The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

"You chose a simple girl for your wife, and tired of her; pretended friendship for me, and under that mask of friendship nursed your profligate dreams; and now you dare insult me with your unholy love."

"I should not have so dared, madam – indeed, I believe I might have conquered my passion – so far as to remain for ever silent – if – if your own words – "

"My words? When have I ever spoken a word that could warrant such an affront?"

"When I advised you to accept Dunkeld – you refused with such impassioned vehemence – you confessed you had a reason."

"And you thought 'twas because I loved another woman's husband – that 'twas your saintly self I cared for? No, sir, 'twas because I swore to Kilrush on his death-bed that I would never belong to another, that our union, of but one tragical hour, should be all I would ever know of wedlock. I belong to him now as I belonged to him then. I love his memory now as I loved him then. That, sir, was my reason. Are you not ashamed of your fatuous self-esteem, which took it for a confession of love? Love for you, the Methodist preacher, the man of God!"

"Yes, I am ashamed – I am drinking the cup of shame."

"You have tricked me, sir. You have deceived me very cruelly. I trusted you – I thought that I had a friend – one man in the world who treated me like a woman of sense – who dared to disapprove, where all the world basely flattered me. And you are the worst of all – the snake in the grass. But do you think I fear you? I had a better man than you at my feet – the man I loved – my first love – a man with sovereign power over the hearts of women. Do you think I fear you? No, sir, 'twas then the tempter tried me. If there is a devil who assails women, I met him then, and vanquished him."

She trembled from head to foot in the excess of her feeling. She was leaning against the balustrade in one of the semicircular recesses on the bridge. He was sitting at the furthest end of the stone bench, his elbows on his knees, his face hidden.

"You have made me hate myself," he said. "'Tis useless to ask you to forgive me; but you can forget that so base a worm crawls upon this earth. That will cost you but a slight effort."

"Yes, I will try to forget you; and to forget how much I valued your friendship, or the friendship of the honourable man I took you for."

"I was that man, madam. Our friendship did not begin in treachery. I was your true and honourable friend – till – till the devil saw me in my foolish pride, my arrogant confidence in good works."

"Well, sir, 'tis a dream ended," she said, in those grave contralto tones that had ever been like music in his ear – the lower key to which her voice dropped when she was deeply moved; "and from to-night be good enough to remember that we are strangers."

"I shall not forget, madam, nor shall my presence make the future troublesome to you."

Something in his words scared her.

"You will do nothing violent – nothing desperately wicked?"

"No, madam, whatever the tempter whispers, however sweetly the river murmurs of rest and oblivion, I shall not kill myself. For me there is the 'something after death'!"

"Will you tell them to bring my coach?"

He rose and obeyed without a word, and stood by bareheaded till she drove away, not even offering to assist her as she stepped into the carriage, attended by her footman. Stobart stood watching till the chariot vanished in the darkness of the street beyond the bridge, then flung himself on the bench in the recess, and sat with his arms folded on the stone parapet, and his forehead leaning upon them, lost in despairing thoughts.

Judas, Judas, the companion of Christ, foredoomed to everlasting misery – Judas, the son of perdition! And what of him who six years ago gave himself to God – convinced of sin, sincerely repenting of the errors of his youth, resolved to lead a new life, to live in Christ and for Christ? How confident he had been, how happy in the assurance of grace – all his thoughts, all his desires in subjection to the Divine will, living not by the strict letter of Christ's law, but by every counsel of perfection, deeming no sacrifice of self too severe, no labour too exacting, in that heavenly service. And now, after that holy apprenticeship, after all those years of duty and obedience, after mounting so high upon the ladder of life, to find himself lying in the mire at the foot of it, caught in the toils of Satan, and again the slave of sin!

The slave of sin – yes – for though he hated the sin, he went on sinning. He loved her – he loved her with a passion that the Water of Life could not quench. How vain were those supplications for grace, those confessions of guilt which broke from his convulsed lips, while her image filled his heart. How vain his cry to Christ for help, while her voice sounded in his ears, and the thought of her indignation, her scorn, her icy indifference, reigned supreme in the fiery tumult of his brain.

Oh, how he loathed himself for his folly; how he writhed under a proud man's agony of humiliation at the thought of his fatuous self-delusion! Something in her look, something in her tone when she protested against a second marriage, had thrilled him with the conviction that his love had found its answer in her heart. When did that fatal love begin? He knew not how the insidious poison stole into his senses; but he could recall his first consciousness of that blissful slavery, his first lapse from honour. He could remember the hour and the moment, they two walking through the squalid street in the winter twilight, her gloved hand resting lightly on his arm, her eyes looking up at him, sapphire-blue under the long dark lashes, her low voice murmuring words of pity for the dying child that she had nursed in her lap, for the broken-hearted mother they had just left, and in his heart a wild rapture that was new and sweet.

"I love her, I love her," he had told himself in that moment. "But she will never know. It is as if I loved an angel. She is as far from me. My conscience can suffer no stain from so pure, so distant a love."

