In all the towns gaunt spectre-like men began to sneak back to work, and Mr. Bly was nigh frenzied with rage, disgust and despair.
“It is Jah!” he said. “It is Jah. He has crept into the hearts of men. He has stirred their minds against me. Oh! my grief. He has used me to bring men lower yet, so that they will live in viler dwellings, and eat of fouler food, and be more meanly clad, more verminous than ever. The women will be lower sluts and shrews than they have ever been, and of their children it will be hard to see how they can ever grow into men and women. Deeper and deeper into the pit has Jah brought us, and there is now no hope.”
And in his agony he remembered how in his childhood he had been taught to pray to Jah, and he knelt and prayed that he might come face to face with Jah, to tell Him what He had done, and to implore Him to make an end of His cruelty and to destroy all at once.
Hearing him pray Mr. Nicodemus fled from his side and left him alone with the Widow Martin. Said she:
“Don’t take on so, dearie. A man’s no call to take on so when he has a woman by his side. There’s nothing else in the nature of things, but men and women only. If we starve, we starve: and if we die, we die, it’s all one. Have done, I say, there’s always room for a bit o’ fun.”
“Fun!” cried Mr. Bly.
And the comfortable creature took his head to her bosom, and there he sobbed out his grief.
XVI: ON THE ROAD
So the strike ended, and Nicholas Bly walked from town to town marking its effects. It was as he had foreseen, and men were lower than before, and every night he prayed that he might meet Jah to curse Him to His face. For days on end he would utter never a word, but the widow Martin stayed with him and saw that he ate and drank, stealing, begging, wheedling, selling herself to get him food. She would say:
“It’s not like Mr. Nicodemus. There’s very little fun in him, but a woman doesn’t care for fun when she’s sorry for a man.”