The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

by M. E. Braddon

  CHAPTER V.

  A SERIOUS FAMILY.

  Lord Kilrush posted to Tunbridge Wells the day after the Jacobitedinner, and found a herd of fine people he knew parading the Pantiles,or sauntering on the common, among Jews and Germans, pinmakers' wivesfrom Smock Alley, and rural squires with red-cheeked daughters. Hedrank the waters, and nearly died of _ennui_. He would have liked theplace better if it had been a solitude. Wit no longer aroused him, noteven George Selwyn's; beauty had ceased to charm, except in one face,and that was two and thirty miles away. That chronic weariness which heknew for the worst symptom of advancing years increased with every hourof fashionable rusticity. The air at the Wells was delicious, the innwas comfortable, his physician swore that the treatment was improvinghis health. He left the place at an hour's notice, to the disgust ofhis body-servant, and posted back to town. He preferred the gloom ofhis great silent house in St. James's Square, where he lived a hermit'slife in his library when London was empty. In years gone by he hadspent the summer and autumn in a round of country visits, diversifiedwith excursions to chateaux in the environs of Paris, and a winter atFlorence or Rome, everywhere admired and in request. Scarce a seasonhad passed without rumours of his impending marriage with some famousbeauty, or still more famous fortune. But for the last five or sixyears he had wearied of society, and had restricted his company to afew chosen friends, men of his own age, with whom he could rail at thefollies of the new generation--men who had known Bolingbroke in his dayof power, and had entertained Voltaire at their country seats in theyear '29.

  Were Tonia's violet eyes the lodestars that drew him back to town? Hewas singing softly to himself as he walked up Shooter's Hill, beingever merciful to the brute creation, and loving horses and dogs betterthan he loved men.

  "Thine eyes are lodestars and thy breath sweet air," he sang, twirlinghis clouded cane; and the thought that he would soon see those lovelyeyes made him gay. But his first visit was not to Rupert Buildings. Heknew that he had shocked and disgusted Antonia, and that he must giveher time to recover her old confidence. It had been but an impetuousmovement, a waft of passionate feeling, when he stretched out his armstowards her, yearning to clasp her to his breast; but her fine instincthad told her that this was the lover and not the friend. He must giveher time to think she had mistaken him. He must play the comedy ofindifference.

  He ordered his favourite hack on the day after his return from theWells, and rode by Westminster Bridge, only opened in the previousautumn, to Clapham, past Kennington Common, where poor Jemmy Dawsonhad suffered for his share in the rebellion of '45, by pleasant rusticroads where the perfume of roses exhaled from prosperous citizens'gardens, surrounding honest, square-built brick houses, not to beconfounded with the villa, which then meant a demi-mansion on a classicmodel, secluded in umbrageous grounds, and not a flimsy bay-windowedpacking-case in a row of similar packing-cases.

  Clapham was then more rustic than Haslemere is now, and the commonwas the Elysian Fields of wealthy city merchants and some persons ofhigher quality. The shrubberied drive into which Kilrush rode was keptwith an exquisite propriety, and those few flowering shrubs that bloomin September were unfolding their petals under an almost smokelesssky. He dismounted before a handsome house more than half a centuryold, built before the Revolution, a solid, red-brick house with longnarrow windows, and a handsome cornice, pediment, and cupola maskingthe shining black tiles of the low roof. A shell-shaped canopy, richlycarved, and supported by cherubic brackets, sheltered the tall doorway.The open door offered a vista of garden beyond the hall, and Kilrushwalked straight through to the lawn, while his groom led the horsesto the stable yard, a spacious quadrangle screened by interveningshrubberies.

  A middle-aged woman of commanding figure was seated at a table underthe spreading branches of a plane with a young man, who rose hurriedly,and went to meet the visitor. The lady was Mrs. Stobart, the widowof a Bristol ship-owner, and the young man was her only son, late ofa famous dragoon regiment. Both were dressed with a gloomy severitythat set his lordship's teeth on edge, but both had a certain air ofdistinction not to be effaced by their plain attire.

  "This is very kind of your lordship," said George Stobart, as theyshook hands. "My mother told me you were at Tunbridge Wells. She sawyour name in the _Gazette_."

  "Your mother was right, George; but the inanity of the place wore meout in a week, and I left before I had given the waters a chance ofkilling or curing me!"

