The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

The old woman came panting up the stairs, and after stopping to recover her normal breathing power, which was but feeble, she addressed the visitor in a voice of alarm.

"Oh, madam, you had best come away from the bed. 'Tis the small-pox, a bad case, and if you have never had the disease – "

"I have been inoculated. I am not afraid," Antonia answered quickly, thinking only of the patient. Alas, poor soul, to be seized with that hateful sickness, which she so feared. "How did she come by this horrible malady, ma'am?"

"She caught it from an old gentleman, my lady – I believe he was a relation – who died in the house. She was taken ill the night after his funeral, a fortnight ago. 'Tis the worst kind of small-pox. She was quite sensible two days ago, and then the fever came back, the secondary fever, the doctor calls it. Even if she gets over it she will be disfigured for life, poor lady, and may lose her eyesight. 'Tis as bad a case as I ever nursed, and if your honour hadn't been inoculated – "

"But I have, woman, and I have no fear. Pray tell me where is this lady's son? Was he in the house when she was taken ill?"

"No, my lady. The little master is living with his gran'ma, the servant girl told me."

"That is fortunate. Are you Mrs. Stobart's only nurse?"

"Yes, my lady."

"And at night when you are asleep, who attends upon her?"

"I am a very light sleeper, ma'am. I mostly hears her when she calls me, if she calls loud enough."

"She must have two nurses. I will get another woman to help you, and I shall come every day to see that she is attended properly. Pray, who is her doctor?"

The woman named a humble apothecary in Lambeth, called Morton, whom Antonia had often met in her visits to the poor, a meek elderly man in whose skill and kindness she had confidence, in spite of his rusty coat and breeches, coarse cotton stockings and grubby hands.

"I will send a physician to see her. Tell Mr. Morton that I shall send Dr. Heberden, who will confer with him. Do you know if Mrs. Stobart has had any trouble on her mind lately, any anxiety?"

"Only about her house, my lady. Her slut of a maid ran away directly she heard 'twas small-pox."

The apothecary came in while Antonia was standing by the bed, and was aghast at the spectacle.

"Does your ladyship know what risk you run here? Oh, madam, for God's sake, leave this infected air."

"I am not afraid. I did not take the disease when the doctors tried to inoculate me. I doubt I am proof against the poison."

"Nay, madam, you must not count on that. I implore you to leave this room instantly, and never to re-enter it. 'Tis a bad case of confluent small-pox, and I fear 'twill be fatal."

"And this poor lady is alone, her husband fighting in America, killed in the late battle, perhaps. At whatever risk I shall do all I can for her. And I hope we may save her, sir, with care and good nursing."

"Your ladyship may be sure I will do my best," said Morton.

"I will go out into the air while you see to your patient. This room is stifling. You will find me below, waiting to talk to you."

She walked on the footpath by the river till the apothecary came to her, and then gave him her instructions. Dr. Heberden was to see the patient that afternoon, if possible. Antonia would wait upon him and persuade him to do so. And Mr. Morton was to be at hand to receive his instructions. And a nurse was to be found, more serviceable than the old woman on the premises, who seemed civil and obliging, and could be kept to help her.

"And I shall see the patient every day," concluded Antonia.

"I must warn your ladyship once more, that you will do so at the peril of your life."

"My good Mr. Morton, there are situations in which that hazard hardly counts. This poor lady's husband, for instance, has he not risked his life a hundred times in America? Risked and lost it, perhaps!"

There was a catch in her voice like a stifled sob, as she spoke the last sentence.

"That is a vastly different matter, your ladyship," said Morton gravely; but he ventured no farther remonstrance.

Antonia saw the physician, and obtained his promise to see Mrs. Stobart that afternoon. She drove through streets that were in a tumult of rejoicing at the success of British arms. No one thought of the general who had fallen, the soldiers who had died. Victory was on every lip, exultation in every mind. 'Twas all the coachman could do to steer horses and chariot through the crowd.

Arrived at home safely, Lady Kilrush told the hall porter to deny her to all visitors, which would not be difficult, since her arrival in London had not been recorded in the newspapers, and Lord Dunkeld was on the road to Scotland, to shoot grouse on his own moors. She ordered her chair for six o'clock, and in the meanwhile shut herself in her dressing-room, where Sophy found her, to whom she related her morning's work.

"If you are frightened don't come near me," she said.

"I am frightened for you, madam, not for myself. I suppose after having had such a bout when I was inoculated I am safe to escape the small-pox for the rest of my life. Sure I carry the marks on my face and neck, though they mayn't be so bad as to make me hideous."

"Then if you are not afraid, you can keep me company in this room of an evening, till Mrs. Stobart is well enough to be sent into the country; and you can drive and walk with me. I will admit no visitors, for I must see her every day if I would be sure that her nurses do their duty. Poor soul, she is alone, and in great danger."

Sophy implored her mistress to run no such hazard, besought her with tears, and with the importunity of a warm affection. In her ladyship's case inoculation had been a failure. She would be mad to re-enter that infected house. Sophy would herself visit Mrs. Stobart, and see that she was properly nursed.

"No, child, no, it is I who must go. It is my duty."

"Why, I never knew you was so fond of her – a pretty simpleton, with scarce a word to say for herself."

