"ONE THREAD IN LIFE WORTH SPINNING."
Antonia spent the next morning, from twelve to two, in the cottage
parlour at Sheen, where Stobart spread out his reports and calculations
before her, showed her what he had done in the district John Wesley
had allotted to him, and how much--how infinitely more than had been
done--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 that
a few shillings could relieve. I have even thought of appealing to my
mother--who has not used me well--but she was married six months ago
to an old admirer, Sir David Lanigan, an Irish soldier, and a fierce
High Churchman, who hates the Wesleys; so I doubt 'twould be wasted
humiliation to ask her for aid. I have not scrupled to beg of my rich
friends, and have raised money to apprentice at least fifty lads who
were in the way to become thieves and reprobates. I have ministered to
the two ends of life--to childhood and old age. The middle period must
fight for itself."
He read his notes of various hard cases. He had jotted down stern
facts with a stern brevity; but the pathos in the facts themselves
brought tears to Antonia's eyes more than once in the course of his
reading. He showed her what good might be done by a few shillings a
week to this family, in which there was a bedridden son--and to another
where there was a consumptive daughter; how there was a little lad
starving in the gutter who could be billeted upon a hard-working honest
family--how for the cost of a room with fire and candle, and sixpence a
day for a nurse, he could provide a nursery where the infants of the
women-toilers could be kept during the day.
"I have heard of some nuns at Avignon who set up such a room for the
women workers in the vineyards," he said. "I think they called it a
_crêche_."
Mrs. Stobart sat by the window busy with her plain sewing, of which she
had always enough to fill every leisure hour. She looked up now and
then and listened, with a mild interest in her husband's work; but she
was just a little tired of it, and the fervid enthusiasm of the time
of her conversion seemed very far away. Staffordshire tea-things and
copper tea-kettle, brass fender and mahogany bureau filled so large
a place in her thoughts, after her husband and son, both of whom she
loved 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. He
was old enough to sit up in his high mahogany chair and feed himself,
with many skirmishing movements of his spoon, which he brandished
between the slow mouthfuls as if it were a tomahawk.
George and Antonia were so absorbed in their work that Mrs. Stobart had
been gone nearly an hour before either of them knew she was absent. The
maid came blundering in with a tray as the clock struck two, and began
to lay the cloth. Antonia rose to take leave, and insisted on going
at once. Her carriage had been waiting half an hour in a drizzling
November rain. She left quickly, but not before she had seen that
Mr. Stobart's dinner consisted of the somewhat scrimped remains of a
shoulder of mutton, and a dish of potatoes boiled in their skins.
She knew some of the officers in his late regiment, and knew how they
lived; and it shocked her a little to recall that squalid meal when she
sat down at four o'clock, with a party of friends, at a table loaded
with an extravagant profusion of the richest food her cook's inventive
powers could bring together. She had seen the expensive French _chef_
standing before her with pencil and bill of fare, racking his brains to
devise something novel and costly.
That morning at Sheen was the beginning of a close alliance in the
cause of charity between Mr. Stobart and Lady Kilrush. They were
partners in a business of good works; and all questions of creed were
for the most part ignored between them. He would have gladly spoken
words in season, but she had a way of putting him off, and she had
become to him so beneficent and divine a creature that it was difficult
for him to remember that she was not a Christian.
The five thousand a year which she had so freely offered him for his
own 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 my
money, 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 I
shall 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 at
Leicester House with the princess and her party of wits and _savants_,
or at Carlisle House, dancing in a chain of dukes and duchesses, with a
German Royal Highness for my partner."
The responsibilities that went with the administration of so large a
fund made a change in George Stobart's life. His residence at Sheen
had long been inconvenient, the journey to and fro wasting time for
which he had better uses. Lucy loved her rustic home and garden in
summer; but she was one of those people who love the country when the
sun shines and the roses are in bloom. In the damp autumnal afternoons,
when silvery mists veiled the common, her spirits sank, and she began
to grow fretful at her husband's absence, and to reproach him if he
were late in coming home.
He wanted his wife to be happy, and he wanted to be near the scene of
his 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 the
Thames, a quarter of a mile from Westminster Bridge, in Crown Place,
a modest terrace facing the river. The house was roomier and more
convenient than his rustic cottage; but the long strip of garden
between low walls was a sad falling off from the lawn and orchard at
Sheen, and he feared that Lucy would regret the change.
Lucy had no regrets. The larger rooms at Lambeth, the dwarf cupboards
on each side of the parlour fireplace, the convenient closets on the
upper floor, the doorsteps and iron railings, and the view of the
river, with the Abbey and Houses of Parliament, and the crowded roofs
and chimneys of Westminster, filled her with delight. The cottage and
garden had been enchanting while the glamour of newly wedded love
shone upon them; but by the time her spirits had settled into a calm
commonplace of domestic life Lucy had discovered that she hated the
country, and smelt ghosts under the sloping ceilings of those quaint
cottage garrets where generations of labouring men and women had
been born and died. Not unseldom had she longed for the bustle of
Moorfields, and the din and riot of Bartholomew Fair, the annual treat
of her childhood.
She arranged her furniture in the new home with complacency, and
thought her son's nursery and her best parlour the prettiest rooms in
the world, much nicer to live in than her ladyship's suite of saloons,
where the splendid spaciousness scared her. She had known few happier
hours in her life than the February afternoon when Lady Kilrush and
Sophy Potter came to tea, and were both full of compliments upon her
parlour, which had been newly done up, with the panelled dado painted
pink, 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, and
took very kindly to the work. As it was hardly possible to avoid the
peril of small-pox in such visits, Mr. Stobart prevailed upon mistress
and maid to submit to the ordeal of inoculation. The operation in
Sophy's case was succeeded by a mild form of the malady; but the virus
had no effect upon Antonia, and her physician argued that the vigour of
a constitution which resisted the artificial infection would ensure her
immunity from the disease. Neither her husband's entreaties, nor the
example of Lady Kilrush could induce Mrs. Stobart to brave the perils
of inoculation. It was in vain that George pleaded, and set a doctor
to argue with her. Her horror of the small-pox made her shrink with
tears and trembling from the notion of the lightest attack produced
artificially.
"If it kills me you will be sorry for having forced me to consent," she
said, and George reluctantly submitted to her refusal. _She_ never went
among his poor, and had never expressed a desire to see them.
"I saw enough of such wretches round Moorfields," she said. "I never
want to go near them again. And I have quite enough to do to keep my
house clean, and look after my little boy. You would want another
servant if I went trapesing about your lanes and alleys, when I ought
to be washing the tea-things and polishing the furniture."
