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The Fallen Leaves

by Wilkie Collins · English · Gutenberg #7894 · 751,492 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Fallen Leaves

Author: Wilkie Collins


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7894]
                Most recently updated: September 12, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7894

Credits: Produced by James Rusk, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FALLEN LEAVES ***




Produced by James Rusk





THE FALLEN LEAVES

By Wilkie Collins


To CAROLINE

Experience of the reception of _The Fallen Leaves_ by intelligent
readers, who have followed the course of the periodical publication at
home and abroad, has satisfied me that the design of the work speaks
for itself, and that the scrupulous delicacy of treatment, in certain
portions of the story, has been as justly appreciated as I could wish.
Having nothing to explain, and (so far as my choice of subject is
concerned) nothing to excuse, I leave my book, without any prefatory
pleading for it, to make its appeal to the reading public on such merits
as it may possess.

W. C. GLOUCESTER PLACE, LONDON July 1st, 1879




THE PROLOGUE

I

The resistless influences which are one day to reign supreme over
our poor hearts, and to shape the sad short course of our lives, are
sometimes of mysteriously remote origin, and find their devious ways to
us through the hearts and the lives of strangers.

While the young man whose troubled career it is here proposed to follow
was wearing his first jacket, and bowling his first hoop, a domestic
misfortune, falling on a household of strangers, was destined
nevertheless to have its ultimate influence over his happiness, and to
shape the whole aftercourse of his life.

For this reason, some First Words must precede the Story, and must
present the brief narrative of what happened in the household of
strangers. By what devious ways the event here related affected the
chief personage of these pages, when he grew to manhood, it will be the
business of the story to trace, over land and sea, among men and women,
in bright days and dull days alike, until the end is reached, and the
pen (God willing) is put back in the desk.

II

Old Benjamin Ronald (of the Stationers’ Company) took a young wife at
the ripe age of fifty, and carried with him into the holy estate of
matrimony some of the habits of his bachelor life.

As a bachelor, he had never willingly left his shop (situated in that
exclusively commercial region of London which is called “the City”) from
one year’s end to another. As a married man, he persisted in following
the same monotonous course; with this one difference, that he now had
a woman to follow it with him. “Travelling by railway,” he explained to
his wife, “will make your head ache--it makes _my_ head ache. Travelling
by sea will make you sick--it makes _me_ sick. If you want change of
air, every sort of air is to be found in the City. If you admire the
beauties of Nature, there is Finsbury Square with the beauties of Nature
carefully selected and arranged. When we are in London, you (and I) are
all right; and when we are out of London, you (and I) are all wrong.”
 As surely as the autumn holiday season set in, so surely Old Ronald
resisted his wife’s petition for a change of scene in that form of
words. A man habitually fortified behind his own inbred obstinacy and
selfishness is for the most part an irresistible power within the limits
of his domestic circle. As a rule, patient Mrs. Ronald yielded; and her
husband stood revealed to his neighbours in the glorious character of a
married man who had his own way.

But in the autumn of 1856, the retribution which sooner or later
descends on all despotisms, great and small, overtook the iron rule of
Old Ronald, and defeated the domestic tyrant on the battle-field of his
own fireside.

The children born of the marriage, two in number, were both daughters.
The elder had mortally offended her father by marrying imprudently--in
a pecuniary sense. He had declared that she should never enter his house
again; and he had mercilessly kept his word. The younger daughter
(now eighteen years of age) proved to be also a source of parental
inquietude, in another way. She was the passive cause of the revolt
which set her father’s authority at defiance. For some little time past
she had been out of health. After many ineffectual trials of the mild
influence of persuasion, her mother’s patience at last gave way. Mrs.
Ronald insisted--yes, actually insisted--on taking Miss Emma to the
seaside.

“What’s the matter with you?” Old Ronald asked; detecting something that
perplexed him in his wife’s look and manner, on the memorable occasion
when she asserted a will of her own for the first time in her life.

A man of finer observation would have discovered the signs of no
ordinary anxiety and alarm, struggling to show themselves openly in the
poor woman’s face. Her husband only saw a change that puzzled him. “Send
for Emma,” he said, his natural cunning inspiring him with the idea of
confronting the mother and daughter, and of seeing what came of _that._
Emma appeared, plump and short, with large blue eyes, and full pouting
lips, and splendid yellow hair: otherwise, miserably pale, languid
in her movements, careless in her dress, sullen in her manner. Out of
health as her mother said, and as her father saw.

“You can see for yourself,” said Mrs. Ronald, “that the girl is pining
for fresh air. I have heard Ramsgate recommended.”

Old Ronald looked at his daughter. She represented the one tender place
in his nature. It was not a large place; but it did exist. And the proof
of it is, that he began to yield--with the worst possible grace.

“Well, we will see about it,” he said.

“There is no time to be lost,” Mrs. Ronald persisted. “I mean to take
her to Ramsgate tomorrow.”

Mr. Ronald looked at his wife as a dog looks at the maddened sheep that
turns on him. “You mean?” repeated the stationer. “Upon my soul--what
next? You mean? Where is the money to come from? Answer me that.”

Mrs. Ronald declined to be drawn into a conjugal dispute, in the
presence of her daughter. She took Emma’s arm, and led her to the door.
There she stopped, and spoke. “I have already told you that the girl is
ill,” she said to her husband. “And I now tell you again that she must
have the sea air. For God’s sake, don’t let us quarrel! I have enough to
try me without that.” She closed the door on herself and her daughter,
and left her lord and master standing face to face with the wreck of his
own outraged authority.

What further progress was made by the domestic revolt, when the bedroom
candles were lit, and the hour of retirement had arrived with the night,
is naturally involved in mystery. This alone is certain: On the next
morning, the luggage was packed, and the cab was called to the door.
Mrs. Ronald spoke her parting words to her husband in private.

“I hope I have not expressed myself too strongly about taking Emma to
the seaside,” she said, in gentle pleading tones. “I am anxious about
our girl’s health. If I have offended you--without meaning it, God
knows!--say you forgive me before I go. I have tried honestly, dear, to
be a good wife to you. And you have always trusted me, haven’t you? And
you trust me still?”

She took his lean cold hand, and pressed it fervently: her eyes rested
on him with a strange mixture of timidity and anxiety. Still in the
prime of her life, she preserved the personal attractions--the fair calm
refined face, the natural grace of look and movement--which had made
her marriage to a man old enough to be her father a cause of angry
astonishment among all her friends. In the agitation that now possessed
her, her colour rose, her eyes brightened; she looked for the moment
almost young enough to be Emma’s sister. Her husband opened his hard old
eyes in surly bewilderment. “Why need you make this fuss?” he asked. “I
don’t understand you.” Mrs. Ronald shrank at those words as if he had
struck her. She kissed him in silence, and joined her daughter in the
cab.

For the rest of that day, the persons in the stationer’s employment had
a hard time of it with their master in the shop. Something had upset Old
Ronald. He ordered the shutters to be put up earlier that evening than
usual. Instead of going to his club (at the tavern round the corner),
he took a long walk in the lonely and lifeless streets of the City by
night. There was no disguising it from himself; his wife’s behaviour at
parting had made him uneasy. He naturally swore at her for taking that
liberty, while he lay awake alone in his bed. “Damn the woman! What
does she mean?” The cry of the soul utters itself in various forms of
expression. That was the cry of Old Ronald’s soul, literally translated.

III

The next morning brought him a letter from Ramsgate.

“I write immediately to tell you of our safe arrival. We have found
comfortable lodgings (as the address at the head of this letter will
inform you) in Albion Place. I thank you, and Emma desires to thank you
also, for your kindness in providing us with ample means for taking our
little trip. It is beautiful weather today; the sea is calm, and the
pleasure-boats are out. We do not of course expect to see you here.
But if you do, by any chance, overcome your objection to moving out
of London, I have a little request to make. Please let me hear of your
visit beforehand--so that I may not omit all needful preparations. I
know you dislike being troubled with letters (except on business), so
I will not write too frequently. Be so good as to take no news for good
news, in the intervals. When you have a few minutes to spare, you will
write, I hope, and tell me how you and the shop are going on. Emma sends
you her love, in which I beg to join.” So the letter was expressed, and
so it ended.

“They needn’t be afraid of my troubling them. Calm seas and
pleasure-boats! Stuff and nonsense!” Such was the first impression which
his wife’s report of herself produced on Old Ronald’s mind. After
a while, he looked at the letter again--and frowned, and reflected.
“Please let me hear of your visit beforehand,” he repeated to himself,
as if the request had been, in some incomprehensible way, offensive to
him. He opened the drawer of his desk, and threw the letter into it.
When business was over for the day, he went to his club at the tavern,
and made himself unusually disagreeable to everybody.

A week passed. In the interval he wrote briefly to his wife. “I’m all
right, and the shop goes on as usual.” He also forwarded one or two
letters which came for Mrs. Ronald. No more news reached him from
Ramsgate. “I suppose they’re enjoying themselves,” he reflected. “The
house looks queer without them; I’ll go to the club.”

He stayed later than usual, and drank more than usual, that night. It
was nearly one in the morning when he let himself in with his latch-key,
and went upstairs to bed.

Approaching the toilette-table, he found a letter lying on it, addressed
to “Mr. Ronald--private.” It was not in his wife’s handwriting; not in
any handwriting known to him. The characters sloped the wrong way, and
the envelope bore no postmark. He eyed it over and over suspiciously. At
last he opened it, and read these lines:

“You are advised by a true friend to lose no time in looking after your
wife. There are strange doings at the seaside. If you don’t believe me,
ask Mrs. Turner, Number 1, Slains Row, Ramsgate.”

No address, no date, no signature--an anonymous letter, the first he had
ever received in the long course of his life.

His hard brain was in no way affected by the liquor that he had drunk.
He sat down on his bed, mechanically folding and refolding the letter.
The reference to “Mrs. Turner” produced no impression on him of any
sort: no person of that name, common as it was, happened to be numbered
on the list of his friends or his customers. But for one circumstance,
he would have thrown the letter aside, in contempt. His memory reverted
to his wife’s incomprehensible behaviour at parting. Addressing him
through that remembrance, the anonymous warning assumed a certain
importance to his mind. He went down to his desk, in the back office,
and took his wife’s letter out of the drawer, and read it through
slowly. “Ha!” he said, pausing as he came across the sentence which
requested him to write beforehand, in the unlikely event of his deciding
to go to Ramsgate. He thought again of the strangely persistent way in
which his wife had dwelt on his trusting her; he recalled her nervous
anxious looks, her deepening colour, her agitation at one moment, and
then her sudden silence and sudden retreat to the cab. Fed by these
irritating influences, the inbred suspicion in his nature began to take
fire slowly. She might be innocent enough in asking him to give her
notice before he joined her at the seaside--she might naturally be
anxious to omit no needful preparation for his comfort. Still, he didn’t
like it; no, he didn’t like it. An appearance as of a slow collapse
passed little by little over his rugged wrinkled face. He looked many
years older than his age, as he sat at the desk, with the flaring
candlelight close in front of him, thinking. The anonymous letter lay
before him, side by side with his wife’s letter. On a sudden, he lifted
his gray head, and clenched his fist, and struck the venomous written
warning as if it had been a living thing that could feel. “Whoever you
are,” he said, “I’ll take your advice.”

He never even made the attempt to go to bed that night. His pipe helped
him through the comfortless and dreary hours. Once or twice he thought
of his daughter. Why had her mother been so anxious about her? Why had
her mother taken her to Ramsgate? Perhaps, as a blind--ah, yes, perhaps
as a blind! More for the sake of something to do than for any other
reason, he packed a handbag with a few necessaries. As soon as the
servant was stirring, he ordered her to make him a cup of strong coffee.
After that, it was time to show himself as usual, on the opening of the
shop. To his astonishment, he found his clerk taking down the shutters,
in place of the porter.

“What does this mean?” he asked. “Where is Farnaby?”

The clerk looked at his master, and paused aghast with a shutter in his
hands.

“Good Lord! what has come to you?” he cried. “Are you ill?”

Old Ronald angrily repeated his question: “Where is Farnaby?”

“I don’t know,” was the answer.

“You don’t know? Have you been up to his bedroom?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, he isn’t in his bedroom. And, what’s more, his bed hasn’t been
slept in last night. Farnaby’s off, sir--nobody knows where.”

Old Ronald dropped heavily into the nearest chair. This second mystery,
following on the mystery of the anonymous letter, staggered him. But
his business instincts were still in good working order. He held out his
keys to the clerk. “Get the petty cash-book,” he said, “and see if the
money is all right.”

The clerk received the keys under protest. _“That’s_ not the right
reading of the riddle,” he remarked.

“Do as I tell you!”

The clerk opened the money-drawer under the counter; counted the pounds,
shillings and pence paid by chance customers up to the closing of
the shop on the previous evening; compared the result with the petty
cash-book, and answered, “Right to a halfpenny.”

Satisfied so far, old Ronald condescended to approach the speculative
side of the subject, with the assistance of his subordinate. “If what
you said just now means anything,” he resumed, “it means that you
suspect the reason why Farnaby has left my service. Let’s hear it.”

“You know that I never liked John Farnaby,” the clerk began. “An active
young fellow and a clever young fellow, I grant you. But a bad servant
for all that. False, Mr. Ronald--false to the marrow of his bones.”

Mr. Ronald’s patience began to give way. “Come to the facts,” he
growled. “Why has Farnaby gone off without a word to anybody? Do you
know that?”

“I know no more than you do,” the clerk answered coolly. “Don’t fly into
a passion. I have got some facts for you, if you will only give me time.
Turn them over in your own mind, and see what they come to. Three days
ago I was short of postage-stamps, and I went to the office. Farnaby was
there, waiting at the desk where they pay the post-office orders. There
must have been ten or a dozen people with letters, orders, and what
not, between him and me. I got behind him quietly, and looked over his
shoulder. I saw the clerk give him the money for his post-office order.
Five pounds in gold, which I reckoned as they lay on the counter, and
a bank-note besides, which he crumpled up in his hand. I can’t tell you
how much it was for; I only know it _was_ a bank-note. Just ask yourself
how a porter on twenty shillings a week (with a mother who takes in
washing, and a father who takes in drink) comes to have a correspondent
who sends him an order for five sovereigns--and a bank-note, value
unknown. Say he’s turned betting-man in secret. Very good. There’s the
post-office order, in that case, to show that he’s got a run of luck. If
he has got a run of luck, tell me this--why does he leave his place like
a thief in the night? He’s not a slave; he’s not even an apprentice.
When he thinks he can better himself, he has no earthly need to keep it
a secret that he means to leave your service. He may have met with an
accident, to be sure. But that’s not _my_ belief. I say he’s up to some
mischief And now comes the question: What are we to do?”

Mr. Ronald, listening with his head down, and without interposing a
word on his own part, made an extraordinary answer. “Leave it,” he said.
“Leave it till tomorrow.”

“Why?” the clerk answered, without ceremony.

Mr. Ronald made another extraordinary answer. “Because I am obliged to
go out of town for the day. Look after the business. The ironmonger’s
man over the way will help you to put up the shutters at night. If
anybody inquires for me, say I shall be back tomorrow.” With those
parting directions, heedless of the effect that he had produced on the
clerk, he looked at his watch, and left the shop.


IV

The bell which gave five minutes’ notice of the starting of the Ramsgate
train had just rung.

While the other travellers were hastening to the platform, two persons
stood passively apart as if they had not even yet decided on taking
their places in the train. One of the two was a smart young man in a
cheap travelling suit; mainly noticeable by his florid complexion, his
restless dark eyes, and his profusely curling black hair. The other was
a middle-aged woman in frowsy garments; tall and stout, sly and sullen.
The smart young man stood behind the uncongenial-looking person with
whom he had associated himself, using her as a screen to hide him while
he watched the travellers on their way to the train. As the bell rang,
the woman suddenly faced her companion, and pointed to the railway
clock.

“Are you waiting to make up your mind till the train has gone?” she
asked.

The young man frowned impatiently. “I am waiting for a person whom I
expect to see,” he answered. “If the person travels by this train, we
shall travel by it. If not, we shall come back here, and look out for
the next train, and so on till night-time, if it’s necessary.”

The woman fixed her small scowling gray eyes on the man as he replied
in those terms. “Look here!” she broke out. “I like to see my way before
me. You’re a stranger, young Mister; and it’s as likely as not you’ve
given me a false name and address. That don’t matter. False names are
commoner than true ones, in my line of life. But mind this! I don’t
stir a step farther till I’ve got half the money in my hand, and my
return-ticket there and back.”

“Hold your tongue!” the man suddenly interposed in a whisper. “It’s all
right. I’ll get the tickets.”

He looked while he spoke at an elderly traveller, hastening by with
his head down, deep in thought, noticing nobody. The traveller was
Mr. Ronald. The young man, who had that moment recognized him, was his
runaway porter, John Farnaby.

Returning with the tickets, the porter took his repellent travelling
companion by the arm, and hurried her along the platform to the train.
“The money!” she whispered, as they took their places. Farnaby handed
it to her, ready wrapped up in a morsel of paper. She opened the paper,
satisfied herself that no trick had been played her, and leaned back in
her corner to go to sleep. The train started. Old Ronald travelled by
the second class; his porter and his porter’s companion accompanied him
secretly by the third.

V

It was still early in the afternoon when Mr. Ronald descended the narrow
street which leads from the high land of the South-Eastern railway
station to the port of Ramsgate. Asking his way of the first policeman
whom he met, he turned to the left, and reached the cliff on which the
houses in Albion Place are situated. Farnaby followed him at a discreet
distance; and the woman followed Farnaby.

Arrived in sight of the lodging-house, Mr. Ronald paused--partly to
recover his breath, partly to compose himself. He was conscious of a
change of feeling as he looked up at the windows: his errand suddenly
assumed a contemptible aspect in his own eyes. He almost felt ashamed of
himself. After twenty years of undisturbed married life, was it possible
that he had doubted his wife--and that at the instigation of a stranger
whose name even was unknown to him? “If she was to step out in the
balcony, and see me down here,” he thought, “what a fool I should look!”
 He felt half-inclined, at the moment when he lifted the knocker of the
door, to put it back again quietly, and return to London. No! it was too
late. The maid-servant was hanging up her birdcage in the area of the
house; the maid-servant had seen him.

“Does Mrs. Ronald lodge here?” he asked.

The girl lifted her eyebrows and opened her mouth--stared at him in
speechless confusion--and disappeared in the kitchen regions. This
strange reception of his inquiry irritated him unreasonably. He knocked
with the absurd violence of a man who vents his anger on the first
convenient thing that he can find. The landlady opened the door, and
looked at him in stern and silent surprise.

“Does Mrs. Ronald lodge here?” he repeated.

The landlady answered with some appearance of effort--the effort of a
person who was carefully considering her words before she permitted them
to pass her lips.

“Mrs. Ronald has taken rooms here. But she has not occupied them yet.”

“Not occupied them yet?” The words bewildered him as if they had been
spoken in an unknown tongue. He stood stupidly silent on the doorstep.
His anger was gone; an all-mastering fear throbbed heavily at his heart.
The landlady looked at him, and said to her secret self: “Just what I
suspected; there _is_ something wrong!”

“Perhaps I have not sufficiently explained myself, sir,” she resumed
with grave politeness. “Mrs. Ronald told me that she was staying at
Ramsgate with friends. She would move into my house, she said, when her
friends left--but they had not quite settled the day yet. She calls here
for letters. Indeed, she was here early this morning, to pay the second
week’s rent. I asked when she thought of moving in. She didn’t seem to
know; her friends (as I understood) had not made up their minds. I must
say I thought it a little odd. Would you like to leave any message?”

He recovered himself sufficiently to speak. “Can you tell me where her
friends live?” he said.

The landlady shook her head. “No, indeed. I offered to save Mrs. Ronald
the trouble of calling here, by sending letters or cards to her present
residence. She declined the offer--and she has never mentioned the
address. Would you like to come in and rest, sir? I will see that your
card is taken care of, if you wish to leave it.”

“Thank you, ma’am--it doesn’t matter--good morning.”

The landlady looked after him as he descended the house-steps. “It’s the
husband, Peggy,” she said to the servant, waiting inquisitively behind
her. “Poor old gentleman! And such a respectable-looking woman, too!”

