Eugene O'Neill - "Anna Christie"

C.F. McGlashan - "History of the Donner Party"

Henry Thomas Hamblin - "Within You is the Power"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Introduction I."

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




"I object to nothing which may help to find him. Do you think the
police have got him anywhere?"

"You forget, sir, that the police have no orders to take him. What I'm
speculating on is the chance that he has got the money about him--say
in small banknotes, for convenience of changing them, you know."

"Well?"

"Well, sir, the people he lives among--the squint-eyed man, for
instance!--don't stick at trifles. If any of them have found out that
Jervy's purse is worth having--"

"You mean they would rob him?"

"And murder him too, sir, if he tried to resist."

Amelius started to his feet. "Send round to the police-stations without
losing another minute," he said. "And let me hear what the answer is,
the instant you receive it."

"Suppose I get the answer late at night, sir?"

"I don't care when you get it, night or day. Dead or living, I will
undertake to identify him. Here's a duplicate key of the garden gate.
Come this way, and I'll show you where my bedroom is. If we are all in
bed, tap at the window--and I will be ready for you at a moment's
notice."

On that understanding Morcross left the cottage.

The day when the mortal remains of Mrs. Farnaby were laid at rest was a
day of heavy rain. Mr. Melton, and two or three other old friends, were
the attendants at the funeral. When the coffin was borne into the damp
and reeking burial ground, a young man and a woman were the only
persons, beside the sexton and his assistants, who stood by the open
grave. Mr. Melton, recognizing Amelius, was at a loss to understand who
his companion could be. It was impossible to suppose that he would
profane that solemn ceremony by bringing to it the lost woman at the
cottage. The thick black veil of the person with him hid her face from
view. No visible expressions of grief escaped her. When the last
sublime words of the burial service had been read, those two mourners
were left, after the others had all departed, still standing together
by the grave. Mr. Melton decided on mentioning the circumstance
confidentially when he wrote to his friend in Paris. Telegrams from
Regina, in reply to his telegrams from London, had informed him that
Mr. Farnaby had felt the benefit of the remedies employed, and was
slowly on the way to recovery. It seemed likely that he would, in no
long time, take the right course for the protection of his niece. For
the enlightenment which might, or might not, come with that time, Mr.
Melton was resigned to wait, with the disciplined patience to which he
had been mainly indebted for his success in life.


"Always remember your mother tenderly, my child," said Amelius, as they
left the burial ground. "She was sorely tried, poor thing, in her life
time, and she loved you very dearly."

"Do you know anything of my father?" Sally asked timidly. "Is he still
living?"

"My dear, you will never see your father. I must be all that the
kindest father and mother could have been to you, now. Oh, my poor
little girl!"

She pressed his arm to her as she held it. "Why should you pity me?"
she said. "Haven't I got You?"

They passed the day together quietly at the cottage. Amelius took down
some of his books, and pleased Sally by giving her his first lessons.
Soon after ten o'clock she withdrew, at the usual early hour, to her
room. In her absence, he sent for Toff, intending to warn him not to be
alarmed if he heard footsteps in the garden, after they had all gone to
bed. The old servant had barely entered the library, when he was called
away by the bell at the outer gate. Amelius, looking into the hall,
discovered Morcross, and signed to him eagerly to come in. The
police-officer closed the door cautiously behind him. He had arrived
with news that Jervy was found.



CHAPTER 4

"Where has he been found?" Amelius asked, snatching up his hat.

"There's no hurry, sir," Morcross answered quietly. "When I had the
honour of seeing you yesterday, you said you meant to make Jervy suffer
for what he had done. Somebody else has saved you the trouble. He was
found this evening in the river."

"Drowned?"

"Stabbed in three places, sir; and put out of the way in the
river--that's the surgeon's report. Robbed of everything he
possessed--that's the police report, after searching his pockets."

Amelius was silent. It had not entered into his calculations that crime
breeds crime, and that the criminal might escape him under that law.
For the moment, he was conscious of a sense of disappointment,
revealing plainly that the desire for vengeance had mingled with the
higher motives which animated him. He felt uneasy and ashamed, and
longed as usual to take refuge in action from his own unwelcome
thoughts. "Are you sure it is the man?" he asked. "My description may
have misled the police--I should like to see him myself."

