“Discussing the vexed question of the unemployed?” said Mr. Boniface, entering the room in time to hear this last remark.
“Yes,” said Sigrid, smiling. “Though I’m a wretched foreigner come to swell their number. But what can be the cause of such distress?”
“I think it is this,” said Mr. Boniface, “population goes on increasing, but practical Christianity does not increase at the same rate.”
“Are you what they call a Christian Socialist?” asked Sigrid.
“No; I am not very fond of assuming any distinctive party name, and the Socialists seem to me to look too much to compulsion. You can’t make people practical Christians by Act of Parliament; you have no right to force the rich to relieve the poor. The nation suffers, and all things are at a dead-lock because so many of us neglect our duty. If we argued less about the ‘masses,’ and quietly did as we would be done by to those with whom life brings us into contact, I believe the distress would soon be at an end.”
“Do you mean by that private almsgiving?” asked Frithiof. “Surely that can only pauperize the people.”
“I certainly don’t mean indiscriminate almsgiving,” said Mr. Boniface; “I mean only this. You start with your own family; do your duty by them. You have a constant succession of servants passing through your household; be a friend to them. You have men and women in your employ; share their troubles. Perhaps you have tenants; try to look at life from their point of view. If we all tried to do this the cure would indeed be found, and the breach between the rich and poor bridged over.”
How simply and unostentatiously Mr. Boniface lived out his own theory Frithiof knew quite well. He reflected that all the kindness he himself had received had not tended to pauperize him, had not in the least crushed his independence or injured his self-respect. On the contrary, it had saved him from utter ruin, and had awakened in him a gratitude which would last all his life. But this new cure was not to depend only on taxation or on the State, but on a great influence working within each individual. The idea set him thinking, and the sense of his own ignorance weighed upon him.
One morning it chanced that, sitting out in the veranda at the back of the house, he overheard Lance’s reading-lesson, which was going on in the morning-room. Sounds of laborious wrestling with the difficulties of “Pat a fat cat,” and other interesting injunctions, made him realize how very slow human nature is to learn any perfectly new thing, and how toilsome are first steps. Presently came a sound of trotting feet.
“Gwen! Gwen!” shouted Lance, “come here to us. Cecil is going to read to us out of her Bible, and it’s awfully jolly!”