The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

She slipped from her chair to the ground, and knelt there, weeping passionately, her pretty auburn hair falling over her face and neck, whose delicate whiteness showed like ivory between loose locks of burnished gold.

Her husband had recovered his self-command, lifted her tenderly from the ground, and held her against his breast. How pretty she was, how artless and childlike, and how brutal it was in him to be so angry at her poor little frivolous yearnings for fine clothes and fine company, music and candlelight! He kissed her on the forehead and lips in a gentle silence, led her to her chair, and then resumed his book.

"'Tis I am the sinner, Lucy," he said after a pause, during which her needle travelled slowly along the seam of the shirt she was making for him. "I did very ill to be so hot and impatient about a trifle. But these long empty days vex me. I hope I may be of the proper stuff for a Christian; but sure I should never have done for a hermit. I want to be up and doing."

"Indeed, George, you work too hard as it is. A long day at home should be a rest for you."

"I am not one of those who relish rest. Come, I will read to you, if you choose."

"I love to hear you read."

"Yes, and sit and dream of your baby, or your new tea-things, and scarce know whether I have been reading Milton or the Bible when I have done," he said gently, as he might have spoken to a child.

"You have such a beautiful voice. I love your voice better than the things you read. But let it be 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and I will listen to every word. I always think Christian is you. I can see you when I follow him with my thoughts."

Her husband smiled at the gentle flattery, and brought Bunyan's delightful story from the modest bookcase which held but some two score of classics and pious works – William Law, Dr. Watts, the writers loved and chosen by the followers of the New Light.

"Dost remember where we left your Christian?" he asked.

"'Twas when he was alone in the Valley of Humiliation, just before Apollyon met him," she answered quickly, though had the book been "Paradise Lost," she would have hardly known whether 'twas before or after the fall when they left Adam and Eve. He read aloud till teatime, and read to himself after tea till the hour of evening prayer and Scripture exposition, to which the little nursemaid and a stout maid-of-all-work were summoned; and so the long day closed at an hour when West End London, from Wimpole Street to Whitehall, was alive with chairs and linkmen, French horns and dancing feet. In this cottage on the common there was a silence that made the chirp of the crickets a burden.

George Stobart was not a quietist. Religion unsupported by philanthropy would not have sufficed him for happiness. He could not spend half his life upon his knees in a rapture of self-humiliation – could not devote hours to searching his own heart. Once and for all he had been convinced of sin, assured that the road he had been travelling was a road that led to the gates of hell, and that in travelling it he had carried many weaker sinners along with him, and so had been a murderer of souls. Once and for all he had been assured of the free grace of God, and believed himself appointed to do good work – a brand snatched from the burning, whose duty it was to snatch other brands, to compel the lost sheep to come into the fold.

He loved to be up and doing. He had the soldier's temper, and must be fighting some one or something; nor could he keep in his chamber and wrestle with impalpable devils. He could not fight, like Luther, with the evil that was within him till he materialized the inward tempter, saw Satan standing before him, and flung his inkpot at a visible foe. Abstract piety could not satisfy George Stobart. He caught himself yawning over Law's "Serious Call," and "The Imitation of Christ."

In the beginning of the Great Revival, when the Oxford Methodists and the Moravian Christians had been as one brotherhood in the meeting-house by Fetter Lane, an enthusiast, by name Molther, had put forward a new way of salvation, which was to be "still." Those who desired to find faith were to give up the public means of grace. They were not even to pray or to read the Scriptures, nor to attempt to do any good works.

John Wesley's fine common sense had repudiated this doctrine, whereupon there had been confusion and falling away among the Fetter Lane society; and the great leader had withdrawn to a chapel and dwelling-house of his own creation, in a disused foundry for cannon, near Finsbury Square. It was here that George Stobart had found faith, and it was in Wesley's strong and active crusade against sin and suffering that he found satisfaction.

After somewhat reluctantly entering upon his career as an itinerant preacher, when the magnitude of the work, the multitudes eager to hear the Word of God, revealed themselves to him, John Wesley, again reluctantly, enlisted the help of lay preachers. The Church had shut her doors upon him – that Anglican Church of which he had ever been a true and staunch apostle – and he had to do without the Church. He saw before him the people of England awakened from the torpor of a century of automatic religion, and saw that he needed more labourers in this vast vineyard than the Church could give him.

For the last two years George Stobart had been one of Wesley's favourite helpers, and had accompanied his chief in several of those itinerant journeys which made half England Wesleyan. He preached at Bristol, rode with Wesley, preaching at every stage of the journey, from Bristol to Falmouth, where he stood shoulder to shoulder with him in one of the worst riots the Christian hero ever faced. He was with him through the roughest encounters in Lancashire, stood beside him on the Market Cross at Bolton, when the great wild mob surged round them and stones flew thick and fast, and where, as if by a miracle, while many of the rabble were hurt, the preacher remained untouched.

In all this, in the effect of his own preaching, in the hazards and adventures of those long rides across the face of a country where most things were new, Stobart found unalloyed delight. He loved his mission in the streets and alleys of Lambeth, his visits to the London jails, for here he had to wrestle with the devils of ignorance and blasphemy, to preach cleanliness to men and women who had been born and reared in filth, to meet the wants of a multitude with a handful of silver, to give counsel, sympathy, compassion, where he could not give bread. This was work that pleased him. Here he felt himself the soldier and servant of Christ.

It was in the religion of the chamber that Stobart fell short of the mark. He loved the Word of God when God spoke by the lips of His Son; but he had not that reverent affection for the Old Testament which Wesley had urged upon him as essential to true religion. For the grandeur, the poetry of Holy Writ he had the highest appreciation; but there were many pages of the sacred volume in which he looked in vain for the light of inspiration. If he could have read his Bible in the same inquiring spirit that Samuel Coleridge brought to it, he might have been better satisfied with the book and with himself; but Wesley had forbidden any such liberal interpretation of the Scriptures. Every line, every word, every letter was to be accepted as the law of God.

