All Roads Lead to Calvary

During the coffee, Mrs. Denton beckoned him to come to her; and Miss Greyson crossed over and took his vacant chair. She had been sitting opposite to them.

“I’ve been hearing so much about you,” she said. “I can’t help thinking that you ought to suit my brother’s paper. He has all your ideas. Have you anything that you could send him?”

Joan considered a moment.

“Nothing very startling,” she answered. “I was thinking of a series of articles on the old London Churches – touching upon the people connected with them and the things they stood for. I’ve just finished the first one.”

“It ought to be the very thing,” answered Miss Greyson. She was a thin, faded woman with a soft, plaintive voice. “It will enable him to judge your style. He’s particular about that. Though I’m confident he’ll like it,” she hastened to add. “Address it to me, will you. I assist him as much as I can.”

Joan added a few finishing touches that evening, and posted it; and a day or two later received a note asking her to call at the office.

“My sister is enthusiastic about your article on Chelsea Church and insists on my taking the whole series,” Greyson informed her. “She says you have the Stevensonian touch.”

Joan flushed with pleasure.

“And you,” she asked, “did you think it had the Stevensonian touch?”

“No,” he answered, “it seemed to me to have more of your touch.”

“What’s that like?” she demanded.

“They couldn’t suppress you,” he explained. “Sir Thomas More with his head under his arm, bloody old Bluebeard, grim Queen Bess, snarling old Swift, Pope, Addison, Carlyle – the whole grisly crowd of them! I could see you holding your own against them all, explaining things to them, getting excited.” He laughed.

His sister joined them, coming in from the next room. She had a proposal to make. It was that Joan should take over the weekly letter from “Clorinda.” It was supposed to give the views of a – perhaps unusually – sane and thoughtful woman upon the questions of the day. Miss Greyson had hitherto conducted it herself, but was wishful as she explained to be relieved of it; so that she might have more time for home affairs. It would necessitate Joan’s frequent attendance at the office; for there would be letters from the public to be answered, and points to be discussed with her brother. She was standing behind his chair with her hands upon his head. There was something strangely motherly about her whole attitude.

Greyson was surprised, for the Letter had been her own conception, and had grown into a popular feature. But she was evidently in earnest; and Joan accepted willingly. “Clorinda” grew younger, more self-assertive; on the whole more human. But still so eminently “sane” and reasonable.

“We must not forget that she is quite a respectable lady, connected – according to her own account – with the higher political circles,” Joan’s editor would insist, with a laugh.

Miss Greyson, working in the adjoining room, would raise her head and listen. She loved to hear him laugh.

“It’s absurd,” Flossie told her one morning, as having met by chance they were walking home together along the Embankment. “You’re not ‘Clorinda’; you ought to be writing letters to her, not from her, waking her up, telling her to come off her perch, and find out what the earth feels like. I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll trot you round to Carleton. If you’re out for stirring up strife and contention, well, that’s his game, too. He’ll use you for his beastly sordid ends. He’d have roped in John the Baptist if he’d been running the ‘Jerusalem Star’ at the time, and have given him a daily column for so long as the boom lasted. What’s that matter, if he’s willing to give you a start?”

Joan jibbed at first. But in the end Flossie’s arguments prevailed. One afternoon, a week later, she was shown into Carleton’s private room, and the door closed behind her. The light was dim, and for a moment she could see no one; until Carleton, who had been standing near one of the windows, came forward and placed a chair for her. And they both sat down.

“I’ve glanced through some of your things,” he said. “They’re all right. They’re alive. What’s your idea?”

Remembering Flossie’s counsel, she went straight to the point. She wanted to talk to the people. She wanted to get at them. If she had been a man, she would have taken a chair and gone to Hyde Park. As it was, she hadn’t the nerve for Hyde Park. At least she was afraid she hadn’t. It might have to come to that. There was a trembling in her voice that annoyed her. She was so afraid she might cry. She wasn’t out for anything crazy. She wanted only those things done that could be done if the people would but lift their eyes, look into one another’s faces, see the wrong and the injustice that was all around them, and swear that they would never rest till the pain and the terror had been driven from the land. She wanted soldiers – men and women who would forget their own sweet selves, not counting their own loss, thinking of the greater gain; as in times of war and revolution, when men gave even their lives gladly for a dream, for a hope —

Without warning he switched on the electric lamp that stood upon the desk, causing her to draw back with a start.

