The Rivals
XXVII
THE RIVALS
Tue road from Bristol to London now carries a stream of motor traffic, and, unheeding, the travelers of today fly past old. toll-house and village pump, and past those old cottages where once John Wesley and Grace Murray rode together.
The signposts show the way to Landsdown Hill where Aspasia's ancestor, Sir Bevil Granville, once died for the Stuarts and where now Wesley's Kingswood School stands in a strange rapprochement of history.
But in 1749 the school was at the colliers' Kingswood near Bristol and housed some pitiable atoms of humanity, and Jacky Murray among the rest.
There the only surviving child of that passionate marriage lived laborious days far away from his mother, who now sat her horse disconsolately and followed John Wesley up the London Road.
And this man, riding there, had told her that should God also give them children they must all be brought up at that Kingswood School, for so there should be no hindrance caused to the glorious work of the campaign for the salvation of England.
It was not the way that Alexander Murray had talked.
He had come posting home from sea to be near her in the storm, and the children had been part and parcel of that mighty love he bore her.
Now there was almost an inhumanity about the
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Wesley who could plan out matters so long ahead and reason out human loves and lives in terms to suit the pattern of God's requirements.
Just how much was he in earnest over this very question of marriage, after all?
Grace Murray's mind was in a turmoil.
There was no one to whom she could unburden her anxieties, no one she dare ask for advice, no one safe enough to trust with such a secret as she carried in her bosom.
So they came to London and to that other house in the Moorfields where it had all begun for her, now nearly ten years ago.
What other idle tales should she hear now to turn her heart sick with fear?
In despair she was forced into speaking of that load of anxiety which she carried, and she hinted '"'at a distance" something of her trouble to one of the sisters at the Foundery.
It seems to have been to the wife of Thomas Maxfield that Grace unburdened herself.
He had known Wesley's mother and was one of the old brigade and that first lay-preacher of all the fraternity, so that she had hopes that here might be found some kind of knowledgeable help. E. Maxfield was emphatic, even on only half a hint given, but she was emphatic in condemnation: "Sister Murray, never think of it!
I know you throughly.
It will never do.
The people would never suffer you and your spirit would not bear their behavior.
You have not humility enough, or meekness, or patience.
You would be miserable all your life, and that would make him miserable too.
So that instead of strengthening you would weaken his hands.
If you love
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yourself, or if you love him, never think of it more."
It was good advice, but none the more palatable for that, and it rankled badly as Grace looked out on that company at the Foundery and tossed the question to and fro in her troubled mind.
She dared tell Wesley nothing of her trouble, and set out for the North still brooding darkly on the enigma of his heart.
| It was at that old home town of Epworth that the couple ran straight into John Bennet.
He had been as good as his word, with courage newborn from Grace's packet in his post-bag, and here with David
Trathan he had straddled right across Wesley's road.
Epworth never seemed a very lucky place for John Wesley although his heart should have been mounting in praises there as the spot where first the Brand was plucked from the burning.
He was not lacking in courage, and seems to have gone straight to the point in an awkward encounter, but was struck dumb when Bennet said: "She has sent me all your letters."
Now what on earth had he said in them?
Had he told her that when he thought of her he thought of God?
Wesley began to think quickly, and his mind turned back on its old unhappy track.
Gone was the glorious freedom of that friendship in the Lord, gone the balance of all resolved complexes.
Instinctively there was a swinging backward, and a phrase from the past rose to the level of consciousness: "I thought it was not proper that she and I should converse any more together."
It was written to Grace Murray in a sad little note at Epworth in 1749,
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but it reads more like a phrase from the affair of Miss Sophy and John Wesley of the unwarmed heart.
So Grace Murray read it, and got the chill of the thing into her very being.
In an agony of tears she sought out Wesley and begged him never to speak like that again unless he did design to kill her.
All reserve was now gone, and she poured out there the love of her heart for him until he was stirred to the depths and wept as heartily as she.
It was at that very moment that John Bennet returned to the attack.
He had found a new strength in his own weakness, for he had loved her so much, and, in her, his own salvation.
With a determination which staggered his leader, Bennet claimed Grace Murray as his right.
It took some moments for John Wesley to know where he was, but gradually those old reasoning powers got to work and he began painfully to figure it all out as in the unregenerate days: "If each insist on his claim it will be cutting her in sunder.
She can never survive it. She will die in ye contest.
So I again determined to give her up." He should have known that it was no time for logic and reason.
A woman like Grace Murray had never yet been afraid of that sort of pulling-in-pieces death, but what she did fear was that cool, withdrawing look of reason on the face of her lover.
Here was no woman like Miss Sophy, looking from one rival to the other and noting a contrast in eye, mouth, chin and nose as though she were drawing their portraits, but here stood Grace Murray, looking from one to the other
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From whence should her help come?
Well she knew that had Alexander Murray stood where Wesley now stood, John Bennet would have been up to his neck in the Trent and she herself safe under lock and key. But now she saw Wesley, standing irresolute, with his thoughts turned inward when only a bold frontal attack could have cut the tangle of this lovers' knot. The truth was that he was back in the bad old Epworth atmosphere, with memories of old terrors and old inhibitions.
