Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch - Hetty Wesley

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This living, by your lordship's permission and favour, I would
gladly resign to one Mr. John Whitelamb, born in the
neighbourhood of Wroote, as his father and grandfather lived in
it, when I took him from among the scholars of a charity school,
founded by one Mr. Travers, an attorney, brought him to my
house, and educated him there, where he was my amanuensis for
four years in transcribing my _Dissertations on the Book of
Job_, now well advanced in the press; and drawing my maps and
figures for it, as well as we could by the light of nature.
After this I sent him to Oxford, to my son John Wesley, Fellow
of Lincoln College, under whom he made such proficiency that he
was the last summer admitted by the Bishop of Oxford into
Deacon's Orders, and placed my curate in Epworth, while I came
up to town to expedite the printing my book.

Since I was here I gave consent to his marrying one of my seven
daughters, and they are married accordingly; and though I can
spare little more with her, yet I would gladly give them a
little glebe land at Wroote, where I am sure they will not want
_springs of water_. But _they_ love the place, though I can get
nobody else to reside on it. If I do not flatter myself, he is
indeed a valuable person, of uncommon brightness, learning,
piety and indefatigable industry; always loyal to the King,
zealous for the Church, and friendly to our Dissenting Brethren;
and for the truth of this character I will be answerable to God
and man. If therefore your lordship will grant me the favour to
let me resign the living unto him, and please to confer it on
him, I shall always remain your lordship's most bounden, most
grateful, and most obedient servant,

Samuel Wesley, Sen.

The Lord Chancellor complied: and so, in February, with an income of
but fifty pounds a year, increased to seventy by Mr. Wesley's
kindness, but in good heart and hope and such love as can only be
between two simple hearts that have proved each other, John
Whitelamb and Molly took possession of the small parsonage.

They were happy: and of their happiness there is no more to be said,
save that it was brief. In the last days of October Molly's child
was born, and died: and a few hours later while the poor man held her
close, refusing to believe, with a sigh Molly's spirit slipped
between his arms and went to God.

To God? It tore the man up by the roots, and the root-soil
of his faith crumbled and fell with the moulds upon her coffin.
He went from her graveside back to the house and closed the door.
Mrs. Wesley had urged him to return with the family to Epworth, and
John, who had ridden from Oxford to preach the funeral sermon, shook
him by the hand and added his persuasions. But the broken husband
thanked him shortly, and strode away. He had sat through the sermon
without listening to a word: and now he went back to a house lonely
even of God.

He and Molly had been too poor to keep a servant: but on the eve of
her illness a labourer's wife had been hired to do the housework and
cook the meals. And seeing his lethargy, this sensible woman,
without asking questions, continued to arrive at seven in the morning
and depart at seven in the evening. He ate the food she set before
him. On Sunday he heard the bell ringing from his church hard by.
But he had prepared no sermon: and after the bell had ceased he sat
in his study before an open book, oblivious.

Yet prayer was read, and a sermon preached, in Wroote Church that
day. John Wesley had walked over from Epworth; and when the bell
ceased ringing, and the minutes passed, and still no rector appeared,
had stepped quietly to the reading-desk.

After service he walked across to the parsonage, knocked gently at
the study door and entered.

"Brother Whitelamb," he said, "you have need of us, I think, and I
know that my father has need of you. To-morrow I return to Oxford,
and I leave a letter with him that he will wish to answer. Death has
shaken him by the hand and it cannot guide a pen: he will be glad to
employ his old amanuensis. What is more, his answer to my letter
will contain much worth your pondering, as well as mine, for it will
be concerned with even such a spiritual charge as you have this day
been neglecting."

"Brother Wesley," answered the widower, looking up, "you have done a
kind deed this morning. But what was your text?"

"My text was, 'Son of man, behold I take from thee the desire of
thine eyes with a stroke: yet shalt thou not mourn or weep, neither
shall thy tears run down.'"

"I love you, brother: you have ever been kind indeed to me. Yet you
put it in my mind at times, that the poor servant with one talent had
some excuse, if a poor defence, who said 'I know thee, that thou art
a hard man.'"

"Do I reap then where I have not sown, and gather where I have not
strewn?"

