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!"