The Fallen Leaves. Wilkie Collins
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virtues of his nation. “I had not thought of it in that light, sir,” he said. “You have been good enough to credit me with a wife or a daughter. I do not possess either of those ladies; but your argument hits me, notwithstanding—hits me hard, I tell you.” He looked at Mr. Hethcote, who sat silently and stiffly disapproving of all this familiarity, and applied himself in perfect innocence and good faith to making things pleasant in that quarter. “You are a stranger, Sir,” said Rufus; “and you will doubtless wish to peruse the article which is the subject of conversation?” He took a newspaper slip from his pocket-book, and offered it to the astonished Englishman. “I shall be glad to hear your sentiments, sir, on the view propounded by our mutual friend, Claude A. Goldenheart.”
Before Mr. Hethcote could reply, Amelius interposed in his own headlong way. “Give it to me! I want to read it first!”
He snatched at the newspaper slip. Rufus checked him with grave composure. “I am of a cool temperament myself, sir; but that don’t prevent me from admiring heat in others. Short of boiling point—mind that!” With this hint, the wise New Englander permitted Amelius to take possession of the printed slip.
Mr. Hethcote, finding an opportunity of saying a word at last, asserted himself a little haughtily. “I beg you will both of you understand that I decline to read anything which relates to another person’s private affairs.”
Neither the one nor the other of his companions paid the slightest heed to this announcement. Amelius was reading the newspaper extract, and placid Rufus was watching him. In another moment, he crumpled up the slip, and threw it indignantly on the deck. “It’s as full of lies as it can hold!” he burst out.
“It’s all over the United States, by this time,” Rufus remarked. “And I don’t doubt we shall find the English papers have copied it, when we get to Liverpool. If you will take my advice, sir, you will cultivate a sagacious insensibility to the comments of the press.”
“Do you think I care for myself?” Amelius asked indignantly. “It’s the poor woman I am thinking of. What can I do to clear her character?”
“Well, sir,” suggested Rufus, “in your place, I should have a notification circulated through the ship, announcing a lecture on the subject (weather permitting) in the course of the afternoon. That’s the way we should do it at Coolspring.”
Amelius listened without conviction. “It’s certainly useless to make a secret of the matter now,” he said; “but I don’t see my way to making it more public still.” He paused, and looked at Mr. Hethcote. “It so happens, sir,” he resumed, “that this unfortunate affair is an example of some of the Rules of our Community, which I had not had time to speak of, when Mr. Dingwell here joined us. It will be a relief to me to contradict these abominable falsehoods to somebody; and I should like (if you don’t mind) to hear what you think of my conduct, from your own point of view. It might prepare me,” he added, smiling rather uneasily, “for what I may find in the English newspapers.”
With these words of introduction he told his sad story—jocosely described in the newspaper heading as “Miss Mellicent and Goldenheart among the Socialists at Tadmor.”
CHAPTER 3
“Nearly six months since,” said Amelius, “we had notice by letter of the arrival of an unmarried English lady, who wished to become a member of our Community. You will understand my motive in keeping her family name a secret: even the newspaper has grace enough only to mention her by her Christian name. I don’t want to cheat you out of your interest; so I will own at once that Miss Mellicent was not beautiful, and not young. When she came to us, she was thirty-eight years old, and time and trial had set their marks on her face plainly enough for anybody to see. Notwithstanding this, we all thought her an interesting woman. It might have been the sweetness of her voice; or perhaps it was something in her expression that took our fancy. There! I can’t explain it; I can only say there were young women and pretty women at Tadmor who failed to win us as Miss Mellicent did. Contradictory enough, isn’t it?”
Mr. Hethcote said he understood the contradiction. Rufus put an appropriate question: “Do you possess a photograph of this lady, sir?”
“No,” said Amelius; “I wish I did. Well, we received her, on her arrival, in the Common Room—called so because we all assemble there every evening, when the work of the day is done. Sometimes we have the reading of a poem or a novel; sometimes debates on the social and political questions of the time in England and America; sometimes music, or dancing, or cards, or billiards, to amuse us. When a new member arrives, we have the ceremonies of introduction. I was close by the Elder Brother (that’s the name we give to the chief of the Community) when two of the women led Miss Mellicent in. He’s a hearty old fellow, who lived the first part of his life on his own clearing in one of the Western forests. To this day, he can’t talk long, without showing, in one way or another, that his old familiarity with the trees still keeps its place in his memory. He looked hard at Miss Mellicent, under his shaggy old white eyebrows; and I heard him whisper to himself, ‘Ah, dear me! Another of The Fallen Leaves!’ I knew what he meant. The people who have drawn blanks in the lottery of life—the people who have toiled hard after happiness, and have gathered nothing but disappointment and sorrow; the friendless and the lonely, the wounded and the lost—these are the people whom our good Elder Brother calls The Fallen Leaves. I like the saying myself; it’s a tender way of speaking of our poor fellow-creatures who are down in the world.”
He paused for a moment, looking out thoughtfully over the vast void of sea and sky. A passing shadow of sadness clouded his bright young face. The two elder men looked at him in silence, feeling (in widely different ways) the same compassionate interest. What was the life that lay before him? And—God help him!—what would he do with it?
“Where did I leave off?” he asked, rousing himself suddenly.
“You left Miss Mellicent, sir, in the Common Room—the venerable citizen with the white eyebrows being suitably engaged in moralizing on her.” In those terms the ever-ready Rufus set the story going again.
“Quite right,” Amelius resumed. “There she was, poor thing, a little thin timid creature, in a white dress, with a black scarf over her shoulders, trembling and wondering in a room full of strangers. The Elder Brother took her by the hand, and kissed her on the forehead, and bade her heartily welcome in the name of the Community. Then the women followed his example, and the men all shook hands with her. And then our chief put the three questions, which he is bound to address to all new arrivals when they join us: ‘Do you come here of your own free will? Do you bring with you a written recommendation from one of our brethren, which satisfies us that we do no wrong to ourselves or to others in receiving you? Do you understand that you are not bound to us by vows, and that you are free to leave us again if the life here is not agreeable to you?’ Matters being settled so far, the reading of the Rules, and the Penalties imposed for breaking them, came next. Some of the Rules you know already; others of smaller importance I needn’t trouble you with. As for the Penalties, if you incur the lighter ones, you are subject to public rebuke, or to isolation for a time from the social life of the Community. If you incur the heavier ones, you are either sent out into the world again for a given period, to return or not as you please; or you are struck off the list of members, and expelled for good and all. Suppose these preliminaries agreed to by Miss Mellicent with silent submission, and let us go on to the close of the ceremony—the reading of the Rules which settle the questions of Love and Marriage.”
“Aha!” said Mr. Hethcote, “we are coming to the difficulties of the Community at last!”
“Are we also coming to Miss Mellicent, sir?” Rufus inquired. “As a citizen of a free country in which I can love in one State, marry in another, and be divorced in a third, I am not interested in your Rules—I am interested in your Lady.”
“The two are inseparable in this case,” Amelius answered gravely. “If I am to speak of Miss Mellicent, I must speak of the Rules; you will soon see why. Our Community becomes a despotism, gentlemen, in