Was it not here that he had declared that he would never marry because he despaired of finding such another woman as his mother?
Was it not here that Susanna's iron method had done its best and its worst for him?
Was it not here that his father had laughed at him and scorned his reasoning propensities with his "Sweetheart, I protest"?
John Bennet was behaving distinctly better, with that urge at his heart of love and despair. A desperate energy was now upon that restless, ambitious man, and he saw his advantage and took it. Until far into the night he and David
Trathan stood over the wretched woman, and urged her on and on until she declared, "I will have John
Bennet."
Their arguments would take her on the line of least resistance, for always it had seemed a dream that the great leader could love as Alex Murray had loved.
They would tell her what was plain to see, at the moment, that really John Wesley would never reason himself up to the point of marriage—the point that Bennet had arrived at long ago with no aid from his
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reason at all.
Grace was lovely to look at and delightful to know, and, withal, had that deeper, more settled beauty and tenderness of the child of God.
That such a treasure should come in any man's way only to produce his exquisite reasons was a thing to chill the heart of any woman.
By contrast Bennet shone with ardor and real human love unmixed of angel matter.
Did they tell her the text of the sermon her hero had just preached at Epworth?
Its words held a solemn portent for a woman's heart:
"What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
So came the fatal answer: "I will have John Bennet," and the other John was left with his cold reasoning and nothing better to look at than his father's grave in Epworth churchyard.
But it had all been too much for Grace Murray, and she was obliged to seek her bed in a state of utter prostration.
Someone told John Wesley: "Sister Murray is exceeding ill," and of course at a stroke his reasoned determination was in ruins. He went swiftly through Epworth streets to her lodging, and passed through the door and into her bedroom where she lay with her memories and her anxieties.
She was stretched on that lodging-house bed and, as he sat beside her, despair seemed to loose her tongue, for in a torrent of emotion she said: "My dear sir, how can you possibly think I love any: other better than you? I love you a thousand times better than ever I loved John
Bennet in my life.
But I know not what to do.
I am afraid if I don't marry him he will run mad."
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"more perplext than ever," and John Bennet took his place at the bedside, and as the shades of night fell he urged her yet again.
She answered that she would have him.
It seems likely that Giace Murray was playing for time and that she was conscious of a very real danger unknown to John Wesley.
That Bennet would run mad was no idle tale. Already she had sent one man to perdition with denying him what his heart craved in those old Newcastle days, but now besides Bennet's soul she had the issues of Wesley's great campaign in her keeping.
This man Bennet, antagonized and half demented, would certainly do mischief.
Already for the Ship's Company there were rocks ahead.
There had sprung up a dangerous criticism of the preachers, and tale-bearers were busy fermenting gossip up and down the kingdom.
Some said that earthly love and heavenly love were all one, and that, were a man once in grace, he had the right to take the wife of any other brother so circumstanced.
That the taint of such gossip should come near the leader himself was unbearable to Grace, who knew so well the honor of the immaculate little man.
Well she knew how the world would hear of all their journeyings together, with John Bennet to tell the tale.
Also she knew that there was a deep resentment of authority in the man Bennet.
She had not ridden with him over the
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Derbyshire hills for nothing.
He was the inveterate Dissenter for all his friendship with Whitefield, Charles Wesley and the Church party.
This in itself was but a symptom of his resentment against the Wesley rule.
She who knew both men so well could sense the breath of mutiny and hear with sharpened ears far murmurs of disloyalty.
This man John Wesley, whom she loved far more than any other man, was in terrible danger through her, for far off she could hear rumblings of a storm which might ruin both him and his glorious work for the salvation of England.
They were really back at the same old question there debated round Epworth tables, as in the old days, in the famous battles of Church and Dissent.
Now the glorious irregulars of Wesley's own preachers were taking a hand in that game which had worn down Susanna Wesley and embittered all the well-springs of her spouse adored.
It looked very much as though John Wesley was never really to get away from his own past for all his heart-warming in Aldersgate Street.
The net was being spread for the feet of the unwary, but if Grace Murray could save him she certainly would, and that in spite of himself.
It was well for him that, in her, he had encountered that kind of loyalty peculiar to the true and tender north.
It must have been Grace, risen from her sickbed, who managed to extricate herself and Wesley from the attentions of Bennet and his squire Trathan.
She had contrived to smooth down ruffled feathers and to allow Bennet to depart to Sheffield in some sort of peace.
He declared that
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the dispute and the omen had ended in his favor, but his heart was full of agitation as he continued his preaching tour and remembered all that had been said and done at Epworth. He declared, not without reason: "This day I shall remember as long as I have breath."
| John Wesley and Grace Murray went forward to Newcastle, and there in their own familiar home a greater sense of security prevailed.
Wesley felt his old weapon of logic again strong in his hand, and he laid it pretty thoroughly across his rival in a long letter to Bennet in which he put up a barrage of reason chiefly on the ground of Bennet's having tried to rob him of his housekeeper.
