The strikers soon came to grips with want and the very poor were brought to starvation. Only the more fiercely for that did their passion glow. They forgot all about Mr. Bly and Jah: they were only determined not to give in. They knew not wherefore they were fighting, and were savagely resolved not to return to their old ways without some palpable change. Forces and emotions had been stirred which led them to look for a miracle, and without the miracle they preferred to die. The miracle did not come and many of them died.
XV: SUCCOUR
With a moderate but assured income the Fattish are humane, that is to say, they grope like shadows through life and shun the impenetrable shadow of death. They shuddered to think of the very poor dying with their eyes gazing forward for the miracle that never came, and they said:
“To think of their finding no miracle but death! It is too horrible. Can such things be in Fatland? Why don’t we do something?”
So they formed committees and wrote to the newspapers and started various funds; and they invited Mr. Bly to lecture in aid of them.
He came to Bondon, lectured, and became the fashion. He discovered to his amazement that there were rich people in Fatland, and these rich people formed Anti-Jah societies. Enormous sums of money were collected for the strikers, because the rich were so delighted to be amused. Mr. Bly amused them enormously. Mr. Nicodemus gave a course of lectures on the Kingdom from which Jah had deposed him, and Mrs. Martin held meetings for women only, to expound her views of men. For years the rich people had not been so vastly entertained, and they poured out money for the strikers.
Unfortunately their subscriptions could buy little else for the very poor but coffins, and of them the supply soon came to an end.
Famine and pestilence stalked abroad, but only the more fiercely did Mr. Bly urge the destruction of Jah, and the more blindly and desperately did the starving poor of Fatland look for the miracle.
But soon not only were the poor starving, but the comfortable, the tradespeople, the professional classes, the humane persons with moderate but assured incomes were faced with want. Rats were now five shillings a brace, and a nest of baby mice was known to fetch four shillings.
When the rich found their meals were costing them more than a pound a head then they forgot their craze and Mr. Bly, and Mr. Nicodemus and the widow Martin withdrew from Bondon. Mr. Bly was no longer reported in the newspapers. His name had become offensive, the bloom had gone from his novelty, the varnish from his reputation, and the sting out of his power.