Where Love Begins (Where There is Love Book 1) Page 4

  “Dudy and Ned and I, or whoever accompanied her on that day, would occupy the children in the home so Mother could minister to the adults. Then we all joined in prayer before we left —or sometimes in song, especially when Ned was with us. His beautiful voice always made people feel better. I suppose that was one of the reasons —” she stopped abruptly, thankful for the lurch of the carriage that made the interruption seem natural. She had felt so at ease talking to Phillip she had almost said that s one of the reasons she loved Charles Wesley was that his was the only other voice she’d ever heard that was as sweet as her brother’s.

  “Yes?” As the carriage ride smoothed out, Phillip encouraged her to continue.

  She took a breath to give her a moment to change conversational direction. “So, working with children has been my life since I was old enough to walk and talk. I’ve always loved it and I can’t imagine doing anything else.” That was definitely enough self-revelation for the moment.

  “Gracious, I’ve talked an alarming distance. You must tell me of yourself now, —er, Phillip. What of your family?”

  He withdrew his level gaze that had so encouraged her comfortable reminiscences and she felt as if the tremulous April sunshine had gone behind a cloud. Throughout her narrative her companion had remained leaning toward her, focusing on every word; but now he sat stiffly upright and looked straight ahead. It was obvious she had put a foot wrong. “Forgive me if I trespass. I—”

  For a moment she thought she saw a flicker of emotion on his stoic features. “No, you have a right to know. I see now my error in not telling your brother. He would not have wished his sister to be exposed—”

  Before she could press him to complete his muddled remarks, Edward rode alongside them, and Catherine turned to her brother. “How is it progressing, Ned?”

  “I don’t know. I’m working on the phrase, ‘All praise the name of Jesus.’ It’s the right idea, but it doesn’t quite sing. I came to ask if Phillip thought we should put up at the next village. The sky seems to be darkening rapidly.”

  Phillip looked at the sky. “I had hoped to reach Rochester tonight and preach there in the morning before going on, but perhaps we could stop at Cobham if the inn is suitable for your sister’s comfort.”

  Both men looked questioningly at Catherine, but she made no response. “What do you think, Cath?” Edward asked.

  “‘Hail,’ I think.”

  Ned looked at the dark sky. “Perhaps, but I think rain more likely.”

  Catherine frowned. “Have you taken leave of your senses? ‘Reign’ wouldn’t suit at all. No wonder you’re having trouble with your song.”

  “Catherine—I am not talking about my writing. Phillip and I want to know if you wish to put up at the nearest inn. It looks like rain coming.”

  “Oh, I daresay. Do as you think best. But try ‘All hail the name of Jesus’ in your poem.”

  By the time they reached Cobham the problematical rain had become a drenching reality and travelers and horses didn’t bother to question the advisability of stopping at the inn, disreputable though it looked.

  “I do apologize, Miss Perronet. You should never have been brought to such a place.” Phillip stood just inside the door surveying the dingy interior.

  “Catherine,” she reminded him firmly. “And do not worry yourself over the accommodation. I chose to come, and shall make do with what presents itself.”

  She soon began to guess how severe a test her brave words were to be put to, however, when, after a brief washing in her damp-smelling room, she joined the men in the inn’s only parlor. The room was crowded with ill-clad, unwashed villagers all talking in voices clearly emboldened by the ale they were consuming. “This is intolerable,” Edward declared and strode off in search of the innkeeper.

  “Catherine—” Phillip took a step toward her.

  “Mind your head!” The sharp crack that accompanied her words told her the warning was too late as Phillip struck the low, blackened ceiling beam.

  He rubbed his forehead ruefully. “You’d think one of my height would learn.”

  Ned joined them. “I gave orders for our supper to be served in my room. Its cramped conditions will be preferable to this.”

  Indeed, Ned’s small room, even with the fireplace that refused to draw properly, was an improvement on the cacophony of the public parlor, but the food set before them by a slatternly serving wench couldn’t have been worse. The pools of fat floating on the stew had congealed into a stiff, white crust by the time it reached them, and even after Catherine pushed the fat aside and found a piece of meat, it was unchewable.

