A DUTY VISIT.
Antonia's appearance at Leicester House was the occasion of a flight of
newspaper paragraphs.
The _St. James's Evening Post_ reminded its readers of the romantic
marriage of a well-known Hibernian nobleman, "which we were the first
to announce to the town, and of which full particulars were given in
our columns; a freak of fancy on the part of the last Baron Kilrush,
amply justified by the dazzling beauty of the young lady who made her
curtsey to the Princess Dowager last week, sponsored by Lady Margaret
Laroche, a connection of the late Lord Kilrush, and, as everybody
knows, a star of the first magnitude in the _beau monde_." Here
followed a description of the lady's personal appearance: her gown of
white tabinet with a running pattern of shamrocks worked in silver, and
the famous Kilrush pearls, which had not been seen for a quarter of a
century.
_Lloyd's_ was more piquant, and had recourse to initials. "It is not
generally known that the lovely young widow who was the cynosure of
neighbouring eyes at St. James's on his Majesty's birthday, began life
in very humble circumstances. Her father, Mr. T----n, was bred for the
Church, but spent his youth as an itinerant tutor to lads of fashion,
and did not prove an ornament to his sacred calling. He brought his
clerical career to a hasty close by an ill-judged indulgence of the
tender passion. His elopement with a buxom wench from a Lincolnshire
homestead would have caused him less trouble had not his natural
gallantry induced him to relieve his sweetheart of the burden of
her father's cash-box, for which mistaken kindness he suffered two
years' seclusion among highwaymen and pickpockets. The beautiful Lady
K----h was educated in the classics and in modern literature by this
clever but unprincipled parent; and she is said to owe an independence
of all religious dogma to the parental training. There is no such
uncompromising infidel as an unfrocked priest."
The _Daily Journal_ had its scraps of information. "A little bird
has told us that the new beauty, whose appearance on the birthday so
fluttered their dovecotes at St. James's Palace, spent her early youth
in third-floor lodgings in a paved court adjoining St. Martin's Lane,
where the young lady and her father drudged for the booksellers. 'Tis
confidently asserted that this lovely _bas-bleu_ had a considerable
share in several comedies and burlettas produced by Mr. Garrick under
the ostensible authorship of her father. 'Tis rarely that genius,
beauty, and wealth are to be found united in a widow of three and
twenty summers. How rich a quarry for our fops and fortune-hunters!"
The _St. James's_ held forth again on the same theme. "Among the
numerous motives which conjecture has put forward for the mysterious
marriage in high life some two years ago--the most interesting
particulars of which we alone were able to supply--the real reason has
been entirely overlooked. Our more intimate knowledge of the _beau
monde_ enables us to hit the right nail on the head. By his deathbed
union with the penniless daughter of a Grub-Street hack, Lord K----
was able to gratify his hatred of the young gentleman who ought to
have been his heir. We are credibly informed that this unfortunate
youth, first cousin of the brilliant but eccentric Irish peer, is now
subsisting on a pittance in a labourer's cottage on a common near
Richmond Park."
This last contribution to the literature of gossip seriously affected
Antonia. She had read all the rest with a sublime indifference.
She had been behind the scenes, and knew how such paragraphs were
concocted--had, indeed, written a good deal of fashionable intelligence
herself, collected by Mr. Thornton sometimes from the chairmen waiting
at street corners, in those summer evening walks with his daughter, or
in the grey autumn nights, when the town had a picturesque air in the
long perspective of oil lamps that looked like strings of topazes hung
upon the darkness. The Grub-Street hack had not thought it beneath him
to converse in an affable humour with a chairman or a running footman,
and so to discover how the most beautiful duchess in England was
spending the evening, how much she lost at faro last night, and who it
was handed her to her chair.
Antonia threw aside the papers with a contemptuous smile. They stabbed
her to the heart when they maligned her dead father; but she was wise
enough to refrain from any attempted refutation of a slander in which,
alas! there might be a grain of truth. Her father was at rest. The
malicious paragraph could not hurt him, and for her own part she had a
virile stoicism which helped her to bear such attacks. She looked back
at her journalistic work, and was thankful to remember that she had
never written anything ill-natured, even when her father had urged her
to give more point to a paragraph, and to insinuate that a lover had
paid the duchess's losses at cards, or that there had been a curious
shuffling of new-born babies in the ducal mansion. Her sprightliest
lines had shone with a lambent flame that hurt nobody.
