Where Love Begins (Where There is Love Book 1) Read online

  “But, to leave the church—our church.” She paused. “Our spiritual home…” Catherine shared much of the horror of the idea of separatism that her mother had expressed at Shoreham.

  Charl laughed. “Cath, you sound like Charles Wesley who said he should rather see his brother in his grave than a dissenter. But it will come to it in time.”

  Ned then joined them to hear of his brother’s journey. But first he took Durial back to her room, and Catherine was left alone in the garden…. Alone to consider this further unhappy news. Dissension and faulty standards among the Society preachers, widespread agitation for separatism. What were the answers?

  Everywhere around her she saw things that were not for the best, in what had once been this best of all possible worlds. And the sense of the ground moving under her brought a new fear. She had conquered her fear of horses, that childhood anxiety that had gripped her so long. But this new fear was much worse—fear of the future was like walking down a long, dark tunnel without a candle. Without assurance of God’s guidance, she could feel no assurance of His caring. If no caring, did He then truly provide salvation?

  No! She put the question aside as one that came directly from the enemy. She would not doubt that. She would choose to believe, no matter how little she felt the closeness of the Saviour.

  And with that determination came the knowledge of what she would do. There was one place she had always felt closer to God than any other. She would go for a walk in the woods.

  She ran to her room for her half-boots and a shawl and then, telling Audrey where she was going, she hurried out again into the day which seemed suddenly brighter. Once in the woods there was no possibility of doubting the personal love of a God who created such a world. There was a beauty in the world, a greenness of trees, a trill of birdsong. And her spirits rose higher, as if the trees that shut the world from view behind her shut out the problems too. In the woods were no rowdy crowds, no dissenting preachers, no disobedient schoolchildren, no poverty-stricken families, no disappointed loves. Here there was a coloring of flowers, a sparkle of water, a warmth of the sun.

  And inside Catherine, as she responded to all around her, at least for the moment, there were no doubts or fears or anxieties. She knew they would return later when she returned to the real world, but for this brief interval there was now inside her a gurgle of laughter, a prayer of thankfulness, a shout of hosannah.

  Had anyone been watching her, however, they would have had no idea such uproar was going on inside the outwardly composed young woman who walked down the wooded path stopping occasionally to pick a specimen for her wildflower press. An especially lovely hawthorn tree brought back to mind the Maying she and her companions had watched on the Kentish village green. She decided to collect a sprig of hawthorn for her book.

  The hawthorn branch was just beyond her reach. She stretched her hand to the delicate cluster of berries that would soon turn red, but even standing on her tiptoes they eluded her grasp. Then a gentle breeze, just a small stirring of the air, brought the branch into her hands.

  She picked it gladly, freely, as it had been given to her, and savored its beauty in joy. And with that action, a new understanding broke upon her. She had thought she must reach God’s will, and had strained her arms and stood on tiptoe to grasp it. But the truth was that He reached down to her. Just as the heaven-sent breeze had placed the hawthorn berries in her hand, so God, in His reaching down to her, had placed and would place all good things in her life, according to His perfect way.

  The shadows were falling long across the path. It was time to return. With only the slightest reluctance, she turned her steps back to the world with its challenges and opportunities. “Help me to view them as such, my God, rather than as burdens. Help me, I ask, to serve Thee more gladly. As gladly as Thou gavest me the hawthorn branch.”

  At first the faint calling of her name sounded as a rustling in the trees, coming so immediately after her prayer that it seemed as if the voice of God were calling her. And then she thought she had imagined it, recalling her childhood experience when her brother’s voice had come to the little girl lost in the woods. But on the fourth call, she knew it was not the wind, not her Creator, nor her imagination. It was a very human male voice. And on the fifth call, she identified the caller. With a cry of gladness, she turned and ran up the path to Phillip.

  Fifteen

  PHILLIP STOOD ON THE PATH in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight. For a moment Catherine felt as if she were seeing him for the first time—his striking height, his endearing thinness, his fleeting smile. During the past two weeks she had thought of him with confused emotions, because she hadn’t the slightest idea of whether he was thinking of her at all. Indeed, it was impossible ever to guess what he thought, much less what he felt. And now, except for a light in his blue eyes that she hoped wasn’t solely of her imagining, his chiseled features were a perfect mask—a barrier between the man inside and the world outside.

  Catherine had become part of his outside world; would she ever get inside, behind the mask? She would like to have thrown her arms around him in welcome; but instead, she offered him a composed smile. “How pleased I am that you are returned. Tell me about your journey.”

  They walked up the path toward the house together, Phillip giving her an account of calling on his friend George Whitefield. “He was desperately ill on his voyage from America, but is recovering. He hopes to accompany Lady Huntingdon to London in a few days.”

  “And what of your services? Had you success?”

  “Yes, but the most remarkable victory over Satan was scored before I left the Foundry.” Now, as he talked about his work, the stiffness fell away and he talked with animation. “Have you heard of the conversion of Mrs. Smithson? The night before I left, she wandered in off the street while I was preaching—”

  “Smithson?” Catherine was immediately alive to the name. Could this be Isaiah’s mother?

