Her voice faltered, her resolution failed her, for the first time.
"Give me a few minutes," she said, in low, pleading tones. "If I try to
go on now, I am afraid I shall cry."
She took the chair which Julian had placed for her, turning her face
aside so that neither of the men could see it. One of her hands was
pressed over her bosom, the other hung listlessly at her side.
Julian rose from the place that he had occupied. Horace neither moved
nor spoke. His head was on his breast: the traces of tears on his cheeks
owned mutely that she had touched his heart. Would he forgive her?
Julian passed on, and approached Mercy's chair.
In silence he took the hand which hung at her side. In silence he lifted
it to his lips and kissed it, as her brother might have kissed it. She
started, but she never looked up. Some strange fear of discovery seemed
to possess her. "Horace?" she whispered, timidly. Julian made no reply.
He went back to his place, and allowed her to think it was Horace.
The sacrifice was immense enough--feeling toward her as he felt--to be
worthy of the man who made it.
A few minutes had been all she asked for. In a few minutes she turned
toward them again. Her sweet voice was steady once more; her eyes rested
softly on Horace as she went on.
"What was it possible for a friendless girl in my position to do, when
the full knowledge of the outrage had been revealed to me?
"If I had possessed near and dear relatives to protect and advise me,
the wretches into whose hands I had fallen might have felt the penalty
of the law. I knew no more of the formalities which set the law in
motion than a child. But I had another alternative (you will say).
Charitable societies would have received me and helped me, if I had
stated my case to them. I knew no more of the charitable societies than
I knew of the law. At least, then, I might have gone back to the honest
people among whom I had lived? When I received my freedom, after the
interval of some days, I was ashamed to go back to the honest people.
Helplessly and hopelessly, without sin or choice of mine, I drifted, as
thousands of other women have drifted, into the life which set a mark on
me for the rest of my days.
"Are you surprised at the ignorance which this confession reveals?
"You, who have your solicitors to inform you of legal remedies and
your newspapers, circulars, and active friends to sound the praises of
charitable institutions continually in your ears--you, who possess these
advantages, have no idea of the outer world of ignorance in which your
lost fellow-creatures live. They know nothing (unless they are rogues
accustomed to prey on society) of your benevolent schemes to help them.
The purpose of public charities, and the way to discover and apply to
them, ought to be posted at the corner of every street. What do we know
of public dinners and eloquent sermons and neatly printed circulars?
Every now and then the ease of some forlorn creature (generally of a
woman) who has committed suicide, within five minutes' walk, perhaps, of
an institution which would have opened its doors to her, appears in the
newspapers, shocks you dreadfully, and is then forgotten again. Take as
much pains to make charities and asylums known among the people without
money as are taken to make a new play, a new journal, or a new medicine
known among the people with money and you will save many a lost creature
who is perishing now.