  He kissed Mrs. Stobart's black mitten, and dropped into a chair ather side, after vouchsafing a distant nod to a young woman who satat a pace or two from the table, sewing the seam of a coarse linenshirt, with her head discreetly bent. She raised a pair of mild browneyes, and blushed rosy red as she acknowledged his lordship's haughtygreeting, and he noticed that Stobart went over to speak to her beforehe resumed his seat.

  There were some dishes of fruit on the table, Mrs. Stobart'swork-basket and several books--the kind of books Kilrush loathed,pamphlets in grey paper covers, sermons in grey boards, the literatureof that Great Revival which had spread a wave of piety over the UnitedKingdom, from John o' Groat's to the Land's End, and across the IrishChannel from the Liffey to the Shannon.

  Mrs. Stobart was his first cousin, the daughter of his father's eldersister and of Sir Michael MacMahon, an Irish judge. Good looks ran inthe blood of the Delafields, and only two years ago Kilrush had beenproud of his cousin, who until that date was a distinguished figurein the fashionable assemblies of London and Bath, and whose aquilinefeatures and fine person were set off by powder and diamonds, and thefloral brocades and flowing sacques which "that hateful woman," Madamede Pompadour, whom everybody of _ton_ abused and imitated, had broughtinto fashion. The existence of such women is, of course, a disgrace tocivilization; but while their wicked reign lasts, persons of qualitymust copy their clothes.

  Two years ago George Stobart had been one of the most promisingsoldiers in His Majesty's army, a man who loved his profession, whohad distinguished himself as a subaltern at Fontenoy, and was markedby his seniors for promotion. He had been also one of the best-dressedand best-mannered young men in London society, and at the Bath and theWells a star of the first magnitude.

  What was he now? Kilrush shuddered as he marked the change.

  "A sanctimonious prig," thought his lordship; "a creature of moods andhallucinations, who might be expected at any hour to turn lay preacher,and jog from Surrey to Cornwall on one of his superannuated chargers,bawling the blasphemous familiarities of the new school to the mobon rural commons, escaping by the skin of his teeth from the savagesof the manufacturing districts, casting in his itinerant lot withWhitefield and the Wesleys."

  To Kilrush such a transformation meant little short of lunacy. Hewas indignant at his kinsman's decadence; and when he gave a curtand almost uncivil nod to the poor dependent, bending over her plainneedlework yonder betwixt sun and shade, it was because he suspectedthat pretty piece of lowborn pink-and-white to have some part in thechange that had been wrought so suddenly.

  Two years ago, at an evening service in John Wesley's chapel at theOld Foundery, George Stobart had been "convinced of sin." Swift asthe descent of the dove over the waters of the Jordan had been theawakening of his conscience from the long sleep of boyhood and youth.In that awful moment the depth of his iniquity had been opened tohim, and he had discovered the hollowness of a life without God inthe world. He had looked along the backward path of years, and hadseen himself a child, drowsily enduring the familiar liturgy, sleepingthrough the hated sermon; a lad at Eton, making a jest of holy things,scorning any assumption of religion in his schoolfellows, insolentto his masters, arrogant and uncharitable, shirking everything thatdid not minister to his own pleasures or his own aims, studious onlyin the pursuit of selfish ambitions, dreaming of future greatness tobe won amidst the carnage of battles as ruthless, as unnecessary, asMalplaquet.

  And following those early years of self-love and impiety there hadcome a season of darker sins, of the sin
s which prosperous youth callspleasure, sins that had sat so lightly on the slumbering conscience,but which filled the awakened soul with horror.

  His first impulse after that spiritual regeneration was to sell outof the army. This was the one tangible and irrevocable sacrifice thatlay in his power. The more he loved a soldier's career, the moreardently he had aspired to military renown, the more obvious was theduty of renunciation. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had but just beenconcluded, and the troubles in America had not begun, so there seemedno chance of his regiment being sent on active service, but his conductseemed not the less extraordinary to his commanding officer.

  "Do you do this to please your mother?" he asked.

  "No, sir; I do it to please Christ."

  The colonel rapped his forehead significantly as Stobart left the room.

  "Another victim of the Oxford Methodists," he said. "If theyare allowed to go on, England will be peopled with hare-brainedenthusiasts, and we shall have neither soldiers nor sailors."

