Books: The Fallen Leaves

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"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."

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