Mr. Ronald walked mechanically to the end of the row of houses, and met
the wide grand view of sea and sky. There were some seats behind the
railing which fenced the edge of the cliff. He sat down, perfectly
stupefied and helpless, on the nearest bench.

At the close of life, the loss of a man’s customary nourishment extends
its debilitating influence rapidly from his body to his mind. Mr. Ronald
had tasted nothing but his cup of coffee since the previous night.
His mind began to wander strangely; he was not angry or frightened
or distressed. Instead of thinking of what had just happened, he was
thinking of his young days when he had been a cricket-player. One
special game revived in his memory, at which he had been struck on the
head by the ball. “Just the same feeling,” he reflected vacantly, with
his hat off, and his hand on his forehead. “Dazed and giddy--just the
same feeling!”

He leaned back on the bench, and fixed his eyes on the sea, and wondered
languidly what had come to him. Farnaby and the woman, still following,
waited round the corner where they could just keep him in view.

The blue lustre of the sky was without a cloud; the sunny sea leapt
under the fresh westerly breeze. From the beach, the cries of children
at play, the shouts of donkey-boys driving their poor beasts, the
distant notes of brass instruments playing a waltz, and the mellow music
of the small waves breaking on the sand, rose joyously together on the
fragrant air. On the next bench, a dirty old boatman was prosing to a
stupid old visitor. Mr. Ronald listened, with a sense of vacant content
in the mere act of listening. The boatman’s words found their way to his
ears like the other sounds that were abroad in the air. “Yes; them’s
the Goodwin Sands, where you see the lightship. And that steamer there,
towing a vessel into the harbour, that’s the Ramsgate Tug. Do you know
what I should like to see? I should like to see the Ramsgate Tug blow
up. Why? I’ll tell you why. I belong to Broadstairs; I don’t belong to
Ramsgate. Very well. I’m idling here, as you may see, without one copper
piece in my pocket to rub against another. What trade do I belong to?
I don’t belong to no trade; I belong to a boat. The boat’s rotting at
Broadstairs, for want of work. And all along of what? All along of the
Tug. The Tug has took the bread out of our mouths: me and my mates. Wait
a bit; I’ll show you how. What did a ship do, in the good old times,
when she got on them sands--Goodwin Sands? Went to pieces, if it come on
to blow; or got sucked down little by little when it was fair weather.
Now I’m coming to it. What did We do (in the good old times, mind you)
when we happened to see that ship in distress? Out with our boat; blow
high or blow low, out with our boat. And saved the lives of the crew,
did you say? Well, yes; saving the crew was part of the day’s work, to
be sure; the part we didn’t get paid for. We saved _the cargo,_ Master!
and got salvage!! Hundreds of pounds, I tell you, divided amongst us by
law!!! Ah, those times are gone. A parcel of sneaks get together, and
subscribe to build a Steam-Tug. When a ship gets on the sands now, out
goes the Tug, night and day alike, and brings her safe into harbour,
and takes the bread out of our mouths. Shameful--that’s what I call
it--shameful.”

The last words of the boatman’s lament fell lower, lower, lower on Mr.
Ronald’s ears--he lost them altogether--he lost the view of the sea--he
lost the sense of the wind blowing over him. Suddenly, he was roused as
if from a deep sleep. On one side, the man from Broadstairs was shaking
him by the collar. “I say, Master, cheer up; what’s come to you?” On the
other side, a compassionate lady was offering her smelling-bottle. “I am
afraid, sir, you have fainted.” He struggled to his feet, and vacantly
thanked the lady. The man from Broadstairs--with an eye to salvage--took
charge of the human wreck, and towed him to the nearest public-house. “A
chop and a glass of brandy-and-water,” said this good Samaritan of the
nineteenth century. “That’s what you want. I’m peckish myself, and I’ll
keep you company.”

He was perfectly passive in the hands of any one who would take charge
of him; he submitted as if he had been the boatman’s dog, and had heard
the whistle.

It could only be truly said that he had come to himself, when there had
been time enough for him to feel the reanimating influence of the food
and drink. Then he got to his feet, and looked with incredulous wonder
at the companion of his meal. The man from Broadstairs opened his greasy
lips, and was silenced by the sudden appearance of a gold coin between
Mr. Ronald’s finger and thumb. “Don’t speak to me; pay the bill, and
bring me the change outside.” When the boatman joined him, he was
reading a letter; walking to and fro, and speaking at intervals to
himself. “God help me, have I lost my senses? I don’t know what to do
next.” He referred to the letter again: “if you don’t believe me, ask
Mrs. Turner, Number 1, Slains Row, Ramsgate.” He put the letter back in
his pocket, and rallied suddenly. “Slains Row,” he said, turning to the
boatman. “Take me there directly, and keep the change for yourself.”

The boatman’s gratitude was (apparently) beyond expression in words. He
slapped his pocket cheerfully, and that was all. Leading the way inland,
he went downhill, and uphill again--then turned aside towards the
eastern extremity of the town.

Farnaby, still following, with the woman behind him, stopped when the
boatman diverged towards the east, and looked up at the name of the
street. “I’ve got my instructions,” he said; “I know where he’s going.
Step out! We’ll get there before him, by another way.”

Mr. Ronald and his guide reached a row of poor little houses, with poor
little gardens in front of them and behind them. The back windows looked
out on downs and fields lying on either side of the road to Broadstairs.
It was a lost and lonely spot. The guide stopped, and put a question
with inquisitive respect. “What number, sir?” Mr. Ronald had
sufficiently recovered himself to keep his own counsel. “That will do,”
 he said. “You can leave me.” The boatman waited a moment. Mr. Ronald
looked at him. The boatman was slow to understand that his leadership
had gone from him. “You’re sure you don’t want me any more?” he
said. “Quite sure,” Mr. Ronald answered. The man from Broadstairs
retired--with his salvage to comfort him.

Number 1 was at the farther extremity of the row of houses. When Mr.
Ronald rang the bell, the spies were already posted. The woman loitered
on the road, within view of the door. Farnaby was out of sight, round
the corner, watching the house over the low wooden palings of the back
garden.

A lazy-looking man, in his shirt sleeves, opened the door. “Mrs. Turner
at home?” he repeated. “Well, she’s at home; but she’s too busy to see
anybody. What’s your pleasure?” Mr. Ronald declined to accept excuses
or to answer questions. “I must see Mrs. Turner directly,” he said, “on
important business.” His tone and manner had their effect on the lazy
man. “What name?” he asked. Mr. Ronald declined to mention his name.
“Give my message,” he said. “I won’t detain Mrs. Turner more than a
minute.” The man hesitated--and opened the door of the front parlour. An
old woman was fast asleep on a ragged little sofa. The man gave up the
front parlour, and tried the back parlour next. It was empty. “Please to
wait here,” he said--and went away to deliver his message.

The parlour was a miserably furnished room. Through the open window, the
patch of back garden was barely visible under fluttering rows of linen
hanging out on lines to dry. A pack of dirty cards, and some plain
needlework, littered the bare little table. A cheap American clock
ticked with stern and steady activity on the mantelpiece. The smell of
onions was in the air. A torn newspaper, with stains of beer on it,
lay on the floor. There was some sinister influence in the place which
affected Mr. Ronald painfully. He felt himself trembling, and sat down
on one of the rickety chairs. The minutes followed one another wearily.
He heard a trampling of feet in the room above--then a door opened and
closed--then the rustle of a woman’s dress on the stairs. In a
moment more, the handle of the parlour door was turned. He rose, in
anticipation of Mrs. Turner’s appearance. The door opened. He found
himself face to face with his wife.

VI

John Farnaby, posted at the garden paling, suddenly lifted his head and
looked towards the open window of the back parlour. He reflected for a
moment--and then joined his female companion on the road in front of the
house.

“I want you at the back garden,” he said. “Come along!”

“How much longer am I to be kept kicking my heels in this wretched
hole?” the woman asked sulkily.

“As much longer as I please--if you want to go back to London with the
other half of the money.” He showed it to her as he spoke. She followed
him without another word.

Arrived at the paling, Farnaby pointed to the window, and to the back
garden door, which was left ajar. “Speak softly,” he whispered. “Do you
hear voices in the house?”

“I don’t hear what they’re talking about, if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t hear, either. Now mind what I tell you--I have reasons of
my own for getting a little nearer to that window. Sit down under the
paling, so that you can’t be seen from the house. If you hear a row, you
may take it for granted that I am found out. In that case, go back to
London by the next train, and meet me at the terminus at two o’clock
tomorrow afternoon. If nothing happens, wait where you are till you hear
from me or see me again.”

He laid his hand on the low paling, and vaulted over it. The linen
hanging up in the garden to dry offered him a means of concealment
(if any one happened to look out of the window) of which he skilfully
availed himself. The dust-bin was at the side of the house, situated
at a right angle to the parlour window. He was safe behind the bin,
provided no one appeared on the path which connected the patch of garden
at the back with the patch in front. Here, running the risk, he waited
and listened.

The first voice that reached his ears was the voice of Mrs. Ronald. She
was speaking with a firmness of tone that astonished him.

“Hear me to the end, Benjamin,” she said. “I have a right to ask as much
as that of my husband, and I do ask it. If I had been bent on nothing
but saving the reputation of our miserable girl, you would have a right
to blame me for keeping you ignorant of the calamity that has fallen on
us--”

There the voice of her husband interposed sternly. “Calamity! Say
disgrace, everlasting disgrace.”

Mrs. Ronald did not notice the interruption. Sadly and patiently she
went on.

“But I had a harder trial still to face,” she said. “I had to save her,
in spite of herself, from the wretch who has brought this infamy on us.
He has acted throughout in cold blood; it is his interest to marry her,
and from first to last he has plotted to force the marriage on us. For
God’s sake, don’t speak loud! She is in the room above us; if she hears
you it will be the death of her. Don’t suppose I am talking at random;
I have looked at his letters to her; I have got the confession of the
servant-girl. Such a confession! Emma is his victim, body and soul. I
know it! I know that she sent him money (_my_ money) from this place. I
know that the servant (at _her_ instigation) informed him by telegraph
of the birth of the child. Oh, Benjamin, don’t curse the poor helpless
infant--such a sweet little girl! don’t think of it! I don’t think of
it! Show me the letter that brought you here; I want to see the letter.
Ah, I can tell you who wrote it! _He_ wrote it. In his own interests;
always with his own interests in view. Don’t you see it for yourself? If
I succeed in keeping this shame and misery a secret from everybody--if
I take Emma away, to some place abroad, on pretence of her health--there
is an end of his hope of becoming your son-in-law; there is an end of
his being taken into the business. Yes! he, the low-lived vagabond
who puts up the shop-shutters, _he_ looks forward to being taken into
partnership, and succeeding you when you die! Isn’t his object in
writing that letter as plain to you now as the heaven above us? His one
chance is to set your temper in a flame, to provoke the scandal of a
discovery--and to force the marriage on us as the only remedy left. Am
I wrong in making any sacrifice, rather than bind our girl for life, our
own flesh and blood, to such a man as that? Surely you can feel for me,
and forgive me, now. How could I own the truth to you, before I left
London, knowing you as I do? How could I expect you to be patient, to go
into hiding, to pass under a false name--to do all the degrading things
that must be done, if we are to keep Emma out of this man’s way? No! I
know no more than you do where Farnaby is to be found. Hush! there is
the door-bell. It’s the doctor’s time for his visit. I tell you again I
don’t know--on my sacred word of honour, I don’t know where Farnaby is.
Oh, be quiet! be quiet! there’s the doctor going upstairs! don’t let the
doctor hear you!”

So far, she had succeeded in composing her husband. But the fury which
she had innocently roused in him, in her eagerness to justify herself,
now broke beyond all control. “You lie!” he cried furiously. “If you
know everything else about it, you know where Farnaby is. I’ll be the
death of him, if I swing for it on the gallows! Where is he? Where is
he?”

A shriek from the upper room silenced him before Mrs. Ronald could
speak again. His daughter had heard him; his daughter had recognized his
voice.

A cry of terror from her mother echoed the cry from above; the sound of
the opening and closing of the door followed instantly. Then there was
a momentary silence. Then Mrs. Ronald’s voice was heard from the upper
room calling to the nurse, asleep in the front parlour. The nurse’s
gruff tones were just audible, answering from the parlour door. There
was another interval of silence; broken by another voice--a stranger’s
voice--speaking at the open window, close by.

“Follow me upstairs, sir, directly,” the voice said in peremptory tones.
“As your daughter’s medical attendant, I tell you in the plainest terms
that you have seriously frightened her. In her critical condition, I
decline to answer for her life, unless you make the attempt at least to
undo the mischief you have done. Whether you mean it or not, soothe her
with kind words; say you have forgiven her. No! I have nothing to do
with your domestic troubles; I have only my patient to think of. I don’t
care what she asks of you, you must give way to her now. If she falls
into convulsions, she will die--and her death will be at your door.”

So, with feebler and feebler interruptions from Mr. Ronald, the doctor
spoke. It ended plainly in his being obeyed. The departing footsteps of
the men were the next sounds to be heard. After that, there was a pause
of silence--a long pause, broken by Mrs. Ronald, calling again from the
upper regions. “Take the child into the back parlour, nurse, and wait
till I come to you. It’s cooler there, at this time of the day.”

The wailing of an infant, and the gruff complaining of the nurse, were
the next sounds that reached Farnaby in his hiding place. The nurse was
grumbling to herself over the grievance of having been awakened from her
sleep. “After being up all night, a person wants rest. There’s no rest
for anybody in this house. My head’s as heavy as lead, and every bone in
me has got an ache in it.”

Before long, the renewed silence indicated that she had succeeded in
hushing the child to sleep. Farnaby forgot the restraints of caution for
the first time. His face flushed with excitement; he ventured nearer to
the window, in his eagerness to find out what might happen next. After
no long interval, the next sound came--a sound of heavy breathing, which
told him that the drowsy nurse was falling asleep again. The window-sill
was within reach of his hands. He waited until the heavy breathing
deepened to snoring. Then he drew himself up by the window-sill, and
looked into the room.

The nurse was fast asleep in an armchair; and the child was fast asleep
on her lap.

He dropped softly to the ground again. Taking off his shoes, and putting
them in his pockets, he ascended the two or three steps which led to the
half-open back garden door. Arrived in the passage, he could just
hear them talking upstairs. They were no doubt still absorbed in their
troubles; he had only the servant to dread. The splashing of water in
the kitchen informed him that she was safely occupied in washing. Slowly
and softly he opened the back parlour door, and stole across the room to
the nurse’s chair.

One of her hands still rested on the child. The serious risk was the
risk of waking her, if he lost his presence of mind and hurried it!

He glanced at the American clock on the mantelpiece. The result relieved
him; it was not so late as he had feared. He knelt down, to steady
himself, as nearly as possible on a level with the nurse’s knees. By a
hair’s breadth at a time, he got both hands under the child. By a hair’s
breadth at a time, he drew the child away from her; leaving her hand
resting on her lap by degrees so gradual that the lightest sleeper could
not have felt the change. That done (barring accidents), all was done.
Keeping the child resting easily on his left arm, he had his right
hand free to shut the door again. Arrived at the garden steps, a slight
change passed over the sleeping infant’s face--the delicate little
creature shivered as it felt the full flow of the open air. He softly
laid over its face a corner of the woollen shawl in which it was
wrapped. The child reposed as quietly on his arm as if it had still been
on the nurse’s lap.

In a minute more he was at the paling. The woman rose to receive him,
with the first smile that had crossed her face since they had left
London.

“So you’ve got the baby,” she said, “Well, you _are_ a deep one!”

“Take it,” he answered irritably. “We haven’t a moment to lose.”

Only stopping to put on his shoes, he led the way towards the more
central part of the town. The first person he met directed him to the
railway station. It was close by. In five minutes more the woman and the
baby were safe in the train to London.

“There’s the other half of the money,” he said, handing it to her
through the carriage window.

The woman eyed the child in her arms with a frowning expression of
doubt. “All very well as long as it lasts,” she said. “And what after
that?”

“Of course, I shall call and see you,” he answered.

She looked hard at him, and expressed the whole value she set on that
assurance in four words. “Of course you will!”

The train started for London. Farnaby watched it, as it left the
platform, with a look of unfeigned relief. “There!” he thought to
himself. “Emma’s reputation is safe enough now! When we are married, we
mustn’t have a love-child in the way of our prospects in life.”

Leaving the station, he stopped at the refreshment room, and drank a
glass of brandy-and-water. “Something to screw me up,” he thought, “for
what is to come.” What was to come (after he had got rid of the child)
had been carefully considered by him, on the journey to Ramsgate.
“Emma’s husband-that-is-to-be”--he had reasoned it out--“will naturally
be the first person Emma wants to see, when the loss of the baby has
upset the house. If Old Ronald has a grain of affection left in him, he
must let her marry me after _that!”_

Acting on this view of his position, he took the way that led back
to Slains Row, and rang the door-bell as became a visitor who had no
reasons for concealment now.

The household was doubtless already disorganized by the discovery of
the child’s disappearance. Neither master nor servant was active in
answering the bell. Farnaby submitted to be kept waiting with perfect
composure. There are occasions on which a handsome man is bound to put
his personal advantages to their best use. He took out his pocket-comb,
and touched up the arrangement of his whiskers with a skilled and gentle
hand. Approaching footsteps made themselves heard along the passage at
last. Farnaby put back his comb, and buttoned his coat briskly. “Now for
it!” he said, as the door was opened at last.




THE STORY




BOOK THE FIRST. AMELIUS AMONG THE SOCIALISTS



CHAPTER 1

Sixteen years after the date of Mr. Ronald’s disastrous discovery at
Ramsgate--that is to say, in the year 1872--the steamship _Aquila_ left
the port of New York, bound for Liverpool.

It was the month of September. The passenger-list of the _Aquila_ had
comparatively few names inscribed on it. In the autumn season, the
voyage from America to England, but for the remunerative value of
the cargo, would prove to be for the most part a profitless voyage to
shipowners. The flow of passengers, at that time of year, sets steadily
the other way. Americans are returning from Europe to their own country.
Tourists have delayed the voyage until the fierce August heat of the
United States has subsided, and the delicious Indian summer is ready
to welcome them. At bed and board the passengers by the _Aquila_ on
her homeward voyage had plenty of room, and the choicest morsels for
everybody alike on the well spread dinner-table.

The wind was favourable, the weather was lovely. Cheerfulness and
good-humour pervaded the ship from stem to stern. The courteous captain
did the honours of the cabin-table with the air of a gentleman who was
receiving friends in his own house. The handsome doctor promenaded the
deck arm-in-arm with ladies in course of rapid recovery from the first
gastric consequences of travelling by sea. The excellent chief engineer,
musical in his leisure moments to his fingers’ ends, played the fiddle
in his cabin, accompanied on the flute by that young Apollo of the
Atlantic trade, the steward’s mate. Only on the third morning of the
voyage was the harmony on board the _Aquila_ disturbed by a passing
moment of discord--due to an unexpected addition to the ranks of the
passengers, in the shape of a lost bird!

It was merely a weary little land-bird (blown out of its course, as the
learned in such matters supposed); and it perched on one of the yards to
rest and recover itself after its long flight.

The instant the creature was discovered, the insatiable Anglo-Saxon
delight in killing birds, from the majestic eagle to the contemptible
sparrow, displayed itself in its full frenzy. The crew ran about the
decks, the passengers rushed into their cabins, eager to seize the first
gun and to have the first shot. An old quarter-master of the _Aquila_
was the enviable man, who first found the means of destruction ready to
his hand. He lifted the gun to his shoulder, he had his finger on the
trigger, when he was suddenly pounced upon by one of the passengers--a
young, slim, sunburnt, active man--who snatched away the gun,
discharged it over the side of the vessel, and turned furiously on the
quarter-master. “You wretch! would you kill the poor weary bird that
trusts our hospitality, and only asks us to give it a rest? That little
harmless thing is as much one of God’s creatures as you are. I’m ashamed
of you--I’m horrified at you--you’ve got bird-murder in your face; I
hate the sight of you!”

