All Roads Lead to Calvary

“I’ll try,” he promised, “but it won’t be any use; I shall drift about the streets, seeking to put heart into myself, but all the while my footsteps will be bearing me nearer and nearer to the recruiting office; and outside the door some girl in the crowd will smile approval or some old fool will pat me on the shoulder and I shall sneak in and it will close behind me. It must be fine to have courage.”

He wrote her two days later from Ayr, giving her the name of his regiment, and again some six months later from Flanders. But there would have been no sense in her replying to that last.

She lingered in the street by herself, a little time, after he had turned the corner. It had been a house of sorrow and disappointment to her; but so also she had dreamed her dreams there, seen her visions. She had never made much headway with her landlord and her landlady: a worthy couple, who had proved most excellent servants, but who prided themselves, to use their own expression, on knowing their place and keeping themselves to themselves. Joan had given them notice that morning, and had been surprised at the woman’s bursting into tears.

“I felt it just the same when young Mr. McKean left us,” she explained with apologies. “He had been with us five years. He was like you, miss, so unpracticable. I’d got used to looking after him.”

Mary Greyson called on her in the morning, while she was still at breakfast. She had come from seeing Francis off by an early train from Euston. He had sent Joan a ring.

“He is so afraid you may not be able to wear it – that it will not fit you,” said Mary, “but I told him I was sure it would.”

Joan held our her hand for the letter. “I was afraid he had forgotten it,” she answered, with a smile.

She placed the ring on her finger and held out her hand. “I might have been measured for it,” she said. “I wonder how he knew.”

“You left a glove behind you, the first day you ever came to our house,” Mary explained. “And I kept it.”

She was following his wishes and going down into the country. They did not meet again until after the war.

Madge dropped in on her during the week and brought Flossie with her. Flossie’s husband, Sam, had departed for the Navy; and Niel Singleton, who had offered and been rejected for the Army, had joined a Red Cross unit. Madge herself was taking up canteen work. Joan rather expected Flossie to be in favour of the war, and Madge against it. Instead of which, it turned out the other way round. It seemed difficult to forecast opinion in this matter.

Madge thought that England, in particular, had been too much given up to luxury and pleasure. There had been too much idleness and empty laughter: Hitchicoo dances and women undressing themselves upon the stage. Even the working classes seemed to think of nothing else but cinemas and beer. She dreamed of a United Kingdom purified by suffering, cleansed by tears; its people drawn together by memory of common sacrifice; class antagonism buried in the grave where Duke’s son and cook’s son would lie side by side: of a new-born Europe rising from the ashes of the old. With Germany beaten, her lust of war burnt out, her hideous doctrine of Force proved to be false, the world would breathe a freer air. Passion and hatred would fall from man’s eyes. The people would see one another and join hands.

Flossie was sceptical. “Why hasn’t it done it before?” she wanted to know. “Good Lord! There’s been enough of it.”

“Why didn’t we all kiss and be friends after the Napoleonic wars?” she demanded, “instead of getting up Peterloo massacres, and anti-Corn Law riots, and breaking the Duke of Wellington’s windows?”

“All this talk of downing Militarism,” she continued. “It’s like trying to do away with the other sort of disorderly house. You don’t stamp out a vice by chivying it round the corner. When men and women have become decent there will be no more disorderly houses. But it won’t come before. Suppose we do knock Militarism out of Germany, like we did out of France, not so very long ago? It will only slip round the corner into Russia or Japan. Come and settle over here, as likely as not, especially if we have a few victories and get to fancy ourselves.”

Madge was of opinion that the world would have had enough of war. Not armies but whole peoples would be involved this time. The lesson would be driven home.

“Oh, yes, we shall have had enough of it,” agreed Flossie, “by the time we’ve paid up. There’s no doubt of that. What about our children? I’ve just left young Frank strutting all over the house and flourishing a paper knife. And the servants have had to bar the kitchen door to prevent his bursting in every five minutes and attacking them. What’s he going to say when I tell him, later on, that his father and myself have had all the war we want, and have decided there shall be no more? The old folks have had their fun. Why shouldn’t I have mine? That will be his argument.”

