Out in the Forty-Five: Duncan Keith's VowHolt, Emily Sarah
General
Out in the Forty-Five: Duncan Keith's Vow
Holt, Emily Sarah
Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746 -- Juvenile fiction
I sat and listened in wonder. It all sounded so strange. Yet Flora
seemed to understand. And I had such an unpleasant sense of being
outside, and not understanding, as I never felt before, and I did not
like it a bit. I knew quite well that if Father had been there, he
would have said it was all stuff and cant. But I did not feel so sure
of my Aunt Kezia. And suppose it were not cant, but was something
unutterably real,--something that I ought to know, and must know some
day, if I were ever to get to Heaven! I did not like it. I felt that I
was among a new sort of people--people who lived, as it were, in a
different place from me--a sort of whom I had never seen one before
(that did not come from Abbotscliff) except my Aunt Kezia, and there
were differences between her and them. My Uncle Drummond and Flora, and
Mr Keith, and this old Mirren, and I thought Helen Raeburn and Mr
Cameron, all belonged this new sort of people. The one who did not seem
to belong them was Angus. Yet I did not like Angus nearly so well as
the rest. And yet he belonged my sort of people. It was a puzzle
altogether, and not a pleasant puzzle. And how anybody was to get out
of the one set into the other set, I could not tell at all.
Stop! I did know one other person at Brocklebank who belonged this new
sort of people. It was Ephraim Hebblethwaite. He was not, I thought--
well, I don't know how to put it--he did not seem so far on the road as
the others; only he was on that road, and not on this road. And then it
struck me, too, whether old Elspie, and perhaps Sam, were not on the
road as well. I ran over in my mind, as I was walking back to the manse
with Flora, who was very silent, all the people I knew; and I could not
think of one other who might be on Flora's road. Father and my sisters,
Esther Langridge, the Catteralls, the Bracewells, Cecilia--oh dear,
no!--Mr Digby, Mr Bagnall (yet they were parsons), Mr Parmenter--no,
not one. At all the four I named last, my mind gave a sort of jump as
if it were quite astonished to be asked the question. But where did the
roads lead? Flora and her sort, I felt quite sure, were going to
Heaven. Then where were Angus and I and all the rest going?
And I did not like the answer at all.
But I felt that the two roads led in opposite ways, and they could not
both go to one place.
As we walked up the path to the manse, Helen came out to meet us.
"My lassie," she said to Flora, "there's Miss Annas i' the garden, and
Leddy Monksburn wad ha'e ye gang till Monksburn for a dish o' tea, and
Miss Cary wi' ye."
Flora's face lighted up.
"Oh, how delightful!" she said. "Come, Cary--come and see Annas Keith."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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