IN ST. JAMES'S SQUARE.
On the afternoon when she was expecting Mr. and Mrs. Stobart, Lady
Kilrush was surprised by a visit from an old friend whom she had almost
forgotten. Her chair had just brought her from a round of visits, and
she had not yet removed her hat and cloak, which Sophy was waiting to
take from her, being ever jealous of her lady's French maid, when a
visitor was announced--
"Mrs. Granger."
The room was the fourth and smallest of a suite of reception-rooms,
which occupied the whole of the first floor, leaving space only for the
wide central staircase, surrounded by a gallery that was a favourite
resort of visitors at a crowded assembly, as a vantage-ground from
which they could watch arrivals, look out for their particular friends,
and criticize "clothes."
The room was half in dusk, and Antonia wondered who the little young
lady in the cherry-coloured hood and satin petticoat of the same bright
hue could be. It was not a colour favoured by people of taste at that
time, and the little plump person in the high hoop had not the air of
the Portland set, that _recherché_ group of women among whom Antonia
had been received on a friendly footing, on the strength of her own
charms and Lady Peggy's popularity. Lady Peggy was of all the sets,
best and worst, and exercised a commanding influence over all.
"My dear creature, sure you won't pretend you've forgot me?" cried the
little woman, with broad, outspoken speech, after her first mincing
salutation had been acknowledged by a stately curtsey and a "Your
humble servant, madam."
"Why, 'tis Patty!" exclaimed Antonia, holding out both her hands.
"Yes, 'tis Patty--Mrs. Granger. Sure you remember old General Granger
that you used to jeer at. I have been married to him over a year, and
we have handsome lodgings in Leicester Square, and I keep my chair; and
if he outlives his two elder brothers and three nephews, I shall be a
peeress."
"My dear Patty, I am gladder than I can say to see your kind little
face again. Sit down, child. You must stop and dine with me. I have
some cousins coming to dinner, and some company afterwards."
"Well, I'm glad you're glad. I thought you was too proud to remember
me, since you didn't send me a card for your ball t'other night, though
all London was there."
"I did not know what had become of you. I have asked ever so many
people who knew the theatres, and no one could say where Miss Lester
had gone since her name vanished from the playbills."
"The General is a strait-laced old fool!" said Patty. "He doesn't like
people to know I was an actress, though I flatter myself that nobody
can hear me speak or see me curtsey without discovering it. There's an
air of high comedy that nobody can mistake. Sure 'tis in the hope of
catching it that fine ladies take up Kitty Clive."
"You mustn't call your husband a fool, Patty, especially if he's kind
to you."
"Oh, he's kind enough, but he's very troublesome with his pussy-cats,
and Minettes, and nonsense; though, to be sure, Minette is a prettier
name than Martha, and genteeler than Patty. And he's very close with
his money. I might have my coach as well as my chair if he wasn't a
miser. I sometimes think I was a simpleton to leave the stage for a
husband of seventy. Sure I might have been another Mrs. Cibber."
"You had been acting seven years, Patty. You gave your genius a fair
chance."
"Pshaw, there's some that don't begin to hit the taste of the town till
they've been at it three times seven. Look at old Colley, for instance.
The managers kept him down half a lifetime. When I look at this house
and think of my two parlours I feel I was a fool to marry the General.
But there never was such a romance as your marriage."
"My marriage was a tragedy, Patty!"
"Ah, but you've got the comedy now. This fine house, and your hall
porter--I never laid eyes on such a pompous creature--and your powdered
footmen. You're a lucky devil, Tonia."
Antonia did not reprove her, being somewhat troubled in mind at the
doubt of her own wisdom in bringing this free-and-easy young person in
company with George Stobart and his wife. In her gladness at meeting
the friend of her girlhood she had forgotten how strange such a mixture
would be.
"If 'tis not convenient to dine with me to-day, Patty, I shall be just
as pleased to see you to-morrow, or the first day that would suit you."
"Your ladyship--ladyship! oh, lord, ain't it droll?--your ladyship is
vastly obleeging; but I came to stay if you'd have me. Granger is gone
to Hounslow to dine with his old regiment, and I'm my own woman till
ten o'clock. 'Twould be civil of you if you'd bid one of your footmen
tell my chairmen to fetch me at a quarter to ten, and then we can sit
by the fire and talk over old times. This is Mrs. Potter's girl, I
doubt, she that waited upon us once when I took a dish of tea with you.
How d'ye do, miss?"--holding out condescending finger-tips to Sophy,
who had stood gazing at her since her entrance.
"Yes, this is Miss Potter, my friend and companion. You can take my hat
and Mrs. Granger's hood, Sophy, and come back when Mr. and Mrs. Stobart
are here."
When Sophy was gone, Lady Kilrush took Patty's plump cheeks between two
caressing hands and contemplated her with a smile.
"You are as pretty as ever, child," she said, with an elder-sister air,
as if she, instead of Patty, had been the senior by near a decade; "and
I am glad to think you have left the playhouse and all its perils for a
comfortable home with an honest man who loves you. Nay, I think you are
prettier than you were in Covent Garden. The quiet life has freshened
your looks. But you shouldn't wear cherry colour."