The quarter-master--a large grave fat man, slow alike in his bodily and
his mental movements--listened to this extraordinary remonstrance with
a fixed stare of amazement, and an open mouth from which the unspat
tobacco-juice tricked in little brown streams. When the impetuous young
gentleman paused (not for want of words, merely for want of breath),
the quarter-master turned about, and addressed himself to the audience
gathered round. “Gentlemen,” he said, with a Roman brevity, “this young
fellow is mad.”

The captain’s voice checked the general outbreak of laughter. “That will
do, quarter-master. Let it be understood that nobody is to shoot the
bird--and let me suggest to _you,_ sir, that you might have expressed
your sentiments quite as effectually in less violent language.”

Addressed in those terms, the impetuous young man burst into another fit
of excitement. “You’re quite right, sir! I deserve every word you
have said to me; I feel I have disgraced myself.” He ran after the
quartermaster, and seized him by both hands. “I beg your pardon; I beg
your pardon with all my heart. You would have served me right if you
had thrown me overboard after the language I used to you. Pray excuse
my quick temper; pray forgive me. What do you say? ‘Let bygones _be_
bygones’? That’s a capital way of putting it. You’re a thorough good
fellow. If I can ever be of the smallest use to you (there’s my card and
address in London), let me know it; I entreat you let me know it.” He
returned in a violent hurry to the captain. “I’ve made it up with the
quarter-master, sir. He forgives me; he bears no malice. Allow me to
congratulate you on having such a good Christian in your ship. I wish
I was like him! Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, for the disturbance I
have made. It shan’t happen again--I promise you that.”

The male travellers in general looked at each other, and seemed to agree
with the quarter-master’s opinion of their fellow-passenger. The women,
touched by his evident sincerity, and charmed with his handsome blushing
eager face, agreed that he was quite right to save the poor bird,
and that it would be all the better for the weaker part of creation
generally if other men were more like him. While the various opinions
were still in course of expression, the sound of the luncheon bell
cleared the deck of the passengers, with two exceptions. One was the
impetuous young man. The other was a middle-aged traveller, with a
grizzled beard and a penetrating eye, who had silently observed the
proceedings, and who now took the opportunity of introducing himself to
the hero of the moment.

“Are you not going to take any luncheon?” he asked.

“No, sir. Among the people I have lived with we don’t eat at intervals
of three or four hours, all day long.”

“Will you excuse me,” pursued the other, “if I own I should like to
know _what_ people you have been living with? My name is Hethcote; I
was associated, at one time of my life, with a college devoted to the
training of young men. From what I have seen and heard this morning, I
fancy you have not been educated on any of the recognized systems that
are popular at the present day. Am I right?”

The excitable young man suddenly became the picture of resignation, and
answered in a formula of words as if he was repeating a lesson.

“I am Claude-Amelius-Goldenheart. Aged twenty-one. Son, and only child,
of the late Claude Goldenheart, of Shedfield Heath, Buckinghamshire,
England. I have been brought up by the Primitive Christian Socialists,
at Tadmor Community, State of Illinois. I have inherited an income of
five hundred a year. And I am now, with the approval of the Community,
going to London to see life.”

Mr. Hethcote received this copious flow of information, in some doubt
whether he had been made the victim of coarse raillery, or whether he
had merely heard a quaint statement of facts.

Claude-Amelius-Goldenheart saw that he had produced an unfavourable
impression, and hastened to set himself right.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “I am not making game of you, as you seem to
suppose. We are taught to be courteous to everybody, in our Community.
The truth is, there seems to be something odd about me (I’m sure I don’t
know what), which makes people whom I meet on my travels curious to know
who I am. If you’ll please to remember, it’s a long way from Illinois to
New York, and curious strangers are not scarce on the journey. When one
is obliged to keep on saying the same thing over and over again, a
form saves a deal of trouble. I have made a form for myself--which is
respectfully at the disposal of any person who does me the honour to
wish for my acquaintance. Will that do, sir? Very well, then; shake
hands, to show you’re satisfied.”

Mr. Hethcote shook hands, more than satisfied. He found it impossible to
resist the bright honest brown eyes, the simple winning cordial manner
of the young fellow with the quaint formula and the strange name. “Come,
Mr. Goldenheart,” he said, leading the way to a seat on deck, “let us
sit down comfortably, and have a talk.”

“Anything you like, sir--but don’t call me Mr. Goldenheart.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it sounds formal. And, besides, you’re old enough to be my
father; it’s _my_ duty to call _you_ Mister--or Sir, as we say to
our elders at Tadmor. I have left all my friends behind me at the
Community--and I feel lonely out here on this big ocean, among
strangers. Do me a kindness, sir. Call me by my Christian name; and give
me a friendly slap on the back if you find we get along smoothly in the
course of the day.”

“Which of your names shall it be?” Mr. Hethcote asked, humouring this
odd lad. “Claude?”

“No. Not Claude. The Primitive Christians said Claude was a finicking
French name. Call me Amelius, and I shall begin to feel at home again.
If you’re in a hurry, cut it down to three letters (as they did at
Tadmor), and call me Mel.”

“Very good,” said Mr. Hethcote. “Now, my friend Amelius (or Mel), I
am going to speak out plainly, as you do. The Primitive Christian
Socialists must have great confidence in their system of education, to
turn you adrift in the world without a companion to look after you.”

“You’ve hit it, sir,” Amelius answered coolly. “They have unlimited
confidence in their system of education. And I’m a proof of it.”

“You have relations in London, I suppose?” Mr. Hethcote proceeded.

For the first time the face of Amelius showed a shadow of sadness on it.

“I have relations,” he said. “But I have promised never to claim their
hospitality. ‘They are hard and worldly; and they will make you hard
and worldly, too.’ That’s what my father said to me on his deathbed.”
 He took off his hat when he mentioned his father’s death, and came to a
sudden pause--with his head bent down, like a man absorbed in thought.
In less than a minute he put on his hat again, and looked up with his
bright winning smile. “We say a little prayer for the loved ones who
are gone, when we speak of them,” he explained. “But we don’t say it out
loud, for fear of seeming to parade our religious convictions. We hate
cant in our Community.”

“I cordially agree with the Community, Amelius. But, my good fellow,
have you really no friend to welcome you when you get to London?”

Amelius answered the question mysteriously. “Wait a little!” he
said--and took a letter from the breast-pocket of his coat. Mr.
Hethcote, watching him, observed that he looked at the address with
unfeigned pride and pleasure.

“One of our brethren at the Community has given me this,” he announced.
“It’s a letter of introduction, sir, to a remarkable man--a man who is
an example to all the rest of us. He has risen, by dint of integrity and
perseverance, from the position of a poor porter in a shop to be one of
the most respected mercantile characters in the City of London.”

With this explanation, Amelius handed his letter to Mr. Hethcote. It was
addressed as follows:--

         To John Farnaby, Esquire,
         Messrs. Ronald & Farnaby,
         Stationers,
         Aldersgate Street, London.



CHAPTER 2

Mr. Hethcote looked at the address on the letter with an expression of
surprise, which did not escape the notice of Amelius. “Do you know Mr.
Farnaby?” he asked.

“I have some acquaintance with him,” was the answer, given with a
certain appearance of constraint.

Amelius went on eagerly with his questions. “What sort of man is he? Do
you think he will be prejudiced against me, because I have been brought
up in Tadmor?”

“I must be a little better acquainted, Amelius, with you and Tadmor
before I can answer your question. Suppose you tell me how you became
one of the Socialists, to begin with?”

“I was only a little boy, Mr. Hethcote, at that time.”

“Very good. Even little boys have memories. Is there any objection to
your telling me what you can remember?”

Amelius answered rather sadly, with his eyes bent on the deck. “I
remember something happening which threw a gloom over us at home in
England. I heard that my mother was concerned in it. When I grew older,
I never presumed to ask my father what it was; and he never offered to
tell me. I only know this: that he forgave her some wrong she had done
him, and let her go on living at home--and that relations and friends
all blamed him, and fell away from him, from that time. Not long
afterwards, while I was at school, my mother died. I was sent for, to
follow her funeral with my father. When we got back, and were alone
together, he took me on his knee and kissed me. ‘Which will you do,
Amelius,’ he said; ‘stay in England with your uncle and aunt? or come
with me all the way to America, and never go back to England again? Take
time to think of it.’ I wanted no time to think of it; I said, ‘Go with
you, papa.’ He frightened me by bursting out crying; it was the first
time I had ever seen him in tears. I can understand it now. He had been
cut to the heart, and had borne it like a martyr; and his boy was his
one friend left. Well, by the end of the week we were on board the ship;
and there we met a benevolent gentleman, with a long gray beard, who
bade my father welcome, and presented me with a cake. In my ignorance,
I thought he was the captain. Nothing of the sort. He was the first
Socialist I had ever seen; and it was he who had persuaded my father to
leave England.”

Mr. Hethcote’s opinions of Socialists began to show themselves (a little
sourly) in Mr. Hethcote’s smile. “And how did you get on with this
benevolent gentleman?” he asked. “After converting your father, did he
convert you--with the cake?”

Amelius smiled. “Do him justice, sir; he didn’t trust to the cake. He
waited till we were in sight of the American land--and then he preached
me a little sermon, on our arrival, entirely for my own use.”

“A sermon?” Mr. Hethcote repeated. “Very little religion in it, I
suspect.”

“Very little indeed, sir,” Amelius answered. “Only as much religion as
there is in the New Testament. I was not quite old enough to understand
him easily--so he wrote down his discourse on the fly-leaf of a
story-book I had with me, and gave it to me to read when I was tired of
the stories. Stories were scarce with me in those days; and, when I
had exhausted my little stock, rather than read nothing I read my
sermon--read it so often that I think I can remember every word of it
now. ‘My dear little boy, the Christian religion, as Christ taught it,
has long ceased to be the religion of the Christian world. A selfish and
cruel Pretence is set up in its place. Your own father is one example
of the truth of this saying of mine. He has fulfilled the first and
foremost duty of a true Christian--the duty of forgiving an injury. For
this, he stands disgraced in the estimation of all his friends: they
have renounced and abandoned him. He forgives them, and seeks peace and
good company in the New World, among Christians like himself. You will
not repent leaving home with him; you will be one of a loving family,
and, when you are old enough, you will be free to decide for yourself
what your future life shall be.’ That was all I knew about the
Socialists, when we reached Tadmor after our long journey.”

Mr. Hethcote’s prejudices made their appearance again. “A barren sort of
place,” he said, “judging by the name.”

“Barren? What can you be thinking of? A prettier place I never saw, and
never expect to see again. A clear winding river, running into a little
blue lake. A broad hill-side, all laid out in flower-gardens, and
shaded by splendid trees. On the top of the hill, the buildings of the
Community, some of brick and some of wood, so covered with creepers and
so encircled with verandahs that I can’t tell you to this day what style
of architecture they were built in. More trees behind the houses--and,
on the other side of the hill, cornfields, nothing but cornfields
rolling away and away in great yellow plains, till they reached the
golden sky and the setting sun, and were seen no more. That was our
first view of Tadmor, when the stage-coach dropped us at the town.”

Mr. Hethcote still held out. “And what about the people who live in this
earthly Paradise?” he asked. “Male and female saints--eh?”

“Oh dear no, sir! The very opposite of saints. They eat and drink like
their neighbours. They never think of wearing dirty horsehair when they
can get clean linen. And when they are tempted to misconduct themselves,
they find a better way out of it than knotting a cord and thrashing
their own backs. Saints! They all ran out together to bid us welcome
like a lot of school-children; the first thing they did was to kiss us,
and the next thing was to give us a mug of wine of their own making.
Saints! Oh, Mr. Hethcote, what will you accuse us of being next? I
declare your suspicions of the poor Socialists keep cropping up again as
fast as I cut them down. May I make a guess, sir, without offending
you? From one or two things I have noticed, I strongly suspect you’re a
British clergyman.”

Mr. Hethcote was conquered at last: he burst out laughing. “You have
discovered me,” he said, “travelling in a coloured cravat and a shooting
jacket! I confess I should like to know how.”

“It’s easily explained, sir. Visitors of all sorts are welcome at
Tadmor. We have a large experience of them in the travelling season.
They all come with their own private suspicion of us lurking about the
corners of their eyes. They see everything we have to show them, and eat
and drink at our table, and join in our amusements, and get as pleasant
and friendly with us as can be. The time comes to say goodbye--and then
we find them out. If a guest who has been laughing and enjoying himself
all day, suddenly becomes serious when he takes his leave, and shows
that little lurking devil of suspicion again about the corners of his
eyes--it’s ten chances to one that he’s a clergyman. No offence, Mr.
Hethcote! I acknowledge with pleasure that the corners of _your_ eyes
are clear again. You’re not a very clerical clergyman, sir, after all--I
don’t despair of converting you, yet!”

“Go on with your story, Amelius. You’re the queerest fellow I have met
with, for many a long day past.”

“I’m a little doubtful about going on with my story, sir. I have told
you how I got to Tadmor, and what it looks like, and what sort of people
live in the place. If I am to get on beyond that, I must jump to the
time when I was old enough to learn the Rules of the Community.”

“Well--and what then?”

“Well, Mr. Hethcote, some of the Rules might offend you.”

“Try!”

“All right, sir! don’t blame me; _I’m_ not ashamed of the Rules. And
now, if I am to speak, I must speak seriously on a serious subject; I
must begin with our religious principles. We find our Christianity in
the spirit of the New Testament--not in the letter. We have three good
reasons for objecting to pin our faith on the words alone, in that book.
First, because we are not sure that the English translation is always
to be depended on as accurate and honest. Secondly, because we know that
(since the invention of printing) there is not a copy of the book in
existence which is free from errors of the press, and that (before the
invention of printing) those errors, in manuscript copies, must as
a matter of course have been far more serious and far more numerous.
Thirdly, because there is plain internal evidence (to say nothing of
discoveries actually made in the present day) of interpolations and
corruptions, introduced into the manuscript copies as they succeeded
each other in ancient times. These drawbacks are of no importance,
however, in our estimation. We find, in the spirit of the book, the most
simple and most perfect system of religion and morality that humanity
has ever received--and with that we are content. To reverence God;
and to love our neighbour as ourselves: if we had only those two
commandments to guide us, we should have enough. The whole collection of
Doctrines (as they are called) we reject at once, without even stopping
to discuss them. We apply to them the test suggested by Christ himself:
by their fruits ye shall know them. The fruits of Doctrines, in the past
(to quote three instances only), have been the Spanish Inquisition, the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the Thirty Years’ War--and the fruits,
in the present, are dissension, bigotry, and opposition to useful
reforms. Away with Doctrines! In the interests of Christianity, away
with them! We are to love our enemies; we are to forgive injuries; we
are to help the needy; we are to be pitiful and courteous, slow to judge
others, and ashamed to exalt ourselves. That teaching doesn’t lead to
tortures, massacres, and wars; to envy, hatred, and malice--and for that
reason it stands revealed to us as the teaching that we can trust. There
is our religion, sir, as we find it in the Rules of the Community.”

“Very well, Amelius. I notice, in passing, that the Community is in one
respect like the Pope--the Community is infallible. We won’t dwell on
that. You have stated your principles. As to the application of them
next? Nobody has a right to be rich among you, of course?”

“Put it the other way, Mr. Hethcote. All men have a right to be
rich--provided they don’t make other people poor, as a part of the
process. We don’t trouble ourselves much about money; that’s the truth.
We are farmers, carpenters, weavers, and printers; and what we earn (ask
our neighbours if we don’t earn it honestly) goes into the common fund.
A man who comes to us with money puts it into the fund, and so makes
things easy for the next man who comes with empty pockets. While they
are with us, they all live in the same comfort, and have their equal
share in the same profits--deducting the sum in reverse for sudden calls
and bad times. If they leave us, the man who has brought money with
him has his undisputed right to take it away again; and the man who has
brought none bids us good-bye, all the richer for his equal share in the
profits which he has personally earned. The only fuss at our place about
money that I can remember was the fuss about my five hundred a year. I
wanted to hand it over to the fund. It was my own, mind--inherited from
my mother’s property, on my coming of age. The Elders wouldn’t hear of
it: the Council wouldn’t hear of it: the general vote of the Community
wouldn’t hear of it. ‘We agreed with his father that he should decide
for himself, when he grew to manhood’--that was how they put it. ‘Let
him go back to the Old World; and let him be free to choose, by the test
of his own experience, what his future life shall be.’ How do you think
it will end, Mr. Hethcote? Shall I return to the Community? Or shall I
stop in London?”

Mr. Hethcote answered, without a moment’s hesitation. “You will stop in
London.”

“I’ll bet you two to one, Sir, he goes back to the Community.”

In those words, a third voice (speaking in a strong New England accent)
insinuated itself into the conversation from behind. Amelius and Mr.
Hethcote, looking round, discovered a long, lean, grave stranger--with
his face overshadowed by a huge felt hat. “Have you been listening to
our conversation?” Mr. Hethcote asked haughtily.

“I have been listening,” answered the grave stranger, “with considerable
interest. This young man, I find, opens a new chapter to me in the book
of humanity. Do you accept my bet, Sir? My name is Rufus Dingwell; and
my home is at Coolspring, Mass. You do _not_ bet? I express my regret,
and have the pleasure of taking a seat alongside of you. What is your
name, Sir? Hethcote? We have one of that name at Coolspring. He is much
respected. Mr. Claude A. Goldenheart, you are no stranger to me--no,
Sir. I procured your name from the steward, when the little difficulty
occurred just now about the bird. Your name considerably surprised me.”

“Why?” Amelius asked.

“Well, sir--not to say that your surname (being Goldenheart) reminds
one unexpectedly of _The Pilgrim’s Progress_--I happen to be already
acquainted with you. By reputation.”

Amelius looked puzzled. “By reputation?” he said. “What does that mean?”

“It means, sir, that you occupy a prominent position in a recent number
of our popular journal, entitled _The Coolspring Democrat._ The late
romantic incident which caused the withdrawal of Miss Mellicent from
your Community has produced a species of social commotion at Coolspring.
Among our ladies, the tone of sentiment, Sir, is universally favourable
to you. When I left, I do assure you, you were a popular character among
us. The name of Claude A. Goldenheart was, so to speak, in everybody’s
mouth.”

Amelius listened to this, with the colour suddenly deepening on his
face, and with every appearance of heartfelt annoyance and regret.
“There is no such thing as keeping a secret in America,” he said,
irritably. “Some spy must have got among us; none of _our_ people would
have exposed the poor lady to public comment. How would you like it, Mr.
Dingwell, if the newspaper published the private sorrows of your wife or
your daughter?”

Rufus Dingwell answered with the straightforward sincerity of feeling
which is one of the indisputable 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 dealing with
love and marriage. For example, it positively prohibits any member
afflicted with hereditary disease from marrying at all; and it reserves
to itself, in the case of every proposed marriage among us, the right of
permitting or forbidding it, in council. We can’t even fall in love with
each other, without being bound, under penalties, to report it to the
Elder Brother; who, in his turn, communicates it to the monthly council;
who, in their turn, decide whether the courtship may go on or not.
That’s not the worst of it, even yet! In some cases--where we haven’t
the slightest intention of falling in love with each other--the
governing body takes the initiative. ‘You two will do well to marry; we
see it, if you don’t. Just think of it, will you?’ You may laugh; some
of our happiest marriages have been made in that way. Our governors in
council act on an established principle: here it is in a nutshell. The
results of experience in the matter of marriage, all over the world,
show that a really wise choice of a husband or a wife is an exception
to the rule; and that husbands and wives in general would be happier
together if their marriages were managed for them by competent advisers
on either side. Laws laid down on such lines as these, and others
equally strict, which I have not mentioned yet, were not put in force,
Mr. Hethcote, as you suppose, without serious difficulties--difficulties
which threatened the very existence of the Community. But that was
before my time. When I grew up, I found the husbands and wives about me
content to acknowledge that the Rules fulfilled the purpose with which
they had been made--the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It
all looks very absurd, I dare say, from your point of view. But these
queer regulations of ours answer the Christian test--by their fruits ye
shall know them. Our married people don’t live on separate sides of the
house; our children are all healthy; wife-beating is unknown among us;
and the practice in our divorce court wouldn’t keep the most moderate
lawyer on bread and cheese. Can you say as much for the success of
the marriage laws in Europe? I leave you, gentlemen, to form your own
opinions.”

