All Roads Lead to Calvary

by Jerome Klapka Jerome

  “No,” admitted Mr. Simson with generosity. “It’s only natural. It’s a fight to the finish between me and the Bourgeois. I cover them with ridicule and contempt and they hit back at me in the only way they know.”

  “Take care they don’t get the best of you,” Miss Ensor advised him.

  “Oh, I’m not afraid,” he answered. “I’ll get another place all right: give me time. The only thing I’m worried about is my young woman.”

  “Doesn’t agree with you?” inquired Miss Ensor.

  “Oh, it isn’t that,” he answered. “But she’s frightened. You know. Says life with me is going to be a bit too uncertain for her. Perhaps she’s right.”

  “Oh, why don’t you chuck it,” advised Miss Ensor, “give the Bourgeois a rest.”

  Mr. Simson shook his head. “Somebody’s got to tackle them,” he said. “Tell them the truth about themselves, to their faces.”

  “Yes, but it needn’t be you,” suggested Miss Ensor.

  Mary was leaning over the table. Miss Ensor’s four-penny veal and ham pie was ready. Mary arranged it in front of her. “Eat it while it’s hot, dearie,” she counselled. “It won’t be so indigestible.”

  Miss Ensor turned to her. “Oh, you talk to him,” she urged. “Here, he’s lost his job again, and is losing his girl: all because of his silly politics. Tell him he’s got to have sense and stop it.”

  Mary seemed troubled. Evidently, as Miss Ensor had stated, advice was not her line. “Perhaps he’s got to do it, dearie,” she suggested.

  “What do you mean by got to do it?” exclaimed Miss Ensor. “Who’s making him do it, except himself?”

  Mary flushed. She seemed to want to get back to her cooking. “It’s something inside us, dearie,” she thought: “that nobody hears but ourselves.”

  “That tells him to talk all that twaddle?” demanded Miss Ensor. “Have you heard him?”

  “No, dearie,” Mary admitted. “But I expect it’s got its purpose. Or he wouldn’t have to do it.”

  Miss Ensor gave a gesture of despair and applied herself to her pie. The hirsute face of Mr. Simson had lost the foolish aggressiveness that had irritated Joan. He seemed to be pondering matters.

  Mary hoped that Joan was hungry. Joan laughed and admitted that she was. “It’s the smell of all the nice things,” she explained. Mary promised it should soon be ready, and went back to her corner.

  A short, dark, thick-set man entered and stood looking round the room. The frame must once have been powerful, but now it was shrunken and emaciated. The shabby, threadbare clothes hung loosely from the stooping shoulders. Only the head seemed to have retained its vigour. The face, from which the long black hair was brushed straight back, was ghastly white. Out of it, deep set beneath great shaggy, overhanging brows, blazed the fierce, restless eyes of a fanatic. The huge, thin-lipped mouth seemed to have petrified itself into a savage snarl. He gave Joan the idea, as he stood there glaring round him, of a hunted beast at bay.

  Miss Ensor, whose bump of reverence was undeveloped, greeted him cheerfully as Boanerges. Mr. Simson, more respectful, rose and offered his small, grimy hand. Mary took his hat and cloak away from him and closed the door behind him. She felt his hands, and put him into a chair close to the fire. And then she introduced him to Joan.

  Joan started on hearing his name. It was one well known.

  “The Cyril Baptiste?” she asked. She had often wondered what he might be like.

  “The Cyril Baptiste,” he answered, in a low, even, passionate voice, that he flung at her almost like a blow. “The atheist, the gaol bird, the pariah, the blasphemer, the anti-Christ. I’ve hoofs instead of feet. Shall I take off my boots and show them to you? I tuck my tail inside my coat. You can’t see my horns. I’ve cut them off close to my head. That’s why I wear my hair long: to hide the stumps.”

  Mary had been searching in the pockets of his cloak. She had found a paper bag. “You mustn’t get excited,” she said, laying her little work-worn hand upon his shoulder; “or you’ll bring on the bleeding.”