“All right,” he said. “Go ahead. You shall have your tub, and a weekly audience of a million readers for as long as you can keep them interested. Up with anything you like, and down with everything you don’t. Be careful not to land me in a libel suit. Call the whole Bench of Bishops hypocrites, and all the ground landlords thieves, if you will: but don’t mention names. And don’t get me into trouble with the police. Beyond that, I shan’t interfere with you.”

She was about to speak.

“One stipulation,” he went on, “that every article is headed with your photograph.”

He read the sudden dismay in her eyes.

“How else do you think you are going to attract their attention?” he asked her. “By your eloquence! Hundreds of men and women as eloquent as you could ever be are shouting to them every day. Who takes any notice of them? Why should they listen any the more to you – another cranky highbrow: some old maid, most likely, with a bony throat and a beaky nose. If Woman is going to come into the fight she will have to use her own weapons. If she is prepared to do that she’ll make things hum with a vengeance. She’s the biggest force going, if she only knew it.”

He had risen and was pacing the room.

“The advertiser has found that out, and is showing the way.” He snatched at an illustrated magazine, fresh from the press, that had been placed upon his desk, and opened it at the first page. “Johnson’s Blacking,” he read out, “advertised by a dainty little minx, showing her ankles. Who’s going to stop for a moment to read about somebody’s blacking? If a saucy little minx isn’t there to trip him up with her ankles!”

He turned another page. “Do you suffer from gout? Classical lady preparing to take a bath and very nearly ready. The old Johnny in the train stops to look at her. Reads the advertisement because she seems to want him to. Rubber heels. Save your boot leather! Lady in evening dress – jolly pretty shoulders – waves them in front of your eyes. Otherwise you’d never think of them.”

He fluttered the pages. Then flung the thing across to her.

“Look at it,” he said. “Fountain pens – Corn plasters – Charitable appeals – Motor cars – Soaps – Grand pianos. It’s the girl in tights and spangles outside the show that brings them trooping in.”

“Let them see you,” he continued. “You say you want soldiers. Throw off your veil and call for them. Your namesake of France! Do you think if she had contented herself with writing stirring appeals that Orleans would have fallen? She put on a becoming suit of armour and got upon a horse where everyone could see her. Chivalry isn’t dead. You modern women are ashamed of yourselves – ashamed of your sex. You don’t give it a chance. Revive it. Stir the young men’s blood. Their souls will follow.”

He reseated himself and leant across towards her.

“I’m not talking business,” he said. “This thing’s not going to mean much to me one way or the other. I want you to win. Farm labourers bringing up families on twelve and six a week. Shirt hands working half into the night for three farthings an hour. Stinking dens for men to live in. Degraded women. Half fed children. It’s damnable. Tell them it’s got to stop. That the Eternal Feminine has stepped out of the poster and commands it.”

A dapper young man opened the door and put his head into the room.

“Railway smash in Yorkshire,” he announced.

Carleton sat up. “Much of a one?” he asked.

The dapper gentleman shrugged his shoulders. “Three killed, eight injured, so far,” he answered.

Carleton’s interest appeared to collapse.

“Stop press column?” asked the dapper gentleman.

“Yes, I suppose so,” replied Carleton. “Unless something better turns up.”

The dapper young gentleman disappeared. Joan had risen.

“May I talk it over with a friend?” she asked. “Myself, I’m inclined to accept.”

“You will, if you’re in earnest,” he answered. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours. Look in to-morrow afternoon, and see Finch. It will be for the Sunday Post– the Inset. We use surfaced paper for that and can do you justice. Finch will arrange about the photograph.” He held out his hand. “Shall be seeing you again,” he said.

It was but a stone’s throw to the office of the Evening Gazette. She caught Greyson just as he was leaving and put the thing before him. His sister was with him.

He did not answer at first. He was walking to and fro; and, catching his foot in the waste paper basket, he kicked it savagely out of his way, so that the contents were scattered over the room.

“Yes, he’s right,” he said. “It was the Virgin above the altar that popularized Christianity. Her face has always been woman’s fortune. If she’s going to become a fighter, it will have to be her weapon.”

He had used almost the same words that Carleton had used.

“I so want them to listen to me,” she said. “After all, it’s only like having a very loud voice.”

He looked at her and smiled. “Yes,” he said, “it’s a voice men will listen to.”