Where Love Begins (Where There is Love Book 1) Page 20

  Catherine gratefully accepted Audrey’s offer to brush her hair for her, since Durial had no call for her abigail’s services at the moment. “Mmm, that feels good, Audrey. Thank you. Please snuff my candles on the way out. I feel as if I could sleep till the day of doom.”

  Those words seemed to echo in Catherine’s consciousness through the night as she tossed and turned uneasily in her bed. “Day of doom. Doom…” In a dozy half-sleep she flung her covers from her.

  Catherine jerked awake as an eruption of the earth broke forth with a thunderous roar and tumultuous shaking.

  She jolted upright with a cry. Had the powder house on the green exploded? She blinked at the early morning light filtering through her draperies. Another shaking rumble sent her writing desk lurching across the floor to crash onto its side, flinging ink across the carpet. Chairs shook, doors slammed, windows rattled, pewter and crockery clattered from their shelves. As Catherine cowered in her bed, clinging to her bedclothes, an enormous sucking sound, followed by the sharp report of splintering limbs told her the great elm tree outside her window crashed to the earth.

  As shards of broken glass flew across her room, Catherine knew London was being visited by yet another earthquake.

  Twenty-eight

  A SHARP CRY, followed by a moaning wail, tore through the house. At first Catherine thought Durial was hurt, and then realized the cry had come from the servants’ quarters. She shook the bits of broken glass out of her slippers and off her shawl before donning them and running in the direction of the noise. When she arrived, along with the rest of the household, at Audrey’s room, she found the maid sitting in a tangle of bedclothes, smashed crockery, and disordered furniture, cradling an oddly twisted arm and shrieking. “It threw me outta bed, it did. Just threw me out. My arm ’it the trunk, owww!”

  “All right, Audrey, you will stop shrieking so that we can see to your injuries.” Durial waded through the shambles. Her housekeeping instincts aroused by the disarray, she began giving orders for the care of Audrey and the righting of the room. Catherine smiled. All her sister-in-law needed to take her mind off her troubles was a house to clean. By the end of the day the house would not only be orderly, but also freshly scrubbed, and all the broken dishes replaced and on the shelf.

  But not everywhere in London was the damage so quickly repaired. This quake was far more violent than the first, and buildings damaged by the first were leveled by the second. People frightened by the first were terrified now. All over the city, church bells rang of their own accord, adding to the noise and confusion. People had run into the streets in their nightclothes and were still milling about hours later when Catherine arrived at the Foundry.

  The panic continued for days. In spite of the attempts of Wesley and other clergymen to calm their fears, the people flocked to the prophets of doom who shouted at the tops of their voices on every street corner, “The end of the world is at hand. Prepare to meet thy Maker.”

  In order to be of more help in the emergency, Catherine moved into London, taking temporary residence with her sister, Elizabeth Briggs, in her newly established home. A small room that Elizabeth usually used for a private sitting room was at Catherine’s disposal whenever she could snatch a few hours of sleep.

  After a week of such a schedule, John Wesley fell ill, putting an even greater burden on Society members. In spite of the fact that they were working almost twenty-four hours a day in the same building, Catherine seldom saw Phillip. But when she did, his calm self-containment and quiet efficiency reaffirmed her confidence that he was the one God had prepared for her to spend her life with.

  After Catherine had spent a particularly tiring day of dispensing soup and changing dirty bandages for the Charity school children, Phillip came to her. She gave him a bowl of soup and bandaged a scrape on his hand, as if he were one of her charges.

  When he had finished eating she said, “I have heard rumors of damage and riots in the Fleet. Perhaps we should visit Dick Smithson?”

  “I would not take you into that danger. There is no knowing what the rabble may be up to.”

  “Nonsense!” A flicker of a smile crossed Catherine’s face; here was her chance to tell Phillip a little of what she felt. “I am more than willing to go anywhere you go, to face anything you face.” She said the words with confidence, ignoring the disquiet they caused in her heart.

  He looked at her, a questioning wrinkle across his brow. “Catherine?”