  Mrs. Stobart was furious with her son for his abandonment of a careerin which she had expected him to win distinction. For some months afterhis "call" she had refused to speak to him, and had left him to hissolitary meditations in his own rooms at Stobart Lodge. In this gloomyperiod they had met only at meals, and it had vexed her to see thather son took no wine, and refused all the daintier dishes upon thetable, all those ragouts and salmis that adorned the board in sumptuouscovered dishes of Georgian silver, and which were the pride of cook anddinner-giver.

  "I give myself a useless trouble in looking at the bill of fare everymorning," Mrs. Stobart said angrily, as the side dishes were removeduntasted, breaking in upon a melancholy silence that had lasted fromthe soup to the game. "God knows I need little for myself; but you usedto appreciate a good dinner."

  "I have learnt to appreciate higher things, madam."

  "I might as well order a leg of mutton and a suet pudding every day inthe week."

  "Indeed, my dear mother, I desire nothing better."

  "With a cook at forty guineas a year!"

  "Dismiss her, and let the kitchen wench dress our simple meals."

  "And make myself a laughing-stock to my friends."

  "To your idle acquaintances only--friends esteem us for deeper reasons.Ah, madam, if you would but hearken to the voices I hear, court thefriends I love, you would scorn the worldling's life as I scorn it. Tothe heir of a boundless estate in the Kingdom of Heaven 'tis idle towaste thought and toil upon a trumpery speck of earth."

  "Oh, those Oxford Methodists! You have caught their jargon. I am a goodChurchwoman, George, and I hate cant."

  "You are a good woman, madam. But what is it to be a good Churchwoman?To attend a morning service once a week in a church where there isneither charity nor enthusiasm, upon whose dull decorum the hungryand the naked dare not intrude--a service that takes no cognizance ofsinners, save in a formula that the lips repeat while the heart remainsdead; to eat a cold dinner on the Sabbath in order that your servantsmay join in the same heartless mockery of worship; to listen to thebarren dogma of a preacher whose life you know for evil, and whoseintellect you despise."

  Mother and son had many such conversations--oases in a desert ofsullen silence--before Mrs. Stobart's conversion; but that conversioncame at last, partly by the preaching of John Wesley, whom her sonworshipped, and partly by the influence of Lady Huntingdon and otherladies of birth and fortune, whose example appealed to the fashionableMaria Stobart as no meaner example could have done. She began tothink less scornfully of the Great Revival when she found her equalsin rank among the most ardent followers of Whitefield and the Wesleys:and within a year of her son's awakening she, too, became convinced ofsin, the firstfruits of which conversion were shown by the dismissalof her forty-guinea cook, her second footman, the third stableservant, and the sale of a fine pair of carriage-horses. She had evencontemplated dispensing with her own maid, but was prevented by a senseof her patrician incapability of getting into her clothes or out ofthem without help. She made, perhaps, a still greater sacrifice bychanging her dressmaker from a Parisienne in St. James's to a woman atKennington, who worked for the Quaker families on Denmark Hill.

  After about ten minutes' conversation with this lady, of whose mentalcapacity he had but a poor opinion, Lord Kilrush invited her son toa turn in the fruit garden--a garden planned fifty years before, andmaintained in all the perfection of espaliered walks and herbaciousborders, masking the spacious area devoted to celery, asparagus,and the homelier vegetables. High brick walls, heavily buttressed,surmounted this garden on three sides, the fourth side being dividedfrom lawn and parterre by a ten-foot yew hedge. At the further end,making a central point in the distance, there was a handsome red-brickorangery, flanked on either side by a hothouse, while at one angle ofthe wall an octagonal summer-house of two stories overlooked the whole,and afforded an extensive view of the open country across the river,from Notting Hill to Harrow. Established wealth and comfort couldhardly find a better indication than in this delightful garden.

  "Upon my soul," cried Kilrush, "you have a little paradise in this _rusin urbe!_ Come, George, I am glad to see you look so well in health,and I hope soon to be gratified by seeing you make an end of your crazylife, and return to a world you were created to serve and adorn. If thearmy will not please you, there is the political arena open to everyyoung man of means and talent. I should like to see your name rank withthe Townsends and the Pelhams before I die."

  "I have no taste for politics, sir; and for my crazy life, sure itlasted seven and twenty years, and came to a happy ending two yearsago."