"I will not say that. But I see that others prepare the way for you
and will do so, as Charles prepared it at Oxford: and finding it
prepared, you take command and march onward. You were born to take
command: the hand of God is evident upon you. But some grow faint by
the way and drop behind, and you have no bowels for these."

Silence fell between them. John Whitelamb broke it. "I can guess
what your father's letter will be--a last appeal to you to succeed
him in Epworth parish. Do you mean to consent?"

"I think not. My reasons--"

"Nay, it is certain you will not. And as for your reasons, they do
not matter: they may be good, but God has better, who decides for
you. Yet deal gently with the old man, for you are denying the
dearest wish of his heart."

"May I tell him that you will come?"

"I will come when he sends for me."

Mr. Wesley's message did not arrive until a good fortnight later,
during which time John Whitelamb had fallen back upon his own sorrow.
He resumed his duties, but with no heart. From the hour of his
wife's death he sank gradually into the rut of a listless parish
priest--a solitary man, careless of his dress as of his duties, loved
by his parishioners for the kindness of his heart. They said that
sorrow had broken him; but the case was worse than this. He had lost
assurance of God's goodness.

He could not, with such a doubt in his heart, go to his wife's family
for comfort. He loved them as ever; but he could not trust their
love to deal tenderly with his infidelity. No Wesley would ever have
let a human sorrow interfere with faith: no Wesley (it seemed to him)
would understand such a disaster. It was upon this thought that he
had called John a hard man. He recognised the truth and that he was
but brittle earthenware beside these hammered vessels of service.

Nevertheless, when in obedience to Mr. Wesley's message he presented
himself at Epworth, he was surprised by the calm everyday air with
which the old man received him. He had expected at least some word
of his grief, some fatherly pressure of the hand. There was none.
He knew, to be sure, that old age deadened sensibility. But, after
all, his dear Molly had been this man's child, if not the
best-beloved.

"Son Whitelamb, my hand is weary, and there is much to write.
Help me to my dearest wish on earth--the only wish now left to me:
help me that Jack may inherit Epworth cure when I am gone. Hear what
he objects: 'The question is not whether I could do more good there
or here in Oxford, _but whether I could do more good to myself_;
seeing wherever I can be most holy myself, there I can most promote
holiness in others. But I can improve myself more at Oxford than at
any other place.' The lad must think I forget my logic. See you, he
juggles me with identical propositions! First it is no question of
doing good to others, but to himself; and anon when he does most good
to himself he will do most good to others. Am I a dead dog, to be
pelted with such sophisms? Son Whitelamb, is your pen ready?"

"Of what avail is it?" John Whitelamb asked himself. "These men,
father and son, decide first, and, having decided, find no lack of
arguments. It is but pride of the mind in which they clothe their
will. Moreover, if there be a God, what a vain conflict am I aiding!
seeing that time with Him is not, and all has been decided from the
beginning."

Yet he took down the answer with his habitual care, glancing up in
the pauses at the old face, gray and intense beneath the dark
skull-cap. The letter ended:

"If you are not indifferent whether the labours of an aged father for
above forty years in God's vineyard be lost, and the fences of it
trodden down and destroyed; if you have any care for our family,
which must be dismally shattered as soon as I am dropped; if you
reflect on the dear love and longing which this dear people has for
you, whereby you will be enabled to do God the more service; and the
plenteousness of the harvest, consisting of near two thousand souls,
whereas you have not many more scholars in the University; you may
perhaps alter your mind, and bend your will to His, who has promised,
if in all our ways we acknowledge Him, He will direct our paths."

CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER I.

"Unto him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the
ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness."

All the world has heard how John Wesley rode, eight years later, into
Epworth; and how, his father's pulpit having been denied to him, he
stood outside upon his father's tomb and preached evening after
evening in the warm June weather the gospel of Justification by Faith
to the listening crowd. Visitors are shown the grit slab, now recut
and resting on a handsome structure of stone, but then upon plainest
brickwork; and are bidden to notice, in the blank space below the
words "Their works do follow them," two rough pieces of ironstone
which mark where the preacher's feet rested.

Eight evenings he preached from it, and on the third evening chose
for his text these words: "Unto him that worketh not, but believeth
on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for
righteousness."

