The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival Page 16

by M. E. Braddon

  CHAPTER XIV.

  "ONE THREAD IN LIFE WORTH SPINNING."

  Antonia spent the next morning, from twelve to two, in the cottageparlour at Sheen, where Stobart spread out his reports and calculationsbefore her, showed her what he had done in the district John Wesleyhad allotted to him, and how much--how infinitely more than had beendone--there remained to do!

  "My own means are so narrow that I can give but little temporal help,"he said. "I have to stand by with empty pockets and see suffering thata few shillings could relieve. I have even thought of appealing to mymother--who has not used me well--but she was married six months agoto an old admirer, Sir David Lanigan, an Irish soldier, and a fierceHigh Churchman, who hates the Wesleys; so I doubt 'twould be wastedhumiliation to ask her for aid. I have not scrupled to beg of my richfriends, and have raised money to apprentice at least fifty lads whowere in the way to become thieves and reprobates. I have ministered tothe two ends of life--to childhood and old age. The middle period mustfight for itself."

  He read his notes of various hard cases. He had jotted down sternfacts with a stern brevity; but the pathos in the facts themselvesbrought tears to Antonia's eyes more than once in the course of hisreading. He showed her what good might be done by a few shillings aweek to this family, in which there was a bedridden son--and to anotherwhere there was a consumptive daughter; how there was a little ladstarving in the gutter who could be billeted upon a hard-working honestfamily--how for the cost of a room with fire and candle, and sixpence aday for a nurse, he could provide a nursery where the infants of thewomen-toilers could be kept during the day.

  "I have heard of some nuns at Avignon who set up such a room for thewomen workers in the vineyards," he said. "I think they called it a_creche_."

  Mrs. Stobart sat by the window busy with her plain sewing, of which shehad always enough to fill every leisure hour. She looked up now andthen and listened, with a mild interest in her husband's work; but shewas just a little tired of it, and the fervid enthusiasm of the timeof her conversion seemed very far away. Staffordshire tea-things andcopper tea-kettle, brass fender and mahogany bureau filled so largea place in her thoughts, after her husband and son, both of whom sheloved with her utmost power of loving, which was not of a high order.She crept away at one o'clock to see her baby George eat his dinner. Hewas old enough to sit up in his high mahogany chair and feed himself,with many skirmishing movements of his spoon, which he brandishedbetween the slow mouthfuls as if it were a tomahawk.

  George and Antonia were so absorbed in their work that Mrs. Stobart hadbeen gone nearly an hour before either of them knew she was absent. Themaid came blundering in with a tray as the clock struck two, and beganto lay the cloth. Antonia rose to take leave, and insisted on goingat once. Her carriage had been waiting half an hour in a drizzlingNovember rain. She left quickly, but not before she had seen thatMr. Stobart's dinner consisted of the somewhat scrimped remains of ashoulder of mutton, and a dish of potatoes boiled in their skins.

  She knew some of the officers in his late regiment, and knew how theylived; and it shocked her a little to recall that squalid meal when shesat down at four o'clock, with a party of friends, at a table loadedwith an extravagant profusion of the richest food her cook's inventivepowers could bring together. She had seen the expensive French _chef_standing before her with pencil and bill of fare, racking his brains todevise something novel and costly.

  That morning at Sheen was the beginning of a close alliance in thecause of charity between Mr. Stobart and Lady Kilrush. They werepartners in a business of good works; and all questions of creed werefor the most part ignored between them. He would have gladly spokenwords in season, but she had a way of putting him off, and she hadbecome to him so beneficent and divine a creature that it was difficultfor him to remember that she was not a Christian.

  The five thousand a year which she had so freely offered him for hisown use she now set aside for his poor.

  "I can spare as much," she said, "and yet be a fine lady. Some day,perhaps, when I am old and withered, like the hags that haunt Ranelagh,I may grow tired of finery; and then the poor shall have nearly all mymoney, and I will live as you do, in a cottage, at ten pounds a year,on a bone of cold mutton and a potato. But while I am young I doubt Ishall go on caring for trumpery things. It is such a pleasant change,when I have been in one of your loathsome alleys, to find myself atLeicester House with the princess and her party of wits and _savants_,or at Carlisle House, dancing in a chain of dukes and duchesses, with aGerman Royal Highness for my partner."

  The responsibilities that went with the administration of so large afund made a change in George Stobart's life. His residence at Sheenhad long been inconvenient, the journey to and fro wasting time forwhich he had better uses. Lucy loved her rustic home and garden insummer; but she was one of those people who love the country when thesun shines and the roses are in bloom. In the damp autumnal afternoons,when silvery mists veiled the common, her spirits sank, and she beganto grow fretful at her husband's absence, and to reproach him if hewere late in coming home.

  He wanted his wife to be happy, and he wanted to be near the scene ofhis labours, and within half an hour's walk of St. James's Square.After a careful search he found a house on the south side of theThames, a quarter of a mile from Westminster Bridge, in Crown Place,a modest terrace facing the river. The house was roomier and moreconvenient than his rustic cottage; but the long strip of gardenbetween low walls was a sad falling off from the lawn and orchard atSheen, and he feared that Lucy would regret the change.

  Lucy had no regrets. The larger rooms at Lambeth, the dwarf cupboardson each side of the parlour fireplace, the convenient closets on theupper floor, the doorsteps and iron railings, and the view of theriver, with the Abbey and Houses of Parliament, and the crowded roofsand chimneys of Westminster, filled her with delight. The cottage andgarden had been enchanting while the glamour of newly wedded loveshone upon them; but by the time her spirits had settled into a calmcommonplace of domestic life Lucy had discovered that she hated thecountry, and smelt ghosts under the sloping ceilings of those quaintcottage garrets where generations of labouring men and women hadbeen born and died. Not unseldom had she longed for the bustle ofMoorfields, and the din and riot of Bartholomew Fair, the annual treatof her childhood.

  She arranged her furniture in the new home with complacency, andthought her son's nursery and her best parlour the prettiest rooms inthe world, much nicer to live in than her ladyship's suite of saloons,where the splendid spaciousness scared her. She had known few happierhours in her life than the February afternoon when Lady Kilrush andSophy Potter came to tea, and were both full of compliments upon herparlour, which had been newly done up, with the panelled dado paintedpink, and a wallpaper sprinkled with roses and butterflies.

  Sophy Potter, who retired into the background of Antonia's life in St.James's Square, was often her companion in her visits to the poor, andtook very kindly to the work. As it was hardly possible to avoid theperil of small-pox in such visits, Mr. Stobart prevailed upon mistressand maid to submit to the ordeal of inoculation. The operation inSophy's case was succeeded by a mild form of the malady; but the virushad no effect upon Antonia, and her physician argued that the vigour ofa constitution which resisted the artificial infection would ensure herimmunity from the disease. Neither her husband's entreaties, nor theexample of Lady Kilrush could induce Mrs. Stobart to brave the perilsof inoculation. It was in vain that George pleaded, and set a doctorto argue with her. Her horror of the small-pox made her shrink withtears and trembling from the notion of the lightest attack producedartificially.

  "If it kills me you will be sorry for having forced me to consent," shesaid, and George reluctantly submitted to her refusal. _She_ never wentamong his poor, and had never expressed a desire to see them.

  "I saw enough of such wretches round Moorfields," she said. "I neverwant to go near them again. And I have quite enough to do to keep myhouse clean, and look after my little boy. You would
want anotherservant if I went trapesing about your lanes and alleys, when I oughtto be washing the tea-things and polishing the furniture."

  Could he be angry with her for being industrious and keeping his housea pattern of neatness? He had long ago come to understand the narrowrange of her thoughts and feelings; but while she was pious and gentleand his devoted wife, he had no ground for thinking he had made amistake in choosing a lowborn helpmeet.

  From the hurried idleness of a fashionable life Antonia stole manyhours for the dwellings of the poor. In most of her visits to thosehaunts of misery she was attended by Stobart; but she had a way ofeluding his guardianship sometimes, and would set out alone, or withMiss Potter, on one of her visits of mercy.

  As time went on he grew more apprehensive of danger in herexplorations; for now that she was familiar with the class among whichhe worked, her intrepid spirit tempted her to plunge deeper into thedark abyss of guilty and unhappy lives.

  The time came when he could no longer bear to think of the perils thatsurrounded her in the close and fetid alleys where typhus and small-poxwere never wholly absent; and at the risk of offending her he assumedthe voice of authority.

  "You told me once that I was your only family connection," he said,"and I presume upon that slender tie to forbid you running such risksas you incur when you enter such a den of fever as the house where Ifound you yesterday."

  "What, sir, _you_ forbid me?--you whose clarion call startled me frommy selfish pleasure; _you_ who showed me my worthless life!"

  "You have done much to redeem that worthlessness, by your sacrifice ofincome."

  "Sacrifice! You know, sir, that in your heart of hearts you despisesuch paltering with charity. In your estimation, not to give all is togive nothing!"

  "You paint me as a bigot, madam, and not as a Christian. Be sure that_He_ who praised the Samaritan approves your charity, and that Hewho holds the seven stars in His right hand will open your eyes tothe light of revelation. A soul so lofty will not be left for everin darkness. But in the mean time there can be no good done by yourpresence in places where you hazard health and life. You have made meyour almoner, and it is my duty to see that the uttermost good is donewith the money you have entrusted to me. Your own presence in thoseperilous places is useless. You have no gospel to carry to the sick anddying."

  "Oh, sir, I have sympathy and compassion to give them. I doubt theyget enough of the gospel, and that the company of a woman who can feelfor their sufferings and soothe them in their pain is not without use.There is no sick-bed that I have sat by where I have not been entreatedto return. The poor creatures like to tell me their troubles, toexpatiate on their miseries, and I listen, and never let them think Iam tired."

  "You scatter gold among them; you demoralize them by your recklessalmsgiving."

  "No, no, no! I feed them. If there come days when the larder is empty,they have at least the memory of a feast. Your gospel will not stop thepangs of hunger. That is but a hysterical devotion which goes famishingto bed to dream of the Golden City with jasper walls, and the angelsstanding round the throne. Dreams, dreams, only dreams! You stuff thosesuffering creatures with dreams."

  "I strive to make them look beyond their sufferings here to theunspeakable bliss of the life hereafter," Stobart answered gravely;and then he entreated her to go no more into those alleys where he nowworked every day, and from which he came to her two or three times aweek to report progress.

  He came to her after his work, in the hour before the six o'clocktea at which she was rarely without visitors. If he was told she hadcompany he went away without seeing her; but between five and six wasthe likeliest hour for finding her alone, since her drawing-rooms werecrowded with morning visitors, and her evenings were seasons of gaietyat home or abroad.

  She received him always in the library, a room she loved, and wherethey had had their first serious conversation. Here, if he lookedtired, she would order in the urn and tea-things, and would maketea for him, while he told her the story of the day. To sit in aneasy-chair beside the wood fire and to have her minister to him made anoasis of rest in the desert of toil, and he soon began to look forwardto this hour as the bright spot in his life, the recompense for everysacrifice of self.

  The first thunder of a footman's double knock, the clatter of highheels and rustle of brocade in the hall, sent him away. He had made nosecond appearance among her modish visitors.

  "Go and shine, and sparkle, and flutter your jewelled wings among otherbutterflies," he said. "I claim no part in your life in the world; butI am proud to know that there are hours in which you are somethingbetter than a woman of fashion."

  * * * * *

  The pleasures of the town and the assiduities of Antonia's friends andadmirers became more absorbing as her influence in the great worldincreased. Her open-handed hospitality, the splendour of her house, andthe success of her entertainments had placed her on a pinnacle of _ton_.

  She held her own among the greatest ladies in London, and was onfamiliar terms with all the duchesses--Portland, Queensberry, Norfolk,Bedford, Hamilton--and nobody ever reminded her, by a shade ofdifference in their appreciation, that she had not been born in thepurple.

  She had more admirers than she took the trouble to count, andhad refused offers of marriage that most women would have foundirresistible. Charles Townshend had followed and courted her; and inspite of all she could do to discourage his addresses by a light gaietyof manner that proclaimed her indifference, he had found her alone onemorning, and flung himself on his knees to sue for her hand.

  Deeply hurt when she rejected him, he reproached her for having fooledhim by her civility.

  "Oh, sir, would you have me distant or sullen to the most brilliant manin London? I thought I let you see that, though I loved your company,my heart was disengaged, and that I had no preference for one man overanother."

  "I doubt, madam, you despise a plain mister, and will wait for the nextmarrying Duke. Wert not for the recent Marriage Act you might aspire toa prince of the blood royal. Your ambition would be justified by yourbeauty; and I believe your pride is equal to your charms."

  "I shall never marry again, Mr. Townshend. I loved my husband; and thetragedy of our marriage made that love more sacred than the commonaffection of wives."

  "Nay, madam, is there not something more potent than the memory of adeparted husband, which makes you scorn my passion? I have severaltimes met a certain grave gentleman in your hall, who seems privilegedto enjoy your society when you have no other company, and who leavesyou when your indifferent acquaintance are admitted."

  "That gentleman is my dear lord's cousin, and a married man. He canhave no influence upon my resolve against a second marriage."

  She rang a bell, and made Mr. Townshend a curtsey which meantdismissal. He retired in silent displeasure, knowing that he hadaffronted her.

  "'Tis deuced hard to be cut out by a sneaking Methodist," he mutteredas he followed the footman downstairs.

  He spent the evening at White's, played higher and drank deeper thanusual, and was weak enough to mention the lady's name with a scornfulanger which betrayed his mortification; and before the next night allthe town knew that Townshend had been refused.

  The rumour came to Stobart's knowledge a week later by means of aparagraph in the _Daily Journal_, with the usual initials and the usualstars. "Lady K., the beautiful widow, has fallen out with Mr. C. T.,the aspiring politician, wit and trifler, whose eminent success as alady-killer has made him unable to endure rejection at the hands of abeauty who, after all, belongs but to the lower ranks of the peerage,and cannot boast of a genteel ancestry."

  Stobart read this stale news in a three-days'-old paper at the shabbycoffee-house in the Borough, where he sometimes took a snack of breadand cheese and a glass of twopenny porter, instead of going home todinner.

  "I doubt she has many such offers," he thought, "for she hangs outevery bait that can tempt a lover--beauty, parts, fortune. If she hasrefu
sed Townshend 'tis, perhaps, only because there is some one elsepleases her better. She will marry, and I shall lose her; for 'tislikely her husband will cut short her friendship for a follower of JohnWesley, lest the Word of God should creep into his house unawares."

  He left London early in April in Mr. Wesley's company, and rode withthat indefatigable man through the rural English landscape, making fromforty to fifty miles a day, and halting every day at some market cross,or on some heathy knoll on the outskirts of town or village, to preachthe gospel to listening throngs. Their journey on this occasion tookthem through quiet agricultural communities and small market towns,where the ill-usage that Wesley had suffered at Bolton and at Falmouthwas undreamt of among the congregations who hung upon his words andloved his presence. He was now in middle life, hale and wiry, a small,neatly built man, with an extraordinary capacity for enduring fatigue,and a serene temper which made light of scanty fare and rough quarters.He was an untiring rider, but had never troubled himself to acquire theart of horsemanship, and as he mostly read a book during his countryrides, he had fallen into a slovenly, stooping attitude over the neckof his horse. He had been often thrown, but rarely hurt, and had aSpartan indifference to such disasters. He loved a good horse, but waswilling to put up with any beast that would carry him to the spot wherehe was expected. He hated to break an appointment, and was the mostpunctual as well as the most polite of men.

