aggregate of human effort it was infinitesimal.
But who shall say that it was not worth the doing? Save writing
a useless book, in what other sphere of sublunar energy could I
have been effectual? I did not thus analyse my attitude at the
time; the man who does so is a poser, a mime to his own audience;
but looking back, I think I was guided by some such unformulated
considerations.

Although my hermit mania was in itself radically cured, yet I
altered nothing in my relations with the outside world. I wrote
to Judith a brief account of what had occurred and received from
her a sympathetic answer. My reading among the Mystics and
Thaumaturgists put me on the track of Arabic. I found that
Carlotta knew enough of the language to give me elementary
instruction, and thus the whirligig of time brought in its
revenge by constituting me her pupil, to our joint edification.

After a while the unhappiness of the past seemed to have faded
from her mind. She spoke little of Paris, less of the dull
pension, and never of Pasquale. She bore towards him an animal's
silent animosity against a human being who has done it an
unforgettable injury. On the other hand, as I have since
discovered, she was slowly developing, and had begun to realise
that in giving herself light-heartedly to a man whom she did not
love, she had committed a crime against her sex, for which she
had paid a heavy penalty: a sentiment, however, which did not
mitigate her resentment against him. Often I saw her sitting
with knitted brows, her needlework idle on her lap, evidently
unravelling some complicated problem; presently she would either
shake her head sadly as if the intellectual process were too hard
for her and resume her needle, or if she happened to catch my
glance, she would start, smile reassuringly at me, and apply
herself with exaggerated zeal to her work. These fits of
abstraction were not those of a woman speculating on mysteries of
the near future. Such Carlotta also indulged in, and they were
easy to recognise, by the dreaminess of her eyes and the faint
smile flickering about her lips. The moods of knitted brows were
periods of soul-travail, and I wondered what they would bring
forth.

One afternoon I came home and found her weeping over a book.
When I bent down to see what she was reading--she had acquired a
taste for novels during the dull pension time in Paris--she
caught my head with both hands.

"Oh, Seer Marcous, do you think they ought to make me wear a
great 'A'?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Like Hester Prynne--see."

She showed me Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter."

"What made you take this out of the shelves?"

"The title," she replied, simply. "I am so fond of red things;
but I should not like that great red 'A'."

"Those were days," said I, "when people thought they could only
be good by being very cruel."

"They would have been more cruel if Hester had not loved the
minister," said Carlotta, looking at me wistfully.

"My dear little girl," said I, seeing whither her thoughts were
tending, "do not bother your brain with psychological problems."

"What are--?" began Carlotta.

I pinched the question, as it were, out of her cheek and smiled
and took away the book.

"They are a dreadful disease my little girl has been afflicted
with for some time. When you sit and wrinkle your forehead like
this," and I scowled forbiddingly, whereat Carlotta laughed, "you
are suffering from acute psychological problem."

"Then I am thinking," said Carlotta, reflectively.

"Don't think too much, dear, just now," said I. "It is best for
you to be happy and calm and contented. Otherwise I'll have to
tell the doctor, and he'll give you the blackest and nastiest
physic you have ever tasted."

"To cure me of a what-you-call-it problem?"

"Yes," said I, emphatically.

"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta in a superior way, "physic can't cure
that."

"You are relying on an exploded fallacy immortalised in a
hackneyed Shakespearian quotation," I remarked.

"Go on," said Carlotta, encouragingly.

"What do you mean?" I asked, taken aback.

"Oh, you darling Seer Marcous," cried Carlotta. "It is so lovely
to hear you talk!"

So I went on talking, and the distress occasioned by the "Scarlet
Letter" was forgotten.

I have mentioned Carlotta's needlework. This was undertaken at
the sapient instigation of Antoinette, who in her turn, I am
sure, neglected the ladle for the scissors, and cast many of her
duties upon the silent but sympathetic Stenson. Carlotta herself
delighted in these preparations. She was never happier than when
curled up on the sofa, a box of chocolates by her side, her work-
basket frothing over, like a great dish of _oeufs a la neige_,
with lawn or mull or what-not, and (I verily believe to complete
her content) my ungainly figure and hatchet-face within her
purview. She would eat and sew industriously. Sometimes she
would press too hard on a sweetmeat and with a little cry would
hold up a sticky finger and thumb.

"Look," she would say, puckering up her face.

And to save from soilure the dainty fabric she was working at, I
would rise and wipe her fingers with my handkerchief; whereupon
she would coo out the sweetest "thank you," in the world, and
perhaps hold up a diminutive garment.