  The two of them were a small island of quiet in the tumult of post-earthquake London.

  She would have liked to remind him of the mad bulls, swollen rivers, and lighted fireworks she had already faced with him. She would have liked to tell him she was now willing to face an ocean voyage, wilderness living, and red Indians with him. But she felt she had said quite enough, so she held out her arm. “Shall we go?”

  The fact that the second shock followed exactly four weeks to the day after the first gave rise to alarm in many quarters over what might follow in April—four weeks to the day after this shaking.

  The same preacher they had heard before still held forth from the corner near the Fleet. “What is God going to do next? Will he order winds to tear up our houses from their foundations and bury us in the ruins?”

  His agitated listeners threw their hands in the air and uttered pitiful moans.

  “Will He remove the raging distemper from the cattle and send the plague upon ourselves? Or—the Lord in His infinite mercy save us—He may command the earth to open her mouth and, the next time He ariseth to shake terribly the earth, command her to swallow us up alive, with our houses, our wives, our children, with all that appertains upon us.”

  A great weeping and moaning accompanied his words, much stronger in intensity than the first time Catherine heard him.

  At first, the prison provost informed Phillip that no amount of garnishment could buy his way in to visit a prisoner in the Fleet. But when Phillip mentioned the name of the man they wished to visit the response changed. “Oh, ’im. Guess that’s all right then. Inside with yer.” He pocketed the coins Phillip offered.

  Inside, a surprise met them. The jail seemed lighter, the air fresher, as if someone had opened all the windows. And then Catherine saw that was precisely what had happened. The dirty panes of glass from the small, barred windows had broken out, allowing fresh air and light into the prison. But more than that, at the end of the hall one section of the wall was broken away, forming a v-shaped passage onto the street. The breech in the wall was well guarded, as a prisoner would have only to scramble up a small pile of fallen brick and leap through the hole to effect an escape.

  “Smithson!” the turnkey shouted.

  To Catherine’s surprise, one of the guards came forward. “Dick! You’ve been made a guard? What has happened?”

  “It was like in that story you read us from the Bible,” he addressed Phillip. “Where the earthquake set the prisoners free. I give a good piece o’ thought to that, and decided they was right to stay. Just ’a cause they was put there unfairly, didn’t mean everybody was, and ya can’t have murderers runnin’ about the streets—wouldn’t be safe for the women n’ children. So when the quake shook that there ’ole in the wall, I stood in the gap, as yer might say.”

  “You prevented a jailbreak?” Catherine asked.

  Dick’s smile was sheepish behind his shaggy beard, “’ad a might ’a trouble convincin’ some it were a good idee. So I threw a few bricks ’ere an’ there to convince ’em.”

  “And you’ve been promoted as a reward! Dick, that’s wonderful! Will you get paid?”

  He nodded. “Yep. Soon’s my debt’s paid off, I can go ’ome to Elmirey at night.”

  Catherine’s heart sank. It would take more than a year for him to earn enough to pay his debt—unless he demanded bribes from the other prisoners. “Dick, that’s wonderful, but you don’t want to become like them.” She pointed to the hardened jailers standing by the wall.

  “No, I’d r
ather be more like ’im,” he nodded toward Phillip. “Thought I might try a piece o’ prayin’ or ’ymn singin’—course, I can’t read the Bible none. Do you ever have any of these Methody Societies of yours in jails?”

  Through the break in the wall, they could hear the street preacher still ranting, “The unrighteous are in a deplorable case indeed; they have nothing to feed upon but anguish and despair. You are deservedly alarmed, for aught you know, you may receive a pre-emptory summons that you cannot ploy with… to walk into eternity in the twinkling of an eye, whether sleeping or waking, who can tell?

  “Surely on the night of Wednesday, the fourth of April, or the morning of Thursday, the fifth of April, London will be destroyed by a third, this time, completely devastating earthquake.”

  The preacher’s hearers sent up a wail, imploring heaven for mercy. But Catherine could not feel alarmed by the preacher’s words. She had just witnessed a miracle, and no fear for the future could diminish that glory.