  “Aye,” he answered, “I must be careful I don’t die on Christmas Day. It would make a fine text, that, for their sermons.”

  He lapsed into silence: his almost transparent hands stretched out towards the fire.

  Mr. Simson fidgeted. The quiet of the room, broken only by Mary’s ministering activities, evidently oppressed him.

  “Paper going well, sir?” he asked. “I often read it myself.”

  “It still sells,” answered the proprietor, and editor and publisher, and entire staff of The Rationalist.

  “I like the articles you are writing on the History of Superstition. Quite illuminating,” remarked Mr. Simson.

  “It’s many a year, I am afraid, to the final chapter,” thought their author.

  “They afford much food for reflection,” thought Mr. Simson, “though I cannot myself go as far as you do in including Christianity under that heading.”

  Mary frowned at him; but Mr. Simson, eager for argument or not noticing, blundered on —

  “Whether we accept the miraculous explanation of Christ’s birth,” continued Mr. Simson, in his best street-corner voice, “or whether, with the great French writer whose name for the moment escapes me, we regard Him merely as a man inspired, we must, I think, admit that His teaching has been of help: especially to the poor.”

  The fanatic turned upon him so fiercely that Mr. Simson’s arm involuntarily assumed the posture of defence.

  “To the poor?” the old man almost shrieked. “To the poor that he has robbed of all power of resistance to oppression by his vile, submissive creed! that he has drugged into passive acceptance of every evil done to them by his false promises that their sufferings here shall win for them some wonderful reward when they are dead. What has been his teaching to the poor? Bow your backs to the lash, kiss the rod that scars your flesh. Be ye humble, oh, my people. Be ye poor in spirit. Let Wrong rule triumphant through the world. Raise no hand against it, lest ye suffer my eternal punishments. Learn from me to be meek and lowly. Learn to be good slaves and give no trouble to your taskmasters. Let them turn the world into a hell for you. The grave — the grave shall be your gate to happiness.

  “Helpful to the poor? Helpful to their rulers, to their owners. They take good care that Christ shall be well taught. Their fat priests shall bear his message to the poor. The rod may be broken, the prison door be forced. It is Christ that shall bind the people in eternal fetters. Christ, the lackey, the jackal of the rich.”

  Mr. Simson was visibly shocked. Evidently he was less familiar with the opinions of The Rationalist than he had thought.

  “I really must protest,” exclaimed Mr. Simson. “To whatever wrong uses His words may have been twisted, Christ Himself I regard as divine, and entitled to be spoken of with reverence. His whole life, His sufferings—”

  But the old fanatic’s vigour had not yet exhausted itself.

  “His sufferings!” he interrupted. “Does suffering entitle a man to be regarded as divine? If so, so also am I a God. Look at me!” He stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly strong enough to bear. “Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once. I had wife, children and a home. Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me. Thirty years I have starved that I might preach. They shut me in their prisons, they hound me into garrets. They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot silence me. What of my life? Am I divine?”

  Miss Ensor, having finished her supper, sat smoking.

  “Why must you preach?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem to pay you.” There was a curious smile about the girl’s lips as she caught Joan’s eye.

  He turned to her with his last flicker of passion.

  “Because to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth,” he answered.


  He sank back a huddled heap upon the chair. There was foam about his mouth, great beads of sweat upon his forehead. Mary wiped them away with a corner of her apron, and felt again his trembling hands. “Oh, please don’t talk to him any more,” she pleaded, “not till he’s had his supper.” She fetched her fine shawl, and pinned it round him. His eyes followed her as she hovered about him. For the first time, since he had entered the room, they looked human.

  They gathered round the table. Mr. Baptiste was still pinned up in Mary’s bright shawl. It lent him a curious dignity. He might have been some ancient prophet stepped from the pages of the Talmud. Miss Ensor completed her supper with a cup of tea and some little cakes: “just to keep us all company,” as Mary had insisted.

  The old fanatic’s eyes passed from face to face. There was almost the suggestion of a smile about the savage mouth.