Even now he would not go straight to the point, but blinded himself with a legal rigmarole which reads like leaves from an enticement of a maid case.
Grace was prevailed on to slip in a short note with this lengthy epistle saying that both she and Bennet had done wrong in not consulting Wesley before they agreed on a union between themselves.
Both these precious missives were entrusted to William Spent, who in his turn never delivered them.
This man was another of Wesley's heroes who had had the honor of introducing Methodism into his own native town of Leeds, but he was another of the queer independable ones whom Wesley was sometimes inclined to trust to his own hurt.
Instead of these highly reasonable letters being delivered, another one was found somewhere in the Orphan House at Newcastle, and this was duly delivered, not to Bennet, but to Charles Wesley. Now
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that letter was not one John had written to Bennet, but one he had written to Grace Murray.
It all reads as though she had been careless with it, or perhaps the case had rather been: "I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it. And one of you has picked it up and put it in his pocket." At least the tale has been handed down to posterity by a descendant of that Jeannie Keith of the Orphan House who had criticized Sister Murray and had been pronounced
"a woman of exquisite subtlety."
It was true that there were enemies on every side, and well Grace knew it. Also she knew they would stoop to anything in their jealousy and hatred of her, for so she had learned at the Foundery "the people will never stand you."
She was thankful to push on with Wesley again to Berwick, for her mind was now made up and she was determined to stake her all on one last throw with fortune.
As they rode forward through those September days and left Newcastle farther and farther behind, she longed for further escape from those cruelly gossiping tongues, and stealing her hand into Wesley's she asked that they might fly together somewhere, anywhere, to be at peace and alone together.
Of course it was not reasonable, but then neither was this vagabond life they were living, so intimately, and yet so separately.
She tried one more request, and this time she begged with all her heart—might they be married at once?
She knew the danger of those talking women she had left behind her, but only let Wesley and her be properly married and she knew she was quite equal
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to holding her own with them all.
It was this traveling together towards marriage and yet never getting there which was so terribly trying and also so bad for the ultimate fortunes of the Kingdom of God.
Wesley was now really alarmed, although it was sweet to have such 2 woman so humbly craving for his love and offering hers to him without stint or fear.
He thought quickly on his old lines and felt his way, as with Miss Sophy, when he had put up all the Indians of North America against her as a protection.
Grace Murray's heart must have failed her when she heard the ordered list of what must be done before the wedding bells could ring: "I told her before this could be done it would be needful (1) to satisfy John Bennet, (2) to procure my brother's consent, and (3) to send an account of the reasons on which I proceeded to every helper and every society in England, at the same time desiring their prayers."
The ready tears cannot have been far off as she faltered out that she would not be willing to stay above a year.
Wesley was at once ready with consolation: ''Perhaps less time will suffice."
It was cruel, but he never could just make up his mind to belong to anyone except to himself and to God, and if he could only put off the evil day he would be able to enjoy the present moment very much more to his satisfaction.
But he persuaded himself that he was really getting on with the business, and was putting the reasons on which he proceeded in order by asking Grace to give him a full account of her life as a step in the right direction.
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They were at Berwick, with the Methodist Societies, from Saturday until Thursday, and it was now that the burning story of the ship's captain, Alexander Murray, was written down.
'There seems to have been no reserve at all between the narrator and the amanuensis who took it all down "from my mouth."
It makes even today a moving story of passion, of sacrifice and of that ultimate intangible something called the love of God. Wesley must have enjoyed it, but what were the thoughts of the woman who sat there with folded hands and thought back into that old life of love and agony?
Before her eyes passed every detail of life with her first husband.
She heard again the very words he had said—ah, ah, the wooing on't!
She thrilled again with her own conviction as she later came to withstand him to the face: 'He swore I should hear Mr. Wesley no more.
I replied: "You are ye Lord of my body, but Christ is the Lord of my soul.
If I were to yield to you in this I should lose my soul, and my blood would be upon your head.'"
She saw him again, raving with anger and stamping with rage, as he thundered: "You shall leave them or me," and she remembered how she had had the hardihood to answer: "I love you above anyone on earth, but I will leave you and all that I have sooner than I will leave Christ!"
Surely Wesley must have seen where it was tending and have been encouraged to believe he would be safe with such a woman, yet his comment after this passionate unbosoming was disappointing: 'This endeared her to me more than before; and yet at ye
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same time strongly inclined me to believe that ye severe discipline was designed to prepare her for a comforter of many, a Mother in Israel."
It was not Israel or the many that Grace was coveting just then.
She had been sitting for hours telling an old tale of love to a man whom her heart loved more than them all.
Surely he meant her to be his, and yet, how could she know with this extraordinary John Wesley?
He had asked her to bring the best of her sticks of furniture with her when she came into residence at his Orphan House, so surely he meant her never to leave?
He was such a man for good furniture and so particular over his desks and the orderly arrangement of his possessions.
Could it be possible that after all that had passed between them he could look on her only as an interesting museum piece and so catalogue her in this rather ruthless way of writing down one's very heart's blood in terms of mothers and sisters in Israel?