Under a sycamore by the churchyard wall at a little distance from the
crowd a man stood and listened--a clergyman in a worn black gown, a
man not old in years but with a face prematurely old, and shoulders
that already stooped under the burden of life--John Whitelamb.
He watched between fear and hope to be recognised. When the preacher
mounted the slab, stroked back his hair and, turning his face towards
the sycamore, fixed his eyes (as it seemed) upon the figure beneath
it, he felt sure he had been recognised: a moment later he doubted
whether that gaze had passed over him in forgetfulness or contempt.

He felt himself worthy of contempt. They had been too hard for him,
these Wesleys. They had all departed from Epworth, years before, and
left him, who had been their brother, alone with his miserable
doubts. No letters, no message of remembered affection or present
good will, ever came from them. He had been unfaithful to his
religion: they had cast him off. For seven years he had walked and
laboured among the men and women here gathered in the midsummer dusk:
but the faces to which he had turned for comfort were faces of the
past--some dead, others far away.

So the preacher's voice came to him as one rending the sepulchre.
"Son of man, can these bones live?" Yes, the bones of Christ's
warrior beneath the slab--laid there to rest in utter weariness--were
stirring, putting forth strength and a voice that pierced his living
marrow. Ah, how it penetrated, unlocking old wells of tears!

He listened, letting his tears run. Only once did he withdraw his
eyes, and then for a moment they fell on John Romley, loitering too,
on the outskirts of the crowd by the churchyard gate and plainly in
two minds about interfering. Romley was curate of Epworth now,
delegate of an absentee sporting rector: and had in truth set this
ball rolling by denying John Wesley his pulpit. He had miscalculated
his flock; this stubborn English breed, so loyal in enmity, loving
the memory of a foe who had proved himself a man. He watched with a
loose-lipped sneer; too weak to conquer his own curiosity, far too
weak to assert his authority and attempt to clear the churchyard of
that "enthusiasm" which he had denounced in his most florid style
last Sunday, within the church.

John Whitelamb's gaze travelled back to the preacher. Up to this he
had heard the voice only, and the dead man in his grave below
speaking through that voice. Now he listened to the words. If the
dead man spoke through them, what a change had death wrought--what
wisdom had he found in the dust that equals all! What had become of
the old confident righteousness, the old pride of intellect?
They were stripped and flung aside as filthy rags. "Apart from faith
we do not count. We _are_ redeemed: we _are_ saved. Christ has made
with us no bargain at all except to believe that the bargain is
concluded. What are we at the best that He should make distinctions
between us? We are all sinners and our infinitesimal grades of sin
sunk in His magnificent mercy. Only acknowledge your sin: only admit
the mercy; and you are healed, pardoned, made joint heirs with
Christ--not in a fair way to be healed, not going to be pardoned in
some future state; but healed, pardoned, your sins washed away in
Christ's blood, actually, here and now."

He heard men and women--notorious evil-livers, some of them--crying
aloud. Ah, the great simplicity of it was beyond him!--and yet not
perhaps beyond him, could he believe the truth, in the bygone years
never questioned by him, that Jesus Christ was very God.

He waited for the last word and strode back to his lonely home with a
mind unconvinced yet wondering at the power he had witnessed, a heart
bursting with love. He sat down to write at once: but tore up many
letters. With Christ, to believe was to be forgiven. If Christ
could not be tender to doubt, how much less would John Wesley be
tender? It was not until Friday that he found courage to dispatch
the following:

Dear Brother,--I saw you at Epworth on Tuesday evening.
Fain would I have spoken to you, but that I am quite at a loss
to know how to address or behave to you.

Your way of thinking is so extraordinary that your presence
creates an awe, as if you were an inhabitant of another world.
God grant you and your followers may always have entire liberty
of conscience. Will you not allow others the same?

Indeed I cannot think as you do, any more than I can help
honouring and loving you. Dear sir, will you credit me?
I retain the highest veneration and affection for you.
The sight of you moves me strangely. My heart overflows with
gratitude; I feel in a higher degree all that tenderness and
yearning of bowels with which I am affected towards every branch
of Mr. Wesley's family. I cannot refrain from tears when I
reflect, This is the man who at Oxford was more than a father to
me; this is he whom I have heard expound, or dispute publicly,
or preach at St. Mary's, with such applause; and--oh, that I
should ever add--whom I have lately heard preach at Epworth, on
his father's tombstone!

