The Finger of God
The Finger of God
The crackly yellow envelope contained three one-pound notes. That was all. How far did Sam think three pounds was going to go when every merchant in town was dunning her for payment on accounts past due? She sighed and returned the notes to the comfort of their envelope. The March wind thrust its clammy fingers through the loose weave of her shawl. So far, March offered no promising smells or warm wafts as an earnest payment on the laggard spring. Indeed, the month was threatening to go out like a lion. She walked back into the house.
Sammy looked up from his slate beside the fire. “Is Papa returning soon?” He always asked that.
“No word yet.” She always answered that. The boy had recently turned twelve. Susanna doubted he knew about the true nature of the marriage union—she certainly hadn’t told him anything—but he was old enough to be aware of an unnatural separation when he saw it. It must bother him.
It surely bothered her.
Here came the maid, back early from shopping. She closed the door against the wind and whipped off her cape. “Gonna rain today yet; feels so. Big news, mum. King William died a week ago, on the eighth. Anne is queen.” She paused; her voice assumed a cautious, hopeful note. “Isn’t Anne a Stuart, mum? I mean, she’s a proper queen, ain’t she?”
“A proper queen, yes. And pray don’t use ‘ain’t’ before the children.”
“Yes’m. Then there’s no problem now, seeing you and master can agree upon who’s queen, ain—isn’t that so?”
“Let’s devoutly hope so.” Susanna set Emilia to work at her mathematics, drilled Molly in her letters and numbers, and listened to Sukey recite. All that busyness occupied the front of her mind. The back of her mind worried, as it had for the last five months.
Sam was being pigheaded and, in a way, Susanna was being just as pigheaded. And yet this was a matter on which she would not bend—she could not bend. William had been the thorn, and he was a thorn no longer. Or had he been? Was fealty to William at the root of this unfortunate schism, or did it go deeper, perhaps past mending?
Easter would fall on April 5 this year. Easter was the season of renewal, the celebration of life both eternal and temporal. Surely things would be healed by then. This argument, started so simply, had continued far too long already, like a fire out of control. No, like an icy storm out of control, freezing both soul and spirit.
As Susanna had feared, March was slow and surly about letting go of winter. Easter Sunday was still raw. A rather uncaring young curate, his theology as sloppy as his dress, celebrated the Easter services, for Sam had gone to London.
A few days later, bitterly frustrated, Susanna wrote a letter to Dr. George Hickes. Persecuted for years for both his religious and his political beliefs, the man had earned her respect, and she knew Sam respected him as well. Perhaps a wisdom greater than hers and Sam’s could prevail.
She mentioned the name of the woman who had recommended him, her friend Lady Yarborough. She laid out her own argument and, as best she could, Sam’s. She appealed to him to intervene if possible, to advise if intervention were unwise. And then she waited for the post and remembered the days when she memorized the hoofbeats of the post horse as she awaited letters from her true love Samuel.
Young love. That headstrong young love had aged and mellowed. Her love was different now. Was it there at all? She had to search her heart, but yes, it was. For all his iron-headedness and lack of money acumen, she loved him. They argued every point of view, didn’t even see eye-to-eye on child-rearing, and yet she loved him. She yearned for his companionship; she needed his cheeriness when life got very heavy. And she yearned for his arms again. It had been too, too long.
On the twenty-ninth of the month Dr. Hickes’s reply reached her. Her hopes and spirit, so chilled by the whole affair, warmed perceptibly. Dr. Hickes was on her side!
“Samuel’s oath,” he wrote, “is inconsistent with his marriage vows and is therefore invalid. It was perjury for him to make the vow, and will be a continuance of perjury for him to persist in the performance of it. I advise you consult the Archbishop of York and Bishop of Lincoln and request them, if they agree with me that the oath is unlawful, to charge him to loose himself from the bond of sin, by which he cannot bind himself by the law of God and man. I encourage you, even if this fails, to stand firm.”
Stand firm. Susanna was a specialist in standing firm, although lately she had found it more and more difficult. This advice of Dr. Hickes buoyed her up and gave her starch not even daily devotions could provide.
