The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

"My dear Patty, I am gladder than I can say to see your kind little face again. Sit down, child. You must stop and dine with me. I have some cousins coming to dinner, and some company afterwards."

"Well, I'm glad you're glad. I thought you was too proud to remember me, since you didn't send me a card for your ball t'other night, though all London was there."

"I did not know what had become of you. I have asked ever so many people who knew the theatres, and no one could say where Miss Lester had gone since her name vanished from the playbills."

"The General is a strait-laced old fool!" said Patty. "He doesn't like people to know I was an actress, though I flatter myself that nobody can hear me speak or see me curtsey without discovering it. There's an air of high comedy that nobody can mistake. Sure 'tis in the hope of catching it that fine ladies take up Kitty Clive."

"You mustn't call your husband a fool, Patty, especially if he's kind to you."

"Oh, he's kind enough, but he's very troublesome with his pussy-cats, and Minettes, and nonsense; though, to be sure, Minette is a prettier name than Martha, and genteeler than Patty. And he's very close with his money. I might have my coach as well as my chair if he wasn't a miser. I sometimes think I was a simpleton to leave the stage for a husband of seventy. Sure I might have been another Mrs. Cibber."

"You had been acting seven years, Patty. You gave your genius a fair chance."

"Pshaw, there's some that don't begin to hit the taste of the town till they've been at it three times seven. Look at old Colley, for instance. The managers kept him down half a lifetime. When I look at this house and think of my two parlours I feel I was a fool to marry the General. But there never was such a romance as your marriage."

"My marriage was a tragedy, Patty!"

"Ah, but you've got the comedy now. This fine house, and your hall porter – I never laid eyes on such a pompous creature – and your powdered footmen. You're a lucky devil, Tonia."

Antonia did not reprove her, being somewhat troubled in mind at the doubt of her own wisdom in bringing this free-and-easy young person in company with George Stobart and his wife. In her gladness at meeting the friend of her girlhood she had forgotten how strange such a mixture would be.

"If 'tis not convenient to dine with me to-day, Patty, I shall be just as pleased to see you to-morrow, or the first day that would suit you."

"Your ladyship – ladyship! oh, lord, ain't it droll? – your ladyship is vastly obleeging; but I came to stay if you'd have me. Granger is gone to Hounslow to dine with his old regiment, and I'm my own woman till ten o'clock. 'Twould be civil of you if you'd bid one of your footmen tell my chairmen to fetch me at a quarter to ten, and then we can sit by the fire and talk over old times. This is Mrs. Potter's girl, I doubt, she that waited upon us once when I took a dish of tea with you. How d'ye do, miss?" – holding out condescending finger-tips to Sophy, who had stood gazing at her since her entrance.

"Yes, this is Miss Potter, my friend and companion. You can take my hat and Mrs. Granger's hood, Sophy, and come back when Mr. and Mrs. Stobart are here."

When Sophy was gone, Lady Kilrush took Patty's plump cheeks between two caressing hands and contemplated her with a smile.

"You are as pretty as ever, child," she said, with an elder-sister air, as if she, instead of Patty, had been the senior by near a decade; "and I am glad to think you have left the playhouse and all its perils for a comfortable home with an honest man who loves you. Nay, I think you are prettier than you were in Covent Garden. The quiet life has freshened your looks. But you shouldn't wear cherry colour."

"Because of my red hair?"

"Because it is a cit's wife's colour, or a vain old woman's that wants to look young. 'Tis not the mode, Patty."

"My petticoat cost a pound a yard," said Patty, ruefully. "I thought the General would kill me when he saw the bill."

"Oh, 'tis pretty enough, and suits you well enough, chérie. I was half in jest. I have a kind friend who lectures me upon all such trifles, and so I thought I'd lecture you. And, my dearest Patty, as the cousin that's to dine with us is a very serious person, I should take it kindly of you not to talk of the playhouse, nor to abuse your husband."

"I hope I know how to behave in company," answered Patty, slightly huffed; and on Mr. and Mrs. Stobart being announced the next moment, she assumed a mincing stateliness which lasted the whole evening.

Stobart thought her an appalling personage, in spite of her reticence. Her cherry satin bodice was cut very low, and her ample bosom was spread with pearls and crosses like a jeweller's show-case. She made up for a paucity of diamonds by the size of her topazes and the profusion of her amethysts, and her Bristol paste buckles would have been big enough for the tallest of the Prussian king's grenadiers. Lucy Stobart, in her pearl-grey silk, made with a quaker-like simplicity, her pure complexion, golden-brown curls and slender shape, seemed all the lovelier by the contrast of Mrs. Granger's florid charms; but poor Patty behaved herself with an admirable reserve, and uttered no word that could offend.

Lucy looked at everything in a wondering rapture – the pictures, the marble busts on ebony and ormolu pedestals, the miniatures and jewels and toys scattered on tables, the glass cabinets displaying the most exquisite porcelain, the China monsters standing about the carpet, the confusion of beautiful objects which met her gaze on every side almost bewildered her. She looked about her like a child at a fair.

"And does your ladyship really live in this house?" she asked innocently. "'Tis not like a house to live in."

