Where Love Begins (Where There is Love Book 1) Page 19

  And then they stood and sang the song with which all Methodist watchnights concluded: “Hearken to the solemn voice, The awful midnight cry! Waiting souls, rejoice, rejoice, And feel the Bridegroom nigh.”

  With only a parting bow to his friends, Phillip went out into the night of the new year, his confidence in God newly reaffirmed. Whatever the year held, Phillip had courage not to despair.

  Catherine’s patience in awaiting God’s timing was likewise tested as the January snows drifted into February and still there were no answers. She sensed Phillip’s difficulty in finding the right answer to George Whitefield’s offer. And she knew her hopes for a future with Phillip could bear no fruit until that question was settled.

  Only once had her brother broached the subject to her. “Cath, I was thinking of the offer Mr. Whitefield extended to our friend. If he should decide to go—that is—I understand the orphan house in Georgia is in need of teachers—had you ever thought—”

  “A teacher of red Indians? Are you weary of my company, brother?” Though she sought to make her answer light, his question continued to plague her. Her head told her that the discomforts and trials of a circuit ride would be as nothing compared to what must be faced by a missionary to the new world. But no matter how sternly her head lectured her heart, her heart would not listen.

  And so she lived from day to day, anxious to hear from Phillip, and yet reluctant to know his answer.

  Twenty-six

  THAT THURSDAY SHE AWOKE uncommonly early and lay for a moment, wondering what had disturbed her. Then she realized the sparrows in the garden bushes below her window were making an unaccountable racket. She thought a cat must have gotten in among them and pulled the quilt over her head in an attempt to go back to sleep. But when she heard more disturbance from the stable yard, she pulled a shawl over her shoulders and went to her window to see what was causing the alarm among the animals. When she opened the sash she found it to be unusually mild for the eighth of February. Nothing was amiss. What could possibly be causing such agitation among the animals?

  Later that morning she was even more baffled. The placid Old Biggin was almost uncontrollable as she drove to the Foundry. And her students were no better. If the sky hadn’t been such a clear blue, she would have been certain a storm was about to strike.

  Catherine had never been more relieved to see the hands of her watch approach twelve o’clock than she was today. “I fear your behavior has been most unacceptable this morning, students. Tomorrow you must be prepared to work harder, or I shall be obliged to have Mr. Told in.” The rascals looked duly smitten at her words, but still failed to leave the room in proper orderliness.

  They departed with an undue scraping of benches, dropping of slates and scuffing of feet. Catherine sighed. And then the noise of the departing children was lost in a great rumbling thunder that shook the building. Could a storm have built up so suddenly? Perhaps that explained the untoward behavior.

  Catherine turned to place an armful of books on her desk. But the desk was gone. As if the earth had suddenly spun off its axis, all the furniture in Catherine’s room slid to the north wall.

  Catherine felt herself flying into the tumbled furniture. The scream that escaped her lips was lost in the crashing of furniture and roaring earth.

  The tumult continued for minutes that seemed like hours. As the earth heaved, the doors and windows in the room burst open. Bricks from the crumbling chimney fell past her window.

  Catherine clawed herself to an upright position and clung to the still undulating wall for support. A raw terror she had never known before washed over her. Her knees gave way and she slid to the floor once more. Her childhood experience of falling off a horse flashed before her eyes. But this was much worse. The ground she had hit those years ago had been all too solid. Today the earth was not solid. All the fears she thought conquered besieged her again.

  When at last the rolling earth subsided, Catherine didn’t move. She hardly dared breathe for fear of bringing on another tremor. As the stillness grew and her mind cleared, her first thought was to wonder where Phillip was.

  He was the one who had helped her in her anxiety before, but where was he now? She suddenly realized how much she had come to rely on her stalwart friend in the past months. His was the calm stability she could always turn to, even when the foundations of the earth shook.

  As if in answer to the cry of her heart, Phillip rushed into the room. “Catherine, are you all right? I was so afraid I wouldn’t find you—that you might be hurt.” He sat on the floor next to her.

  “I’m fine, Phillip. Now that you’re here.” She relaxed in the delicious comfort of resting her head on his shoulder.

  In the midst of the rubble they sat together in a calm quiet. But their small island of peace was short-lived. In a few moments the sound of running feet and excited voices in the courtyard intruded.

  “We must help.” Phillip got to his feet and extended a hand to Catherine.

  “Do you think there’s much damage?”

  “There’s sure to be a great deal in the poorer parts of town. Pray that there won’t be a fire.”

  They were just into the courtyard when the second shock struck, this even harder than the first. Catherine was certain the earth would split apart beneath her feet. But Phillip held her. And even in the midst of the terrified shrieks, the crash of falling bricks, and the roar of the jolting earth, Catherine knew she could not live without this man’s support. Even if it meant going to the ends of the earth—even to America. Life without Phillip was unthinkable.