Stand firm. Easy for the doctor to say. So difficult to do. In a terse note accompanied by too little money, Sam refused to accept the arbitration of any outside opinion. And he mentioned seeking a chaplaincy aboard a man-of-war. Susanna tried to see the advantage of such a thing. Sam would be making a nice wage, and it would be sent directly to her, Sam being at sea. With only herself to manage the funds, and Sam an ocean away from anyplace to spend it, she might even get their finances into some semblance of order.
Sam an ocean away. She spent the afternoon dissolved in tears and at evening devotions felt no better for having cried the day away than she felt before.
She had acknowledged that the whole morass could be mended only by God Himself, but she had never really let go. For the first time in her life, Susanna Annesley Wesley gave up. Sam was adamant; so was she. Her position was correct according to the laws of God. Dr. Hickes agreed with that. The crux was no longer who sat on the throne of England. Sam’s vow had become the problem. She saw that clearly enough, and he could persist in it only with God’s tacit approval. Susanna would sit back and let God work His own way.
On May fifteenth she wrote a letter to that effect to Lady Yarborough.
In the midst of the mess she gave birth to a daughter, her fourteenth child. Queen Anne was a legitimate ruler; Queen Anne’s accession should have solved this tragic dilemma, had stubbornness not frozen it past solution. Susanna named her baby Anne.
July. The sun came early and stayed late. Summer warmth helped soften memories of the harsh and bitter spring. Susanna suspended the children’s lessons for a spell. And her sweetbrier came into flower at long last.
She was unusually slow to bounce back from this birthing. After weeks abed, she was finally garnering enough energy to take quiet walks around the garden.
This particular evening she wandered out through the freshly painted gate into her somewhat orderly garden. The weeds had been beaten back along the paths here, but the grass and thistles and pigweed in the rear had yet to be pulled. She’d get Molly onto that job. Molly’s crippling deformities made her a natural for sitting-down jobs. The child was six now and ready for chores.
Here was her sweetbrier, coming into its glory. She inhaled deeply. Ahhh. When life became burdensome, a little fragrance meant a lot. She thought of how God must find human foibles burdensome, and how He must relish the fragrance of His obedient servants. “We are unto God a sweet savor of Christ.” Where was that? Second Corinthians, she thought.
A footstep on the path behind her made her turn. She caught her breath. “Sam.”
“Sukey.” His riding clothes were all dusty. He must have just arrived.
She ached to embrace him. She held her place, rigid. “You’ve seen our newest?”
“Anne, Emilia tells me. She’s a lovely baby.”
“One of our prettiest.” She licked her lips. She must tread carefully here, most carefully. “I assumed Anne was a name we would both agree upon.”
“Yes, as, I assume, we both agree on the legitimacy of the queen.” He wandered off to study the lily plants. “Your lilies aren’t blooming.”
“Too early. Next month.”
He continued on, pausing by the rosemary bush in the shelter of the west wall. “Where rosemary flourishes the mistress rules.”
Susanna had heard that adage many a time. Nor was it the only one she knew. “Who passes by the rosemary and cares not to take a spray, for women’s love no care has he nor shall he, though he live for aye.”
Sam twisted to study her a moment. His eyes danced; the creases in their corners deepened. What was he thinking? He plucked a sprig of rosemary, held it to his nose and inhaled deeply, then tossed the spray to her. He continued his circuit of the garden.
She caught the sprig with two hands. Its leaves had been bruised by the plucking. Its aroma overwhelmed her memory of the sweetbrier’s. She was a practical woman, a direct woman, and not one to dance so daintily among the roses. “Let us stop skating around the edges of the pond and go straight to the middle. Are you here to stay?”
“That depends.” He wheeled to face her. “Are you ready to submit your will to mine in every regard, as a proper wife must?”
“What you’re saying is, am I willing to abandon any opinions of my own? There was a day when you valued my opinions, whether they reflected yours or not. Have I ceased being a person at some time between that day and this?”
“The husband is head and master of the house. You refuse to accept that.”
“You have always been head and master. In fact, I daresay if you were not in charge of finances we wouldn’t be over two hundred and fifty pounds in debt right now. I may not agree with your choice of king or your notions of discipline, but they prevail nonetheless. Yours are the prayers the children hear—when you’re around to offer them.”
“You’re begging the issue. I’m talking about the true submission a wife must make.”