  He liked George Stobart, having assayed his mental and moral qualitiesat the beginning of their acquaintance, and having pronounced him truemetal. He was a man of wide sympathies, and during this April journeythrough the heart of Hertfordshire, and then by the wooded pastures andwide grassy margins of the Warwickshire coach roads between Coventryand Stratford-on-Avon, he discovered that something was amiss with hishelper.

  "I hope you do not begin to tire of your work, Stobart," he said."There are some young men I have seen put their hands to the ploughin a fever of faith and piety, and drive their first furrow deep andstraight, and then faith grows dim, and the line straggles, and mysorrowful heart tells me that the labourer is good for nothing. But Ido not think you are of that kidney."

  "I hope not, sir."

  "But I see there is trouble of some sort on your mind. We passed avista in that oak wood yonder, with the smiling sun showing like a diskof blood-red gold at the end of the clearing; and you, who have suchan eye for landscape, stared at it with a vacant gaze. I'll vouch forit you have uneasy thoughts that come between you and God's beautifulworld."

  "I trouble myself without reason, sir, about a soul that I would fainwin for Christ, and cannot."

  "'Tis of your cousin's widow, Lady Kilrush, you are thinking," Wesleysaid, with a keen glance.

  "Oh, sir, how did you divine that?"

  "Because you told me of the lady's infidel opinions; and as I know howlavish she has been with her money in helping your work among the poor,I can understand that in sheer gratitude you would desire to bring herinto the fold. I doubt you have tried, in all seriousness?"

  "I have tried, sir; but not hard enough. My cousin is a strangecreature--generous, impetuous, charitable; but she has a commandingtemper, and a light way of putting me off in an argument, which make ithard to reason with her. And then I doubt Satan has ever the best ofit, and that 'tis easier to argue on the evil side, easier to deny thanto prove. When I am in my cousin's company, and we are both interestedin the wretches she has saved from misery, I find myself forgettingthat while she snatches the sick and famished from the jaws of death,her immortal soul is in danger of a worse death than the grave, andthat in all the time we have been friends nothing has been done for hersalvation."

  "Mr. Stobart, I doubt you have thought too much of the woman andtoo little of the woman's unawakened soul," Wesley said, with gravereproof. "Her beauty has dazzled your senses; and conscience has beenlulled to sleep. As your pastor and your friend I warn you that you doill to cherish the company of a beautiful heathen, save with the soleintent of accomplishing her salvation."

  "Oh, sir, can you think me so weak a wretch as to entertain oneunworthy thought in relation to this lady, who has ever treated me witha sisterly friendship? The fact that she is exquisitely beautiful canmake no difference in my concern for her. I would give half the yearsof my life to save her soul; and I see her carried along the flood-tideof modish pleasures, the mark for gamesters and spendthrifts, and Idread to hear that she has been won by the most audacious and the worstof the worthless crew."

  "If you can keep your own conscience clear of evil, and win this womanfrom the toils of Satan, you will do well," said Wesley, "but tampernot with the truth; and if you fail in bringing her to a right wayof thinking, part company with her for ever. You know that I am yourfriend, Stobart. My heart went out to you at the beginning of ouracquaintance, when you told me of your marriage with a young womanso much your inferior in worldly rank, for your attachment to a girlof the servant class recalled my own experience. The woman I lovedbest, before I met Mrs. Wesley, was a woman who had been a domesticservant, but whose intellect and character fitted her for the highestplace in the esteem of all good people. Circumstances prevented ourunion--and--I made another choice."

  He concluded his speech with an involuntary sigh, and George Stobartknew that the great leader, who had many enthusiastic followers andhelpers among the women of his flock, had not been fortunate in thatone woman who ought to have been first in her sympathy with his work.

  Stobart spent a month on the road with his chief, preaching at Bristoland to the Kingswood miners, and journeying from south to north withhim, in company with one of Wesley's earliest and best lay preachers, aman of humble birth, but greatly gifted for his work among assembliesin which more than half of his hearers were heathens, to whom the Wordof God was a new thing--souls dulled by the monotony of daily toil,and only to be aroused from the apathy of a brutish ignorance by anemotional preacher. Those who had stood by Whitefield's side when thetears rolled down the miners' blackened faces, knew how strong, howurgent, how pathetic must be the appeal, and how sure the result whenthat appeal is pitched in the right key.

  The little band bore every hardship and inconvenience of a journey onhorseback through all kinds of weather, with unvarying good humour;for Wesley's cheerful spirits set them so fine an example of Christiancontentment that they who were his juniors would have been ashamed tocomplain.

  In some of the towns on their route Mr. Wesley had friends who wereeager to entertain the travellers, and in whose pious households theyfared well. In other places they had to put up with the rough mealsand hard beds of inns rarely frequented by gentlefolks; or sometimes,belated in desolate regions, had to take shelter in a roadside hovel,where they could scarce command a loaf of black bread for their supper,and a shakedown of straw for their couch.

  May had begun when Wesley and his deacons arrived in London, afterhaving preached to hundreds of thousands on their way. Stobart hadbeen absent more than a month, and the time seemed much longer than itreally was by reason of the distances traversed and the varieties oflife encountered on the way. He had received a weekly letter from hiswife, who told him of all her household cares, and of Georgie's dailygrowth in childish graces. He had answered all her letters, tellingher of his adventures on the road, in which she took a keen interest,loving most of all to hear of the fine houses to which he was invited,the dishes at table, and the way they were served, the tea-things andtray, and if the urn were copper or silver, also the dress of theladies, and whether they wore linen aprons in the morning. He knew herlittle weaknesses, and indulged her, and rarely returned from a journeywithout bringing her some trifling gift for her house, a cream-jug ofsome special ware, a damask table-cloth, or something he knew she loved.

  Their union had been one of peace and a tranquil affection, which onStobart's part outlived the brief fervour of a self-sacrificing love.The romantic feeling, the glow of religious enthusiasm which had ledto his marriage, belonged to the past; but he told himself that he haddone well
to marry the printer's daughter, and that she was the fittesthelpmeet he could have chosen, since she left him free to work out hissalvation, and submitted with gentle obedience to the necessities ofhis spiritual life.

  "Mr. Wesley would thank Providence for so placid a companion," hethought, having heard of his leader's sufferings from a virago whoopened and destroyed his letters, insulted his friends, and tormentedhim with an unreasoning jealousy that made his home life a kind ofmartyrdom.

  During that religious pilgrimage Stobart had written several times toLady Kilrush--letters inspired by his intercourse with Wesley, and bythe spiritual experiences of the day; letters written in the quiet ofa sleeping household, and aflame with the ardent desire to save thatone most precious soul from eternal condemnation. He had written with avehement importunity which he had never ventured in his conversation;had wrestled with the infidel spirit as Jacob wrestled with the angel;had been moved even to tears by his own eloquence, carried away by theardour of his feelings.

  "Since I was last in your company I have seen multitudes won fromSatan; have seen the roughest natures softened to penitent tears at thestory of Calvary--the hardest hearts melted, reprobates and vagabondslaying down their burden of sins, and taking up the Cross. And I havethought of you, so gifted by nature, so rare a jewel for the crown ofChrist--you whose inexhaustible treasures of love and compassion I haveseen poured upon the most miserable of this world's outcasts, the veryscum and refuse of debased humanity. You, so kind, so pitiful, so clearof brain and steadfast of purpose, can you for ever reject those Divinepromises, that gift of eternal life by which alone we are better thanthe brutes that perish?"

  "Alas! dear sir," Antonia wrote in her reply to this last letter,"can you not be content with so many victories, so great a multitudewon from Satan, and leave one solitary sinner to work out her owndestiny? If my mind could realize your kingdom of the saints, if Icould believe that far off, in some vague region of this universe,whose vastness appals me, there is a world where I shall see the holyteacher of Nazareth, hear words of ineffable wisdom from living lips,and, most precious of all, see once again in a new and better life thehusband who died in my arms, I would accept your creed with ecstaticjoy. But I cannot. My father taught me to reason, not to dream; and Ihave no power to unlearn what I learnt from him, and from the books heput into my hands. Do not let us argue about spiritual things. We shallnever agree. Teach me to care for the poor and the wretched with a wiseaffection, and to use my fortune as a good woman, Pagan or Christian,ought to use riches, for the comfort of others, as well as for her ownpleasure in the only world she believes in."

  * * * * *

  The London season, which in those days began and ended earlier thanit does now, was growing more brilliant as it neared the close.When Mr. Stobart returned to town, Ranelagh, Vauxhall, the ItalianOpera, Handel's Oratorios, the two patent theatres, and that littletheatre in the Haymarket, where the malicious genius of Samuel Footerevelled in mimicry and caricature, were crowded nightly with the saltof the earth; and the ruinous pleasures of the St. James's Streetclubs--White's, Arthur's, and the Cocoa Tree--were still in fullswing, to the apprehension and horror of fathers and mothers, sisters,wives, and sweethearts, who might wake any morning to hear that son orhusband, brother or lover, had been reduced to beggary between midnightand dawn. Losses at cards that ruined families, disputes that endedin blood, were the frequent tragedies that heightened the comedy offashionable life by the zest of a poignant contrast.

  George Stobart returned to London with Wesley's counsel in his mind. Hehad been told his duty as a Christian. He must hold no commune with adaughter of Belial, save in the hope of leading her into the fold. Ifhis most strenuous endeavours failed to convert the unbeliever he mustrenounce her friendship and see her no more. He must not trifle withsacred things, honour her for a compassionate and generous disposition,admire her natural gifts, and forget that she was a daughter ofperdition.

  He recalled the hours he had spent in her company, hours in which allreligious questions had been ignored while they discussed the means offeeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Surely they had been aboutthe Master's work, though the Master's name had not been spoken. Heremembered how, instead of being instant in season and out of season,he had kept silence about spiritual things, had even encouraged herto talk of those trivial pleasures she loved too well--the court, theopera, her patrician friends, her social triumphs. He recalled thoseromantic legends in which some pious knight, journeying towards theHoly Land, meets a lovely lady in distress, succours her, pities,and even loves her, only to discover the flames of hell in thoseluminous eyes, the fiery breath of Satan upon those alluring lips. Heswore to be resolute with himself and inexorable to her, to acceptno compromises, to reject even her gold, if he could not make her aChristian.

  In his anxiety for her spiritual welfare it was a bitter disappointmentto him not to find her at home when he called in St. James's Square onthe day after his return. He called again next day, and was told thatshe was dining with the Duchess of Portland at Whitehall, and was toaccompany her grace to the Duchess of Norfolk's ball in the evening.

  He felt vexed and offended at this second repulse, yet he had reasonto be grateful to her for her kindness to his wife during his absence.She, the fine lady, whose every hour was allotted in the mill-roundof pleasure, had taken Lucy and the little boy to Hyde Park in hercoach, and for long country drives to Chiswick and Kew, and had evenaccepted an occasional dish of tea in the parlour at Crown Place, hadheard Georgie repeat one of Dr. Watts's hymns, and had brought him apresent of toys from Mrs. Chevenix's, such as no Lambeth child had everpossessed.

  He had been full of work since his return, visiting his schools andinfant nurseries, and preaching in an old brewhouse which he hadconverted into a chapel, where he held a nightly service, consistingof one earnest prayer, a chapter of the New Testament, and a shortsermon of friendly counsel, gentle reproof of evil habits and evilspeech, and fervent exhortation to all sinners to lead a better life;and where he held, also, a class for adults who had never been taughtto read or write, and for whom he laboured with unvarying patience andkindness.

  He was more out of humour than a Christian should have been when, onhis third visit to St. James's Square, he was told that her ladyshipwas confined to her room by a headache, and desired not to bedisturbed, as she was going to the masquerade that evening.

  The porter spoke of "the masquerade" with an assurance that nogentleman in London could fail to know all about so distinguished anentertainment.

  Stobart left the door in a huff. It was six weeks since he had seen herface, and she valued his friendship so little that she cared not howmany times he was sent away from her house. She would give herself notrouble to receive him.

  Instead of going home to supper he wandered about the West End tillnightfall, when streets and squares began to be alive with links andchairmen. At almost every door there was a coach or a chair, and theroll of wheels over the stones made an intermittent thunder. Everybodyof any importance was going to the masquerade, which was a subscriptiondance at Ranelagh, given by a number of bachelor noblemen, and supposedto be accessible only to the choicest company; though 'twas odds thata week later it would be known that more than one notorious courtesanhad stolen an entrance, and displayed her fine figure and her diamondsamong the duchesses.

  A fretful restlessness impelled Stobart to pursue his wanderings. Thethought of the Lambeth parlour, with the sky shut out, and the tallowcandles guttering in their brass candlesticks, oppressed him with anidea of imprisonment.

  He walked at random, his nerves soothed by the cool night air, andpresently, having turned into a main thoroughfare, found himselfdrifting the way the coaches and chairs were going, in a procession oflamps and torches, an undulating line of fire and light that flared andflickered with every waft of the south-west wind.

  All the road between St. James's and Chelsea had a gala air to-night,for 'twas said the old k
ing and the Duke of Cumberland would be atRanelagh. People were standing in open doorways, groups were gatheredat street corners, eager voices named the occupants of chariot orsedan, mostly wrong. The Duke of Newcastle was greeted with mingledcheers and hisses; Fox evoked a storm of applause; and young Mrs.Spencer's diamonds were looked at with gloating admiration bymilliners' apprentices and half-starved shirt-makers.

  Stobart went along with the coaches on the Chelsea Road to the entranceof Ranelagh, where a mob had assembled to see the company--a mob whichseemed as lively and elated as if to stand and stare at beauty andjewels, fops and politicians, afforded almost as good an entertainmentas the festivity under the dome. Having made his way with some elbowingto the front row, Stobart had a near view of the company, who had totraverse some paces between the spot where their coaches drew up andthe Doric portico which opened into the rotunda, that magnificentpleasure-house which has been compared to the Pantheon at Rome for sizeand architectural dignity.

  The portico was ablaze with strings and festoons of many-colouredlamps, and from within there came the inspiring sounds of dance musicplayed by an orchestra of strings and brasses--sounds that mingledwith the trampling of horses' hoofs, the cracking of whips, the oathsof coachmen, and the remonstrances of link-boys and footmen, trying tokeep back the crowd.

  "Oh, oh, oh!" cried the front row at the appearance of a tall woman,masked, and wearing a long pink satin cloak, which fell back as shedescended from her chariot, revealing a magnificent form attired asDiana, in a white satin tunic which displayed more of a handsome legthan is often given to the public view, and a gauze drapery that madeno envious screen between admiring eyes and an alabaster bust andshoulders.

  "I'll wager her ladyship came out in such a hurry she forgot to put onher clothes," said one spectator.

  "I say, Sally," cried another, "if you or me was to come out such afigure, we should be in the stocks or the pillory before we went home."

  "Sure 'tis a kindness in a great lady to show us that duchesses aremade of flesh and blood like common folks, only finer."

  Flashing eyes defied the crowd as the handsome duchess strode by, hersilver buskins glittering in the rainbow light, her head held at animperial level, admiring fops closing round her, with their hands ontheir sword-hilts, ready to repress or to punish insult.