"Certainly, sir. While we are about it, if you feel any curiosity to
trace Jervy's ill-gotten money, there's a chance (from what I have
heard) of finding the man with the squint. The people at our place
think it's likely he may have been concerned in the robbery, if he
hasn't committed the murder."

In an hour after, under the guidance of Morcross, Amelius passed
through the dreary doors of a deadhouse, situated on the southern bank
of the Thames, and saw the body of Jervy stretched out on a stone slab.
The guardian who held the lantern, inured to such horrible sights,
declared that the corpse could not have been in the water more than two
days. To any one who had seen the murdered man, the face, undisfigured
by injury of any kind, was perfectly recognizable. Amelius knew him
again, dead, as certainly as he had known him again, living, when he
was waiting for Phoebe in the street.

"If you're satisfied, sir," said Morcross, "the inspector at the
police-station is sending a sergeant to look after 'Wall-Eyes'--the
name they give hereabouts to the man suspected of the robbery. We can
take the sergeant with us in the cab, if you like."

Still keeping on the southern bank of the river, they drove for a
quarter of an hour in a westerly direction, and stopped at a
public-house. The sergeant of police went in by himself to make the
first inquiries.

"We are a day too late, sir," he said to Amelius, on returning to the
cab. "Wall-Eyes was here last night, and Mother Sowler with him,
judging by the description. Both of them drunk--and the woman the worse
of the two. The landlord knew nothing more about it; but there's a man
at the bar tells me he heard of them this morning (still drinking) at
the Dairy."

"The Dairy?" Amelius repeated.

Morcross interposed with the necessary explanation. "An old house, sir,
which once stood by itself in the fields. It was a dairy a hundred
years ago; and it has kept the name ever since, though it's nothing but
a low lodging house now."

"One of the worst places on this side of the river," the sergeant
added, "The landlord's a returned convict. Sly as he is we shall have
him again yet, for receiving stolen goods. There's every sort of thief
among his lodgers, from a pickpocket to a housebreaker. It's my duty to
continue the inquiry, sir; but a gentleman like you will be better, I
should say, out of such a place as that."

Still disquieted by the sight that he had seen in the deadhouse, and by
the associations which that sight had recalled, Amelius was ready for
any adventure which might relieve his mind. Even the prospect of a
visit to a thieves' lodging house was more welcome to him than the
prospect of going home alone. "If there's no serious objection to it,"
he said, "I own I should like to see the place."

"You'll be safe enough with us," the sergeant replied. "If you don't
mind filthy people and bad language--all right, sir! Cabman, drive to
the Dairy."

Their direction was now towards the south, through a perfect labyrinth
of mean and dirty streets. Twice the driver was obliged to ask his way.
On the second occasion the sergeant, putting his head out of the window
to stop the cab, cried, "Hullo! there's something up."

They got out in front of a long low rambling house, a complete contrast
to the modern buildings about it. Late as the hour was, a mob had
assembled in front of the door. The police were on the spot keeping the
people in order.

Morcross and the sergeant pushed their way through the crowd, leading
Amelius between them. "Something wrong, sir, in the back kitchen," said
one of the policemen answering the sergeant while he opened the street
door. A few yards down the passage there was a second door, with a man
on the watch by it. "There's a nice to-do downstairs," the man
announced, recognizing the sergeant, and unlocking the door with a key
which he took from his pocket. "The landlord at the Dairy knows his
lodgers, sir," Morcross whispered to Amelius; "the place is kept like a
prison." As they passed through the second door, a frantic voice
startled them, shouting in fury from below. An old man came hobbling up
the kitchen stairs, his eyes wild with fear, his long grey hair all
tumbled over his face. "Oh, Lord, have you got the tools for breaking
open the door?" he asked, wringing his dirty hands in an agony of
supplication. "She'll set the house on fire! she'll kill my wife and
daughter!" The sergeant pushed him contemptuously out of the way, and
looked round for Amelius. "It's only the landlord, sir; keep near
Morcross, and follow me."

They descended the kitchen stairs, the frantic cries below growing
louder and louder at every step they took; and made their way through
the thieves and vagabonds crowding together in the passage. Passing on
their right hand a solid old oaken door fast closed, they reached an
open wicket-gate of iron which led into a stone-paved yard. A heavily
barred window was now visible in the back wall of the house, raised
three or four feet from the pavement of the yard. The room within was
illuminated by a blaze of gaslight. More policemen were here, keeping
back more inquisitive lodgers. Among the spectators was a man with a
hideous outward squint, holding by the window-bars in a state of
drunken terror. The sergeant looked at him, and beckoned to one of the
policemen. "Take him to the station; I shall have something to say to
Wall-Eyes when he's sober. Now then! stand back all of you, and let's
see what's going on in the kitchen."