"Because of my red hair?"
"Because it is a cit's wife's colour, or a vain old woman's that wants
to look young. 'Tis not the mode, Patty."
"My petticoat cost a pound a yard," said Patty, ruefully. "I thought
the General would kill me when he saw the bill."
"Oh, 'tis pretty enough, and suits you well enough, _chérie_. I was
half in jest. I have a kind friend who lectures me upon all such
trifles, and so I thought I'd lecture you. And, my dearest Patty, as
the cousin that's to dine with us is a very serious person, I should
take it kindly of you not to talk of the playhouse, nor to abuse your
husband."
"I hope I know how to behave in company," answered Patty, slightly
huffed; and on Mr. and Mrs. Stobart being announced the next moment,
she assumed a mincing stateliness which lasted the whole evening.
Stobart thought her an appalling personage, in spite of her reticence.
Her cherry satin bodice was cut very low, and her ample bosom was
spread with pearls and crosses like a jeweller's show-case. She made
up for a paucity of diamonds by the size of her topazes and the
profusion of her amethysts, and her Bristol paste buckles would have
been big enough for the tallest of the Prussian king's grenadiers. Lucy
Stobart, in her pearl-grey silk, made with a quaker-like simplicity,
her pure complexion, golden-brown curls and slender shape, seemed all
the lovelier by the contrast of Mrs. Granger's florid charms; but poor
Patty behaved herself with an admirable reserve, and uttered no word
that could offend.
Lucy looked at everything in a wondering rapture--the pictures, the
marble busts on ebony and ormolu pedestals, the miniatures and jewels
and toys scattered on tables, the glass cabinets displaying the most
exquisite porcelain, the China monsters standing about the carpet, the
confusion of beautiful objects which met her gaze on every side almost
bewildered her. She looked about her like a child at a fair.
"And does your ladyship really live in this house?" she asked
innocently. "'Tis not like a house to live in."
"Do you think it should he put under a glass case, or buried under
burning ashes like Herculaneum, so that it may be found perfect and
undisturbed two thousand years after we are all dead?" said Stobart,
smiling at her.
He was pleased with her fresh young prettiness, which was not disgraced
even by Antonia's imperial charms.
"You see, madam, how foolish I have been to indulge my wife with a
sight of splendours which lie so far away from our lives," he said to
Antonia, who accompanied them through the suite of drawing-rooms where
clusters of candles had just been lighted in sconces on the walls, to
show them the famous Gobelins tapestries that had once belonged to
Madame de Montespan.
"I doubt, sir, Mrs. Stobart is too happy in her rural life ever to
sigh for a large London house and its obligation to live in company,"
answered Antonia.
"I love our cottage dearly when my husband is at home, madam; but I
have to spend weeks and months with no companion but my baby son, who
can say but four words yet, while Mr. Stobart is wandering about the
country with Mr. Wesley, and having sticks and stones aimed at him
sometimes in the midst of his sermons. If your ladyship would persuade
him to leave off field preaching I should be a happy woman."
"Nay, madam, I cannot come between a man and his conscience, however
much our opinions may differ; and if Mr. Stobart thinks his sermons do
good----"
"'Tis a question of living in light or darkness, madam. Those who carry
the lamp John Wesley lighted know too well what need there is of their
labours."
"You go among great sinners?"
"We go among the untaught savages of a civilized country, madam. If
there is need of God's word anywhere upon this earth, it is needed
where we go. Thousands of awakened souls answer for the usefulness of
our labours."
"And you are content to pass your life in such work? You have not taken
it up for a year or so, to abandon it when the fever of enthusiasm
cools?"
"I have no such fever, madam. And to what should I go back if I took
my hand from the plough? I have renounced the profession I loved, and
have forfeited my mother's affection. She was my only near relation.
My wife and I stand alone in the world; we have no friend but God, no
profession but to serve Him."
"I wonder you do not go into the Church."
"The Church that has turned a cold shoulder upon Wesley and Whitefield
is no church for me. I can do more good as a free man."
The door was flung open as the clock struck four, and Lady Margaret
Laroche came fluttering in, almost before the butler could announce her.
"My matchless one, will you give me some dinner?" she demanded gaily.
"I have been shopping in the city, hunting for feathers for my screen,
and I know your hour. But I forgot you had visitors. Pray make us
acquainted."
"My cousin, Mr. Stobart, Mrs. Stobart, Mrs. Granger." Lady Peggy sank
to the floor in a curtsey, smiled benignantly at Lucy, and put up her
glass to stare disapprovingly at Patty's cherry-coloured bodice.
Dinner was announced, and they went downstairs to that spacious
dining-room, which had been so gloomy an apartment when Lord Kilrush
dined there in his later years, generally alone. The room had seen
wilder feasts than any that Lady Kilrush was likely to give there,
when her late husband was in his pride of youth and folly, the boldest
rake-hell in London.