  Ned took a bite of the bread and after no more than three chews grabbed for his cider mug and choked down a swallow of the sour liquid. “I advise you to avoid the bread.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as no napkins had been provided. “In this dismal light I failed to see the mold on it, but the taste was unmistakable.”

  Phillip chewed stoically on the rubbery meat and soggy vegetables. Then, after a sip of cider, “It’s no worse than the orphan asylum. Quite like, if my memory holds.”

  “Orphanage?” Catherine’s fork hit her wooden serving trencher with a clatter.

  Phillip nodded without expression. “I started to tell you this afternoon. But I think it best to present you both with the full details now. Then if you wish to turn back in the morning I shall understand.”

  “Turn back…?” Catherine began, but her question went unanswered as Phillip turned to her brother.

  “Edward, please believe that on my honor as a Christian I would not have embarked on this journey, had I realized the harm it could do to your sister’s reputation.”

  “Nonsense, I am sufficient chaperonage for her good name. Such travels are common practice.”

  “But not in the company of one with my background. I wish you to know the plain facts. I am a foundling.”

  There was no reply. Phillip’s desolate words filled the silence.

  “An abandoned foundling. Which can mean only that my mother was a servant girl—A fallen servant girl—or worse—and my father a care-for-nothing nobleman or a rake. Whatever the case may have been, the fact remains that, except at the very highest and lowest extremes of society, foundling means bastard and therefore disgrace. I know you will not want to expose your sister to such company.”

  Catherine broke in before Ned could reply, “What contemptible rubbish! I will hear no more of it, Sir, and neither will my brother.”

  Ned was thoughtful for a moment as the rain washed against the windows in great, unremitting gulps, and the weak flame fluttered on the grate. Finally he spoke. “God has accepted you. With Him as your Father, there can be no more to say on the matter.”

  “You are very kind, Edward. But your sister…”

  “My sister has spoken for herself most adequately.”

  “Both now, and at some length this afternoon, when I related my childhood to you. I think you should reciprocate, unless to do so would cause you pain.” Catherine truly wanted to hear more of his history and felt no inclination to leave even so small a comfort as Ned’s weak fire for the chill dreariness of her own room.

  “The subject is not at all painful to me,” Phillip assured her. “I simply fear giving disgust to others.”

  “Then be at rest, Phillip. Ned is quite right, we share the same Father, so are of the same family. There is no offense possible.”

  Phillip nodded slowly and stared into the fire. “I always took some comfort in the fact that Mrs. Ortlund often told me how remarkably clean and well-cared-for was the infant she found on her doorstep in a rush basket. It was most unusual, for a foundling often had little more than a few rags to protect it from the chill fog.”

  “Mrs. Ortlund raised you?” Catherine asked.

  Again Phillip nodded without looking at her. “She named me for a brother who died young, and cared for me. She had been a nurse at the Royal Asylum of St. Anne for Children Whose Parents Had Seen Bett
er Days. The institution was no longer operating by the time I made my unwanted appearance into the world. But she ran a small asylum from the goodness of her heart and her own small living.”

  The wind and rain that whipped at the old inn made the three occupants of the room draw closer together. “I have never ceased to give thanks for Mrs. Ortlund. Were it not for her, I should have been sent to the parish poorhouse where it is unlikely I would have seen my first year through, amidst the filth, disease, and starvation.”

  Catherine shuddered.

  “I have visited such places as an adult: Pandemonium and vice rule jointly among the paupers, fallen women, neglected children, vagrants, lunatics, aged, and ill. Had the usual fate befallen me, I should have been put in such a place where the best I could have hoped for was some feeble crone who might choose to care for a pewling infant for the short period it could be expected to survive in such circumstances.”

  “Were there no parish nurses?”