“You can’t do it,” she concluded, “unless you are prepared to keep half the world’s literature away from the children, scrap half your music, edit your museums and your picture galleries; bowdlerize your Old Testament and rewrite your histories. And then you’ll have to be careful for twenty-four hours a day that they never see a dog-fight.”

Madge still held to her hope. God would make a wind of reason to pass over the earth. He would not smite again his people.

“I wish poor dear Sam could have been kept out of it,” said Flossie. She wiped her eyes and finished her tea.

Joan had arranged to leave on the Monday. She ran down to see Mary Stopperton on the Saturday afternoon. Mr. Stopperton had died the year before, and Mary had been a little hurt, divining insincerity in the condolences offered to her by most of her friends.

“You didn’t know him, dear,” she had said to Joan. “All his faults were on the outside.”

She did not want to talk about the war.

“Perhaps it’s wrong of me,” she said. “But it makes me so sad. And I can do nothing.”

She had been busy at her machine when Joan had entered; and a pile of delicate white work lay folded on a chair beside her.

“What are you making?” asked Joan.

The little withered face lighted up. “Guess,” she said, as she unfolded and displayed a tiny garment.

“I so love making them,” she said. “I say to myself, ‘It will all come right. God will send more and more of His Christ babies; till at last there will be thousands and thousands of them everywhere; and their love will change the world!’”

Her bright eyes had caught sight of the ring upon Joan’s hand. She touched it with her little fragile fingers.

“You will let me make one for you, dearie, won’t you?” she said. “I feel sure it will be a little Christ baby.”

Arthur was still away when she arrived home. He had gone to Norway on business. Her father was afraid he would find it difficult to get back. Telegraphic communication had been stopped, and they had had no news of him. Her father was worried. A big Government contract had come in, while many of his best men had left to enlist.

“I’ve fixed you up all right at the hospital,” he said. “It was good of you to think of coming home. Don’t go away, for a bit.” It was the first time he had asked anything of her.

Another fortnight passed before they heard from Arthur, and then he wrote them both from Hull. He would be somewhere in the North Sea, mine sweeping, when they read his letters. He had hoped to get a day or two to run across and say good-bye; but the need for men was pressing and he had not liked to plead excuses. The boat by which he had managed to leave Bergen had gone down. He and a few others had been picked up, but the sights that he had seen were haunting him. He felt sure his uncle would agree that he ought to be helping, and this was work for England he could do with all his heart. He hoped he was not leaving his uncle in the lurch; but he did not think the war would last long, and he would soon be back.

“Dear lad,” said her father, “he would take the most dangerous work that he could find. But I wish he hadn’t been quite so impulsive. He could have been of more use helping me with this War Office contract. I suppose he never got my letter, telling him about it.”

In his letter to Joan he went further. He had received his uncle’s letter, so he confided to her. Perhaps she would think him a crank, but he couldn’t help it. He hated this killing business, this making of machinery for slaughtering men in bulk, like they killed pigs in Chicago. Out on the free, sweet sea, helping to keep it clean from man’s abominations, he would be away from it all.

She saw the vision of him that night, as, leaning from her window, she looked out beyond the pines: the little lonely ship amid the waste of waters; his beautiful, almost womanish, face, and the gentle dreamy eyes with their haunting suggestion of a shadow.

Her little drummer played less and less frequently to her as the months passed by. It didn’t seem to be the war he had looked forward to. The illustrated papers continued to picture it as a sort of glorified picnic where smiling young men lolled luxuriously in cosy dug-outs, reading their favourite paper. By curious coincidence, it generally happened to be the journal publishing the photograph. Occasionally, it appeared, they came across the enemy, who then put up both hands and shouted “Kamerad.” But the weary, wounded men she talked to told another story.