He was dissatisfied with himself for his coldness, for wandering thoughts, for the dying out of that sacred fire which John Wesley's preaching had kindled in his soul at the time of his conversion. But he told himself that such a fire can burn but once in a lifetime. 'Tis like the burning bush in which Moses beheld his God. That stupendous vision comes once, and once only. It has done its purifying work, and burnt out sin. But between the starting-point of the converted penitent and the Christian's crown, how long and difficult the race! George Stobart had felt his footsteps flagging on the stony road. He had not lost courage. The dogged determination to win that eternal crown was still with him; but he had lost something of his first enthusiasm, that romantic temper in which it had pleased him to prove his sincerity by the sacrifice of fortune and station, and by a marriage which would have seemed impossible to him in his unregenerate days.

A week after Lady Kilrush had given her great entertainment there came a letter from her, addressed to Mrs. Stobart, and the very seal upon it was as precious in the sight of the printer's daughter as if it had been a jewel.

"Look, George, what a beautiful seal – a naked boy with a helmet, and two snakes twisted round his cane. Who can have written to me? Why, the name is signed outside, 'Townshend.' Sure I know nobody of that name."

"'Tis but the frank, child. The letter is from Lady Kilrush."

"How can you tell that?"

"I could swear to her hand among a hundred. Not the penmanship of one woman in a thousand shows such strength of will."

"Can one's writing show one's mind? I should never have thought it. I wonder if 'tis a card for her next assembly. Oh, George, don't be angry! I should like, once in my life, only once, to go to a party."

Her husband sighed as he patted her shoulder, with the gentle touch that only strong men have, and which always soothed her.

"Read your letter," he said; "'tis no card."

She took her scissors from her work-basket and carefully cut round the seal – loth to spoil anything so beautiful, though her heart beat fast with expectation. George read the letter aloud over her shoulder.

    "St. James's Square, November 15th.

"DEAR MADAM,

"I hope that neither you nor Mr. Stobart have forgot your polite promise to visit me, and that you will do me the favour of dining with me at four o'clock next Monday, when Lady Margaret Laroche, the Duchess of Portland, Mr. Townshend, and some other of my most agreeable acquaintance, will be good enough to give me their company in the evening. As you live so far off, I shall venture to send my coach to fetch you before dark, and I shall be best pleased if you will spend the night in St. James's Square, and return home at your leisure and convenience on Tuesday. Knowing Mr. Stobart's serious mind, I did not presume to send you a card for my ball last week, as I should be sorry for any invitation of mine to seem an empty compliment.

"Pray persuade your husband, and my cousin by marriage, to gratify me by bidding you write 'Yes,' and believe me, with much respect,

    "Your sincere friend and servant,
    "ANTONIA KILRUSH."

"Must I say no, George?" Lucy asked, with a quivering lip, ready to burst into tears.

"Nay, child, I made you unhappy t'other day, and was miserable for two days after at the thought I had been a brute. If it would please you to visit her ladyship – "

"Please me! I should feel as if I was flying over the moon."

"But you could not fly over the moon in a grogram gown. You need not vie with her Grace of Portland, but I doubt you have no clothes fit for company, and my purse is empty."

"But I have my wedding gown," she cried, clapping her hands – "the gown I bought at Clapham with the pocket-money your mother gave me, a crown piece at a time, and that I saved till it was over three guineas. And I bought a pearl grey silk, and your mother's woman helped me make it, and then when I told you what I had done you were vexed at my vanity, and would not let me wear it; so I was married in my old stuff gown, and the pearl grey silk has never been worn. The Duchess will not have a newer gown than mine, if you'll let me go."

"'When I was a child I thought as a child,'" quoted George. "Well, dearest, thou shalt have thy childish pleasure. To have seen how idle and empty a thing fine company is may make thee love our serious life better."

CHAPTER XIII.

IN ST. JAMES'S SQUARE

On the afternoon when she was expecting Mr. and Mrs. Stobart, Lady Kilrush was surprised by a visit from an old friend whom she had almost forgotten. Her chair had just brought her from a round of visits, and she had not yet removed her hat and cloak, which Sophy was waiting to take from her, being ever jealous of her lady's French maid, when a visitor was announced —

"Mrs. Granger."

The room was the fourth and smallest of a suite of reception-rooms, which occupied the whole of the first floor, leaving space only for the wide central staircase, surrounded by a gallery that was a favourite resort of visitors at a crowded assembly, as a vantage-ground from which they could watch arrivals, look out for their particular friends, and criticize "clothes."

The room was half in dusk, and Antonia wondered who the little young lady in the cherry-coloured hood and satin petticoat of the same bright hue could be. It was not a colour favoured by people of taste at that time, and the little plump person in the high hoop had not the air of the Portland set, that recherché group of women among whom Antonia had been received on a friendly footing, on the strength of her own charms and Lady Peggy's popularity. Lady Peggy was of all the sets, best and worst, and exercised a commanding influence over all.

"My dear creature, sure you won't pretend you've forgot me?" cried the little woman, with broad, outspoken speech, after her first mincing salutation had been acknowledged by a stately curtsey and a "Your humble servant, madam."

"Why, 'tis Patty!" exclaimed Antonia, holding out both her hands.

"Yes, 'tis Patty – Mrs. Granger. Sure you remember old General Granger that you used to jeer at. I have been married to him over a year, and we have handsome lodgings in Leicester Square, and I keep my chair; and if he outlives his two elder brothers and three nephews, I shall be a peeress."