A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [507]
He glowered at one gentleman who had subsided against the side of a house, taking a brief respite from the noonday heat with his hat over his face.
“The spirit of God must redeem the slothful, fill the human frame with activity, poise, and libertarian consciousness!”
Roger wondered, rather, whether Caldwell would view the escalating war as the result of God’s intervention—but upon reflection, thought that he likely would. Caldwell was a thinker, but a staunch Presbyterian, and thus a believer in predestination.
“The slothful encourage and facilitate oppression,” Caldwell explained, with a scornful gesture toward a family of tinkers enjoying an alfresco luncheon in the yard of a house. “Their own shame and sinking spirits, their own pitiful compliance and submission—these become self-made chains of slavery!”
“Oh, aye,” Roger said, and coughed. Caldwell was a famous preacher, and rather inclined to want to keep in practice. “Will ye take a whet, Mr. Caldwell?” It was a warm day, and Caldwell’s rather round, cherubic face was becoming very red.
They went into Thomas’s ordinary, a fairly respectable house, and sat down with tankards of the house beer—for Caldwell, like most, did not regard beer as being in any way “drink,” like rum or whisky. What else, after all, would one drink? Milk?
Out of the sun, and with a cooling draught to hand, Davy Caldwell became less heated in his expressions, as well as his countenance.
“Praise God for the fortune of meeting ye here, Mr. MacKenzie,” he said, breathing deep after lowering his tankard. “I had sent a letter, but doubtless ye will have left home before it could come. I wished to inform ye of the gladsome news—there is to be a Presbytery.”
Roger felt a sudden leap of the heart.
“When? And where?”
“Edenton, early next month. The Reverend Doctor McCorkle is coming from Philadelphia. He’ll remain for a time, before departing on his further journey—he is going to the Indies, to encourage the efforts of the church there. I am, of course, presuming to know your mind—I apologize for the forwardness of my address, Mr. MacKenzie—but is it still your desire to seek ordination?”
“With all my heart.”
Caldwell beamed, and grasped him strongly by the hand.
“Give ye joy of it, dear man—great joy.”
He then plunged into a close description of McCorkle, whom he had met in Scotland, and speculations regarding the state of religion in the colony—he spoke of Methodism with some respect, but considered the New Light Baptists “somewhat unregulated” in their effusions of worship, though doubtless well-meaning—and surely sincere belief was an improvement over unbelief, whatever the form it might take. In due course, though, he came back round to their present circumstances.
“Ye’ve come with your father-in-law, have ye?” he asked. “I thought I saw him, in the road.”
“I have, and ye did,” Roger assured him, fumbling in his pocket for a coin. The pocket itself was full of coiled horsehair; with his academic experience as guide, he had made provision against possible boredom by bringing the makings of a new fishing line.
“Ah.” Caldwell looked at him keenly. “I’ve heard things of late—is it true, he’s turned Whig?”
“He is a firm friend to liberty,” Roger said, cautious, and took a breath. “As am I.” He’d not had occasion to say it out loud before; it gave him a small, breathless feeling, just under the breastbone.
“Aha, aha, very good! I had heard of it, as I say—and yet there are a great many who say otherwise: that he is a Tory, a Loyalist like his relations, and that this protestation of support for the independency movement is but a ruse.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Caldwell’s bushy eyebrow, cocked like a swell’s hat, made it clear that it was.
“Jamie Fraser is an honest man,” Roger said, and drained his tankard. “And an honorable one,” he added, setting it down. “And speaking of the same, I think