Self-deluded sinner! Hypocrite to himself! He knew now that this moment marked the beginning of apostasy, the law of sin warring against the inward light. He knew now that this woman – noble-minded, chaste, charitable, a creature of kindly impulses and generous acts, for him represented Antichrist, and that from the hour in which he proved her stubborn in unbelief, he should have renounced her friendship. He had paltered with truth, had tried to reconcile the kingdom of darkness with the kingdom of light, had been satisfied with the vague hope of a deferred conversion, and had made his bosom friend of the woman who denied his Master.

He loved her – with a love not to be repented of – a love that ran in his veins and moved his heart, and seemed as much a part of his being as the nerves and bones and flesh and blood that made him a man. He might lie in dust and ashes at the foot of the cross, scourge himself to death with the penitent's whip; but while the heart beat and the brain could think the wicked love would be there; and he would die adoring her, die and perish everlastingly, lost to salvation, cut off from Christ's compassion, by that unhallowed love.

There was the agony for him, the believer. To abhor sin, to believe in everlasting punishment, and to feel the impossibility of a saving repentance, to know himself a son of perdition; since what could avail the pangs of remorse for the man who went on sinning, whose whole life was coloured by a guilty passion?

The Divine Teacher's stern denunciation of such sin rang in his ears, as he crouched with folded arms on the stone parapet, alone in the summer darkness, an outcast from God.

"He that looketh upon a woman!" On his adulterous heart that sentence burnt like vitriol upon tender flesh. Only by ceasing to love her could he cease to sin; and, looking forward through the long vista of the coming years, he saw no possibility of change in his guilty heart, no hope of respite from yearning and regret. Six years of repentance for the sins and follies of his youth; six years of faithful service; six years of peace and self-approval; and now behold him thrust outside the gate, a soul more lost than in those unregenerate days when the consciousness of sin was first awakened in his mind, when remorse for a youthful intrigue, in which he had been the victim and sport of a vile woman, and for a duel that had ended fatally, first became intolerable. For him, the earnest believer, to whom religion was a terrible reality, the fall from a state of grace meant the loss of that great hope which alone can make life worth living, that "hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." For him sin unrepented of meant everlasting despair, the pains of hell, the companionship of devils.

He left the bridge, and wandered along the river bank, past his own house, past the Archbishop's Palace, to the dreary marshes between Lambeth and Battersea – wandered like a man hunted by evil spirits; and it was not till daylight that he turned his steps slowly homeward, dejected and forlorn.

CHAPTER XV.

"MY LADY AND MY LOVE."

Antonia was wounded to the quick by a revelation that lost her the one friend whom she had counted as changeless amidst the fickle herd. She knew of how airy a substance the friendship of the many is made; and, pleasant as she found the polite world, she had as yet discovered no kindred spirit, no woman of her own age, and tastes, and inclinations, whom she could choose for her bosom friend. Lady Margaret Laroche was, indeed, her only intimate friend amidst the multitude of her admiring acquaintance. But in George Stobart, the man who dared to be uncivil, who gave her vinegar and wormwood when she was satiated with the honey and roses of modish society, she had found a closer sympathy, a quicker appreciation of her ideas and aspirations, than in any one she had known since those old days in Rupert Buildings, where she discussed every thought and every dream with Kilrush. And stormily as that former friendship had ended, she had never contemplated the possibility of evil passions here, in that stern ascetic, the man who had renounced the world, with all its pleasures, follies, and temptations. An infidel herself, she had honoured Stobart for his steadfast faith, his self-surrender.

She was troubled, shocked, distressed by the discovery that her friend was unworthy. His absence made a blank in her life, in spite of her innumerable distractions. The memory of his sin haunted her. She tried in vain to banish the offender's image from her mind, and the thought of him came upon her at strange seasons, and sometimes kept her awake at night, like the hot and cold fits of an Indian fever.

She was not the woman to cherish weak sentimentalism, vain regrets for an unworthy friend. She had lost him, and must endure her loss, knowing that henceforward friendship was impossible. She could never again admit him to her presence, never confide in him, never esteem and honour him. The man she had trusted was dead to her for ever. It was less than a week after the parting on Westminster Bridge when she received a letter which removed all fear of any chance encounter with the man who had offended her.

    "The George Inn, Portsmouth.

"The wretch who writes these lines would scarce presume to address you were it not to bid a farewell that is to be eternal. I have gone back to my old trade of soldiering, and am to sail from this place at the first favourable wind, to serve in North America under General Amherst, with a company of grenadiers, mostly volunteers like myself. 'Tis beginning life again at the bottom of the ladder; but the lowest rank in his Majesty's service is too high for the deserter from Christ. The chances of savage warfare may bring me that peace which I can never know in this world, and should I fall I shall expire in the hope of salvation, trusting that the Great Judge will be merciful to a sinner who dies in the service of his King and country.

"If you ever think of me, madam, let it be with kindness, as of one tempted beyond his strength, and not a willing sinner.