  "Sure, Charley, one would suppose these wretches had never seen ahandsome woman till to-night," laughed the lady.

  "I doubt they never have seen so much of one," answered the gentlemanin a half-whisper, on which he was called "beast," and rebuked with asmart tap from Diana's fan.

  A great many people had arrived, peeresses without number, and amongthem Katharine, Duchess of Queensberry, Prior's Kitty, made immortalby a verse. This lovely lady appeared in a studied simplicity of whitelute-string, without a jewel--a beauty unadorned that had somewhatmissed fire at the last birthday, against the magnificence of herrivals. The beautiful Duchess of Hamilton went by with her lovelysister, Lady Coventry, radiant in a complexion of white-lead which wassaid to be killing her. Starry creatures like goddesses passed in aglittering procession; the music, the babel of voices from within, madea tempest of sound; but _she_ had not yet appeared, and Stobart waitedto see her pass.

  She came in her chariot, like Cinderella in the fairy tale.Hammer-cloth and liveries were a blaze of gold and blue. Three footmenhung behind, with powdered heads, sky-blue velvet coats, whitebreeches, pink stockings and gold garters--gorgeous creatures thatleapt down to open the coach door and let down the steps, but were notsuffered to come near her, for a bevy of her admirers had been watchingfor her arrival, and crowded about her carriage door, thrusting herlackeys aside.

  She laughed at their eagerness.

  "'Twas vastly kind of you to wait for me, Sir Joseph," she said to theforemost. "I should scarce have dared to plunge into the whirlpoolof company unattended. Lady Margaret had a couple of young things tobring, who insisted upon coming here directly the room opened, so Ilet her come without me. I love a _fete_ best at the flood-tide. Sureyour lordship must think me monstrous troublesome if I have robbed youof a dance," she added, turning to a tall man in smoke-coloured velvetand silver.

  "I think your ladyship knows that there is but one woman in Europe Ilove to dance with," said Lord Dunkeld, gravely.

  He was a man of distinguished rank and fortune, distinguished meritalso--a man whom Stobart had known and admired in his society days.

  "Then 'tis some woman in Asia you are thinking of when I see youdistrait or out of spirits," Antonia said lightly, as she took his arm.

  "Alas! fair enslaver, you know too well your power to make me happy orwretched," he murmured in her ear.

  "I hope everybody will be happy to-night," she said gaily, "or yousubscribing gentlemen, who have taken so much trouble to please us,will be ill-paid for your pains. For my own part, I mean to thinkRanelagh the seventh heaven, and not to refuse a dance."

  She wore her velvet loup, with a filmy border of Brussels that cloudedthe carmine of her lips. Her white teeth flashed against the blacklace, her smile was enchantingly gay.

  Stobart heard her in a gloomy temper. What hope was there for such awoman--so given over to worldly pleasures, with no capacity for thoughtof serious things, no desire for immortality, finding her paradise in amasquerade, her happiness in the adulation of fools?

  "How can I ever bring her nearer to God while she lives in a perpetualintoxication of earthly pleasures, while she so exults in her beautyand her power over the hearts of men?"

  She wore a diamond tiara and necklace of matchless fire. Her gownwas white and silver, the stomacher covered with coloured jewelsthat flashed between the opening of her long black silk domino, anample garment with loose sleeves. She had arrayed herself in all hersplendour for this much-talked-of masquerade, wishing to do honour tothe gentlemen who gave the treat.

  "Bid my servants fetch me at one o'clock, if you please, Sir Joseph,"she said to the cavalier on her left.

  "At one! Impossible! 'Tis nearly eleven already. I shall order them atthree, and I'll wager they'll have to wait hours after that."

  "You make very sure of your dance pleasing folks," she said. "I doubtI shall have yawned myself half dead before three o'clock; but you'llhave to find me a seat in a dark corner where I can sleep behind myfan."

  "There are no dark corners--except in the gallery for lovers anddowagers--and I pledge myself nobody under forty shall have anydisposition for slumber," protested Sir Joseph, as he ran off to giveher orders.

  She passed under the lamp-lit portico on Lord Dunkeld's arm.

  "_That_ is the man she will marry," Stobart thought, as he walked away,hurrying from the crowd and the lights, and noise and laughter, andpast a tavern a little way off, in front of which an army of footmenand links were gathered, and where they and the crowd were being servedwith beer and gin. He was glad to get into a dark lane that led towardsWestminster Bridge, skirting the river, and to be able to think quietly.

  She would marry Dunkeld. Was it not the best thing she could do--herbest chance for the saving of that immortal soul which he had tried invain to save? Dunkeld was no idle pleasure-lover, though he mixed inthe diversions of his time. He was a politician, had written more thanone pamphlet that had commanded the attention of the town. He was agood Churchman, a regular attendant at the Chapel Royal. He was richenough to be above suspicion of mercenary views. He had never been agambler or a profligate. He was seven and thirty, Antonia's senior byabout twelve years. Assuredly she would be safer from the evil of thetime as Dunkeld's wife than in her present unprotected position.

  He repeated these arguments with unending iteration throughout hishomeward walk. It was perhaps his duty to urge this union upon her.She had never spoken to him of Dunkeld, or in so casual a tone that hehad suspected her of no uncommon friendship for that excellent man;yet he could hardly doubt that she favoured his suit. Dunkeld washandsome, accomplished, of an ancient Scottish family, had made hismark in the English House
of Commons. Stobart could scarcely believe itpossible that such a suitor had failed to engage Antonia's affections.At any rate, it was his duty--his duty as a friend, as a Christian--topersuade her to this marriage.

  He found his wife sitting up for him, and the supper untouched, thoughit was midnight when he got home. The supper was but a frugal meal ofbread and cheese, a spring salad, and small beer; but the table wasneatly laid with a clean damask cloth, and adorned with a Lowestoftbowl of wallflowers. Lucy had a genius for small things, and was quickto learn any art that light hands and perseverance could accomplish.

  "How late you are, George!" she exclaimed. "I was almost frightened.Have you been teaching your night class all these hours?"

  "No, 'tis not a class night. I have been roaming the streets, full ofthought, but idle of purpose. I let myself drift with the crowd, andwent to stare at the fine people going into Ranelagh."

  "You! Well, 'tis a wonder. But why didn't you take me? I should haveloved to see the fancy dresses and masks and dominos. Indeed, I shouldhave asked you many a time to let me see the quality going to Court,only I fancied you thought all such shows wicked."

  "A wicked waste of time. I doubt I have been wickedly wasting my timeto-night, Lucy; yet perhaps some good may come of my idleness. God canturn even our errors to profit."

  "Oh, George, I have done very wrong," his wife said, with suddenseriousness. "I have forgotten something."

  "Nay, child, 'tis not the first time. Thy genius never showed strongestin remembering things."

  "But this was a serious thing, and you'll scold me when you know it."

  "Be brief, dear, and I promise to be indulgent."

  "You know Sally Dormer, the poor woman that's in a consumption, andthat you and her ladyship are concerned about?"

  "Yes."

  "Her young brother called the day you came home, and told me thedoctor had given her over, and she wanted to see you--she was piningand fretting because you was away; and she had been a terrible sinner,the boy said, and was afeared to meet her God. I meant to tell you thefirst minute I saw you, George; and then I was so glad to see you, andthat put everything out of my head."

  "And kept it out of your head for a week, Lucy--the prayer of a dyingwoman?"

  "Ah, now you are angry with me."

  "No, no; but I am sorry--very sorry. The poor soul is dead, perhaps.I might have been with her at the last hour, and might have given herhope and comfort. You should not forget such things as those, Lucy;your heart should serve instead of memory when a dying penitent's peaceis in question."

  "Oh, I am a hateful wretch, and I'd sooner you scolded me than not. Butyou had been away so long, and I had fretted about you, and was so gladto have you again."

  She was in tears, and he held out his hand to her across the table.

  "Don't cry, Lucy. Perhaps I do ill to leave you--even in God's service;but the call is strong."

  He left his thought unspoken. He had been thinking that the man whogave himself to the service of Christ should have neither wife norchild. The earthly and the heavenly love were not compatible.

  "I will go to Sally's garret the first thing to-morrow morning," hesaid. "Please God I may not be too late!"

  He was silent for the rest of the meal, and his slumbers were brief andperturbed, his fitful sleep haunted by visions of splendour and beauty:the brazen duchess, erstwhile maid-of-honour, wife of two husbands,radiant and half-naked as the goddess of chastity, with a diamondcrescent on her brow; and that other woman, whose modest bearing gavethe grace of purity even to the splendour of her jewels and glitteringsilver gown. Dream faces followed him through the labyrinth of sleep,and his last dream was of the nightmare kind. He was in the retreat atFontenoy, fighting at close quarters with a French dragoon, whom heknew of a sudden for the foul fiend in person, and that the stake forwhich he fought was Antonia's soul.

  "He shall not have her," he cried. "I'd sooner see her another man'swife than the devil's prize."

  He was awakened by his own voice, in a hoarse, gasping cry, andstarting up in the broad light of a May morning, looked at his watch,and found it was half-past five. He rose quietly, so as not to disturbhis sleeping wife, and made his morning toilet in a little back roomthat served as his dressing-closet--a Spartan chamber, in which anabundance of cold water was his only luxury. He left the house soonafter six, and walked quickly through the quiet morning streets to thepestiferous alley where Sally Dormer lay dying or dead.

  She was one of his penitents, a woman who was still young, and hadonce been beautiful, steeped in sin in the very morning of life, inthe company of thieves and highwaymen, grown prematurely old in aprofligate career, a courtesan's neglected offspring, and carrying theseeds of consumption from her cradle. Her mother had been dead tenyears; her father had never been known to her; her only relative wasa boy of eleven, her mother's sole legacy. A sermon of Whitefield'spreached to thousands of hearers on Kennington Common, in the sultrystillness of an August night, had awakened her to the knowledge of sin.She was one of the many who went to hear the famous preacher, promptedby idle curiosity, and who left him changed and exalted, shudderingat the sins of the past, horrified at the perils of the future. Thatwave of penitent feeling might have ebbed as quickly as it rose but forGeorge Stobart, who found the sinner while the effect of Whitefield'seloquence was new, and completed the work of conversion--a work moreeasily accomplished, perhaps, by reason of Sally Dormer's broken health.

  She had been marked for death before that sultry night when she hadstood under the summer stars, trembling at Whitefield's picture of thesinner's doom, pale to the lips as he dwelt on the terrors of hell, andGod's curse upon the stubborn unbeliever. "All the curses of the lawbelong to you, oh, ye adamantine hearts, that melt not at the name ofJesus. Cursed are you when you go out; cursed are you when you come in;cursed are your thoughts; cursed are your words; cursed are your deeds!Everything you do, say, or think, from morning to night, is only onecontinued series of sin. Awake, awake, thou that sleepest, melt andtremble, heart of stone. Look to Him whom thou hast pierced! Look andlove; look and mourn; look and praise. Though thou art stained withsin, and black with iniquity, thy God is yet thy God!"

  Stobart had told Antonia of Sally Dormer's condition, and had providedby her means for the penitent's comfort in her lingering illness, thefatal end of which was obvious, however much her state varied from weekto week. But he had opposed Antonia's desire to visit the invalid,shrinking with actual pain from the idea of any contact between thespotless woman and the castaway, who in her remorse for her past lifewas apt to expatiate upon vile experiences.

  Five minutes' walk brought Mr. Stobart to a narrow street on the edgeof the river, a street long given over to the dregs of humanity. Thehouses were old and dilapidated, and several of those on the water-sidehad been shored up at the back with timber supports, moss-grown andslimy from the river fog, yet a favourite climbing place for vagabondboys, as well as for a colony of starveling rats.

  Sally's lodging was on the third story of a corner house, one of theoldest and most tumble-down, but also one of the most spacious, havingformed part of a nobleman's mansion under the Tudor kings, when all theriver-side was pleasaunce and garden.

  The garret occupied the whole of the top floor, under a steeply slopingroof, and had two windows, one looking to the street, the other to theriver. Here Sally had been slowly dying for near half a year, in chargeof her little brother, and under the supervision of the dispensarydoctor, who saw her daily.

  The house was quiet in the summer morning. The men who had work to dohad gone about it; the idlers were still in bed; the more respectableamong the women were occupied with their children or their housework.Stobart met no one in the gloom of the rickety staircase, where therotten boards offered numerous pitfalls for the unwary. He was used toruin and decay in that water-side region, and trod carefully. The lastflight was little better than a ladder, at the top of which he saw thegarret door ajar, and heard a voice he knew speaking in
tones so lowand gentle that speech seemed a caress.

  It was Antonia's voice. She was sitting by Sally Dormer's pillow,in all the splendour of white and silver brocade, diamond tiara andjewelled stomacher. Her right arm was round the sick woman, and Sally'sdishevelled head leant against her shoulder.

  "Great Heaven, what a change of scene!" he said, as he bent down andtook Sally's hand. "'Tis not many hours since I saw you at Ranelagh."

  "Were _you_ at Ranelagh?"

  "At the gate only. I do not enter such paradises. I went there lastnight, after your door was shut in my face for the third time. Itseemed my only chance of seeing you; and the sight was worth a journey.But what madness to come here alone in your finery, to flash jewelsworth a king's ransom before starving desperadoes! Sure 'twas wilfullyto provoke danger."

  "I am not afraid. My coach brought me to the end of the street, and mychair is to fetch me presently. I shall be taken care of, sir, be sure.This foolish Sally had set her heart on seeing me in my masqueradefinery, so I came straight from Ranelagh; and I have been telling Sallyabout the ball and the beauties."

  "An edifying discourse, truly!"

  "Oh, you shall edify her to your heart's content when I am gone. I havebeen trying to amuse her. I stole those sweetmeats for Harry from theroyal table"--smiling at the boy, who was sitting on the end of thebed, with his mouth full of bonbons. "I smuggled them into my pocketwhile the duke was talking to me."

  "I was at Ranelagh once, your ladyship," said Sally, touching the gemson Antonia's stomacher one by one with her attenuated finger-tips,as if she were counting them, and as if their brilliancy gave herpleasure. "'Twas when I was young and lived like a lady. My firstsweetheart took me there. He was a gentleman then. 'Twas before he tookto the road. I dream of him often as he was in those days, seven yearsago. He is changed now, and so am I. Sometimes I can scarce believe weare the same flesh and blood. 'Twas a handsome face, a dear face! Isee it in my dreams every night."

  "Sally, Sally, is this the spirit in which to remember your sins?"exclaimed Stobart, reprovingly. "See, madam, what mischief yourmistaken kindness has done."

  "No, no, no! My poor Sally is no less a true penitent because herthoughts turn for a few moments to the days that are gone. 'Tis afault in your religion, sir, that it is all gloom. Your Master took akinder view of life, and was indulgent to human affections as He waspitiful to human pains. Sally has made her peace with God, and believesin a happy world where her sins will be forgiven, and she will wearthe white robe of innocence, and hear the songs of angels round theheavenly throne."

  "If thou hast indeed assurance of salvation, Sally, thou art happierthan the great ones of the earth, who wilfully refuse their portion inChrist's atoning blood, who can neither realize their own iniquity, northe Redeemer's power to take away their sins," Stobart said gravely.

  "'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,'"murmured Sally, her fingers still wandering about Antonia's jewels,touching necklace and tiara, and the raven hair that fell in heavycurls about the full white throat.

