All Roads Lead to Calvary | Page 7

Deacon Hornflower to the heart.
Joan's prayers that night, to the accompaniment of Mrs. Munday's sobs,
had a hopeless air of unreality about them. Mrs. Munday's kiss was
cold.
How long Joan lay and tossed upon her little bed she could not tell.
Somewhere about the middle of the night, or so it seemed to her, the
frenzy seized her. Flinging the bedclothes away she rose to her feet. It
is difficult to stand upon a spring mattress, but Joan kept her balance.
Of course He was there in the room with her. God was everywhere,
spying upon her. She could distinctly hear His measured breathing.

Face to face with Him, she told Him what she thought of Him. She told
Him He was a cruel, wicked God.
There are no Victoria Crosses for sinners, or surely little Joan that night
would have earned it. It was not lack of imagination that helped her
courage. God and she alone, in the darkness. He with all the forces of
the Universe behind Him. He armed with His eternal pains and
penalties, and eight-year-old Joan: the creature that He had made in His
Own Image that He could torture and destroy. Hell yawned beneath her,
but it had to be said. Somebody ought to tell Him.
"You are a wicked God," Joan told Him. "Yes, You are. A cruel,
wicked God."
And then that she might not see the walls of the room open before her,
hear the wild laughter of the thousand devils that were coming to bear
her off, she threw herself down, her face hidden in the pillow, and
clenched her hands and waited.
And suddenly there burst a song. It was like nothing Joan had ever
heard before. So clear and loud and near that all the night seemed filled
with harmony. It sank into a tender yearning cry throbbing with
passionate desire, and then it rose again in thrilling ecstasy: a song of
hope, of victory.
Joan, trembling, stole from her bed and drew aside the blind. There was
nothing to be seen but the stars and the dim shape of the hills. But still
that song, filling the air with its wild, triumphant melody.
Years afterwards, listening to the overture to Tannhauser, there came
back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic
discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims'
onward march. So through the jangled discords of the world one heard
the Song of Life. Through the dim aeons of man's savage infancy;
through the centuries of bloodshed and of horror; through the dark ages
of tyranny and superstition; through wrong, through cruelty, through
hate; heedless of doom, heedless of death, still the nightingale's song: "I
love you. I love you. I love you. We will build a nest. We will rear our

brood. I love you. I love you. Life shall not die."
Joan crept back into bed. A new wonder had come to her. And from
that night Joan's belief in Mrs. Munday's God began to fade,
circumstances helping.
Firstly there was the great event of going to school. She was glad to get
away from home, a massive, stiffly furnished house in a wealthy
suburb of Liverpool. Her mother, since she could remember, had been
an invalid, rarely leaving her bedroom till the afternoon. Her father, the
owner of large engineering works, she only saw, as a rule, at
dinner-time, when she would come down to dessert. It had been
different when she was very young, before her mother had been taken
ill. Then she had been more with them both. She had dim recollections
of her father playing with her, pretending to be a bear and growling at
her from behind the sofa. And then he would seize and hug her and
they would both laugh, while he tossed her into the air and caught her.
He had looked so big and handsome. All through her childhood there
had been the desire to recreate those days, to spring into the air and
catch her arms about his neck. She could have loved him dearly if he
had only let her. Once, seeking explanation, she had opened her heart a
little to Mrs. Munday. It was disappointment, Mrs. Munday thought,
that she had not been a boy; and with that Joan had to content herself.
Maybe also her mother's illness had helped to sadden him. Or perhaps
it was mere temperament, as she argued to herself later, for which they
were both responsible. Those little tricks of coaxing, of tenderness, of
wilfulness, by means of which other girls wriggled their way so
successfully into a warm nest of cosy affection: she had never been
able to employ them. Beneath her self-confidence was a shyness, an
immovable reserve