Hetty Wesley Part 41

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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d.

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 G.o.d, 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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 G.o.d 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.ses.

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 pa.s.s 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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.

As they ran to view the damage, the two riders came cantering across the gully and joined them. By good fortune, at the base of the rock there welled a tiny spring and spread itself in a miniature bog before making up its mind to leap down the mountain-side and feed the infant waters of the Taptee. Into this plashy soil the gun had plunged and the carriage lay some yards away up-ended on a broken wheel, but otherwise uninjured. Beside the carriage, when the General reached it, an artillery sergeant and three of the team of No. 2 gun were lifting the injured man.

"Badly hurt?"

The sergeant saluted. "We doubt it's over with him, sir. His back's broken, seemingly."

The General turned away to examine the face of the cliff, and almost at once gave vent to a low whistle.

"See here, Ellerton, the rock is caverned and the gun must have broken through the roof. It doesn't look to me like a natural cavern, either. Hi! half a dozen of you, clear away this rubbish and let me have a nearer look."

The men turned to and heaved away the fallen stones under which the water oozed muddily.

"Just as I thought! Nature never made a hole like this."

An exclamation interrupted him. It came from one of the relief party who had clambered into the cavern and was spading there in the loose soil.

"What is it?"

"A skeleton, sir!--stretched here as natural as life."

The General dismounted and clambered to the entrance, followed by his staff officer. As they reached it, the man stooped again and rose with something in his hand.