She grew impatient of the fighters with their mouths; the savage old baldheads heroically prepared to sacrifice the last young man; the sleek, purring women who talked childish nonsense about killing every man, woman and child in Germany, but quite meant it; the shrieking journalists who had decided that their place was the home front; the press-spurred mobs, the spy hunters, chasing terrified old men and sobbing children through the streets. It was a relief to enter the quiet ward and close the door behind her. The camp-followers: the traders and pedlars, the balladmongers, and the mountebanks, the ghoulish sightseers! War brought out all that was worst in them. But the givers of their blood, the lads who suffered, who had made the sacrifice: war had taught them chivalry, manhood. She heard no revilings of hatred and revenge from those drawn lips. Patience, humour, forgiveness, they had learnt from war. They told her kindly stories even of Hans and Fritz.

The little drummer in her brain would creep out of his corner, play to her softly while she moved about among them.

One day she received a letter from Folk. He had come to London at the request of the French Government to consult with English artists on a matter he must not mention. He would not have the time, he told her, to run down to Liverpool. Could she get a couple of days’ leave and dine with him in London.

She found him in the uniform of a French Colonel. He had quite a military bearing and seemed pleased with himself. He kissed her hand, and then held her out at arms’ length.

“It’s wonderful how like you are to your mother,” he said, “I wish I were as young as I feel.”

She had written him at the beginning of the war, telling him of her wish to get out to the front, and he thought that now he might be able to help her.

“But perhaps you’ve changed your mind,” he said. “It isn’t quite as pretty as it’s painted.”

“I want to,” she answered. “It isn’t all curiosity. I think it’s time for women to insist on seeing war with their own eyes, not trust any longer to the pictures you men paint.” She smiled.

“But I’ve got to give it up,” she added. “I can’t leave Dad.”

They were sitting in the hall of the hotel. It was the dressing hour and the place was almost empty. He shot a swift glance at her.

“Arthur is still away,” she explained, “and I feel that he wants me. I should be worrying myself, thinking of him all alone with no one to look after him. It’s the mother instinct I suppose. It always has hampered woman.” She laughed.

“Dear old boy,” he said. He was watching her with a little smile. “I’m glad he’s got some luck at last.”

They dined in the great restaurant belonging to the hotel. He was still vastly pleased with himself as he marched up the crowded room with Joan upon his arm. He held himself upright and talked and laughed perhaps louder than an elderly gentleman should. “Swaggering old beggar,” he must have overheard a young sub. mutter as they passed. But he did not seem to mind it.

They lingered over the meal. Folk was a brilliant talker. Most of the men whose names were filling the newspapers had sat to him at one time or another. He made them seem quite human. Joan was surprised at the time.

“Come up to my rooms, will you?” he asked. “There’s something I want to say to you. And then I’ll walk back with you.” She was staying at a small hotel off Jermyn Street.

He sat her down by the fire and went into the next room. He had a letter in his hand when he returned. Joan noticed that the envelope was written upon across the corner, but she was not near enough to distinguish the handwriting. He placed it on the mantelpiece and sat down opposite her.

“So you have come to love the dear old chap,” he said.

“I have always loved him,” Joan answered. “It was he didn’t love me, for a time, as I thought. But I know now that he does.”

He was silent for a few moments, and then he leant across and took her hands in his.

“I am going,” he said, “where there is just the possibility of an accident: one never knows. I wanted to be sure that all was well with you.”

He was looking at the ring upon her hand.

“A soldier boy?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “If he comes back.” There was a little catch in her voice.

“I know he’ll come back,” he said. “I won’t tell you why I am so sure. Perhaps you wouldn’t believe.” He was still holding her hands, looking into her eyes.

“Tell me,” he said, “did you see your mother before she died. Did she speak to you?”

“No,” Joan answered. “I was too late. She had died the night before. I hardly recognized her when I saw her. She looked so sweet and young.”

“She loved you very dearly,” he said. “Better than herself. All those years of sorrow: they came to her because of that. I thought it foolish of her at the time, but now I know she was wise. I want you always to love and honour her. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t right.”

She looked at him and smiled. “It’s quite easy,” she answered. “I always see her as she lay there with all the sorrow gone from her. She looked so beautiful and kind.”