    "GEORGE STOBART."

She put the letter away in a secret drawer of her bureau, but she did not read it a second time. The lines were engraved upon her memory. She was angry with him. She was sorry for him.

The friend was lost, but the world remained; and Lady Kilrush flung herself with a new zest and eagerness into the modish whirlpool.

London was empty, but Tunbridge Wells was at the zenith. She took the handsomest lodging in the little town, a stone's throw from the Pantiles, with drawing-room windows looking over the Common, and commanding all the gaiety of the place. She invited Patty Granger and her General to spend the season with her, having an idea that her old friend's joyous trifling would help her to be light-hearted and prevent her brooding upon the past. She had not omitted Mrs. Granger's name last season when sending out cards for her drums and dances; but this invitation to Tunbridge was a more intimate thing, and Patty was overwhelmed by her kindness. In the cosmopolitan crowd at the Wells, in a company where German princes and English dukes rubbed shoulders with tradesmen's wives from Smock-alley, and pickpockets newly released from the Counter, Antonia's beauty and reckless expenditure secured her a numerous following, and made her conspicuous everywhere. She could not saunter across the Common with Mrs. Granger or Sophy Potter without attracting a crowd of acquaintance, who hung upon her steps like the court about the old King or the Princess of Wales.

Miss Potter declared that the Wells was like heaven. In London she saw very little fine company, and only went abroad with her mistress when her ladyship visited the poor, or drove on shopping expeditions to the city. But manners were less formal at the Wells; and Sophy went to picnics and frisked up and down the long perspective of country dances hand in hand with persons of quality.

Never had Sophy known her mistress so eager for amusement as during this particular season. She was ready to join in every festivity, however trivial, however foolish, and diversions that had a spice of eccentricity, like Lady Caroline Petersham's minced-chicken supper at Vauxhall, seemed to please her most. She entertained lavishly, gave breakfasts, picnics, dances, suppers – had a crowd at her tea-table every evening; and Mr. Pitt being at the Wells that year, she gave several entertainments in his honour, notably an excursion to Bayham Abbey, in a dozen coaches and four, and a picnic dinner among the ruins, at which the great minister – who had but lately grasped the sceptre of supreme power – flung off the burden of public care, forgot his gout and the dark cloud of war in Europe and America, Frederick's reverses, misfortunes in Canada, while he sunned himself in Antonia's beauty, and absorbed her claret and champagne.

"I could almost wish for another earthquake that would bury me under these antique walls," he said gaily. "Sure, madam, to expire at your feet were a death more illustrious than the Assyrian funeral pile."

"Sardanapalus was a worthless sybarite, sir, and the world could spare him. England without Mr. Pitt must cease to be a nation."

"Nay, but think how glad Newcastle would be, and how the old King would chuckle if a falling pillar despatched me. 'Twould be the one pleasing episode in my history. His Majesty would order me a public funeral, in his gratitude for my civility in dying. Death is a Prime Minister's ace of trumps, and his reputation with posterity sometimes hangs on that last card."

The minister's visit to Tunbridge was shortened by the news of the taking of Cape Breton and the siege of Louisbourg, the first substantial victory that English arms had won in America since Braddock's disastrous rout on the Monongahela. Amherst and his dragoons had landed on that storm-beaten coast in the nick of time. The aristocratic water-drinkers and the little shopkeepers at the Wells rejoiced as one man. Bonfires blazed on the Common, every window was illuminated, martial music was heard on every side, toasts were drunk, glasses broken, and a general flutter of excitement pervaded the Wells, while in London a train of French standards were being carried to Westminster Abbey, to the sound of trumpets and kettle-drums, and the wild huzzas of the populace.

Antonia wondered whether George Stobart had fallen among the English dragoons fighting in the trenches, of whose desperate courage old General Granger talked so glibly. She heard of heavy losses on both sides. She pictured him lying among the unconsidered dead, while the cross of St. George waved above the shattered ramparts, and the guns roared their triumphant thunder. She read the newspapers, half in hope, half in fear of finding Stobart's name; but it was not till General Amherst's despatches were made public some time later that her mind was set at rest, and she knew that he lived and had done well.

That little season at Tunbridge, where people had to stay six weeks for a water-cure, was a crowning triumph for Antonia as a woman of ton. Never till now had she so concentrated her thoughts upon the futilities of pleasure, never so studied every bill of fare, or so carefully planned every entertainment. Her originality and her lavish outlay made her the cynosure of that smaller great world at the Wells. Everybody applauded her taste, and anticipated her ruin.

"The woman has a genius for spending, which is much rarer than a genius for saving," said a distinguished gourmand, who dined twice a week at Antonia's lodgings. "A fool can waste money; but to scatter gold with both hands and make every guinea flash requires a great mind. I doubt Lady Kilrush will die a pauper; but she will have squandered her fortune like a gentlewoman."

Lady Peggy Laroche was at the Wells, and spent most of her leisure with Antonia. While approving her protégée's taste she urged the necessity of prudence.