"Isn't it pretty?"

"Yes, my dear," I would say, and I would turn aside wondering at
the exquisite refinements of pain that men were sometimes called
upon to bear.


At last the time came. I sat up all night in a torture of
suspense, having got it into my foolish head that Carlotta might
die. The doctor came upon me at six in the morning sitting half
frozen at the bottom of the stairs. When he gave me his cheery
news he seemed to develop from a middle-aged, commonplace man
into a radiant archangel.

I met Antoinette soon afterwards, busy, important, exultant. She
nevertheless graciously accorded me a brief interview.

"And to think, Monsieur," she exclaimed, as if the crowning
triumph of a million ions of evolution had at, last been
attained, "to think that it is a boy!"

"You would have been just as pleased if it had been a girl," said
I.

She shook her wise, fat head. "Women _ca ne vaut pas grand'
chose._"

Let it be remembered that "women are of no great account" is a
sentiment expressed, not by me, but by Antoinette. But all the
same I soon found myself a cipher in the house, where the
triumvirate of the negligible sex, Antoinette, the nurse and
Carlotta, reigned despotically.

To write much of Carlotta's happiness would be to treat of sacred
things at which I can only guess. She dwelt in rapture. The joy
and meaning of the universe were concentrated in the tiny bundle
of pink flesh that lay on her bosom. I used to sit by her side
while she talked unwearyingly of him. He was a thing of infinite
perfections. He had such a lot of hair.

"She won't believe, sir," said the nurse, "that it will all drop
off and a new crop come."

"Oh-h!" said Carlotta. "It can't be so cruel. For it is my hair
--see, Seer Marcous, darling; isn't it just my hair?"

It was her great solicitude that the boy should resemble her.

"I don't know about his nose," she remarked critically. "There
is so little of it yet and it is so soft--feel how soft it is.
But his eyes are brown like mine, and his mouth--now look, aren't
they just the same?"

She put her cheek next to the child's and invited me to compare
the two adjacent baby mouths. They were, of a truth, very much
alike.

She was jealous of the baby, desirous of having it always with
her to tend and fondle, impatient of the nurse and Antoinette.
It was a thing so intensely hers that she resented other hands
touching it. Oddly enough, of me she made an exception. Nothing
delighted her more than to put the little creature into my
awkward and nervous arms, and watch me carry it about the room.
I think she wanted to give me something, and this share in the
babe was the most precious gift she could devise.

Of Pasquale she continued to say nothing. In her intense joy of
motherhood he seemed to have become the dim creature of a dream.
I had registered the birth without consulting her--in the legal
names of the parents.

"What are you going to call him, Carlotta?" I asked one day.

"_Mon petit chou._ That's what Antoinette says. It's a
beautiful name."

"There are many points in calling an infant one's little
cabbage," I admitted, "but soon he'll grow up to be as old as I
am, and--" I sighed, "who would call me their _petit chow_?"

Carlotta laughed.

"That is true. We shall have to find a name." She reflected for
a few moments; then put her arms round my neck and continued her
reflections.

"He shall be Marcus--another Marcus Ordeyne. Then perhaps some
day he will be 'Seer Marcous' like you."

"Do you mean when I die?" I asked.

"Oh, not for years and years and years!" she cried, tightening
her clasp in alarm. "But the child lives longer than the father.
It is fate. He will live longer than I."

"Let us hope so, dear," I answered. "But it is just because I am
not his father that he can't be Sir Marcus when I die. He can
have my name; but my title--"

"Who will have it?"

"No one."

"It will die too?"

"It will be quite dead."

"You are his father, you know, _really_," she whispered.

"The law of England takes no count, unfortunately, of things of
the spirit," said I.

"What are things of the spirit?"

"The things, my dear," said I, "that you are beginning to
understand." I bent down and kissed the child as it lay on her
lap. "Poor little Marcus Ordeyne," I said. "My poor quaintly
fathered little son, I'm afraid there is much trouble ahead of
you, but I'll do my best to help you through it."

"Bless you, dear," said Carlotta, softly.

I looked at her in wonder. She had spoken for the first time
like a grown woman--like a woman with a soul.


A few weeks later.

We were sitting at breakfast. The morning newspaper contained
the account of a battle and the lists of British officers killed.
I scanned as usual the melancholy columns, when a name among the
dead caught my eye--and I stared at it stupidly. Pasquale was
dead, killed outright by a Boer bullet. The wild, bright life was
ended. It seemed a horrible thing, and, much as he had wronged
me, my first sentiment was one of dismay. He was too gallant and
beautiful a creature for death.

