‘How should I tell, sir? But if I had to say, I should say this—just what they say themselves—that there are too many of them. Go where you will, in town or country, you’ll find half-a-dozen shops struggling for a custom that would only keep up one, and so they’re forced to undersell one another. And when they’ve got down prices all they can by fair means, they’re forced to get them down lower by foul—to sand the sugar, and sloe-leave the tea, and put—Satan only that prompts ’em knows what—into the bread; and then they don’t thrive—they can’t thrive; God’s curse must be on them. They begin by trying to oust each other, and eat each other up; and while they’re eating up their neighbours, their neighbours eat up them; and so they all come to ruin together.’
‘Why, you talk like Mr. Mill himself, Tregarva; you ought to have been a political economist, and not a City missionary. By the bye, I don’t like that profession for you.’
‘It’s the Lord’s work, sir. It’s the very sending to the Gentiles that the Lord promised me.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Paul; but you are meant for other things, if not better. There are plenty of smaller men than you to do that work. Do you think that God would have given you that strength, that brain, to waste on a work which could be done without them? Those limbs would certainly be good capital for you, if you turned a live model at the Academy. Perhaps you’d better be mine; but you can’t even be that if you go to Manchester.’
The giant looked hopelessly down at his huge limbs. ‘Well! God only knows what use they are of just now. But as for the brains, sir—in much learning is much sorrow. One had much better work than read, I find. If I read much more about what men might be, and are not, and what English soil might be, and is not, I shall go mad. And that puts me in mind of one thing I came here for, though, like a poor rude country fellow as I am, I clean forgot it a thinking of—Look here, sir; you’ve given me a sight of books in my time, and God bless you for it. But now I hear that—that you are determined to be a poor man like us; and that you shan’t be, while Paul Tregarva has ought of yours. So I’ve just brought all the books back, and there they lie in the hall; and may God reward you for the loan of them to his poor child! And so, sir, farewell;’ and he rose to go.
‘No, Paul; the books and you shall never part.’
‘And I say, sir, the books and you shall never part.’
‘Then we two can never part’—and a sudden impulse flashed over him—‘and we will not part, Paul! The only man whom I utterly love, and trust, and respect on the face of God’s earth, is you; and I cannot lose sight of you. If we are to earn our bread, let us earn it together; if we are to endure poverty, and sorrow, and struggle to find out the way of bettering these wretched millions round us, let us learn our lesson together, and help each other to spell it out.’
‘Do you mean what you say?’ asked Paul slowly.
‘I do.’