All Roads Lead to Calvary | Page 6

It had been a pretty crowded day, even for so busy a sinner as little
Joan. It was springtime, and they had gone into the country for her
mother's health. Maybe it was the season: a stirring of the human sap,
conducing to that feeling of being "too big for one's boots," as the
saying is. A dangerous period of the year. Indeed, on the principle that
prevention is better than cure, Mrs. Munday had made it a custom

during April and May to administer to Joan a cooling mixture; but on
this occasion had unfortunately come away without it. Joan, dressed for
use rather than show, and without either shoes or stockings, had stolen
stealthily downstairs: something seemed to be calling to her.
Silently--"like a thief in the night," to adopt Mrs. Munday's
metaphor--had slipped the heavy bolts; had joined the thousand
creatures of the wood--had danced and leapt and shouted; had behaved,
in short, more as if she had been a Pagan nymph than a happy English
child. She had regained the house unnoticed, as she thought, the Devil,
no doubt, assisting her; and had hidden her wet clothes in the bottom of
a mighty chest. Deceitfulness in her heart, she had greeted Mrs.
Munday in sleepy tones from beneath the sheets; and before breakfast,
assailed by suspicious questions, had told a deliberate lie. Later in the
morning, during an argument with an active young pig who was willing
enough to play at Red Riding Hood so far as eating things out of a
basket was concerned, but who would not wear a night-cap, she had
used a wicked word. In the afternoon she "might have killed" the
farmer's only son and heir. They had had a row. In one of those sad
lapses from the higher Christian standards into which Satan was always
egging her, she had pushed him; and he had tumbled head over heels
into the horse-pond. The reason, that instead of lying there and
drowning he had got up and walked back to the house howling fit to
wake the Seven Sleepers, was that God, watching over little children,
had arranged for the incident taking place on that side of the pond
where it was shallow. Had the scrimmage occurred on the opposite
bank, beneath which the water was much deeper, Joan in all probability
would have had murder on her soul. It seemed to Joan that if God,
all-powerful and all-foreseeing, had been so careful in selecting the site,
He might with equal ease have prevented the row from ever taking
place. Why couldn't the little beast have been guided back from school
through the orchard, much the shorter way, instead of being brought
round by the yard, so as to come upon her at a moment when she was
feeling a bit short-tempered, to put it mildly? And why had God
allowed him to call her "Carrots"? That Joan should have "put it" this
way, instead of going down on her knees and thanking the Lord for
having saved her from a crime, was proof of her inborn evil disposition.
In the evening was reached the culminating point. Just before going to

bed she had murdered old George the cowman. For all practical
purposes she might just as well have been successful in drowning
William Augustus earlier in the day. It seemed to be one of those things
that had to be. Mr. Hornflower still lived, it was true, but that was not
Joan's fault. Joan, standing in white night-gown beside her bed,
everything around her breathing of innocence and virtue: the spotless
bedclothes, the chintz curtains, the white hyacinths upon the
window-ledge, Joan's Bible, a present from Aunt Susan; her
prayer-book, handsomely bound in calf, a present from Grandpapa,
upon their little table; Mrs. Munday in evening black and cameo brooch
(pale red with tomb and weeping willow in white relief) sacred to the
memory of the departed Mr. Munday--Joan standing there erect, with
pale, passionate face, defying all these aids to righteousness, had
deliberately wished Mr. Hornflower dead. Old George Hornflower it
was who, unseen by her, had passed her that morning in the wood.
Grumpy old George it was who had overheard the wicked word with
which she had cursed the pig; who had met William Augustus on his
emergence from the pond. To Mr. George Hornflower, the humble
instrument in the hands of Providence, helping her towards possible
salvation, she ought to have been grateful. And instead of that she had
flung into the agonized face of Mrs. Munday these awful words:
"I wish he was dead!"
"He who in his heart--" there was verse and chapter for it. Joan was a
murderess. Just as well, so far as Joan was concerned, might she have
taken a carving-knife and stabbed