The conversation at dinner was confined to Lady Margaret, Mr. Stobart,
and Antonia; for Lucy had no more idea of talking than if she had been
in church, and Mrs. Granger only opened her mouth when obliged by the
business of the table, where two courses of eight dishes succeeded each
other in the ponderous magnificence of silver and the substantiality
of mock-turtle soup, turkey and chine, chicken pie, boiled rabbits,
cod and oyster sauce, veal and ham, larded pheasants, with jellies and
puddings, a bill of fare which, in its piling of Pelion upon Ossa,
would be more likely to excite disgust than appetite in the modern
_gourmet_. But in spite of such travelled wits as Bolingbroke, Walpole,
Chesterfield, and Carteret, the antique Anglo-Saxon _menu_ still
obtained when George II. was king.
"You are the first Methodist I have ever dined with," said Lady Peggy,
keenly interested in a new specimen of the varieties of mankind, "so I
hope you will tell me all about this religious revival which has made
such a stir among the lower classes, and sent Lady Huntingdon out of
her wits."
"On my honour, madam, if but half the women of fashion in London were
as sane as that noble lady, society would be in a much better way than
it is."
"Oh, I grant you we have mad women enough. Nearly all the clever ones
lean that way. But I doubt your religious mania is the worst; and a
woman must be far gone who fills her house with a mixed rabble of
crazy nobility and converted bricklayers. I am told Lady Huntingdon
recognizes no distinctions of class among her followers."
"Nay, there you are wrong, Lady Peggy," cried Antonia, "for Mr.
Whitefield preaches to the quality in her ladyship's drawing-room, but
goes down to her kitchen to convert the rabble."
"Lady Huntingdon models her life upon the precepts of her Redeemer,
madam," said Stobart, ignoring this interruption. "I hope you do not
consider that an evidence of lunacy."
"There is a way of doing things, Mr. Stobart. God forbid I should blame
anybody for being kind and condescending to the poor."
"Christians never condescend, madam. They have too acute a sense of
their own lowness to consider any of their fellow-creatures beneath
them. They are no more capable of condescending towards each other than
the worms have that crawl in the same furrow."
"Ah, I see these Oxford Methodists have got you in their net. Well,
sir, I admire an enthusiast, even if he is mistaken. Everybody in
London is so much of a pattern that there are seasons when the wretch
who fired the Ephesian dome would be a welcome figure in company--since
any enthusiasm, right or wrong, is better than perpetual flatness."
"Lady Margaret has so active a mind that she tires of things sooner
than most of us," said Antonia, smiling at the lively lady, whose
hazel eyes twinkled almost as brightly as the few choice diamonds that
sparkled in the folds of her Brussels neckerchief.
"I confess to being sick of feather-work and shell-work, and the women
who can think of nothing else. And even the musical fanatics weary me
with their everlasting babble about Handel and the Italian singers.
There is not a spark of mind among the whole army of _conoscenti_.
With a month's labour I'd teach the inhabitants of a parrot-house to
jabber the same flummery."
And then Lady Peggy turned to Mr. Stobart and made him talk about his
Methodists, as she called them, and listened with intelligent interest,
and gave him no offence by her replies.
"Our cousin is a very pretty fellow, and the wife has not an ill
figure," she said to Antonia after dinner, in a corner of the inner
drawing-room, while Mrs. Stobart and Mrs. Granger sat side by side in
the great saloon, looking at a portfolio of Italian prints; "but how,
in the name of all that's odious, did you come by that cherry-coloured
person?"
"She is my old friend, an actress at Drury Lane, but now retired from
the stage and prosperously married."
"The creature has a pretty little face, but her clothes are execrable,
and then the audacity of her shoulders! Such nakedness can only be
suffered in a woman of the highest mode. Indecency with an ill-cut gown
is unpardonable. Don't let her cross your threshold again, child."
"Dear Lady Peggy, you are too good a friend for me to disoblige you;
but I will never be uncivil to one who was kind when I was poor."
"Well, well, you are a fine pig-headed creature, but if you must have
such a friend, pray let your dressmaker clothe her. 'Twill cost you
less than you will lose of credit by her appearance. Remember 'tis by
your women friends you will be judged. 'Tis of little consequence what
notorious gamblers and rakes pass in and out of your great assemblies,
so long as they are men of fashion; but your women must be of the
highest quality for birth, clothes, and breeding."
'Twas six o'clock, and a bevy of footmen were busied in setting out
a tea and coffee table with Indian porcelain and silver urn, and the
rooms began to be picturesquely sprinkled with elegant figures, like a
canvas of Watteau's. It was a prettier scene than one of her ladyship's
great assemblies, for the fine furniture, the priceless china and other
ornaments were undisturbed, and there was enough space and atmosphere
for people to admire the rooms and each other.
The Duchess of Portland and her chosen friend Mrs. Delany came sailing
in, sparkling with gaiety, and tenderly embracing their matchless
Orinda. Everybody of mark in those days had a nickname, and Mrs.
Delany, who had a genius for finding nonsense names, had hit upon this
one for Lady Kilrush; not because she was a poetess like the original
Orinda, but because the epithet "matchless" seemed appropriate to so
perfect a beauty and twenty thousand a year.