He took Amelius by the arm, and led him to the window. Even the
sergeant started when the scene inside met his view. "By God!" he
cried, "it's Mother Sowler herself."

It _was_ Mother Sowler. The horrible woman was tramping round and round
in the middle of the kitchen, like a beast in a cage; raving in the
dreadful drink-madness called delirium tremens. In the farthest corner
of the room, barricaded behind the table, the landlord's wife and
daughter crouched in terror of their lives. The gas, turned full on,
blazed high enough to blacken the ceiling, and showed the heavy bolts
shot at the top and bottom of the solid door. Nothing less than a
battering-ram could have burst that door in from the outer side; an
hour's work with the file would have failed to break a passage through
the bars over the window. "How did she get there?" the sergeant asked.
"Run downstairs, and bolted herself in, while the missus and the young
'un were cooking"--was the answering cry from the people in the yard.
As they spoke, another vain attempt was made to break in the door from
the passage. The noise of the heavy blows redoubled the frenzy of the
terrible creature in the kitchen, still tramping round and round under
the blazing gaslight. Suddenly, she made a dart at the window, and
confronted the men looking in from the yard. Her staring eyes were
bloodshot; a purple-red flush was over her face; her hair waved wildly
about her, torn away in places by her own hands. "Cats!" she screamed,
glaring out of the window, "millions of cats! all their months wide
open spitting at me! Fire! fire to scare away the cats!" She searched
furiously in her pocket, and tore out a handful of loose papers. One of
them escaped, and fluttered downward to a wooden press under the
window. Amelius was nearest, and saw it plainly as it fell, "Good
heavens!" he exclaimed, "it's a bank-note!" "Wall-Eyes' money!" shouted
the thieves in the yard; "She's going to burn Wall-Eyes' money!" The
madwoman turned back to the middle of the kitchen, leapt up at the
gas-burner, and set fire to the bank-notes. She scattered them flaming
all round her on the kitchen floor. "Away with you!" she shouted,
shaking her fists at the visionary multitude of cats. "Away with you,
up the chimney! Away with you, out of the window!" She sprang back to
the window, with her crooked fingers twisted in her hair! "The snakes!"
she shrieked; "the snakes are hissing again in my hair! the beetles are
crawling over my face!" She tore at her hair; she scraped her face with
long black nails that lacerated the flesh. Amelius turned away, unable
to endure the sight of her. Morcross took his place, eyed her steadily
for a moment, and saw the way to end it. "A quarter of gin!" he
shouted. "Quick! before she leaves the window!" In a minute he had the
pewter measure in his hand, and tapped at the window. "Gin, Mother
Sowler! Break the window, and have a drop of gin!" For a moment, the
drunkard mastered her own dreadful visions at the sight of the liquor.
She broke a pane of glass with her clenched fist. "The door!" cried
Morcross, to the panic-stricken women, barricaded behind the table.
"The door!" he reiterated, as he handed the gin in through the bars.
The elder woman was too terrified to understand him; her bolder
daughter crawled under the table, rushed across the kitchen, and drew
the bolts. As the madwoman turned to attack her, the room was filled
with men, headed by the sergeant. Three of them were barely enough to
control the frantic wretch, and bind her hand and foot. When Amelius
entered the kitchen, after she had been conveyed to the hospital, a
five-pound note on the press (secured by one of the police), and a few
frail black ashes scattered thinly on the kitchen floor, were the only
relics left of the ill-gotten money.


After-inquiry, patiently pursued in more than one direction, failed to
throw any light on the mystery of Jervy's death. Morcross's report to
Amelius, towards the close of the investigation, was little more than
ingenious guess-work.

"It seems pretty clear, sir, in the first place, that Mother Sowler
must have overtaken Wall-Eyes, after he had left the letter at Mrs.
Farnaby's lodgings. In the second place, we are justified (as I shall
show you directly) in assuming that she told him of the money in
Jervy's possession, and that the two succeeded in discovering Jervy--no
doubt through Wall-Eyes' superior knowledge of his master's movements.
The evidence concerning the bank-notes proves this. We know, by the
examination of the people at the Dairy, that Wall-Eyes took from his
pocket a handful of notes, when they refused to send for liquor without
having the money first. We are also informed, that the breaking-out of
the drink-madness in Mother Sowler showed itself in her snatching the
notes out of his hand, and trying to strangle him--before she ran down
into the kitchen and bolted herself in. Lastly, Mrs. Farnaby's bankers
have identified the note saved from the burning, as one of forty
five-pound notes paid to her cheque. So much for the tracing of the
money.