"Don't argue with me, Sophy. It is useless. If there is any risk, I have run it," Antonia answered.

She shivered as she recalled that darkened chamber, the tainted atmosphere, the oppressive heat of a fire that had been burning day and night through the mild October weather. She knew that there was poison in that pestilential air, and that she had inhaled it, knew and did not care.

Her eyes were shining with a feverish light. Her heart ached with remorseful pity for the deserted wife, deserted by the man who had fled from his country, flung himself into a service of danger, flung away his life perhaps. It was because she had been unwise, had encouraged a close friendship that was but a mask for love, that yonder poor woman was lying on her sick bed deserted by her natural protector. He had sacrificed every tie, renounced every duty, on account of that guilty love. She hated herself when she thought that she had lured him from his home, had made him her friend and counsellor, at the expense of his young wife. Every hour he had spent with her in St. James's Square had been stolen from Lucy and her boy. It was the wife who had a right to his thoughts, his counsels, his leisure; and she had filched them from her. He had lingered by the fireside in her library, reluctant to leave her, when he should have been brightening Lucy's monotonous existence, elevating her mind by his conversation, continuing that education of heart and intellect in which he had been engaged before he lost himself in a fatal friendship. She had driven him from her with anger and contempt, driven him into exile and danger; but had she not as much need to be angry with herself, remembering her pleasure in his company, her forgetfulness of his wife's claims?

This one thing remained for her to do, to watch over the lonely wife in her day of peril, to win her back to life and health if it were possible. This atoning act would ease her conscience, perhaps, and bring her peace of mind. If George Stobart lived to come back to England he would know that she had done her duty, and, although not a Christian, had fulfilled the Christian's mission of mercy and love.

And if that ghastly distemper struck her down – a possible result, though she did not apprehend it – what then? She had no keen love of life, and would not much regret to lay down the load of days that had lost their savour. She had tasted all the pleasures that the world, the flesh, and the devil can offer a beautiful woman, all the luxuries that gold can buy, all the homage that rank can claim, the adulation of high-born profligates, the envy of rival beauties, and every trivial diversion that Satan can put into the minds of the idle rich. She had struck every note in the gamut of elegant pleasures; and had arrived at that period of satiety in which some women take to vice as the natural crescendo in the scale of emotion. What sacrifice would it be to die for her who feared no hereafter, had no account to render?

She visited Mrs. Stobart every day, questioned nurses and doctors, and took infinite trouble to secure the patient's comfort. She sat by the sick-bed, endured the fetid atmosphere of a room carefully shut against the air of heaven, she listened to Lucy's delirious ravings, her frantic appeals to her husband to come back to her. She, who in her right senses had seemed to grieve so little at his absence, in her wanderings was for ever recalling the happy hours of their courtship, acting over again that simple story of a girl's first love for a sweetheart of superior station.

Antonia listened with an aching heart. The love was there then; the woman was not the pink-and-white automaton she had once thought her. And she had come between George Stobart and this idyllic affection, had spoiled two lives, unwittingly, but not without guilt. She had absorbed him, suffered him to squander all his leisure upon her company, sought his counsel, invited his sympathy, made herself a part of his life, as no woman has the right to do with another woman's husband.

And now, sitting by what might be the bed of death, she could not forgive herself for that friendship which she had cherished without thought of the cost. She had courted his company, and reproached him when he absented himself. He had been her most cherished companion; those days had been blank on which they had not met. All the feverish pleasures of the great world had not been enough to make up for one lost hour of his society. Their talk beside the firelit hearth, in the darkening twilight, their meetings in poverty-stricken garrets and loathsome alleys, had been more to her than all the rest of her life.

"If she should die before he comes back to her it will be on my conscience for ever that I was the wretch who parted them," she thought.

The doctors were not hopeful of Mrs. Stobart's recovery. She had very little strength, they told Lady Kilrush, very little power to fight against the disease, which had attacked her in its most virulent form. Should she recover, she would be disfigured for life, and possibly blind.

Oh, the horror of it! If he came home to find the pretty childish face, the lily and rose complexion, so cruelly transformed! Was not death almost better for the victim than such a resurrection?

Heaven was kinder to this weak soul than to spare her for such a cruel fate. After Antonia had been visiting her for over a week, in which time there had been no improvement in the symptoms, there came a rally with some hours of consciousness; but this was only the prelude of approaching death.

Lucy recognized Antonia, spoke of her husband and her son in a sage and matter-of-fact tone which was quite unlike her talk in delirium, was glad that the boy was safely out of the way when she was seized with the malady.

"My father came here one night, in a raging fever," she told Antonia. "I was frightened; but I hadn't the heart to drive him out of the house. He looked like a dying man. It was the small-pox. He had sent the disease inward by getting up from his bed and going out into the streets in the rain. He lay ill over a week, and I got an old woman to nurse him. I never went near him after I knew. But the infection was in the house, I suppose. I remember the night of his funeral, and my aching bones, and my burning head. I knew I was going to be ill. And then I remember nothing more – nothing more. Was it last night – the funeral?"

She spoke in a weak voice, in broken sentences, with long pauses between, Antonia holding her hand as she talked. The poor wasted hand was icy cold now; the fever was gone – gone with the life of the patient.