Stobart was not an ardent believer in sudden conversions, though, in the course of his field preaching, it had been a common thing for him to see men and women fling themselves on their knees and declare that they were "saved," convinced of sin, justified, sanctified, on the instant, by one single operation of the Holy Spirit. He had seen something of the convulsionists of Bristol. The miracle of Pentecost had, in a lesser degree, been often repeated before his eyes; and among these instantaneous conversions he knew of some that had been the beginning of changed and holy lives. But he could not picture Antonia amongst Wesley's easily won converts. Had he not wrestled again and again with that stubborn spirit of unbelief, in the days when they were friends, and when he never spared hard words? All his arguments, all his pleadings, had failed to change her.
He did not allow for the influence of time, satiety, Weltschmerz, the aching void of a life without love.
He rode with Wesley as far as Barnet, on the first stage of his Northern journey, heard him preach there in the evening to a closely-packed audience, and rode back to London next morning. It was late in the afternoon, a mild spring afternoon, when, after visiting several houses in the neighbourhood of Moorfields, he discovered Lady Kilrush in an underground kitchen, seated by the sick-bed of a cobbler, a young man with a wife and two children, dying of a consumption. The wife sat on one side of the bed, her husband's hand clasped in hers, Antonia on the other side reading the Gospel of St. John, in those thrilling tones which Wesley had noted. She looked up as Stobart entered the kitchen, and her cheek crimsoned as she recognized him; but when she spoke her voice was cold as at their parting.
"I thought it was Mr. Wesley," she said. "Has he sent you to see our poor Morris? This gentleman is one of Mr. Wesley's helpers, Morris."
The sick man smiled faintly, and held out a wasted hand to the visitor.
"Morris and I are old friends," Stobart said gently. "No, Lady Kilrush, I was not sent here," and then seeing there was no vacant chair, he stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece, waiting for Antonia to go on reading.
"'I am the true Vine,'" she began, and read to the end of the chapter; then rose quietly, bent over the dying man, murmured a few kind words, pressed the wife's hand tenderly, and stole from the room, almost as noiselessly as if she had been indeed the good angel these people thought her. Stobart's survey of the wretched room had shown him that her charity had provided the sufferer with every comfort and even luxury that could be administered in such a home.
He followed her into the squalid street. The sky above the dilapidated red tile roofs was blue and bright, and the north-west wind blew the freshness of April flowers from the fields and gardens between Finsbury and Islington. Antonia had no carriage waiting for her.
"I forget that I am a fine lady when I come here," she said, smiling at him. "I walk from house to house, and take a hackney-coach when I have done my day's work."
"Shall I get you a coach now? It is nearly six o'clock. Or will you walk a little way?"