Mr. Hethcote declined to express an opinion. Rufus declined to resign
his interest in the lady. “And what did Miss Mellicent say to it?” he
inquired.

“She said something that startled us all,” Amelius replied. “When
the Elder Brother began to read the first words relating to love and
marriage in the Book of Rules, she turned deadly pale; and rose up in
her place with a sudden burst of courage or desperation--I don’t know
which. ‘Must you read that to me?’ she asked. ‘I have nothing to do with
love or marriage.’ The Elder Brother laid aside his Book of Rules. ‘If
you are afflicted with an hereditary malady,’ he said, ‘the doctor from
the town will examine you, and report to us.’ She answered, ‘I have no
hereditary malady.’ The Elder Brother took up his book again. ‘In due
course of time, my dear, the Council will decide for you whether you are
to love and marry or not.’ And he read the Rules. She sat down again,
and hid her face in her hands, and never moved or spoke until he had
done. The regular questions followed. Had she anything to say, in the
way of objection? Nothing! In that case, would she sign the Rules? Yes!
When the time came for supper, she excused herself, just like a child.
‘I feel very tired; may I go to bed?’ The unmarried women in the same
dormitory with her anticipated some romantic confession when she grew
used to her new friends. They proved to be wrong. ‘My life has been one
long disappointment,’ was all she said. ‘You will do me a kindness if
you will take me as I am, and not ask me to talk about myself.’ There
was nothing sulky or ungracious in the expression of her wish to keep
her own secret. A kinder and sweeter woman--never thinking of herself,
always considerate of others--never lived. An accidental discovery made
me her chief friend, among the men: it turned out that her childhood had
been passed, where my childhood had been passed, at Shedfield Heath,
in Buckinghamshire. She was never weary of consulting my boyish
recollections, and comparing them with her own. ‘I love the place,’ she
used to say; ‘the only happy time of my life was the time passed there.’
On my sacred word of honour, this was the sort of talk that passed
between us, for week after week. What other talk could pass between a
man whose one and twentieth birthday was then near at hand, and a
woman who was close on forty? What could I do, when the poor, broken,
disappointed creature met me on the hill or by the river, and said, ‘You
are going out for a walk; may I come with you?’ I never attempted to
intrude myself into her confidence; I never even asked her why she had
joined the Community. You see what is coming, don’t you? _I_ never saw
it. I didn’t know what it meant, when some of the younger women, meeting
us together, looked at me (not at her), and smiled maliciously. My
stupid eyes were opened at last by the woman who slept in the next bed
to her in the dormitory--a woman old enough to be my mother, who took
care of me when I was a child at Tadmor. She stopped me one morning,
on my way to fish in the river. ‘Amelius,’ she said, ‘don’t go to
the fishing-house; Mellicent is waiting for you.’ I stared at her in
astonishment. She held up her finger at me: ‘Take care, you foolish boy!
You are drifting into a false position as fast as you can. Have you no
suspicion of what is going on?’ I looked all round me, in search of what
was going on. Nothing out of the common was to be seen anywhere. ‘What
can you possibly mean?’ I asked. ‘You will only laugh at me, if I tell
you,’ she said. I promised not to laugh. She too looked all round her,
as if she was afraid of somebody being near enough to hear us; and then
she let out the secret. ‘Amelius, ask for a holiday--and leave us for a
while. Mellicent is in love with you.’”




CHAPTER 4

Amelius looked at his companions, in some doubt whether they would
preserve their gravity at this critical point in his story. They both
showed him that his apprehensions were well founded. He was a little
hurt, and he instantly revealed it. “I own to my shame that I burst out
laughing myself,” he said. “But you two gentlemen are older and wiser
than I am. I didn’t expect to find you just as ready to laugh at poor
Miss Mellicent as I was.”

Mr. Hethcote declined to be reminded of his duties as a middle-aged
gentleman in this backhanded manner. “Gently, Amelius! You can’t expect
to persuade us that a laughable thing is not a thing to be laughed at.
A woman close on forty who falls in love with a young fellow of
twenty-one--”

“Is a laughable circumstance,” Rufus interposed. “Whereas a man of forty
who fancies a young woman of twenty-one is all in the order of Nature.
The men have settled it so. But why the women are to give up so much
sooner than the men is a question, sir, on which I have long wished to
hear the sentiments of the women themselves.”

Mr. Hethcote dismissed the sentiments of the women with a wave of his
hand. “Let us hear the rest of it, Amelius. Of course you went on to the
fishing-house? And of course you found Miss Mellicent there?”

“She came to the door to meet me, much as usual,” Amelius resumed, “and
suddenly checked herself in the act of shaking hands with me. I can only
suppose she saw something in my face that startled her. How it happened,
I can’t say; but I felt my good spirits forsake me the moment I found
myself in her presence. I doubt if she had ever seen me so serious
before. ‘Have I offended you?’ she asked. Of course, I denied it; but
I failed to satisfy her. She began to tremble. ‘Has somebody said
something against me? Are you weary of my company?’ Those were the next
questions. It was useless to say No. Some perverse distrust of me, or
some despair of herself, overpowered her on a sudden. She sank down
on the floor of the fishing-house, and began to cry--not a good hearty
burst of tears; a silent, miserable, resigned sort of crying, as if she
had lost all claim to be pitied, and all right to feel wounded or hurt.
I was so distressed, that I thought of nothing but consoling her. I
meant well, and I acted like a fool. A sensible man would have lifted
her up, I suppose, and left her to herself. I lifted her up, and put my
arm round her waist. She looked at me as I did it. For just a moment,
I declare she became twenty years younger! She blushed as I have never
seen a woman blush before or since--the colour flowed all over her neck
as well as her face. Before I could say a word, she caught hold of my
hand, and (of all the confusing things in the world!) kissed it. ‘No!’
she cried, ‘don’t despise me! don’t laugh at me! Wait, and hear what
my life has been, and then you will understand why a little kindness
overpowers me.’ She looked round the corner of the fishing-house
suspiciously. ‘I don’t want anybody else to hear us,’ she said, ‘all the
pride isn’t beaten out of me yet. Come to the lake, and row me about in
the boat.’ I took her out in the boat. Nobody could hear us certainly;
but she forgot, and I forgot, that anybody might see us, and that
appearances on the lake might lead to false conclusions on shore.”

Mr. Hethcote and Rufus exchanged significant looks. They had not
forgotten the Rules of the Community, when two of its members showed a
preference for each other’s society.

Amelius proceeded. “Well, there we were on the lake. I paddled with the
oars, and she opened her whole heart to me. Her troubles had begun, in
a very common way, with her mother’s death and her father’s second
marriage. She had a brother and a sister--the sister married a German
merchant, settled in New York; the brother comfortably established as
a sheep-farmer in Australia. So, you see, she was alone at home, at the
mercy of the step-mother. I don’t understand these cases myself, but
people who do, tell me that there are generally faults on both sides. To
make matters worse, they were a poor family; the one rich relative being
a sister of the first wife, who disapproved of the widower marrying
again, and never entered the house afterwards. Well, the step-mother had
a sharp tongue, and Mellicent was the first person to feel the sting of
it. She was reproached with being an encumbrance on her father, when
she ought to be doing something for herself. There was no need to repeat
those harsh words. The next day she answered an advertisement. Before
the week was over, she was earning her bread as a daily governess.”

Here Rufus stopped the narrative, having an interesting question to put.
“Might I inquire, sir, what her salary was?”

“Thirty pounds a year,” Amelius replied. “She was out teaching from nine
o’clock to two--and then went home again.”

“There seems to be nothing to complain of in that, as salaries go,” Mr.
Hethcote remarked.

“She made no complaint,” Amelius rejoined. “She was satisfied with her
salary; but she wasn’t satisfied with her life. The meek little woman
grew downright angry when she spoke of it. ‘I had no reason to complain
of my employers,’ she said. ‘I was civilly treated and punctually
paid; but I never made friends of them. I tried to make friends of the
children; and sometimes I thought I had succeeded--but, oh dear, when
they were idle, and I was obliged to keep them to their lessons, I soon
found how little hold I had on the love that I wanted them to give me.
We see children in books who are perfect little angels; never envious
or greedy or sulky or deceitful; always the same sweet, pious, tender,
grateful, innocent creatures--and it has been my misfortune never to
meet with them, go where I might! It is a hard world, Amelius, the
world that I have lived in. I don’t think there are such miserable lives
anywhere as the lives led by the poor middle classes in England.
From year’s end to year’s end, the one dreadful struggle to keep up
appearances, and the heart-breaking monotony of an existence without
change. We lived in the back street of a cheap suburb. I declare to
you we had but one amusement in the whole long weary year--the annual
concert the clergyman got up, in aid of his schools. The rest of the
year it was all teaching for the first half of the day, and needlework
for the young family for the other half. My father had religious
scruples; he prohibited theatres, he prohibited dancing and light
reading; he even prohibited looking in at the shop-windows, because we
had no money to spare and they tempted us to buy. He went to business in
the morning, and came back at night, and fell asleep after dinner,
and woke up and read prayers--and next day to business and back, and
sleeping and waking and reading prayers--and no break in it, week after
week, month after month, except on Sunday, which was always the same
Sunday; the same church, the same service, the same dinner, the same
book of sermons in the evening. Even when we had a fortnight once a year
at the seaside, we always went to the same place and lodged in the same
cheap house. The few friends we had led just the same lives, and were
beaten down flat by just the same monotony. All the women seemed to
submit to it contentedly except my miserable self. I wanted so little!
Only a change now and then; only a little sympathy when I was weary
and sick at heart; only somebody whom I could love and serve, and be
rewarded with a smile and a kind word in return. Mothers shook their
heads, and daughters laughed at me. Have we time to be sentimental?
Haven’t we enough to do, darning and mending, and turning our dresses,
and making the joint last as long as possible, and keeping the children
clean, and doing the washing at home--and tea and sugar rising, and my
husband grumbling every week when I have to ask him for the house-money.
Oh, no more of it! no more of it! People meant for better things all
ground down to the same sordid and selfish level--is that a pleasant
sight to contemplate? I shudder when I think of the last twenty years of
my life!’ That’s what she complained of, Mr. Hethcote, in the solitary
middle of the lake, with nobody but me to hear her.”

“In my country, sir,” Rufus remarked, “the Lecture Bureau would have
provided for her amusement, on economical terms. And I reckon, if a
married life would fix her, she might have tried it among Us by way of a
change.”

“That’s the saddest part of the story,” said Amelius. “There came a
time, only two years ago, when her prospects changed for the better. Her
rich aunt (her mother’s sister) died; and--what do you think?--left her
a legacy of six thousand pounds. There was a gleam of sunshine in her
life! The poor teacher was an heiress in a small way, with her fortune
at her own disposal. They had something like a festival at home, for the
first time; presents to everybody, and kissings and congratulations,
and new dresses at last. And, more than that, another wonderful event
happened before long. A gentleman made his appearance in the family
circle, with an interesting object in view--a gentleman, who had called
at the house in which she happened to be employed as teacher at the
time, and had seen her occupied with her pupils. He had kept it
to himself to be sure, but he had secretly admired her from that
moment--and now it had come out! She had never had a lover before; mind
that. And he was a remarkably handsome man: dressed beautifully, and
sang and played, and was so humble and devoted with it all. Do you think
it wonderful that she said Yes, when he proposed to marry her? I don’t
think it wonderful at all. For the first few weeks of the courtship,
the sunshine was brighter than ever. Then the clouds began to rise.
Anonymous letters came, describing the handsome gentleman (seen under
his fair surface) as nothing less than a scoundrel. She tore up the
letters indignantly--she was too delicate even to show them to him.
Signed letters came next, addressed to her father by an uncle and
an aunt, both containing one and the same warning: ‘If your daughter
insists on having him, tell her to take care of her money.’ A few days
later, a visitor arrived--a brother, who spoke out more plainly still.
As an honourable man, he could not hear of what was going on, without
making the painful confession that his brother was forbidden to enter
his house. That said, he washed his hands of all further responsibility.
You two know the world, you will guess how it ended. Quarrels in the
household; the poor middle-aged woman, living in her fool’s paradise,
blindly true to her lover; convinced that he was foully wronged; frantic
when he declared that he would not connect himself with a family which
suspected him. Ah, I have no patience when I think of it, and I almost
wish I had never begun to tell the story! Do you know what he did? She
was free of course, at her age, to decide for herself; there was no
controlling her. The wedding day was fixed. Her father had declared he
would not sanction it; and her step-mother kept him to his word.
She went alone to the church, to meet her promised husband. He never
appeared; he deserted her, mercilessly deserted her--after she had
sacrificed her own relations to him--on her wedding-day. She was taken
home insensible, and had a brain fever. The doctors declined to answer
for her life. Her father thought it time to look to her banker’s
pass-book. Out of her six thousand pounds she had privately given no
less than four thousand to the scoundrel who had deceived and forsaken
her! Not a month afterwards he married a young girl--with a fortune of
course. We read of such things in newspapers and books. But to have them
brought home to one, after living one’s own life among honest people--I
tell you it stupefied me!”

He said no more. Below them in the cabin, voices were laughing and
talking, to a cheerful accompaniment of clattering knives and forks.
Around them spread the exultant glory of sea and sky. All that they
heard, all that they saw, was cruelty out of harmony with the miserable
story which had just reached its end. With one accord the three men rose
and paced the deck, feeling physically the same need of some movement to
lighten their spirits. With one accord they waited a little, before the
narrative was resumed.



CHAPTER 5

Mr. Hethcote was the first to speak again.

“I can understand the poor creature’s motive in joining your Community,”
 he said. “To a person of any sensibility her position, among such
relatives as you describe, must have been simply unendurable after what
had happened. How did she hear of Tadmor and the Socialists?”

“She had read one of our books,” Amelius answered; “and she had her
married sister at New York to go to. There were moments, after her
recovery (she confessed it to me frankly), when the thought of suicide
was in her mind. Her religious scruples saved her. She was kindly
received by her sister and her sister’s husband. They proposed to keep
her with them to teach their children. No! the new life offered to her
was too like the old life--she was broken in body and mind; she had
no courage to face it. We have a resident agent in New York; and he
arranged for her journey to Tadmor. There is a gleam of brightness, at
any rate, in this part of her story. She blessed the day, poor soul,
when she joined us. Never before had she found herself among such
kind-hearted, unselfish, simple people. Never before--” he abruptly
checked himself, and looked a little confused.

Obliging Rufus finished the sentence for him. “Never before had she
known a young man with such natural gifts of fascination as C.A.G. Don’t
you be too modest, sir; it doesn’t pay, I assure you, in the nineteenth
century.”

Amelius was not as ready with his laugh as usual. “I wish I could drop
it at the point we have reached now,” he said. “But she has left Tadmor;
and, in justice to her (after the scandals in the newspaper), I must
tell you how she left it, and why. The mischief began when I was helping
her out of the boat. Two of our young women met us on the bank of the
lake, and asked me how I got on with my fishing. They didn’t mean any
harm--they were only in their customary good spirits. Still, there was
no mistaking their looks and tones when they put the question. Miss
Mellicent, in her confusion, made matters worse. She coloured up, and
snatched her hand out of mine, and ran back to the house by herself.
The girls, enjoying their own foolish joke, congratulated me on my
prospects. I must have been out of sorts in some way--upset, perhaps,
by what I had heard in the boat. Anyhow, I lost my temper, and _I_ made
matters worse, next. I said some angry words, and left them. The same
evening I found a letter in my room. ‘For your sake, I must not be seen
alone with you again. It is hard to lose the comfort of your sympathy,
but I must submit. Think of me as kindly as I think of you. It has
done me good to open my heart to you.’ Only those lines, signed by
Mellicent’s initials. I was rash enough to keep the letter, instead of
destroying it. All might have ended well, nevertheless, if she had only
held to her resolution. But, unluckily, my twenty-first birthday was
close at hand; and there was talk of keeping it as a festival in the
Community. I was up with sunrise when the day came; having some farming
work to look after, and wanting to get it over in good time. My shortest
way back to breakfast was through a wood. In the wood I met her.”

“Alone?” Mr. Hethcote asked.

Rufus expressed his opinion of the wisdom of putting this question with
his customary plainness of language. “When there’s a rash thing to be
done by a man and a woman together, sir, philosophers have remarked that
it’s always the woman who leads the way. Of course she was alone.”

“She had a little present for me on my birthday,” Amelius explained--“a
purse of her own making. And she was afraid of the ridicule of the young
women, if she gave it to me openly. ‘You have my heart’s dearest wishes
for your happiness; think of me sometimes, Amelius, when you open your
purse.’ If you had been in my place, could you have told her to go away,
when she said that, and put her gift into your hand? Not if she had been
looking at you at the moment--I’ll swear you couldn’t have done it!”

The lean yellow face of Rufus Dingwell relaxed for the first time into
a broad grin. “There are further particulars, sir, stated in the
newspaper,” he said slily.

“Damn the newspaper!” Amelius answered.

Rufus bowed, serenely courteous, with the air of a man who accepted a
British oath as an unwilling compliment paid by the old country to the
American press. “The newspaper report states, sir, that she kissed you.”

“It’s a lie!” Amelius shouted.

“Perhaps it’s an error of the press,” Rufus persisted. “Perhaps, _you_
kissed _her?”_

“Never mind what I did,” said Amelius savagely.

Mr. Hethcote felt it necessary to interfere. He addressed Rufus in his
most magnificent manner. “In England, Mr. Dingwell, a gentleman is not
in the habit of disclosing these--er--these--er, er--”

“These kissings in a wood?” suggested Rufus. “In my country, sir, we
do not regard kissing, in or out of a wood, in the light of a shameful
proceeding. Quite the contrary, I do assure you.”

Amelius recovered his temper. The discussion was becoming too ridiculous
to be endured by the unfortunate person who was the object of it.

“Don’t let us make mountains out of molehills,” he said. “I did kiss
her--there! A woman pressing the prettiest little purse you ever saw
into your hand, and wishing you many happy returns of the day with the
tears in her eyes; I should like to know what else was to be done but
to kiss her. Ah, yes, smooth out your newspaper report, and have another
look at it! She _did_ rest her head on my shoulder, poor soul, and she
_did_ say, ‘Oh, Amelius, I thought my heart was turned to stone; feel
how you have made it beat!’ When I remembered what she had told me in
the boat, I declare to God I almost burst out crying myself--it was so
innocent and so pitiful.”

Rufus held out his hand with true American cordiality. “I do assure
you, sir, I meant no harm,” he said. “The right grit is in you, and no
mistake--and there goes the newspaper!” He rolled up the slip, and flung
it overboard.

Mr. Hethcote nodded his entire approval of this proceeding. Amelius went
on with his story.