  “A strange supper-party,” he said. “Cyril the Apostate; and Julius who strove against the High Priests and the Pharisees; and Inez a dancer before the people; and Joanna a daughter of the rulers, gathered together in the house of one Mary a servant of the Lord.”

  “Are you, too, a Christian?” he asked of Joan.

  “Not yet,” answered Joan. “But I hope to be, one day.” She spoke without thinking, not quite knowing what she meant. But it came back to her in after years.

  The talk grew lighter under the influence of Mary’s cooking. Mr. Baptiste could be interesting when he got away from his fanaticism; and even the apostolic Mr. Simson had sometimes noticed humour when it had chanced his way.

  A message came for Mary about ten o’clock, brought by a scared little girl, who whispered it to her at the door. Mary apologized. She had to go out. The party broke up. Mary disappeared into the next room and returned in a shawl and bonnet, carrying a small brown paper parcel. Joan walked with her as far as the King’s Road.

  “A little child is coming,” she confided to Joan. She was quite excited about it.

  Joan thought. “It’s curious,” she said, “one so seldom hears of anybody being born on Christmas Day.”

  They were passing a lamp. Joan had never seen a face look quite so happy as Mary’s looked, just then.

  “It always seems to me Christ’s birthday,” she said, “whenever a child is born.”

  They had reached the corner. Joan could see her bus in the distance.

  She stooped and kissed the little withered face.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered.

  Mary gave her a hug, and almost ran away. Joan watched the little child-like figure growing smaller. It glided in and out among the people.

  CHAPTER XI

  In the spring, Joan, at Mrs. Denton’s request, undertook a mission. It was to go to Paris. Mrs. Denton had meant to go herself, but was laid up with sciatica; and the matter, she considered, would not brook of any delay.

  “It’s rather a delicate business,” she told Joan. She was lying on a couch in her great library, and Joan was seated by her side. “I want someone who can go into private houses and mix with educated people on their own level; and especially I want you to see one or two women: they count in France. You know French pretty well, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sufficiently,” Joan answered. The one thing her mother had done for her had been to talk French with her when she was a child; and at Girton she had chummed on with a French girl, and made herself tolerably perfect.

  “You will not go as a journalist,” continued Mrs. Denton; “but as a personal friend of mine, whose discretion I shall vouch for. I want you to find out what the people I am sending you among are thinking themselves, and what they consider ought to be done. If we are not very careful on both sides we shall have the newspapers whipping us into war.”

  The perpetual Egyptian trouble had cropped up again and the Carleton papers, in particular, were already sounding the tocsin. Carleton’s argument was that we ought to fall upon France and crush her, before she could develop her supposed submarine menace. His flaming posters were at every corner. Every obscure French newspaper was being ransacked for “Insults and Pinpricks.”

  “A section of the Paris Press is doing all it can to help him, of course,” explained Mrs. Denton. “It doesn’t seem to matter to them that Germany is only waiting her opportunity, and that, if Russia comes in, it is bound to bring Austria. Europe will pay dearly one day for the luxury of a free Press.”

  “But you’re surely not suggesting any other kind of Press, at this period of the world’s history?” exclaimed Joan.

  “Oh, but I am,” answered the old lady with a grim tightening of the lips. “Not even Carleton would be allowed to incite to murder or arson. I would have him prosecuted for inciting a nation to war.”

  “Why is the Press always so eager for war?” mused Joan. “According to their own account, war doesn’t pay them.”

  “I don’t suppose it does: not directly,” answered Mrs. Denton. “But it helps them to establish their position and get a tighter hold upon the public. War does pay the newspaper in the long run. The daily newspaper lives on commotion, crime, lawlessness in general. If people no longer enjoyed reading about violence and bloodshed half their occupation, and that the most profitable half would be gone. It is the interest of the newspaper to keep alive the savage in human nature; and war affords the readiest means of doing this. You can’t do much to increase the number of gruesome murders and loathsome assaults, beyond giving all possible advertisement to them when they do occur. But you can preach war, and cover yourself with glory, as a patriot, at the same time.”

