"Friends! what are they worth?" asked the other. "Good to sing 'Awa' Whigs, awa'!' or to pass their glasses over the water-jug when they say, 'The King, God bless him!'[[4]] But how many of them are ready to put their hands in their pockets to maintain your good cause? How many are ready to melt down their plate, as their fathers and ours did for King Charles? How many would die for the King now, as for his grandfather then?"
"That cause triumphed, Gilbert," said Stevens, suggestively.
"Did it?" answered Gilbert, more suggestively still. "How much worse had we been off now, Father Cuthbert—how far different, if the one at St. James's had been called Richard Cromwell instead of Anne Stuart? Trust me, England will henceforth be constant but to one thing—her inconstancy. She will go on, as she hath gone, from bad to worse, with short reactions every now and then. First King Charles—then my Lord Protector—then a little fit of reaction, and King Charles again. Then comes King James, and wounds her pride by being really a King and not a puppet, and off she goes to Dutch William—my Lord Protector over again. And now, the Princess Anne"—
"And after her, Gilbert?"
"After her? The saints know!—at least I hope they do; for I am sure I don't. But if these fellows had the King in to-morrow, they would kick him out again the day after."
"Probably," rejoined Stevens, calmly. "However, it does not much matter to me. I have a safe refuge in France in either case—my Lady Ingram's income to draw upon if we succeed—and, if we fail—well, I have friends on the other side. And at the worst, the Jesuit College at Rome would provide me with a shelter for my old age."
"Yes, there is no fear for you, Father," said Gilbert. "But we poor wretches, who have not the good fortune to be of your Order—we are proscribed exiles. Should we have been anything worse under Oliver?"
"Why, you might very likely have been in the pillory," said Stevens, "and had an ear or two less than now. And you might have been at Tyburn."
Gilbert took no notice of this flattering allusion. He answered as if he were pursuing his previous train of thought:
"No, the King will never 'have his ain again.' There are two things that England has come to value above even her throne and her peace: these are her Protestantism and her liberties. For these, and these alone, she will fight to the death. Of course the two monsters cannot live long together; the one must devour the other in the end. And whether heresy will swallow liberty, or liberty eat up heresy,—our great-grandsons may see, but we scarcely shall."