第92章

"I had now not only to provide for the wants of the passing hour--I had my debts to pay.It was only to be done by toiling harder than ever, and by living more poorly than ever.I soon paid the penalty, in my weakened state, of leading such a life as this.One evening my head turned suddenly giddy; my heart throbbed frightfully.I managed to open the window, and to let the fresh air into the room, and I felt better.But I was not sufficiently recovered to be able to thread my needle.I thought to myself, 'If I go out for half an hour, a little exercise may put me right again.' I had not, as I suppose, been out more than ten minutes when the attack from which I had suffered in my room was renewed.There was no shop near in which I could take refuge.I tried to ring the bell of the nearest house door.Before I could reach it I fainted in the street.

"How long hunger and weakness left me at the mercy of the first stranger who might pass by, it is impossible for me to say.

"When I partially recovered my senses I was conscious of being under shelter somewhere, and of having a wine-glass containing some cordial drink held to my lips by a man.I managed to swallow--I don't know how little, or how much.The stimulant had a very strange effect on me.Reviving me at first, it ended in stupefying me.I lost my senses once more.

"When I next recovered myself, the day was breaking.I was in a bed in a strange room.A nameless terror seized me.I called out.Three or four women came in, whose faces betrayed, even to my inexperienced eyes, the shameless infamy of their lives.I started up in the bed.I implored them to tell me where I was, and what had happened--"Spare me! I can say no more.Not long since you heard Miss Roseberry call me an outcast from the streets.Now you know--as God is my judge I am speaking the truth!--now you know what made me an outcast, and in what measure I deserved my disgrace."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.

"You will forgive and understand me if I say no more of this period of my life.Let me pass to the new incident in my career which brought me for the second time before the public notice in a court of law.