  “Yes, but many were as lethal as the parish workhouse. Perhaps you have heard the term ‘killing nurses’. An apt appellation, to be sure. More than three-fourths of the infants cared for by parish nurses die every year. I have looked into the subject with some interest—it seems that parish nurses who continue to bury infants week after week, with no criticism and no lessening of the number of children given them, take the hint—society considers it very fit and convenient that such a child should die. After all, it relieves society of the care of an object that at worst is loathed and at best ignored. I thank God that by the large part of such society I was ignored.”

  All was silent in the room save for the incessant pounding of the rain. Then a violent gust of wind rattled the windowpanes so sharply the inhabitants started. Catherine rose and smoothed her muslin skirt over its quilted petticoat. “It is long past time we were in our beds. Do you plan to preach in the fields at five in the morning as Mr. Wesley does, Phillip?”

  “I often do. It is a good idea to give the workers the Word of God before they begin their labours. But I fear we would have few hearers in the morning, even if the storm has passed. Let us rise at five and go on to Rochester for our first meeting. There is a small but faithful Society there.”

  “I will light you to your rooms.” Ned picked up a candlestick.

  Phillip’s room was next to Edward’s and when Phillip opened the door Catherine could see that his fire had gone out. With a shiver she moved on toward the stairs, then turned back to say good-night. In the frame of the dark doorway Phillip looked remote and lonely. She couldn’t leave him like that. It was more than she could bear, the thought of his aloneness. She took a step toward him—

  “Cath!” Ned called impatiently from the stairway. She gave Phillip a last small smile and turned to her brother.

  Phillip watched Catherine fly up the stairs with a detachment that persisted from his orphanage days. He had learned early that it didn’t pay to get too attached to people or things. People moved—went on to school or work; things were lost or stolen—he gave a brief thought for the one thing that had been truly his, the blanket Mrs. Ortlund found him in. He had always kept it carefully folded in the bottom of the chest under his bed in the orphanage. Until one day he returned from chapel to find the contents of the trunk spilled on his bed and the blanket gone. He hadn’t even reported the incident, as the knowledge that he attached any importance to a worn, faded baby blanket would indeed have made him a laughingstock.

  His most determined efforts at detachment had failed him in one tender matter, however—the matter of Sally Gwynne. It was his own fault—he had broken his own carefully kept rule.

  It happened without any rational awareness on his part. Indeed, until word reached him and other workers that day at the Foundry that Charles Wesley and Sally Gwynne were wed, he had had no understanding of the depth of his feeling. The fact that every young Methodist who preached in Wales, or met Sally when she visited the Foundry with her father, was more than half in love with the beautiful Welsh girl, was no comfort to Phillip. Nor did the fact that he would never have made an attempt to win her affections—nor have stood a chance had he done so—lessen the intensity of his feelings.

  The cut was much sharper, although less deep, than the severing from his curacy had been. But both had produced the same results—an increased determination to remain aloof.

  He turned to see if he could fan the few sparks on his grate into life. Then he saw his bag open on the floor.

  Memories of the orphanage pillaging returned so sharply his stomach knotted. While he was next door in Ned’s room a thief had been at work here. Fortunately he always kept his purse with him, and he had little else of value to steal. His two leather-bound books and a linen shirt would fetch a few shillings when resold. But there was little among a clergyman’s belongings worth stealing.

  He gathered up the scattered remains of his goods not worth the bother of stealing and renewed his determination to form no affections for things or for people. There must be nothing in his hand or in his heart worth stealing.

  Six

  “PREACHIN’ IN THE COCKPIT! Preachin’ in the cockpit!” Two urchins ran through Rochester the next morning, publicizing the meeting. And in the amphitheatre usually used for much rougher purposes, the hymn-singing of a curious crowd was attracting newcomers who were willing to stand in the drizzling rain for a fresh entertainment.

  Catherine walked among the women on the edges of the crowd, welcoming them, helping them with their children, urging them to join in the singing, and ignoring the rude suggestions of two young ruffians who made no attempt to hide the bottles in their coat pockets.