  "How beautiful you are!" she murmured. "If the angels are like you, andas kind, how dearly I shall love them! Poor hell-deserving me! _Will_they be kind, and never cast my sins in my face, nor draw their skirtsaway from me, and quicken their steps, as I have seen modest women doin the streets?"

  "We are told that God's angels are much kinder than modest women,Sally," Antonia answered, smiling at her as she offered a cup ofcooling drink to the parched lips.

  She had been teaching the eleven-year-old Harry to make lemonade forhis sick sister. One of the ladies from the infant nursery came inevery day to make Sally's bed and clean her room, and for the rest theprecocious little brother, reared in muddle, idleness, and intermittentstarvation, was much more helpful than a happier child would have been.

  "Shall I read to you, Sally?" Stobart asked in his grave voice, seatinghimself in an old rush-bottomed chair at the foot of the bed.

  "Oh, sir, pray with me, pray for me! I would rather hear your prayersthan the book. They do me more good."

  Antonia gently withdrew her arm from the sick woman's waist, andarranged the pillows at her back--luxurious down pillows supplied fromthe _trop-plein_ of St. James's Square--and rose from her seat by thebed.

  "Good-bye, Sally," she said, putting on her black domino, which she hadthrown off at the invalid's request, to exhibit the splendours beneath."I shall come and see you soon again; and I leave you with a goodfriend."

  "Oh, my lady, do stop for a bit. I love to have you by my bed; and, oh,I want you to hear his prayers. I want you to be justified by faith,you who have never sinned."

  "Hush, hush, Sally!"

  "Who know not sin--like mine. I want you to believe as I do. I want tomeet you in heaven among the happy souls washed white in the blood ofthe Lamb. Stay and hear him pray."

  "I'll stay for a little to please you, Sally; but indeed I am out ofplace here," Antonia said gravely, as she resumed her seat.

  Stobart was kneeling at the foot of the bed, his face bent upon hisclasped hands, and the women had been speaking in almost whispers,Sally's voice being weak from illness, and Antonia's lowered insympathy. He looked up presently after a long silence and began hisprayer. He had been struggling against earthly thoughts, striving forthat detachment of mind and senses which he had found more and moredifficult of late, striving to concentrate all his forces of heart andintellect upon the dying woman--the newly awakened soul hovering onthe threshold of eternity. Could there be a more enthralling theme, asubject more removed from earthly desires and earthly temptations?

  Antonia looked at him with something of awe in her gaze. She had neverheard him pray. He had argued with her; he had striven his hardest tomake her think as he thought; but he had never prayed for her. Intothat holier region, that nearer approach to the God he worshipped, shehad never passed. The temple doors were shut against so obstinate anunbeliever, so hardened a scorner.

  His face seemed the face of a stranger, transfigured by that raptureof faith in the spirit world, made like to the angels in whose actualand everlasting existence this man--this rational, educated Englishman,of an over-civilized epoch--firmly believed. He believed, and was madehappy by his belief. This present life was of no more value to him thanthe dull brown husk of the worm that knows it is to be a butterfly.To the Voltairean this thing was wonderful. The very strangeness ofit fascinated her, and she listened with deepest interest to GeorgeStobart's prayer.

  His opening invocation had a formal tone. The words came slowly, andfor some minutes his prayer was woven out of those familiar and movingtexts he loved, while the thoughts and feelings of the man himselfrose slowly from the depths of a heart that seemed ice-bound; but theman believed in Him to whom he prayed, and presently the ice melted,and the fire came, and the speaker forgot all surrounding things--thelovely eyes watching him in a grave wonder, the feelings and doubts andapprehensions of last night. The earthly fetters fell away from hisliberated soul, and he was alone with his God, as much alone as Moseson the mountain, as Christ in the garden. Then, and then only, the manbecame eloquent. Moving words came from the heart so deeply moved,burning words from the spirit on fire with an exalted faith.

  Sally Dormer sobbed upon Antonia's breast, the unbeliever looking downupon her with a tender pity, glad that the slow and painful passage tothe grave should be soothed by beautiful fables, by dreams that tookthe sting from death.

  Perhaps the thing that moved Antonia most was the unspeakable pity andcompassion, the love that this man felt for the castaway. She had beentold that the Oxford Methodists were a sanctimonious, pragmatical sect,whose heaven was an exclusive freehold, and who delighted in consigningtheir fellow-creatures to everlasting flames. But here she foundsympathy with the sinner stronger than abhorrence of the sin. And herreason--that reason of which she was so proud--told her that with sucha sinner none but an enthusiast could have prevailed. It needed thefiery speech of a Whitefield, the passionate appeal of a
n impassionedorator, to awaken a soul so dead.

  "'Awake, thou that sleepest,'" cries the Church to the heathen; but ifthe Church that calls is a formal, unloving, half-somnolent Church,what chance of awakening?

  The great Revival had been the work of a handful of young men--men whomthe Church might have kept had her rulers been able to gauge theirpower, but who had been sent into the fields to carry on their work ofconversion as their Master was sent before them.

  Antonia was no nearer belief in Stobart's creed than she had beenyesterday; but she was impressed by the sincerity of the man, thevitality of an unquestioning faith.

  He was interrupted in the midst of an impassioned sentence by astartling appearance. The lattice facing the river had been left opento the balmy morning air. The casement rattled suddenly, and a pair ofhands appeared clutching the sill, followed almost instantly by thevision of a ghastly face with starting eyeballs and panting mouth; andthen a slenderly built man scrambled through the opening, and droppedhead foremost into the room, breathless, and speechless for the moment.

  George Stobart started to his feet.

  "What are you doing here, fellow?" he exclaimed angrily.

  The man took no notice of the question, but flung himself on hisknees by the bed, and grasped Sally's hand. His clothes were torn andmud-stained, one of his coat-sleeves was ripped from wrist to shoulder.Great beads of sweat rolled down his ashen face.

  "Hide me, hide me, Sally," he gasped hoarsely. "If ever you loved me,save me from the gallows. Hide me somewhere behind your bed--in yourcloset--anywhere. The constables are after me. It's a hanging business."

  "Oh, Jack, I thought you was in Georgia--safe, and leading an honestlife."

  "I've come back. I'm one of them that can't be honest. They're afterme. I gave them the slip on the bridge--ran for my life--climbed theold timbers. Hell, how slippery they are! They'll be round the cornerdirectly. They'll search every house in the street."

  He was looking about the room with strained eyes, searching for somehole to hide in. There was a curious kind of closet in the slope ofthe rafters, filling an acute angle. He was making for this, thenstopped and ran to the window facing the river.

  "Get out of this, fellow," said Stobart. "This woman has done with thecompanions of sin. Go!"

  "No, no," cried Antonia; "you shall not give him over to thosebloodhounds."

  "What, madam, would you make yourself the abettor of crime--comebetween a felon and the law which protects honest people from thievesand murderers?"

  "I hate your laws--your inexorable judges, your murdering laws, whichwill hang a child that never knew right from wrong for a stolensixpence."

  "They are round the corner; they are looking at the house," gasped thefugitive, moving from the window and looking round the room in a wilddespair.

  He had been caught in that very house years before, when he and SallyDormer lodged there together, and when he was one of the luckiestprofessionals on the Dover road, with a couple of good horses, and agenius for getting clear off after a job. He had escaped by the skin ofhis teeth on that occasion, the witnesses for identification breakingdown in the inquiry before the magistrate. He had saved his neck andsome of the profits from an audacious attack on the Dover mail, andhad gone to America in a shipload of mixed company, swearing to turnhonest and cheat Jack Ketch. But he could as easily have turned wildIndian; and after a spirited career in Georgia he had got himself backto London, and being in low water, without means to buy himself a goodhorse, had sunk to the meaner status of foot-pad, and this morning hadbeen concerned with three others in an attempt to stop a great lady'scoach on the way from Ranelagh.

  A chosen few among the most dissipated of the company had kept the ballgoing till seven o'clock, and had gone to breakfast and cards afterseven--and it was one of these great ladies whose chariot had beenstopped in the loneliest part of the road, between Chelsea and the FiveFields.

  Antonia was looking out of the window that overhung the street. Thethief made a rush towards the same window, and stopped midway, staringat this queen-like figure in mute surprise. Her beauty, her sumptuousdress and jewels made him almost think this dazzling appearance thehallucination of his own distraught brain. "Is it real?" he muttered,and then went back to the other casement, and looked out again.

  "They are coming," he said in a dull voice. "'Tis no use to hide inthat rat-hole. They'd have me out in a trice. The game's up, Sally. Ishall dance upon nothing at Tyburn before the month is out."

  He looked to the priming of a pair of pistols which he carried in aleather belt. They were ready for work. He took his stand behind thegarret door. The first man who entered that room would be accountedfor. They would not risk an ascent upon those slippery old beams whichhe had climbed for sport many a time in his boyhood; they would maketheir entrance from the street. Well, there was some hope of givingthem trouble on the top flight of stairs, almost as steep as a ladder,and rotten enough to let them down headlong with a little extra impetusfrom above.

  "They are not round yet," cried Antonia, snatching up her blacksilk domino from the chair where it hung. "Put on this, sir. So,so"--wrapping the voluminous cloak round the thief's thin frame. "Don'tcry, Sally; we'll save him if we can, for your sake; and he'll turnhonest for your sake. So; the cloak covers your feet. Why, I doubt Iam the taller. Now for the mask," adjusting the little loup, whichfastened with a spring, over the man's face, and the silk hood over hishead.

  "Come, Mr. Stobart, my chair is at the door," she said breathlessly."Take this poor wretch downstairs, bundle him into the chair, and bidmy servants carry him to my house, and hide him there. They can send ahackney coach to fetch me. Quick, quick!" she cried, stamping her foot;"quick, sir, if you would save a life."

  Stobart looked from the masked figure to Antonia irresolutely, and thenlooked out of the river window. There was a mob hurrying along themuddy shore at the heels of three Bow Street runners, who were nearingthe network of timbers below. There was no time for scruples. Fiveminutes would give the pursuers time to come round to the front of thehouse.

  A wailing voice came from the bed--

  "Oh, sir, save him, for Christ's sake! He was my first sweetheart; andhe has always been kind to me. Give him this one chance."

  The fugitive had not waited, but had scrambled downstairs in hisstrange disguise, stumbling every now and then when his feet caught inthe trailing domino.

  Antonia, watching from the window, saw him dash into the street,open the door of the sedan--'twas not the first he had opened asviolently--and disappear inside it.

  The chairmen stood dumbfounded; and had not Stobart appeared on theinstant to give them their lady's orders, might have raised an alarm.Drilled to obedience, however, the men took up their load in prompt andorderly style, and the sedan, with two running footmen guarding it,turned one corner of the street a minute before the constables cameround the other.

  It was an unspeakable mortification for these gentlemen when they foundtheir bird flown, how they knew not, or, indeed, whether he had everbeen in the house, which they searched from cellar to garret, giving asmuch trouble as they could to all its inhabitants. It was in vain thatthey questioned Sally Dormer, who swore it was years since she had seteyes on her old friend Jack Parsons. It shocked Stobart to see thatthis brand plucked from the burning could be so ready with a lie, andthat the two women rejoiced in the escape of Mr. Parsons almost as ifhe had been a Christian martyr saved from the lions.

  "He is a man; and 'twas a life--a life like yours or mine--that we weresaving," Antonia said by-and-by, when he expressed surprise at herconduct. "'Tis a thing a woman does instinctively. I think I would doas much to save a sheep from the slaughter-house. 'Twas a happy thoughtthat brought the sedan to my mind. I remembered Lord Nithisdale'sescape in '15."

  "Lady Nithisdale was saving her husband's life by that stratagem."

  "And I was saving a thief whose face I had never seen till five minutesbefore I fastened my mask upon it. But I saw a man trem
bling for hislife, like a bird in a net; and I remembered how savage our law is, andhow light judge and jury make of a fellow-creature's doom. I shallpack the rascal off to America again, and dare him to do ill thereafter his escape. You must help me to get him down the river thisnight, Mr. Stobart, and stowed away upon the first ship that sails fromGravesend."

  "I must, must I?"

  "If you refuse, I must employ Goodwin, and that might be dangerous."

  "I cannot refuse you. Can you doubt that I admire your kindness, yourgenerous sympathy with creatures that suffer? But I tremble at thethought of a nature so impulsive, a heart so easily melted."

  "Oh, it can be hard on occasion," she said proudly, remembering thelovers who had sighed at her feet and been sent away despairing, sinceher reign in London had begun, her supremacy as a beauty and a fortune.

  Having consented to help in her work of mercy, Stobart performed histask faithfully. He had allies among the vagabond classes whose honourhe could rely on, and with the help of two stalwart boatmen he conveyedJack Parsons to Erith, and saw him on board a trading vessel, carryinga score or so of emigrants and a freight of miscellaneous merchandiseto Boston, which by good luck was to sail with the next favourablewind. He provided the fugitive with proper clothing and necessaries forthe voyage, which might last months, and took pains to clothe him likea small tradesman's son; and as such he was shipped, with his passagepaid, and the promise of a five-pound note, to be given him by thecaptain before he landed in America, to maintain him till he got work.

  "If the lady who saved you from the gallows should hear of youby-and-by as leading an honest life, I dare say she will help you tobetter yourself out yonder; but if you fall back into sin you willdeserve the worst that can happen to a hardened reprobate;" and withthese words of counsel, a New Testament, and Charles Wesley's hymnbook, Mr. Stobart took leave of Antonia's _protege_, who sobbed outbroken words of gratitude to him and to the good lady, which sounded asif they came from the heart.

  "I had my chance before, sir, and I threw it away--but God's curseblight me if I forget what that woman did for me."

  Stobart wrote to Lady Kilrush, with an account of what he had done, butit was some days before he saw her. He had to take up the thread ofhis mission work, and had to wait upon Mr. Wesley more than once--todiscuss his philanthropic labours--at his house by the Foundery. Hesaw Sally Dormer every day, and was touched by the poor creature'sadoration of Antonia, whom she now regarded as a heaven-sent angel.

  "Oh, sir, you told me once that her ladyship was an infidel; but,indeed, sir, whatever she says, whatever she thinks, you cannot believethat such a creature will be shut out from heaven. Sure, sir, heavenmust be full of women like her, and God must love them, because theyare good."

  "No, Sally, God cannot love those who deny Christ."

  "But indeed she does not. While you was away, when I was so ill,I asked her to read the Bible to me, and she let me choose thechapters--the Sermon on the Mount, and those chapters you love in St.John's Gospel--and she told me she loved Jesus--loved His words ofkindness and mercy, His goodness to the sick and the poor, and to thelittle children."

  "All that is no use, Sally, without faith in His atoning blood, withoutthe conviction of sin, or the belief in saving grace. Yet I can scarcethink that so good a woman as Lady Kilrush will be left for ever underthe dominion of Satan. Faith will come to her some day--with the comingof sorrow."

  "Yes, yes, it will come; and she will shine like a star in heaven. Godcannot do without such angels round His throne."

  Stobart reproved her gently for words that went too near blasphemy. Hewas melted by her affection for the generous friend who had done somuch to brighten her declining days.