Could he be angry with her for being industrious and keeping his house
a pattern of neatness? He had long ago come to understand the narrow
range of her thoughts and feelings; but while she was pious and gentle
and his devoted wife, he had no ground for thinking he had made a
mistake in choosing a lowborn helpmeet.
From the hurried idleness of a fashionable life Antonia stole many
hours for the dwellings of the poor. In most of her visits to those
haunts of misery she was attended by Stobart; but she had a way of
eluding his guardianship sometimes, and would set out alone, or with
Miss Potter, on one of her visits of mercy.
As time went on he grew more apprehensive of danger in her
explorations; for now that she was familiar with the class among which
he worked, her intrepid spirit tempted her to plunge deeper into the
dark abyss of guilty and unhappy lives.
The time came when he could no longer bear to think of the perils that
surrounded her in the close and fetid alleys where typhus and small-pox
were never wholly absent; and at the risk of offending her he assumed
the 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 risks
as you incur when you enter such a den of fever as the house where I
found you yesterday."
"What, sir, _you_ forbid me?--you whose clarion call startled me from
my selfish pleasure; _you_ who showed me my worthless life!"
"You have done much to redeem that worthlessness, by your sacrifice of
income."
"Sacrifice! You know, sir, that in your heart of hearts you despise
such paltering with charity. In your estimation, not to give all is to
give 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 He
who holds the seven stars in His right hand will open your eyes to
the light of revelation. A soul so lofty will not be left for ever
in darkness. But in the mean time there can be no good done by your
presence in places where you hazard health and life. You have made me
your almoner, and it is my duty to see that the uttermost good is done
with the money you have entrusted to me. Your own presence in those
perilous places is useless. You have no gospel to carry to the sick and
dying."
"Oh, sir, I have sympathy and compassion to give them. I doubt they
get enough of the gospel, and that the company of a woman who can feel
for 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 entreated
to return. The poor creatures like to tell me their troubles, to
expatiate on their miseries, and I listen, and never let them think I
am tired."
"You scatter gold among them; you demoralize them by your reckless
almsgiving."
"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 the
pangs of hunger. That is but a hysterical devotion which goes famishing
to bed to dream of the Golden City with jasper walls, and the angels
standing round the throne. Dreams, dreams, only dreams! You stuff those
suffering creatures with dreams."
"I strive to make them look beyond their sufferings here to the
unspeakable bliss of the life hereafter," Stobart answered gravely;
and then he entreated her to go no more into those alleys where he now
worked every day, and from which he came to her two or three times a
week to report progress.
He came to her after his work, in the hour before the six o'clock
tea at which she was rarely without visitors. If he was told she had
company he went away without seeing her; but between five and six was
the likeliest hour for finding her alone, since her drawing-rooms were
crowded with morning visitors, and her evenings were seasons of gaiety
at home or abroad.
She received him always in the library, a room she loved, and where
they had had their first serious conversation. Here, if he looked
tired, she would order in the urn and tea-things, and would make
tea for him, while he told her the story of the day. To sit in an
easy-chair beside the wood fire and to have her minister to him made an
oasis of rest in the desert of toil, and he soon began to look forward
to this hour as the bright spot in his life, the recompense for every
sacrifice of self.
The first thunder of a footman's double knock, the clatter of high
heels and rustle of brocade in the hall, sent him away. He had made no
second appearance among her modish visitors.
"Go and shine, and sparkle, and flutter your jewelled wings among other
butterflies," he said. "I claim no part in your life in the world; but
I am proud to know that there are hours in which you are something
better than a woman of fashion."
* * * * *
The pleasures of the town and the assiduities of Antonia's friends and
admirers became more absorbing as her influence in the great world
increased. Her open-handed hospitality, the splendour of her house, and
the success of her entertainments had placed her on a pinnacle of _ton_.
She held her own among the greatest ladies in London, and was on
familiar terms with all the duchesses--Portland, Queensberry, Norfolk,
Bedford, Hamilton--and nobody ever reminded her, by a shade of
difference in their appreciation, that she had not been born in the
purple.
She had more admirers than she took the trouble to count, and
had refused offers of marriage that most women would have found
irresistible. Charles Townshend had followed and courted her; and in
spite of all she could do to discourage his addresses by a light gaiety
of manner that proclaimed her indifference, he had found her alone one
morning, and flung himself on his knees to sue for her hand.
Deeply hurt when she rejected him, he reproached her for having fooled
him by her civility.
"Oh, sir, would you have me distant or sullen to the most brilliant man
in 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 over
another."
"I doubt, madam, you despise a plain mister, and will wait for the next
marrying Duke. Wert not for the recent Marriage Act you might aspire to
a prince of the blood royal. Your ambition would be justified by your
beauty; and I believe your pride is equal to your charms."
"I shall never marry again, Mr. Townshend. I loved my husband; and the
tragedy of our marriage made that love more sacred than the common
affection of wives."
"Nay, madam, is there not something more potent than the memory of a
departed husband, which makes you scorn my passion? I have several
times met a certain grave gentleman in your hall, who seems privileged
to enjoy your society when you have no other company, and who leaves
you when your indifferent acquaintance are admitted."
"That gentleman is my dear lord's cousin, and a married man. He can
have no influence upon my resolve against a second marriage."
She rang a bell, and made Mr. Townshend a curtsey which meant
dismissal. He retired in silent displeasure, knowing that he had
affronted her.
"'Tis deuced hard to be cut out by a sneaking Methodist," he muttered
as he followed the footman downstairs.
He spent the evening at White's, played higher and drank deeper than
usual, and was weak enough to mention the lady's name with a scornful
anger which betrayed his mortification; and before the next night all
the town knew that Townshend had been refused.
The rumour came to Stobart's knowledge a week later by means of a
paragraph in the _Daily Journal_, with the usual initials and the usual
stars. "Lady K., the beautiful widow, has fallen out with Mr. C. T.,
the aspiring politician, wit and trifler, whose eminent success as a
lady-killer has made him unable to endure rejection at the hands of a
beauty 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 shabby
coffee-house in the Borough, where he sometimes took a snack of bread
and cheese and a glass of twopenny porter, instead of going home to
dinner.
"I doubt she has many such offers," he thought, "for she hangs out
every bait that can tempt a lover--beauty, parts, fortune. If she has
refused Townshend 'tis, perhaps, only because there is some one else
pleases her better. She will marry, and I shall lose her; for 'tis
likely her husband will cut short her friendship for a follower of John
Wesley, lest the Word of God should creep into his house unawares."