“I’m near the end now,” he said. “If I had known it would have taken so
long to tell--never mind! We got out of the wood at last, Mr. Rufus;
and left it without a suspicion that we had been watched. I was prudent
enough (when it was too late, you will say) to suggest to her that we
had better be careful for the future. Instead of taking it seriously,
she laughed. ‘Have you altered your mind, since you wrote to me?’ I
asked. ‘To be sure I have,’ she said. ‘When I wrote to you I forgot the
difference between your age and mine. Nothing that _we_ do will be taken
seriously. I am afraid of their laughing at me, Amelius; but I am afraid
of nothing else.’ I did my best to undeceive her. I told her plainly
that people unequally matched in years--women older than men, as well as
men older than women--were not uncommonly married among us. The council
only looked to their being well suited in other ways, and declined to
trouble itself about the question of age. I don’t think I produced much
effect; she seemed, for once in her life, poor thing, to be too happy to
look beyond the passing moment. Besides, there was the birthday festival
to keep her mind from dwelling on doubts and fears that were not
agreeable to her. And the next day there was another event to occupy
our attention--the arrival of the lawyer’s letter from London, with the
announcement of my inheritance on coming of age. It was settled, as you
know, that I was to go out into the world, and to judge for myself; but
the date of my departure was not fixed. Two days later, the storm that
had been gathering for weeks past burst on us--we were cited to appear
before the council to answer for an infraction of the Rules. Everything
that I have confessed to you, and some things besides that I have kept
to myself, lay formally inscribed on a sheet of paper placed on the
council table--and pinned to the sheet of paper was Mellicent’s letter
to me, found in my room. I took the whole blame on myself, and insisted
on being confronted with the unknown person who had informed against
us. The council met this by a question:--‘Is the information, in any
particular, false?’ Neither of us could deny that it was, in every
particular, true. Hearing this, the council decided that there was no
need, on our own showing, to confront us with the informer. From that
day to this, I have never known who the spy was. Neither Mellicent nor
I had an enemy in the Community. The girls who had seen us on the lake,
and some other members who had met us together, only gave their evidence
on compulsion--and even then they prevaricated, they were so fond of us
and so sorry for us. After waiting a day, the governing body pronounced
their judgment. Their duty was prescribed to them by the Rules. We were
sentenced to six months’ absence from the Community; to return or not
as we pleased. A hard sentence, gentlemen--whatever _we_ may think of
it--to homeless and friendless people, to the Fallen Leaves that had
drifted to Tadmor. In my case it had been already arranged that I was
to leave. After what had happened, my departure was made compulsory in
four-and-twenty hours; and I was forbidden to return, until the date
of my sentence had expired. In Mellicent’s case they were still more
strict. They would not trust her to travel by herself. A female member
of the Community was appointed to accompany her to the house of her
married sister at New York: she was ordered to be ready for the journey
by sunrise the next morning. We both understood, of course, that the
object of this was to prevent our travelling together. They might have
saved themselves the trouble of putting obstacles in our way.”

“So far as You were concerned, I suppose?” said Mr. Hethcote.

“So far as She was concerned also,” Amelius answered.

“How did she take it, sir?” Rufus inquired.

“With a composure that astonished us all,” said Amelius. “We had
anticipated tears and entreaties for mercy. She stood up perfectly calm,
far calmer than I was, with her head turned towards me, and her eyes
resting quietly on my face. If you can imagine a woman whose whole being
was absorbed in looking into the future; seeing what no mortal creature
about her saw; sustained by hopes that no mortal creature about her
could share--you may see her as I did, when she heard her sentence
pronounced. The members of the Community, accustomed to take leave of an
erring brother or sister with loving and merciful words, were all more
or less distressed as they bade her farewell. Most of the women were in
tears as they kissed her. They said the same kind words to her over and
over again. ‘We are heartily sorry for you, dear; we shall all be glad
to welcome you back.’ They sang our customary hymn at parting--and broke
down before they got to the end. It was _she_ who consoled _them!_ Not
once, through all that melancholy ceremony, did she lose her strange
composure, her rapt mysterious look. I was the last to say farewell; and
I own I couldn’t trust myself to speak. She held my hand in hers. For
a moment, her face lighted up softly with a radiant smile--then the
strange preoccupied expression flowed over her again, like shadow over a
light. Her eyes, still looking into mine, seemed to look beyond me. She
spoke low, in sad steady tones. ‘Be comforted, Amelius; the end is not
yet.’ She put her hands on my head, and drew it down to her. ‘You will
come back to me,’ she whispered--and kissed me on the forehead, before
them all. When I looked up again, she was gone. I have neither seen her
nor heard from her since. It’s all told, gentlemen--and some of it has
distressed me in the telling. Let me go away for a minute by myself, and
look at the sea.”





BOOK THE SECOND. AMELIUS IN LONDON



CHAPTER 1

Oh, Rufus Dingwell, it is such a rainy day! And the London street which
I look out on from my hotel window presents such a dirty and such a
miserable view! Do you know, I hardly feel like the same Amelius who
promised to write to you when you left the steamer at Queenstown. My
spirits are sinking; I begin to feel old. Am I in the right state of
mind to tell you what are my first impressions of London? Perhaps I may
alter my opinion. At present (this is between ourselves), I don’t like
London or London people--excepting two ladies, who, in very different
ways, have interested and charmed me.

Who are the ladies? I must tell you what I heard about them from Mr.
Hethcote, before I present them to you on my own responsibility.

After you left us, I found the last day of the voyage to Liverpool dull
enough. Mr. Hethcote did not seem to feel it in the same way: on the
contrary, he grew more familiar and confidential in his talk with me. He
has some of the English stiffness, you see, and your American pace was
a little too fast for him. On our last night on board, we had some more
conversation about the Farnabys. You were not interested enough in the
subject to attend to what he said about them while you were with us; but
if you are to be introduced to the ladies, you must be interested now.
Let me first inform you that Mr. and Mrs. Farnaby have no children; and
let me add that they have adopted the daughter and orphan child of Mrs.
Farnaby’s sister. This sister, it seems, died many years ago, surviving
her husband for a few months only. To complete the story of the past,
death has also taken old Mr. Ronald, the founder of the stationer’s
business, and his wife, Mrs. Farnaby’s mother. Dry facts these--I don’t
deny it; but there is something more interesting to follow. I have next
to tell you how Mr. Hethcote first became acquainted with Mrs. Farnaby.
Now, Rufus, we are coming to something romantic at last!

It is some time since Mr. Hethcote ceased to perform his clerical
duties, owing to a malady in the throat, which made it painful for him
to take his place in the reading-desk or the pulpit. His last curacy
attached him to a church at the West-end of London; and here, one Sunday
evening, after he had preached the sermon, a lady in trouble came to him
in the vestry for spiritual advice and consolation. She was a regular
attendant at the church, and something which he had said in that
evening’s sermon had deeply affected her. Mr. Hethcote spoke with her
afterwards on many occasions at home. He felt a sincere interest in her,
but he disliked her husband; and, when he gave up his curacy, he ceased
to pay visits to the house. As to what Mrs. Farnaby’s troubles were, I
can tell you nothing. Mr. Hethcote spoke very gravely and sadly when he
told me that the subject of his conversations with her must be kept a
secret. “I doubt whether you and Mr. Farnaby will get on well together,”
 he said to me; “but I shall be astonished if you are not favourably
impressed by his wife and her niece.”

This was all I knew when I presented my letter of introduction to Mr.
Farnaby at his place of business.

It was a grand stone building, with great plate-glass windows--all
renewed and improved, they told me, since old Mr. Ronald’s time. My
letter and my card went into an office at the back, and I followed them
after a while. A lean, hard, middle-aged man, buttoned up tight in a
black frock-coat, received me, holding my written introduction open in
his hand. He had a ruddy complexion not commonly seen in Londoners, so
far as my experience goes. His iron-gray hair and whiskers (especially
the whiskers) were in wonderfully fine order--as carefully oiled and
combed as if he had just come out of a barber’s shop. I had been in the
morning to the Zoological Gardens; his eyes, when he lifted them from
the letter to me, reminded me of the eyes of the eagles--glassy and
cruel. I have a fault that I can’t cure myself of. I like people, or
dislike them, at first sight, without knowing, in either case, whether
they deserve it or not. In the one moment when our eyes met, I felt the
devil in me. In plain English, I hated Mr. Farnaby!

“Good morning, sir,” he began, in a loud, harsh, rasping voice. “The
letter you bring me takes me by surprise.”

“I thought the writer was an old friend of yours,” I said.

“An old friend of mine,” Mr. Farnaby answered, “whose errors I deplore.
When he joined your Community, I looked upon him as a lost man. I am
surprised at his writing to me.”

It is quite likely I was wrong, knowing nothing of the usages of society
in England. I thought this reception of me downright rude. I had laid my
hat on a chair; I took it up in my hand again, and delivered a parting
shot at the brute with the oily whiskers.

“If I had known what you now tell me,” I said, “I should not have
troubled you by presenting that letter. Good morning.”

This didn’t in the least offend him. A curious smile broke out on his
face; it widened his eyes, and it twitched up his mouth at one corner.
He held out his hand to stop me. I waited, in case he felt bound to make
an apology. He did nothing of the sort--he only made a remark.

“You are young and hasty,” he said. “I may lament my friend’s
extravagances, without failing on that account in what is due to an
old friendship. You are probably not aware that we have no sympathy in
England with Socialists.”

I hit him back again. “In that case, sir, a little Socialism in England
would do you no harm. We consider it a part of our duty as Christians
to feel sympathy with all men who are honest in their convictions--no
matter how mistaken (in our opinion) the convictions may be.” I rather
thought I had him there; and I took up my hat again, to get off with the
honours of victory while I had the chance.

I am sincerely ashamed of myself, Rufus, in telling you all this.
I ought to have given him back “the soft answer that turneth away
wrath”--my conduct was a disgrace to my Community. What evil influence
was at work in me? Was it the air of London? or was it a possession of
the devil?

He stopped me for the second time--not in the least disconcerted by what
I had said to him. His inbred conviction of his own superiority to a
young adventurer like me was really something magnificent to witness. He
did me justice--the Philistine-Pharisee did me justice! Will you believe
it? He made his remarks next on my good points, as if I had been a young
bull at a prize cattle show.

“Excuse me for noticing it,” he said. “Your manners are perfectly
gentlemanlike, and you speak English without any accent. And yet you
have been brought up in America. What does it mean?”

I grew worse and worse--I got downright sulky now.

“I suppose it means,” I answered, “that some of us, in America,
cultivate ourselves as well as our land. We have our books and music,
though you seem to think we only have our axes and spades. Englishmen
don’t claim a monopoly of good manners at Tadmor. We see no difference
between an American gentleman and an English gentleman. And as for
speaking English with an accent, the Americans accuse _us_ of doing
that.”

He smiled again. “How very absurd!” he said, with a superb compassion
for the benighted Americans. By this time, I suspect he began to feel
that he had had enough of me. He got rid of me with an invitation.

“I shall be glad to receive you at my private residence, and introduce
you to my wife and her niece--our adopted daughter. There is the
address. We have a few friends to dinner on Saturday next, at seven.
Will you give us the pleasure of your company?”

We are all aware that there is a distinction between civility and
cordiality; but I myself never knew how wide that distinction might be,
until Mr. Farnaby invited me to dinner. If I had not been curious (after
what Mr. Hethcote had told me) to see Mrs. Farnaby and her niece,
I should certainly have slipped out of the engagement. As it was, I
promised to dine with Oily-Whiskers.

He put his hand into mine at parting. It felt as moistly cold as a dead
fish. After getting out again into the street, I turned into the first
tavern I passed, and ordered a drink. Shall I tell you what else I did?
I went into the lavatory, and washed Mr. Farnaby off my hand. (N.B.--If
I had behaved in this way at Tadmor, I should have been punished with
the lighter penalty--taking my meals by myself, and being forbidden to
enter the Common Room for eight and forty hours.) I feel I am getting
wickeder and wickeder in London--I have half a mind to join you in
Ireland. What does Tom Moore say of his countrymen--he ought to know, I
suppose? “For though they love women and golden store: Sir Knight, they
love honour and virtue more!” They must have been all Socialists in Tom
Moore’s time. Just the place for me.


I have been obliged to wait a little. A dense fog has descended on us
by way of variety. With a stinking coal fire, with the gas lit and the
curtains drawn at half-past eleven in the forenoon, I feel that I am in
my own country again at last. Patience, my friend--patience! I am coming
to the ladies.

Entering Mr. Farnaby’s private residence on the appointed day, I became
acquainted with one more of the innumerable insincerities of modern
English life. When a man asks you to dine with him at seven o’clock, in
other countries, he means what he says. In England, he means half-past
seven, and sometimes a quarter to eight. At seven o’clock I was the only
person in Mr. Farnaby’s drawing-room. At ten minutes past seven, Mr.
Farnaby made his appearance. I had a good mind to take his place in the
middle of the hearth-rug, and say, “Farnaby, I am glad to see you.” But
I looked at his whiskers; and _they_ said to me, as plainly as words
could speak, “Better not!”

In five minutes more, Mrs. Farnaby joined us.

I wish I was a practised author--or, no, I would rather, for the moment,
be a competent portrait-painter, and send you Mrs. Farnaby’s likeness
enclosed. How I am to describe her in words, I really don’t know. My
dear fellow, she almost frightened me. I never before saw such a woman;
I never expect to see such a woman again. There was nothing in her
figure, or in her way of moving, that produced this impression on
me--she is little and fat, and walks with a firm, heavy step, like the
step of a man. Her face is what I want to make you see as plainly as I
saw it myself: it was her face that startled me.

So far as I can pretend to judge, she must have been pretty, in a
healthy way, when she was young. I declare I hardly know whether she is
not pretty now. She certainly has no marks or wrinkles; her hair either
has no gray in it, or is too light to show the gray. She has preserved
her fair complexion; perhaps with art to assist it--I can’t say. As for
her lips--I am not speaking disrespectfully, I am only describing them
truly, when I say that they invite kisses in spite of her. In two words,
though she has been married (as I know from what one of the guests told
me after dinner) for sixteen years, she would be still an irresistible
little woman, but for the one startling drawback of her eyes. Don’t
mistake me. In themselves, they are large, well-opened blue eyes, and
may at one time have been the chief attraction in her face. But now
there is an expression of suffering in them--long, unsolaced suffering,
as I believe--so despairing and so dreadful, that she really made my
heart ache when I looked at her. I will swear to it, that woman lives in
some secret hell of her own making, and longs for the release of death;
and is so inveterately full of bodily life and strength, that she may
carry her burden with her to the utmost verge of life. I am digging
the pen into the paper, I feel this so strongly, and I am so wretchedly
incompetent to express my feeling. Can you imagine a diseased mind,
imprisoned in a healthy body? I don’t care what doctors or books may
say--it is that, and nothing else. Nothing else will solve the mystery
of the smooth face, the fleshy figure, the firm step, the muscular grip
of her hand when she gives it to you--and the soul in torment that looks
at you all the while out of her eyes. It is useless to tell me that such
a contradiction as this cannot exist. I have seen the woman; and she
does exist.

Oh yes! I can fancy you grinning over my letter--I can hear you saying
to yourself, “Where did he pick up his experience, I wonder?” I have no
experience--I only have something that serves me instead of it, and
I don’t know what. The Elder Brother, at Tadmor, used to say it was
sympathy. But _he_ is a sentimentalist.

Well, Mr. Farnaby presented me to his wife--and then walked away as if
he was sick of us both, and looked out of the window.

For some reason or other, Mrs. Farnaby seemed to be surprised, for the
moment, by my personal appearance. Her husband had, very likely, not
told her how young I was. She got over her momentary astonishment, and,
signing to me to sit by her on the sofa, said the necessary words of
welcome--evidently thinking something else all the time. The strange
miserable eyes looked over my shoulder, instead of looking at me.

“Mr. Farnaby tells me you have been living in America.”

The tone in which she spoke was curiously quiet and monotonous. I
have heard such tones, in the Far West, from lonely settlers without a
neighbouring soul to speak to. Has Mrs. Farnaby no neighbouring soul to
speak to, except at dinner parties?

“You are an Englishman, are you not?” she went on.

I said Yes, and cast about in my mind for something to say to her. She
saved me the trouble by making me the victim of a complete series of
questions. This, as I afterwards discovered, was _her_ way of finding
conversation for strangers. Have you ever met with absent-minded people
to whom it is a relief to ask questions mechanically, without feeling
the slightest interest in the answers?

She began. “Where did you live in America?”

“At Tadmor, in the State of Illinois.”

“What sort of place is Tadmor?”

I described the place as well as I could, under the circumstances.

“What made you go to Tadmor?”

It was impossible to reply to this, without speaking of the Community.
Feeling that the subject was not in the least likely to interest her,
I spoke as briefly as I could. To my astonishment, I evidently began to
interest her from that moment. The series of questions went on--but now
she not only listened, she was eager for the answers.

“Are there any women among you?”

“Nearly as many women as men.”

Another change! Over the weary misery of her eyes there flashed a bright
look of interest which completely transformed them. Her articulation
even quickened when she put her next question.

“Are any of the women friendless creatures, who came to you from
England?”

“Yes, some of them.”

I thought of Mellicent as I spoke. Was this new interest that I had so
innocently aroused, an interest in Mellicent? Her next question only
added to my perplexity. Her next question proved that my guess had
completely failed to hit the mark.

“Are there any _young_ women among them?”

Mr. Farnaby, standing with his back to us thus far, suddenly turned and
looked at her, when she inquired if there were “young” women among us.

“Oh yes,” I said. “Mere girls.”

She pressed so near to me that her knees touched mine. “How old?” she
asked eagerly.

Mr. Farnaby left the window, walked close up to the sofa, and
deliberately interrupted us.

“Nasty muggy weather, isn’t it?” he said. “I suppose the climate of
America--”

Mrs. Farnaby deliberately interrupted her husband. “How old?” she
repeated, in a louder tone.

I was bound, of course, to answer the lady of the house. “Some girls
from eighteen to twenty. And some younger.”

“How much younger?”

“Oh, from sixteen to seventeen.”

She grew more and more excited; she positively laid her hand on my arm
in her eagerness to secure my attention all to herself. “American girls
or English?” she resumed, her fat, firm fingers closing on me with a
tremulous grasp.

“Shall you be in town in November?” said Mr. Farnaby, purposely
interrupting us again. “If you would like to see the Lord Mayor’s
Show--”

Mrs. Farnaby impatiently shook me by the arm. “American girls or
English?” she reiterated, more obstinately than ever.

Mr. Farnaby gave her one look. If he could have put her on the blazing
fire and have burnt her up in an instant by an effort of will, I believe
he would have made the effort. He saw that I was observing him, and
turned quickly from his wife to me. His ruddy face was pale with
suppressed rage. My early arrival had given Mrs. Farnaby an opportunity
of speaking to me, which he had not anticipated in inviting me to
dinner. “Come and see my pictures,” he said.

His wife still held me fast. Whether he liked it or not, I had again
no choice but to answer her. “Some American girls, and some English,” I
said.

Her eyes opened wider and wider in unutterable expectation. She suddenly
advanced her face so close to mine, that I felt her hot breath on my
cheeks as the next words burst their way through her lips.

“Born in England?”

“No. Born at Tadmor.”

She dropped my arm. The light died out of her eyes in an instant. In
some inconceivable way, I had utterly destroyed some secret expectation
that she had fixed on me. She actually left me on the sofa, and took a
chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. Mr. Farnaby, turning paler
and paler, stepped up to her as she changed her place. I rose to look at
the pictures on the wall nearest to me. You remarked the extraordinary
keenness of my sense of hearing, while we were fellow passengers on the
steamship. When he stooped over her, and whispered in her ear, I heard
him--though nearly the whole breadth of the room was between us. “You
hell-cat!”--that was what Mr. Farnaby said to his wife.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour after seven. In quick
succession, the guests at the dinner now entered the room.

I was so staggered by the extraordinary scene of married life which
I had just witnessed, that the guests produced only a very faint
impression upon me. My mind was absorbed in trying to find the true
meaning of what I had seen and heard. Was Mrs. Farnaby a little mad?
I dismissed that idea as soon as it occurred to me; nothing that I had
observed in her justified it. The truer conclusion appeared to be,
that she was deeply interested in some absent (and possibly lost) young
creature; whose age, judging by actions and tones which had sufficiently
revealed that part of the secret to me, could not be more than sixteen
or seventeen years. How long had she cherished the hope of seeing the
girl, or hearing of her? It must have been, anyhow, a hope very deeply
rooted, for she had been perfectly incapable of controlling herself
when I had accidentally roused it. As for her husband, there could be
no doubt that the subject was not merely distasteful to him, but so
absolutely infuriating that he could not even keep his temper, in the
presence of a third person invited to his house. Had he injured the girl
in any way? Was he responsible for her disappearance? Did his wife know
it, or only suspect it? Who _was_ the girl? What was the secret of Mrs.
Farnaby’s extraordinary interest in her--Mrs. Farnaby, whose marriage
was childless; whose interest one would have thought should be naturally
concentrated on her adopted daughter, her sister’s orphan child? In
conjectures such as these, I completely lost myself. Let me hear
what your ingenuity can make of the puzzle; and let me return to Mr.
Farnaby’s dinner, waiting on Mr. Farnaby’s table.