"Do you think it should he put under a glass case, or buried under burning ashes like Herculaneum, so that it may be found perfect and undisturbed two thousand years after we are all dead?" said Stobart, smiling at her.

He was pleased with her fresh young prettiness, which was not disgraced even by Antonia's imperial charms.

"You see, madam, how foolish I have been to indulge my wife with a sight of splendours which lie so far away from our lives," he said to Antonia, who accompanied them through the suite of drawing-rooms where clusters of candles had just been lighted in sconces on the walls, to show them the famous Gobelins tapestries that had once belonged to Madame de Montespan.

"I doubt, sir, Mrs. Stobart is too happy in her rural life ever to sigh for a large London house and its obligation to live in company," answered Antonia.

"I love our cottage dearly when my husband is at home, madam; but I have to spend weeks and months with no companion but my baby son, who can say but four words yet, while Mr. Stobart is wandering about the country with Mr. Wesley, and having sticks and stones aimed at him sometimes in the midst of his sermons. If your ladyship would persuade him to leave off field preaching I should be a happy woman."

"Nay, madam, I cannot come between a man and his conscience, however much our opinions may differ; and if Mr. Stobart thinks his sermons do good – "

"'Tis a question of living in light or darkness, madam. Those who carry the lamp John Wesley lighted know too well what need there is of their labours."

"You go among great sinners?"

"We go among the untaught savages of a civilized country, madam. If there is need of God's word anywhere upon this earth, it is needed where we go. Thousands of awakened souls answer for the usefulness of our labours."

"And you are content to pass your life in such work? You have not taken it up for a year or so, to abandon it when the fever of enthusiasm cools?"

"I have no such fever, madam. And to what should I go back if I took my hand from the plough? I have renounced the profession I loved, and have forfeited my mother's affection. She was my only near relation. My wife and I stand alone in the world; we have no friend but God, no profession but to serve Him."

"I wonder you do not go into the Church."

"The Church that has turned a cold shoulder upon Wesley and Whitefield is no church for me. I can do more good as a free man."

The door was flung open as the clock struck four, and Lady Margaret Laroche came fluttering in, almost before the butler could announce her.

"My matchless one, will you give me some dinner?" she demanded gaily. "I have been shopping in the city, hunting for feathers for my screen, and I know your hour. But I forgot you had visitors. Pray make us acquainted."

"My cousin, Mr. Stobart, Mrs. Stobart, Mrs. Granger." Lady Peggy sank to the floor in a curtsey, smiled benignantly at Lucy, and put up her glass to stare disapprovingly at Patty's cherry-coloured bodice.

Dinner was announced, and they went downstairs to that spacious dining-room, which had been so gloomy an apartment when Lord Kilrush dined there in his later years, generally alone. The room had seen wilder feasts than any that Lady Kilrush was likely to give there, when her late husband was in his pride of youth and folly, the boldest rake-hell in London.

The conversation at dinner was confined to Lady Margaret, Mr. Stobart, and Antonia; for Lucy had no more idea of talking than if she had been in church, and Mrs. Granger only opened her mouth when obliged by the business of the table, where two courses of eight dishes succeeded each other in the ponderous magnificence of silver and the substantiality of mock-turtle soup, turkey and chine, chicken pie, boiled rabbits, cod and oyster sauce, veal and ham, larded pheasants, with jellies and puddings, a bill of fare which, in its piling of Pelion upon Ossa, would be more likely to excite disgust than appetite in the modern gourmet. But in spite of such travelled wits as Bolingbroke, Walpole, Chesterfield, and Carteret, the antique Anglo-Saxon menu still obtained when George II. was king.

"You are the first Methodist I have ever dined with," said Lady Peggy, keenly interested in a new specimen of the varieties of mankind, "so I hope you will tell me all about this religious revival which has made such a stir among the lower classes, and sent Lady Huntingdon out of her wits."

"On my honour, madam, if but half the women of fashion in London were as sane as that noble lady, society would be in a much better way than it is."

"Oh, I grant you we have mad women enough. Nearly all the clever ones lean that way. But I doubt your religious mania is the worst; and a woman must be far gone who fills her house with a mixed rabble of crazy nobility and converted bricklayers. I am told Lady Huntingdon recognizes no distinctions of class among her followers."

"Nay, there you are wrong, Lady Peggy," cried Antonia, "for Mr. Whitefield preaches to the quality in her ladyship's drawing-room, but goes down to her kitchen to convert the rabble."

"Lady Huntingdon models her life upon the precepts of her Redeemer, madam," said Stobart, ignoring this interruption. "I hope you do not consider that an evidence of lunacy."

"There is a way of doing things, Mr. Stobart. God forbid I should blame anybody for being kind and condescending to the poor."

"Christians never condescend, madam. They have too acute a sense of their own lowness to consider any of their fellow-creatures beneath them. They are no more capable of condescending towards each other than the worms have that crawl in the same furrow."

"Ah, I see these Oxford Methodists have got you in their net. Well, sir, I admire an enthusiast, even if he is mistaken. Everybody in London is so much of a pattern that there are seasons when the wretch who fired the Ephesian dome would be a welcome figure in company – since any enthusiasm, right or wrong, is better than perpetual flatness."