Stratagems
X XIX
STRATAGEMS
Tue brothers faced one another in that house at Whitehaven, and John 'Wesley must almost have believed that his father had risen from the dead.
Charles was storming in just the same old family manner. Did not John see, the blockhead, that ''All our preachers will leave us, all our societies disperse if you marry so mean a woman!"
"Are you in your senses or not?"
'"'Love has put out your eyes." And then the crowning thrust: "She was your mistress before she was your wife."
Could it be real, this torrent of abuse from that brother who had sung with him of the love of God and had watched with him the falling of fire from heaven?
It was too real, and for all the world like a sparring match between Susanna and the Rector of Epworth in the old days when it was "a sorrow peculiar to our family that your father and I never think alike."
So backwards and forwards the argument went, and the voice of the accuser rose in a wild crescendo of fury: "She is low born—her parents were laboring people."
To which the quiet John answered: "This weighs nothing with me, as it does not prevent either her grace or her gifts.
Besides, whoever I marry, I believe it will not be a gentlewoman. I despair of finding any such so qualified."
The anger rose with redoubled fury:
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"She is only your servant," and the irritatingly cool John replied: "I therefore like her the better—by living so long with her under one roof I am as secure against being deceived in her as I can well be against being deceived by anyone.
Indeed I should scruple marrying any woman who had not done so for some time."
But Charles still thundered: "She has traveled with you six months, and people will say she was your mistress before she was your wife."
To which grand accusation the imperturbable John replied: "And let them say it; it would hurt just as much as a thousand things they have said before.
But let them know withal I should never marry any woman till I had proof that she both could and would travel with me." What could Charles Wesley more say than a final burst of vitriol in that "She is engaged to another."
"Where?" asked John.
"At Epworth," came the pat answer, for Charles had heard all about that scene when Bennet asked: "Will you marry me?" and she replied: "I will."
He had made it his business to go round by Newcastle and Leeds on his way to Whitehaven, and he had picked up every bit of gossip as he went.
He had been really alarmed when he heard that Wesley was incredibly in love with the woman and showed it before all the society, for Charles Wesley knew his brother's reasoned procedure and had never objected before to his friendship with Grace Murray.
Before, it had seemed always safe and removed from ardors and not "beyond all sense and reason" as now the gossips reported it. They had both been present at his wed-
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ding in far-away Wales, but perhaps Charles had time to think of nothing but himself just then.
He tells us that Christ and His disciples were bidden to his marriage, there where the grounds of Garth House stretched down to the sylvan Wye, but he says nothing of Grace Murray.
Perhaps, in great humility, she ate her wedding breakfast in the kitchen.
Then, he had not objected to the two traveling together, and had been all friendship with an eye on John and his marriage dowry.
Now, he was well-nigh impotent with rage.
He was like his father, jealous of love in another and jealous that John, who could be so useful to him, should think of marrying at all.
As he stormed an idea came to him, an idea born of old memories and springing from that linking of his two last accusations about the mistress before the wife and the mention of the name of John Bennet.
Now he was on firmer ground and he knew just what to do because long ago his father had taught him what to do when that same sequence of thought was presented to him.
When Hetty Wesley was once considered in that light the Rector of Epworth had married her, willy-nilly, to a drunken plumber who had once solicited her hand.
Charles Wesley turned on his heel, sprang to horse, and rode straight for Hindley Hill.
He left John pensive and evidently robbed of all action, as the first thing he did when alone was to sit down and meditate.
Taking a piece of paper he wrote out laboriously all the reasons for marriage and all the objections, all the qualities his wife should have, and then wound up with a sigh of
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relief and a glorious Q.E.D. in the words: "Therefore all my seven arguments against marriage are totally set aside.
Nay, some of them seem to prove both that I ought to marry and that Grace Murray is ye
Person."
It all looked very neat and worked out beautifully on paper, but it was no time for reasoning with Charles Wesley riding hell for leather through that wild country of rolling mountain.
It might give John Wesley a greater sense of security and prove an opiate to his ruffled nerves, but it was no help to the woman Grace Murray left behind at Hindley Hill. Upon her Charles Wesley burst.
Into that little stone house he rushed like a tornado, and even as he kissed her he gasped out his breathless greeting: "Grace Murray, you have broken my heart."