He rose and took the letter from where he had placed it on the mantelpiece. He stooped and held it out above the fire and a little flame leaped up and seemed to take it from his hand.

They neither spoke during the short walk between the two hotels. But at the door she turned and held out her hands to him.

“Thank you,” she said, “for being so kind – and wise. I shall always love and honour her.”

He kissed her, promising to take care of himself.

She ran against Phillips, the next day, at one of the big stores where she was shopping. He had obtained a commission early in the war and was now a captain. He had just come back from the front on leave. The alternative had not appealed to him, of being one of those responsible for sending other men to death while remaining himself in security and comfort.

“It’s a matter of temperament,” he said. “Somebody’s got to stop behind and do the patriotic speechifying. I’m glad I didn’t. Especially after what I’ve seen.”

He had lost interest in politics.

“There’s something bigger coming,” he said. “Here everything seems to be going on much the same, but over there you feel it. Something growing silently out of all this blood and mud. I find myself wondering what the men are staring at, but when I look there’s nothing as far as my field-glasses will reach but waste and desolation. And it isn’t only on the faces of our own men. It’s in the eyes of the prisoners too. As if they saw something. A funny ending to the war, if the people began to think.”

Mrs. Phillips was running a Convalescent Home in Folkestone, he told her; and had even made a speech. Hilda was doing relief work among the ruined villages of France.

“It’s a new world we shall be called upon to build,” he said. “We must pay more heed to the foundation this time.”

She seldom discussed the war with her father. At the beginning, he had dreamed with Greyson of a short and glorious campaign that should weld all classes together, and after which we should forgive our enemies and shape with them a better world. But as the months went by, he appeared to grow indifferent; and Joan, who got about twelve hours a day of it outside, welcomed other subjects.

It surprised her when one evening after dinner he introduced it himself.

“What are you going to do when it’s over?” he asked her. “You won’t give up the fight, will you, whatever happens?” She had not known till then that he had been taking any interest in her work.

“No,” she answered with a laugh, “no matter what happens, I shall always want to be in it.”

“Good lad,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “It will be an ugly world that will come out of all this hate and anger. The Lord will want all the help that He can get.”

“And you don’t forget our compact, do you?” he continued, “that I am to be your backer. I want to be in it too.”

She shot a glance at him. He was looking at the portrait of that old Ironside Allway who had fought and died to make a nobler England, as he had dreamed. A grim, unprepossessing gentleman, unless the artist had done him much injustice, with high, narrow forehead, and puzzled, staring eyes.

She took the cigarette from her lips and her voice trembled a little.

“I want you to be something more to me than that, sir,” she said. “I want to feel that I’m an Allway, fighting for the things we’ve always had at heart. I’ll try and be worthy of the name.”

Her hand stole out to him across the table, but she kept her face away from him. Until she felt his grasp grow tight, and then she turned and their eyes met.

“You’ll be the last of the name,” he said. “Something tells me that. I’m glad you’re a fighter. I always prayed my child might be a fighter.”

Arthur had not been home since the beginning of the war. Twice he had written them to expect him, but the little fleet of mine sweepers had been hard pressed, and on both occasions his leave had been stopped at the last moment. One afternoon he turned up unexpectedly at the hospital. It was a few weeks after the Conscription Act had been passed.

Joan took him into her room at the end of the ward, from where, through the open door, she could still keep watch. They spoke in low tones.

“It’s done you good,” said Joan. “You look every inch the jolly Jack Tar.” He was hard and tanned, and his eyes were marvellously bright.

“Yes,” he said, “I love the sea. It’s clean and strong.”

A fear was creeping over her. “Why have you come back?” she asked.

He hesitated, keeping his eyes upon the ground.

“I don’t suppose you will agree with me,” he said. “Somehow I felt I had to.”

A Conscientious Objector. She might have guessed it. A “Conchy,” as they would call him in the Press: all the spiteful screamers who had never risked a scratch, themselves, denouncing him as a coward. The local Dogberrys of the tribunals would fire off their little stock of gibes and platitudes upon him, propound with owlish solemnity the new Christianity, abuse him and condemn him, without listening to him. Jeering mobs would follow him through the streets. More than once, of late, she had encountered such crowds made up of shrieking girls and foul-mouthed men, surging round some white-faced youngster while the well-dressed passers-by looked on and grinned.

