Miss Sophy Runs Away
XVII
MISS SOPHY RUNS AWAY
Gury had Mrs. Causton mentioned banns of matrimony.
It appeared to have been too glibly.
To John Wesley it could not be just as simple as that, for he had doubts of the spiritual attainments of Mr. Williamson and did not believe that Miss Sophy was now any better than she should be.
He made various visits to the lovers and to Mr. Causton and talked of banns and crosses and contrite spirits, but he showed no signs at all of getting forward with the business in hand.
Marriage was a difficult thing to compass in Savannah when John Wesley was the priest in charge.
He had a way of making things difficult for the ordinary mortal. No Dissenter dare so much as approach his Eucharistic Feast, although the authorities had hoped cheerfully that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper might be made to embrace them all. No baby dare show its face for baptism unless prepared to endure trine immersion and to produce irreproachable godparents in right quantities and right qualities.
Certainly no person could dream of marriage unless he could produce the certificate of a plaster saint.
Miss Bovey, who was Miss Sophy's friend, had proved already how difficult it was, because for some reason John Wesley objected to her wished-for union
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with Mr. Burnside. With her experience known and conned it was not likely that Mr. Williamson and — Miss Sophy would fare much better.
To love's young dream the priestly admonitions must have proved most irksome, and it was certain that the breaking-point could not be far off. Williamson had already lost his temper and told Wesley to his face:
"Sir, you shall speak to her no more till we are married. You can persuade her to anything.
After you went from the lot yesterday she would neither eat nor drink for two hours, but was crying continually and in such an agony she was fit for nothing."
But love has a way of laughing at locksmiths even when clad in cassock and bands.
The four young people planned to outwit John Wesley altogether and save both themselves and him a lot of argument.
But four short days after Miss Sophy's engagement had been announced to Wesley the two bridal couples of the Williamsons and the Burnsides traveled over the border into Carolina and there were married by a priest, innocent alike of High Church doctrine and a proper reverence for the legality of banns.
As North Carolina possessed but one traveling missionary, it was not likely that he would let such a thing as banns or license stand in his way when his scattered flock must be married when he came their way or else continue to live in sin.
His appearance at Purrysburg just over the border from Georgia was the signal of salvation for those who groaned under Wesley's laws and formalities.
So was Miss Sophy married in a kind of Gretna Green adventure in spite
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SOPHY RUNS
AWAY of the fact that she had been Wesley's star pupil and the female neophyte of his Holy Club.
That fellow in Carolina could be little better than a Dissenter to do so barbarous a thing!
It is significant that just now Wesley took to reading Job and to talking and acting like that old Hammer of the Dissenters in Epworth Parish.
The news of that runaway match was a knock-down blow for the son of old Sam Wesley.
It brought on his old Stanton trouble, and now all the diary is strewn with agony.
There the stark words stand sentinel.
"Pain," "Much more pain," "Much pain," and in place of dinner that old antidote 4 Kempis appears.
Wesley considered that wedding day of March 12, 1737, as another of his darkest days in a sad life of defeat.
He had feared for his pride should he make a direct proposal, and now he had lost all. He feared lest he should suffer as Varanese had made him suffer in her refusal, but now that Miss Sophy was lost altogether he still beat about in his mind wondering how he could still keep her friendship.
Varanese had been kind, why not Miss Sophy?
True, she had no convenient nickname, but it is significant that he calls her Miss Sophy all the time in his diary when he should have mentioned her only as Mrs. Williamson.
But it was one thing to have Sally Kirkham married and to retain her friendship as Varanese and quite another thing to keep on thinking of Miss
Sophy and to ignore Mrs. Williamson altogether.
There was all the difference in the world between Sally and Sophy.
Sally's mind was still John Wes-
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ley's, for he possessed her still in her letters and his own communings with her, but Sophy had never had a mind.
The danger lurked there, for she was all woman.
She did not care for the things of the mind, but only for the things of the body.
There 'was no rapier cut and thrust of wit in her garden conversations.
