Conversation Piece
XXVIII
CONVERSATION PIECE
Tue time at Berwick had been undeniably sweet, and surely much ground had been gained.
Grace rode back to Newcastle with John Wesley in more intimate conversation than ever now that she had
© offered upon his altar the whole story of her old-time love.
Wesley was at his best in just such surroundings. The joys of the road always thrilled him, and with a good companion who never complained, whatever the way or the weather, he found it all exhilarating and talked well.
He had had many of these confessions and life stories from his converts, and had early grasped the importance of such unburdening of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart. He was peculiarly fitted to deal with troubled souls from his belief that the love of God was really the warp and woof of life, and also the ghost of Uncle Matthew always managed to accompany him when he was embarked on these perilous explorations in soul surgery.
So Wesley talked to Grace Murray, and so they came together to Newcastle, and even there could not have done with sweet words.
Far into the night they talked and talked, and could not make an end.
Wesley had always loved the scene in Eden and Milton's phrase of the conversation of the first of all
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PIECE lovers: "With thee conversing I forget all time."
He had rejoiced to find the same thing possible with God, and the line had been incorporated in one of those jubilant hymns of the Methodist Revival.
In the old days in Oxford or in Georgia Wesley had never forgotten time when talking with God, for he clocked in every hour and each moment of prayer, but, since his conversion, all that had been changed.
Now, in addition, he had found a woman with whom he could combine both forms of rapture in a glory of talk and of prayer.
The thing called time was eliminated altogether.
The hymns of the Methodists sprang from just such vivid experiences of the road, of human companionship and the presence of God:
"Talk with us, Lord, Thyself reveal, Whilst here o'er earth we rove; Speak to our hearts, and let us feel The kindling of Thy love.
With Thee conversing, we forget All time, all toil and care.
Labor is rest and pain is sweet, If Thou, my Lord, art there."
Grace Murray began to feel the ground more secure under her feet and opened up her heart to him there in their beloved Orphan House where first he had spoken to her of his love.
She told him honestly, "In time past I could have married another if you would have given me away, but now it is impossible that we should part—God has united us forever."
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TO SUSANNA
Such communion might be very sweet in that old room at Newcastle where so much had passed between them, but John Wesley saw he was getting more involved than he at first believed, so he performed a characteristic volte-face by betaking himself off to Grace's critics to learn if she really was all she seemed to be.
It was a highly reasonable proceeding, but not just what an ordinary man would do after such a night of love and blessed conversation.
How Wesley could solmenly hold that court upon the character of his splendid friend baffles the imagination, for the things against her were so trivial and her accusers were but a pack of jealous women.
They said she had spent ten shillings on an apron and bought a Holland shift, that she would not lend her saddle to Mrs. Williams, that she was proud and insolent and rode into the town with Mr. Wesley alone, and that she bought a Joseph before she wanted it.
This last item was a peculiarly feminine sin, for the Joseph was for horse travel, and she was not above wanting to look her best on those glorious expeditions with Wesley over the hills and far away.
Her friend and champion, having spent the best part of two days in such investigations, was able at last to come to the conclusion that "jealousy and envy were ye real ground of most of these accusations."
So off they set again, complete in Joseph, and with the disputed saddle, and came at last to Hindley Hill with Christopher Hopper and to the house of Hannah
Broadwood.
Here, at Grace Murray's request, they renewed that contract made before in Dublin ere
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PIECE they sailed the seas to Bristol.
It was Grace's plea for a legalizing of their relationship, which Wesley had said could not be consummated in marriage before a year had run its weary course of months and days.
She now stood up before these strange Methodists to take this oath of allegiance to Wesley, and before she said the words Christopher Hopper saw that she was trembling all over.
Love was having its way with her at last, and no longer did it seem a dream that Wesley should love her even as Alex Murray had loved, even as men love for whose companionship her soul had long fainted and watched in vain.
But old campaigner Hopper was having no raptures, and he stopped the ceremony with his blunt: "Sister Murray, have you any scruple on your mind?
If you have the least scruple I beg you would stop.
Pray do."
But with a glad smile she answered, "I have none at all."
For what scruple could be left now that Wesley and she had had between them what was told at Berwick and what was said, hand in hand, on the road and by night in the room at Newcastle?
In one hour Wesley bade her goodbye and took horse to Whitehaven.
She followed him out of the little stone-roofed house and stood watching him up the hill, and as he rode he turned and saw her and went on his way rejoicing.
He had told himself that now neither life nor death could part them, but from the time he came to Whitehaven he had "something hanging on my mind which I knew not how to explain." The weight was there and he was unhappy.
It was a secret haunting fear, for no longer could |
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he disguise the fact from himself that Grace Murray was very much in love with him.
Also he could not forget that tale of Alexander, home from the seas, and the fever of those short, blissful furloughs of which Grace had not spared him details. On Sunday the words struck on his heart: "Son of man, behold,
I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke." It was the text of Sophy's betrayal, and he was going over all the old ground again and remembering how he suffered then. The fire of love and the flames of desire were ever a terror to him, for he had been a brand plucked from the burning and whenever it kindled anywhere near him he was uneasy.