Her husband's rightful heir starving in a hovel! That was a concrete
fact with which she could cope. But for the motive of that deathbed
bond, she knew better than the hack scribbler; she knew that a
passionate love, baulked and disappointed in life, had triumphed in the
hour of death. He had bound her to himself to the end of her existence,
in the sublime tyranny of that love which had not realized its strength
till too late.
And that he should be supposed to have been actuated by a petty
spite--an old man's hatred of a youthful heir!
"What reptiles these scribblers are!" she thought, "that will sell lies
by the guinea's worth, and think themselves honest if they give full
measure."
She sent for Goodwin.
"You must know all about his lordship's family," she said. "Can you
tell me of any cousin whom he may be said to have disinherited?"
"There is no one who could be rightly called his lordship's heir, my
lady; but there is a young gentleman, a cousin, only son to a sister
of his lordship's father, who may at one time have expected to come
into some of the property, the entail having expired, and there being
no direct heir in existence."
"Had this gentleman offended his lordship?"
"Yes, my lady. He behaved very badly indeed, and his lordship forbade
him the house."
"Was he dissipated--a spendthrift?"
"No, my lady. I don't think his lordship would have taken that so ill
in a fine young man with a wealthy mother. It would have been only
natural for him to be a man of pleasure. But Mr. Stobart's conduct was
very bad indeed. He left the army----"
"A coward?"
"No, my lady, I don't think we can call him that. He was singled out
for his dash and spirit in the retreat at Fontenoy, where he saved the
life of his superior officer at the risk of his own. But soon after
his regiment came home he took up religion, left off powdering his
hair, sold his commission, and gave the money to the building fund for
Wesley's Chapel in the City Road."
"He must be a foolish fellow, I think," said Antonia, who was not
fascinated by this description. "And was his lordship seriously
offended by this conduct?"
"He didn't like the young gentleman turning Methodist, my lady; but
that was not the worst."
"Indeed?"
"Mr. Stobart made a low marriage."
"What? Did he marry a woman of bad character?"
"I don't think there was anything against the young woman's
_character_, my lady; but she was very low, a servant of Mrs.
Stobart's, I believe, and a Methodist. John Wesley's influence was
at the bottom of it all. There's no reckoning the harm those Oxford
Methodists have done in high families. Well, there's Lady Huntingdon!
There's no need to say more than that."
"But how comes this gentleman to be in poor circumstances, as the _St.
James's Post_ states, if his mother is rich?"
"Oh, my lady, the honourable Mrs. Stobart was quite as angry as his
lordship, and she married Sir David Lanigan, an Irish baronet, who
courted her when she was a girl at Kilrush Abbey. Your ladyship would
notice her portrait in the long drawing-room at Kilrush."
"Yes, yes, I remember--a handsome face, with a look of his lordship.
Then you have reason to believe that Mr. Stobart is living in poverty,
as a consequence of his love-match?"
Her cheek crimsoned as she spoke, recalling that bitterest hour of
her life in which Kilrush had told her that he could not marry her.
That inexorable pride--the pride of the name-worshippers--had darkened
this young man's existence, as it had darkened hers. But he, at least,
had shaken off the fetters of caste, and had taken his own road to
happiness.
"Thank you, Goodwin; that is all I want to know," she said.
An hour later she was being driven to Richmond in an open carriage,
with the faithful Sophy seated opposite her, in the dazzling June
sunshine. They stopped at Putney to spend half an hour with Mrs.
Potter, and then drove on to the village of Sheen, and pulled up at a
roadside inn, where Antonia inquired for Mr. Stobart's cottage, and was
agreeably surprised at finding her question promptly answered.
"'Tis about a mile from here, your ladyship," said the landlord,
who had run out of his bar-parlour to wait upon a lady in as fine a
carriage as any that passed his door on a Saturday afternoon, when
court and fashion drove to Richmond to air themselves in the Park and
play cards at modish lodgings on the Green. "'Tis a white cottage
facing the common--the first turning on the left hand will take you to
it; but 'tis a bad road for carriages."
They drove along the high road for about a quarter of a mile, between
market gardens, where the asparagus beds showed green and feathery, and
where the strawberry banks were white with blossom, under the blue sky
of early June. The hedges were full of hawthorn bloom and honeysuckle,
dog-roses and red campion.
"Sure, the country's a sweet place to come to for an afternoon," said
Sophy, as she sniffed the purer air; "but I'm glad we live in London."
The lane was narrow and full of ruts, so Antonia alighted at the
turning and sent Sophy and the carriage back to the inn to wait for
her. Sophy had a volume of a novel in her reticule, and would be able
to amuse herself.