He left London early in April in Mr. Wesley's company, and rode with
that indefatigable man through the rural English landscape, making from
forty 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 preach
the gospel to listening throngs. Their journey on this occasion took
them through quiet agricultural communities and small market towns,
where the ill-usage that Wesley had suffered at Bolton and at Falmouth
was undreamt of among the congregations who hung upon his words and
loved 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 the
art of horsemanship, and as he mostly read a book during his country
rides, he had fallen into a slovenly, stooping attitude over the neck
of his horse. He had been often thrown, but rarely hurt, and had a
Spartan indifference to such disasters. He loved a good horse, but was
willing to put up with any beast that would carry him to the spot where
he was expected. He hated to break an appointment, and was the most
punctual as well as the most polite of men.
He liked George Stobart, having assayed his mental and moral qualities
at the beginning of their acquaintance, and having pronounced him true
metal. He was a man of wide sympathies, and during this April journey
through the heart of Hertfordshire, and then by the wooded pastures and
wide grassy margins of the Warwickshire coach roads between Coventry
and Stratford-on-Avon, he discovered that something was amiss with his
helper.
"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 plough
in a fever of faith and piety, and drive their first furrow deep and
straight, and then faith grows dim, and the line straggles, and my
sorrowful heart tells me that the labourer is good for nothing. But I
do 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 a
vista in that oak wood yonder, with the smiling sun showing like a disk
of blood-red gold at the end of the clearing; and you, who have such
an eye for landscape, stared at it with a vacant gaze. I'll vouch for
it you have uneasy thoughts that come between you and God's beautiful
world."
"I trouble myself without reason, sir, about a soul that I would fain
win for Christ, and cannot."
"'Tis of your cousin's widow, Lady Kilrush, you are thinking," Wesley
said, 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 how
lavish 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 her
into the fold. I doubt you have tried, in all seriousness?"
"I have tried, sir; but not hard enough. My cousin is a strange
creature--generous, impetuous, charitable; but she has a commanding
temper, and a light way of putting me off in an argument, which make it
hard to reason with her. And then I doubt Satan has ever the best of
it, and that 'tis easier to argue on the evil side, easier to deny than
to prove. When I am in my cousin's company, and we are both interested
in the wretches she has saved from misery, I find myself forgetting
that 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, and
that in all the time we have been friends nothing has been done for her
salvation."
"Mr. Stobart, I doubt you have thought too much of the woman and
too little of the woman's unawakened soul," Wesley said, with grave
reproof. "Her beauty has dazzled your senses; and conscience has been
lulled to sleep. As your pastor and your friend I warn you that you do
ill to cherish the company of a beautiful heathen, save with the sole
intent of accomplishing her salvation."
"Oh, sir, can you think me so weak a wretch as to entertain one
unworthy thought in relation to this lady, who has ever treated me with
a sisterly friendship? The fact that she is exquisitely beautiful can
make no difference in my concern for her. I would give half the years
of my life to save her soul; and I see her carried along the flood-tide
of modish pleasures, the mark for gamesters and spendthrifts, and I
dread to hear that she has been won by the most audacious and the worst
of the worthless crew."
"If you can keep your own conscience clear of evil, and win this woman
from the toils of Satan, you will do well," said Wesley, "but tamper
not with the truth; and if you fail in bringing her to a right way
of thinking, part company with her for ever. You know that I am your
friend, Stobart. My heart went out to you at the beginning of our
acquaintance, when you told me of your marriage with a young woman
so much your inferior in worldly rank, for your attachment to a girl
of the servant class recalled my own experience. The woman I loved
best, before I met Mrs. Wesley, was a woman who had been a domestic
servant, but whose intellect and character fitted her for the highest
place in the esteem of all good people. Circumstances prevented our
union--and--I made another choice."
He concluded his speech with an involuntary sigh, and George Stobart
knew that the great leader, who had many enthusiastic followers and
helpers among the women of his flock, had not been fortunate in that
one 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 Bristol
and to the Kingswood miners, and journeying from south to north with
him, in company with one of Wesley's earliest and best lay preachers, a
man of humble birth, but greatly gifted for his work among assemblies
in which more than half of his hearers were heathens, to whom the Word
of 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 an
emotional preacher. Those who had stood by Whitefield's side when the
tears rolled down the miners' blackened faces, knew how strong, how
urgent, how pathetic must be the appeal, and how sure the result when
that appeal is pitched in the right key.
The little band bore every hardship and inconvenience of a journey on
horseback through all kinds of weather, with unvarying good humour;
for Wesley's cheerful spirits set them so fine an example of Christian
contentment that they who were his juniors would have been ashamed to
complain.
In some of the towns on their route Mr. Wesley had friends who were
eager to entertain the travellers, and in whose pious households they
fared well. In other places they had to put up with the rough meals
and 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, after
having preached to hundreds of thousands on their way. Stobart had
been absent more than a month, and the time seemed much longer than it
really was by reason of the distances traversed and the varieties of
life encountered on the way. He had received a weekly letter from his
wife, who told him of all her household cares, and of Georgie's daily
growth in childish graces. He had answered all her letters, telling
her 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 and
tray, and if the urn were copper or silver, also the dress of the
ladies, and whether they wore linen aprons in the morning. He knew her
little weaknesses, and indulged her, and rarely returned from a journey
without bringing her some trifling gift for her house, a cream-jug of
some special ware, a damask table-cloth, or something he knew she loved.
Their union had been one of peace and a tranquil affection, which on
Stobart's part outlived the brief fervour of a self-sacrificing love.
The romantic feeling, the glow of religious enthusiasm which had led
to his marriage, belonged to the past; but he told himself that he had
done well to marry the printer's daughter, and that she was the fittest
helpmeet he could have chosen, since she left him free to work out his
salvation, and submitted with gentle obedience to the necessities of
his spiritual life.
"Mr. Wesley would thank Providence for so placid a companion," he
thought, having heard of his leader's sufferings from a virago who
opened and destroyed his letters, insulted his friends, and tormented
him with an unreasoning jealousy that made his home life a kind of
martyrdom.
During that religious pilgrimage Stobart had written several times to
Lady Kilrush--letters inspired by his intercourse with Wesley, and by
the spiritual experiences of the day; letters written in the quiet of
a sleeping household, and aflame with the ardent desire to save that
one most precious soul from eternal condemnation. He had written with a
vehement 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 the
ardour of his feelings.
