Johanna Spyri - "Heidi"

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Retold by Mary Catherine Judd - "Classic Myths"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Fallen Leaves

W >> Wilkie Collins >> 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."