The walk gave Antonia time for quiet thought before she met the man
who might receive her as an enemy. She was going to him with no
high-flown ideas of restitution--of surrendering a fortune that she
knew to be the bequest of love. She had accepted that heritage without
compunction. She had given herself to the dead, and she thought it
no wrong to receive the fortune that the dead had given to her. But
if her husband's kinsman was in poor circumstances, it was her duty
to share her riches with him. She had an instinctive dislike of all
professors of religion; but she could but admire this young man for the
humble marriage which had offended his cousin, and perhaps lost him a
substantial part of his cousin's fortune.
The lane was a long one, between untrimmed hedges that breathed the
delicate perfume of wild flowers, on one side a field of clover, a
strawberry garden on the other. It was a relief to have left the dust
of the high road, and the burden of Sophy's running commentary upon the
houses and carriages and people on their way. Sheen Common lay before
her at last, an undulating expanse carpeted with short sweet turf,
where the lady's-slipper wrought a golden pattern on the greyish green,
and where the yellow bloom of the gorse rose and fell over the hillocky
ground in a dazzling perspective. Larks were singing in the midsummer
blue, and behind the park wall, built when the first Charles was king,
the rooks were calling amidst the darkness of forest trees. Close on
her left hand as she came out of the lane, Antonia saw a cottage which
she took for the labourer's hovel indicated in the _St. James's Evening
Post_. It had been once a pair of cottages, with deeply sloping thatch
and crow-step gables above end walls of red brick; but it was now one
house in a flower-garden of about an acre, surrounded with a hedge of
roses and lavender, inside a low white paling. The plastered porch,
with its broad bench and little square window, was big enough for two
or three people to sit in; the parlour casements were wide and low, and
none of the rooms could have been above seven or eight feet high; but
this humble dwelling, contemplated on the outside, had those charms of
the picturesque and the rustic which are apt to make people forget
that houses are meant to be lived in rather than to be looked at from
over the way.
The garden was prettier than her own old garden at Putney, Tonia
thought. Never had she seen so many flowers in so small a space.
While she stood admiring this little paradise, out of range of the
windows, she was startled by the sound of a voice close by; and then,
for the first time, she became aware of a domestic group under an old
crab-apple tree, which was big enough to spread a shade over a young
man and woman sitting side by side on a garden bench, and a very
juvenile nursemaid kneeling on the grass and supervising the movements
of a crawling baby.
The young man was Mr. Stobart, no doubt; and the girl who sat sewing
diligently, with bent head, and who looked hardly eighteen years of
age, must be his wife; and the baby made the natural third in the
domestic trio, the embodied grace and sanction of a virtuous marriage.
He was reading aloud from "Paradise Lost," the story of Adam and Eve
before the coming of the Tempter. He had a fine baritone voice, and
gave full effect to the music of Milton's verse, reading as a man who
loves the thing he reads. In the restrictions which piety imposed upon
the choice of books, he had been over the same ground much oftener than
a more libertine student would have been; and this may have accounted
for the young wife's appearance of being more interested in the hem of
her baby's petticoat than in Milton's Eve.
"A simpleton," thought Tonia. "'Tis not every man would forfeit wealth
and station for such a wife. But she looks sweet-tempered, and as free
from earthly stain as a sea-nymph."
She went on to the low wooden gate, as white as if it had been painted
yesterday, and rang a primitive kind of bell that hung on the gate-post.
The young woman laid down her sewing, and came to open the gate with
the air of doing the most natural thing in the world; but on perceiving
Antonia's splendour of silver-grey lute-string and plumed hat she
stopped in confusion, dropping a low curtsey before she admitted the
visitor.
Antonia thought her lovely. Those velvety brown eyes set off the
delicacy of her complexion, while the bright auburn of her unpowdered
hair, which fell about her forehead and hung upon her neck in natural
curls, gave a vivid beauty to a face that without brilliant colouring
would have meant very little. She had the exquisite freshness of
creatures that do not think--almost without passions, quite without
mind.
"I think you must be Mrs. Stobart," Tonia said gently. "I have come to
see your husband, if he will be good enough to receive me. I am Lady
Kilrush."
The timid sweetness of Mrs. Stobart's expression changed in a moment,
and an angry red flamed over cheeks and brow.
"Then I'm sure I don't know what can be your ladyship's business here,
unless you have come to crow over us," she said, "for I know you wasn't
invited."
Stobart came to the gate in time to hear his wife's speech.