She spent her time reading the faces of John Wesley or of Williamson with a mental inventory of eyes, lips, teeth and hair.
She marked the contrast of color and movement in a strange comparison of the flesh as though she were drawing a picture.
So was she helped through those terrible doses of Jones and Haliburton, so was she saved from the extinction of boredom in the priest's holy endeavors for her soul.
Now for the first time with her loss John Wesley had to withstand an assault of the flesh and the devil.
In Stanton it had been sublimated in intellect and religion and at first with Miss Sophy in the hymn-singing, but now the whole force of his "inordinate affection" burst upon him.
In horror he tried to restart all the machinery of the Holy Club, but it creaked badly and refused to go.
His diary is eloquent of trembling desire and fierce pain, and the exclamations are no longer ejaculatory prayer but the agitated "Could not pray," and an hour afterwards "Tried to pray, lost, sunk."
And then the cry of a broken heart, "No such day since I first saw the sun!
O deal tenderly with thy servant!"
His mind seemed drugged with desire, and his whole being ached for someone to deal tenderly with him: "I was as stupid as if half awake and yet in the
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sharpest pain I ever felt. To see her no more, that thought was as the piercing of a sword, it was not to be borne nor shaken off. Iwas weary of the world, of light, of life—I could not pray.
Then indeed the snares of death were about me; the pains of hell overtook me." God had left him alone with his sin.
The strain became at last unbearable.
Wesley's mind was revolving and revolving round one thought which in time was to become a dangerous obsession.
That marriage of Miss Sophy's seemed to crucify his mind, and he came to be able to concentrate on little else.
It had been so shamefully irregular from his point of view, and so at the back of his mind he was always brooding on one thought.
The fall of Miss Sophy from grace obsessed the priest of her soul.
How could she treat the Church's Sacraments like that when he had spent hours teaching her all the high church doctrines of the Holy Club.
With head well in the sand he was convinced that such a marriage amounted to no marriage at all. And yet well he knew that it was abundantly real, for he had chidden her so harshly in the guise of agerieved priest that gossiping tongues said he had made her miscarry her first child. He was horribly lonely, but he would make the most of all that remained to him—his own lean marriage with the Church.
He must fix attention on himself, for pulsating, rapturous life had escaped him and he was left with only Delamotte and an empty bungalow.
Wesley pursued Mrs. Williamson with his ghostly counsel until her husband could
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stand it no longer and forbade his wife to have any dealings with the priest of her soul.
John Wesley's heart was empty.
It was craving for something young, and the sight of the newlyweds and the gossip of their expectations was enough to drive him mad.
He read 4 Kempis, he cut down trees, he made a journey to the scene of the fatal marriage in North Carolina and he began to substitute
Watts for the German love lyrics.
He was craving for something young in his arid life and wrote at length to Aspasia's little sister, Anne Granville, who had been fond of him in those far-off Stanton days.
He thought lovingly of his own little sister, who was dear to him as the youngest of the family, and he wrote to her to come out to him to light up his lonely parsonage.
He admitted some very naughty small boys to Holy Communion and on that Sunday read The Song of the Three Children, which they had read at Stanton when the world was young.
He wrote to his mother suggesting a general emigration of the people of Wroote and Epworth to his hospitality in a vain hope of peopling his world with some who might appreciate him.
The poison of his very self was eating the goodness of his heart and he was sure to go very wrong when he began writing like
Brother Charles in his journal and thinking like his father of those pestilential Dissenters.
He was astoundingly rude to the Moravian Bishop, whom he would not admit to Holy Communion, and he took all the texts of Scripture to himself as illustrative of God's approbation of his excellence.
He determined
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AWAY on an inhuman discharge of his parochial duties, and if his parishioners did not keep the letter of the law then woe betide them.
The love-starved, lonely man was surely working up to one grand climax of self-assertion.
He had discharged some of his spleen against those souldestroying hymns of the Moravians by repudiating their Bishop, and now at last he meant to wipe off his other load of resentment in as spectacular a way.
It was on Sunday, the 7th of August, 1737, that the sinners of Savannah presented themselves at the Christian Sacrifice.
'Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins and are in love and charity with your neighbors and intend to lead a new life following the commandments of God—draw near with faith and take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort."
So said the priest, complete in all the panoply of Holy Church.
So said John Wesley, but he really did not mean what he said.
Sophy was kneeling at his feet to take the tokens of Christ's Passion from his lenient hand and he bent down and whispered something in her ear.
He had meant to do it so that none in the church could hear, and he prided himself on his sagacity and felt he was behaving with all the mildness of which he was master.
But he was too blind with self-love to see that he was wounding her as publicly as though he had shouted upon the housetops that whispered message: "I can't administer the Holy Communion to you before I have spoken with you."
For once in his life he cared nothing for the pain he inflicted, for round his empty heart he
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wrapped the words of the Epistle for the day and took all their meaning to himself: "God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it." That the temptation of that blushing young woman had been real was proved by this violent way he chose to strike out against it. She had denied him the wine of life and he would refuse her Living Bread.
That was all the love and mystery he was master of, for he was shut out from the warmth of man's earthly mating, and so most surely the sinner should suffer under the only mastery of which he was capable.
He longed to have her at his feet and burned to humiliate her still more in his arrogant letter which was to follow his refusal, with his dream of another scene of priestly triumph next Lord's Day.
He wrote surely, with a sense of satisfaction: "If you offer yourself at the Lord's Table on Sunday I will advertise you as I have done more than once wherein you have done wrong.
And when you have openly declared yourself to have truly repented I will administer to you the mysteries of God."
In the diary the horrid deed is duly recorded in laconic fashion: 'Eucharist, Miss Sophy repelled."
So let all thine enemies perish, and so let evening shadows bring John Wesley to the end of a perfect day.
Monday morning is a notoriously difficult one for the clergy, but that of August 8, 1737, must have seemed black indeed to John Wesley.
It was incredible that the son of Susanna Wesley should have lived
MISS SOPHY RUNS AWAY to see the day when he could read such words as these: "To all constables, tithing-men and others whom it may concern: you and each of you are hereby required to take the body of John Wesley,
Clerk, and bring him before one of the bailiffs of the said town to answer the complaint of William Williamson and Sophia, his wife, for defaming the said
Sophia in a public congregation without cause; by which the said William Williamson is damaged One
Thousand Pounds Sterling."
It was unthinkable.
The Rector of Epworth might languish in Lincoln Gaol and Susanna send her rings to ease his penury, but what would she say to her Brand plucked from the burning?
That £1,000 had an ugly look when John Wesley and Delamotte had but one shilling between them up to date.
Then next day Wesley was arrested and faced a jury of his parishioners, whom he believed represented justice no more than the famous jury of Bunyan's Vanity Fair.
But in this he was led astray by his own prejudice, for the true bills they kept bringing in against him had in reality much to be said for them.
In the irony of fate it was now this Vanity Fair jury-box which believed itself the champion of religion against John Wesley himself.
In the list of its grievances it stated ""That whereas the colony of Georgia is composed of a mixed number of Christian members of the Church of England and Dissenters, who all or part would attend divine ordinances and communicate with a faithful pastor of the Established Church: The Reverend Mr. John
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Wesley, who for the most part serves the cure of Savannah, has not, as the law directs, emitted any declaration in this place of his adherence to the principles of the Church of England. We have the more reason to complain of grievances that the said reverend person (as we humbly conceive) deviates from the principles and regulations of the Established
Church in many particulars inconsistent with the happiness and prosperity of this colony as... ."
There followed twelve of the reverend person's faults, which have the ring of truth about them, as "By introducing into the Church and service at the Altar compositions of psalms and hymns not inspected or authorized by any proper judicature; by restricting the benefit of the Lord's Supper to a small number of persons and refusing it to all others who will not conform to a grievous set of penances, confessions, mortifications and constant attendances of early and late hours of prayer, very inconsistent with the labor and employment of the colony.
By venting sundry and uncharitable expressions of all who differ from him, and not pronouncing the Benediction in Church until all the hearers except his own communicants are withdrawn."
