Out in the Forty-Five Part 35

"Then, if not so, there is the other side. The chains, the torture-irons, the fire. You can choose, so: you tell, or you die.

There is no more choice. Does Mademoiselle wonder that we came?"

"No, indeed, Lucette. How could I? But that was in France. This is England. We are a different sort of people here."

"You--yes. But the Church and the priests are the same everywhere.

Everywhere! May the good G.o.d keep them from us!"

"Why, Lucette! you are praying against the Prince, if it be as you say!"

"Ah! would I then do harm to _Monseigneur le Prince_? Let him leave there the priests, and none shall be more glad to see him come than I.

I love the right, always. But the priests! No, no."

"But if it be right, Lucette?"

"The good G.o.d knows what is right. But, Mademoiselle, can it be right to bring in the priests and the confessions?"

"Is it not G.o.d who brings them, Lucette? We only bring the King. If the King choose to bring the priests--"

"Ah! then the Lord will bring the fires. But the Lord bring the priests! The Lord shut up the preches and set up the ma.s.s? The Lord burn His poor servants, and clothe the servants of Satan in gold and scarlet? The Lord forbid His Word, and set up images? _Comment_, Mademoiselle! It would not be possible."

"But, Lucette, the King has the right."

"The Lord Christ has the right," said Lucette, solemnly. "Is it not He whose right it is? Mademoiselle, He stands before the King!"

We heard Grandmamma saying good-night to my Uncle Charles at the foot of the stairs, and Lucette ran off to her chamber.

I felt more plagued than ever. What _is_ right?

Just then Annas and Flora came up; Annas grave but composed, Flora with a white face and red eyes.

"O Cary, Cary!" She came and put her arms round me. "Pray for Angus; we shall never see him again. And he is not ready--he is not ready."

"My poor Flora!" I said, and I did my best to soothe her. But Annas did better.

"The Lord can make him ready," she said. "He healed the paralytic man, dear, as some have it, entirely for the faith of them that bore him.

And surely the daughter of the Canaanitish woman could have no faith herself."

"Pray for him, Annas!" sobbed Flora. "You have more faith than I."

"I am not so hard tried--yet," was the grave reply.

"You do not think Mr Keith in danger?" said I.

"I think the Lord sitteth above the water-floods, Cary; and I would rather not look lower. Not till I must, and that may be very soon."

"Annas," said I, "I wish you would tell me what right is. I do get so puzzled."

"What puzzles you, Cary? Right is what G.o.d wills."

"But would the Prince not have the right, if G.o.d did not will him to succeed?"

"The Lawgiver can always repeal His own laws. We in the crowd, Cary, can only judge when they be repealed by hearing Him decree something contrary to them. And there are no precedents in that Court.

'Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He.' We can only wait and see.

Until we do see it, we must follow our last orders."

"My Father says," added Flora, "that this question was made harder than it need have been, by the throwing out of the Exclusion Bill. The House of Commons pa.s.sed it, but the Bishops and Lord Halifax threw it out; if that had been pa.s.sed, making it impossible for a Papist to be King, then King James would never have come to the throne at all, and all the troubles and persecutions of his reign would not have happened. That, my Father says, was where they went wrong."

"Well," said I, "it does look like it. But how queer that the Bishops should be the people to go wrong!"

Annas laughed.

"You will find that nothing new, Cary, if you search," said she. "'They that lead thee cause thee to err' is as old a calamity as the Prophets.

And where priests or would-be priests are the leaders, they very generally do go wrong."

"I wish," said I, "there were a few more 'Thou shalt nots' in the Bible."

"Have you finished obeying all there are?"

I considered that question with one sleeve off.

"Well, no, I suppose not," I said at length, pulling off the other.

Annas smiled gravely, and said no more.

Glorious news! The Prince is at Derby. I am sure there is no more need to fear for Angus. His Royal Highness will be here in a very few days now: and then let the Whigs look to themselves!

Grandmamma has bought some more white c.o.c.kades. She says Hatty has improved wonderfully; her cheeks are not so shockingly red, and she speaks better, and has more decent manners. She thinks the Crosslands have done her a great deal of good. I thought Hatty looking not at all well the last time she was here; and so grave for her--almost sad. And I am afraid the Crosslands, or somebody, have done her a great deal of bad. But somehow, Hatty is one of those people whom you cannot question unless she likes. Something inside me will not put the questions. I don't know what it is.

I wish I knew everything! If I could only understand myself, I should get on better. And how am I going to understand other people?

Note 1. A clergyman always wore his ca.s.sock at this time. Whitefield was very severe on those worldly clergy who laid it aside, and went "disguised"--namely, in the ordinary coat--to entertainments of various kinds.

CHAPTER TEN.

SPIDERS' WEBS.

"Why does he find so many tangled threads, So many dislocated purposes, So many failures in the race of life?"

REV HORATIUS BONAR, D.D.

We had a grand time of it last night, to celebrate the Prince's entry into Derby. I did not see one red ribbon. Grandmamma is very much put out at the forbidding of French cambrics; she says n.o.body will be able to have a decent ruffle or a respectable handkerchief now: but what can you expect of these Hanoverians? And I am sure she looked smart enough last night. We had dancing--first, the minuet, and then a round--"Pepper's black," and then "Dull Sir John," and a country dance, "Smiling Polly." Flora would not dance, and Grandmamma excused her, because she was a minister's daughter: Grandmamma always says a clergyman when she tells people: she says minister is a low word only used by Dissenters, and she does not want people to know that any guest of hers has any connection with those creatures. "However, thank Heaven! (says she) the girl is not my grand-daughter!" I don't know what she would say if I were to turn Dissenter. I suppose she would cut me off with a shilling. Ephraim said so, and I asked him what it meant.

Shillings are not very sharp, and what was I to be cut off? Ephraim seemed excessively amused.