George Stobart stood in the curtained embrasure of a window,
contemplating this elegant circle amidst which Antonia moved like a
goddess, the loveliest where all had some claim to beauty, peerless
among the _élite_ of womankind. Her grace, her ease, her dignity would
have become a throne, but every charm was natural, and a part of
herself; not a modish demeanour acquired by an imitative faculty--the
surface gloss of the low-born woman apt to mimic her betters. He could
not withhold his admiration from charms that all the world admired,
but the extravagance of the fashionable toilette disgusted him, and
he looked with angry scorn at brocades of dazzling hues interwoven
with gold and silver; court gowns of such elaborate decoration that a
Spitalfields weaver might have worked half a lifetime upon a fabric
where trees and flowers, garlands and classic temples, lakes and
mountains were depicted in their natural colours on a ground of gold.
He had been living among such people a few years ago, and had never
questioned their right so to squander money; or, casually reckoning the
cost of a woman's gala dress, or the wax candles burnt at a ball, he
had approved such expenditure as a virtue in the rich, since it must
needs be good for trade. To-night as he stood aloof, watching those
radiant figures, his imagination conjured up the vision of an alley in
which he had spent his morning hours, going from house to house, with
a famished crowd hanging on his footsteps, a scene of sordid misery he
could not remember without a shudder. Oh, those hungry faces, those
gaunt and spectral forms, skeletons upon which the filthy rags hung
loose; those faces of women that had once been fair, before vice,
want, and the small-pox disfigured them; those villainous faces of men
who had spent half their lives in jail, of women who had spent all
their womanhood in infamy, and, mixed with these, the faces of little
children still unmarked by the brand of sin, children whom he longed
to gather up in his arms and carry out of that hell upon earth, had
there been any refuge for such! His heart sickened as he looked at the
splendour of clothes and jewels, pictures, statues, curios, and thought
how many of God's creatures might be plucked from the furnace and set
on the highway to heaven for the cost of all that finery.
He was not altogether a stranger in that scene, for he saw several old
acquaintances among the company, but he felt himself out of touch with
them, and tried to escape all greetings and inquiries. And later, when
the tables had been opened, and half the assembly were seated at whist
or commerce, while the other half pretended to listen to a _pot-pourri_
from Handel's "Semele," arranged for fiddles and harpsichord, which was
being performed in the saloon, he went to the inmost room where Lucy
was sitting solitary beside the deserted tea-table.
"Come, child," he said curtly, "we have had enough of this. 'Tis a
pleasure that leaves an ill taste in the mouth."
His wife rose with alacrity. She had crept away from the music-room,
dazzled by the splendour of the scene, and too shy to remain among
such magnificent people, who looked at her with a bland wonder through
jewelled eye-glasses.
"I think there is to be a supper," she said hesitatingly.
"Do you wish to stay for it?"
"Nay, 'tis as you please."
"I have no pleasure but to escape from this herd."
Lucy saw that something had vexed him, and went hungry to bed, having
been too much embarrassed by the unaccustomed attentions of splendid
beings in livery to eat a good dinner.
* * * * *
There was nobody in the dining-room when Mr. and Mrs. Stobart went
to breakfast at nine o'clock next morning. George, who had slept
little, had been steeping himself in a grey fog in St. James's Park
since eight; but Lucy had found it more difficult to dress herself,
encumbered by the officious assistance of one of Antonia's women, than
unaided in her own little bedchamber at Sheen.
"Her ladyship takes her chocolate in her dressing-room," the butler
informed Mr. Stobart, "and desires that you and your lady will
breakfast at your own hour," whereupon George and his wife seated
themselves in the magnificent solitude of the dining-room, and ate
moderately of a meal almost as abundant as the previous day's dinner,
for what was less of substance upon the table was balanced by the cold
joints, pies, and poultry of the "regalia," or sideboard display.
Lucy returned to her room directly after breakfast to pack her trunk,
or rather to look on ruefully while her ladyship's woman packed it.
Happily, all her garments were neat and in good condition, although of
a quaker-like plainness.
George sat in the library, waiting till his wife should be ready for
departure, and opened one book after another in a strange inability to
fix his attention upon anything. How well he remembered that room, and
his last interview with his cousin! This was the table on which Kilrush
had struck his clenched fist, when he swore that not to secure a life
of bliss would he marry beneath his rank. The mystery of his passionate
words, his violent gesture, was clear enough now. To his pride of
birth, to a foolish reverence for trivial things, he had sacrificed
his earthly happiness. To the man who esteemed all things small in
comparison with life eternal it seemed a paltry renunciation; yet there
had been a kind of grandeur in it, a Roman stoicism that could suffer
for an idea. And now that George Stobart knew the woman his cousin had
loved, her charm, her beauty, he could better understand the pangs of
unsatisfied love, the conflict between passion and pride.
There were hot-house flowers in a Nankin bowl on the table, and a fire
of coal and logs burnt merrily in the wide basket grate. The room had a
far more cheerful aspect on this November morning than on that sultry
summer day, four years ago.
On a side table by the fireplace Stobart noticed a pile of books richly
bound in crimson morocco--the newest edition of Voltaire.
"She reads and loves that arch mocker still, cherishes a writer who
would laugh away her hope of heaven, her belief in the Physician of
souls. Beset with temptation, the cynosure of profligates, she rejects
the only rock that stands firm and high, a sure refuge when the waves
of passion sweep over the drowning soul."
