All Roads Lead to Calvary | Page 2

of patience when they have to live with us for twenty-four hours
a day. You see, little things we do and say without thinking, and little
ways we have that we do not notice ourselves, may all the time be
irritating to other people."
"What about the other people irritating us?" suggested Joan.
"Yes, dear, and of course that can happen too," agreed the little old
lady.
"Did he, Carlyle, ever come to this church?" asked Joan.
Mary Stopperton was afraid he never had, in spite of its being so near.
"And yet he was a dear good Christian--in his way," Mary Stopperton
felt sure.
"How do you mean 'in his way'?" demanded Joan. It certainly, if
Froude was to be trusted, could not have been the orthodox way.
"Well, you see, dear," explained the little old lady, "he gave up things.
He could have ridden in his carriage"--she was quoting, it seemed, the
words of the Carlyles' old servant--"if he'd written the sort of lies that
people pay for being told, instead of throwing the truth at their head."

"But even that would not make him a Christian," argued Joan.
"It is part of it, dear, isn't it?" insisted Mary Stopperton. "To suffer for
one's faith. I think Jesus must have liked him for that."
They had commenced with the narrow strip of burial ground lying
between the south side of the church and Cheyne Walk. And there the
little pew- opener had showed her the grave of Anna, afterwards Mrs.
Spragg. "Who long declining wedlock and aspiring above her sex
fought under her brother with arms and manly attire in a flagship
against the French." As also of Mary Astell, her contemporary, who
had written a spirited "Essay in Defence of the Fair Sex." So there had
been a Suffrage Movement as far back as in the days of Pope and Swift.
Returning to the interior, Joan had duly admired the Cheyne monument,
but had been unable to disguise her amusement before the tomb of Mrs.
Colvile, whom the sculptor had represented as a somewhat impatient
lady, refusing to await the day of resurrection, but pushing through her
coffin and starting for Heaven in her grave-clothes. Pausing in front of
the Dacre monument, Joan wondered if the actor of that name, who had
committed suicide in Australia, and whose London address she
remembered had been Dacre House just round the corner, was
descended from the family; thinking that, if so, it would give an
up-to-date touch to the article. She had fully decided now to write it.
But Mary Stopperton could not inform her. They had ended up in the
chapel of Sir Thomas More. He, too, had "given up things," including
his head. Though Mary Stopperton, siding with Father Morris, was
convinced he had now got it back, and that with the remainder of his
bones it rested in the tomb before them.
There, the little pew-opener had left her, having to show the
early-comers to their seats; and Joan had found an out-of-the-way pew
from where she could command a view of the whole church. They were
chiefly poor folk, the congregation; with here and there a sprinkling of
faded gentility. They seemed in keeping with the place. The twilight
faded and a snuffy old man shuffled round and lit the gas.
It was all so sweet and restful. Religion had never appealed to her

before. The business-like service in the bare cold chapel where she had
sat swinging her feet and yawning as a child had only repelled her. She
could recall her father, aloof and awe-inspiring in his Sunday black,
passing round the bag. Her mother, always veiled, sitting beside her, a
thin, tall woman with passionate eyes and ever restless hands; the
women mostly overdressed, and the sleek, prosperous men trying to
look meek. At school and at Girton, chapel, which she had attended no
oftener than she was obliged, had had about it the same atmosphere of
chill compulsion. But here was poetry. She wondered if, after all,
religion might not have its place in the world--in company with the
other arts. It would be a pity for it to die out. There seemed nothing to
take its place. All these lovely cathedrals, these dear little old churches,
that for centuries had been the focus of men's thoughts and aspirations.
The harbour lights, illumining the troubled waters of their lives. What
could be done with them? They could hardly be maintained out of the
public funds as mere mementoes of the past. Besides, there were too
many of them. The tax-payer would naturally grumble. As Town Halls,
Assembly Rooms? The idea was unthinkable. It would be like a
performance of Barnum's Circus in the Coliseum at Rome. Yes, they
would disappear. Though not, she