Part 31 (1/2)
Mrs Tremayne had never opened her lips; and leaving her in the study, Blanche wandered into the parlour, where Clare and Lysken were seated at work.
”I marvel what Master Tremayne would have!” said Blanche, sitting down in the window, and idly pulling the dead leaves from the plant which stood there. ”He saith 'tis our own fault that we will not to be saved, and yet in the self breath he addeth that the will so to be must needs be given us of G.o.d.”
Lysken looked up.
”Methinks we are all willing enow to be saved from punishment,” she said. ”What we be unwilling to be saved from is sin.”
”'Sin'--alway sin!” muttered Blanche. ”Ye be both of a story. Sin is wickedness. I am not wicked.”
”Sin is the disobeying of G.o.d,” replied Lysken. ”And saving thy presence, Blanche, thou art wicked.”
”Then so art thou!” retorted Blanche.
”So I am,” said Lysken. ”But I am willing to be saved therefrom.”
”Prithee, Mistress Elizabeth Barnevelt, from what sin am I not willing to be saved?”
”Dost truly wish to know?” asked Lysken in her coolest manner.
”Certes!”
”Then--pride.”
”Pride is no sin!”
”I love not gainsaying, Blanche. But I dare in no wise gainsay the Lord. And He saith of pride, that it is an abomination unto Him, and He hateth it.” [Proverbs six, verse 16; and sixteen verse 5.]
”But that is ill and sinful pride,” urged Blanche. ”There is proper pride.”
”It seemeth to my poor wits,” said Lysken, ”that a thing which the Lord hateth must be all of it improper.”
”Why, Lysken! Thus saying, thou shouldst condemn all high spirit and n.o.ble bearing!”
”'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' There was no pride in Christ, Blanche. And thou wilt scarce say that He bare Him not n.o.bly.”
”Why, then, we might as well all be peasants!”
”I suppose we might, if we were,” said Lysken.
”Lysken, it should be a right strange world, where thou hadst the governance!”
”Very like,” was Lysken's calm rejoinder, as she set the pin a little further in her seam.
”What good is it, prithee, to set thee up against all men's opinion?
[What are now termed 'views' were then called 'opinions.'] Thou shalt but win scorn for thine.”
”Were it only mine, Blanche, it should be to no good. But when it is G.o.d's command wherewith mine opinion runneth,--why then, the good shall be to hear Christ say, 'Well done, faithful servant.' The scorn I bare here shall be light weight then.”
”But wherefore not go smoothly through the world?”