"I wish I could give an equally satisfactory account of the tracing of
the crime. We can make nothing of Wall-Eyes. He declares that he didn't
even know Jervy was dead, till we told him; and he swears he found the
money dropped in the street. It is needless to say that this last
assertion is a lie. Opinions are divided among us as to whether he is
answerable for the murder as well as the robbery, or whether there was
a third person concerned in it. My own belief is that Jervy was drugged
by the old woman (with a young woman very likely used as a decoy), in
some house by the riverside, and then murdered by Wall-Eyes in cold
blood. We have done our best to clear the matter up, and we have not
succeeded. The doctors give us no hope of any assistance from Mother
Sowler. If she gets over the attack (which is doubtful), they say she
will die to a certainty of liver disease. In short, my own fear is that
this will prove to be one more of those murders which are mysteries to
the police as well as the public."

The report of the case excited some interest, published in the
newspapers in conspicuous type. Meddlesome readers wrote letters,
offering complacently stupid suggestions to the police. After a while,
another crime attracted general attention; and the murder of Jervy
disappeared from the public memory, among other forgotten murders of
modern times.



CHAPTER 5

The last dreary days of November came to their end.

No longer darkened by the shadows of crime and torment and death, the
life of Amelius glided insensibly into the peaceful byways of
seclusion, brightened by the companionship of Sally. The winter days
followed one another in a happy uniformity of occupations and
amusements. There were lessons to fill up the morning, and walks to
occupy the afternoon--and, in the evenings, sometimes reading,
sometimes singing, sometimes nothing but the lazy luxury of talk. In
the vast world of London, with its monstrous extremes of wealth and
poverty, and its all-permeating malady of life at fever-heat, there was
one supremely innocent and supremely happy creature. Sally had heard of
Heaven, attainable on the hard condition of first paying the debt of
death. "I have found a kinder Heaven," she said, one day. "It is here
in the cottage; and Amelius has shown me the way to it."

Their social isolation was at this time complete: they were two
friendless people, perfectly insensible to all that was perilous and
pitiable in their own position. They parted with a kiss at night, and
they met again with a kiss in the morning--and they were as happily
free from all mistrust of the future as a pair of birds. No visitors
came to the house; the few friends and acquaintances of Amelius,
forgotten by him, forgot him in return. Now and then, Toff's wife came
to the cottage, and exhibited the "cherubim-baby." Now and then, Toff
himself (a musician among his other accomplishments) brought his fiddle
upstairs; and, saying modestly, "A little music helps to pass the
time," played to the young master and mistress the cheerful tinkling
tunes of the old vaudevilles of France. They were pleased with these
small interruptions when they came; and they were not disappointed when
the days passed, and the baby and the vaudevilles were hushed in
absence and silence. So the happy winter time went by; and the howling
winds brought no rheumatism with them, and even the tax-gatherer
himself, looking in at this earthly paradise, departed without a curse
when he left his little paper behind him.

Now and then, at long intervals, the outer world intruded itself in the
form of a letter.

Regina wrote, always with the same placid affection; always entering
into the same minute narrative of the slow progress of "dear uncle's"
return to health. He was forbidden to exert himself in any way. His
nerves were in a state of lamentable irritability. "I dare not even
mention your name to him, dear Amelius; it seems, I cannot think why,
to make him--oh, so unreasonably angry. I can only submit, and pray
that he may soon be himself again." Amelius wrote back, always in the
same considerate and gentle tone; always laying the blame of his dull
letters on the studious uniformity of his life. He preserved, with a
perfectly easy conscience, the most absolute silence on the subject of
Sally. While he was faithful to Regina, what reason had he to reproach
himself with the protection that he offered to a poor motherless girl?
When he was married, he might mention the circumstances under which he
had met with Sally, and leave the rest to his wife's sympathy.

One morning, the letters with the Paris post-mark were varied by a few
lines from Rufus.