  “Yes. I instructed the sisters to call on her. Do you know if any have? Her tale was absolutely remarkable. She was returning from a bagnio where she had sought to sell herself for the sake of buying bread for her children—”

  “Had she red hair?”

  “It seems so, if I recall—”

  “O Phillip,” Catherine so forgot herself as to take his arm. “It must be the same. Isaiah Smithson was my pupil, but he had to quit and go to sweeping when his father lost his job. And you say she found the Lord?”

  “Indeed, it was a remarkable conversion. She seemed truly a new person.”

  “Phillip, we must help that family. Do you think the Society might—?”

  “Lend to an unemployed man whose children sweep? I believe the Society lending policies to be sounder than that. The Society will lend up to twenty shillings, but the sum must be repaid within three months. It seems most unlikely Smithson could meet those terms.”

  “But we must do something.”

  “Indeed we must. Will you call on her with me?”

  Catherine readily agreed and they continued on up the path, talking of their work. And Catherine saw no reason to let go of the arm she held.

  The following day Catherine clung to the same arm, as protection from the squalor around her. Chitty Lane off Tottenham Court Road was a row of dilapidated houses that had been turned into one-room dwellings. That they were also warrens of disease showed in the pockmarked faces and emaciated limbs of the children playing in the gutters that served as disposal systems for all manner of waste.

  “Catherine, I should not have asked you to accompany me. I had no idea—” Phillip began.

  “I believe we had this conversation once before, sir. Surely this is what our Lord had in mind when He reminded us, ‘As ye have done it unto the least of these.’”

  It seemed impossible to Catherine that such a pocket of misery could exist in the very center of London, almost equidistant between the purity of the Foundry and Aldergate Street to the east, and the elegance of Mayfair and Park L
ane to the west. She turned her eyes away from the sight of a scraggly dog shaking a rat to death, and resisted the impulse to put her hand over her nose.

  An urchin directed them down a muddy path to an unpainted door hanging crooked on its hinges, then held out his filthy hand for a farthing. It wasn’t the dirt on the hand that shocked Catherine, but rather the running sore on his inflamed palm. “Phillip, if that isn’t treated, he’ll lose his hand.”

  The stench from the street followed them into the Smithson home where, at least, there was some semblance of order, some attempt to keep the filth at bay with sweeping and scrubbing. With a toddler clinging to her skirt, Elmira Smithson was at work over a stack of linen which she was ironing with alternating flatirons kept hot on the hearth.

  Elmira’s greeting seemed cheerful beyond all possibility of her circumstances. “The good Jesus you told us about ’asn’t left me for one minute,” she assured Phillip. “And the Methody sisters brung two loads o’ wash. More’n I’ve ’ad in as many weeks afore.”

  But her accounting of her blessings was interrupted by a fretful cry from a pallet in a dark corner of the room.

  “Are you awake, Isey? We’ve visitors.”

  “Miss Perronet!” The fussy voice changed to a whoop of joy.

  “Isaiah! I didn’t see you there. Are you ill?”

  “’s me feet. I got stuck an’ the sweep built a fire under me. I wasn’t a’ feared, t’ weren’t that. I were stuck.”

  Catherine knew it was common practice for chimney sweeps to light a fire under boys who, out of fear refused to climb the insides of badly blocked chimneys, but hearing of the practice and being presented with evidence of its results were different matters.

  The sight of Isaiah’s badly blistered feet brought tears to Catherine’s eyes. His mother attempted to soothe the fever in her son’s feet with cool rags. “Have you no salve?” Catherine asked.

  Elmira shook her head.

  “I shall bring you some first thing in the morning,” Catherine promised. “Now, young man, where is the primer I loaned you? Let us see if you have remembered what I labored so hard to teach you.”

  Isaiah produced the book from under his pallet—in much better condition than Catherine had dared hope for—and they spent half an hour reviewing the answers to the picture catechism, while Phillip instructed Mrs. Smithson from the Bible.

  “And what of your husband? Has he found work?” Phillip asked as they prepared to take their leave.

  “Da’s in the Fleet,” Isaiah said, before his mother could answer.

  “The Fleet?” Catherine couldn’t have kept the horror out of her voice if she’d tried. The Fleet was the largest of London’s debtor’s prisons, notorious for its dirt, debauchery, and harsh treatment of prisoners—and for the hopelessness of gaining release from it.

  “’e owed Mr. Pinchbeck two quid. When ’e couldn’t pay, ol’ Pinchy swore out a complaint, swore ’e owed 'im twenty. ’Course they would a taken ’im for the two just the same. Tha’s why I went to the bagnio, it’s the only place I could think of to earn that kinda money. But they didn’t even want laundry done by the loikes of me—let alone any other service.”

  “For twenty pounds he could be freed?” Phillip asked.

  Mrs. Smithson shook her head. “There’s the garnish for the jailer and the warden and the guard. Upwards of fifty quid, I should think.”