The servant threw open the drawing-room door, and the most honoured
guest present led Mrs. Farnaby to the dining-room. I roused myself
to some observation of what was going on about me. No ladies had been
invited; and the men were all of a certain age. I looked in vain for the
charming niece. Was she not well enough to appear at the dinner-party? I
ventured on putting the question to Mr. Farnaby.

“You will find her at the tea-table, when we return to the drawing-room.
Girls are out of place at dinner-parties.” So he answered me--not very
graciously.

As I stepped out on the landing, I looked up; I don’t know why, unless
I was the unconscious object of magnetic attraction. Anyhow, I had
my reward. A bright young face peeped over the balusters of the upper
staircase, and modestly withdrew itself again in a violent hurry.
Everybody but Mr. Farnaby and myself had disappeared in the dining-room.
Was she having a peep at the young Socialist?


Another interruption to my letter, caused by another change in the
weather. The fog has vanished; the waiter is turning off the gas, and
letting in the drab-coloured daylight. I ask him if it is still raining.
He smiles, and rubs his hands, and says, “It looks like clearing up
soon, sir.” This man’s head is gray; he has been all his life a waiter
in London--and he can still see the cheerful side of things. What native
strength of mind cast away on a vocation that is unworthy of it!

Well--and now about the Farnaby dinner. I feel a tightness in the lower
part of my waistcoat, Rufus, when I think of the dinner; there was
such a quantity of it, and Mr. Farnaby was so tyrannically resolute in
forcing his luxuries down the throats of his guests. His eye was on me,
if I let my plate go away before it was empty--his eye said “I have paid
for this magnificent dinner, and I mean to see you eat it.” Our printed
list of the dishes, as they succeeded each other, also informed us of
the varieties of wine which it was imperatively necessary to drink with
each dish. I got into difficulties early in the proceedings. The taste
of sherry, for instance, is absolutely nauseous to me; and Rhine wine
turns into vinegar ten minutes after it has passed my lips. I asked for
the wine that I could drink, out of its turn. You should have seen Mr.
Farnaby’s face, when I violated the rules of his dinner-table! It was
the one amusing incident of the feast--the one thing that alleviated the
dreary and mysterious spectacle of Mrs. Farnaby. There she sat, with her
mind hundreds of miles away from everything that was going on about
her, entangling the two guests, on her right hand and on her left, in a
network of vacant questions, just as she had entangled me. I discovered
that one of these gentlemen was a barrister and the other a ship-owner,
by the answers which Mrs. Farnaby absently extracted from them on the
subject of their respective vocations in life. And while she questioned
incessantly, she ate incessantly. Her vigorous body insisted on being
fed. She would have emptied her wineglass (I suspect) as readily as
she plied her knife and fork--but I discovered that a certain system
of restraint was established in the matter of wine. At intervals, Mr.
Farnaby just looked at the butler--and the butler and his bottle, on
those occasions, deliberately passed her by. Not the slightest visible
change was produced in her by the eating and drinking; she was equal to
any demands that any dinner could make on her. There was no flush in her
face, no change in her spirits, when she rose, in obedience to English
custom, and retired to the drawing-room.

Left together over their wine, the men began to talk politics.

I listened at the outset, expecting to get some information. Our
readings in modern history at Tadmor had informed us of the dominant
political position of the middle classes in England, since the time of
the first Reform Bill. Mr. Farnaby’s guests represented the respectable
mediocrity of social position, the professional and commercial average
of the nation. They all talked glibly enough--I and an old gentleman who
sat next to me being the only listeners. I had spent the morning lazily
in the smoking-room of the hotel, reading the day’s newspapers. And
what did I hear now, when the politicians set in for their discussion? I
heard the leading articles of the day’s newspapers translated into bald
chat, and coolly addressed by one man to another, as if they were his
own individual views on public affairs! This absurd imposture positively
went the round of the table, received and respected by everybody with a
stolid solemnity of make-believe which it was downright shameful to
see. Not a man present said, “I saw that today in the _Times_ or the
_Telegraph.”_ Not a man present had an opinion of his own; or, if he
had an opinion, ventured to express it; or, if he knew nothing of the
subject, was honest enough to say so. One enormous Sham, and everybody
in a conspiracy to take it for the real thing: that is an accurate
description of the state of political feeling among the representative
men at Mr. Farnaby’s dinner. I am not judging rashly by one example
only; I have been taken to clubs and public festivals, only to hear over
and over again what I heard in Mr. Farnaby’s dining-room. Does it need
any great foresight to see that such a state of things as this cannot
last much longer, in a country which has not done with reforming itself
yet? The time is coming, in England, when the people who _have_ opinions
of their own will be heard, and when Parliament will be forced to open
the door to them.

This is a nice outbreak of republican freedom! What does my
long-suffering friend think of it--waiting all the time to be presented
to Mr. Farnaby’s niece? Everything in its place, Rufus. The niece
followed the politics, at the time; and she shall follow them now.

You shall hear first what my next neighbour said of her--a quaint old
fellow, a retired doctor, if I remember correctly. He seemed to be as
weary of the second-hand newspaper talk as I was; he quite sparkled
and cheered up when I introduced the subject of Miss Regina. Have I
mentioned her name yet? If not, here it is for you in full:--Miss Regina
Mildmay.

“I call her the brown girl,” said the old gentleman. “Brown hair, brown
eyes, and a brown skin. No, not a brunette; not dark enough for that--a
warm, delicate brown; wait till you see it! Takes after her father, I
should tell you. He was a fine-looking man in his time; foreign blood
in his veins, by his mother’s side. Miss Regina gets her queer name by
being christened after his mother. Never mind her name; she’s a charming
person. Let’s drink her health.”

We drank her health. Remembering that he had called her “the brown
girl,” I said I supposed she was still quite young.

“Better than young,” the doctor answered; “in the prime of life. I call
her a girl, by habit. Wait till you see her!”

“Has she a good figure, sir?”

“Ha! you’re like the Turks, are you? A nice-looking woman doesn’t
content you--you must have her well-made too. We can accommodate you,
sir; we are slim and tall, with a swing of our hips, and we walk like
a goddess. Wait and see how her head is put on her shoulders--I say
no more. Proud? Not she! A simple, unaffected, kind-hearted creature.
Always the same; I never saw her out of temper in my life; I never
heard her speak ill of anybody. The man who gets her will be a man to be
envied, I can tell you!”

“Is she engaged to be married?”

“No. She has had plenty of offers; but she doesn’t seem to care for
anything of that sort--so far. Devotes herself to Mrs. Farnaby, and
keeps up her school-friendships. A splendid creature, with the vital
thermometer at temperate heart--a calm, meditative, equable person. Pass
me the olives. Only think! the man who discovered olives is unknown;
no statue of him erected in any part of the civilized earth. I know few
more remarkable instances of human ingratitude.”

I risked a bold question--but not on the subject of olives. “Isn’t Miss
Regina’s life rather a dull one in this house?”

The doctor cautiously lowered his voice. “It would be dull enough to
some women. Regina’s early life has been a hard one. Her mother was Mr.
Ronald’s eldest daughter. The old brute never forgave her for marrying
against his wishes. Mrs. Ronald did all she could, secretly, to help the
young wife in disgrace. But old Ronald had sole command of the money,
and kept it to himself. From Regina’s earliest childhood there was
always distress at home. Her father harassed by creditors, trying one
scheme after another, and failing in all; her mother and herself, half
starved--with their very bedclothes sometimes at the pawnbrokers. I
attended them in their illnesses, and though they hid their wretchedness
from everybody else (proud as Lucifer, both of them!), they couldn’t
hide it from me. Fancy the change to this house! I don’t say that living
here in clover is enough for such a person as Regina; I only say it
has its influence. She is one of those young women, sir, who delight in
sacrificing themselves to others--she is devoted, for instance, to Mrs.
Farnaby. I only hope Mrs. Farnaby is worthy of it! Not that it
matters to Regina. What she does, she does out of her own sweetness of
disposition. She brightens this household, I can tell you! Farnaby did
a wise thing, in his own domestic interests, when he adopted her as his
daughter. She thinks she can never be grateful enough to him--the good
creature!--though she has repaid him a hundredfold. He’ll find that out,
one of these days, when a husband takes her away. Don’t suppose that
I want to disparage our host--he’s an old friend of mine; but he’s a
little too apt to take the good things that fall to his lot as if they
were nothing but a just recognition of his own merits. I have told him
that to his face, often enough to have a right to say it of him when he
doesn’t hear me. Do you smoke? I wish they would drop their politics,
and take to tobacco. I say Farnaby! I want a cigar.”

This broad hint produced an adjournment to the smoking-room, the doctor
leading the way. I began to wonder how much longer my introduction to
Miss Regina was to be delayed. It was not to come until I had seen a new
side of my host’s character, and had found myself promoted to a place of
my own in Mr. Farnaby’s estimation.

As we rose from table one of the guests spoke to me of a visit that he
had recently paid to the part of Buckinghamshire which I come from. “I
was shown a remarkably picturesque old house on the heath,” he said.
“They told me it had been inhabited for centuries by the family of the
Goldenhearts. Are you in any way related to them?” I answered that I
was very nearly related, having been born in the house--and there, as
I suppose, the matter ended. Being the youngest man of the party, I
waited, of course, until the rest of the gentlemen had passed out to the
smoking-room. Mr. Farnaby and I were left together. To my astonishment,
he put his arm cordially into mine, and led me out of the dining-room
with the genial familiarity of an old friend!

“I’ll give you such a cigar,” he said, “as you can’t buy for money in
all London. You have enjoyed yourself, I hope? Now we know what wine
you like, you won’t have to ask the butler for it next time. Drop in any
day, and take pot-luck with us.” He came to a standstill in the hall;
his brassy rasping voice assumed a new tone--a sort of parody of
respect. “Have you been to your family place,” he asked, “since your
return to England?”

He had evidently heard the few words exchanged between his friend
and myself. It seemed odd that he should take any interest in a place
belonging to people who were strangers to him. However, his question was
easily answered. I had only to inform him that my father had sold the
house when he left England.

“Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that!” he said. “Those old family places
ought to be kept up. The greatness of England, sir, strikes its roots in
the old families of England. They may be rich, or they may be poor--that
don’t matter. An old family _is_ an old family; it’s sad to see their
hearths and homes sold to wealthy manufacturers who don’t know who their
own grandfathers were. Would you allow me to ask what is the family
motto of the Goldenhearts?”

Shall I own the truth? The bottles circulated freely at Mr. Farnaby’s
table--I began to wonder whether he was quite sober. I said I was sorry
to disappoint him, but I really did not know what my family motto was.

He was unaffectedly shocked. “I think I saw a ring on your finger,” he
said, as soon as he recovered himself. He lifted my left hand in his own
cold-fishy paw. The one ring I wear is of plain gold; it belonged to my
father and it has his initials inscribed on the signet.

“Good gracious, you haven’t got your coat-of-arms on your seal!” cried
Mr. Farnaby. “My dear sir, I am old enough to be your father, and I must
take the freedom of remonstrating with you. Your coat-of-arms and your
motto are no doubt at the Heralds’ Office--why don’t you apply for them?
Shall I go there for you? I will do it with pleasure. You shouldn’t be
careless about these things--you shouldn’t indeed.”

I listened in speechless astonishment. Was he ironically expressing his
contempt for old families? We got into the smoking-room at last; and my
friend the doctor enlightened me privately in a corner. Every word Mr.
Farnaby had said had been spoken in earnest. This man, who owes his rise
from the lowest social position entirely to himself--who, judging by
his own experience, has every reason to despise the poor pride of
ancestry--actually feels a sincerely servile admiration for the accident
of birth! “Oh, poor human nature!” as Somebody says. How cordially I
agree with Somebody!

We went up to the drawing-room; and I was introduced to “the brown girl”
 at last. What impression did she produce on me?

Do you know, Rufus, there is some perverse reluctance in me to go on
with this inordinately long letter just when I have arrived at the most
interesting part of it. I can’t account for my own state of mind; I only
know that it is so. The difficulty of describing the young lady doesn’t
perplex me like the difficulty of describing Mrs. Farnaby. I can see her
now, as vividly as if she was present in the room. I even remember (and
this is astonishing in a man) the dress that she wore. And yet I shrink
from writing about her, as if there was something wrong in it. Do me a
kindness, good friend, and let me send off all these sheets of paper,
the idle work of an idle morning, just as they are. When I write next,
I promise to be ashamed of my own capricious state of mind, and to paint
the portrait of Miss Regina at full length.

In the mean while, don’t run away with the idea that she has made a
disagreeable impression upon me. Good heavens! it is far from that.
You have had the old doctor’s opinion of her. Very well. Multiply this
opinion by ten--and you have mine.


[NOTE:--A strange indorsement appears on this letter, dated several
months after the period at which it was received:--_“Ah, poor Amelius!
He had better have gone back to Miss Mellicent, and put up with the
little drawback of her age. What a bright, lovable fellow he was!
Goodbye to Goldenheart!”_

These lines are not signed. They are known, however, to be in the
handwriting of Rufus Dingwell.]



CHAPTER 2

I particularly want you to come and lunch with us, dearest Cecilia, the
day after tomorrow. Don’t say to yourself, “The Farnaby’s house is dull,
and Regina is too slow for me,” and don’t think about the long drive for
the horses, from your place to London. This letter has an interest of
its own, my dear--I have got something new for you. What do you think
of a young man, who is clever and handsome and agreeable--and, wonder
of wonders, quite unlike any other young Englishman you ever saw in your
life? You are to meet him at luncheon; and you are to get used to his
strange name beforehand. For which purpose I enclose his card.

He made his first appearance at our house, at dinner yesterday evening.

When he was presented to me at the tea-table, he was not to be put
off with a bow--he insisted on shaking hands. “Where I have been,” he
explained, “we help a first introduction with a little cordiality.” He
looked into his tea-cup, after he said that, with the air of a man who
could say something more, if he had a little encouragement. Of course,
I encouraged him. “I suppose shaking hands is much the same form in
America that bowing is in England?” I said, as suggestively as I could.

He looked up directly, and shook his head. “We have too many forms in
this country,” he said. “The virtue of hospitality, for instance, seems
to have become a form in England. In America, when a new acquaintance
says, ‘Come and see me,’ he means it. When he says it here, in nine
cases out of ten he looks unaffectedly astonished if you are fool enough
to take him at his word. I hate insincerity, Miss Regina--and now I have
returned to my own country, I find insincerity one of the established
institutions of English Society. ‘Can we do anything for you?’ Ask them
to do something for you--and you will see what it means. ‘Thank you for
such a pleasant evening!’ Get into the carriage with them when they
go home--and you will find that it means, ‘What a bore!’ ‘Ah, Mr.
So-and-so, allow me to congratulate you on your new appointment.’
Mr. So-and-so passes out of hearing--and you discover what the
congratulations mean. ‘Corrupt old brute! he has got the price of his
vote at the last division.’ ‘Oh, Mr. Blank, what a charming book you
have written!’ Mr. Blank passes out of hearing--and you ask what his
book is about. ‘To tell you the truth, I haven’t read it. Hush! he’s
received at Court; one must say these things.’ The other day a friend
took me to a grand dinner at the Lord Mayor’s. I accompanied him first
to his club; many distinguished guests met there before going to the
dinner. Heavens, how they spoke of the Lord Mayor! One of them didn’t
know his name, and didn’t want to know it; another wasn’t certain
whether he was a tallow-chandler or a button-maker; a third, who had met
with him somewhere, described him as a damned ass; a fourth said, ‘Oh,
don’t be hard on him; he’s only a vulgar old Cockney, without an _h_ in
his whole composition.’ A chorus of general agreement followed, as the
dinner-hour approached: ‘What a bore!’ I whispered to my friend, ‘Why
do they go?’ He answered, ‘You see, one must do this sort of thing.’
And when we got to the Mansion House, they did that sort of thing with
a vengeance! When the speech-making set in, these very men who had been
all expressing their profound contempt for the Lord Mayor behind his
back, now flattered him to his face in such a shamelessly servile way,
with such a meanly complete insensibility to their own baseness, that
I did really and literally turn sick. I slipped out into the fresh air,
and fumigated myself, after the company I had kept, with a cigar. No,
no! it’s useless to excuse these things (I could quote dozens of other
instances that have come under my own observation) by saying that they
are trifles. When trifles make themselves habits of yours or of mine,
they become a part of your character or mine. We have an inveterately
false and vicious system of society in England. If you want to trace
one of the causes, look back to the little organized insincerities of
English life.”

Of course you understand, Cecilia, that this was not all said at one
burst, as I have written it here. Some of it came out in the way of
answers to my inquiries, and some of it was spoken in the intervals of
laughing, talking, and tea-drinking. But I want to show you how very
different this young man is from the young men whom we are in the habit
of meeting, and so I huddle his talk together in one sample, as Papa
Farnaby would call it.

My dear, he is decidedly handsome (I mean our delightful Amelius); his
face has a bright, eager look, indescribably refreshing as a contrast
to the stolid composure of the ordinary young Englishman. His smile is
charming; he moves as gracefully--with as little self-consciousness--as
my Italian greyhound. He has been brought up among the strangest people
in America; and (would you believe it?) he is actually a Socialist.
Don’t be alarmed. He shocked us all dreadfully by declaring that his
Socialism was entirely learnt out of the New Testament. I have looked at
the New Testament, since he mentioned some of his principles to me; and,
do you know, I declare it is true!

Oh, I forgot--the young Socialist plays and sings! When we asked him
to go to the piano, he got up and began directly. “I don’t do it well
enough,” he said, “to want a great deal of pressing.” He sang old
English songs, with great taste and sweetness. One of the gentlemen of
our party, evidently disliking him, spoke rather rudely, I thought.
“A Socialist who sings and plays,” he said, “is a harmless Socialist
indeed. I begin to feel that my balance is safe at my banker’s, and
that London won’t be set on fire with petroleum this time.” He got his
answer, I can tell you. “Why should we set London on fire? London takes
a regular percentage of your income from you, sir, whether you like it
or not, on sound Socialist principles. You are the man who has got the
money, and Socialism says:--You must and shall help the man who has got
none. That is exactly what your own Poor Law says to you, every time the
collector leaves the paper at your house.” Wasn’t it clever?--and it was
doubly severe, because it was good-humouredly said.

Between ourselves, Cecilia, I think he is struck with me. When I walked
about the room, his bright eyes followed me everywhere. And, when I took
a chair by somebody else, not feeling it quite right to keep him all to
myself, he invariably contrived to find a seat on the other side of me.
His voice, too, had a certain tone, addressed to me, and to no other
person in the room. Judge for yourself when you come here; but don’t
jump to conclusions, if you please. Oh no--I am not going to fall in
love with him! It isn’t in me to fall in love with anybody. Do you
remember what the last man whom I refused said of me? “She has a machine
on the left side of her that pumps blood through her body, but she has
no heart.” I pity the woman who marries _that_ man!

One thing more, my dear. This curious Amelius seems to notice trifles
which escape men in general, just as _we_ do. Towards the close of the
evening, poor Mamma Farnaby fell into one of her vacant states; half
asleep and half awake on the sofa in the back drawing-room. “Your aunt
interests me,” he whispered. “She must have suffered some terrible
sorrow, at some past time in her life.” Fancy a man seeing that! He
dropped some hints, which showed that he was puzzling his brains to
discover how I got on with her, and whether I was in her confidence or
not: he even went the length of asking what sort of life I led with the
uncle and aunt who have adopted me. My dear, it was done so delicately,
with such irresistible sympathy and such a charming air of respect,
that I was quite startled when I remembered, in the wakeful hours of
the night, how freely I had spoken to him. Not that I have betrayed any
secrets; for, as you know, I am as ignorant as everybody else of what
the early troubles of my poor dear aunt may have been. But I did tell
him how I came into the house a helpless little orphan girl; and how
generously these two good relatives adopted me; and how happy it made
me to find that I could really do something to cheer their sad childless
lives. “I wish I was half as good as you are,” he said. “I can’t
understand how you became fond of Mrs. Farnaby. Perhaps it began in
sympathy and compassion?” Just think of that, from a young Englishman!
He went on confessing his perplexities, as if we had known one another
from childhood. “I am a little surprised to see Mrs. Farnaby present at
parties of this sort; I should have thought she would have stayed in her
own room.” “That’s just what she objects to do,” I answered; “She says
people will report that her husband is ashamed of her, or that she is
not fit to be seen in society, if she doesn’t appear at the parties--and
she is determined not to be misrepresented in that way.” Can you
understand my talking to him with so little reserve? It is a specimen,
Cecilia, of the odd manner in which my impulses carry me away, in this
man’s company. He is so nice and gentle--and yet so manly. I shall be
curious to see if you can resist him, with your superior firmness and
knowledge of the world.

