I must lay down my pen, for I hear a shocking smash in the kitchen.
That girl Dolly is so careless! I don't believe I shall ever have much
time for writing now.
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Langbeck Rectory, under the Cheviots, August the 28th, 1747.
Nearly a whole year since I writ one line!
Our lot is settled now, and we moved in here in May last. I am very
thankful that the lines have fallen to me still in my dear North--I have
not pleasant recollections of the South. And I fancy--but perhaps
unjustly--that we Northerners have a deeper, more yearning love for our
hills and dales than they have down there. We are about midway between
Brocklebank and Abbotscliff, which is just where I would have chosen to
be, if I could have had the choice. It is not often that God gives a
man all the desires of his heart; perhaps to a woman He gives it even
less often. How thankful I ought to be!
My Aunt Kezia was so good as to come with us, to help me to settle down.
I should not have got things straight in twice the time if she had not
been here. Sophy spent the days with Father while my Aunt Kezia was
here, and just went back to the Vicarage for the night. Father is very
much delighted with Sophy's child, and calls him a bouncing boy, and a
credit to the family; and Sophy thinks him the finest child that ever
lived, as my Aunt Kezia saith every mother hath done since Eve.
The night before my Aunt Kezia went home, as she and I sat together,--it
was not yet time for Ephraim to come in from his work in the parish, for
he is one of the few parsons who do work, and do not pore over learned
books or go a-hunting, and leave their parishes to take care of
themselves--well, as my Aunt and I sat by the window, she said something
which rather astonished me.
"Cary, I don't know what you and Ephraim would say, but I am beginning
to think we made a mistake."
"Do you mean about the Chinese screens, Aunt?" said I. "The gold
lacquer would have gone very well with the damask, but--"
"Chinese screens!" saith my Aunt, with a hearty laugh. "Why, whatever
is the girl thinking about? No, child! I mean about the Prince."
"Aunt Kezia!" I cried. "You never mean to say we did wrong in fighting
for our King?"
"Wrong? No, child, for we meant to do right. I gather from Scripture
that the Lord takes a deal more account of what a man means than of what
he does. Thank God it is so! For if a man means to come to Christ, he
does come, no matter how: ay, and if a man means to reject Christ, he
does that too, however fair and orthodox he may look in the eyes of the
world. Therefore, as to those matters that are in doubt, and cannot be
plainly judged by Scripture, but Christian men may and do lawfully
differ about them, if a man honestly meant to do God's will, so far as
he knew it, I don't believe he will be judged as if he had not cared to
do it. But what I intend to say is this--that it is plain to me now
that the Lord hath repealed the decree whereby He gave England to the
House of Stuart. There is no right against Him, Cary. He doeth as He
will with all the kingdoms of the world. Maybe it's not so plain to
you--if so, don't you try to see through my eyes. Follow your own
conscience until the Lord teaches yourself. If our fathers had been
truer men, and had passed the Bill of Exclusion in 1680, the troubles of
1688 would never have come, nor those of 1745 neither. They ate sour
grapes, and set our teeth on edge--ay, and their own too, poor souls!
It was the Bishops and Lord Halifax that did it, and the Bishops paid
the wyte, as Sam says. It must have been a bitter pill to those seven
in the Tower, to think that all might have been prevented by lawful,
constitutional means, and that they--their Order, I mean--had just
pulled their troubles on their own heads."
"Aunt Kezia," I cried in distress, "you never mean to say that Colonel
Keith died for a wrongful cause?"
"God forbid!" she said, gravely. "Colonel Keith did not die for that
Cause. He died for right and righteousness, for truth and honour, for
faithfulness, for loyalty and love--no bad things to die for. Not for
the Prince--only for God and Flora, and a little, perhaps, for Angus.
God forbid that I should judge any true and honourable man--most of all
that man who gave his life for those we love. Only, Cary, the Cause is
dead and gone. The struggle is over for ever: and we may thank God it
is so. On the wreck of the old England a new England may arise--an
England standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made her
free, free from priestly yoke and priest-ridden rulers, free not to
revolt but to follow, not to disobey, but to obey. If only--ah! if only
she resolve, and stand to it, never to be entangled again with the yoke
of bondage, never to forget the lessons which God has taught her, never
again to eat the sour grapes, and set the children's teeth on edge. Let
her once begin to think of the tiger's beauty, and forget its deathly
claws--once lay aside her watchword of `No peace with Rome'--and she
will find it means no peace with God, for His scourge has always pursued
her when she has truckled to His great enemy. Eh, but men have short
memories, never name short sight. Like enough, by a hundred years are
over, they'll be looking at Roman sugar-sticks as the Scarlet Woman
holds them out, and thinking that she is very fair and fine-spoken, and
why shouldn't they have a few sweets? Well! it is well the government
of the world isn't in old Kezia's hands, for if it were, some people
would find themselves uncommonly uncomfortable before long."
"You don't mean me, I hope?" I said, laughing.
"Nay, child, I don't mean you, nor yet your husband. Very like you'll
not see it as I do. But you'll live to see it--if only you live long
enough."
Well, my Aunt Kezia may be right, though I do not see it. Only that I
do think it was a sad blunder to throw out the Bill of Exclusion. It
had passed the Commons, so they were not to blame. But one thing I
should like to set down, for any who may read this book a hundred years
hence, if it hath not been tore up for waste-paper long ere that--that
we Protestants who fought for the Prince never fought nor meant to fight
for Popery. We hated it every bit as much as any who stood against him.
We fought because the contrary seemed to us to be doing evil that good
might come. But I won't say we may not live to be thankful that we lost
our cause.
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It has been a warm afternoon, and I sat with the window open in the
parlour, singing and sewing; Ephraim was out in the parish. I was
turning down a hem when a voice in the garden spoke to me,--
"An't like you, Madam, to give a drink of whey to a poor soldier?"
There was a slight Scots accent with the words.
"Whence come you?" I said.
"I fought at Prestonpans," he answered. He looked a youngish man, but
very ragged and bemired.
"On which side?" I said, as I rose up. Of course I was not going to
refuse him food and drink, however that might be, but I dare say I
should have made it a little more dainty for one of Prince Charlie's
troops than for a Hanoverian, and I felt pretty sure he was the former
from his accent.