"Since I was last in your company I have seen multitudes won from
Satan; have seen the roughest natures softened to penitent tears at the
story of Calvary--the hardest hearts melted, reprobates and vagabonds
laying down their burden of sins, and taking up the Cross. And I have
thought of you, so gifted by nature, so rare a jewel for the crown of
Christ--you whose inexhaustible treasures of love and compassion I have
seen poured upon the most miserable of this world's outcasts, the very
scum and refuse of debased humanity. You, so kind, so pitiful, so clear
of brain and steadfast of purpose, can you for ever reject those Divine
promises, that gift of eternal life by which alone we are better than
the 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 multitude
won from Satan, and leave one solitary sinner to work out her own
destiny? If my mind could realize your kingdom of the saints, if I
could believe that far off, in some vague region of this universe,
whose vastness appals me, there is a world where I shall see the holy
teacher of Nazareth, hear words of ineffable wisdom from living lips,
and, most precious of all, see once again in a new and better life the
husband who died in my arms, I would accept your creed with ecstatic
joy. But I cannot. My father taught me to reason, not to dream; and I
have no power to unlearn what I learnt from him, and from the books he
put into my hands. Do not let us argue about spiritual things. We shall
never agree. Teach me to care for the poor and the wretched with a wise
affection, 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 own
pleasure in the only world she believes in."
* * * * *
The London season, which in those days began and ended earlier than
it does now, was growing more brilliant as it neared the close.
When Mr. Stobart returned to town, Ranelagh, Vauxhall, the Italian
Opera, Handel's Oratorios, the two patent theatres, and that little
theatre in the Haymarket, where the malicious genius of Samuel Foote
revelled in mimicry and caricature, were crowded nightly with the salt
of the earth; and the ruinous pleasures of the St. James's Street
clubs--White's, Arthur's, and the Cocoa Tree--were still in full
swing, to the apprehension and horror of fathers and mothers, sisters,
wives, and sweethearts, who might wake any morning to hear that son or
husband, brother or lover, had been reduced to beggary between midnight
and dawn. Losses at cards that ruined families, disputes that ended
in blood, were the frequent tragedies that heightened the comedy of
fashionable life by the zest of a poignant contrast.
George Stobart returned to London with Wesley's counsel in his mind. He
had been told his duty as a Christian. He must hold no commune with a
daughter of Belial, save in the hope of leading her into the fold. If
his most strenuous endeavours failed to convert the unbeliever he must
renounce her friendship and see her no more. He must not trifle with
sacred things, honour her for a compassionate and generous disposition,
admire her natural gifts, and forget that she was a daughter of
perdition.
He recalled the hours he had spent in her company, hours in which all
religious questions had been ignored while they discussed the means of
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Surely they had been about
the Master's work, though the Master's name had not been spoken. He
remembered how, instead of being instant in season and out of season,
he had kept silence about spiritual things, had even encouraged her
to talk of those trivial pleasures she loved too well--the court, the
opera, her patrician friends, her social triumphs. He recalled those
romantic legends in which some pious knight, journeying towards the
Holy Land, meets a lovely lady in distress, succours her, pities,
and even loves her, only to discover the flames of hell in those
luminous eyes, the fiery breath of Satan upon those alluring lips. He
swore to be resolute with himself and inexorable to her, to accept
no compromises, to reject even her gold, if he could not make her a
Christian.
In his anxiety for her spiritual welfare it was a bitter disappointment
to him not to find her at home when he called in St. James's Square on
the day after his return. He called again next day, and was told that
she was dining with the Duchess of Portland at Whitehall, and was to
accompany her grace to the Duchess of Norfolk's ball in the evening.
He felt vexed and offended at this second repulse, yet he had reason
to 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-round
of pleasure, had taken Lucy and the little boy to Hyde Park in her
coach, and for long country drives to Chiswick and Kew, and had even
accepted an occasional dish of tea in the parlour at Crown Place, had
heard Georgie repeat one of Dr. Watts's hymns, and had brought him a
present of toys from Mrs. Chevenix's, such as no Lambeth child had ever
possessed.
He had been full of work since his return, visiting his schools and
infant nurseries, and preaching in an old brewhouse which he had
converted into a chapel, where he held a nightly service, consisting
of one earnest prayer, a chapter of the New Testament, and a short
sermon of friendly counsel, gentle reproof of evil habits and evil
speech, and fervent exhortation to all sinners to lead a better life;
and where he held, also, a class for adults who had never been taught
to read or write, and for whom he laboured with unvarying patience and
kindness.
He was more out of humour than a Christian should have been when, on
his third visit to St. James's Square, he was told that her ladyship
was confined to her room by a headache, and desired not to be
disturbed, as she was going to the masquerade that evening.
The porter spoke of "the masquerade" with an assurance that no
gentleman in London could fail to know all about so distinguished an
entertainment.
Stobart left the door in a huff. It was six weeks since he had seen her
face, and she valued his friendship so little that she cared not how
many times he was sent away from her house. She would give herself no
trouble to receive him.
Instead of going home to supper he wandered about the West End till
nightfall, when streets and squares began to be alive with links and
chairmen. At almost every door there was a coach or a chair, and the
roll of wheels over the stones made an intermittent thunder. Everybody
of any importance was going to the masquerade, which was a subscription
dance at Ranelagh, given by a number of bachelor noblemen, and supposed
to be accessible only to the choicest company; though 'twas odds that
a week later it would be known that more than one notorious courtesan
had stolen an entrance, and displayed her fine figure and her diamonds
among the duchesses.
A fretful restlessness impelled Stobart to pursue his wanderings. The
thought of the Lambeth parlour, with the sky shut out, and the tallow
candles guttering in their brass candlesticks, oppressed him with an
idea of imprisonment.
He walked at random, his nerves soothed by the cool night air, and
presently, having turned into a main thoroughfare, found himself
drifting the way the coaches and chairs were going, in a procession of
lamps and torches, an undulating line of fire and light that flared and
flickered 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 king and the Duke of Cumberland would be at
Ranelagh. People were standing in open doorways, groups were gathered
at street corners, eager voices named the occupants of chariot or
sedan, mostly wrong. The Duke of Newcastle was greeted with mingled
cheers and hisses; Fox evoked a storm of applause; and young Mrs.
Spencer's diamonds were looked at with gloating admiration by
milliners' apprentices and half-starved shirt-makers.
Stobart went along with the coaches on the Chelsea Road to the entrance
of Ranelagh, where a mob had assembled to see the company--a mob which
seemed as lively and elated as if to stand and stare at beauty and
jewels, fops and politicians, afforded almost as good an entertainment
as the festivity under the dome. Having made his way with some elbowing
to the front row, Stobart had a near view of the company, who had to
traverse some paces between the spot where their coaches drew up and
the Doric portico which opened into the rotunda, that magnificent
pleasure-house which has been compared to the Pantheon at Rome for size
and architectural dignity.