But the strangest incident of all I have not told you yet--feeling some
hesitation about the best way of describing it, so as to interest you in
what has deeply interested me. I must tell it as plainly as I can, and
leave it to speak for itself.

Who do you think has invited Amelius Goldenheart to luncheon? Not Papa
Farnaby, who only invites him to dinner. Not I, it is needless to say.
Who is it, then? Mamma Farnaby herself. He has actually so interested
her that she has been thinking of him, and dreaming of him, in his
absence!

I heard her last night, poor thing, talking and grinding her teeth in
her sleep; and I went into her room to try if I could quiet her, in
the usual way, by putting my cool hand on her forehead, and pressing it
gently. (The old doctor says it’s magnetism, which is ridiculous.) Well,
it didn’t succeed this time; she went on muttering, and making that
dreadful sound with her teeth. Occasionally a word was spoken clearly
enough to be intelligible. I could make no connected sense of what I
heard; but I could positively discover this--that she was dreaming of
our guest from America!

I said nothing about it, of course, when I went upstairs with her cup of
tea this morning. What do you think was the first thing she asked
for? Pen, ink, and paper. Her next request was that I would write Mr.
Goldenheart’s address on an envelope. “Are you going to write to him?”
 I asked. “Yes,” she said, “I want to speak to him, while John is out of
the way at business,” “Secrets?” I said, turning it off with a laugh.
She answered, speaking gravely and earnestly. “Yes; secrets.” The letter
was written, and sent to his hotel, inviting him to lunch with us on
the first day when he was disengaged. He has replied, appointing the day
after tomorrow. By way of trying to penetrate the mystery, I inquired
if she wished me to appear at the luncheon. She considered with herself,
before she answered that. “I want him to be amused, and put in a good
humour,” she said, “before I speak to him. You must lunch with us--and
ask Cecilia.” She stopped, and considered once more. “Mind one thing,”
 she went on. “Your uncle is to know nothing about it. If you tell him, I
will never speak to you again.”

Is this not extraordinary? Whatever her dream may have been, it has
evidently produced a strong impression on her. I firmly believe she
means to take him away with her to her own room, when the luncheon is
over. Dearest Cecilia, you must help me to stop this! I have never been
trusted with her secrets; they may, for all I know, be innocent secrets
enough, poor soul! But it is surely in the highest degree undesirable
that she should take into her confidence a young man who is only an
acquaintance of ours: she will either make herself ridiculous, or do
something worse. If Mr. Farnaby finds it out, I really tremble for what
may happen.

For the sake of old friendship, don’t leave me to face this difficulty
by myself. A line, only one line, dearest, to say that you will not fail
me.




BOOK THE THIRD. MRS. FARNABY’S FOOT



CHAPTER 1

It is an afternoon concert; and modern German music was largely
represented on the programme. The patient English people sat in
closely-packed rows, listening to the pretentious instrumental noises
which were impudently offered to them as a substitute for melody. While
these docile victims of the worst of all quackeries (musical quackery)
were still toiling through their first hour of endurance, a passing
ripple of interest stirred the stagnant surface of the audience caused
by the sudden rising of a lady overcome by the heat. She was quickly led
out of the concert-room (after whispering a word of explanation to two
young ladies seated at her side) by a gentleman who made a fourth member
of the party. Left by themselves, the young ladies looked at each other,
whispered to each other, half rose from their places, became confusedly
conscious that the wandering attention of the audience was fixed on
them, and decided at last on following their companions out of the hall.

But the lady who had preceded them had some reason of her own for not
waiting to recover herself in the vestibule. When the gentleman in
charge of her asked if he should get a glass of water, she answered
sharply, “Get a cab--and be quick about it.”

The cab was found in a moment; the gentleman got in after her, by the
lady’s invitation. “Are you better now?” he asked.

“I have never had anything the matter with me,” she replied, quietly;
“tell the man to drive faster.”

Having obeyed his instructions, the gentleman (otherwise Amelius) began
to look a little puzzled. The lady (Mrs. Farnaby herself) perceived his
condition of mind, and favoured him with an explanation.

“I had my own motive for asking you to luncheon today,” she began,
in that steady downright way of speaking that was peculiar to her. “I
wanted to have a word with you privately. My niece Regina--don’t be
surprised at my calling her my niece, when you have heard Mr. Farnaby
call her his daughter. She _is_ my niece. Adopting her is a mere phrase.
It doesn’t alter facts; it doesn’t make her Mr. Farnaby’s child or mine,
does it?”

She had ended with a question, but she seemed to want no answer to it.
Her face was turned towards the cab-window, instead of towards Amelius.
He was one of those rare people who are capable of remaining silent when
they have nothing to say. Mrs. Farnaby went on.

“My niece Regina is a good creature in her way; but she suspects people.
She has some reason of her own for trying to prevent me from taking you
into my confidence; and her friend Cecilia is helping her. Yes, yes; the
concert was the obstacle which they had arranged to put in my way. You
were obliged to go, after telling them you wanted to hear the music; and
I couldn’t complain, because they had got a fourth ticket for me. I made
up my mind what to do; and I have done it. Nothing wonderful in my being
taken ill with the heat; nothing wonderful in your doing your duty as a
gentleman and looking after me--and what is the consequence? Here we are
together, on our way to my room, in spite of them. Not so bad for a poor
helpless creature like me, is it?”

Inwardly wondering what it all meant, and what she could possibly
want with him, Amelius suggested that the young ladies might leave the
concert-room, and, not finding them in the vestibule, might follow them
back to the house.

Mrs. Farnaby turned her head from the window, and looked him in the face
for the first time. “I have been a match for them so far,” she said;
“leave it to me, and you will find I can be a match for them still.”

After saying this, she watched the puzzled face of Amelius with a
moment’s steady scrutiny. Her full lips relaxed into a faint smile; her
head sank slowly on her bosom. “I wonder whether he thinks I am a little
crazy?” she said quietly to herself. “Some women in my place would have
gone mad years ago. Perhaps it might have been better for _me?”_ She
looked up again at Amelius. “I believe you are a good-tempered fellow,”
 she went on. “Are you in your usual temper now? Did you enjoy your
lunch? Has the lively company of the young ladies put you in a good
humour with women generally? I want you to be in a particularly good
humour with me.”

She spoke quite gravely. Amelius, a little to his own astonishment,
found himself answering gravely on his side; assuring her, in the most
conventional terms, that he was entirely at her service. Something in
her manner affected him disagreeably. If he had followed his impulse, he
would have jumped out of the cab, and have recovered his liberty and his
light-heartedness at one and the same moment, by running away at the top
of his speed.

The driver turned into the street in which Mr. Farnaby’s house was
situated. Mrs. Farnaby stopped him, and got out at some little distance
from the door. “You think the young ones will follow us back,” she said
to Amelius. “It doesn’t matter, the servants will have nothing to tell
them if they do.” She checked him in the act of knocking, when they
reached the house door. “It’s tea-time downstairs,” she whispered,
looking at her watch. “You and I are going into the house, without
letting the servants know anything about it. _Now_ do you understand?”

She produced from her pocket a steel ring, with several keys attached to
it. “A duplicate of Mr. Farnaby’s key,” she explained, as she chose one,
and opened the street door. “Sometimes, when I find myself waking in
the small hours of the morning, I can’t endure my bed; I must go out
and walk. My key lets me in again, just as it lets us in now, without
disturbing anybody. You had better say nothing about it to Mr. Farnaby.
Not that it matters much; for I should refuse to give up my key if he
asked me. But you’re a good-natured fellow--and you don’t want to make
bad blood between man and wife, do you? Step softly, and follow me.”

Amelius hesitated. There was something repellent to him in entering
another man’s house under these clandestine conditions. “All right!”
 whispered Mrs. Farnaby, perfectly understanding him. “Consult your
dignity; go out again, and knock at the door, and ask if I am at home.
I only wanted to prevent a fuss and an interruption when Regina comes
back. If the servants don’t know we are here, they will tell her we
haven’t returned--don’t you see?”

It would have been absurd to contest the matter, after this. Amelius
followed her submissively to the farther end of the hall. There, she
opened the door of a long narrow room, built out at the back of the
house.

“This is my den,” she said, signing to Amelius to pass in. “While we are
here, nobody will disturb us.” She laid aside her bonnet and shawl, and
pointed to a box of cigars on the table. “Take one,” she resumed. “I
smoke too, when nobody sees me. That’s one of the reasons, I dare say,
why Regina wished to keep you out of my room. I find smoking composes
me. What do _you_ say?”

She lit a cigar, and handed the matches to Amelius. Finding that
he stood fairly committed to the adventure, he resigned himself to
circumstances with his customary facility. He too lit a cigar, and took
a chair by the fire, and looked about him with an impenetrable composure
worthy of Rufus Dingwell himself.

The room bore no sort of resemblance to a boudoir. A faded old turkey
carpet was spread on the floor. The common mahogany table had no
covering; the chintz on the chairs was of a truly venerable age. Some
of the furniture made the place look like a room occupied by a man.
Dumb-bells and clubs of the sort used in athletic exercises hung over
the bare mantelpiece; a large ugly oaken structure with closed doors,
something between a cabinet and a wardrobe, rose on one side to the
ceiling; a turning lathe stood against the opposite wall. Above the
lathe were hung in a row four prints, in dingy old frames of black wood,
which especially attracted the attention of Amelius. Mostly foreign
prints, they were all discoloured by time, and they all strangely
represented different aspects of the same subject--infants parted from
their parents by desertion or robbery. The young Moses was there, in
his ark of bulrushes, on the river bank. Good St. Francis appeared next,
roaming the streets, and rescuing forsaken children in the wintry night.
A third print showed the foundling hospital of old Paris, with the
turning cage in the wall, and the bell to ring when the infant was
placed in it. The next and last subject was the stealing of a child from
the lap of its slumbering nurse by a gipsy woman. These sadly suggestive
subjects were the only ornaments on the walls. No traces of books or
music were visible; no needlework of any sort was to be seen; no
elegant trifles; no china or flowers or delicate lacework or sparkling
jewelry--nothing, absolutely nothing, suggestive of a woman’s presence
appeared in any part of Mrs. Farnaby’s room.

“I have got several things to say to you,” she began; “but one thing
must be settled first. Give me your sacred word of honour that you will
not repeat to any mortal creature what I am going to tell you now.” She
reclined in her chair, and drew in a mouthful of smoke and puffed it out
again, and waited for his reply.

Young and unsuspicious as he was, this unscrupulous method of taking his
confidence by storm startled Amelius. His natural tact and good sense
told him plainly that Mrs. Farnaby was asking too much.

“Don’t be angry with me, ma’am,” he said; “I must remind you that you
are going to tell me your secrets, without any wish to intrude on them
on my part--”

She interrupted him there. “What does that matter?” she asked coolly.

Amelius was obstinate; he went on with what he had to say. “I should
like to know,” he proceeded, “that I am doing no wrong to anybody,
before I give you my promise?”

“You will be doing a kindness to a miserable creature,” she answered,
as quietly as ever; “and you will be doing no wrong to yourself or to
anybody else, if you promise. That is all I can say. Your cigar is out.
Take a light.”

Amelius took a light, with the dog-like docility of a man in a state of
blank amazement. She waited, watching him composedly until his cigar was
in working order again.

“Well?” she asked. “Will you promise now?”

Amelius gave her his promise.

“On your sacred word of honour?” she persisted.

Amelius repeated the formula. She reclined in her chair once more.
“I want to speak to you as if I was speaking to an old friend,” she
explained. “I suppose I may call you Amelius?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, Amelius, I must tell you first that I committed a sin, many long
years ago. I have suffered the punishment; I am suffering it still. Ever
since I was a young woman, I have had a heavy burden of misery on my
heart. I am not reconciled to it, I cannot submit to it, yet. I never
shall be reconciled to it, I never shall submit to it, if I live to be
a hundred. Do you wish me to enter into particulars? or will you have
mercy on me, and be satisfied with what I have told you so far?”

It was not said entreatingly, or tenderly, or humbly: she spoke with
a savage self-contained resignation in her manner and in her voice.
Amelius forgot his cigar again--and again she reminded him of it. He
answered her as his own generous impulsive temperament urged him; he
said, “Tell me nothing that causes you a moment’s pain; tell me only
how I can help you.” She handed him the box of matches; she said, “Your
cigar is out again.”

He laid down his cigar. In his brief span of life he had seen no human
misery that expressed itself in this way. “Excuse me,” he answered; “I
won’t smoke just now.”

She laid her cigar aside like Amelius, and crossed her arms over her
bosom, and looked at him, with the first softening gleam of tenderness
that he had seen in her face. “My friend,” she said, “yours will be
a sad life--I pity you. The world will wound that sensitive heart of
yours; the world will trample on that generous nature. One of these
days, perhaps, you will be a wretch like me. No more of that. Get up; I
have something to show you.”

Rising herself, she led the way to the large oaken press, and took her
bunch of keys out of her pocket again.

“About this old sorrow of mine,” she resumed. “Do me justice, Amelius,
at the outset. I haven’t treated it as some women treat their sorrows--I
haven’t nursed it and petted it and made the most of it to myself and to
others. No! I have tried every means of relief, every possible pursuit
that could occupy my mind. One example of what I say will do as well as
a hundred. See it for yourself.”

She put the key in the lock. It resisted her first efforts to open it.
With a contemptuous burst of impatience and a sudden exertion of her
rare strength, she tore open the two doors of the press. Behind the door
on the left appeared a row of open shelves. The opposite compartment,
behind the door on the right, was filled by drawers with brass handles.
She shut the left door; angrily banging it to, as if the opening of it
had disclosed something which she did not wish to be seen. By the merest
chance, Amelius had looked that way first. In the one instant in which
it was possible to see anything, he had noticed, carefully laid out on
one of the shelves, a baby’s long linen frock and cap, turned yellow by
the lapse of time.

The half-told story of the past was more than half told now. The
treasured relics of the infant threw their little glimmer of light on
the motive which had chosen the subjects of the prints on the wall.
A child deserted and lost! A child who, by bare possibility, might be
living still!

She turned towards Amelius suddenly, “There is nothing to interest you
on _that_ side,” she said. “Look at the drawers here; open them for
yourself.” She drew back as she spoke, and pointed to the uppermost of
the row of drawers. A narrow slip of paper was pasted on it, bearing
this inscription:--_“Dead Consolations.”_

Amelius opened the drawer; it was full of books. “Look at them,”
 she said. Amelius, obeying her, discovered dictionaries, grammars,
exercises, poems, novels, and histories--all in the German language.

“A foreign language tried as a relief,” said Mrs. Farnaby, speaking
quietly behind him. “Month after month of hard study--all forgotten now.
The old sorrow came back in spite of it. A dead consolation! Open the
next drawer.”

The next drawer revealed water-colours and drawing materials huddled
together in a corner, and a heap of poor little conventional landscapes
filling up the rest of the space. As works of art, they were wretched
in the last degree; monuments of industry and application miserably and
completely thrown away.

“I had no talent for that pursuit, as you see,” said Mrs. Farnaby. “But
I persevered with it, week after week, month after month. I thought to
myself, ‘I hate it so, it costs me such dreadful trouble, it so worries
and persecutes and humiliates me, that _this_ surely must keep my mind
occupied and my thoughts away from myself!’ No; the old sorrow stared me
in the face again on the paper that I was spoiling, through the colours
that I couldn’t learn to use. Another dead consolation! Shut it up.”

She herself opened a third and a fourth drawer. In one there appeared
a copy of Euclid, and a slate with the problems still traced on it; the
other contained a microscope, and the treatises relating to its use.
“Always the same effort,” she said, shutting the door of the press as
she spoke; “and always the same result. You have had enough of it, and
so have I.” She turned, and pointed to the lathe in the corner, and to
the clubs and dumb-bells over the mantelpiece. “I can look at _them_
patiently,” she went on; “they give me bodily relief. I work at the
lathe till my back aches; I swing the clubs till I’m ready to drop with
fatigue. And then I lie down on the rug there, and sleep it off, and
forget myself for an hour or two. Come back to the fire again. You have
seen my dead consolations; you must hear about my living consolation
next. In justice to Mr. Farnaby--ah, how I hate him!”

She spoke those last vehement words to herself, but with such intense
bitterness of contempt that the tones were quite loud enough to be
heard. Amelius looked furtively towards the door. Was there no hope that
Regina and her friend might return and interrupt them? After what he had
seen and heard, could _he_ hope to console Mrs. Farnaby? He could only
wonder what object she could possibly have in view in taking him into
her confidence. “Am I always to be in a mess with women?” he thought to
himself. “First poor Mellicent, and now this one. What next?” He lit his
cigar again. The brotherhood of smokers, and they alone, will understand
what a refuge it was to him at that moment.

“Give me a light,” said Mrs. Farnaby, recalled to the remembrance of her
own cigar. “I want to know one thing before I go on. Amelius, I watched
those bright eyes of yours at luncheon-time. Did they tell me the truth?
You’re not in love with my niece, are you?”

Amelius took his cigar out of his mouth, and looked at her.

“Out with it boldly!” she said.

Amelius let it out, to a certain extent. “I admire her very much,” he
answered.

“Ah,” Mrs. Farnaby remarked, “you don’t know her as well as I do.”

The disdainful indifference of her tone irritated Amelius. He was still
young enough to believe in the existence of gratitude; and Mrs. Farnaby
had spoken ungratefully. Besides, he was fond enough of Regina already
to feel offended when she was referred to slightingly.

“I am surprised to hear what you say of her,” he burst out. “She is
quite devoted to you.”

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Farnaby, carelessly. “She is devoted to me, of
course--she is the living consolation I told you of just now. That was
Mr. Farnaby’s notion in adopting her. Mr. Farnaby thought to himself,
‘Here’s a ready-made daughter for my wife--that’s all this tiresome
woman wants to comfort her: now we shall do.’ Do you know what I call
that? I call it reasoning like an idiot. A man may be very clever at
his business--and may be a contemptible fool in other respects. Another
woman’s child a consolation to _me!_ Pah! it makes me sick to think of
it. I have one merit, Amelius, I don’t cant. It’s my duty to take care
of my sister’s child; and I do my duty willingly. Regina’s a good sort
of creature--I don’t dispute it. But she’s like all those tall darkish
women: there’s no backbone in her, no dash; a kind, feeble, goody-goody,
sugarish disposition; and a deal of quiet obstinacy at the bottom of
it, I can tell you. Oh yes, I do her justice; I don’t deny that she’s
devoted to me, as you say. But I am making a clean breast of it now.
And you ought to know, and you shall know, that Mr. Farnaby’s living
consolation is no more a consolation to me than the things you have seen
in the drawers. There! now we’ve done with Regina. No: there’s one thing
more to be cleared up. When you say you admire her, what do you mean? Do
you mean to marry her?”

For once in his life Amelius stood on his dignity. “I have too much
respect for the young lady to answer your question,” he said loftily.

“Because, if you do,” Mrs. Farnaby proceeded, “I mean to put every
possible obstacle in your way. In short, I mean to prevent it.”

This plain declaration staggered Amelius. He confessed the truth by
implication in one word.

“Why?” he asked sharply.

“Wait a little, and recover your temper,” she answered.

There was a pause. They sat, on either side of the fireplace, and eyed
each other attentively.

“Now are you ready?” Mrs. Farnaby resumed. “Here is my reason. If you
marry Regina, or marry anybody, you will settle down somewhere, and lead
a dull life.”

“Well,” said Amelius; “and why not, if I like it?”

“Because I want you to remain a roving bachelor; here today and gone
tomorrow--travelling all over the world, and seeing everything and
everybody.”

“What good will that do to _you,_ Mrs. Farnaby?”