Carlotta poured out my tea and came round with the cup which she
deposited by my side. To prevent her peeping over my shoulder at
the paper, as she usually did, I laid it on the table; but her
quick eye had already read the great headlines.

"Great Battle. British officers killed. Oh, let me see, Seer
Marcous."

"No, dear," said I. "Go and eat your breakfast."

She looked at me strangely. I tried to smile; but as I am an
incompetent actor my grimace was a proclamation of
disingenuousness.

"Why shouldn't I read it?" she asked, quickly.

"Because I say you mustn't, Carlotta."

She continued to look at me. She had suddenly grown pale. I
stirred my tea and made a pretence of sipping it.

"Go on with your breakfast, my child," I repeated.

"There is something--something about him in the paper," said
Carlotta. "He is a British officer."

In the face of her intuition further concealment appeared
useless. Besides, sooner or later she would have to know.

"He is a British officer no longer, dear," said I.

"Is he dead?"

My mind flew back to an evening long ago--long, long ago it
seemed
--when another newspaper had told of another death, and my ears
caught the echo of the identical question that had then fallen
from her lips. I dreaded lest she should say again, "I am so
glad."

I beckoned her to my side, and pointing with my finger to the
name watched her face anxiously. She read, stared for a bit in
front of her and turned to me with a piteous look. I drew her to
me, and she laid her face against my shoulder.

"I don't know why I'm crying, Seer Marcous, dear," she said,
after a while.

I made her drink some of my tea, but she would eat nothing, and
presently she went upstairs. She had not said that she was glad.
She had wept and not known the reason for her tears. I railed at
myself for my doubts of her.

She was subdued and thoughtful all the day. In the evening,
instead of curling herself up in the sofa-corner among the
cushions, she sat on a stool by my feet as I read, one hand
supporting her chin, the other resting on my knee.

"I am glad he was a brave man," she said at last, alluding to
Pasquale for the first time since the morning. "I like brave
men."

"_Dulce et decorum est._ He died for his country," said I.

"It does not hurt me now so much to think of him," said Carlotta.

I could not help feeling a miserable pang of jealousy at
Pasquale's posthumous rehabilitation as a hero in Carlotta's
heart. Yet, was it not natural? Was it not the way of women? I
saw myself far remote from her, and though she never spoke of him
again I divined that her thoughts dwelt not untenderly on his
memory. I was absurd, I know. But I had begun almost to believe
in my make-believe paternity, and I was jealous of the rightful
claims of the dead man.

And yet had he lived he might have come back one day with his
conquering air and his irresistible laugh, and carried them both
away from me. In sparing me this crowning humiliation I thanked
the high gods.

But never to this day has she mentioned his name again.




CHAPTER XXIV


How shall I set down that which happened not long afterwards?

The death of a baby is so commonplace, so unimportant. Few
reasoning people, viewing the matter in the abstract, can do
otherwise than rejoice that a human being is saved from the
weariness of the tired years that make up life. For who shall
disprove the pessimist's assertion that it is better not to have
been born than to come into the world, and that it is better to
die than to live? But those from whom the single hope of their
existence is ravished find little consolation in reason. Grief
is the most intensely egotistical of emotions. I have lost all
that makes life beautiful to me. Is not that enough for the
stricken soul?

To Carlotta it meant a passage through the valley of the shadow.
To me, at first, it meant the life of Carlotta, and then a blank
in my newly ordered scheme of things. The curse of
ineffectuality still pursued me. I had allotted to myself my
humble task--the development of the new generation in the form of
Carlotta's boy, and even that small usefulness was I denied by
Fate.

A chill, a touch of croup, an agonised watching, and the tiny
thing lay dead. Antoinette and I had to drag it stone cold from
Carlotta's bosom. I alone carried it to burial. The little
white coffin rested on the opposite seat of the hired brougham,
and on it was a bunch of white flowers given by Antoinette. In
the cemetery chapel another fragment of humanity awaited
sepulture, and the funeral service was read over both bodies. I
stood alone by the little white coffin. A crowd of mourners were
grouped beside the black one. I glanced at the inscription as I
passed: "Jane Elliot, in the eighty-sixth year of her age." The
officiant referred in the service to "our dear brother and
sister, here departed." It was either an awful jest or an awful
verity.