The next moment he was stretched at her feet in the deadest of dead faints.
Susanna Wesley had had some trouble in training her children to speak the truth.
Their father would not observe her reasonable ruling in the matter and was more prone to frighten them to death and falsehood.
Some, she knew, would speak the truth handsomely whatever befell, but Hetty was a difficult case, and from Charles Wesley's actions now it seems likely that he too might have been one of Susanna's failures.
His mind was busy weaving a plot as good as ever threw the fat into the fire of a Shakespearian drama. The inevitable letter must have been written somewhere between Whitehaven and Hindley Hill, and it was presented at once to Grace Murray when the messenger regained consciousness.
It read, and
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was supposed to read, as though John had stood at his brother's elbow as Charles composed the fatal words.
When Grace had sufficiently restored the victim of an unkind world, this was the letter she was bidden to read for her sins:
"My Dear SISTER AND FRIEND, "What shall I say to you?
I would not willingly grieve you though you have wellnigh broke my heart: and still you will be the occasion of bringing down my hairs with sorrow to the grave.
Neither my soul nor my body will ever recover the wound; in this life I mean.
But there the weary are at rest, there all tears are wiped away from our eyes.
Fain would I hope that you can say something in your defense (when I come to talk to you), which now I know not.
But the case thus appears to me: You promised J.B. to marry him—since which you have engaged yourself to another. How is this possible? And who is that other?
One of such importance that his doing so dishonest an action would destroy himself and me and the whole work of God.
It was on the very brink of ruin, but the snare is broken and we are delivered.
I am returning with my brother straight to London, but could not leave the country without writing to you.
Still I will suspend my judgment in that love which hopeth all things.
But O! how humbled, how thankful ought you to be at your almost miraculous deliverance!
Had not the Lord restrained you, what a scandal had you brought upon the Gospel.
Nay, and you would have left
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your name as a curse upon God's people. But I spare you and hope in ignorance you did it. Be not therefore troubled overmuch.
I never intend to speak a hard word to you about it, but pray for you and love you, till we meet at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb."
The mischief was that only that morning Grace had received that other ambiguous letter from her lover at Whitehaven, and this new effort might reasonably follow on that.
She had been very lowspirited when she read the first letter, for she had really come to believe that a great future lay ahead with John Wesley, and had dreamed of honors for the Kingdom of God brought about by their own union in the bonds of the Gospel: 'My soul is athirst for God and the good of souls.
I find my former zeal returned.
I trust I shall be more bold in the cause of Christ than ever—the Lord hath brought strange things to pass what I never looked for. Praise the Lord, O my soul, who hath cast thy lot in a fair ground."
So she had written on Monday to Sister Proctor and had asked her for a warning if John
Bennet came to Newcastle, for "I must not see him.
It will tear my soul to pieces seeing I can by no means help him now, for whom God hath joined together no man can put asunder."
So any woman might have reasoned after what had passed between John Wesley and herself, but she reckoned without the late Rector of Epworth and his wife Susanna.
Their spirits were walking abroad on those bare-
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backed mountains of Cumberland that September morning in 1749.
It was now Wednesday morning, September the 27th, and the fainting Charles Wesley was gradually reviving in the little stone house at Hindley Hill.
He had arrived about 11 a.m. and, true to a Judas standard of things, he had betrayed Grace with a kiss.
He had followed up that advantage with a spectacular faint and the reading of his letter. About one o'clock he contrived to get her onto his horse with a promise that he would take her straight to John Bennet and his brother and so straighten out the tangle.
The tangle was really of his own making, for neither John nor Grace were acting at all like people with guilty consciences.
The man whose conscience was uneasy was in reality the hero Charles himself.
Along that road to Newcastle he seemed to hear a horse following him.
Grace Murray was perched on his pillion and it was difficult to look round, but any moment he felt that those flying feet must apprehend them.
So great was the tension that he turned right out of his road with a sweet consciousness that he had now really given his brother the slip and could go more slowly.
'He used several stratagems to elude his pursuer, and at last turned out of the Newcastle road and made straight for Durham."
On they went until they were well lost, and were thankful to put up for the night with Farmer John Brown who lived at Newlands on the borders of Northumberland and Durham.