  “I wonder how many of my ideals will be left to me,” sighed Joan. “I always used to regard the Press as the modern pulpit.”

  “The old pulpit became an evil, the moment it obtained unlimited power,” answered Mrs. Denton. “It originated persecution and inflamed men’s passions against one another. It, too, preached war for its own ends, taught superstition, and punished thought as a crime. The Press of to-day is stepping into the shoes of the medieval priest. It aims at establishing the worst kind of tyranny: the tyranny over men’s minds. They pretend to fight among themselves, but it’s rapidly becoming a close corporation. The Institute of Journalists will soon be followed by the Union of Newspaper Proprietors and the few independent journals will be squeezed out. Already we have German shareholders on English papers; and English capital is interested in the St. Petersburg Press. It will one day have its International Pope and its school of cosmopolitan cardinals.”

  Joan laughed. “I can see Carleton rather fancying himself in a tiara,” she said. “I must tell Phillips what you say. He’s out for a fight with him. Government by Parliament or Government by Press is going to be his war cry.”

  “Good man,” said Mrs. Denton. “I’m quite serious. You tell him from me that the next revolution has got to be against the Press. And it will be the stiffest fight Democracy has ever had.”

  The old lady had tired herself. Joan undertook the mission. She thought she would rather enjoy it, and Mrs. Denton promised to let her have full instructions. She would write to her friends in Paris and prepare them for Joan’s coming.

  Joan remembered Folk, the artist she had met at Flossie’s party, who had promised to walk with her on the terrace at St. Germain, and tell her more about her mother. She looked up his address on her return home, and wrote to him, giving him the name of the hotel in the Rue de Grenelle where Mrs. Denton had arranged that she should stay. She found a note from him awaiting her when she arrived there. He thought she would like to be quiet after her journey. He would call round in the morning. He had presumed on the privilege of age to send her some lilies. They had been her mother’s favourite flower. “Monsieur Folk, the great artist,” had brought them himself, and placed them in her dressing-room, so Madame informed her.

  It was one of the half-dozen old hotels still left in Paris, and was built round a garden famous for its mighty mulberry tree. She breakfasted underneath it, and was reading there when Folk appeared before her, s
miling and with his hat in his hand. He excused himself for intruding upon her so soon, thinking from what she had written him that her first morning might be his only chance. He evidently considered her remembrance of him a feather in his cap.

  “We old fellows feel a little sadly, at times, how unimportant we are,” he explained. “We are grateful when Youth throws us a smile.”

  “You told me my coming would take you back thirty-three years,” Joan reminded him. “It makes us about the same age. I shall treat you as just a young man.”

  He laughed. “Don’t be surprised,” he said, “if I make a mistake occasionally and call you Lena.”

  Joan had no appointment till the afternoon. They drove out to St. Germain, and had déjeuner at a small restaurant opposite the Château; and afterwards they strolled on to the terrace.

  “What was my mother doing in Paris?” asked Joan.

  “She was studying for the stage,” he answered. “Paris was the only school in those days. I was at Julien’s studio. We acted together for some charity. I had always been fond of it. An American manager who was present offered us both an engagement, and I thought it would be a change and that I could combine the two arts.”

  “And it was here that you proposed to her,” said Joan.

  “Just by that tree that leans forward,” he answered, pointing with his cane a little way ahead. “I thought that in America I’d get another chance. I might have if your father hadn’t come along. I wonder if he remembers me.”

  “Did you ever see her again, after her marriage?” asked Joan.

  “No,” he answered. “We used to write to one another until she gave it up. She had got into the habit of looking upon me as a harmless sort of thing to confide in and ask advice of — which she never took.”

  “Forgive me,” he said. “You must remember that I am still her lover.” They had reached the tree that leant a little forward beyond its fellows, and he had halted and turned so that he was facing her. “Did she and your father get on together. Was she happy?”