  "Nine and twenty! Faith, George, that's too old for foolery. JohnWesley was a lad at college, and Whitefield was scarce out of his teenswhen he gave himself up to these pious hallucinations; and they wereboth penniless youths who must needs begin their journey without scripor sack. But you, a man of fortune, a soldier, one of the young heroesof Fontenoy, that you could be caught by the rhapsodies that carryaway a London mob of shop-boys and servant-wenches, or a throng ofsemi-savage coal-miners at Kingswood, in that contagion of enthusiasmto which crowds are subject--that _you_ could turn Methodist! Pah, itmakes me sick to think of your folly!"

  "Perhaps some day your lordship will come over and help us. After mymother's conversion there is no heart so stubborn that I should despairof its being changed."

  "Your mother is a fool! Well, I don't want to quarrel with you, sowe'll argue no further. After all, in a young man these follies are butpassing clouds. Had you not taken so serious a step as to leave thearmy I should scarcely have vexed myself on your account. By the way,who is that seamstress person I saw sitting on the lawn, and whom Ihave seen here before to-day?"

  His eyes were on George's face, and the conscious flush he expected tosee passed over the young man's cheek and brow as he spoke.

  "She is a girl whose conscience was awakened in the same hour that sawmy redemption; she is my twin-sister in Christ."

  "That I can understand," said Kilrush, with the air of humouring amadman, "but why the devil do I find her established here?"

  "She is the daughter of a journeyman printer, her mother a drunkardand her father an atheist. Her home was a hell upon earth. Her casehad been brought before Mr. Wesley, who was touched by her unaffectedpiety. I heard her history from his lips, and made it my duty to rescueher from her vile associations."

  "How came you by the knowledge of your spiritual twinship?"

  "She was seated near me in the meeting-house, and I was the witness ofher agitation, of the Pentecostal flame that set her spirit on fire; Isaw her fall from the bench, with her forehead bent almost to the flooron which she knelt. Her whole frame was convulsed with sobs which shestrove with all her might to restrain. I tried to raise her from theground, but her ice-cold hand repulsed mine, and the kneeling figurewas as rigid as if it had been marble."

  "A cataleptic seizure, perhaps. Your Brotherhood of the Foundery hasmuch to answer for."

&nbs
p; "It has many to answer for," George retorted indignantly--"thousands ofsouls rescued from Satan."

  "Had that meek-looking young woman been one of his votaries? If so,I wonder your mother consented to harbour her. It is one thing toentertain angels unawares, but knowingly to receive devils----"

  "Scoff as you will, sir, but do not slander a virtuous girl because shehappens to be of low birth."

  "If she was not a sinner, why this convulsion of remorse for sin? Icannot conceive the need of self-humiliation in youth that has nevergone astray."

  "Does your lordship think it is enough to have lived what the worldcalls a moral life, never to have been caught in the toils of vice?The fall from virtue is a terrible thing; but there is a state of sinmore deadly than Mary Magdalen's. There is the sin of the infidel whodenies Christ; there is the sin of the ignorant and the unthinking, whohas lived aloof from God. It was to the conviction of such a state thatLucy Foreman was awakened that night."

  "Did you enter into conversation with her after the--the remarkableexperience?" asked Kilrush, with a cynical devilry lighting his darkgrey eyes as he watched his young kinsman's face.

  It was a fine frank face, with well-cut features and eyes of the samedark grey as his lordship's, a face that had well become the dragoon'sRoman headgear, and which had a certain poetical air to-day with theunpowdered brown hair thrown carelessly back from the broad forehead.

  "No, it was not till long after that night that I introduced myself toher. It was not till after my mother's conversion that I could hopeto win her friendship for this recruit of Christ. I had heard Lucy'sstory in the mean-time, and I knew that she was worthy of all that ourfriendship could do for her."

  "And you persuaded your mother to take her into her service?"

  "She is not a servant," George said quickly.

  "What else?"

  "She is useful to my mother--works with her needle, attends to theaviary, and to the flowers in the drawing-room----"

  "All that sounds like a servant."

  "We do not treat her as a servant."

  "Does she sit at table with you?"

  "No. She has her meals in the housekeeper's room. It is my mother'sarrangement, not mine."

  "You would have her at the same table with the granddaughter of theseventeenth Baron Kilrush?"

  "I have ceased to consider petty distinctions. To me the premier dukeis of no more importance than Lucy Foreman's infidel father--a soul tobe saved or lost."

  "George," said Kilrush, gravely, "let me tell you, as your kinsman andfriend, that you are in danger of making a confounded mess of yourlife."

  "I don't follow you."

