The vicar laughed a complacent little laugh at this cogent reasoning of his young friend. “Unfortunately,” he said, “we have no authority for interfering with people in the management of their souls in this country. Such a proceeding would be quite unconstitutional; the state only legislates for the salvation of their bodies.”
“Dear me, just so!” ejaculated Miss Merrywig. “I remember my dear mother telling me that a very clever man—I’m not sure if he wasn’t a member of Parliament, but anyhow he made speeches in public—and he said—I really think it was an electioneering speech just at the time the Catholic Emancipation bill was being passed—that in this free country every man had a right to go to the devil his own way. How exceedingly shocking! To think of people’s going to the devil at all! But that’s just it. They prefer to go their own way, and, as you say, the law can’t prevent them. It’s entirely a question of personal influence, you see.”
“Then perhaps Sir Simon could do something,” suggested Franceline; “he’s master here, and he makes everybody do what he likes. Why don’t you speak to him, monsieur?”
“He might do something, perhaps, if anybody could; but, unfortunately, he does not see it,” observed the vicar.
“I’ll speak to him. I’ll make him see it,” said Franceline, who flew with a woman’s natural instinct to arbitrary legislation as the readiest mode of redressing wrongs, and had, moreover, a strong faith in her own power of making Sir Simon “see it.”
“But is this not rather—of course you know best, only it does strike me that it is a case for the bishop’s interference rather than the squire’s,” said Miss Merrywig. She was a remnant of the old times when a bishop could hold his own; that was before ritualism came into vogue.
“Yes,” cried Franceline, with sudden exultation, “of course it’s the bishop who must do it. You ought to write to him, monsieur!”
Mr. Langrove smiled. “The bishop has no more power to interfere with the proceedings of my parishioners than you have.”
“Then what has he power to do? What are bishops good for?” demanded the obtuse young Papist.
But Mr. Langrove, being a loyal “churchman,” was not going to enter on such slippery, debatable ground as this. He was happily saved from the disagreeable process of beating about the bush for an answer by the fact of their being close by widow Bing’s door, from which there issued distinctly a twofold sound as of somebody crying and somebody else exhorting. Bessy no sooner caught it than she swelled the chorus of lamentation by breaking forth into a loud cry. If there was any weeping to be done, Bessy was not the one to be behindhand. And now she was resolved to do her very best; for perhaps the prophecy was already coming true, and mammy was beginning to be a prey to the snakes and devils.