“No. No, there’s more. I can’t believe this tiff is the whole reason for your actions. We spent over twelve years in marriage together; surely this isn’t the first you noticed that our opinions vary. Are you looking for an excuse to get away? Are Lincoln and London that much nicer to be in than Epworth?”
His face, already tight, twisted more. It spoke more than words could ever say. He turned away from her, back to the barely budding lilies. “They respect me there. I’m convocation man; I run the show. When I discuss the symbolism in Job they listen. I can sit in a coffeehouse and talk about a book I’ve read, and someone else has read it, too. No one here even knows how to read, let alone discuss anything beyond the weather and the price of eggs and barleycorn.”
“I remind you you weren’t given this parish by men. It was ordained of God. You belong here.”
He walked slowly up the path to inspect the lavender. Its brittle aroma conquered the meager odor of the rue beside it. “For years I have preached revival. Renewal. There is no revival here in this God-forsaken wilderness. Just ignorance. Ignorant men who prize their ignorance and loathe anything better for themselves. They pay lip service to God and oppose me. If I belonged here I would have received some sign by now.”
“You said you had applied for a ship’s chaplaincy. Do you suppose that’s where you belong?”
“Perhaps. I’ve not withdrawn my application.” He turned to look at her finally. “You’d be well cared for. My salary would go to you, and you’ve been holding it up to me that you could manage better. This can be your chance to prove it.”
“Unless you’re lost at sea. Then I’m destitute, with six small children, no roof, and a burden of debt. Is that what you want for your son and daughters?”
“I want revival, Sukey. And it won’t come here at Epworth.”
“So you’ll launch a revival at sea, one ship at a time.” She was beginning to feel giddy again. She walked past him to the bench beside the sweet woodruff and sat down: “I’ve been writing letters, as you know—Lady Yarborough and George Hickes. Dr. Hickes urged me to take my appeal to the archbishop and bishop. I haven’t yet. I would ask that we submit our problem to referees, one of whom—”
“No! I refuse to submit anything to outside persons. This is between you and me. Us alone. Not outsiders.”
“Not your own masters the bishop and archbishop?”
“No reference of any sort.”
“Very well. Then I suppose there’s nothing more to talk about. I do ask that you read Dr. Hickes’s reply to my letter. You should know what others think in the matter whether you consent to arbitration or not. And perhaps before dinner you might spend some time with Sammy. He asks about you.”
He stood very close to her; his shadow fell across her face. “You make this whole problem out to be my fault somehow—that I’m the one being unreasonable. Had I my Bible in my hand I’d wag it in your face. The finger of God points to you, Sukey! To you!” He marched off to the house.
The finger of God. Yes. She would make the finger of God the topic of her devotions this evening.
Was she the problem? Was she really the one? Despite some doubts, the more she examined that possibility, the less she believed it. He was trying to escape a less-than-ideal rectorship in a dull and dreary parish. It was he, not herself.
She saw this, also: she could never sway him, and he would listen to no other voice. She must leave the matter to God. God took care of ravens and lilies of the field. He’d take care of her children; she must trust Him. Have faith. God would resolve this matter to His satisfaction. She must trust Him to.
Sam stayed two days—“putting things in order,” he said. He stayed upstairs in Sammy’s room. He had vowed not to touch her again until she begged God’s pardon and his, and he was sticking to his vow. She certainly had to give his stubbornness its due.
Early the next morning, as the cock robins announced dawn and the jackdaws were picking through the pig’s scraps, Sam left for London. Permanently.
Susanna cried through most of her morning devotional. Having him near but not with her hurt worse than when he was fifty miles away in Lincoln or two hundred miles away in London. To almost smell his closeness, to watch his hands move, to hear his voice—it tantalized. It stirred her. Didn’t he feel anything? Was everything gone between them? Apparently.
At least she wasn’t pregnant again. Mrs. Whipple up the street claimed that Susanna’s ill health came of being pregnant constantly. The woman was illiterate and unschooled in spiritual matters, but she knew more than doctors about keeping well. If she was right, Susanna at least would enjoy better health when she was turned out on the street.
She completed her devotions, with difficulty, an hour later than usual; she would not let wandering thoughts rob her of godly thinking. She sent Molly and Sukey out to weed the herb patches by the east fence, then had to go out and show them what to pull and what to save. She sent Sammy to dig the thistles, for the girls refused to touch them.