  If only she and Phillip could speak of the future—their future. Surely now, with London crumbled around them, they needed each other more than ever before. She knew she needed Phillip. If only he would say he needed her.

  As they settled into the relative quiet of the carriage to drive back to the Foundry where Catherine would spend another night with Elizabeth, she thought, “Perhaps now he will speak. We are alone, perhaps now…”

  And perhaps he did. But Catherine, worn out by the long days of work and emotion with only brief snatches of sleep, fell asleep to the swaying motion of the vehicle.

  And much to her surprise, she awoke late the next morning, not in the tiny closet off her sister’s room where she had been staying, but in her room in Greenwich.

  “How did I get here?” she asked Audrey, who was carrying on with her duties in spite of the fact that one arm was tied in a sling. Catherine recalled that just a year ago, Ned had been the one with a damaged arm. It seemed as if her life was ever to be punctuated with upheavals, no matter how much she prayed for a more gentle calling.

  “Mr. Ned brought you in sound asleep last night. The mistress sent him for you—said it wasn’t right for you to be working day and night in London when you needed to be here making your earthquake gown.”

  “My what?” Catherine sat upright in her bed.

  Audrey handed her a cup of coffee. “All the ladies is makin’ ’em. Mistress ’as us all at it—but I’m not much good sewing with only one ’and.”

  “Audrey, what are you talking about?”

  “Earthquake gowns. To wear for the all-night vigil when the final quake comes. Mistress says we’ll all go out in the fields—since she can’t convince Mr. Ned to take us clean out of London as some are doin’ Mistress sez—.”

  “That will be enough, Audrey. Thank you.”

  Catherine finished her coffee, dressed quickly, and hurried downstairs. Sure enough, Durial had assembled all the female servants in the south sitting room, where each one was stitching intently on a garment of ivory muslin. While they stitched, Durial read to them from a printed Earthquake Sermon, “‘If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me up.’ No distance can separate us, no velocity remove us, from divine vengeance if guilty, nor put us beyond God’s protection if righteous…” She looked up as Catherine entered. “Hello, Sister. As you see, the next visitation of the Lord’s hand shall not find us sleeping. I have ordered a length of muslin for you too.”

  The sound of approaching horses’ hooves eliminated the need for Catherine to reply. “Don’t put down your sewing, any of you. I shall see to the door,” and she fled from the room, wondering what in the world she would do with such a garment. As if it would matter what one wore if they were to be swallowed alive by the earth.

  Catherine’s heart soared when she saw their visitor. She ran down the steps, and as in all her dreams, Phillip opened his arms and she went into them. For a moment they stood there in the morning sunshine, secure and belonging.

  “I have come to speak to you,” he said at last.

  “Come into the front parlor. Everyone else is in back. You can’t imagine what Durial has them doing.”

  “Making earthquake gowns?”

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s all the rage in London. I called on the Countess of Huntingdon this morning and even her household is set about it.”

  "Has the panic not subsided at all yet?” She led him to a small sofa.

  “The Countess said seven hundred coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park Corner with whole parties removing into the country. It is said lodging is unattainable in Windsor and nearby villages.”

  Catherine had no desire to continue a discussion of the earthquake, now that she finally had Phillip alone in a quiet room. She looked down at her hands, but couldn’t quite suppress the smile on her lips.

  Still he hesitated, so she made an opening for him. “You have determined to accept Mr. Whitefield’s offer?” Why did those simple words make her think of walking into a dark night?

  He gave her a deep, level look, but before he could reply another carriage sounded on the drive. No servants appeared from the sewing circle, so Catherine went to the door. The sight of the beloved figure in a full-bottomed wig brought a joyous cry from her, “Father!” and for the second time that morning, she flew into a caller’s arms. “What a wonderful surprise! What brings you to London when everyone else is fleeing the city?”

  “That is precisely what brought me, Child. Your mother could not rest until I could bring her my personal assurances that all her children in London are well. We have received the most alarming reports.”