He remembered the world he lived in five years ago, a world that seemed
as far away as if those years had been centuries. He knew that of the
men who surrounded Lady Kilrush with the stately adulation courtiers
offer to queens there was scarce one who was not at heart a seducer,
who would not profit by the first hint of human weakness in their
goddess. And she was alone, motherless, sisterless, without a friend of
her own blood, alone among envious women and unprincipled men.
"Of all those fine gentlemen who prate of honour, and would rather
commit murder than submit to a trumpery impertinence, I doubt if there
is one who would scruple to act unfairly by a woman, or who would hold
himself bound by the impassioned vows that cajoled her into sin," he
thought.
He looked into the crimson-bound octavos, tossing them aside one by
one. They were not all of them deadly, but the poison was there; in
those satirical romances, in those "Questions sur l'Encyclopédie," in
those notes upon ancient history, on page after page he might have
found the same deadly mockery, the same insidious war against the
Christian faith, _l'Infâme_.
The door was flung open by a footman, and Antonia appeared before
him, radiant in the freshness of her morning beauty, unspoilt by
eighteenth-century washes and pigments. She was dressed for walking,
in a sea-green lute-string and a pink gauze hat, her elbow-sleeves and
the bosom of her gown ruffled with the same pale pink, and she wore
long loose straw-coloured Saxony gloves, wrinkled here and there from
wrist to elbow. Her only jewels were diamond solitaire ear-rings and
a diamond brooch with a pear-shaped pearl pendant, one of the famous
Kilrush pearls, from the treasures of the Indian merchant, the spoil of
kings and rajahs.
They shook hands, and she hoped he and Mrs. Stobart had breakfasted
well.
"I take my own breakfast in my dressing-room with a book," she said
apologetically, "because that is the only hour I can feel sure of being
alone. Morning visits begin so early. I am deep in 'Sir Charles.'
Incomparable man!"
"'Sir Charles?'" he faltered. "Oh, I understand. You are reading
Richardson's new novel--a tedious, interminable book, I take it."
"Tedious! I tremble for the day when I finish it. The world will seem
empty when I bid Harriet and Clementina farewell. But I shall return
again and again to those dear creatures. I wish myself a bad memory for
their sakes."
"Oh, madam, to be thus concerned about the flimsy creations of an old
printer's idle brain!"
"Idle! Do you call genius idle? There was never another Richardson. I
fear there never will be. A hundred years hence women will weep for
Clarissa, and men will model themselves upon Grandison."
"It saddens me, madam, to see you as enthusiastic about a paltry
fiction as I would have you about the truths of the gospel. And I
see with pain that you still cherish the works of the most notorious
blasphemer in Europe."
"The man who stands up like little David against the Goliath of
intolerance; the man who has rescued the Calas family from undeserved
infamy, cleared the name of that unhappy victim of a persecuting
priesthood, condemned, not because it was clear that he was a murderer,
but because it was certain that he was a Protestant."
"I own, madam, that in his fight for a dead man's honour, Monsieur
de Voltaire acted handsomely. I am sorry that he who did so much for
the love of his neighbour should spurn the gospel which instils that
virtue."
"Voltaire loved his neighbour without being taught, or say rather that
he can accept all that his reason approves in the teaching of Jesus of
Nazareth, while he rejects the traditions of the Roman Church."
"Nay, did he stop _there_ I were with him heart and soul. But he does
more. He turns the Gospel light to darkness. Would to God, madam, that
you could find a wiser guide for your footsteps through a world where
Satan has spread his worst snares in the fairest places."
"Mr. Stobart," she said, looking at him gravely, her violet eyes
darkened to black under the rosy shadow of her hat, "I sometimes wish I
could believe in Christ the Saviour; but I would not if I must believe
also in Satan. Let us argue no more upon theology; I only shock you.
My coach is at the door, and I want to take Mrs. Stobart to an auction
where I believe she will see the finest collection of Nankin monsters
and willow-pattern tea-things that China has sent us since last winter.
'Tis the first sale of the season, and all the world will be there, and
twenty who go to stare and chatter for one who means to buy."
"Your ladyship is vastly kind, but my wife and I must travel by the
Richmond coach, which leaves the Golden Cross at noon. I have to thank
you in her name and my own for your kind hospitality."
"Oh, sir, don't thank me. Only promise that you will come to see me
again, and often. We will not talk about serious things, lest we should
quarrel."
"Madam, if I come into this house again we must talk of serious things.
Can I pretend to be your friend, see you living without God in the
world--I who believe in His judgments as I believe in His mercies--and
not try to save a beautiful soul that I see hovering above the pit of
hell? Can I be your friend, and hold my peace?"
"Nay, sir, leave my soul to your God. If He is all you believe, He will
not let me perish."
"If you are obstinate and deny Him He will cast you out. He has given
you talents for which you have to render an account, intellect, force
of will, wealth, and the power that goes with it. I will come to this
house no more to see you wasting yourself upon insipid amusements,
listening to idle flatteries, smiling upon sybarites and fops, moving
from one to another, false alike to all, since all are your inferiors,
and you can esteem none of them. Your coquetries, your friendships are
alike hollow, as artificial as your swooning curtsey, taught by Serise,
the dancing-master."
