The Fallen Leaves Part 5

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 a.s.semble 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 pa.s.sing shadow of sadness clouded his bright young face.

The two elder men looked at him in silence, feeling (in widely different ways) the same compa.s.sionate interest. What was the life that lay before him? And--G.o.d 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 nutsh.e.l.l. 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sed, where my childhood had been pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed there.'

On my sacred word of honour, this was the sort of talk that pa.s.sed between us, for week after week. What other talk could pa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance," 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. n.o.body 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 sh.o.r.e."

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 enc.u.mbrance 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt. 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 cla.s.ses 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.body but me to hear her."

"In my country, sir," Rufus remarked, "the Lecture Bureau would have provided for her amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.s-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 a.s.sure 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.