  "She came to see me very often while you was away," Sally said; "andshe paid the nurse-keeper to come every day, and sent me soups andjellies and all sorts of good things by a light-porter every morning.And she talks to me as if I was an honest woman. She never reminds mewhat a sinner I have been--or even that I'm not a lady."

  * * * * *

  It was more than a week after the scene in Sally Dormer's garret, andthe ship that carried Mr. John Parsons was beating round the StartPoint, when George Stobart called in St. James's Square early in theafternoon.

  The dining-room door stood wide open as he crossed the hall, and he sawa long table strewed with roses and covered with gold plate, and the_debris_ of a fashionable breakfast, chocolate-pots, champagne-glasses,carbonadoed hams, chickens and salads, jellies and junkets and creams.

  "Her ladyship has been entertaining company," he said, with a sense ofdispleasure of which he felt ashamed, knowing how unreasonable it was.Had she not a right to live her own life, she who had never professedChristianity, least of all his kind of Christianity, which meant totalrenunciation of all self-indulgence, purple and fine linen, banquetsand dances, splendid furniture and rich food?

  "Yes, sir, her ladyship has been giving a breakfast-party to the Dukeof Cumberland," replied the footman, swelling with pride. "Eight andtwenty sat down--mostly dukes and duchesses--and Mr. Handel played onthe 'arpsikon for an hour after breakfast. His royal 'ighness lovesmusic," added the lackey, condescendingly, as he ushered Mr. Stobartinto the library.

  "Was Lord Dunkeld among the company?" Stobart asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  Stobart had come there charged with a mission, a self-imposedduty, which had been in his mind--paramount over all otherconsiderations--ever since that night at Ranelagh, when he had seenAntonia and Lord Dunkeld together. Again and again he went over thesame chain of reasoning, with always the same result. He saw her inthe flower of youth, beautiful and impulsive, with a wild courage thatscorned consequences, ready to break the law if her heart prompted;and he told himself that for such a woman marriage with a good man wasthe only safeguard from the innumerable perils of a woman's life. Inher case marriage was inevitable. The worldlings would not cease fromstriving for so rich a prize. If she did not marry Dunkeld, she wouldmarry some one else, his inferior, perhaps, in every virtue. It was hisduty--his, as her friend, her earnest well-wisher--to persuade her toso suitable an alliance.

  Having marked out this duty to be done, he was in a fever of anxietyto get his task accomplished. He was like a martyr, who knows deathinevitable, and is eager for the faggot and the stake. That poignanteagerness was so strange a feeling--a fire of enthusiasm that wasalmost agony.

  He walked up and down the library, agitated and impatient, his handsclasped above his head. He was wondering how she would receive hisadvice. She would be angry, perhaps; and would resent the impertinenceof unsought counsel.

  The windows were open, and the room was full of flowers and soft vernalair. A Kirkman harpsichord stood near the fireplace, scattered withloose sheets of music from the newest opera and oratorio. A guitar hungby a broad blue ribbon across an armchair. Light and trivial romancesand modish magazines lay about the table; and another table was coveredwith baskets of shells and a half-finished picture-frame in shell-work.A white cockatoo cackled and screamed on his perch by a window. Nothingwas wanting to mark the lady of fashion.

  She came in, beaming with smiles, in the splendour of gala clothes, asky-blue poplin sacque, covered with Irish lace, over a primrose satinpetticoat powdered with silver shamrocks. Her hair was rolled backfrom her forehead, a little cap like a gauze butterfly was perched onthe top of her head, and gauze lappets were crossed under her chin,and pinned with a single brilliant. The little cap gave a piquancyto her beauty, a dainty touch of the _soubrette_, which Boucher hasimmortalized in his portrait of the Pompadour.

  "Well, sir," she cried gaily, making him a low curtsey, "we have brokenthe law between us, and I thank you heartily for your share in theoffence against its majesty. Would to God that Admiral Byng could havebeen saved as easily!"

  "You have a generous heart, madam--a heart too easily moved, perhaps,by human miseries, and I tremble for its impulses, while I admire itswarmth and courage. You have neve
r been absent from my thoughts sincethat morning in Sally's garret. Indeed, what man living could forget ascene so incongruous--yet--so beautiful?"

  His voice faltered towards the end, and he leant against the latelord's tall armchair.

  "You have not been kind in keeping away from me so long, when I wasdying to give expression to my gratitude."

  "Be sure my recompense was having obliged you. 'Twas superfluous tothank me. I have been very busy. I had arrears of work, and I knew all_your_ hours were engaged."

  "Sure there must always be something to do in a town full of people."

  She was playing with the great white bird, smoothing his fluffytopknot, ruffling the soft saffron feathers round his neck, temptinghim with the pink tips of taper fingers, flashing rose-coloured lightfrom her diamond rings, whose splendour covered the slender hoop ofgold with which Kilrush married her.

  "You have been entertaining the Duke of Cumberland, I hear."

  "Billy the Butcher! That's what my father and I used to call him, whenwe concocted Jacobite paragraphs for _Lloyd's Evening Post_. Yes, Mr.Stobart, I have been entertaining royalty for the first time in mylife. The honour was not my own seeking either, for his royal highnesschallenged me to invite him."

  "He would not be so much out of the fashion as not to be among youradorers."

  "That is too prettily said for an Oxford Methodist. 'Tis a reminiscenceof the soldier's manners. When the duke led me out for the seconddance at the Duchess of Norfolk's ball he was pleased to complimentmy housekeeping. 'I hear your ladyship's is the pleasantest house intown,' he said, 'but am I never to know more of it than hearsay?' Onwhich I dropped my best curtsey, and told him that my house with allit contained was at his feet, and I had not finished my chocolate nextmorning before his royal highness's aide-de-camp was announced, whocame to tell me his master would accept any invitation I was civilenough to send him."

  "And this trivial conquest made you happy?"

  "Sure it pleased me as any other toy would have done. 'Twas somethingto think about--whom I should invite--how I should dress my table. Istrewed it from end to end with cut roses, brought up from Essex thismorning, with the dew on their petals. Their perfume had a flavour ofthe East--some valley in Cashmere--till a succession of smoking roastspolluted the atmosphere. I had a mind to imitate mediaeval feasts, andgive the prince a pie full of live singing birds, but one hardly knowshow the birds might behave when the pie was cut."

  "You had one sensible man among your guests, I doubt."

  "_Merci du compliment--pour les autres_. Pray who was this paragon?"

  "Lord Dunkeld."

  "You know Lord Dunkeld?"

  "He was my intimate friend some years ago."

  "Before you left off having any friends but Methodists?"

  "Before I knew that life was too serious a thing for triflingfriendships."

  "I am glad you approve of Dunkeld. Of all my modish friends he is theone I like best."

  "Is it not something better than liking? Dear Lady Kilrush, accept thecounsel of a friend whose heart is tortured by the consciousness ofyour unprotected position, the infinite perils that surround youth andbeauty in a world given over to folly--a world which the most appallingconvulsion of nature and the sudden death of thousands of unpreparedsinners could not awaken from its dream of pleasure. I see you in yourgrace and loveliness, of a character too generous to suspect evil,hemmed round with profligates, the companion of unfaithful wives anddamaged misses. And since I cannot win you for Christ, since you aredeaf and cold to the Saviour's voice, I would at least see you guardedby a man of honour--a man who knows the world he lives in, and wouldknow how to protect an adored wife from its worst dangers."

  "I hardly follow the drift of this harangue, sir."

  "Marry Dunkeld. You could not choose a better man, and I know that headores you."

  "You are vastly kind, sir, to interest yourself in my matrimonialprojects. But there is more of the old woman--the spinster aunt--inthis unasked advice than I expected from so serious a person as Mr.Stobart."

  "I fear you are offended."

  He had grown pale to the lips as he talked to her. His wholecountenance, and the thrilling note in his voice betrayed the intensityof his feeling.

  "No, I am only amused. But I regret that you should have wasted troubleon my affairs. It is true that Lord Dunkeld has honoured me with theoffer of his hand on more than one occasion, but he has had his answer;and he is so sensible a man that in rejecting him as a lover I have notlost him as a friend."

  "He will offer again, and you will accept him."

  "Never!" she exclaimed with sudden energy, dropping her light,half-mocking tone, and looking at him with flashing eyes. "I shallnever take a second husband, sir. You may be sure of that."

  A crimson fire flashed across his pallid face, and slowly faded. Hedrew a deep breath, and there was a silence of moments that seemed long.

  "You--you--must have some reason for such a strange resolve."

  "Yes, I have my reason."

  "May I know it?" he asked, trembling with emotion.

  "No, sir, neither you nor any one else. 'Tis my own secret. And nowlet us talk of other matters. It was on your conscience to give me aspinster aunt's advice. You have done your duty very prettily, and yourconscience can be at rest."

  He stood looking at her in a strange silence. The beautiful facewhich had fired with a transient passion was now only pensive. Sheseated herself in her favourite chair by the open window, took upa tapestry-frame, and began to work in minute stitches that neededexquisite precision of eye and hand.

  How much of his future life or earthly happiness he would have givento fathom her thoughts! He had come there to persuade her to marry; hehad convinced himself that she ought to marry; and yet his heart wasbeating with a wild gladness. He felt like a wretch who had escaped thegallows. The rope had been round his neck when the reprieve came.

  "Tell me about your night-school," she said, without looking up fromher work. "Do the numbers go on increasing?"

  "I--I--can't talk of the school to-day," he said. "I have a world ofbusiness on my hands. Good-bye."

  He left her on the instant without offering his hand, hurried throughthe hall, and opened the great door before the porter, somnolent afterthe morning's bustle, could struggle out of his leathern chair.

  "Never, never, never more must I cross that threshold," he told himselfas he walked away.

  He stopped on the other side of the road, and looked back at the greathandsome house, so dull externally, with its long rows of uniformwindows, its massive pediment and heavy iron railings, with the tallextinguishers on each side of the door in a flourish of hammered iron.

  "If I ever enter that house again I shall deserve to perisheverlastingly," he thought.

  'Twas four o'clock, and the sun was blazing, a midsummer afternoon inearly May. He walked to his house in Lambeth like a man in a dream,from which he seemed to wake with a startled air when his wife ran outinto the passage to welcome him.

  "How pale you look," she said. "Is it one of your old headaches?"

  "No, no; 'tis nothing but the sudden heat. You are pale enoughyourself, poor little woman! Come, Lucy, give me an early tea, and I'lltake you and the boy for a jaunt up the river."

  "Oh, George, how good you are! 'Tis near a year since you gave us atreat, or yourself a holiday."

  "I have worked too hard, perhaps, and might have given you morepleasure. 'Tis difficult not to be selfish, even in trying to do good."

  "I'll have tea ready in a jiffy, and Georgie dressed. I've been sittingat the window watching the boats, and wishing ever so to be on theriver."

  "Thou shalt have thy wish for this once, love," he said gently.

  He was silent all through the simple meal, eating hardly anything,though 'twas the first food he had tasted since a seven-o'clockbreakfast. He found himself wondering at the sunshine and thebrightness of things, like a man who has come away from a newly filledgrave--a grave where al
l his hopes and affections lie buried.

  Lucy and her boy sat opposite him, and in the gaiety of their ownprattle were unaware of his silence. The boy was three years old, andof an inexhaustible loquacity, having been encouraged to babble inLucy's lonely hours. The sweet little voice ran on like a ripple ofmusic, his mother hushing him every now and then, while Stobart satwith his head leaning on his hand, thinking, thinking, thinking.

  They went up the river to Putney in a skiff, Stobart rowing, and it wasone of the happiest evenings in Lucy's life. She had occupation enoughfor all the way in pointing out the houses and churches and gardens toGeorgie, who asked incessant questions. She did not see the rower'spallid brow, with its look of infinite pain.

  They landed at Fulham, moored the boat at the bottom of some woodensteps, and sat on a green bank, while Georgie picked the flowers offthe blossoming sedges. Stobart sat with his elbows on his knees, gazingat the opposite shore, the rustic street climbing up the hill, andwhite cottages scattered far apart against a background of meadowlandgolden with marsh marigolds.

  "Has rowing made your head worse, George?" his wife asked timidly.

  "No, dear, no! There is nothing the matter"--holding out his hand toher. "Only I have been thinking--thinking of you and the boy, and ofyour lives in that dull house by the river. It is dull, I'm afraid."

  "Never, when you are at home," she answered quickly. "You are verystudious, and you don't talk much; but I am happy, quite happy, whenyou are sitting there. To have your company is all I desire."

  "I have been a neglectful husband of late, Lucy. Those poor wretches inthe Marsh have taken too much of my time and thought. Whatever a man'swork in the world may be, he ought to remember his home."

  "It is only when you are away--quite away, on those long journeys withMr. Wesley."

  "I will give up those journeys. Let the men who have neither wives norchildren carry on _that_ work. Would you like me to take Orders, Lucy?"

  "Take Orders?"

  "Enter the Church of England as an ordained priest. I might settle downthen, get a London living. I have friends who could help me. It wouldnot be to break with Wesley; he is a staunch Churchman."

  "Yes, yes, I should love to see you in a real pulpit in a handsomeblack gown. I should love you to be a clergyman. All the town wouldflock to hear you, and people would talk of you as they do of Mr.Whitefield."

  "No, no. I have not the metal to forge his thunderbolts. But we canthink about it. I mean to be a kinder husband, Lucy. Yes, my poor girl,a kinder husband. Sure ours was a love match, was it not?"

  "I loved you from the moment I heard your voice, that night at theFoundery Chapel, when I woke out of a swoon and heard you speaking tome. And in all those happy days at Clapham, when I used to tremble atthe sound of your footstep, and when you taught me to read good books,an ignorant girl like me, and to behave like a lady. Oh, George, youhave always, always been good to me."

  The sun set, and the stars shone out of the deep serene as they wenthome, and a profound peace fell upon George Stobart's melancholy soul.To do his duty! That was the only thing that remained to be done. Heunderstood John Wesley's warning better now. His soul had been in perilunspeakable. He loved her, he loved her, that queen among women--lovedher with a passion measured by her own perfections. As she outshoneevery woman he had ever seen in loveliness, mental and physical, so hislove for her surpassed any love he had ever imagined.

  And to-day, when she had looked at him with so glorious a light in hereyes, when she had declared she would never marry, and confessed thatshe had a secret--a secret she would tell to none--he had trembled withan exquisite joy, an overpowering fear, as the conviction that sheloved him flashed into his mind.

  Why not? 'Twas hardly strange that the flame which had kindled inhis breast had found a responsive warmth in hers. They had been somuch to each other, had lived in such harmony of desires and hopes,each equally earnest in the endeavour to redress some of the manifoldwrongs of the world. She had flung herself heart and soul into hisphilanthropic work, and here they had ever been at one. Her presence,her voice, her sweetness and grace had become the first necessityof his life, the one thing without which life was worthless. Was itstrange if he had become more to her than a common friend? Was itstrange if, after giving him her friendship, she had given him herheart?

  But, oh, how deep a fall for the man who had set his hopes on highthings, who had put on the whole armour of faith, had called himselfa soldier and servant of Christ, who had looked back with loathingat the folly and the impiety of his boyhood and youth, and had sethis face towards the City of the Saints, scorning earthly things! Howdeep a fall for the man who had cried with St. Paul, "For me to liveis Christ, to die is gain"! How deep a fall to know himself the slaveof a forbidden love, possessed heart and brain and in every fibre ofhis being by a passion stronger than any feeling of his unregenerateyouth! Well, he had to fight the good fight, and to conquer man's mostimplacable enemy, sin. A year ago he had thought himself so safe,so far advanced on the narrow path, having only to reproach himselfsometimes for a certain coldness in private prayer; successful in hismission work; happy in a humble marriage; having surrendered all thingsthat worldlings care for in order to lead the Christian life, andhaving found a passionless peace as his reward.