Now when he fell asleep the fear brought out its puppet costume and walked for him not in Williemson's likeness, but in the likeness of John Bennet.
The quick question of dreamland was, "Where is Grace Murray?" and the answer came as quickly:
"At Chinley." Wesley woke in a moment, and from that time could sleep no more.
He lay tossing and thinking in great discomfort, and turned backwards and forwards in his mind the mighty question of marriage. He was afraid and unhappy, and when he arose and put pen to paper, the first words that came to him for his love letter to Grace read very strangely, even to himself:
"There is I know not what of sad presage That tells me we shall never meet again."
Which remark looks very much as though the dream
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of Chinley and John Bennet had been a wish fulfilment dream rather than the promptings of a guilty conscience.
And it is true that the words to the eyes of Grace Murray turned her sick with apprehension.
All her high spirits were gone, and she sank again into the slough of despond with all the beating about hither and thither to find some firm place to ground her friendship with Wesley upon.
Where should safety be found, both for themselves and for the Kingdom of God?
Before, she had kept John Bennet as a sort of sallyport in the interests of this Kingdom; now he was far away, and she knew she had thrown in her lot with Wesley for better or for worse.
She had been content to wait a year only because he ordered it so, but she believed it was bad policy and that every day of their friendship endangered the fortunes of the Ship's Company, which were dearer to Wesley than any single person could ever be.
"If you love him, Sister Murray, never think of it more."
So they had told her in London, and she knew it was true if John Wesley had fallen back into his old way of hesitation and into thinking too precisely upon the event. They looked like debating the matter for years and years although she had already given herself to him in mind and spirit, when she trembled with love in the presence of Christopher Hopper in the little stone house at Hindley Hill.
She would have known there was good ground for her fear could she have seen John Wesley at Whitehaven.
But also, if she could have seen him, she
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might have been comforted by the fact that the strength of his love was to be gauged by the strength of his fear of desire and its kindling flame.
For the first time in his glorious friendship with this woman the old conflict had emerged.
The old symptoms had returned.
He was shivering with nervous prostration and in a fever, and if Varanese had seen him she would have told him that he looked like a corpse.
He thought of taking a vomit and going to bed, and must have longed for John, his old friend of Savannah, who had helped him through similar storms with Miss Sophy.
But there was now one great difference —all the world had gone out after this man to hear him speak of the love of God and so he could not get to bed just when he felt he must die, for "when
I came home, seeing a vast congregation in the market-place, I could not send them empty away.
And while I was speaking to them God remembered me and strengthened me both in soul and body."
Things would indeed be serious with John Wesley if he could not preach.
The Lord had a wonderful way of lifting every care and anxiety from the man's heart could he but proclaim the Grace of God and gather in the outcasts of men to the Lover of their souls.
And so to bed, but in the morning things were not nearly so simple.
A species of storm or species of hurricane struck the house where John Wesley lay.
The plot was gathering itself up in a complication of motive and a blaze of passion sufficient to wreck any Ship's Company.
Someone looking so very like
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PIECE the ghost of the old Rector of Epworth had entered from the wings—was even now knocking down the door to obtain a conference with Brother John.
It was Charles Wesley, and moreover, it was Brother Charles flouncing and bouncing in exquisite rage.
Now, John Wesley secretly dreaded the visits of this brother of his. At the best he disarranged his papers and lost his books as his father had contrived to put grit in the domestic machine of his wife Susanna.
At the worst this Brother Charles had power to upset all Wesley's dearest plans.
The trouble of it was he could never be quite sure of his loyalty.
Charles loved, as his father, the big people, and was friendly with Whitefield's aristocratic party, who taught those horrible decrees of John Calvin.
But now there was a greater urgency than matters of faith laid on the heart of Charles Wesley. He had a secret terror that he saw his bread and butter disappearing out of the corner of his eye.
His income, for all his precarious loyalty, depended on the fortunes of the campaign and upon the sale of those books which the Methodist preachers took about the country with them. Now
Charles Wesley could write of those same preachers with a sneer and speak impatiently of his brother's folly in appointing such poor tools, but his own £100 a year was guaranteed by the extent of their success.
John Wesley could truly say that the money he made was not being laid by for his own wife and children who were yet unborn, for very truly it was being drafted into the coffers of Brother Charles and of those other importunate members of the Wesley
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family.
John himself gave away nearly all that he had, but now, to Charles Wesley's horror, this generous mainstay of the penurious was threatening to produce both wife and children himself.
It was reasonable to suppose that even Grace Murray could not live entirely upon air, and Charles Wesley had flown northwards to prevent any possibility of her ever having to attempt that miracle.
It was so startlingly clear to Brother Charles that John Wesley must never marry that it swelled all his little frame with anger to think that the man was as much as contemplating it. He was bursting with rage, and must have cut a figure just like a pocket edition of the Rector of Epworth.
His string of epithets was as gloriously fluent.