  The faithful of the Rochester Methodist Society sang loudly so those unfamiliar with the songs could follow them. One of the members had requested permission to share his testimony. He took his place in the center of the ring, standing staunch in spite of the jeers of the crowd. “Need a drink, Buddy?” “Haven’t seen you at the inn lately; religion got you down?” “Hey, Barber Bolton, how about a shave and a haircut—for a swig of gin?”

  Bolton’s voice rang above his rowdy audience. “I praise God. When Mr. Wesley were at Rochester last, I were one of the most eminent drunkards in all the town—”

  Cries of “’Struth,” and “Don’t we know it!” and “Miss the old times, Charlie?” interrupted him, but they subsided and Bolton continued.

  “Mr. Wesley was a-preachin’ at the church. I come to listen at the window, and God struck me to the ’eart. I prayed for power against the demon drink. And God gave me more than I asked, ’e took away the very desire of it.”

  An overage egg flew through the air and landed at the speaker’s feet. “Run ’em all out of town! They’ll ruin business.”

  Bolton held up his hand. “Yet I felt myself worse and worse, till, on 25 April last, I could ’old out no longer. I knew I must drop into ’ell that moment unless God appeared to save me. And ’e did! I knew ’e loved me and I felt sweet peace. Yet I did not dare to say I had faith, till, yesterday was twelvemonth. God gave me faith; and 'is love ’as ever since filled my ’eart.”

  A combination of Amens and jeers met the conclusion of the speech; but then the audience became unusually quiet as Phillip rose to preach. Catherine breathed a prayer that the service might continue undisrupted.

  Phillip opened his Bible and began to read. “For by grace—”

  There was a loud squawking from the back of the crowd and the way parted for two men to enter, each carrying a flapping, screeching rooster toward the center of the cockpit ring. “Now, me fine lords ’n ladies, as so many of you are gathered ’ere a’ ready, we’ll give you some real entertainment. On this side, Chanticleer, my fine red Pyle, and on t’other, Acey Jones’ Wednesbury Grey. Fine fightin’ cocks both in prime form. Who’ll lay odds as to which of these fair-feathered fighters will be first to draw blood?”

  Many in the audience surged forward to place bets. Phillip turned to Ned. “Sing loudly and follow me.” Ho
lding his Bible aloft like a banner, Phillip led the way through the mob, Ned and Catherine behind him singing the Isaac Watts hymn, “We’re marching to Zion.”

  A vast number of people followed their parade to the market cross in the center of town and more joined them along the way. Catherine hoped that now the chaff had been separated from the wheat so that Phillip would have receptive hearers. But as soon as he mounted the steps of the cross, the crowd began thrusting to and fro, and Phillip was knocked from his perch on the highest stone step. Catherine started to cry out for fear he had been seriously hurt, but saw him rise quickly and remount the steps.

  The audience continued to shove, but Phillip held his back firm against the stone cross and continued his Bible reading. “…For by grace are ye saved through faith; and…” Seeing they could not dislodge the preacher by pushing, those who had come for sport—considering field preachers fair game for a rough entertainment—began throwing stones. At the same time, some got up on the cross behind Phillip to push him down. One man began shouting in his ear, making it impossible to continue the Scripture reading. Suddenly the tone of the shout changed to one of pain and the man fell at Phillip’s feet, his cheek bleeding profusely where a stone intended for Phillip had struck his harasser.

  Then a second troublemaker, far more burly than the first, forced his way toward Phillip. Before he could reach the cross though, a misdirected stone hit him on the forehead and bounced off. Blood ran down his face and the rabble-rouser advanced no farther.

  A third reached out to attack Phillip from the left. But as he stretched his hand forward, a sharp stone aimed at Phillip, struck the attacker’s fingers. With a howl of pain, the man dropped his hand, then stood silent waiting to hear the preacher. As if following his cue, the others became silent and Phillip continued, “By grace are ye saved, through faith. These two little words, faith and salvation, include the substance of all the Bible, the marrow, as it were, of the whole Scripture.”