The portico was ablaze with strings and festoons of many-coloured
lamps, and from within there came the inspiring sounds of dance music
played by an orchestra of strings and brasses--sounds that mingled
with the trampling of horses' hoofs, the cracking of whips, the oaths
of coachmen, and the remonstrances of link-boys and footmen, trying to
keep 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 she
descended from her chariot, revealing a magnificent form attired as
Diana, in a white satin tunic which displayed more of a handsome leg
than is often given to the public view, and a gauze drapery that made
no envious screen between admiring eyes and an alabaster bust and
shoulders.
"I'll wager her ladyship came out in such a hurry she forgot to put on
her clothes," said one spectator.
"I say, Sally," cried another, "if you or me was to come out such a
figure, 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 are
made of flesh and blood like common folks, only finer."
Flashing eyes defied the crowd as the handsome duchess strode by, her
silver buskins glittering in the rainbow light, her head held at an
imperial level, admiring fops closing round her, with their hands on
their sword-hilts, ready to repress or to punish insult.
"Sure, Charley, one would suppose these wretches had never seen a
handsome woman till to-night," laughed the lady.
"I doubt they never have seen so much of one," answered the gentleman
in a half-whisper, on which he was called "beast," and rebuked with a
smart tap from Diana's fan.
A great many people had arrived, peeresses without number, and among
them Katharine, Duchess of Queensberry, Prior's Kitty, made immortal
by a verse. This lovely lady appeared in a studied simplicity of white
lute-string, without a jewel--a beauty unadorned that had somewhat
missed fire at the last birthday, against the magnificence of her
rivals. The beautiful Duchess of Hamilton went by with her lovely
sister, Lady Coventry, radiant in a complexion of white-lead which was
said to be killing her. Starry creatures like goddesses passed in a
glittering procession; the music, the babel of voices from within, made
a tempest of sound; but _she_ had not yet appeared, and Stobart waited
to 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 footmen
hung behind, with powdered heads, sky-blue velvet coats, white
breeches, pink stockings and gold garters--gorgeous creatures that
leapt down to open the coach door and let down the steps, but were not
suffered to come near her, for a bevy of her admirers had been watching
for her arrival, and crowded about her carriage door, thrusting her
lackeys aside.
She laughed at their eagerness.
"'Twas vastly kind of you to wait for me, Sir Joseph," she said to the
foremost. "I should scarce have dared to plunge into the whirlpool
of company unattended. Lady Margaret had a couple of young things to
bring, who insisted upon coming here directly the room opened, so I
let her come without me. I love a _fête_ best at the flood-tide. Sure
your lordship must think me monstrous troublesome if I have robbed you
of a dance," she added, turning to a tall man in smoke-coloured velvet
and silver.
"I think your ladyship knows that there is but one woman in Europe I
love to dance with," said Lord Dunkeld, gravely.
He was a man of distinguished rank and fortune, distinguished merit
also--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 you
distrait 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 or
wretched," he murmured in her ear.
"I hope everybody will be happy to-night," she said gaily, "or you
subscribing gentlemen, who have taken so much trouble to please us,
will be ill-paid for your pains. For my own part, I mean to think
Ranelagh the seventh heaven, and not to refuse a dance."
She wore her velvet loup, with a filmy border of Brussels that clouded
the carmine of her lips. Her white teeth flashed against the black
lace, her smile was enchantingly gay.
Stobart heard her in a gloomy temper. What hope was there for such a
woman--so given over to worldly pleasures, with no capacity for thought
of serious things, no desire for immortality, finding her paradise in a
masquerade, her happiness in the adulation of fools?
"How can I ever bring her nearer to God while she lives in a perpetual
intoxication of earthly pleasures, while she so exults in her beauty
and her power over the hearts of men?"
She wore a diamond tiara and necklace of matchless fire. Her gown
was white and silver, the stomacher covered with coloured jewels
that flashed between the opening of her long black silk domino, an
ample garment with loose sleeves. She had arrayed herself in all her
splendour for this much-talked-of masquerade, wishing to do honour to
the 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 at
three, and I'll wager they'll have to wait hours after that."
"You make very sure of your dance pleasing folks," she said. "I doubt
I shall have yawned myself half dead before three o'clock; but you'll
have to find me a seat in a dark corner where I can sleep behind my
fan."
"There are no dark corners--except in the gallery for lovers and
dowagers--and I pledge myself nobody under forty shall have any
disposition for slumber," protested Sir Joseph, as he ran off to give
her 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, and
past a tavern a little way off, in front of which an army of footmen
and links were gathered, and where they and the crowd were being served
with beer and gin. He was glad to get into a dark lane that led towards
Westminster Bridge, skirting the river, and to be able to think quietly.
She would marry Dunkeld. Was it not the best thing she could do--her
best chance for the saving of that immortal soul which he had tried in
vain to save? Dunkeld was no idle pleasure-lover, though he mixed in
the diversions of his time. He was a politician, had written more than
one pamphlet that had commanded the attention of the town. He was a
good Churchman, a regular attendant at the Chapel Royal. He was rich
enough to be above suspicion of mercenary views. He had never been a
gambler or a profligate. He was seven and thirty, Antonia's senior by
about twelve years. Assuredly she would be safer from the evil of the
time as Dunkeld's wife than in her present unprotected position.
He repeated these arguments with unending iteration throughout his
homeward 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 he
had suspected her of no uncommon friendship for that excellent man;
yet he could hardly doubt that she favoured his suit. Dunkeld was
handsome, accomplished, of an ancient Scottish family, had made his
mark in the English House of Commons. Stobart could scarcely believe it
possible 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--to
persuade her to this marriage.
He found his wife sitting up for him, and the supper untouched, though
it was midnight when he got home. The supper was but a frugal meal of
bread and cheese, a spring salad, and small beer; but the table was
neatly laid with a clean damask cloth, and adorned with a Lowestoft
bowl of wallflowers. Lucy had a genius for small things, and was quick
to 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 of
thought, but idle of purpose. I let myself drift with the crowd, and
went to stare at the fine people going into Ranelagh."
"You! Well, 'tis a wonder. But why didn't you take me? I should have
loved to see the fancy dresses and masks and dominos. Indeed, I should
have 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 time
to-night, Lucy; yet perhaps some good may come of my idleness. God can
turn even our errors to profit."
"Oh, George, I have done very wrong," his wife said, with sudden
seriousness. "I have forgotten something."
"Nay, child, 'tis not the first time. Thy genius never showed strongest
in 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, and
that you and her ladyship are concerned about?"