She sent the maid downstreet for more bread; with Sam home those few days the usual ration of bread had gone too quickly. Having sent people off in all directions, she herself walked out to the barn to check on the dark cow’s infected udder. Then she took up her sewing and strolled out to the bench by the sweet woodruff to mend the tear in Sammy’s other britches.
Globby clouds scudded off-and-on across the sun, keeping the day cool. The rent was worse than she had thought. She pricked herself with the needle. Twice. This day was going morbidly, as might be expected when your man has left for good. She was near tears again. She really should not cry in front of the children.
Across her fell a shadow darker than that which the clouds made. Sam had returned! She laid her work in her lap and watched his face.
The children saw him, of course, and came running. He said fatherly things, hugged them, and sent them back to their labors.
“Sukey, do you remember the old clergyman who sometimes rides down through this way?”
“I do.”
“As I was riding out the road this morning he was riding in. We spoke a few minutes, and the topic fell on my leaving, and the reasons for it. In short, he prevailed upon me to return and fulfill my responsibilities as pastor. He claims the curates the church sends out here aren’t suitable.”
“He’s right. Shallow young men, slipshod theology. Mouth opinions about local politics of which they know nothing. They’ve turned the locals further against you just by being associated with St. Andrews.”
“As he says also.” Sam nodded, hesitated. “And so I’ve returned as rector. Only.”
“Your vow. Dr. Hickes says, and I agree, that your vow is invalid because it’s contrary to the vow you made at our wedding.”
“I won’t back down.” His voice almost broke. “I can’t.”
“I rather wish, if that be the case, that you weren’t here.”
Susanna went to bed early that night but her weary body refused to fall asleep.
She heard the stairs creaking. Sam was coming up at last. The squeaky board in the hall floor beyond their chamber told her he had walked on. The stairs to the third floor groaned quietly. He would be in Sammy’s room tonight.
She slept then, after another spell of weeping. She awakened to children’s voices in the distance crying, “Fire!” What did children know about fire? A child was shaking her and tugging at the blanket. A whoosh of cold air rushed in with every tug. She gathered the blanket closer around.
“Mama, fire! Get up!” The squeaky voice finally penetrated. Emilia pulled the blanket away and yanked her arm.
“What—?”
Sam’s strong arms dragged her bodily across the floor; they pressed her against his warm, broad chest. She snatched at the blanket and wrapped it around herself.
He paused by the chamber window and shouted at the night blackness in the front yard. “Sam! Is Molly out?”
“Yes, Papa!”
Susanna stumbled, half walking, half being carried, across the room to the door.
The hallway was full of smoke. They made their way down the stairs more by memory than by feel. Behind them something came crashing in.
Her lungs and eyes burned; heat blasted her face. She could hear nothing but roar and crackling, could see nothing at all. An orange hell filled her pleasant kitchen. Flames blocked the garden door. They pushed past the butter churn to the rarely-used stairwell door. It was warped shut. Sam turned her loose long enough to slam a bulky shoulder into it. It popped open.
Susanna ran forward, and then Sam’s arms were around her again, pulling her along faster than she could go. Cold, dark night air swamped her and sapped away the heat. They ran.
“Gather around!” The voice of the master of the house boomed solidly, reassuringly.
Here in the dull orange glow stood the wild-eyed maid with baby Anne in her arms. Sammy with Molly; tiny Hetty clinging to Emilia; Sukey—
All accounted for.
Neighbors were shouting and running, coming from all directions. Susanna knew better than to think this an outpouring of community sympathy; they feared the fire would reach their own houses were it not stopped.
She found herself crying in the midst of her harsh coughing. She tried to stop; she couldn’t. Sam’s warm, broad hand pressed her wet face against him as he cooed platitudes of some sort.
Thunder brought her head snapping around; part of the roof had just caved in. A hideous blast of sparks and tiny yellow flames shot up into the blackness and winked out one by one as they drifted down. Windows glowed orange; shutters flew outward as fire like the breath of dragons blew them open.
She pushed away from him. Platitudes! Is that what he offered? “This!” She sobbed and jabbed her hand toward her ruined home. “This, Sam Wesley, is what the divine Judge thinks of your vow. This is the finger of God!”