  That decision filled Catherine with an unspeakable sense of peace. In the midst of the turmoil around her, her heart was at peace. And she knew she had made the right decision. “My peace I give you, not as the world giveth…” Peace was the one emotion Satan could not counterfeit. It was the complete assurance of being in God’s will.

  Catherine clung to that sense of assurance as she sorely needed the accompanying peace in the days to come. Internal peace was the only quiet available. The Foundry was thronged with frightened people who crowded into the damaged Foundry in desperate hope of turning aside the wrath of God. Terror drove them to attempt appeasing an angry God by urgent contrition and promises of future piety. Observing their machinations, John Wesley shook his head. “There is no divine visitation which is likely to have so general an influence upon sinners as an earthquake.” An ironic smile hovered at the corners of his lips.

  Affluent, smug London needed this reminder of the wrath of God and the judgment to come; and Ned had been unwittingly prophetic in saying that squabbling Society members needed shaking up. And now a frenzied, earthquake theology spelled the end of optimism.

  London’s nerves became almost uncontrollable, incited as they were by such predictions as that of Sir Isaac Newton who declared, “Jupiter is going to approach so close to the earth as possibly to brush it.”

  Whitefield and Wesley conducted all-night services for those too wrought-up to sleep, and those who no longer had a bed to go home to. Phillip held open-air services in Hyde Park. As on their circuit ride, Catherine frequently accompanied him and led the singing. The favorite song was Isaac Watts’s:

  O God, Our Help in ages past,

  Our Hope for years to come.

  Our shelter from the stormy blast,

  And our eternal Home!

  Under the shadow of Thy

  Throne Still may we dwell secure;

  Sufficient is Thine arm alone,

  And our defense is sure.

  The crowd sang with a lustiness brought on by desperation, and then listened to the preacher as drowning men cling to a lifeline. Phillip chose Isaiah 2, as his theme: “‘The haughtiness of man shall be made low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day… for the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth.’”

  At the mention of shaking earth, cries of fear rose from the women and shouts of, “Amen,” and “‘Struth,” from the men. The
n Phillip read to them from Psalm 46:

  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.

  Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He hath made in the earth. Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

  “Our little philosophies try to explain earthquakes without reference to God, but these are a divine warning that the time has come for Londoners to consider their faults.

  “But do not despair —consider these warnings and do not despair. God has not forgotten how to show mercy. We must be genuinely sorry for our sins. We must repent and turn from our evildoing. We must take our refuge in the Lord of Hosts who is our very present help in trouble.”

  Catherine marveled anew at the pillar of strength Phillip was, as he led these frightened people to an understanding of the comfort and security God had for them. And she renewed her vow to stay by his side—that is, if he should indicate he desired her to do so.

  A few days later, when Catherine and Phillip went to Chitty Lane to call on Elmira Smithson, they were appalled at the desolation the earthquake had wrought in the slum areas of the city. Although an ancient building code required building in brick in order to prevent fire, no one could afford to pay any attention to the code, and the flimsy lath and plaster buildings had crumbled like sandcastles.

  Elmira was attempting to shelter her family in a room that now had only three walls. “You must come with us,” Catherine said, as she picked up little Susanna and started toward the carriage.

  “But where’ll we go?” Elmira cried, her ragged voice showed how torn she was between hope and despair.

  Catherine stopped. She could think of nothing. She couldn’t take them home with her. Durial would never hear of it. The spare rooms at the Foundry were already bursting with now-homeless Society members. There was not an extra inch in Phillip’s room.

  Then Catherine knew where there was space aplenty. She thought of the elegant homes near Hyde Park that she had seen earlier in the day. “To Park Lane,” she said.

  The Countess of Huntingdon’s butler did not so much as raise an eyebrow at the sight of the dirty, ill-clothed persons who attended Miss Perronet and Mr. Ferrar. “Please come in. I will see if her Ladyship is at home.”

  Her Ladyship was. Catherine held her breath as the countess surveyed the motley gaggle of humanity Catherine had ushered into the elegant hall. Suddenly she realized how presumptuous her act had been. Catherine had not only embarrassed her friends and disgraced herself, but she had dragged Phillip into her rash scheme as well. He would be abased in the Countess’ sight as well.

  Lady Huntingdon bustled into the reception hall wearing a black cloak and a dark straw bonnet over her lace cap. “Well, Miss Perronet,” she nodded in Catherine’s direction. “And Mr. Ferrar.” The noble lady drew a deep breath. “This is most convenient.”

  She indicated the shadow companion behind her. “Lady Fanny and I were just setting out to deliver baskets of food to the needy. It is much better that they should come to me. Rettkin!” The butler materialized out of nowhere. “See that these children are fed and properly clothed. Their mother shall accompany me and direct my charities to the most deserving. I do abhor the thought of bestowing gifts upon the undeserving. You shall be a great help to me in my work, Mrs. —ah, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

  Her head spinning, as an encounter with the Countess always made it do, Catherine accompanied an open-mouthed Isaiah and his brother and sisters to the housemaid’s quarters. She saw to it that they were unafraid in their new circumstances before she prepared to leave. “And now you shall have no excuse for coming to school with dirty hands, Isaiah,” she said with a smile.