"Yes."
"Her young brother called the day you came home, and told me the
doctor had given her over, and she wanted to see you--she was pining
and 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 the
first minute I saw you, George; and then I was so glad to see you, and
that put everything out of my head."
"And kept it out of your head for a week, Lucy--the prayer of a dying
woman?"
"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 her
hope and comfort. You should not forget such things as those, Lucy;
your heart should serve instead of memory when a dying penitent's peace
is in question."
"Oh, I am a hateful wretch, and I'd sooner you scolded me than not. But
you had been away so long, and I had fretted about you, and was so glad
to 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 who
gave himself to the service of Christ should have neither wife nor
child. The earthly and the heavenly love were not compatible.
"I will go to Sally's garret the first thing to-morrow morning," he
said. "Please God I may not be too late!"
He was silent for the rest of the meal, and his slumbers were brief and
perturbed, 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 diamond
crescent on her brow; and that other woman, whose modest bearing gave
the grace of purity even to the splendour of her jewels and glittering
silver gown. Dream faces followed him through the labyrinth of sleep,
and his last dream was of the nightmare kind. He was in the retreat at
Fontenoy, fighting at close quarters with a French dragoon, whom he
knew of a sudden for the foul fiend in person, and that the stake for
which he fought was Antonia's soul.
"He shall not have her," he cried. "I'd sooner see her another man's
wife than the devil's prize."
He was awakened by his own voice, in a hoarse, gasping cry, and
starting 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 disturb
his sleeping wife, and made his morning toilet in a little back room
that served as his dressing-closet--a Spartan chamber, in which an
abundance of cold water was his only luxury. He left the house soon
after six, and walked quickly through the quiet morning streets to the
pestiferous alley where Sally Dormer lay dying or dead.
She was one of his penitents, a woman who was still young, and had
once been beautiful, steeped in sin in the very morning of life, in
the company of thieves and highwaymen, grown prematurely old in a
profligate career, a courtesan's neglected offspring, and carrying the
seeds of consumption from her cradle. Her mother had been dead ten
years; her father had never been known to her; her only relative was
a boy of eleven, her mother's sole legacy. A sermon of Whitefield's
preached to thousands of hearers on Kennington Common, in the sultry
stillness 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, prompted
by idle curiosity, and who left him changed and exalted, shuddering
at the sins of the past, horrified at the perils of the future. That
wave of penitent feeling might have ebbed as quickly as it rose but for
George Stobart, who found the sinner while the effect of Whitefield's
eloquence was new, and completed the work of conversion--a work more
easily accomplished, perhaps, by reason of Sally Dormer's broken health.
She had been marked for death before that sultry night when she had
stood under the summer stars, trembling at Whitefield's picture of the
sinner's doom, pale to the lips as he dwelt on the terrors of hell, and
God's curse upon the stubborn unbeliever. "All the curses of the law
belong to you, oh, ye adamantine hearts, that melt not at the name of
Jesus. 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 one
continued series of sin. Awake, awake, thou that sleepest, melt and
tremble, heart of stone. Look to Him whom thou hast pierced! Look and
love; look and mourn; look and praise. Though thou art stained with
sin, and black with iniquity, thy God is yet thy God!"
Stobart had told Antonia of Sally Dormer's condition, and had provided
by her means for the penitent's comfort in her lingering illness, the
fatal end of which was obvious, however much her state varied from week
to week. But he had opposed Antonia's desire to visit the invalid,
shrinking with actual pain from the idea of any contact between the
spotless woman and the castaway, who in her remorse for her past life
was apt to expatiate upon vile experiences.
Five minutes' walk brought Mr. Stobart to a narrow street on the edge
of the river, a street long given over to the dregs of humanity. The
houses were old and dilapidated, and several of those on the water-side
had been shored up at the back with timber supports, moss-grown and
slimy from the river fog, yet a favourite climbing place for vagabond
boys, as well as for a colony of starveling rats.
Sally's lodging was on the third story of a corner house, one of the
oldest and most tumble-down, but also one of the most spacious, having
formed part of a nobleman's mansion under the Tudor kings, when all the
river-side was pleasaunce and garden.
The garret occupied the whole of the top floor, under a steeply sloping
roof, and had two windows, one looking to the street, the other to the
river. Here Sally had been slowly dying for near half a year, in charge
of her little brother, and under the supervision of the dispensary
doctor, who saw her daily.
The house was quiet in the summer morning. The men who had work to do
had gone about it; the idlers were still in bed; the more respectable
among the women were occupied with their children or their housework.
Stobart met no one in the gloom of the rickety staircase, where the
rotten boards offered numerous pitfalls for the unwary. He was used to
ruin and decay in that water-side region, and trod carefully. The last
flight was little better than a ladder, at the top of which he saw the
garret door ajar, and heard a voice he knew speaking in tones so low
and 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 and
jewelled stomacher. Her right arm was round the sick woman, and Sally's
dishevelled head leant against her shoulder.
"Great Heaven, what a change of scene!" he said, as he bent down and
took 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 last
night, after your door was shut in my face for the third time. It
seemed 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 jewels
worth a king's ransom before starving desperadoes! Sure 'twas wilfully
to provoke danger."
"I am not afraid. My coach brought me to the end of the street, and my
chair 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 masquerade
finery, so I came straight from Ranelagh; and I have been telling Sally
about the ball and the beauties."
"An edifying discourse, truly!"
"Oh, you shall edify her to your heart's content when I am gone. I have
been trying to amuse her. I stole those sweetmeats for Harry from the
royal table"--smiling at the boy, who was sitting on the end of the
bed, with his mouth full of bonbons. "I smuggled them into my pocket
while the duke was talking to me."
"I was at Ranelagh once, your ladyship," said Sally, touching the gems
on Antonia's stomacher one by one with her attenuated finger-tips,
as if she were counting them, and as if their brilliancy gave her
pleasure. "'Twas when I was young and lived like a lady. My first
sweetheart took me there. He was a gentleman then. 'Twas before he took
to the road. I dream of him often as he was in those days, seven years
ago. He is changed now, and so am I. Sometimes I can scarce believe we
are the same flesh and blood. 'Twas a handsome face, a dear face! I
see 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 your
mistaken kindness has done."
"No, no, no! My poor Sally is no less a true penitent because her
thoughts turn for a few moments to the days that are gone. 'Tis a
fault in your religion, sir, that it is all gloom. Your Master took a
kinder view of life, and was indulgent to human affections as He was
pitiful to human pains. Sally has made her peace with God, and believes
in a happy world where her sins will be forgiven, and she will wear
the white robe of innocence, and hear the songs of angels round the
heavenly throne."