  “Fifty pounds!” Catherine was thunderstruck. She knew the graft and corruption in the prison system was unconscionable, but she had no idea of its magnitude. Fifty pounds amounted to the yearly salary of a well-to-do man. It was far beyond anything Smithson or any of his family could hope to raise. Even Catherine, who would gladly have paid his release, couldn’t imagine where such a sum could be found.

  The toddler began to whimper for some of the thin gruel heating on the hearth beside the flatirons. Catherine was glad that she had brought a basket of bread. Before she and Phillip left, they prayed with the family in a small circle around Isaiah’s mat. “I will return with medicine for your feet, Isaiah,” Catherine promised from the doorway.

  “You must not come here alone,” Phillip told her sternly when they were back on their way to the Foundry. “It’s not safe. I shall accompany you tomorrow.”

  And he did, as soon as her class was dismissed the next day. And the next as well. Catherine was pleased that Isaiah’s blisters were responding to the calves’ jelly salve, but she feared having him fully recovered so that he would have to go back to sweeping chimneys again. “Phillip, I’ve been thinking about Isaiah. I can’t supply the money to get his father out of prison, but I can spare enough to keep him in the Charity school.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure yet, something like supplying the family with the amount of food his earnings as a sweep would have equaled, perhaps. If it’s done through the Society surely they would accept it.”

  “That is most generous of you, Catherine. I should like to share the responsibility with you.”

  “Oh, but, Phillip—forgive me, but you have so little.”

  “On the contrary, I have so much. A visit such as this makes me ever more conscious of it. Please pardon me if I seem presumptuous when I say that it is my observation that children reared by well-to-do parents accept what comes to them as of right—demand it even. One who has received everything from the goodness of another’s openhandedness learns appreciation quickly. And since there is nothing I can do to repay those who gave to me, I must give to others.”

  Catherine nodded. “The theological implications seem boundless.”

  “God’s grace to us all—unmerited favor, you mean?”

  “Yes, and adoption—we are all adopted into God’s family and made heirs by His love.”

  For a moment it seemed to Catherine that Phillip was considering his next movement very carefully. Then, decidedly, for the first time in their acquaintanceship, he offered his arm without her making the first move.

  And that small linking action stayed with Catherine throughout the evening. Later that night, when reading in her green vellum volume of John Donne, by the light of a branched candelabra, she came upon his Meditation 17. But she found it impossible to think of mankind in general, as the grave image of Phillip Ferrar was fixed in her mind’s eye.

  “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume: when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language, and every chapter must be so translated… No man is an island entire of itself.” Ah, here was the part she looked for. Phillip was such a remote island, and she had no barque to reach him. With a sigh she returned to her reading, “If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me….”

  “And any child’s pain,” she added. She wished she could take all the urchins in London under her wing, put salve on their sores and teach them to read. But at least she could minister to the one God had placed directly in her path. Tomorrow she would approach Elmira Smithson on the possibility of Isaiah returning to school.

  Sixteen

  THE NEXT MORNING, however, Catherine’s day presented a full schedule of duties before she could visit the Smithsons. John Wesley was now returned to London, living in his rooms over the Foundry, and he would be preaching at five o’clock in the morning, which meant Catherine must arrive early to be assured of a good seat.

  It had been many weeks since John Wesley had filled his pulpit, and yet when he stood before them, it was as if he had never been away. In spite of his forty-six years, his countenance was fresh, his eyes bright and piercing, and his long hair still a rich auburn. But most compelling was the intelligence, energy, and love he radiated to all around him.

  After greeting his “dear children,” he launched quickly into his sermon on Matthew 25:43, “I was sick and in prison and ye visited me not.” And he exhorted his hearers
on the importance of not failing in this Christian duty, of not being remiss in this opportunity to show Christian love. “Charity, or love—as I wish it had been rendered throughout Scripture—is love for our neighbor, as Christ hath loved us; it is patient towards all men; it suffers all the weaknesses, ignorance, errors, infirmities, all the forwardness and littleness of faith of the children of God; all the malice and wickedness of the children of the world. And it suffers all this, not only for a time, for a short season, but to the end, still feeding our enemy when he hungers; if he thirst, still giving him drink; thus continually heaping coals of fire—of melting love—upon his head.”

  Wesley continued, speaking more specifically about prison visitation, and gradually Catherine became sensible of her own negligence. Never had she visited a prisoner. She didn’t even know how to go about it.

  And then Wesley concluded the service by introducing Sarah Peters who had come to the Foundry looking for volunteers to visit prisons. “This very week in the Fleet,” Miss Peters told the congregation, “there are ten malefactors under sentence of death who would be glad of any friends who could go and pray with them.”

  Quailing inwardly at what she knew she should be required to face, Catherine joined the band of workers around Sarah Peters at the side of the altar after the service. “I shall go with you,” Catherine pledged.

  She was still shaking inwardly when she turned to leave and saw Phillip among the volunteers. Then she knew she could do it.

  Even with the support of Phillip, her Headmaster Silas Told, and two other society members, however, Catherine could not avoid second thoughts that afternoon, when they met Sarah Peters outside the Fleet.