"Pray, my dear Lucy, let us have no ill-nature," he said, with grave
displeasure, as he opened the gate. "You see, madam, my wife has not
been bred in the school that teaches us how to hide our feelings. I
hope your ladyship will excuse her for being too simple to be polite."
"I am sorry if she or you can think of me as an enemy," said Antonia,
very coldly. She had been startled out of her friendly feeling by Mrs.
Stobart's unexpected attack. "I only knew a few hours ago, from an
insolent paragraph in a newspaper, that there was any one living who
could think himself the worse for my marriage."
"Indeed, madam, I have never blamed you or Providence for that romantic
incident. Will your ladyship sit under our favourite tree, where my
wife and I have been sitting, or would you prefer to be within doors?"
"Oh, the garden by all means. I adore a garden; and yours is the
prettiest for its size I have ever seen, except the rose-garden at
Kilrush Abbey, which I dare swear you know."
"My aunt's garden? Yes. I was just old enough to remember her leading
me by the hand among her rose trees. She died before my fourth
birthday, and I have never seen Kilrush House since her death."
"'Tis vastly at your service, sir, with all it can offer of
accommodation, if ever you and your lady care to occupy it for a
season."
They were moving slowly towards the apple tree as they talked, Lucy
Stobart hanging her head as she crept beside her husband, ashamed of
her shrewish outburst, for which she expected a lecture by-and-by, and
shedding a penitential tear or two behind a corner of her muslin apron.
"We shall not trespass on your ladyship's generosity. We have framed
our lives upon a measure that would make Kilrush House out of the
question."
"We are not rich enough to live in a great house," snapped Lucy,
sinning again in the midst of her repentance.
"Say rather that we have done with the things that go with wealth and
station, and have discovered the happiness that can be found in what
fine people call poverty."
Nursemaid and baby had disappeared from the little lawn. Antonia took
the seat Mr. Stobart indicated on the rustic bench; but her host and
his wife remained standing, Lucy puzzled as to what she ought to do,
George too much troubled in mind to know what he was doing.
"Mrs. Stobart, and you, sir, pray be seated. Let us be as friendly as
we can," pleaded Antonia. "Be sure I came here in a friendly spirit.
Pray be frank with me. I know nothing but what I read in the _St.
James's Evening Post_. Is it true that you were once your cousin's
acknowledged heir?"
"No, madam, it is not true. I was but his lordship's nearest relation."
"And he would have inherited his lordship's fortune if he had not
married me," said Lucy, with irrepressible vehemence. "Sure you know
'twas so, George! And I can never forgive myself for having cost you
a great fortune. And then Lord Kilrush must needs make a much lower
marriage--on his death-bed, to spite you, for _my_ father had never
been----"
Her husband clapped his hand over her lips before she could finish the
sentence. Antonia started up from the bench, pale with indignation.
"Lucy, I am ashamed of you," said George. "Go indoors and play with
your baby. You do not know how to converse with a lady. I beg you to
forgive her, madam, and to think of her as a pettish child, who will
learn better behaviour in time."
"I can forgive much, but not to hear it said that Kilrush had any other
motive than his love for me when he made me his wife. I loved him,
sir--loved him too dearly to suffer that falsehood for an instant. No,
Mrs. Stobart, don't go," as Lucy began to creep away, ashamed of her
misconduct. "You must hear why I came, and what I have to say to your
husband. I came as a friend, and I hoped to find a friendly welcome. I
came to do justice, if justice can be done, but not to apologize for a
marriage which was prompted by love, and love alone."
"Be patient with us, madam, and you may yet find us worthy of your
friendship," said Stobart, gently. "But first of all be assured that we
ask nothing from your generosity. We assert no claim to justice, not
considering ourselves wronged."
"You think differently from your wife, Mr. Stobart."
"Oh, madam, cannot you see that my wife is a wayward child, who has
never learnt to reason? To-night, on her knees at the foot of the
Cross, she will shed penitential tears for her sins of pride and
impatience."
"Pray, sir, do not talk of sin. 'Twas natural, perhaps, that your wife
should think ill of me."
"Oh, madam, 'twas for his sake only that I was angry," protested Lucy,
with streaming eyes. "Satan gets the better of me when I remember that
he was disinherited for marrying me; and I thought you had come here to
triumph over him. But, indeed, I covet nobody's fortune, and am content
with this dear cottage, where I have been happier than I ever was in my
life before."