Grace Murray made a great effort, in company, to look as though nothing was being done
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sufficiently out of the way to attract notice, but when once she got to bed her courage failed her.
There, in a strange house, "she lay tumbling and tossing to and fro as one in deep distress."
The stratagems were closing in on her, and she felt terribly apprehensive as to the motives and the actions of this volcanic Charles Wesley.
With a true woman's insight she believed that he really was not speaking the truth.
And yet John Wesley might have changed his mind and it might be true, as Charles said, that all the societies were ready to fly to pieces.
She knew she would do anything in her power to keep "one she dearly loved from ruin," but in the darkness of that night she could not tell just how true those bogeys of Charles Wesley's were.
And always dancing before her eyes, as she lay, were pictures of John on the road, John preaching, John singing his hymns,
John bending over her in tenderness and holding her hand in his. They were indeed memories that bless and burn, or, as the wretched woman herself described them, "ta sword piercing her heart."
So all night she lay and never slept at all, and in the morning arose to breakfast with Farmer Brown and Charles Wesley, and then to horse again and so to Newcastle.
Perhaps, after all, if she could see John Bennet, and, if he really loved her, he might be able to clear up some of the difficulty and at least rescue her from this ride of the Valkyries with Charles
Wesley.
When she heard Bennet was at Newcastle she cheerfully said: "Let us go—let us go to him."
But this was not at all what Charles Wesley intended.
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He had not ridden over all those horrid mountains and gone almost stark staring mad with anger and been lost and supported Grace Murray on his horse all the way to Newcastle to have her twist poor.
Bennet round her little finger just like that.
He deposited her at Ferry Hill and rode on alone to Newcastle.
There were more stratagems yet to be worked out, . and Master Charles could do them better without those honest eyes of Grace Murray fixed on him. He had an interesting interview with John Bennet, in which he tried to work that poor man into a fever of jealousy against Wesley. He laid all the blame on his brother, and roundly declared that he, John Wesley, had used all his art and authority to seduce another man's wife.
He fulminated to some purpose, and together they went to the Orphan House to tell all there of the sins of the leader.
The whole place was in an uproar, and, in that room where once Grace and Wesley had seen a vision of sweet things, the air was rent and blistered with jealousies and angry complaints.
One saw Mr. Wesley already in hell fire.
Jane Keith was quite positive about it:
"John Wesley is a child of ye devil."
John Bennet brought on the top stone with worthy emphasis: "If John Wesley is not damned there is no God."
Brother Charles had exploded the gunpowder, but there remained the last stratagem of all, and he did not suppose that could fail. Having raised the storm, he slipped out of the house to fetch Grace Murray, and brought her back, tired and weary-eyed, into this
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vitriolic atmosphere of the Orphan House at Newcastle.
There John Bennet stood waiting for her, and when she saw him she made him the amends which his love deserved, for she told him handsomely that she knew she had used him ill and she begged that he would forgive her.
She was quite positive she would go no further than that, and told them all:
"T will do nothing till I have seen Mr. Wesley." But Charles had not yet done with his wiles, for at that moment, from the wings, entered one who should swing the whole action of the play to the right-about.
Word was brought to Grace Murray to the effect that John Wesley had really given her up and had sent his orders by this messenger that she should go to some place among the country societies where she might live privately.
Now came the well-arranged chorus: "Good God!
What will the world say: He is tired of her, and so thrusts his whore into a corner!
Sister Murray, will you consent to this?" To which she answered, "'No, I will die first."
In that awful meeting Grace Murray had seen several things quite clearly and, as swiftly, made her decision.
She knew how to act because she loved John Wesley so purely and so wholeheartedly that self did not just then come into the business.
She had heard with horror that people, quite glibly, were speaking of her as "Mr. Wesley's whore."
Charles Wesley, being the complete gentleman, had said "mistress" to John Wesley at Whitehaven, but by the time he reached Newcastle he had allowed the
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local worthies to translate that word into the vernacular.
As they stood round the woman, baiting her with their obscenities, she saw that great revival of love and religion already laid in the dust.
The world would say it was the inevitable end of those strange love-songs and that daring imagery of the Godhead which read so like the imagery of the sons of Adam.
Already there was that heresy of lust and the community in wives.