  Never more, of his free will, would he see this daughter of Babylon,this enchanting heathen, who had cast her fatal spell around his life.It might not be possible to avoid chance meetings in those miserableabodes where it was her whim to play the angel of pity; but doubtlessthat caprice of a fine lady would pass, and Lambeth Marsh would knowher no more.

  She wrote to him about a week after his last visit to St. James'sSquare.

  "Why do you not come to take a dish of tea with me? My friends areleaving for their country seats, and I have been alone severalafternoons, expecting you. Were you affronted with me for calling you aspinster aunt? Sure our friendship, and my esteem for your goodness,should excuse that careless impertinence. I enclose a bank bill whichI pray you to spend as quickly as possible in buying clothing andshoes for the little ragged wretches I met coming out of your schoolyesterday. Ah, when will there be such schools all over England, inevery city, in every village? Sure some day the country will take alesson from such men as you and Mr. Wesley, and the poor will be bettercared for than they are now."

  The easy assurance of her letter surprised him. Every line indicatedthe woman of the world, the finished coquette. He replied coldly,thanking her for her bounty, and giving his absorbing occupations as areason for not waiting upon her.

  They met a week later in Sally Dormer's garret; but Antonia was leavingas he entered, and he did nothing to detain her. He had a brief visionof her beauty, more simply dressed than usual, in a black silk mantleand hood over a grey tabinet gown. He came upon her some days after ina shed at the back of the Vauxhall Pottery, entertaining a large partyof pottery girls at supper, herself the merriest of the band. She hadher woman Sophy to help her, and Mrs. Patty Granger, and he had neverseen a more jovial feast. There was a long table upon trestles, loadedwith joints and poultry, pies and puddings, and great copper tankardsof small beer; at which feast two reluctant footmen, with disgustedcountenances, assisted in undress livery, while an old blind fiddlersat in a corner playing the gayest tunes in his _repertoire_.

  Antonia begged Mr. Stobart to stay and keep them company, but hedeclined. It was his class night, he told her, and he had his adultscholars waiting for him hard by. He carried away the vision of herradiant countenance, supremely happy in the happiness she had made forothers. Was it possible better to realize the lessons of the DivineAltruist? And yet she was no more a Christian than the profligateBolingbroke or the cynic Voltaire.

  He was consistent and conscientious in his determination to avoid her,so far as possible without incivility. The town was beginning to thin,and he heard with relief that she was going on a visit to the Duchessof Portland at Bulstrode, near Maidenhead. In the autumn she was to beat Tunbridge
Wells, to drink the waters, a business of six weeks.

  "My physician orders it, though I swear I have nothing the matter withme," she told him, at one of their chance meetings in the Marsh. "'Tisgood for my nerves to waste six weeks in a place where there is a danceevery night, and where I shall spend every day in a crowd."

  In another of these casual meetings she upbraided him for havingdeserted her.

  "I have been more than usually busy," he said. "My schools are growing,and the dispensary is daily becoming a more serious business."

  "Everything with you is serious; but you cannot be so seriously busy asnot to have leisure for a dish of tea in St. James's Square once in afortnight. Sure you know my heart is with you in all your good works,and that I like to hear about them."

  "Indeed, madam, I am eternally grateful for your sympathy and yourhelp; but of late I have had no leisure. My wife's spirits weresuffering from a close London house, and I devote every hour I cansteal from my work to giving her change of air."

  "I am glad to hear it. Yes, Mrs. Stobart must miss your pretty gardenat Sheen."

  * * * * *

  That month of May seemed to George Stobart to contain the longestand weariest days and hours he had ever known. The weather wasclose and oppressive, the rank odours of the Marsh were at theirworst; jail fever, small-pox, putrid throats, all the most dreadedforms of infectious sickness hung heavy over the dwellers in thatpoverty-stricken settlement--the pottery hands, the glass-polishers,the lace-workers, the industrious and the idle, the honest and thecriminal classes whom fate had herded together, unwilling neighbours inan equality of poverty.

  He worked among the sick and the dying with unflagging zeal; he gavethem the best of himself, all that he had of faith in God and Christ,sustaining their spirits in the last awful hours of consciousnessby his own exaltation. He gave them inexhaustible pity and love,the compassion that is only possible to a man of keen imaginationand quick sympathies. He understood their inarticulate sorrows, andwas able to lift their minds above the actual to the unseen, and toconvince them of an eternity of bliss that should pay them for a lifeof misery--promise more easy to believe now that all life's miseriesbelonged to the past, and the long agony of living was dwarfed by thenearness of death.

  He followed Sally Dormer to her last resting-place in an obscuregraveyard, and he provided for her brother's maintenance in the familyof a hard-working carpenter, to whom the boy was to be apprenticedin due time. He had a more personal interest in this little lad thanin his other scholars, remembering Antonia's interest in the deadwoman, her almost sisterly affection for that fallen sister. The boywas intelligent, and took kindly to the simple tasks set him at Mr.Stobart's school, where the teaching went no further than reading,writing, and cyphering, and where the founder's sole ambition was torear a generation of believing Christians, steeped, from the verydawn of intelligence, in the knowledge of Christ's life and example.He relied on those gospel lessons of universal charity and brotherlylove, as an enduring influence over the minds and actions of hispupils, and hoped that from his school-rooms--some of them no betterthan an outhouse or a roomy garret, the humble predecessors of thoseragged schools which were to begin their blessed work half a centurylater--the gospel light would radiate far and wide across the gloom ofoutcast lives and homes now ruled by Satan.

  In his devotion to his mission work Mr. Stobart had not forgottenhis promise to make his wife's life happier. He spent all the finestafternoons in rural airings with Lucy and little George; sometimes onthe river, sometimes taking a little journey by coach as far as Sutton,or Ewell, or to Hampton Court; sometimes walking to Clapham Common, oras far as Dulwich, through lanes where the hedgerow oaks and elms hunga canopy of translucent green over the grassy path, and where they cameevery now and then on a patch of copse or a little wood, in which itwas pleasant to sit and rest while the boy played about among the youngfern in a rapture of delight.

  He lavished kindness upon his wife and child. Never had there beena more indulgent father or a more attentive husband. Lucy, whoseflower-like prettiness had faded a little in the smoke from thepotteries and the Vauxhall glass-works, recovered her rose-and-lilytints in these excursions, and was full of grateful affection whichtouched her husband's heart. There was something pathetic in heraccepting kindness as a favour which another woman would have claimedby the divine right of a wife. It pleased him to see her happy; and hisconscience, which had been cruelly disturbed of late, was now at rest.But even that inward peace could not cure the dull aching of his heart,which ached he scarce knew why; or it might be that he stubbornlyrefused to know. He would have told himself, if he could, that the painwas physical, and that the weariness of life which followed him throughevery scene, and most of all in this sweet summer _idlesse_, was aquestion of bodily health, a lassitude for which a modish physicianwould have ordered "the Bath" or "the Wells."

  Oh, the mental oppression of those May afternoons, the dull misery,vague, undefined, but intolerable, in which every sound jarred, eventhe silver-sweet of his child's joyous voice, in which every sight wassteeped in gloom, even the lovely river, rose-flushed and smiling inthe evening light!

  He was miserable, and he tried to find the cause of his misery inthings which lay remote from the one image he dared not contemplate.He told himself that the burden under which he ached was only themonotonous quiet of his days--the want of strong interests and activeefforts such as kept John Wesley's mind in the freshness of a perpetualyouth. _That_ was the true fountain of Jouvence--action, progress,the consciousness of struggle and victory. He had tasted the joy ofsuccessful effort in his itinerant preaching--the uncouth mob crowdingas to a show at a fair, the insulting assaults of semi-savages, thetriumph when he had subjugated those rough natures, when by the mereforce of his eloquence, by the magnetism of his own strong faith, hecompelled the railers to listen, and saw ribald jokes change to eagerinterest, scorn give place to awe, and tears roll down the faces thatsin had stained and blemished. All this had been to him as the wine oflife; and this he had promised to renounce in order that he might dohis duty as that commonplace domestic animal, a kind husband.

  Sitting on the river bank in the summer quiet, in the rosy afterglow,amidst tall sedges and wild flowers that love the river, with his childprattling at his knee, playing with his watch-ribbon, asking questionsthat were never answered, and his wife seated at his side supremelycontent in having won him to give her so much of his company, GeorgeStobart meditated upon the great mistake of his life--his marriage!

  He remembered how lovely a creature the printer's daughter had seemedto him in her ecstasy of faith, how divine a thing the soul newlyawakened to a sense of sin, and a desire for saving grace. His hearthad gone out to her in an overwhelming wave of enthusiasm, a feelingso exalted, so different from any passion of his unregenerate years,that he had welcomed it as the one pure and perfect love of his life.He thought God had given him this friendless, ill-used girl to be hishelpmeet, the sharer of all his aspirations, his lifelong labours inthe service of Christ, as of that impassioned hour in Wesley's Chapel.

  Soon, too soon, he had discovered the shallow nature behind thathysterical emotion, the tepid piety which alone remained after thefervour of newly awakened feelings. Too soon he had found that pettyinterests and trivial domestic cares and joys filled the measure of hiswife's mind; that she thought more of her tea-trays and her sofa-coversthan of thousands of Kingswood miners won from Satan to Christ; thathe must never look to her for sympathy with his highest aspirations,hardly for interest in his everyday work among the poor.

  When he suggested that she should help in his day nurseries or hisinfant schools, she refused with a shudder, lest she should bring homesmall-pox or scarlet fever to little Georgie. That fear of pestilencehung like a funeral pall over Lambeth Marsh; and all his efforts topopularize inoculation could do very little against dense ignorance,and terror of a preventive measure that seemed as bad as the disease.

  "If I've
got to have the small-pox anyhow, I'd sooner leave it toProvidence," was the usual argument.

  His marriage, so gravely resolved, with such generous disdain ofworldly advantage, had not brought him happiness. The fellowship inthought and feeling, which is the soul of marriage, was wanting in aunion that had yet every appearance of domestic affection, and whichsufficed for the wife's content. She was happy, looking no deeper thanthe surface of things, and finding content in the calm prosperity ofher life, the absence of poverty and ill-usage. His marriage was amistake, and to the man who had taken upon himself, as he had done,the service of Christ's poor, any marriage must needs be a mistake.For the itinerant preacher, for the man with a suffering populacedepending on his care, home ties were fetters that needs must gall. Hecould not serve two masters. He must be a half-hearted philanthropistor a neglectful husband; only an occasional preacher or a deserter ofhis home. He remembered the priests he had met and conversed with inFrance, men who had no claims, no interests outside their Church andtheir parish; and it seemed to him that he had bound himself with aservitude that made his service of Christ a dead letter.

  His mission work must end if he was to do his duty at home. His careeras John Wesley's helper had been the most absorbing episode in hislife--a source of unbounded satisfaction to mind and conscience. Hehad gloried in the result of his labours, never questioning, in hisown fervid faith, whether conversions so sudden would stand the testof time. He had counted every convert as a gain for ever, every floodof tears as a cleansing stream. But, precious though this work hadbeen to him, conscience urged him to renounce it. His first duty wasto make a home for the woman he had sworn to love and cherish. To thisend he would try to become a priest of the Established Church, striveto obtain a London living, however small, and confine his service ofChrist within a narrow radius, till fortune should widen his areaof work. He had loved his freedom hitherto, the power to work forhis own hand; but for Lucy's sake he would bend his shoulders to theEpiscopal yoke, and enter on a phase of humble obedience to authority,prepared at any hour to be called to account for his opinions, and tobe hampered and constrained in his gospel teaching. He would haveto suffer, as others of the Oxford Methodists and their discipleshad suffered, from the tyranny of ecclesiastical intolerance; but hewould face all difficulties, submit to many restrictions, to make ahome for his wife. And then there was always the hope that the Churchof England would be swept from the great dismal swamp of formalism onthe strong tide of the Great Revival, which ran higher and wider withevery year of Wesley's and Whitefield's life. The teaching begun byWhitefield among the prisoners in Gloucester jail, by Wesley in thehumble meeting-house in Fetter Lane, had spread over England, Scotland,and Ireland with an irresistible force, and must finally make its powerfelt in the Established Church.

  From the market cross and the country side, from the colliers ofBristol and the miners of Cornwall, from the wild fervour of servicesand sermons under starlit skies, from congregations numbered bythousands, George Stobart was prepared to restrict the scope of hiswork to an obscure London pulpit or a poverty-stricken parish, contentif in so doing his conscience could be at rest. But the outlook wasdreary, and he began to measure the length of his earthly pilgrimage,and foresaw the long progress of eventless years, some little gooddone, perhaps, some souls gained for Christ, many small sorrowsalleviated, but all his work shut within a narrow space, controlled byother people's opinions.

  One agony which other men of deep religious feeling have sufferedwas spared to John Wesley's helper. His faith knew no shadow ofchange. His absolute belief in his God and his Saviour remained tohim in the lowest depth of mental depression. He might feel himselfa creature of sinful impulses, an outcast from God, but he neverdoubted the existence of that God, or the reality of that hereafterthe hope of which lies at the root of all religion. The paradise ofsaints, the infinite joys of eternity, hung on the balance of good andevil, a stupendous stake, which most men played for with such wildrecklessness, till the lights of this life began to fade, and the awfulpossibilities of that other life beyond the veil flashed on theirtroubled souls.

  He was startled from the automatic monotony of his life by a letterwhose superscription so agitated him that his shaking hand couldscarcely break the seal. Indeed, he did not break it for somemoments, but sat with the letter in his hand, staring at the familiarwriting--Antonia's writing, a strong and firm penmanship, every letterdefinite and upright, somewhat resembling Joseph Addison's. Oh, howembued with sin, how trapped and entangled in Satan's net, must hissoul be when only the sight of Antonia's writing could so move him!

  He was alone. The letter had been brought him by the littlemaid-servant. His wife was upstairs, busy with her son, whose footstepsmight be heard running across the floor above.

  He broke the seal at last, and unfolded her letter.

  * * * * *

  "St. James's Square, Monday night.

  "DEAR SIR,

  "I believe it is near a month since you have honoured me with a visit, nor was I so fortunate as to meet you on Saturday afternoon, when I spent some hours among our poor friends in the Marsh, and went to look at Sally's grave in the Baptist burial-ground. I must impose on your goodness to order a neat headstone, with the dear creature's name and age, and one of those Scripture texts which so consoled her last hours. I doubt, since the afternoon was so fine, you were treating yourself to a rustic holiday with Mrs. Stobart, to whom I beg you to present my affectionate compliments.

  "Well, sir, since you are too busy to visit me, I must needs thrust my company upon you, at the risk of being thought troublesome. In one of my conversations with Sally Dormer the poor soul entreated me, with tearful urgency, to hear the famous preacher who converted her, believing that even my stubborn mind must yield to his invincible arguments, must be touched and melted by his heavenly eloquence. To soothe her agitated spirits I promised to hear Mr. Whitefield preach, a promise which I gave the more readily as my curiosity had been aroused by the reports I had heard of his genius.