"Let us be friends, then, Mrs. Stobart," Antonia said, with a
graciousness that completely subjugated the contrite Lucy, whose
murmured reply was inaudible, and who sat gazing at the visitor in a
rapture of admiration.
Never had Lucy's eyes beheld so handsome a woman, or such a hat, with
its black ostrich feathers, clasped at the side by a diamond buckle
that flashed rainbow light in the sunshine. The glancing sheen of the
pale grey gown, the long gloves drawn to the elbow under deep ruffles
of Flemish lace, the diamond cross sparkling between the folds of
Cyprus gauze that veiled the corsage, the _tout-ensemble_ of a fine
lady's toilette, filled Mrs. Stobart with wonder. Wholly unconscious of
the impression she had made on the wife, Antonia addressed herself to
the husband with an earnest countenance.
"I am thankful to find you do not accuse Lord Kilrush of injustice,"
she said. "But as his kinsman, you may naturally have expected to
inherit some part of his wealth; and I therefore beg you to accept a
fourth share of my income, which is reckoned at twenty thousand pounds.
I hope that with five thousand a year your wife will be able to enjoy
all the pleasures that fortune can give."
"Oh, Georgie!" exclaimed Lucy, breathless with a rapturous surprise.
Her husband laid his hand on hers with a caressing touch.
"Hush, my dearest," he said; and then in a graver tone, "Your offer is
as unexpected as it is generous, madam; but I will not take advantage
of an impulse which you might afterwards regret, and of which the world
you live in would question the wisdom. Be sure I do not envy you my
kinsman's fortune. If I ever stood in the place of his heir I lost that
place two years before he died. He told me plainly that he meant to
strike my name out of his will. I hoped for nothing, desired nothing
from him."
"But sure, sir, nobody loves poverty. I have tasted it, and know what
it means; and since I have enjoyed all the luxuries of wealth I own
that it would distress me to go back to the two-pair parlour of which
the evening papers love to remind me."
"True, madam; for in your world pleasure and money are inseparable
ideas. When I left that world--at the call of religion--I renounced
something far dearer to me than fortune. I gave up a soldier's career,
and the hope to serve my country, and write my name upon her register
of honourable deeds. Having made that sacrifice, I have nothing to
lose, except the lives of those I love--nothing to desire for them or
for myself, except that our present happiness may continue."
"But if I assure you that your acceptance of my offer would ease my
conscience----"
"Nay, madam, your conscience may rest easy in the assurance that we are
content----"
"I do not think your wife is content, Mr. Stobart. She received me just
now as an enemy. Let me convince her that I am her friend."
"You can do that in a hundred ways, madam, without making her rich,
which would be to be her enemy in disguise."
"Sure, your ladyship, I was full of sinfulness and pride when I spoke
to you so uncivilly," Lucy said, in a contrite voice. "Mr. Stobart is a
better judge of all serious matters than I am. I should never be clever
if I lived to be a hundred, in spite of the pains he takes to teach me.
And if he thinks we had best be poor, why, so do I; and this house is a
palace compared with the hovel I lived in before he took me away from
my father and mother."
"You hear, Lady Kilrush, my wife and I are of one mind. But to prove
that 'tis for no stubborn pride that I reject your generous offer, I
promise to appeal to your kindness at any hour of need, and, further,
to call upon you once in a way for those charitable works in which
the men I most honour are engaged. There is Mr. Whitefield's American
Orphanage, for example----"
"Oh, command my purse, I pray you, sir. I rejoice in helping the
poor--I who have known poverty. I will send you something for your
orphans to-night. Let me assist all your good works."
"'Tis very generous of your ladyship to help us; for I doubt your own
religious views scarcely tally with those of my friends."
"I have no religious views, Mr. Stobart. I have no religion except the
love of my fellow-creatures."
"Great Heaven, madam, have the undermining influences of a corrupt
society so early sapped your belief in Christ?"
"No, sir, society has not influenced me. I have never been a believer
in Christianity as a creed, though I can admire Jesus of Nazareth as a
philanthropist, and grieve for him as a martyr to the cruelty of man.
I was taught to reason, where other children are taught to believe; to
question and to think for myself, where other children are taught to be
dumb and to stifle thought."
Stobart gazed at her with horror. Mrs. Stobart listened open-mouthed,
astonished at the audacity which could give speech to such opinions.
"Oh, madam, 'tis sad to hear outspoken unbelief from the lips of youth.
I doubt you have suffered the influence of that pernicious writer whose
pen has peopled France with infidels."
"If, sir, you mean Voltaire, you do ill to condemn the apostle of
toleration, to whom you and all other dissenters should be grateful."