"If thou hast indeed assurance of salvation, Sally, thou art happier
than the great ones of the earth, who wilfully refuse their portion in
Christ's atoning blood, who can neither realize their own iniquity, nor
the 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 heavy
curls about the full white throat.
"How beautiful you are!" she murmured. "If the angels are like you, and
as 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 skirts
away from me, and quicken their steps, as I have seen modest women do
in 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 of
cooling drink to the parched lips.
She had been teaching the eleven-year-old Harry to make lemonade for
his sick sister. One of the ladies from the infant nursery came in
every day to make Sally's bed and clean her room, and for the rest the
precocious little brother, reared in muddle, idleness, and intermittent
starvation, was much more helpful than a happier child would have been.
"Shall I read to you, Sally?" Stobart asked in his grave voice, seating
himself 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 prayers
than the book. They do me more good."
Antonia gently withdrew her arm from the sick woman's waist, and
arranged the pillows at her back--luxurious down pillows supplied from
the _trop-plein_ of St. James's Square--and rose from her seat by the
bed.
"Good-bye, Sally," she said, putting on her black domino, which she had
thrown 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 good
friend."
"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 to
meet you in heaven among the happy souls washed white in the blood of
the Lamb. Stay and hear him pray."
"I'll stay for a little to please you, Sally; but indeed I am out of
place here," Antonia said gravely, as she resumed her seat.
Stobart was kneeling at the foot of the bed, his face bent upon his
clasped hands, and the women had been speaking in almost whispers,
Sally's voice being weak from illness, and Antonia's lowered in
sympathy. He looked up presently after a long silence and began his
prayer. He had been struggling against earthly thoughts, striving for
that detachment of mind and senses which he had found more and more
difficult of late, striving to concentrate all his forces of heart and
intellect upon the dying woman--the newly awakened soul hovering on
the threshold of eternity. Could there be a more enthralling theme, a
subject more removed from earthly desires and earthly temptations?
Antonia looked at him with something of awe in her gaze. She had never
heard him pray. He had argued with her; he had striven his hardest to
make her think as he thought; but he had never prayed for her. Into
that holier region, that nearer approach to the God he worshipped, she
had never passed. The temple doors were shut against so obstinate an
unbeliever, so hardened a scorner.
His face seemed the face of a stranger, transfigured by that rapture
of faith in the spirit world, made like to the angels in whose actual
and everlasting existence this man--this rational, educated Englishman,
of an over-civilized epoch--firmly believed. He believed, and was made
happy by his belief. This present life was of no more value to him than
the dull brown husk of the worm that knows it is to be a butterfly.
To the Voltairean this thing was wonderful. The very strangeness of
it fascinated her, and she listened with deepest interest to George
Stobart's prayer.
His opening invocation had a formal tone. The words came slowly, and
for some minutes his prayer was woven out of those familiar and moving
texts he loved, while the thoughts and feelings of the man himself
rose slowly from the depths of a heart that seemed ice-bound; but the
man believed in Him to whom he prayed, and presently the ice melted,
and the fire came, and the speaker forgot all surrounding things--the
lovely eyes watching him in a grave wonder, the feelings and doubts and
apprehensions of last night. The earthly fetters fell away from his
liberated soul, and he was alone with his God, as much alone as Moses
on the mountain, as Christ in the garden. Then, and then only, the man
became 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 down
upon her with a tender pity, glad that the slow and painful passage to
the grave should be soothed by beautiful fables, by dreams that took
the sting from death.
Perhaps the thing that moved Antonia most was the unspeakable pity and
compassion, the love that this man felt for the castaway. She had been
told that the Oxford Methodists were a sanctimonious, pragmatical sect,
whose heaven was an exclusive freehold, and who delighted in consigning
their fellow-creatures to everlasting flames. But here she found
sympathy with the sinner stronger than abhorrence of the sin. And her
reason--that reason of which she was so proud--told her that with such
a sinner none but an enthusiast could have prevailed. It needed the
fiery speech of a Whitefield, the passionate appeal of an impassioned
orator, to awaken a soul so dead.
"'Awake, thou that sleepest,'" cries the Church to the heathen; but if
the 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 whom
the Church might have kept had her rulers been able to gauge their
power, but who had been sent into the fields to carry on their work of
conversion as their Master was sent before them.
Antonia was no nearer belief in Stobart's creed than she had been
yesterday; but she was impressed by the sincerity of the man, the
vitality of an unquestioning faith.
He was interrupted in the midst of an impassioned sentence by a
startling appearance. The lattice facing the river had been left open
to the balmy morning air. The casement rattled suddenly, and a pair of
hands appeared clutching the sill, followed almost instantly by the
vision of a ghastly face with starting eyeballs and panting mouth; and
then a slenderly built man scrambled through the opening, and dropped
head 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 his
knees by the bed, and grasped Sally's hand. His clothes were torn and
mud-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 your
closet--anywhere. The constables are after me. It's a hanging business."
"Oh, Jack, I thought you was in Georgia--safe, and leading an honest
life."
"I've come back. I'm one of them that can't be honest. They're after
me. I gave them the slip on the bridge--ran for my life--climbed the
old timbers. Hell, how slippery they are! They'll be round the corner
directly. They'll search every house in the street."
He was looking about the room with strained eyes, searching for some
hole to hide in. There was a curious kind of closet in the slope of
the rafters, filling an acute angle. He was making for this, then
stopped and ran to the window facing the river.
"Get out of this, fellow," said Stobart. "This woman has done with the
companions of sin. Go!"
"No, no," cried Antonia; "you shall not give him over to those
bloodhounds."
"What, madam, would you make yourself the abettor of crime--come
between a felon and the law which protects honest people from thieves
and murderers?"
"I hate your laws--your inexorable judges, your murdering laws, which
will hang a child that never knew right from wrong for a stolen
sixpence."
"They are round the corner; they are looking at the house," gasped the
fugitive, moving from the window and looking round the room in a wild
despair.
He had been caught in that very house years before, when he and Sally
Dormer lodged there together, and when he was one of the luckiest
professionals on the Dover road, with a couple of good horses, and a
genius for getting clear off after a job. He had escaped by the skin of
his teeth on that occasion, the witnesses for identification breaking
down in the inquiry before the magistrate. He had saved his neck and
some of the profits from an audacious attack on the Dover mail, and
had gone to America in a shipload of mixed company, swearing to turn
honest and cheat Jack Ketch. But he could as easily have turned wild
Indian; and after a spirited career in Georgia he had got himself back
to London, and being in low water, without means to buy himself a good
horse, had sunk to the meaner status of foot-pad, and this morning had
been concerned with three others in an attempt to stop a great lady's
coach on the way from Ranelagh.