  "I am told that he is to preach at Kennington Common to-morrow night, to a vaster audience than his new Tabernacle, large as it is, could contain, and I should like better to hear him under the starry vault of a June evening than in the sultry fustiness of a crowded meeting-house. I have ever been interested in your description of those open-air meetings where you yourself have been the preacher. There is something romantic and heart-stirring in your picture of the rugged heath, the throng of humanity huddled together under a wild night sky, seeing not each other's faces, but hearing the beating of each other's hearts, the quickened breath of agitated feeling, and in the midst of that listening silence the shrill cry of some overwrought creature falling to the ground in a transport of agitation, which you and Mr. Wesley take to be the visitation of a Divine Power.

  "I have not courage to go alone to such a meeting, and I do not care to ask any of my modish friends to go with me, though there are several among my acquaintance who are admirers of Mr. Whitefield, and occasional attendants at Lady Huntingdon's pious assemblies. To them, did I express this desire, I might seem a hypocrite. You who have sounded the depths of my mind, and who know that although I am an unbeliever I have never been a scoffer, will think more indulgently of me.

  "The service is to begin at ten o'clock. I shall call at your door at nine, and ask you to accompany me to Kennington in my coach.

  "I remain, dear sir, with heartfelt respect,

  "Your very sincere and humble servant,

  "ANTONIA KILRUSH."

  "What has happened, George?" asked his wife, who had come into the roomunheard by him, while he was reading his letter. "You look as pleasedas if you had come into a fortune."

  He looked up at her with a b
ewildered air, and for the moment could notanswer.

  "What does she say, George? 'Tis from Lady Kilrush, I know, for herfootman is waiting in the passage."

  "Yes, 'tis from Lady Kilrush. She desires to hear Whitefield preachto-morrow night, and asks me to accompany her."

  "What, is she coming round, after all? I doubt you will be monstrousproud if you convert her."

  "I should be monstrous happy--but it will be God's work, not mine.My words have been like the idle wind. Whitefield's influence mightdo something; but, alas! I fear even he will fail to touch that proudheart, that resolute mind, so strong in the sense of intellectualpower. Will you go with us to-morrow?"

  "Mr. Whitefield's sermons are so long, and the heat at the Tabernaclealways makes my head ache."

  "'Tis not at the Tabernacle, but at Kennington, in the open air."

  "And we may have to stand all the time. I think I'd rather stay at homewith Georgie."

  "Her ladyship will call for me at nine. The boy will be in bed andasleep hours before."

  "I love to sit by his bed sewing. He wakes sometimes, and likes to findme there; and sometimes he has bad dreams, and wakes in a fright."

  "And wants his mother's hand and voice to soothe his spirits. Happychild, who knows not the burden of sin, and has but shadowy fears thatvanish at a word of comfort! Well, you must do as you please, Lucy; butthere will be room for you in her ladyship's coach."

  "Oh, she is always kind, and I should love the ride; but Mr.Whitefield's sermons are so long."

  Stobart wrote briefly to assure Lady Kilrush of his pleasure in beingher escort to Kennington, with the customary formal conclusion,protesting himself her ladyship's "most obliged and most devoted humbleservant."

  When his letter was despatched he went out to the Marsh, and walkedfor an hour in that waste region outside the streets and alleys wherehis work lay. His wife's parlour had grown too small for him. He feltstifled within those four walls.

  He would see her again, spend some hours in her company, her trustedfriend and protector, permitted to guard her amidst that rabble throngwhich was likely to assemble on the common. His heart beat with afierce rapture at the thought of those coming hours. Only to stand byher side under the summer stars, hemmed round, half suffocated by thecrowd; only to see her, and to hear the adored music of her voice, thevoice which had so haunted him of late, that he had started up outof sleep sometimes, hearing her call his name. Vain delusion, thatbetrayed the drift of his dreams!

  Her coach was at his door five minutes before the hour. The nightwas sultry, and the two parlour windows were wide open. He had beenleaning with folded arms upon the window-sill watching for her, whileLucy sat at the table sewing by the light of two candles in tall brasscandlesticks. She had thought the pair of tallow candles a mark ofgentility in the beginning of her married life, when the remembranceof the slum near Moorfields was fresh; but she knew better now, havingseen the splendours of St. James's Square, and wax candles reckoned bythe hundred.

  Her ladyship had four horses to her chariot, and a couple ofpostillions. The lamps flamed through the summer darkness.

  "I may be late," Stobart said hurriedly. "Don't sit up for me, Lucy."

  He saw Antonia's face at the coach door, and the sight of it so movedhim that he could scarcely speak.

  His wife ran to bid him good-bye, with her customary childlike kiss,standing on tip-toe to offer him her fresh young lips, but he waved heraside.

  "We shall be late. Good-night."

  His heart was beating furiously. On the threshold of his door he hadhalf a mind to excuse himself to Antonia, and to go back. He felt asif the devil was tugging him into some dark labyrinth of doom. Thisman believed in the devil as firmly as he believed in God--believed inan actual omnipresent Satan, ubiquitous, ever on the watch to decoysinners, ever eager to people hell with renegades from Christ. Andhe felt, with a thrill of agony, that he was in the devil's clutchto-night. Satan was spreading his choicest lure to catch the sinner'ssoul--a woman's ineffable beauty.

  She was alone, and welcomed him with her sweetest smile.

  "I am turning my back on Handel's new oratorio to hear your Mr.Whitefield," she said, as they shook hands; "but now the hour isapproaching I feel as eager as if I were going to see a new Romeo asseducing as Spranger Barry."

  "Ah, madam, dared I hope that Whitefield's eloquence could change thisfrivolous humour to a beginning of belief! Could your stubborn mindonce bend itself to understand the mysteries of God's redeeming graceyou would not long remain in darkness. Could but one ray of Divinetruth stream in upon your soul, like the shaft of sunshine throughNewton's shutter, you would soon be drowned in light, dazzled by theprismatic glory of the Heavenly Sun."

  "And blinded, as I doubt you are, sir. I will not impose upon you. I donot go to Kennington to be assured of free grace, or to be convincedof sin; but first to keep a promise to the dead, and next to followthe fashion, which is to hear and criticize Mr. Whitefield. Some of myfriends swear he is a finer orator than Mr. Pitt."

  After this they remained silent for the greater part of the way,Antonia watching the road, where the houses were set back behind longgardens, and where the countrified inns had ample space in front for ahorse-trough and rustic tables and benches, with here and there a rowof fine elms. That sense of space and air which is so sadly wantingnow in the mighty wilderness of brick and stone gave a rural charm tothe suburbs when George II. was king. Ten minutes' walk took a manfrom town to country, from streets and alleys to meadow and cornfield,hedgerow and thicket. The perfume of summer flowers was in the airthrough which they drove, and the village that hemmed the fatal common,so recently a scene of ignominious death, was as rustic as a hamlet inBuckinghamshire.

  The crowd had gathered thickly, and had spread itself over the greaterpart of the common when Lady Kilrush's chariot drew up on the outskirtsof the assembly. Stobart alighted and went to reconnoitre. A platformhad been erected about six feet from the ground, and on this there hadbeen placed a row of chairs, and a table for the preacher, with a brasslantern standing on each side of the large quarto Bible. Whitefield wasthere, with one of his helpers, a member of Parliament, his devotedadherent, and two ladies, one of whom was the Countess of Yarmouth'sdaughter, Lady Chesterfield, dowered with the blood of the Guelfs, anda fine fortune from the royal coffers, Whitefield's most illustriousconvert, and a shining light in Lady Huntingdon's saintly circle.

  Stobart was on terms of friendship with the orator, and had nodifficulty in obtaining a seat for Lady Kilrush. Indeed, her ladyship'sname would have obtained the favour as easily had she sent it by herfootman, for George Whitefield loved to melt patrician hearts, and drawtears from proud eyes. Enthusiast as he was, there is a something inhis familiar letters which suggests that aristocratic converts counteddouble. They were the _ecarte_ kings, the trump-aces in the game heplayed against Satan.

  Stobart brought Antonia through the crowd, and placed her in a chair atthe end of the platform, farthest from the preacher, lest the thunderof his tremendous voice should sound too close to her ear.

  There was a chair to spare for himself, and he took his seat at herside, in the silence of that vast audience, waiting for the giving outof the hymn with which these open-air services usually began.

  Never before had Antonia seen so vast an assemblage hushed in a seriousexpectancy, with faces all turned to one point, that central spot abovethe heads of the crowd where the lanterns made an atmosphere of faintyellow light around George Whitefield's black figure standing besidethe table, with one hand resting upon an open Bible, and the otheruplifted to command silence and attention.

  From the preacher's platform, almost to the edge of the common thecrowd extended, black and dense, a company gathered from all overLondon, and compounded of classes so various that almost everyMetropolitan type might be found there, from the Churchman of highestdignity, come to criticize and condemn, to the street-hawker, theprofessional mendicant, come to taste an excitement scarcely inferi
orto gin.

  Whitefield's helper gave out the number of the hymn, and recited thefirst two lines in slow and distinct tones. Then, with a burst of soundloud as the stormy breakers rolling over a rock-bound beach, there rosethe voices of a multitude that none could number, harsh and sweet,loud and low, soprano and contralto, bass and tenor, mingled in onevast chorus of praise. The effect was stupendous, and Antonia felt acatching of her breath, that was almost a sob. Did those words meannothing, after all? Was that cry of a believing throng only empty air?

  A short extempore prayer followed from the helper. George Whitefield'svoice had not yet been heard. The influence of his presence was enough,and it may have been that his dramatic instinct led him to keephimself in reserve till that moment of hush and expectancy in which hepronounced the first words of his text.

  He stood there, supreme in a force that is rare in the history ofmankind, the force that rules multitudes. 'Twas no commanding grace ofperson that impressed this prodigious assembly. He stood there, thecentral point in that tremendous throng, a very common figure, short,fat, in a black gown with huge sleeves, and a ridiculous white wig,features without beauty or grandeur, eyes with a decided squint; andthat vast concourse thrilled at his presence, as at a messenger fromthe throne of God. This was the heaven-born orator, the man who attwo-and-twenty years of age had held assembled thousands spell-boundby his eloquence, the man gifted with a voice of surpassing beauty,and with a dramatic genius which enabled him to clothe abstract ideaswith flesh and blood, and make them live and move before his awestruckhearers.

  It was this dramatic genius that made Whitefield supreme over themasses. Those of his admirers who had leisure to read and weigh hispublished sermons might discover that he had no message to deliver,that those trumpet tones were but reverberations in the air, that ofall who flocked to hear the famous preacher, none ever carried home aconvincing and practicable scheme of religious life; yet none coulddoubt the power of the man to stir the feelings, to excite, awaken andalarm the ignorant and unenlightened, to melt and to startle even hissuperiors in education and refinement. None could deny that the manwho began life as a pot-boy in a Gloucester tavern was the greatestpreacher of his time.

  Antonia watched and listened with a keen interest, enduring the heatedatmosphere of the crowd as best she might. She had thrown off hermantle, and the starlight shone upon the marble of her throat and thediamond heart that fastened her gauze kerchief. One large ruby set inthe midst of the diamonds enhanced their whiteness; and it seemed toStobart as he looked at her that the vivid crimson spot symbolized hisown heart's blood, always bleeding for her, drop by drop. Absorbed byher interest in the preacher, she was unconscious of those eyes thatgazed at her with an unspeakable love, knew not that for this man itwas happiness only to sit by her side, to watch every change in thelovely face, every grace of the perfect form, oblivious of the crowd,the orator, of everything upon earth except her.

  To-night Whitefield was in one of his gloomy moods, the preacherof unmitigated Calvinism. It may be that his late quarrel with theBishop of Bangor, and the persecution he had suffered at his West Endchapel had soured him, and that he was unconsciously influenced by thehardness of a world in which a mighty hunter of souls was the mark fornarrow-minded opposition and vulgar ridicule. His purpose to-nightseemed rather to appal than to convince, to instil despair rather thanhope.

  His text from the Epistle of St. Jude was pronounced in solemn tonesthat reached wide across that closely packed mass of humanity--

  "For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of oldordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of ourGod into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our LordJesus Christ.... Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds;trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked upby the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame;wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever."

  In an oration that lasted nearly two hours the preacher rang thechanges on these tremendous words. Through every phase of sin, throughevery stage of the downward journey, his imagination followed thesinner, "of old ordained" to perish everlastingly. His vivid wordsdescribed a soul inevitably lost; and again and again the melancholymusic of those phrases, "raging waves of the sea, foaming out theirown shame; wandering stars; clouds without water," rang out over theawe-stricken throng, moved by this picture of an imagined doom, withan emotion scarcely less intense than the thrill of agony that ranthrough the crowd at Tyburn when the doomed sinner swung into Eternity.

  It was with the picture of Judas, his final example of sin and death,that the preacher closed his discourse.

  "Let those who tell you there is no such thing as predestination turntheir eyes upon Judas," he said, his voice falling to that grave notewhich preluded terror. "Let them consider the arch-apostate, the sonof perdition. Oh, my brethren, had ever mortal man such opportunitiesof salvation as Judas had? Have the angels who stand about the throneof God, His worshippers and subordinates, half such privileges asJudas had? To be the friend and companion of his Saviour, in dailyand familiar association with the Redeemer of souls; to walk by Hisside through the fields of Palestine; to sit at meat with Him; to bewith Him in sadness and in joy, in prayer and praise; to journey overthe wild sea with Him, and behold His power to still the tempest; tobe His bosom friend; to live on an equality with God! Think of him,oh, you sinners who have never seen your Saviour's face, think ofJudas! Think of those three years of sweet converse! Think of thatDivine condescension which received sinful man in the brotherhood offriendship! Think of those journeys by the Lake of Gennesaret, thosepilgrimages of prayer and praise, the daily, the hourly companionshipwith Divinity, the affectionate familiarity with Ineffable Wisdom!

  "And, O God, great God of sinners, to think what came of suchunutterable privileges! The disciple, the companion, bartered all thatglory and delight, flung away those inestimable joys for a handful ofsilver. Which of you dare disbelieve in predestined damnation whenhe contemplates this hideous fall, when he sees the chosen brotherof Jesus sink to the base huckstering of a Jonathan Wild, one of thesacred twelve reduced to the level of informers and thief-catchers,trucking his soul's salvation against thirty pieces of silver?

  "'Twas the inexorable destiny of the foredoomed sinner, the appointedend to which those footsteps beside the lake, those footstepsacross the mountain, those footsteps through the temple, and in themarket-place, fast or slow, were always moving. God had sentenced thisman to the most awful doom the mind can conceive, created to betray,the foredoomed destroyer of his Saviour. Who can question that he wasmarked for hell? How else account for such a fall? I despise thatshallow reasoner who will tell you that the fall of Judas was a gradualdescent, beginning in avarice, ending in murder. I laugh at that fondtheorizer who will tell you that Judas was an ambitious dreamer,longing to behold the Kingdom of Christ triumphant on earth, andthinking to realize that dazzling dream by bringing about the conflictbetween his Master and earthly authority. I laugh at him who tells methat Judas expected to see the power of the Synagogue and the Forumshrivel like a burning scroll before the face of the Messiah; and thatit was on the failure of that hope he rushed to the Field of Blood.