  The winter evening was closing in fast when Catherine and Phillip left Park Lane. “I must return you to your brother,” Phillip said. “The quake has turned many Londoners’ minds to the judgment of God; but an equal number have adopted the philosophy of ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow ye die,’ and the streets are not safe for a woman.”

  Catherine sighed. “I expect you are right. But I had hoped we might call on Mr. Smithson and inform him of his family’s good fortune.”

  “Tomorrow,” Phillip promised.

  Catherine had had no time alone with Phillip since the cataclysm, and she longed to speak to him of her new resolve. But it was impossible that she should speak first. He must give her an opening, some encouragement, just the slightest chink in the wall he kept around himself. But Phillip’s wall of isolation was perhaps the only one in London not cracked by the earthquake.

  Twenty-seven

  THE NEXT DAY CATHERINE SAW that the walls of the Fleet were likewise intact. Outside, the mob listened to a thundering street preacher, “Earthquakes are singled out above all natural phenomena by their majesty and dreadful horror to mark an immediate operation of God’s hand exercised in His divine anger.

  “Earthquakes are God’s instruments. This is why they always strike at populous cities, and not at uninhabited territories, and why they are especially frightful, inasmuch as they are sudden, unavoidable, and threaten us with a peculiarly dreadful form of death.”

  A high shriek rose above the wailing of the crowd and several women sank to the ground.

  “The preservation of London was a miracle. God deliberately refrained from producing the kind of earthquake that would have destroyed London; but damnation will have its numbers, come when it will…”

  As the lamentation of the mob rose to an even higher pitch, Catherine was for once grateful for the doors of the Fleet which cut her off from the sound.

  To her relief, Smithson was sober today and eager for news. “I’ve ’eard tell such tales about London—tell me what it’s like.”

  Catherine told him some news of London in general, but moved quickly to what he most wanted to know of Elmira and his children. Catherine held her breath after she recounted the role the Countess of Huntingdon played in the story, for she recalled Smithson’s earlier resistance to “Evangelical toffs mucking about in his affairs.” But today his gratitude was wholehearted.

  His appreciation for the care taken of his family even extended to allowing Phillip to read the Bible to him and the others in his cell. Phillip chose Acts 16 and explained, “This is the story of others unfairly imprisoned at the time of an earthquake. ‘And when the magistrates had laid many stripes upon Paul and Silas, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely.’”

  In immediate identification with the story, the prisoners in the Fleet moved closer to Phillip, who read, “‘And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God; and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bands were loosed.’”

  “Lor, I wisht the quake ’ad broken the Fleet down,” a prisoner said.

  “That’s th’ only way you’ll see th’ light o’ day, Uriah.”

  Phillip went on, above the comments of his audience, “‘And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, “Do thyself no harm; for we are all here.” Then the jailer called for a light, brought Paul and Silas out, and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house.”’”

  The convicts erupted in jeers at Paul and Silas who chose to remain, rather than escape, but Dick Smithson was silent. Indeed, he was so deep in thought when his visitors left that he did not even bid Catherine and Phillip a farewell.

  When Catherine arrived home, she found another crisis had descended
upon the household. Durial had been listening to a preacher at the Greenwich village green that afternoon. Her high-strung nerves were now at the breaking point as she demanded the family leave London. It seemed that nothing Ned could say had any effect in calming her.

  “Allow that I know what the preacher said, Husband. And allow me to judge the good sense his words made. Listen to his reasoning. This present earth, a very unsatisfactory second version of the first earth more or less destroyed by the Flood, is going to end in a great conflagration that will burn it right up. The fire will naturally begin at Rome, the headquarters of the Antichrist, but England is sure to be a particularly unpleasant spot because of our extensive coalfields that will burn so easily."

  “Durial!” Ned was never a patient man and his wife’s vapors drove him to distraction. “If the entire earth and especially all of England is to be burnt up—what can it matter where we are living when it happens? My work is here.”

  “But you can take work elsewhere.” Durial’s voice rose another pitch. “I do not wish to compare London to Sodom—for London contains many good people; but because of its size it also contains a proportionately large number of evil people. And setting aside all other considerations, London, by reason of its crowded and insecure buildings, is, of all other places, the most dangerous.”

  Ned turned away.

  Durial flung herself across the room at him. “Do not turn your back on me. If our baby had lived—if I could have given you a child—you would not treat me so!” Racking sobs began to shake her body.

  Ned turned and took his wife in his arms. “Durial, Durial. I will write to my father. Perhaps he will know of something.”

  Catherine, who had not intended to eavesdrop on their private quarrel but had been caught in the entrance hall, fled to her room. It had been a full month since the earthquake; surely the hysteria would soon die down, people would rebuild their chimneys, replace their crockery and reglaze their windows. The great London earthquake would become nothing but a memory.