  "Oh yes, you do. You know very well what I mean. You have played thefool badly enough already, by selling your commission. But there arelower depths of folly. When a man begins to talk as you do, and tohanker after some pretty bit of plebeian pink-and-white, one knowswhich way he is drifting."

  He paused, expecting an answer, but George walked beside him in a moodysilence.

  "There is one mistake which neither fate nor the world ever forgivesin a man," pursued Kilrush, "and that is an ignoble marriage; it is anerror whose consequences stick to him for the whole course of his life,and he can no more shake off the indirect disadvantages of the actthan he can shake off his lowborn wife and her lowborn kin. I will gofurther, George, and say that if you make such a marriage I will neverforgive you, never see your face again."

  "Your lordship's threats are premature. I have not asked yourpermission to marry, and I have not given you the slightest ground forsupposing that I contemplate marriage."

  "Oh yes, you have. That young woman yonder is ground enough for myapprehension. You would not have intruded her upon your home if youwere not _epris_. Take a friendly counsel from a man of the world,George, and remember that although my title dies with me, my fortune isat my disposal, and that you are my natural heir."

  "Oh, sir, that would be the very last consideration to influence me."

  "Sure I know you are stubborn and hot-headed, or you would not haveabandoned a soldier's career without affording me the chance todissuade you. I came here to-day on purpose to give you this warning.'Twas my duty, and I have done it."

  He gave a sigh of relief, as if he had flung off a troublesome burden.

  As they turned to go back to the lawn, Lucy Foreman came to meetthem--a slim figure of medium height, a pretty mouth and a _nezretrousse_, reddish brown hair with a ripple in it, the pink and whiteof youth in her complexion; but her feet and ankles, her hands andher ears, the "points," to which the connoisseur's eye looked, had acertain coarseness.

  "Not even a casual strain of blue blood here," thought Kilrush; "but'tis true I have seen duchesses as coarsely moulded."

  She had come at her mistress's order to invite them to a dish of teaon the lawn. Kilrush assented, though it was but five o'clock, and hehad not dined. They walked by the damsel's side to the table underthe plane, where the tea-board was set ready. Having given expressionto his opinion, his lordship was not disinclined to become betteracquainted with this Helen of the slums, so that he might betterestimate his cousin's peril. She resumed her distant chair and herneedlework, as Kilrush and George sat down to tea, and was not invitedto share that elegant refreshment. The young man's vexed glance inher direction would have been enough to betray his _penchant_ for thehumble companion.

  Mrs. Stobart forgot herself so far as to question her cousin aboutsome of the fine people whose society she had renounced.

  "Though I no longer go to their houses I have not ceased to see them,"she said. "We meet at Lady Huntingdon's. Lady Chesterfield and LadyCoventry are really converts; but I fear most of my former friendsresort to that admirable woman's assemblies out of curiosity ratherthan from a searching for the truth."

  "Her _protege_, Whitefield, has had as rapid a success as Garrick orBarry," said Kilrush. "He is a powerful orator of a theatrical type,and not to have heard him preach is to be out of the fashion. I myselfstood in the blazing sun at Moorfields to hear him, when he first beganto be cried up; but having heard him I am satisfied. The show was afine show, but once is enough."

  "There are but too many of your stamp, Kilrush. Some good seed mustever fall on stony places; yet the harvest has been rich enough toreward those who toil in the vineyard--rich in promise of a day whenthere shall be no more railing and no more doubt."

  "And when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and Frederick andMaria Theresa shall love each other like brother and sister, and Franceshall be satisfied with less than half the earth," said Kilrush,lightly. "You have a pretty little maid yonder," he added in a lowervoice, when George had withdrawn from the tea-table, and seemedabsorbed in a book.

  "She is not my maid, she is a brand snatched from the burning. I amkeeping her till I can place her in some household where she will besafe herself, and a well-spring of refreshing grace for those with whomshe lives."

  "And in the mean time, don't you think there may be a certain dangerfor your son in such close proximity with a pretty girl--of that tenderage?"

  "My son! Danger for my son in the society of a journeyman's daughter--agirl who can but just read and write? My good Kilrush, I am astoundedthat you could entertain such a thought."

  "I'm glad you consider my apprehensions groundless," said his lordship,stifling a yawn as he rose to take leave. "Poor silly woman," hethought. "Well, I have done my duty. But it would have been wiser toomit that hint to the mother. If she should plague her son about his_penchant_, ten to one 'twill make matters worse. An affair of thatkind thrives on opposition."