Already Westly Hall was gone to the dogs with his mistresses and his patient wife.
Had not the great Count Zinzendorf himself traveled to America thus accompanied?
He was head and leader of all the Moravians, and John Wesley owed him so much already in the success of his own campaign.
Zinzendorf was not a whit ashamed of his '"'Spirit Bride," for were not all things possible to the lovers of God? Old Oglethorpe would surely join hands with Uncle Matthew for once and agree that he had always foretold the ruin of these precious Wesleys—''Your history would be made a play or tale of."
No, not if it depended on Grace Murray.
Never would she let the world talk like that about John Wesley. Never would she let them drag those lovely hymns and that Emmaus experience of Aldersgate
Street in the mud.
There was a natural body, and quite well she knew it, but, thank God, there was a spiritual body too.
The next world should make amends for the crucifixion of this one.
It might be that the floods would wash her down, but that could not be helped.
She would make her supreme sacrifice
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in order to keep the Captain of her Salvation and the ship's captain forever apart, and each in his own order.
So searching out John Bennet with those kindling eyes she said quite simply: "I will have John
Bennet if he will have me."
XXX CRISIS In far Whitehaven John Wesley had appeased the shades of his mother.
He had demonstrated his love by reason.
It had always been Susanna's method, when life with the Rector of Epworth had been trying, to turn to such sweet conference as John
Wesley had just held.
She would have question and answer with her daughters and write down all for her own comfort.
Again in her lengthy letters to her sons she indulged in this same blissful antidote of quiet argument.
But now came a reaction.
The mind, once lulled by all his seven arguments against marriage and their refutation, sprang forward with a sudden unreasonable swiftness.
What was Brother Charles doing?
John Wesley was all at once very uncomfortable and went to horse in a hurry just after two in the afternoon.
He rode like a fury for the first hour until his horse was in a lather of sweat.
He was weak himself from his usual complaint under stress of emotion, but "God was pleased to strengthen both man and beast," and it was just as well, as their way lay over some of the steepest hills and under the shadow of Skiddaw and the giants of Lakeland.
Once before John Wesley had ridden like this with thought spurning the ground.
Then it was on the day of the first cuckoo's song and there had been but
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thirty-five miles between Oxford and Stanton. Then it was spring and the time of lad's love; now it was mature September and the ripeness of middle age, and a much longer journey to be accomplished.
He was forced to lie at Keswick, but his heart was soaring. He had had "a solemn, delightful ride."
Did he remember that other journey and think on the way that the Lord his God had led him? He reports that his mind was stayed on God, and we know that hymns were never far away from him in such delightful communion.
'There were appropriate ones to be hummed, as he rode, of God's providential way, and a very sweet one of finding direction "touched by the loadstone of Thy love."
But somehow he could not leave it all to God just now, for he was up by three in the morning and pushing on again as fast as he could go.
It was pitch dark, and no time for riding in that land of barrier mountains with old passes to be negotiated which went right over the back of the range.
Great Gable, the Langdales, Skiddaw and Helvellyn were all alike to John Wesley on that dark morning:
"T could see no road nor anything else." Dawn came up on the lonely rider near Penruddock Moor, but as soon after the mist gathered again.
There was danger of bog and a trackless wilderness, but Wesley pushed on as marching on compass bearing, and at three in the afternoon trotted up in great delight to the little stone house at Hindley Hill.
But there was none that answered.
Only Hannah Broadwood hurried forward and whispered the words up to him:
CRISIS "Mr. Charles left us two hours since and carried Sister Murray behind him."
It was a cruel blow.
Wesley had been riding in danger and weakness for twelve hours, and now, within sight of home, he heard the news which broke him down utterly. He seems to have cried like a child, for when honest James Broadwood came in later he wept too at the very sight of his distress.
And yet the only words he said were: ""The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord." Ominous words enough, for they were from the service for the dead.
But the brave heart was not yet conquered, for he said, "I must go on to Newcastle."
The faithful Broadwood could not let that happen after such a ride and such a collapse, and at once he volunteered to ride on himself, and what was more, "with God's leave" to bring Grace Murray back behind him.
At night Wesley was not allowed either to recruit his strength or to bind up his broken heart in secret, for a great congregation met to whom he must perforce preach. He was weak and his mind was bruised, and it is instructive to see just where he turned for a text.