"Every morning, my bright boy, I get up and say to myself, 'Well! I
reckon it's about time to take the route for London;' and every
morning, if you'll believe me, I put it off till next day. Whether it's
in the good feeding (expensive, I admit; but when your cook helps you
to digest instead of hindering you, a man of my dyspeptic nation is too
grateful to complain)--or whether it's in the air, which reminds me, I
do assure you, of our native atmosphere at Coolspring, Mass., is more
than I can tell, with a hard steel pen on a leaf of flimsy paper. You
have heard the saying, 'When a good American dies, he goes to Paris'.
Maybe, sometimes, he's smart enough to discount his own death, and
rationally enjoy the future time in the present. This you see is a
poetic light. But, mercy be praised, the moral of my residence in Paris
is plain:--If I can't go to Amelius, Amelius must come to me. Note the
address Grand Hotel; and pack up, like a good boy, on receipt of this.
Memorandum: The brown Miss is here. I saw her taking the air in a
carriage, and raised my hat. She looked the other way.

"British--eminently British! But, there, I bear no malice; I am her most
obedient servant, and yours affectionately, RUFUS.--Postscript: I want
you to see some of our girls at this hotel. The genuine American
material, sir, perfected by Worth."

Another morning brought with it a few sad lines from Phoebe. "After
what had happened, she was quite unable to face her friends; she had no
heart to seek employment in her own country--her present life was too
dreary and too hopeless to be endured. A benevolent lady had made her
an offer to accompany a party of emigrants to New Zealand; and she had
accepted the proposal. Perhaps, among the new people, she might recover
her self-respect and her spirits, and live to be a better woman.
Meanwhile, she bade Mr. Goldenheart farewell; and asked his pardon for
taking the liberty of wishing him happy with Miss Regina."

Amelius wrote a few kind lines to Phoebe, and a cordial reply to Rufus,
making the pursuit of his studies his excuse for remaining in London.
After this, there was no further correspondence. The mornings succeeded
each other, and the postman brought no more news from the world
outside.

But the lessons went on; and the teacher and pupil were as
inconsiderately happy as ever in each other's society. Observing with
inexhaustible interest the progress of the mental development of Sally,
Amelius was slow to perceive the physical development which was
unobtrusively keeping pace with it. He was absolutely ignorant of the
part which his own influence was taking in the gradual and delicate
process of change. Ere long, the first forewarnings of the coming
disturbance in their harmless relations towards each other, began to
show themselves. Ere long, there were signs of a troubled mind in
Sally, which were mysteries to Amelius, and subjects of wonderment,
sometimes even trials of temper, to the girl herself.

One day, she looked in from the door of her room, in her white
dressing-gown, and asked to be forgiven if she kept the lessons of the
morning waiting for a little while.

"Come in," said Amelius, "and tell me why."

She hesitated. "You won't think me lazy, if you see me in my
dressing-gown?"

"Of course not! Your dressing-gown, my dear, is as good as any other
gown. A young girl like you looks best in white."

She came in with her work-basket, and her indoor dress over her arm.

Amelius laughed. "Why haven't you put it on?" he asked.

She sat down in a corner, and looked at her work-basket, instead of
looking at Amelius. "It doesn't fit me so well as it did," she
answered. "I am obliged to alter it."

Amelius looked at her--at the charming youthful figure that had filled
out, at the softly-rounded outline of the face with no angles and
hollows in it now. "Is it the dressmaker's fault?" he asked slyly.

Her eyes were still on the basket. "It's my fault," she said. "You
remember what a poor little skinny creature I was, when you first saw
me. I--you won't like me the worse for it, will you?--I am getting fat.
I don't know why. They say happy people get fat. Perhaps that's why.
I'm never hungry, and never frightened, and never miserable now--" She
stopped; her dress slipped from her lap to the floor. "Don't look at
me!" she said--and suddenly put her hands over her face.

Amelius saw the tears finding their way through the pretty plump
fingers, which he remembered so shapeless and so thin. He crossed the
room, and touched her gently on the shoulder. "My dear child! have I
said anything to distress you?"

"Nothing."

"Then why are you crying?"

"I don't know." She hesitated; looked at him; and made a desperate
effort to tell him what was in her mind. "I'm afraid you'll get tired
of me. There's nothing about me to make you pity me now. You seem to
be--not quite the same--no! it isn't that--I don't know what's come to
me--I'm a greater fool than ever. Give me my lesson, Amelius! please
give me my lesson!"