The New Magdalen

With that frank avowal he left the luncheon table, and took a chair near

Mercy.

"You will naturally be anxious," he went on, "to know what my offense

was. Do you understand Political Economy and the Laws of Supply and

Demand?"

Mercy owned that she did _not_ understand them.

"No more do I--in a Christian country," he said. "That was my offense.

You shall hear my confession (just as my aunt will hear it) in two

words." He paused for a little while; his variable manner changed

again. Mercy, shyly looking at him, saw a new expression in his eyes--an

expression which recalled her first remembrance of him as nothing had

recalled it yet. "I had no idea," he resumed, "of what the life of a

farm-laborer really was, in some parts of England, until I undertook the

rector's duties. Never before had I seen such dire wretchedness as I saw

in the cottages. Never before had I met with such noble patience under

suffering as I found among the people. The martyrs of old could endure,

and die. I asked myself if they could endure, and _live_, like the

martyrs whom I saw round me?--live, week after week, month after month,

year after year, on the brink of starvation; live, and see their pining

children growing up round them, to work and want in their turn; live,

with the poor man's parish prison to look to as the end, when hunger and

labor have done their worst! Was God's beautiful earth made to hold such

misery as this? I can hardly think of it, I can hardly speak of it, even

now, with dry eyes!"

His head sank on his breast. He waited--mastering his emotion before he

spoke again. Now, at last, she knew him once more. Now he was the man,

indeed, whom she had expected to see. Unconsciously she sat listening,

with her eyes fixed on his face, with his heart hanging on his words,

in the very attitude of the by-gone day when she had heard him for the

first time!

"I did all I could to plead for the helpless ones," he resumed. "I went

round among the holders of the land to say a word for the tillers of the

land. 'These patient people don't want much' (I said); 'in the name of

Christ, give them enough to live on!' Political Economy shrieked at the

horrid proposal; the Laws of Supply and Demand veiled their majestic

faces in dismay. Starvation wages were the right wages, I was told. And

why? Because the laborer was obliged to accept them! I determined, so

far as one man could do it, that the laborer should _not_ be obliged to

accept them. I collected my own resources--I wrote to my friends--and

I removed some of the poor fellows to parts of England where their work

was better paid. Such was the conduct which made the neighborhood too

hot to hold me. So let it be! I mean to go on. I am known in London; I

can raise subscriptions. The vile Laws of Supply and Demand shall find

labor scarce in that agricultural district; and pitiless Political

Economy shall spend a few extra shillings on the poor, as certainly as I

am that Radical, Communist, and Incendiary--Julian Gray!"