I am quite forgot. None of the family ever honour me with a
line. Have I been ungrateful? I have been passionate, fickle, a
fool; but I hope I never shall be ungrateful.

Dear sir, is it in my power to serve or oblige you in any way?
Glad I should be that you would make use of me. God open all
our eyes and lead us into truth wherever it be!
John Whitelamb.

The answer was delivered to him that same evening. It ran:

Dear Brother,--I take you at your word, if indeed it covers
permission to preach in your church at Wroote on Sunday morning
next. I design to take for text--and God grant it may be
profitable to you and to others!--"Ask, and it shall be given
you."

CHAPTER II.

From Epworth John Wesley rode on to Sheffield, and then southward
through Coventry, Evesham and Painswick to Bristol, preaching as he
went, sometimes thrice a day: from Bristol to Cardiff and back; and
so, on Sunday evening, July 18th, towards London. On Tuesday morning
he dismounted by the door of the Foundry, having left it just two
months before.

To his surprise it was opened by Hetty: but at once he guessed the
reason.

"Mother?"

"Hist! The end is very near--a few hours perhaps." She kissed him.
"I have been with her these five days, taking turns with the others.
They are all here--Emmy and Sukey and Nancy and Pat. Charles cannot
be fetched in time, I fear."

"He was in North Wales when he last wrote."

"Listen!"--a sound of soft singing came down the stairway.
"They are singing his hymn to her: she begs us constantly to sing to
her."

"Jesu, Lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly
While the nearer waters roll--"

Sang the voices overhead as John followed his sister into the small
sitting-room.

"What do the doctors say?"

"There is nothing to be said. She feels no pain; has no disease.
It is old age, brother, loosening the cords."

"She is happy?"

"Ah, so happy!" Hetty's eyes brimmed with tears and she turned away.

"Sister, that happiness is for you too. Why have you, alone of us,
so far rejected it?"

"No--not now!" she protested. "Speak to me some other time and I
will listen: not now, when my body and heart are aching!"

Her sisters sang:

"Other refuge have I none;
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
Leave, ah! leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me!
All my trust on Thee is stay'd,
All my help from Thee I bring:
Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing!"

She stepped to the door with a feeble gesture of the hands. She knew
that, worn as he was with his journey, if she gave him the chance he
would grasp it and pause, even while his mother panted her last, to
wrestle for and win a soul--not because she, Hetty, was his sister;
simply because hers was a soul to be saved. Yes, and she foresaw
that sooner or later he would win: that she would be swept into the
flame of his conquest: yet her poor bruised spirit shrank back from
the flame. She craved only to be let alone, she feared all new
experience, she distrusted even the joy of salvation. Life had been
too hard for Hetty.

He followed her up the stairs to his mother's room, and entering
commanded his sisters with a gesture to sing the hymn to an end.
They did so. Mrs. Wesley lay propped on the pillows, her wasted face
turned to the light, a faint smile on her lips. For a little while
after the hymn ended she lay silent with no change on her face.
They doubted if she saw John or, seeing, had recognised him.
But by and by her lips moved and she murmured his name.

"Jacky!"

He stepped to the bedside, and with his hand covered the transparent
hand with its attenuated marriage ring.

"I like them--to sing to me," she whispered. "When--when I am
released--sing--a psalm of praise to God. Promise me."

He pressed her hand for reply, and her eyes closed peacefully. She
seemed to sleep.

It was not until Friday that the end came. Shortly before eleven
that morning she waked suddenly out of slumber with lips muttering
rapidly. They, bending close, caught the words "Saviour--dear
Saviour--help--at the last." By the time they had summoned John,
though the muttering continued, the words were unintelligible: yet
they knew she was praising God.

In a little while the voice ceased and she lay staring calmly
upwards. From three to four o'clock the last cords were loosening.
Suddenly John arose, and lifting his hand in benediction, spoke the
words of the Commendatory Prayer: "O Almighty God, in whom do live
the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from
their earthly prison; we humbly commend the soul of this Thy servant,
our dear Mother, into Thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful
Creator and most merciful Saviour, most humbly beseeching Thee that
it may be precious in Thy sight. . . ."