A chosen few among the most dissipated of the company had kept the ball
going till seven o'clock, and had gone to breakfast and cards after
seven--and it was one of these great ladies whose chariot had been
stopped in the loneliest part of the road, between Chelsea and the Five
Fields.
Antonia was looking out of the window that overhung the street. The
thief made a rush towards the same window, and stopped midway, staring
at this queen-like figure in mute surprise. Her beauty, her sumptuous
dress and jewels made him almost think this dazzling appearance the
hallucination 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 in
that rat-hole. They'd have me out in a trice. The game's up, Sally. I
shall dance upon nothing at Tyburn before the month is out."
He looked to the priming of a pair of pistols which he carried in a
leather belt. They were ready for work. He took his stand behind the
garret door. The first man who entered that room would be accounted
for. They would not risk an ascent upon those slippery old beams which
he had climbed for sport many a time in his boyhood; they would make
their entrance from the street. Well, there was some hope of giving
them 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 impetus
from above.
"They are not round yet," cried Antonia, snatching up her black
silk domino from the chair where it hung. "Put on this, sir. So,
so"--wrapping the voluminous cloak round the thief's thin frame. "Don't
cry, Sally; we'll save him if we can, for your sake; and he'll turn
honest for your sake. So; the cloak covers your feet. Why, I doubt I
am the taller. Now for the mask," adjusting the little loup, which
fastened with a spring, over the man's face, and the silk hood over his
head.
"Come, Mr. Stobart, my chair is at the door," she said breathlessly.
"Take this poor wretch downstairs, bundle him into the chair, and bid
my servants carry him to my house, and hide him there. They can send a
hackney 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 then
looked out of the river window. There was a mob hurrying along the
muddy shore at the heels of three Bow Street runners, who were nearing
the network of timbers below. There was no time for scruples. Five
minutes would give the pursuers time to come round to the front of the
house.
A wailing voice came from the bed--
"Oh, sir, save him, for Christ's sake! He was my first sweetheart; and
he has always been kind to me. Give him this one chance."
The fugitive had not waited, but had scrambled downstairs in his
strange disguise, stumbling every now and then when his feet caught in
the 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 as
violently--and disappear inside it.
The chairmen stood dumbfounded; and had not Stobart appeared on the
instant to give them their lady's orders, might have raised an alarm.
Drilled to obedience, however, the men took up their load in prompt and
orderly style, and the sedan, with two running footmen guarding it,
turned one corner of the street a minute before the constables came
round the other.
It was an unspeakable mortification for these gentlemen when they found
their bird flown, how they knew not, or, indeed, whether he had ever
been in the house, which they searched from cellar to garret, giving as
much trouble as they could to all its inhabitants. It was in vain that
they questioned Sally Dormer, who swore it was years since she had set
eyes on her old friend Jack Parsons. It shocked Stobart to see that
this brand plucked from the burning could be so ready with a lie, and
that the two women rejoiced in the escape of Mr. Parsons almost as if
he 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 were
saving," Antonia said by-and-by, when he expressed surprise at her
conduct. "'Tis a thing a woman does instinctively. I think I would do
as much to save a sheep from the slaughter-house. 'Twas a happy thought
that brought the sedan to my mind. I remembered Lord Nithisdale's
escape 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 minutes
before I fastened my mask upon it. But I saw a man trembling for his
life, like a bird in a net; and I remembered how savage our law is, and
how light judge and jury make of a fellow-creature's doom. I shall
pack the rascal off to America again, and dare him to do ill there
after his escape. You must help me to get him down the river this
night, Mr. Stobart, and stowed away upon the first ship that sails from
Gravesend."
"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, your
generous sympathy with creatures that suffer? But I tremble at the
thought of a nature so impulsive, a heart so easily melted."
"Oh, it can be hard on occasion," she said proudly, remembering the
lovers who had sighed at her feet and been sent away despairing, since
her reign in London had begun, her supremacy as a beauty and a fortune.
Having consented to help in her work of mercy, Stobart performed his
task faithfully. He had allies among the vagabond classes whose honour
he could rely on, and with the help of two stalwart boatmen he conveyed
Jack Parsons to Erith, and saw him on board a trading vessel, carrying
a score or so of emigrants and a freight of miscellaneous merchandise
to Boston, which by good luck was to sail with the next favourable
wind. He provided the fugitive with proper clothing and necessaries for
the voyage, which might last months, and took pains to clothe him like
a small tradesman's son; and as such he was shipped, with his passage
paid, and the promise of a five-pound note, to be given him by the
captain before he landed in America, to maintain him till he got work.
"If the lady who saved you from the gallows should hear of you
by-and-by as leading an honest life, I dare say she will help you to
better yourself out yonder; but if you fall back into sin you will
deserve the worst that can happen to a hardened reprobate;" and with
these words of counsel, a New Testament, and Charles Wesley's hymn
book, Mr. Stobart took leave of Antonia's _protégé_, who sobbed out
broken words of gratitude to him and to the good lady, which sounded as
if they came from the heart.
"I had my chance before, sir, and I threw it away--but God's curse
blight me if I forget what that woman did for me."
Stobart wrote to Lady Kilrush, with an account of what he had done, but
it was some days before he saw her. He had to take up the thread of
his mission work, and had to wait upon Mr. Wesley more than once--to
discuss his philanthropic labours--at his house by the Foundery. He
saw Sally Dormer every day, and was touched by the poor creature's
adoration 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 believe
that such a creature will be shut out from heaven. Sure, sir, heaven
must be full of women like her, and God must love them, because they
are 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 the
chapters--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 of
kindness and mercy, His goodness to the sick and the poor, and to the
little children."
"All that is no use, Sally, without faith in His atoning blood, without
the conviction of sin, or the belief in saving grace. Yet I can scarce
think that so good a woman as Lady Kilrush will be left for ever under
the dominion of Satan. Faith will come to her some day--with the coming
of sorrow."
"Yes, yes, it will come; and she will shine like a star in heaven. God
cannot do without such angels round His throne."
Stobart reproved her gently for words that went too near blasphemy. He
was melted by her affection for the generous friend who had done so
much to brighten her declining days.
"She came to see me very often while you was away," Sally said; "and
she paid the nurse-keeper to come every day, and sent me soups and
jellies 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 me
what 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, and
the ship that carried Mr. John Parsons was beating round the Start
Point, when George Stobart called in St. James's Square early in the
afternoon.