"Oh, sir, are all the Oxford Methodists as rude as you?"
"Forgive me, madam. I cannot stoop to that smooth lying that goes by
the name of politeness. 'Now, now is the accepted time, now is the
day of salvation.' My heart yearns to snatch a sinner from doom. Five
years ago I should have been among your admirers, should have burnt the
incense of vain adulation before you, as at the shrine of a goddess,
should have been made happy with a smile, ineffably blessed by a civil
word. But I have lived aloof from your _beau monde_, and I come back to
discover what a Sodom it is. The company I once loved fills me with
disgust and loathing. I see the flames of Tophet behind your galaxy
of wax candles, the rags of lost sinners under your gold and silver
brocade. I will come here no more."
He moved towards the door, she following him, holding out both her
hands.
"Mr. Stobart, you make life a tragedy. I protest that some of my
friends in gold and silver brocade are as good Christians as even your
kindness could desire me to be. They are more fortunate than I am in
never having been taught to question the creed that satisfied their
fathers and grandfathers. I sometimes wish I had less of the doubting
spirit. But pray do not let theological differences part us. You and
your wife are a kind of relations, for you are of my dear husband's
blood; I can never forget that. Come, sir, let us be reasonable," she
exclaimed, seating herself at the table, and motioning him to the
opposite chair.
She was sitting where Kilrush had sat during that last interview with
his kinsman, in the same high-backed chair, the bright colouring of her
face and hat shining against a background of black horsehair.
"What do you want me to do? Of what sins am I to repent?" she asked,
smiling at him. "I try to help my fellow-creatures, to be honest and
truthful and kind. What more can I do?"
"Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor."
"I cannot do that. I think I have a right to be happy. Fate has flung
riches into my lap; and I love the things that money buys--this house,
foreign travel, ease and splendour, pictures, music, the friends that
wealth and station have brought round me. I love to mix with the salt
of the earth. And you want me to renounce all these things, and to live
as Jesus of Nazareth lived--Jesus, the Son of Joseph the carpenter."
"Jesus, the Son of God, who so lived His brief life on earth to be for
all mankind an example."
"And are we all to be peasants?"
"Believe me, madam, there is only one perfect form of the Christian
life, and that is the imitation of Christ."
"You would make this a hateful world if you had your way, Mr. Stobart."
"I would make it a Christian world if I could, Lady Kilrush."
"Well, sir, let me help you with your poor. I should like to do
that, though I do not mean to sell this house, or the jewels that my
husband's grandfather brought from the East Indies. I can spare a good
deal for almsgiving, and yet sparkle at St. James's. Take me to see
your poor people at Lambeth. Bring their sorrows nearer to my heart. I
know I am leading a foolish, idle life, made up of gratified vanities
and futile fevers, but 'tis such a pleasant life. I had my day of
drudgery and petty cares, the struggle to make one shilling go as far
as five, and my heart dances for joy sometimes among the pleasures
and splendours in which I move to-day. But be sure I have a heart to
pity the suffering. Let me go with you to Lambeth. I will buy no china
dragons to-day; and the money I put in my purse to waste on toys shall
be given to your poor. Take me to them to-day. You can go back to Sheen
by a later coach."
He refused at first, protesting that the places to which he went were
no fitting scenes for her. She would have to confront vice as well as
poverty--revolting sights, hideous language, Lazarus with his sores,
and a blaspheming Lazarus--things odious and things terrible.
"I am not afraid," she answered. "If there are such things we ought to
know of them. I do know that vice and sin exist. I am not an ignorant
girl. I was not born in the purple."
She was impetuous, resolute, insistent, and she overruled all his
objections.
"You will be sorry that I let you have your way," he said at last, "and
I am foolish so to humour a fine lady's whim."
"I am not a fine lady to-day. There is more than one side to my
character."
"If you mean to come with me, you had best put on a plainer gown."
"I have none plainer than this. 'Tis no matter if I spoil it, for I am
tired of the colour. Oh, here is Mrs. Stobart," she cried, as a servant
ushered in Lucy, who entered timidly, looking for her husband.
"Your ladyship's servant," she murmured with a curtsey. "Is it time for
us to go home, George?"
"Time for me to take you to the coach, Lucy. I shall spend the day
among my people."
"And I am to go home alone," his wife said ruefully.
"I shall be with you by tea-time, and you will have your boy and a
world of household cares to engage you till then."
She brightened at this, and smiled at him.
"I'll warrant Hannah will not have dusted the parlour," she said. "Oh,
madam, we have such pretty mahogany furniture, and I do love to keep it
bright. There's nothing like elbow-grease for a mahogany table."
"I know that by experience, child. I have used it myself," Antonia
answered gaily.
She was pleased and excited at the idea of a plunge into the mysteries
of outcast London. She had been poor herself, but had known only the
shabby genteel poverty which keeps shoes to its feet and a weathertight
roof over its head. With want and rags and filth she had never come in
contact save in her brief glimpse of the Irish and English towns at
Limerick; and looking back upon that experience of a brain overwrought
with grief, it seemed to her like a fever-dream. To-day she would go
among the abodes of misery with a mind quick to see and understand.
