All Roads Lead to Calvary Part 37

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- gla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 n.o.bler 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 pa.s.sed.

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 plat.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sers-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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.p.a.ce 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.