  And then a small figure bounded out of the closed carriage and threw herself into Catherine’s arms as well. “Philothea!”

  “Isn’t it famous! I convinced Mother that Father shouldn’t travel so far alone, and she could spare me much more easily than any of the boys.” Then she saw Phillip who had come into the hall to greet the arrivals, and she abandoned her sister for her idol. “I brought you a poppyseed cake. We can pretend it’s your birthday.’’

  Catherine ushered them all into the parlor and turned to summon Durial. Before she could leave the hall, however, the sound of yet another carriage halted her step. Wondering who else could possibly be arriving now, Catherine opened the door.

  She blinked in surprise at the gleaming perfection of the fittings and golden coronets on the doors that announced the Countess of Huntingdon.

  George Whitefield alighted first and offered his hand to assist Lady Huntingdon; then, as yet another surprise, Charles Wesley emerged behind her. The Countess issued an order to her driver, then, her wide skirts sweeping the gravel from the path, led the way into the house, past Catherine who was left standing at the door.

  The lady swept unerringly into the front parlour. At her entrance Phillip jerked to his feet. “I have come to speak to you,” she addressed Phillip. “I do not know what is to be done with that man Smithson.”

  A slight swivel of her head brought the other new arrivals into her view. “Oh, hello, Vincent. What brings you to London? This is an insane time to be visiting the city—they say it will all be rubble in a matter of days. But never mind. You’re looking well.” Without giving Vincent a chance to reply, she went on from her position in the center of the room.

  “I paid Mr. Smithson’s debts, as you suggested, Phillip, but he has declined my offer of a place on my estate at Donnington Park. What do you say to that?”

  Whitefield answered for Phillip, “My Lady, if he feels a calling to minister to those unfortunates in prison, are we to interfere with that?”

  “Calling? What does one of his class know of a calling?”

  “The disciples were simple men, my Lady. Our Lord called them,” Whitefield said.

  The Countess tossed her head in the air with a sniff. Just then Ned and Durial entered and the conversation becam
e general. Not even the Countess of Huntingdon was able to upstage a reunion of the Perronet family.

  Across the room Catherine sought to catch Phillip’s eye. He stood tall and alone in the corner, isolated from all the joyful family greetings. Catherine felt an overwhelming desire to reach him, to tell him she would be his family, that he never need be alone again. But Charles Wesley was beside her and she must speak to him. “What has brought you to London?”

  “I received word my brother was gravely ill—at death’s door. I came to nurse him, but when I arrived I found him in the quite capable hands of Mrs. Vazielle.”

  “Humph,” the Countess said. “Clutches is more like. It will not do, Charles. She must not ensnare him.”

  Charles nodded. “Indeed, I believe she is a woman of sorrowful spirit.”

  “She will not do.” The Countess issued her edict with another toss of her head and moved on around the room, instinctively playing hostess as if she were in her own London drawing room.

  “And how is Sally? I haven’t heard from her for months,” Catherine asked.

  Charles’ face became somber. “My dearest is not well. The babe miscarried. It may have been the shock of the first earthquake…”

  “Charles, I’m so sorry. Is there fear for her health?”

  “No, no. The doctor says we may yet look forward to a full quiver. But this one is mourned.”

  And Catherine too ached for Sally’s empty mother-arms, for the unheard baby laughter, for dreams unfulfilled—an ache of might-have-beens.

  And again the question arose in her heart, as she looked at Phillip and wondered if her own dreams must also die before they could be born, “My God, where art Thou? Thou has promised a perfect way—but where? And when?”

  Just then Vincent joined her and Charles. “Ah, Wesley, tell me of the work in your part of the country. Is there still a movement for separation?”

  Catherine knew how strongly Charles Wesley opposed such ideas and listened carefully for his answer. “It seems the great shaking-up God gave us has not been without its consequence in the minds of the brethren. We had a conference of the northern and midlands Societies just a week ago. All agreed not to separate. So the wound is healed—to some extent.”