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I thought it all out. Don't know now what decided me. Something inside me, I suppose." Joan found herself poking the fire. "Have you known Mary Stopperton long?" she asked. "Oh, yes," answered the girl. "Ever since I've been on my own." "Did you talk it over with her?" asked Joan. "No," answered the girl. "I may have just told her. She isn't the sort that gives advice."
Separated from its base, imprisoned within those tradition-haunted walls, it would lose touch with the people, would become in its turn a mere oligarchy. If the people are ever to govern they must keep their hand firmly upon the machine; not remain content with pulling a lever and then being shown the door." She had sent a note by messenger to Mary Stopperton to say she was coming.
The idea is that there comes a time to all of us when we have to choose. Whether, like your friend Carlyle, we will 'give up things' for our faith's sake. Or go for the carriage and pair." Mary Stopperton laughed. "He is quite right, dear," she said. "It does seem to come, and it is so hard. You have to pray and pray and pray. And even then we cannot always do it."
At the time, she remembered, the shadow of a fear had passed over her. Mary Stopperton did not know the name of the preacher. It was quite common for chance substitutes to officiate there, especially in the evening.
"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.
He looked a little doubtful at Joan. Mary introduced them. His name was Julius Simson. He shook hands as if under protest. "As friends of Mary Stopperton," he said, "we meet on neutral ground. But in all matters of moment I expect we are as far asunder as the poles. I stand for the People." "We ought to be comrades," answered Joan, with a smile. "I, too, am trying to help the People."
Stopperton had died the year before, and Mary had been a little hurt, divining insincerity in the condolences offered to her by most of her friends. "You didn't know him, dear," she had said to Joan. "All his faults were on the outside." She did not want to talk about the war. "Perhaps it's wrong of me," she said. "But it makes me so sad. And I can do nothing."
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.
Joan waited till the last of the congregation had disappeared, and then joined the little pew-opener who was waiting to close the doors. Joan asked her what she had thought of the sermon, but Mary Stopperton, being a little deaf, had not heard it. "It was quite good the matter of it," Joan told her. "All Roads lead to Calvary.
It stood in a narrow side street between two public-houses, and was covered with ivy. It had two windows above and a window and a door below. The upstairs rooms belonged to the churchwardens and were used as a storehouse for old parish registers, deemed of little value. Mary Stopperton and her bedridden husband lived in the two rooms below. Mary unlocked the door, and Joan passed in and waited.
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