“I can understand the poor creature’s motive in joining your Community,” he said. “To a person of any sensibility her position, among such relatives as you describe, must have been simply unendurable after what had happened. How did she hear of Tadmor and the Socialists?”
“She had read one of our books,” Amelius answered; “and she had her married sister at New York to go to. There were moments, after her recovery (she confessed it to me frankly), when the thought of suicide was in her mind. Her religious scruples saved her. She was kindly received by her sister and her sister’s husband. They proposed to keep her with them to teach their children. No! the new life offered to her was too like the old life—she was broken in body and mind; she had no courage to face it. We have a resident agent in New York; and he arranged for her journey to Tadmor. There is a gleam of brightness, at any rate, in this part of her story. She blessed the day, poor soul, when she joined us. Never before had she found herself among such kind-hearted, unselfish, simple people. Never before—” he abruptly checked himself, and looked a little confused.
Obliging Rufus finished the sentence for him. “Never before had she known a young man with such natural gifts of fascination as C.A.G. Don’t you be too modest, sir; it doesn’t pay, I assure you, in the nineteenth century.”
Amelius was not as ready with his laugh as usual. “I wish I could drop it at the point we have reached now,” he said. “But she has left Tadmor; and, in justice to her (after the scandals in the newspaper), I must tell you how she left it, and why. The mischief began when I was helping her out of the boat. Two of our young women met us on the bank of the lake, and asked me how I got on with my fishing. They didn’t mean any harm—they were only in their customary good spirits. Still, there was no mistaking their looks and tones when they put the question. Miss Mellicent, in her confusion, made matters worse. She coloured up, and snatched her hand out of mine, and ran back to the house by herself. The girls, enjoying their own foolish joke, congratulated me on my prospects. I must have been out of sorts in some way—upset, perhaps, by what I had heard in the boat. Anyhow, I lost my temper, and I made matters worse, next. I said some angry words, and left them. The same evening I found a letter in my room. ‘For your sake, I must not be seen alone with you again. It is hard to lose the comfort of your sympathy, but I must submit. Think of me as kindly as I think of you. It has done me good to open my heart to you.’ Only those lines, signed by Mellicent’s initials. I was rash enough to keep the letter, instead of destroying it. All might have ended well, nevertheless, if she had only held to her resolution. But, unluckily, my twenty-first birthday was close at hand; and there was talk of keeping it as a festival in the Community. I was up with sunrise when the day came; having some farming work to look after, and wanting to get it over in good time. My shortest way back to breakfast was through a wood. In the wood I met her.”
“Alone?” Mr. Hethcote asked.
Rufus expressed his opinion of the wisdom of putting this question with his customary plainness of language. “When there’s a rash thing to be done by a man and a woman together, sir, philosophers have remarked that it’s always the woman who leads the way. Of course she was alone.”
“She had a little present for me on my birthday,” Amelius explained—“a purse of her own making. And she was afraid of the ridicule of the young women, if she gave it to me openly. ‘You have my heart’s dearest wishes for your happiness; think of me sometimes, Amelius, when you open your purse.’ If you had been in my place, could you have told her to go away, when she said that, and put her gift into your hand? Not if she had been looking at you at the moment—I’ll swear you couldn’t have done it!”
The lean yellow face of Rufus Dingwell relaxed for the first time into a broad grin. “There are further particulars, sir, stated in the newspaper,” he said slily.
“Damn the newspaper!” Amelius answered.
Rufus bowed, serenely courteous, with the air of a man who accepted a British oath as an unwilling compliment paid by the old country to the American press. “The newspaper report states, sir, that she kissed you.”