"I scorn the championship of an infidel. I am no more a dissenter than
the Wesleys or George Whitefield. I have not ceased to belong to the
Church of England because I follow heaven-born teachers sent to startle
that Church from a century of torpor. _They_ have not ceased to be of
the Church because bishops disapprove their ardour and parish priests
exclude them from their pulpits."
"Oh, sir, I doubt not that you and those gentlemen are honest in your
convictions. 'Tis my misfortune, perhaps, that I cannot think as you
do."
"If you would condescend to hear those inspired preachers you would not
long walk in the darkness that now encompasses you; for sure, madam,
God meant you to be among the children of light, one of His elect,
awaiting but His appointed hour for your redemption. Oh, after that new
birth, how you will hate the life that lies behind! With what tears you
will atone for your unbelief!"
His earnestness startled her. His strong voice trembled, his dark
grey eyes were clouded with tears. Could any man so concern himself
about the spiritual welfare of a stranger? She had grown up with a
deep-rooted prejudice against professing Christians. She expected
nothing from religious people but harshness and injustice, self-esteem
and arrogance, masked under an assumption of humility. This man talked
the jargon she hated, but she could not doubt his sincerity.
"Alas! madam, my heart aches for you, when I consider the peril of your
soul. With youth and beauty, wealth, the world's esteem--all Satan's
choicest lures--what safeguard, what defence have you?"
"Moi!" she answered, rising suddenly, and looking proud defiance at
him, remembering that heroic monosyllable in Corneille's "Medea."
"Oh, sir, it is on ourselves--on the light within, not the God in the
sky--we must depend in the conflict between right and wrong. Do you
think a creed can help a man in temptation, or that the Thirty-Nine
Articles ever saved a sinner from falling?"
He was silent, lost in admiration at so much spirit and beauty, such
boldness and pride. His own ideal of womanly grace was gentleness,
obedience, an amiable nullity; but he must needs own the triumphant
charms of this bold disputant, who was not afraid to confess an impiety
that shocked him. He had known many Deists among his own sex; but the
wickedest women he had met in his unregenerate days had been like the
devils that believe and tremble.
"I have stayed over long," said Antonia, resuming the easy tone of
trivial conversation, "and I have my woman waiting for me at the inn.
Good day to you, Mrs. Stobart, and pray remember we are to be friends.
I hope your husband will bring you to dine with me in St. James's
Square."
"I know not if it would be wise to accept your ladyship's polite
invitation," Stobart answered, "though we are grateful for the kindness
that inspires it. I have an inward assurance that I am safest in
keeping aloof from the world I once loved too well. My life here holds
all that is good for my soul--all that my heart can desire."
"But is your religion but a passive piety, sir? Do you follow the
doctrine of the Moravians, who abjure all active righteousness, and
wait in stillness for the coming of faith? Do you do nothing for
Christianity?"
"Indeed, madam, he works like a slave in doing good," protested
Lucy, eagerly. "Mr. Wesley has given him a mission among the poorest
wretches at Lambeth. He has set up a dispensary there, and schools for
the children, and a night class for grown men. He toils among them
for many hours three or four days a week. I tremble lest he should
take some dreadful fever, and come home to me only to die. He goes
to the prisons, and reads to the condemned creatures, and comes home
broken-hearted at the cruelty of the law, at the sinfulness of mankind.
What does he do for religion? He gives his life for it--almost as his
Redeemer did!"
"You teach me to honour him, madam, and to honour you for so generously
defending him against my impertinence. Pray forgive me, and you too,
Mr. Stobart. I have allowed myself great freedom of speech; and if you
do not return my visit I shall be sure you are offended."
"We shall not suffer you to think that, madam," Stobart answered
gravely.
He insisted on escorting her to her carriage, and in the walk of
nearly a mile they had time for conversation. He suffered himself for
that brief span to acknowledge the existence of mundane things, and
talked of Handel's oratorios, Richardson's novels, and even of Garrick
and Shakespeare. He handed Lady Kilrush to her carriage, and saw her
drive away from the inn door, a radiant vision in the afternoon light,
before he went back to the cottage, and the adoring young wife, and the
yearling baby, and a dish of tea, and the story of Eve and the Serpent.
The next day's post brought him an enclosure of two bank bills for five
hundred pounds each, and one line in a strong and somewhat masculine
penmanship.
"For your poor of Lambeth, and for Mr. Whitefield's orphans.
"ANTONIA KILRUSH."