She came to him and stood over him with her hands upon his shoulders.

“Must you, dear?” she said. “Can’t you reconcile it to yourself – to go on with your work of mercy, of saving poor folks’ lives?”

He raised his eyes to hers. The shadow that, to her fancy, had always rested there seemed to have departed. A light had come to them.

“There are more important things than saving men’s bodies. You think that, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I won’t try to hold you back, dear, if you think you can do that.”

He caught her hands and held them.

“I wanted to be a coward,” he said, “to keep out of the fight. I thought of the shame, of the petty persecutions – that even you might despise me. But I couldn’t. I was always seeing His face before me with His beautiful tender eyes, and the blood drops on His brow. It is He alone can save the world. It is perishing for want of love; and by a little suffering I might be able to help Him. And then one night – I suppose it was a piece of driftwood – there rose up out of the sea a little cross that seemed to call to me to stretch out my hand and grasp it, and gird it to my side.”

He had risen. “Don’t you see,” he said. “It is only by suffering that one can help Him. It is the sword that He has chosen – by which one day He will conquer the world. And this is such a splendid opportunity to fight for Him. It would be like deserting Him on the eve of a great battle.”

She looked into his eager, hopeful eyes. Yes, it had always been so – it always would be, to the end. Not priests and prophets, but ever that little scattered band of glad sufferers for His sake would be His army. His weapon still the cross, till the victory should be won.

She glanced through the open door to where the poor, broken fellows she always thought of as “her boys” lay so patient, and then held out her hand to him with a smile, though the tears were in her eyes.

“So you’re like all the rest of them, lad,” she said. “It’s for King and country. Good luck to you.”

After the war was over and the men, released from their long terms of solitary confinement, came back to life injured in mind and body, she was almost glad he had escaped. But at the time it filled her soul with darkness.

It was one noonday. He had been down to the tribunal and his case had been again adjourned. She was returning from a lecture, and, crossing a street in the neighbourhood of the docks, found herself suddenly faced by an oncoming crowd. It was yelping and snarling, curiously suggestive of a pack of hungry wolves. A couple of young soldiers were standing back against a wall.

“Better not go on, nurse,” said one of them. “It’s some poor devil of a Conchy, I expect. Must have a damned sight more pluck than I should.”

It was the fear that had been haunting her. She did not know how white she had turned.

“I think it is someone I know,” she said. “Won’t you help me?”

The crowd gave way to them, and they had all but reached him. He was hatless and bespattered, but his tender eyes had neither fear nor anger in them. She reached out her arms and called to him. Another step and she would have been beside him, but at the moment a slim, laughing girl darted in front of him and slipped her foot between his legs and he went down.

She heard the joyous yell and the shrill laughter as she struggled wildly to force her way to him. And then for a moment there was a space and a man with bent body and clenched hands was rushing forward as if upon a football field, and there came a little sickening thud and then the crowd closed in again.

Her strength was gone and she could only wait. More soldiers had come up and were using their fists freely, and gradually the crowd retired, still snarling; and they lifted him up and brought him to her.

“There’s a chemist’s shop in the next street. We’d better take him there,” suggested the one who had first spoken to her. And she thanked them and followed them.

They made a bed for him with their coats upon the floor, and some of them kept guard outside the shop, while one, putting aside the frightened, useless little chemist, waited upon her, bringing things needful, while she cleansed the foulness from his smooth young face, and washed the matted blood from his fair hair, and closed the lids upon his tender eyes, and, stooping, kissed the cold, quiet lips.

There had been whispered talk among the men, and when she rose the one who had first spoken to her came forward. He was nervous and stood stiffly.

“Beg pardon, nurse,” he said, “but we’ve sent for a stretcher, as the police don’t seem in any hurry. Would you like us to take him. Or would it upset him, do you think, if he knew?”