The New Magdalen

"This is strong language, I know. You shall hear what the facts are, and

judge for yourself.

"Having resigned his curacy, his next proceeding was to offer his

services, as volunteer, to a new missionary enterprise on the West

Coast of Africa. The persons at the head of the mission proved, most

fortunately, to have a proper sense of their duty. Expressing their

conviction of the value of Julian's assistance in the most handsome

terms, they made it nevertheless a condition of entertaining his

proposal that he should submit to examination by a competent medical

man. After some hesitation he consented to this. The doctor's report

was conclusive. In Julian's present state of health the climate of West

Africa would in all probability kill him in three months' time.

"Foiled in his first attempt, he addressed himself next to a London

Mission. Here it was impossible to raise the question of climate, and

here, I grieve to say, he has succeeded.

"He is now working--in other words, he is now deliberately risking his

life--in the Mission to Green Anchor Fields. The district known by this

name is situated in a remote part of London, near the Thames. It is

notoriously infested by the most desperate and degraded set of wretches

in the whole metropolitan population, and it is so thickly inhabited

that it is hardly ever completely free from epidemic disease. In

this horrible place, and among these dangerous people, Julian is now

employing himself from morning to night. None of his old friends ever

see him. Since he joined the Mission he has not even called on Lady

Janet Roy.

"My pledge is redeemed--the facts are before you. Am I wrong in taking

my gloomy view of the prospect? I cannot forget that this unhappy man

was once my friend, and I really see no hope for him in the future.

Deliberately self-exposed to the violence of ruffians and the outbreak

of disease, who is to extricate him from his shocking position? The one

person who can do it is the person whose association with him would be

his ruin--Mercy Merrick. Heaven only knows what disasters it may be my

painful duty to communicate to you in my next letter!

"You are so kind as to ask me to tell you something about myself and my

plans.

"I have very little to say on either head. After what I have

suffered--my feelings trampled on, my confidence betrayed--I am as

yet hardly capable of deciding what I shall do. Returning to my old

profession--to the army--is out of the question, in these leveling days,

when any obscure person who can pass an examination may call himself my

brother officer, and may one day, perhaps, command me as my superior in

rank. If I think of any career, it is the career of diplomacy. Birth

and breeding have not quite disappeared as essential qualifications in

_that_ branch of the public service. But I have decided nothing as yet.