It was true that the discipline of the Church of England needed tightening up, for there were too many of Miss Austen's Mr. Collinses about in the eighteenth century, and matters ecclesiastical were notoriously slack.
But it was equally true that John Wesley had not found the way to reformation, and
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AWAY indeed he never would find that way as long as he insisted on sinning against his heart.
The trial dragged on and things were at a deadlock as Wesley refused to answer any of the ecclesiastical clauses in such profane surroundings.
But he did not like the look of the secular attack either in that his pursuit of Miss Sophy was being proclaimed from the house-tops. The time had clearly come for him to fly for his life.
It was impossible for Vanity Fair to understand the absolute restraint and holiness of his friendship with Miss Sophy. It sounded most horribly compromising in that hateful court and on everybody's gossiping lips.
Like some baited creature at bay Wesley stood in the great square of Savannah and read with horror a notice to restrain him from leaving the town and forbidding any man to help him so to do. But such a notice was not able to frighten the f aithful Delamotte.
He had begged Wesley not to embark on his grand reprisal against Miss Sophy, although the lad bore no love towards the lady himself.
He had the boy's healthy reaction of the old school tie, and could see more clearly than Wesley, with his love-clouded eyes, that such an action was not that of a sportsman or a hero.
But again, now that his idol was so pitifully exposing his clay feet, Delamotte resolutely shut his eyes and helped to plan his escape.
Ten pounds had come in from England as from the hand of God, and this would suffice for the passage money.
The next thing was to elude pursuit, and the conspirators planned a get-away into the forest and so to the coast.
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Delamotte would come by boat with books and parchments and meet the fugitive at Charleston, where he might take ship for England.
They must have admitted one woman to the plot, but mercifully she was sound and knew how to keep a secret.
It was she who, like Martha, thought of food and provided a large gingerbread to be stuffed into the pocket and eaten on the journey.
What were Wesley's thoughts that evening as he took prayers for the last time at Savannah and then slipped quietly and unobserved into the trackless forests? He almost at once lost his way and beat up and down an unblazed trail or tore his flesh on giant brambles fighting his way to freedom.
But on he went in the energy of despair, and ever as he fought his bosom was cleaned of that perilous stuff that weighed upon the heart.
All his faculties were functioning again.
It was he who found water; it was he who made a neat scout trail of broken twigs which saved him from going only round in circles; it was he who prayed and slept all night in the open and woke up refreshed.
Once he roasted potatoes at a Negro's fire, and surely their taste was sweet.
Torn and bruised and hungry but alive he made contact with Delamotte at last, and on Christmas Eve sailed over Charleston Bar.
He said he shook off the dust of Georgia from his feet, but he hardly had so much energy left in him, for he was more dead than alive as he lay in his bunk on the good ship Samuel and contemplated the dreary timbers above his head.
It only remained for Delamotte to return to the
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AWAY empty bungalow with his memories and the weight of his own loneliness.
Silent was the flute. Low lay the French books.
The love songs had quite died away.
He was only a young man and he had no return ticket to England. He had to borrow fifteen pounds from George Whitefield in the next June ere he could follow his hero home again. What did he think of Wesley as he sat in that place of memories in that forsaken bungalow alone with his long, long thoughts?
He had forsaken mother and friends and country for his hero, and now he was himself forsaken. They had never as much as reached the Indians, and there had been some strange deeds done here in the name of God's love. Perhaps it was some consolation to Dela-' motte to be rid of Miss Sophy for good, but the house was strangely silent now and his mother was far away across estranging seas.
He really did not know where the next meal was to come from, but surely he was the first of the Mark Tapleys on American soil with his gallant: "My not knowing at one meal where I shall get the next is a great help to thankfulness." Moreover, upon Delamotte's innocent head had descended all the spite of the enemies which his master had escaped by running away.
And yet he was still Wesley's 'son in Christ," and dutiful at that.
It is surely to the eternal credit of Delamotte that in this darkest hour, like Varro of the Republic, so he also did not despair of John' Wesley.