Surely, surely she could do her part in the duty that the rich owe the
poor without selling all that she had, without abrogating one iota
of the sumptuous surroundings so dear to her romantic temper, to her
innate love of the beautiful.
She kissed Mrs. Stobart at parting, and promised to visit her at Sheen
the first day she was free of engagements.
George found her chariot at the door when he came back from despatching
his wife in the Richmond stage.
"Come, come," she said, "let us hasten to your poor wretches. I am
dying to give them the guineas I meant for my monsters."
"Faith, madam, you will find monsters enough where we are going, but
not such as a fine lady could display on her china cupboard."
Mr. Stobart stopped the carriage on the south side of Westminster
Bridge.
"If you are not averse to walking some little distance, it might be
well to send your carriage home," he said. "I can take you back to your
house in a hackney coach;" and on this the chariot was dismissed.
"You shall not go a yard out of your way on my account," she said. "I
am not afraid of going about alone. The great ladies I know would swoon
if they found themselves in a London street unattended; but I am not
like them."
He gave her his arm, and they threaded their way through a labyrinth
of streets and alleys that lay between the Thames and the waste spaces
of Lambeth Marsh, a dreary region where the water lay in stagnant
pools, receptacles for all unconsidered filth, exhaling putrid fever.
Here and there above the forest of chimneys and chance medley of
roofs and gables there rose the bulk of a pottery, for this was the
chosen place of the potter's art; but for the rest the desolate region
between Stangate and the New Cut was given over to poverty and crime.
Fine old houses that had once stood in the midst of fair gardens had
been divided into miserable tenements, and swarmed like anthills with
half-starved humanity; alleys so narrow that the sunshine rarely
visited them, covered and crowded the old garden ground; four-storied
houses, built with a supreme neglect of such trifles as light and air,
overshadowed the low hovels that had once been rustic cottages smiling
across modest flower-gardens.
Mr. Stobart came to a halt in a lane leading to the river, where a row
of rickety wooden houses hung over an expanse of malodorous mud. The
tide was out, and a troop of half-naked children were chasing a starved
dog, with a kettle tied to his tail, through the slime and slush of the
foreshore.
"Oh, the poor dog!" cried Tonia, as they stood on a causeway at the end
of the lane. "For pity's sake stop those little wretches!"
George called to them, but they only looked at him, and pursued their
sport. Had he been alone he would have given the little demons chase,
but he could not risk bespattering himself from head to foot in a
lady's company.
"There is but one way to stop them," he said, "and that is to teach
them better. We are trying to do that in our schools, but the task
needs twenty-fold more men and more money than we can command. 'Twould
shock you, no doubt, to see how the children of the poor amuse
themselves; but I question if there is more cruelty to the brute
creation among those unenlightened brats than among the children of
our nobility, who are bred up to think a cock-fight or a stag-hunt the
summit of earthly bliss. Jim Rednap," he shouted, as the chase doubled
and came within earshot, "if you don't untie that kettle and let the
dog go, I'll give you a flogging that will make you squall."
The biggest of the boys looked up at this address, recognized a
well-known figure, and called to his companions to stop. They halted,
their yells ceased, and the hunted cur scrambled up the slippery stone
steps, at the top of which Antonia and Stobart were standing. He caught
the dog, took off the kettle, and flung it into the river. The boy
Rednap came slowly up the steps.
"'Twarn't me that begun it," he said sheepishly.
"'Twas you that should have stopped it. You're bigger and older than
the others. You are twice as wicked, because you know better. What
will your poor mother say when I tell her that you take pleasure in
tormenting God's creatures?"
He was stooping to pat the half-starved mongrel as he spoke to the boy,
and perhaps that tender touch of his hand and his countenance as he
looked at the beast, was a better lesson than his spoken reproof.
"See," Antonia said, dropping a shilling into the boy's grimy palm.
"Fetch me twopenn'orth of bread for the dog, and keep the change for
yourself."
The boy stared, clutched the coin, and ran off.
"Will he come back?" asked Antonia.
"Yes; he's not as bad as he looks. His mother is one of the lost sheep
that the Shepherd has found. Her season of repentance will be but
brief, poor soul, since she is marked for death; but she leans on Him
who never turned the light of His countenance from the penitent sinner."
"Is the boy's father living?"
George Stobart shrugged his shoulders.
"Who knows? She does not, poor wretch! He is dead for her. She has
three children, and has toiled to keep them from starving till she has
fallen under her burden."
"Let me provide for them! Let her know that they will be cared for
when she is gone. It may make her last hours happy," said Antonia,
impetuously.
"I will not hinder you in any work of beneficence; but among so many
and in such pressing need of help it would be well to take time, and to
consider how you can make your money go furthest."
"I will buy no more foolish things--trumpery that I forget or sicken
of a few hours after 'tis bought. I will go to no more china auctions,
squander no more guineas at Mrs. Chenevix's. Oh, Mr. Stobart, I know
you despise me because I am like the young man in the gospel story. I
am too rich not to be fond of riches. But indeed, sir, I do desire to
help the poor."