My "quaintly fathered little son" had small need of my help
through the troubles of his life. His mother needed all that I
could give. Without me she would have died. That I verily
believe. I was her solitary plank in the welter wherein she
would have been submerged. She clung to me--literally clung to
me. I sat for hours with her grasp upon me. To feel assured of
my physical presence alone seemed to bring her calm.

Recent as are those sleepless days and nights, their memory is
all confused. The light burning dimly in the familiar chamber
which I had once sealed up as a tomb; the shadows on the wall;
the fevered face and great hollow eyes of Carlotta against the
pillows; her little hand clutching mine in desperation; the soft
tread of the nurse, that is all I remember. And when she
recovered her wits and grew sane, although for a long time she
spoke little, and scarcely noticed me otherwise, she claimed me
by her side. She was still dazed by the misery of her darkness.
It was only then that I realised the part the child had played in
her development. Her nature had been stirred to the quick; the
capacity for emotion had been awakened. She had left me without
a qualm. She had given herself to Pasquale without a glimmer of
passion. She had returned to me like a wounded animal seeking
its home. For the child alone the passionate human love had
sprung flaming from the seed hidden in her soul. And now the
child was dead, and the sun had gone from her sky, and she was
benumbed with the icy blackness of the world.

Then came a time when her speech was loosened and she talked to
me incessantly of the child, until one day she spoke of it as
living and clamoured for it, and relapsed into her fever.

At last one morning she awakened from a sound sleep and found me
watching; for I had relieved the nurse at six o'clock. She
smiled at me for the first time since the child fell sick, and
took my hand and kissed it.

"It is like waking into heaven to see your face, Seer Marcous,
darling," she whispered.

"I hope heaven is peopled by a better-looking set of fellows," I
said.

"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta. "Don't you know you are beautiful?"

"You mustn't throw an old jest in my teeth, Carlotta," said I,
and I reminded her how she had once screamed with laughter when I
had told her I was very beautiful.

Carlotta listened patiently until I had ended, and then she said,
with a little sigh:

"You cannot understand, Seer Marcous, darling. I have been
thinking of my little baby and the angels--and all the angels are
like you."

To cover the embarrassment my modesty underwent, I laughed and
drew the picture of myself with long flaxen hair and white wings.

"My angels hadn't got wings," said Carlotta, seriously. "They
all wore dressing-gowns. They were real angels. And the one
that was most like you brought my baby in his arms for me to
kiss; and when he put it on a white cloud to sleep, and took me
up in his arms instead and carried me away, away, away through
the air, I didn't cry at leaving baby. Wasn't that funny? I
snuggled up close to him--like that"--she illustrated the action
of "snuggling" beneath the bed-clothes--"and it was so comfy."

The pale sunshine of a fine February morning filtered into the
room from behind the curtains. I turned off the dimmed electric
lamp and let full daylight into the room.

"Oh!" cried Carlotta, turning to the window, "how lovely the good
sun is! It is more like heaven than ever. Do you know," she
added, mysteriously, "just before I woke it was all dark, and I
had lost my angels and I was looking for them."

I counselled her sagely to look for no more members of the
Hierarchy _en deshabille_, but to content herself with the
humbler denizens of this planet. She pressed my hand.

"I'll try to be contented, Seer Marcous, darling."

She did her best, poor child, when I was by; but I heard that
often she would sit by a little pile of garments and take them up
one by one and cry her heart out--so that though she quickly
recovered, her cheeks remained wan and drawn, and pain lingered
in her eyes. The weather changed to fog and damp and she spent
the days crouching by the fire, sometimes not stirring a muscle
for an hour together. Her favourite seat was the fender-stool in
the drawing-room. Her own boudoir downstairs, where she used to
receive instruction from the excellent Miss Griggs, she scarcely
entered.

She broke one of these fits suddenly and called me by her own pet
version of my name. I looked up from the writing-table where I
was studying the Arabic grammar.

"Yes?"

"I have been thinking--oh, thinking, thinking so long. I've been
thinking that you must love me very much."

"Yes, Carlotta," said I, with a half smile. "I suppose I do."

"As much as I loved my baby," she said, seriously,

"I used to love you in a different way, perhaps,"

"And now?"

"Perhaps in the same sort of way, Carlotta."

"I loved my baby because it was mine," she remarked, looking at
the flames through one hand's delicate fingers. "I wanted to do
everything for him and didn't want him to do anything for me. I
would have died for him. It is so strange. Yes, I think you
must love me like that, Seer Marcous. Why?"