All Roads Lead to Calvary. Jerome Klapka Jerome

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СКАЧАТЬ train of argument lead to nobody ever doing anything?” suggested Joan.

      “I suppose it would mean stagnation,” admitted Madge. “And yet I don’t know. Are there not forces moving towards right that are crying to us to help them, not by violence, which only interrupts – delays them, but by quietly preparing the way for them? You know what I mean. Erasmus always said that Luther had hindered the Reformation by stirring up passion and hate.” She broke off suddenly. There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, if God would only say what He wants of us,” she almost cried; “call to us in trumpet tones that would ring through the world, compelling us to take sides. Why can’t He speak?”

      “He does,” answered Joan. “I hear His voice. There are things I’ve got to do. Wrongs that I must fight against. Rights that I must never dare to rest till they are won.” Her lips were parted. Her breasts heaving. “He does call to us. He has girded His sword upon me.”

      Madge looked at her in silence for quite a while. “How confident you are,” she said. “How I envy you.”

      They talked for a time about domestic matters. Joan had established herself in furnished rooms in a quiet street of pleasant Georgian houses just behind the Abbey; a member of Parliament and his wife occupied the lower floors, the landlord, a retired butler, and his wife, an excellent cook, confining themselves to the basement and the attics. The remaining floor was tenanted by a shy young man – a poet, so the landlady thought, but was not sure. Anyhow he had long hair, lived with a pipe in his mouth, and burned his lamp long into the night. Joan had omitted to ask his name. She made a note to do so.

      They discussed ways and means. Joan calculated she could get through on two hundred a year, putting aside fifty for dress. Madge was doubtful if this would be sufficient. Joan urged that she was “stock size” and would be able to pick up “models” at sales; but Madge, measuring her against herself, was sure she was too full.

      “You will find yourself expensive to dress,” she told her, “cheap things won’t go well on you; and it would be madness, even from a business point of view, for you not to make the best of yourself.”

      “Men stand more in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman,” Madge was of opinion. “If you go into an office looking dowdy they’ll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won’t keep you in gloves for a week and they’ll be ashamed of themselves. There’s nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not to sympathize with the rich stamps you as middle class.” She laughed.

      Joan was worried. “I told Dad I should only ask him for enough to make up two hundred a year,” she explained. “He’ll laugh at me for not knowing my own mind.”

      “I should let him,” advised Madge. She grew thoughtful again. “We cranky young women, with our new-fangled, independent ways, I guess we hurt the old folks quite enough as it is.”

      The bell rang and Madge opened the door herself. It turned out to be Flossie. Joan had not seen her since they had been at Girton together, and was surprised at Flossie’s youthful “get up.” Flossie explained, and without waiting for any possible attack flew to her own defence.

      “The revolution that the world is waiting for,” was Flossie’s opinion, “is the providing of every man and woman with a hundred and fifty a year. Then we shall all be able to afford to be noble and high-minded. As it is, nine-tenths of the contemptible things we do comes from the necessity of our having to earn our living. A hundred and fifty a year would deliver us from evil.”

      “Would there not still be the diamond dog-collar and the motor car left to tempt us?” suggested Madge.

      “Only the really wicked,” contended Flossie. “It would classify us. We should know then which were the sheep and which the goats. At present we’re all jumbled together: the ungodly who sin out of mere greed and rapacity, and the just men compelled to sell their birthright of fine instincts for a mess of meat and potatoes.”

      “Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things.

      Flossie seemed struck by an idea.

      “By Jove,” she exclaimed. “Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I’d be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I’d be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can’t go on much longer. I’m getting too well known. I do believe I’ll try it. The shouting’s easy enough.” She turned to Joan. “Are you going to take up socialism?” she demanded.

      “I may,” answered Joan. “Just to spank it, and put it down again. I’m rather a believer in temptation – the struggle for existence. I only want to make it a finer existence, more worth the struggle, in which the best man shall rise to the top. Your ‘universal security’ – that will be the last act of the human drama, the cue for ringing down the curtain.”

      “But do not all our Isms work towards that end?” suggested Madge.

      Joan was about to reply when the maid’s announcement of “Mrs. Denton” postponed the discussion.

      Mrs. Denton was a short, grey-haired lady. Her large strong features must have made her, when she was young, a hard-looking woman; but time and sorrow had strangely softened them; while about the corners of the thin firm mouth lurked a suggestion of humour that possibly had not always been there. Joan, waiting to be introduced, towered head and shoulders above her; yet when she took the small proffered hand and felt those steely blue eyes surveying her, she had the sensation of being quite insignificant. Mrs. Denton seemed to be reading her, and then still retaining Joan’s hand she turned to Madge with a smile.

      “So this is our new recruit,” she said. “She is come to bring healing to the sad, sick world – to right all the old, old wrongs.”

      She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince.

      “And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”

      She released Joan’s hand abruptly. “Come and see me to-morrow morning at my office,” she said. “We will fix up something that shall be serviceable to us both.”

      Madge flashed Joan a look. She considered Joan’s position already secured. Mrs. Denton was the doyen of women journalists. She edited a monthly review and was leader writer of one of the most important dailies, besides being the controlling spirit of various social movements. Anyone she “took up” would be assured of steady work. The pay might not be able to compete with the prices paid for more popular journalism, but it would afford a foundation, and give to Joan that opportunity for influence which was her main ambition.

      Joan expressed her thanks. She would like to have had more talk with the stern old lady, but was prevented by the entrance of two new comers. The first was Miss Lavery, a handsome, loud-toned young woman. She ran a nursing paper, but her chief interest was in the woman’s suffrage question, just then coming rapidly to the front. She had heard Joan speak at Cambridge and was eager to secure her adherence, being wishful to surround herself with a group of young and good-looking women who should take the movement out of the hands of the “frumps,” as she termed them. Her doubt was whether Joan would prove sufficiently tractable. She intended to offer her remunerative work upon the Nursing News without saying anything about the real motive behind, trusting to gratitude to make her task the easier.

      The second was СКАЧАТЬ