"I believe it, madam, and that God will bless your desires. 'Tis not
easy for a woman in the bloom of youth and beauty to take up the cross
as Lady Huntingdon has done--to dedicate all she has of fortune and
influence to the service of Christ. 'Twere cruel to reproach you for
falling short of so rare a perfection."
"I have been told that Lady Huntingdon leaves it to doubters like me to
feed the hungry and clothe the naked--since the cry of the destitute
appeals to all alike--and that she devotes all her means to paying
preachers, and providing chapels."
"That, madam, is her view of Christ's service; and I doubt she is
right. When all mankind believe in Christ, there will be no more want
and misery in this world; for the rich will remember that to refuse
help to His poor is to deny Him."
The boy came back, breathless with running, and carrying a twopenny
loaf in his grimy paw. He had gnawed off a corner crust as he ran.
"Dogs don't love crust," he remarked apologetically, as he knelt down
in the dirt and fed the famished cur.
He went with them presently to his mother's garret, where Antonia sat
by the woman's bed for half an hour, while Stobart read or talked to
her. His tenderness to the sick woman and the reasonableness of all he
said impressed even the unbeliever. His words touched her heart, though
they left her mind unconvinced. The room showed an exceeding poverty,
but was cleaner than Antonia had hoped to find it; and she could but
smile upon discovering that Mr. Stobart had helped the three children
to scrub the floor and clean the windows in the course of his last
visit, and had made Jim, the eldest of the family, promise to brush the
hearth and dust the room every morning, and had supplied him with a
broom, and soap, and other materials for cleanliness. The boy was his
mother's sick nurse, and was really helpful in his rough way. The other
two children attended at an infant school which Stobart had set up in a
room near, at a minimum cost for rent and fire. The teachers were three
young women of the prosperous middle-classes, who each worked two days
a week without remuneration.
After this quiet visit to the dying woman, Stobart led Lady Kilrush
through crowded courts and alleys, where every object that her eyes
rested on was a thing that revolted or pained her--brutal faces;
famished faces; lowering viciousness; despairing want; brazen impudence
that fixed her with a bold stare, and then burst into an angry laugh at
her beauty, or pointed scornfully to the diamonds in her ears. Insolent
remarks were flung after her; children in the gutters larded their
speech with curses; obscene exclamations greeted the strange apparition
of a woman so unlike the native womanhood. Had she been some freak of
nature at a show in Bartholomew Fair, she could scarcely have been
looked at with a more brutal curiosity.
Stobart held her arm fast in his, and hurried her through the filthy
throng, hurried her past houses that he knew for dangerous--houses in
which small-pox or jail fever had been raging, fever as terrible as
that of the year '50, when half the bar at the Old Bailey had been
stricken with death during the long hours of a famous trial for murder.
Jail birds were common in these rotten dens where King George's poor
had their abode, and they brought small-pox and putrid fever home with
them, from King George's populous prisons, where the vile and the
unfortunate, the poor debtor and the notorious felon, were herded cheek
by jowl in a common misery. He was careful to take her only into the
cleanest houses, to steer clear of vice and violence. He showed her his
best cases--cases where gospel teaching had worked for good; the people
he had helped into a decent way of life; industrious mothers; pious
old women toiling for orphaned grandchildren; young women, redeemed
from sin, maintaining themselves in a semi-starvation, content to
drudge twelve hours a day just to keep off hunger.
Her heart melted with pity, and glowed with generous impulses. She
clasped the women's hands; she vowed she would be their friend and
helper, and showered her gold among them.
"Teach me how to help them," she said. "Oh, these martyrs of poverty!
Show me how to make their lives happier."
"Be sure I shall not be slack to engage your ladyship in good works,"
he answered cordially. "If you will suffer me to be your counsellor you
may do a world of good, and yet keep your fine house and your Indian
jewels. Your influence should enlist others in the crusade against
misery. It needs but the superfluous wealth of all the rich to save the
lives and the souls of all the poor."
He was hurrying her towards a coach stand, through the deepening gloom
of November. They had spent more than three hours in these haunts of
wretchedness, and the brief day had closed upon them. The lights on
Westminster Bridge and King Street seemed to belong to another world as
the coach drove to St. James's Square. Stobart insisted on accompanying
Antonia to her own door, and took leave of her on the threshold with
much more of friendship than he had shown her hitherto. He seemed to
her a changed being since they had walked through those wretched alleys
together. Hitherto his manner with her had been stiff and constrained,
with an underlying air of disapproval. But now that she had seen him
beside a sick-bed, and had seen how he loved and understood the poor,
and how he was loved and understood by them, she began to realize how
good and generous a heart beat under that chilling exterior. The idea
of a man in the flower of his youth flinging off a profession he loved,
to devote his life to charity appealed to all her best feelings.
"I shall wait on your wife to-morrow morning," she said. "You will have
time before I come to decide what I can do to help those poor wretches.
Their white faces would haunt my dreams to-night if I did not know
that I could do something to make them happier."
"Sleep sweetly," he answered gently. "You have a heart to pity the
poor."
He bent over her gloved hand, touched it lightly with his lips, and
vanished as she crossed her threshold, where the hall-porter and three
pompous footmen gave a royal air to her entrance.