Ashcliffe Hall: A tale of the last century

by Emily Sarah Holt

"Well, my dear," said Cicely, "I've got my thoughts upon that, too. You look here! I don't find as ever I did a thing to please God afore I took Him that died to stand for me. I never cared aught about pleasing Him; and do you think He'd be like to be pleased with such work as that? If He can see into our hearts, why, it must be just like talking. And do you think Madam would be pleased with me, however well I sewed and swept, if I just went saying forever, ''Tis not to please you I'm working; I don't care a bit about you?'

"I think I do want to please Him," said Celia slowly.

"Don't you stick at thinking, child," said old Cicely, with a pleased look; "go on to knowing, my dear. Well, then, as to bringing something to Him, look here in this other part."

Cicely turned to Isaiah, and after a little search, pointed out a verse which Celia read.

"'But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.'"[[11]]

"If the Queen was a-coming this way, my dear, and we was all of us a-going out to see her, what would you think of me if you see me ransacking the house for all the foul clothes I could find, to tie up in a bundle, and saying, 'There! I'm a-going to give these to the Queen!' Wouldn't you think I was only fit for Bedlam? You see it don't say 'all our iniquities are as filthy rags;' we should be ready to own that. Dear, no! 'tis all our righteousnesses. Will you tell me, then, what we have to bring to Him that is above all Kings and Lords? Well, and last of all, as to living as we list. I do find that mostly when we have made it up like with Him, we list to live after His ways. Not always—surely not always!" she added, sadly shaking her head; "truly we are a pack of good-for-noughts, e'en the best of us; yet it do hurt to think as we've grieved Him when we come to see all He has done and will do for us. Them's my thoughts upon that, Mrs. Celia."

"Why did you never speak to me—to any of us—in this way before now, Cicely?" asked Celia, very thoughtfully and gravely.

"Truly, my dear, I take shame to myself that I never did," replied Cicely; "but you see there was two reasons. Firstly, 'tisn't so very long since I come to know it myself—leastwise not many years. Then, you see, when I did know, I hadn't the face, like, for a good while. Seemed so bold and brassy like for me to be a-talking i' thatn's to the likes of you, as knowed so much more than me. And somehow it never seemed to come natural till last night, and then it come all at once out of what Miss Lucy she said about Parson's sermons."

Celia remained silent for a minute. The mention of Dr. Braithwaite's sermons had opened up a vein of thought. She wondered if anywhere there were men who preached sermons of a different kind from his, such as she and even old Cicely might understand, and from which they could derive benefit. Was there any preacher who, instead of enlarging on the Angelical Doctor, was satisfied to keep to Jesus Christ and Him crucified? A wild desire sprang up in her heart to go to London, and hear the great men who preached before the Queen. She did not mention this to Cicely. Celia knew full well that it would appear to her not only preposterous, but absolutely perilous. Harry was the only member of the family who had ever visited the metropolis, and this by virtue of Her Majesty's commission. The Squire considered it a hot-bed of all evil, physical, moral, and political. Had he walked down the Strand, he would honestly have suspected every man he met to be a Jesuit in disguise, or at the least a Jacobite, which he thought scarcely better. He believed that the air of the capital was close and pestilential, that all honesty and morality were banished from its borders, that all the men in it—with the exception of the Duke of Marlborough and the Whig Ministers—were arrant rogues, and all the women—excluding the Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough—were heartless and unprincipled. There was some ground for his belief, but he sometimes excepted the wrong persons.

All these facts and feelings floated through Celia's mind, and she felt that to bring her wishes to light would probably hinder their accomplishment. She sat silent and thoughtful.