  "No, dear sinners, a thousand and a thousand times no! Over that guiltyhead the fiat of the Eternal had gone forth, 'This is the son ofperdition, this is he who shall betray the Son of God.'"

  Then, after a long pause, sinking his mighty voice almost to a whisper,the preacher asked--

  "Is there any son of perdition here to-night? Is there one among youwhose stubborn heart answers not to his Saviour's call--a wretch inlove with vice, who would rather have sensual pleasures on earth thaneverlasting bliss in heaven--a modern Judas who sells his Redeemer'slove for thirty pieces of the devil's money, thirty profligateraptures, thirty vicious indulgences, thirty debauches in filthytaverns, thirty nights of riot and wantonness among gamesters and loosewomen?

  "If there be any
such, cast him from you. However near, howeverdear--father, brother, husband, son, flesh of your flesh and bone ofyour bone. Cast him out; oh, you who value your eternal happiness!You cannot mistake the mark of the lost soul. The son of perditionbears a brand of sin that no eye can fail to recognize. 'Tis Satan'sbroad-arrow, and stamps the wretch foredoomed to hell. You who wouldtaste the joys of heaven, hold no fellowship with such on earth."

  The great throng heard those concluding phrases in a profound silence.The heavy stillness of a sultry night, the muffled roll of distantthunder, the fitful lightning, now faint, now vivid, that flashedacross the scene, intensified the dramatic effect of the sermon, andthe crowds that had gathered noisily with much talk and some jeering,dwindled and melted away subdued and thoughtful.

  Like many other of Whitefield's sermons which moved multitudes, therewas little left after the last resonance of the mighty voice had sunkinto silence. But the immediate effect of his oration was tremendous.Garrick had said that he would give a hundred pounds if he could say"Oh!" like Whitefield; and what Garrick could not do must have beensomething of exceptional power.

  Antonia had given her whole mind to the preacher; yet for her hissermon was but a dramatic effort, and she went back to her coach fullof wonder at that vast influence which a fine voice and a cultivatedelocution had exercised over the multitude in England and America.

  Upon George Stobart the preacher's influence was stronger.

  "The man makes me believe against my own reason," he said, "which hasever striven against the idea of a fatal necessity. Come, Lady Kilrush,confess that his eloquence moved you."

  "I confess as much with all my heart; and I am very glad to haveheard him. He is a finer actor--an unconscious actor, of course--thanGarrick; at least, he has a greater power to appal an ignorant crowd."

  "I see you are as stubborn as ever."

  "My mind is not a weather-cock, to be driven by changing winds. Idoubt Mr. Whitefield may do good by such a discourse as we have heardto-night. He may scare feeble sinners, and teach them to believe that,weak and wicked as they are, God has marked them for salvation. Butwhat of the sinner deeply sunk in guilt--will not he see only thehopelessness of any struggle to escape from Satan? 'So be it,' he willcry; 'if I am the son of perdition, let me drown my soul in sin, andforget the injustice of God.'"

  George Stobart's only answer was a despairing sigh. "Let me drown mysoul in sin, and forget God." Those awful words too well depicted thecondition of his own mind to-night, sitting by her side in the roomychariot, apart from her, with his face turned to the open window, hiseyes looking into the summer stillness, unseeing, his heart beatingwith the fierce throb of passion held in check.

  Was not Whitefield right, after all? Were there not men whose nameswere written in the Book of Doom, wretches not born to be judged, butjudged before they were born? To-night that religion of despair seemedto him the only possible creed. He had looked back and remembered thesins of his youth--his life at Eton--his life in the Army. And he hadbelieved the stain of those sins washed away in one ineffable hour ofspiritual anguish and spiritual joy, the conviction of sin followed bythe assurance of free grace. He had believed his past life annihilated,and himself made a new creature, pure as Adam before the fall. And inthe years that had followed that day of grace he had walked with headerect, and eyes looking up to heaven, strong in his belief in Christ,but strongest in his reliance upon his own good works.

  O God, what availed his labour in the service of humanity, hissacrifice of worldly gain, his preaching, his prayers, his faithfulstudy of God's word? A wave of passion surged across his soul, and allof good that there had been in him was swept away. The original man,foredoomed to evil, appeared again. A soul drowned in sin! Her words,so carelessly spoken, had denounced him.

  The silence lasted long, and they were nearing the lights of Londonwhen Antonia spoke.

  "You are very silent, Mr. Stobart," she said; "I hope you have not anytrouble on your mind to-night."

  "No, no."

  "Then 'tis that hideous doctrine troubles you."

  "Perhaps. What if it be the only true key to God's mysteries? Yes, Ibelieve there are souls given over to Satan."

  "Oh, if you believe in Satan you can believe anything."

  "Can you look round the world you live in and doubt the Power of Evil?"

  "Of the evil within us, no. 'Tis in ourselves, in our own hearts andminds the devil lives. We have to fight him there. Oh, I believe inthat devil, the devil of many names. Envy, hatred, malice, jealousy,vanity, self-love, discontent. I know the fiend under most of hisaliases. But our part is to be stronger than our own evil inclinations.I am not afraid of the devil."

  "He speaks for you in that arrogant speech, and his name is pride."

  "Well, perhaps I spoke with too much assurance; but I believe pride isa virtue in women, as courage is in men. Or, perhaps, pride in women isonly courage by another name."

  He did not reply for some moments; and then an irrepressible impulsemade him touch on a perilous subject.

  "Have you changed your mind about Lord Dunkeld?"

  "As how, sir?" she asked, with a chilling air.

  "Have you resolved to accept him as a husband? Surely you could not befor ever adamant against so noble a suitor."

  "You are vastly impertinent, to repeat a question that I answered sometime ago. No, sir, I shall never accept Lord Dunkeld, nor any othersuitor--had he the highest rank in the kingdom."

  "You must have some strong reason."

  "I have my reason, an all-sufficient reason; and now, sir, no more, Ibeg you. Indeed, I wonder that you can distress me by renewing thisargument."

  "Oh, madam, if you but knew the motive of my impertinence, the anguishof heart that speaks in those words! I would have you happily mated,Antonia. I--_I_--who adore you. Yes, though my jealous soul couldscarce contemplate the image of your husband without the murderer'simpulse--though to think of you belonging to another would be a tormentworse than hell-fire. Could you know how I have wrestled with Satan;how when I urged you to marry Dunkeld every word I spoke was like aknife driven through my heart; how I longed to fling myself at yourfeet, to tell you, as I tell you now, at the peril of my salvation,that I love you, with all the strength of my soul, my soul drowned insin, the unpardonable sin of loving you, the sin for which I must loseheaven and reckon with Satan, my darling sin, the sin unto death, neverto be repented of."

  He was on his knees, and his arms were about her, drawing her avertedface towards his own with a wild violence, till her brow touched his,and his lips were pressed against her burning cheek. She felt thepassion of his kiss, and his tears upon her face, before she wrenchedherself from his arms, and dashed down the glass in front of her.

  "Stop!" she called out to the postillions.

  Startled at her authoritative cry, they pulled up their horsessuddenly, with a loud clattering on the stones, a hundred yards fromthe bridge.

  "You devil!" she said to Stobart, between her set teeth. "You that Itook for a saint! I will not breathe the same air with you."

  The carriage had hardly stopped when she opened the door and sprangout, not waiting for her footman to let down the steps. He had beenasleep in the rumble, and only alighted a moment before his mistress.

  She walked towards the bridge in a tumult of agitation, Stobart ather side, while her carriage and horses stood still, and her servantswaited for orders, wondering at this strange caprice of their lady's.

  "Hypocrite! hypocrite!" she repeated. "You--the Christian, the preacherwho calls sinners to repentance; the man who sacrificed fortune tomarry the girl he loved."

  "I knew not what love meant."

  "You chose a simple girl for your wife, and tired of her; pretendedfriendship for me, and under that mask of friendship nursed yourprofligate dreams; and now you dare insult me with your unholy love."

  "I should not have so dared, madam--indeed, I believe I might haveconquered my passion--so far as to remain for ever silent--if--if you
rown words----"

  "My words? When have I ever spoken a word that could warrant such anaffront?"

  "When I advised you to accept Dunkeld--you refused with suchimpassioned vehemence--you confessed you had a reason."

  "And you thought 'twas because I loved another woman's husband--that'twas your saintly self I cared for? No, sir, 'twas because I swore toKilrush on his death-bed that I would never belong to another, thatour union, of but one tragical hour, should be all I would ever knowof wedlock. I belong to him now as I belonged to him then. I love hismemory now as I loved him then. That, sir, was my reason. Are you notashamed of your fatuous self-esteem, which took it for a confession oflove? Love for you, the Methodist preacher, the man of God!"

  "Yes, I am ashamed--I am drinking the cup of shame."

  "You have tricked me, sir. You have deceived me very cruelly. I trustedyou--I thought that I had a friend--one man in the world who treatedme like a woman of sense--who dared to disapprove, where all the worldbasely flattered me. And you are the worst of all--the snake in thegrass. But do you think I fear you? I had a better man than you at myfeet--the man I loved--my first love--a man with sovereign power overthe hearts of women. Do you think I fear you? No, sir, 'twas then thetempter tried me. If there is a devil who assails women, I met himthen, and vanquished him."

  She trembled from head to foot in the excess of her feeling. She wasleaning against the balustrade in one of the semicircular recesses onthe bridge. He was sitting at the furthest end of the stone bench, hiselbows on his knees, his face hidden.

  "You have made me hate myself," he said. "'Tis useless to ask you toforgive me; but you can forget that so base a worm crawls upon thisearth. _That_ will cost you but a slight effort."

  "Yes, I will try to forget you; and to forget how much I valued yourfriendship, or the friendship of the honourable man I took you for."

  "I was that man, madam. Our friendship did not begin in treachery. Iwas your true and honourable friend--till--till the devil saw me in myfoolish pride, my arrogant confidence in good works."

  "Well, sir, 'tis a dream ended," she said, in those grave contraltotones that had ever been like music in his ear--the lower key to whichher voice dropped when she was deeply moved; "and from to-night be goodenough to remember that we are strangers."

  "I shall not forget, madam, nor shall my presence make the futuretroublesome to you."

  Something in his words scared her.

  "You will do nothing violent--nothing desperately wicked?"

  "No, madam, whatever the tempter whispers, however sweetly the rivermurmurs of rest and oblivion, I shall not kill myself. For me there isthe 'something after death'!"

  "Will you tell them to bring my coach?"

  He rose and obeyed without a word, and stood by bareheaded till shedrove away, not even offering to assist her as she stepped into thecarriage, attended by her footman. Stobart stood watching till thechariot vanished in the darkness of the street beyond the bridge, thenflung himself on the bench in the recess, and sat with his arms foldedon the stone parapet, and his forehead leaning upon them, lost indespairing thoughts.

  Judas, Judas, the companion of Christ, foredoomed to everlastingmisery--Judas, the son of perdition! And what of him who six yearsago gave himself to God--convinced of sin, sincerely repenting of theerrors of his youth, resolved to lead a new life, to live in Christ andfor Christ? How confident he had been, how happy in the assurance ofgrace--all his thoughts, all his desires in subjection to the Divinewill, living not by the strict letter of Christ's law, but by everycounsel of perfection, deeming no sacrifice of self too severe, nolabour too exacting, in that heavenly service. And now, after that holyapprenticeship, after all those years of duty and obedience, aftermounting so high upon the ladder of life, to find himself lying in themire at the foot of it, caught in the toils of Satan, and again theslave of sin!

  The slave of sin--yes--for though he hated the sin, he went on sinning.He loved her--he loved her with a passion that the Water of Lifecould not quench. How vain were those supplications for grace, thoseconfessions of guilt which broke from his convulsed lips, while herimage filled his heart. How vain his cry to Christ for help, while_her_ voice sounded in his ears, and the thought of her indignation,her scorn, her icy indifference, reigned supreme in the fiery tumult ofhis brain.

  Oh, how he loathed himself for his folly; how he writhed under aproud man's agony of humiliation at the thought of his fatuousself-delusion! Something in her look, something in her tone whenshe protested against a second marriage, had thrilled him with theconviction that his love had found its answer in her heart. When didthat fatal love begin? He knew not how the insidious poison stoleinto his senses; but he could recall his first consciousness of thatblissful slavery, his first lapse from honour. He could remember thehour and the moment, they two walking through the squalid street in thewinter twilight, her gloved hand resting lightly on his arm, her eyeslooking up at him, sapphire-blue under the long dark lashes, her lowvoice murmuring words of pity for the dying child that she had nursedin her lap, for the broken-hearted mother they had just left, and inhis heart a wild rapture that was new and sweet.

  "I love her, I love her," he had told himself in that moment. "But shewill never know. It is as if I loved an angel. She is as far from me.My conscience can suffer no stain from so pure, so distant a love."

  Self-deluded sinner! Hypocrite to himself! He knew now that this momentmarked the beginning of apostasy, the law of sin warring against theinward light. He knew now that this woman--noble-minded, chaste,charitable, a creature of kindly impulses and generous acts, for himrepresented Antichrist, and that from the hour in which he proved herstubborn in unbelief, he should have renounced her friendship. He hadpaltered with truth, had tried to reconcile the kingdom of darknesswith the kingdom of light, had been satisfied with the vague hope ofa deferred conversion, and had made his bosom friend of the woman whodenied his Master.

  He loved her--with a love not to be repented of--a love that ran in hisveins and moved his heart, and seemed as much a part of his being asthe nerves and bones and flesh and blood that made him a man. He mightlie in dust and ashes at the foot of the cross, scourge himself todeath with the penitent's whip; but while the heart beat and the braincould think the wicked love would be there; and he would die adoringher, die and perish everlastingly, lost to salvation, cut off fromChrist's compassion, by that unhallowed love.

  There was the agony for him, the believer. To abhor sin, to believein everlasting punishment, and to feel the impossibility of a savingrepentance, to know himself a son of perdition; since what could availthe pangs of remorse for the man who went on sinning, whose whole lifewas coloured by a guilty passion?

  The Divine Teacher's stern denunciation of such sin rang in his ears,as he crouched with folded arms on the stone parapet, alone in thesummer darkness, an outcast from God.

  "He that looketh upon a woman!" On his adulterous heart that sentenceburnt like vitriol upon tender flesh. Only by ceasing to love her couldhe cease to sin; and, looking forward through the long vista of thecoming years, he saw no possibility of change in his guilty heart, nohope of respite from yearning and regret. Six years of repentance forthe sins and follies of his youth; six years of faithful service; sixyears of peace and self-approval; and now behold him thrust outsidethe gate, a soul more lost than in those unregenerate days when theconsciousness of sin was first awakened in his mind, when remorse for ayouthful intrigue, in which he had been the victim and sport of a vilewoman, and for a duel that had ended fatally, first became intolerable.For him, the earnest believer, to whom religion was a terrible reality,the fall from a state of grace meant the loss of that great hopewhich alone can make life worth living, that "hope of eternal life,which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." For himsin unrepented of meant everlasting despair, the pains of hell, thecompanionship of devils.

  He left the bridge, and wandered along the river bank, past his ownhouse, past the Archbishop's Pala
ce, to the dreary marshes betweenLambeth and Battersea--wandered like a man hunted by evil spirits; andit was not till daylight that he turned his steps slowly homeward,dejected and forlorn.

 

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