He chose that one he had used in Bunhill Fields at his mother's funeral, and in that action the fate of Grace Murray was really sealed.
Whilst Charles Wesley was listening for the ring of the hoof of John's horse in pursuit, that son of his mother was preaching the funeral sermon of his love:
"And I saw a great white throne, and I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne."
That was always the fatal flaw in his arguments—he
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must look for his mother's protection in his women friends, and when they were snatched from him he would employ her methods of defence, or think now of Grace Murray as though his mother had died. But he was suffering deeply, as was to be seen by the next day's fasting and prayer and by the reappearance of that old habit of writing down questions on inordinate affection: '""And this I clearly perceived, that I had never before had so strong an affection for any person under heaven."
Nevertheless there was always duty to be done, and Whitehaven had been left without a preacher, so that on Friday, instead of going on to Newcastle, this strange man turned back on his tracks: "I knew this was giving up all, but I knew
God called."
Here was a different journey to be faced, with the wind so high that Wesley could hardly sit his horse. But now he battled onward in the interests of the Kingdom of God as bravely as he had ridden before, touched by the loadstone of human passion.
It seemed as though the wind would keep him back in his endeavor to reach Whitehaven for the Sunday preaching, but as once before he had fought in the forests of Georgia, so now he urged his way over "ye broad bare backs of those enormous mountains." By Saturday afternoon he had reached Whitehaven and had resolved to resume his spare diet, 'which I shall probably quit no more." Both in his friendship with Miss Sophy and with Grace Murray he had felt less need of his stringent treatment for the flesh when all was going well, but now he turned back as before to this same sheet anchor in the blast.
CRISIS On Sunday, October 1, Wesley suffered horribly.
His heart went down into his boots like any stone, and he found no relief anywhere save in preaching, when he was able for that time to throw off the weight.
He also went to church, where his mind was busy with that old theme of fire and the seaimagery of storm.
When he returned to his lodging he took up the Prayer Book in desperation and opened on a verse which seemed to leap right out of the page and speak comfort to his heart, and these were the words: "I should utterly have fainted, but that I believe verily to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
There it was before his eyes, God's promise for the success of his own campaign, and he,
Wesley, was the instrument in spite of his breaking heart. How could he faint when men were dying in their sins, when women were wearing out their hearts in the search for some great Purity which should heal all their afflictions, when little children were seeking the gentleness of the Lord?
It was no time for fainting, for the Revival was but ten years old, and yet he had suffered a crushing blow and surely heavy enough to take the very heart out of him.
Would God give him a word and some further comfort in dreams of the night? And so in prayer John Wesley's
Sunday came to an end, and in the sheer exhaustion of misery he slept soundly.
Of course he dreamed.
Fears took their personal shape again, and he saw a man bring out Grace Murray for execution.
She spoke no word of reluctance, but walked up with him to the scaffold which stood
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there in its stark outlines as Wesley had seen it at Tyburn with Charles at his best on the cart of death.
The sentence was executed without her stirring either hand or foot.
Because she was dead Wesley dared to look her in the face, and there in dreams he scanned every well-known feature until the face turned black before him and he could not bear it longer and went away.
But away from her he could not keep, so he returned and begged she might be cut down.
She was laid on a bed, and he sat by mourning as she had laid at Epworth in that old battle of hope and fear.
But he could sit there now the more comfortably for the very reason that she was dead.
At the first sign of returning life Wesley awoke with a start.
The dream had taken-up the old fear motive of a living, breathing, talking woman: "She came to herself and began to speak and I awaked." All his women friends, except Miss Sophy, had been great talkers with a vivacity which delighted Wesley's heart.
And yet he feared, for was not that sparkle akin to fire and the devil's own onset?
He never really plucked up courage to look at any of them comfortably save in dreams and death.
Over a woman's corpse in Georgia he could wax quite eloquent, but that was because it was so entirely safe.
He felt quite brave and gallant would they but not talk and not come to life—''dear dead women, with such hair too."
Susanna Wesley had left no loopholes in her fool-proof method. She had made him the son of her own cloistered period, and, in the Providence of God, Grace Murray had now slipped silently to her side.