She rose from her own side of the fireplace, crossed to the side on
which Amelius was sitting, and, standing before him, placed her hands
heavily on his shoulders. Her eyes grew radiant with a sudden interest
and animation as they looked down on him, riveted on his face.

“I am still waiting, my friend, for the living consolation that may yet
come to me,” she said. “And, hear this, Amelius! After all the years
that have passed, you may be the man who brings it to me.”

In the momentary silence that followed, they heard a double knock at the
house-door.

“Regina!” said Mrs. Farnaby.

As the name passed her lips, she sprang to the door of the room, and
turned the key in the lock.



CHAPTER 2

Amelius rose impulsively from his chair.

Mrs. Farnaby turned at the same moment, and signed to him to resume his
seat. “You have given me your promise,” she whispered. “All I ask of you
is to be silent.” She softly drew the key out of the door, and showed it
to him. “You can’t get out,” she said, “unless you take the key from me
by force!”

Whatever Amelius might think of the situation in which he now found
himself, the one thing that he could honourably do was to say nothing,
and submit to it. He remained quietly by the fire. No imaginable
consideration (he mentally resolved) should induce him to consent to a
second confidential interview in Mrs. Farnaby’s room.

The servant opened the house-door. Regina’s voice was heard in the hall.

“Has my aunt come in?”

“No, miss.”

“Have you heard nothing of her?”

“Nothing, miss.”

“Has Mr. Goldenheart been here?”

“No, miss.”

“Very extraordinary! What can have become of them, Cecilia?”

The voice of the other lady was heard in answer. “We have probably
missed them, on leaving the concert room. Don’t alarm yourself, Regina.
I must go back, under any circumstances; the carriage will be waiting
for me. If I see anything of your aunt, I will say that you are
expecting her at home.”

“One moment, Cecilia! (Thomas, you needn’t wait.) Is it really true that
you don’t like Mr. Goldenheart?”

“What! has it come to that, already? I’ll try to like him, Regina.
Goodbye again.”

The closing of the street door told that the ladies had separated. The
sound was followed, in another moment, by the opening and closing of the
dining-room door. Mrs. Farnaby returned to her chair at the fireplace.

“Regina has gone into the dining-room to wait for us,” she said. “I see
you don’t like your position here; and I won’t keep you more than a few
minutes longer. You are of course at a loss to understand what I was
saying to you, when the knock at the door interrupted us. Sit down again
for five minutes; it fidgets me to see you standing there, looking at
your boots. I told you I had one consolation still possibly left. Judge
for yourself what the hope of it is to me, when I own to you that I
should long since have put an end to my life, without it. Don’t think I
am talking nonsense; I mean what I say. It is one of my misfortunes that
I have no religious scruples to restrain me. There was a time when I
believed that religion might comfort me. I once opened my heart to a
clergyman--a worthy person, who did his best to help me. All useless! My
heart was too hard, I suppose. It doesn’t matter--except to give you
one more proof that I am thoroughly in earnest. Patience! patience! I am
coming to the point. I asked you some odd questions, on the day when you
first dined here? You have forgotten all about them, of course?”

“I remember them perfectly well,” Amelius answered.

“You remember them? That looks as if you had thought about them
afterwards. Come! tell me plainly what you did think?”

Amelius told her plainly. She became more and more interested, more and
more excited, as he went on.

“Quite right!” she exclaimed, starting to her feet and walking swiftly
backwards and forwards in the room. “There _is_ a lost girl whom I want
to find; and she is between sixteen and seventeen years old, as you
thought. Mind! I have no reason--not the shadow of a reason--for
believing that she is still a living creature. I have only my own stupid
obstinate conviction; rooted here,” she pressed both hands fiercely on
her heart, “so that nothing can tear it out of me! I have lived in that
belief--Oh, don’t ask me how long! it is so far, so miserably far, to
look back!” She stopped in the middle of the room. Her breath came and
went in quick heavy gasps; the first tears that had softened the hard
wretchedness in her eyes rose in them now, and transfigured them with
the divine beauty of maternal love. “I won’t distress you,” she said,
stamping on the floor, as she struggled with the hysterical passion that
was raging in her. “Give me a minute, and I’ll force it down again.”

She dropped into a chair, threw her arms heavily on the table, and laid
her head on them. Amelius thought of the child’s frock and cap hidden
in the cabinet. All that was manly and noble in his nature felt for the
unhappy woman, whose secret was dimly revealed to him now. The little
selfish sense of annoyance at the awkward situation in which she had
placed him, vanished to return no more. He approached her, and put his
hand gently on her shoulder. “I am truly sorry for you,” he said. “Tell
me how I can help you, and I will do it with all my heart.”

“Do you really mean that?” She roughly dashed the tears from her eyes,
and rose as she put the question. Holding him with one hand, she parted
the hair back from his forehead with the other. “I must see your whole
face,” she said--“your face will tell me. Yes: you do mean it. The world
hasn’t spoilt you, yet. Do you believe in dreams?”

Amelius looked at her, startled by the sudden transition. She
deliberately repeated her question.

“I ask you seriously,” she said; “do you believe in dreams?”

Amelius answered seriously, on his side, “I can’t honestly say that I
do.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “like me. I don’t believe in dreams, either--I wish
I did! But it’s not in me to believe in superstitions; I’m too hard--and
I’m sorry for it. I have seen people who were comforted by their
superstitions; happy people, possessed of faith. Don’t you even believe
that dreams are sometimes fulfilled by chance?”

“Nobody can deny that,” Amelius replied; “the instances of it are too
many. But for one dream fulfilled by a coincidence, there are--”

“A hundred at least that are _not_ fulfilled,” Mrs. Farnaby interposed.
“Very well. I calculate on that. See how little hope can live on! There
is just the barest possibility that what I dreamed of you the other
night may come to pass. It’s a poor chance; but it has encouraged me to
take you into my confidence, and ask you to help me.”

This strange confession--this sad revelation of despair still
unconsciously deceiving itself under the disguise of hope--only
strengthened the compassionate sympathy which Amelius already felt for
her. “What did you dream about me?” he asked gently.

“It’s nothing to tell,” she replied. “I was in a room that was quite
strange to me; and the door opened, and you came in leading a young girl
by the hand. You said, ‘Be happy at last; here she is.’ My heart knew
her instantly, though my eyes had never seen her since the first days
of her life. And I woke myself, crying for joy. Wait! it’s not all told
yet. I went to sleep again, and dreamed it again, and woke, and lay
awake for awhile, and slept once more, and dreamed it for the third
time. Ah, if I could only feel some people’s confidence in three times!
No; it produced an impression on me--and that was all. I got as far as
thinking to myself, there is just a chance; I haven’t a creature in the
world to help me; I may as well speak to him. O, you needn’t remind me
that there is a rational explanation of my dream. I have read it all
up, in the Encyclopaedia in the library. One of the ideas of wise men
is that we think of something, consciously or unconsciously, in the
daytime, and then reproduce it in a dream. That’s my case, I daresay.
When you were first introduced to me, and when I heard where you had
been brought up, I thought directly that _she_ might have been one among
the many forlorn creatures who had drifted to your Community, and that I
might find her through you. Say that thought went to my bed with me--and
we have the explanation of my dream. Never mind! There is my one poor
chance in a hundred still left. You will remember me, Amelius, if you
_should_ meet with her, won’t you?”

The implied confession of her own intractable character, without
religious faith to ennoble it, without even imagination to refine
it--the unconscious disclosure of the one tender and loving instinct in
her nature still piteously struggling for existence, with no sympathy to
sustain it, with no light to guide it--would have touched the heart of
any man not incurably depraved. Amelius spoke with the fervour of his
young enthusiasm. “I would go to the uttermost ends of the earth, if I
thought I could do you any good. But, oh, it sounds so hopeless!”

She shook her head, and smiled faintly.

“Don’t say that! You are free, you have money, you will travel about
in the world and amuse yourself. In a week you will see more than
stay-at-home people see in a year. How do we know what the future has
in store for us? I have my own idea. She may be lost in the labyrinth
of London, or she may be hundreds of thousands of miles away. Amuse
yourself, Amelius--amuse yourself. Tomorrow or ten years hence, you
might meet with her!”

In sheer mercy to the poor creature, Amelius refused to encourage her
delusion. “Even supposing such a thing could happen,” he objected, “how
am I to know the lost girl? You can’t describe her to me; you have not
seen her since she was a child. Do you know anything of what happened at
the time--I mean at the time when she was lost?”

“I know nothing.”

“Absolutely nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Have you never felt a suspicion of how it happened?”

Her face changed: she frowned as she looked at him. “Not till weeks and
months had passed,” she said, “not till it was too late. I was ill
at the time. When my mind got clear again, I began to suspect one
particular person--little by little, you know; noticing trifles, and
thinking about them afterwards.” She stopped, evidently restraining
herself on the point of saying more.

Amelius tried to lead her on. “Did you suspect the person--?” he began.

“I suspected him of casting the child helpless on the world!” Mrs.
Farnaby interposed, with a sudden burst of fury. “Don’t ask me any more
about it, or I shall break out and shock you!” She clenched her fists as
she said the words. “It’s well for that man,” she muttered between her
teeth, “that I have never got beyond suspecting, and never found out the
truth! Why did you turn my mind that way? You shouldn’t have done it.
Help me back again to what we were saying a minute ago. You made some
objection; you said--?”

“I said,” Amelius reminded her, “that, even if I did meet with the
missing girl, I couldn’t possibly know it. And I must say more than
that--I don’t see how you yourself could be sure of recognizing her, if
she stood before you at this moment.”

He spoke very gently, fearing to irritate her. She showed no sign of
irritation--she looked at him, and listened to him, attentively.

“Are you setting a trap for me?” she asked. “No!” she cried, before
Amelius could answer, “I am not mean enough to distrust you--I forgot
myself. You have innocently said something that rankles in my mind. I
can’t leave it where you have left it; I don’t like to be told that I
shouldn’t recognize her. Give me time to think. I must clear this up.”

She consulted her own thoughts, keeping her eyes fixed on Amelius.

“I am going to speak plainly,” she announced, with a sudden appearance
of resolution. “Listen to this. When I banged to the door of that big
cupboard of mine, it was because I didn’t want you to see something on
the shelves. Did you see anything in spite of me?”

The question was not an easy one to answer. Amelius hesitated. Mrs.
Farnaby insisted on a reply.

“Did you see anything?” she reiterated

Amelius owned that he had seen something.

She turned away from him, and looked into the fire. Her firm full tones
sank so low, when she spoke next, that he could barely hear them.

“Was it something belonging to a child?”

“Yes.”

“Was it a baby’s frock and cap? Answer me. We have gone too far to go
back. I don’t want apologies or explanations--I want, Yes or No.”

“Yes.”

There was an interval of silence. She never moved; she still looked into
fire--looked, as if all her past life was pictured there in the burning
coals.

“Do you despise me?” she asked at last, very quietly.

“As God hears me, I am only sorry for you!” Amelius answered.

Another woman would have melted into tears. This woman still looked into
the fire--and that was all. “What a good fellow!” she said to herself,
“what a good fellow he is!”

There was another pause. She turned towards him again as abruptly as she
had turned away.

“I had hoped to spare you, and to spare myself,” she said. “If the
miserable truth has come out, it is through no curiosity of yours, and
(God knows!) against every wish of mine. I don’t know if you really felt
like a friend towards me before--you must be my friend now. Don’t speak!
I know I can trust you. One last word, Amelius, about my lost child. You
doubt whether I should recognize her, if she stood before me now. That
might be quite true, if I had only my own poor hopes and anxieties to
guide me. But I have something else to guide me--and, after what has
passed between us, you may as well know what it is: it might even, by
accident, guide you. Don’t alarm yourself; it’s nothing distressing this
time. How can I explain it?” she went on; pausing, and speaking in some
perplexity to herself. “It would be easier to show it--and why not?” She
addressed herself to Amelius once more. “I’m a strange creature,”
 she resumed. “First, I worry you about my own affairs--then I puzzle
you--then I make you sorry for me--and now (would you think it?) I am
going to amuse you! Amelius, are you an admirer of pretty feet?”

Amelius had heard of men (in books) who had found reason to doubt
whether their own ears were not deceiving them. For the first time, he
began to understand those men, and to sympathize with them. He admitted,
in a certain bewildered way, that he was an admirer of pretty feet--and
waited for what was to come next.

“When a woman has a pretty hand,” Mrs. Farnaby proceeded; “she is ready
enough to show it. When she goes out to a ball, she favours you with a
view of her bosom, and a part of her back. Now tell me! If there is no
impropriety in a naked bosom--where is the impropriety in a naked foot?”

Amelius agreed, like a man in a dream.

“Where, indeed!” he remarked--and waited again for what was to come
next.

“Look out of the window,” said Mrs. Farnaby.

Amelius obeyed. The window had been opened for a few inches at the
top, no doubt to ventilate the room. The dull view of the courtyard was
varied by the stables at the farther end, and by the kitchen skylight
rising in the middle of the open space. As Amelius looked out, he
observed that some person at that moment in the kitchen required
apparently a large supply of fresh air. The swinging window, on the side
of the skylight which was nearest to him, was invisibly and noiselessly
pulled open from below; the similar window, on the other side, being
already wide open also. Judging by appearance, the inhabitants of the
kitchen possessed a merit which is exceedingly rare among domestic
servants--they understood the laws of ventilation, and appreciated the
blessing of fresh air.

“That will do,” said Mrs. Farnaby. “You can turn round now.”

Amelius turned. Mrs. Farnaby’s boots and stockings were on the
hearthrug, and one of Mrs. Farnaby’s feet was placed, ready for
inspection, on the chair which he had just left. “Look at my right foot
first,” she said, speaking gravely and composedly in her ordinary tone.

It was well worth looking at--a foot equally beautiful in form and
in colour: the instep arched and high, the ankle at once delicate and
strong, the toes tinged with rose-colour at the tips. In brief, it was
a foot to be photographed, to be cast in plaster, to be fondled and
kissed. Amelius attempted to express his admiration, but was not
allowed to get beyond the first two or three words. “No,” Mrs. Farnaby
explained, “this is not vanity--simply information. You have seen my
right foot; and you have noticed that there is nothing the matter with
it. Very well. Now look at my left foot.”

She put her left foot up on the chair. “Look between the third toe and
the fourth,” she said.

Following his instructions, Amelius discovered that the beauty of the
foot was spoilt, in this case, by a singular defect. The two toes were
bound together by a flexible web, or membrane, which held them to each
other as high as the insertion of the nail on either side.

“Do you wonder,” Mrs. Farnaby asked, “why I show you the fault in my
foot? Amelius! my poor darling was born with my deformity--and I want
you to know exactly what it is, because neither you nor I can say what
reason for remembering it there may not be in the future.” She stopped,
as if to give him an opportunity of speaking. A man shallow and flippant
by nature might have seen the disclosure in a grotesque aspect. Amelius
was sad and silent. “I like you better and better,” she went on. “You
are not like the common run of men. Nine out of ten of them would have
turned what I have just told you into a joke--nine out of ten would have
said, ‘Am I to ask every girl I meet to show me her left foot?’ You are
above that; you understand me. Have I no means of recognizing my own
child, now?”

She smiled, and took her foot off the chair--then, after a moment’s
thought, she pointed to it again.

“Keep this as strictly secret as you keep everything else,” she said.
“In the past days, when I used to employ people privately to help me to
find her, it was my only defence against being imposed upon. Rogues and
vagabonds thought of other marks and signs--but not one of them could
guess at such a mark as that. Have you got your pocket-book, Amelius? In
case we are separated at some later time, I want to write the name and
address in it of a person whom we can trust. I persist, you see, in
providing for the future. There’s the one chance in a hundred that my
dream may come true--and you have so many years before you, and so many
girls to meet with in that time!”

She handed back the pocket-book, which Amelius had given to her, after
having inscribed a man’s name and address on one of the blank leaves.

“He was my father’s lawyer,” she explained; “and he and his son are both
men to be trusted. Suppose I am ill, for instance--no, that’s absurd; I
never had a day’s illness in my life. Suppose I am dead (killed perhaps
by some accident, or perhaps by my own hand), the lawyers have my
written instructions, in the case of my child being found. Then again--I
am such an unaccountable woman--I may go away somewhere, all by myself.
Never mind! The lawyers shall have my address, and my positive orders
(though they keep it a secret from all the world besides) to tell it to
you. I don’t ask your pardon, Amelius, for troubling you. The chances
are so terribly against me; it is all but impossible that I shall ever
see you--as I saw you in my dream--coming into the room, leading my girl
by the hand. Odd, isn’t it? This is how I veer about between hope and
despair. Well, it may amuse you to remember it, one of these days. Years
hence, when I am at rest in mother earth, and when you are a middle aged
married man, you may tell your wife how strangely you once became the
forlorn hope of the most wretched woman that ever lived--and you may say
to each other, as you sit by your snug fireside, ‘Perhaps that poor lost
daughter is still living somewhere, and wondering who her mother was.’
No! I won’t let you see the tears in my eyes again--I’ll let you go at
last.”

She led the way to the door--a creature to be pitied, if ever there was
a pitiable creature yet: a woman whose whole nature was maternal, who
was nothing if not a mother; and who had lived through sixteen years of
barren life, in the hopeless anticipation of recovering her lost child!

“Goodbye, and thank you,” she said. “I want to be left by myself, my
dear, with that little frock and cap which you found out in spite of me.
Go, and tell my niece it’s all right--and don’t be stupid enough to fall
in love with a girl who has no love to give you in return.” She pushed
Amelius into the hall. “Here he is, Regina!” she called out; “I have
done with him.”

Before Amelius could speak, she had shut herself into her room. He
advanced along the hall, and met Regina at the door of the dining-room.



CHAPTER 3

The young lady spoke first.

“Mr. Goldenheart,” she said, with the coldest possible politeness,
“perhaps you will be good enough to explain what this means?”

She turned back into the dining-room. Amelius followed her in silence.
“Here I am, in another scrape with a woman!” he thought to himself. “Are
men in general as unlucky as I am, I wonder?”

“You needn’t close the door,” said Regina maliciously. “Everybody in the
house is welcome to hear what _I_ have to say to you.”

Amelius made a mistake at the outset--he tried what a little humility
would do to help him. There is probably no instance on record in which
humility on the part of a man has ever really found its way to the
indulgence of an irritated woman. The best and the worst of them alike
have at least one virtue in common--they secretly despise a man who is
not bold enough to defend himself when they are angry with him.

“I hope I have not offended you?” Amelius ventured to say.

She tossed her head contemptuously. “Oh dear, no! I am not offended.
Only a little surprised at your being so very ready to oblige my aunt.”

In the short experience of her which had fallen to the lot of Amelius,
she had never looked so charmingly as she looked now. The nervous
irritability under which she was suffering brightened her face with the
animation which was wanting in it at ordinary times. Her soft brown eyes
sparkled; her smooth dusky cheeks glowed with a warm red flush; her
tall supple figure asserted its full dignity, robed in a superb dress of
silken purple and black lace, which set off her personal attractions to
the utmost advantage. She not only roused the admiration of Amelius--she
unconsciously gave him back the self-possession which he had, for the
moment, completely lost. He was man enough to feel the humiliation of
being despised by the one woman in the world whose love he longed
to win; and he answered with a sudden firmness of tone and look that
startled her.

“You had better speak more plainly still, Miss Regina,” he said. “You
may as well blame me at once for the misfortune of being a man.”

She drew back a step. “I don’t understand you,” she answered.

“Do I owe no forbearance to a woman who asks a favour of me?” Amelius
went on. “If a man had asked me to steal into the house on tiptoe, I
should have said--well! I should have said something I had better not
repeat. If a man had stood between me and the door when you came back, I
should have taken him by the collar and pulled him out of my way. Could
I do that, if you please, with Mrs. Farnaby?”

Regina saw the weak point of this defence with a woman’s quickness of
perception. “I can’t offer any opinion,” she said; “especially when you
lay all the blame on my aunt.”

Amelius opened his lips to protest--and thought better of it. He wisely
went straight on with what he had still to say.

“If you will let me finish,” he resumed, “you will understand me a
little better than that. Whatever blame there may be, Miss Regina, I am
quite ready to take on myself. I merely wanted to remind you that I was
put in an awkwar

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