It was Hetty who bent low, took the inert hand, and after listening
for a while laid it softly down on the coverlet. All was over: yet
she listened until the voices of the watchers, released by her
signal, rose together--

"Hark! a voice divides the sky--
Happy are the faithful dead
In the Lord who sweetly die--"

She raised her face as if to entreat for yet a moment's respite.
But their faces were radiant, transfigured with the joy of their
faith. And then suddenly, certainly, in their rapture she saw the
purpose and end of all their common sufferings; want, hunger, years
of pinching and striving, a thousand petty daily vexations, all the
hardships that had worn her mother down to this poor corpse upon the
bed, her own sorrowful fate and her sisters' only less sorrowful--all
caught up in the hand of God and blazing as a two-edged sword of
flame. Across the blaze, though he was far away, she saw the
confident eyes of Charles smiling as at a prophecy fulfilled.
But the hand outstretched for the sword was John's, claiming it by
right indefeasible. She, too, had a right indefeasible: and before
the sword descended to cleave the walls of this humble death chamber
and stretch over England, her heart cried and claimed to be pierced
with it. "Let it pierce me and cut deep, for my tears, too, have
tempered it!"

From the Journal of Charles Wesley for the year 1750:

"March 5th. I prayed by my sister Wright, a gracious, tender,
trembling soul; a bruised reed which the Lord will not break.

"March 14th. I found my sister Wright very near the haven"; and
again on Sunday, the 18th: "Yet still in darkness, doubts and
fears, against hope believing in hope.

"March 21St. At four I called on my brother Wright, a few
minutes after her spirit was set at liberty. I had sweet
fellowship with her in explaining at the chapel those solemn
words, 'Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon
withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thy everlasting light,
and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.'

"March 26th. I followed her to her quiet grave, and wept with
them that weep."

EPILOGUE.

Early in December, 1803, in the cool decline of a torrid day, a small
British force--mixed regulars and sepoys--threaded its way among the
mountains of Berar. It moved slowly and with frequent halts, its
pace regulated by the middle of the column, where teams of men panted
and dragged at the six guns which were to batter down the hill
fortress of Gawul Ghur: for roads in this country there were none,
and all the long day ahead of the guns gangs laboured with pick and
shovel to widen the foot-tracks leading up to the passes.

Still farther ahead trudged and halted the 74th regiment, following a
squadron of the 19th Light Dragoons, and now and again the toilers on
the middle slope, taking breath for a new effort and blinking the
sweat from their eyes, would catch sight of a horseman on a ridge far
overhead, silhouetted against the pale blue sky for a moment while he
scanned a plateau or gully unseen by them. Now and again, too, in
such pauses, the clear air pulsed with the tramp of the rearguard in
the lower folds of the hills--sepoys and comrades of the 78th and
94th.

Though with arms, legs and loins strained almost to cracking, the men
worked cheerfully. Their General had ridden forward with his staff:
they knew that close by the head of the pass their camp was already
being marked out for them, and before sleeping they would be fed as
they deserved.

They growled, indeed, but good-humouredly, when, for the tenth time
that day, they came to the edge of a gully into which the track
plunged steeply to mount almost as steeply on the farther side: and
their good humour did them the more credit since the General had
forbidden them to lock the wheels, on the ground that locking shook
and weakened the gun-carriages.

With a couple of drag-ropes then, and a dozen men upon each, digging
heels in the slope, slipping, cursing, back-hauling with all their
weight, the first gun was trailed down and run across the gully.
As the second began its descent a couple of horsemen came riding
slowly back from the advance-guard and drew rein above the farther
slope to watch the operation.

About a third of the way down, the track, which trended at first to
the left, bent abruptly away to the right, from the edge of a low
cliff of rock; and at this corner the men on the drag-ropes must
also fling themselves sharply to the right to check the wheels on
the verge of the fall. They did so, cleverly enough: but almost on
the instant were jerked out of their footholds like puppets.
Amid outcries of terror and warning, the outer wheel of the gun broke
through the crumbling soil on the verge, the ropes flew through their
hands, tearing away the flesh before the flesh could cast off its
grip; and with a clatter of stones the gun somersaulted over the
slope. With it, caught by the left-hand rope before he could spring
clear, went hurling a man. They saw his bent shoulders strike a slab
of rock ripped bare an instant before, and heard the thud as he
disappeared.

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