CHAPTER II

From Epworth John Wesley rode on to Sheffield, and then southward through Coventry, Evesham and Painswick to Bristol, preaching as he went, sometimes thrice a day: from Bristol to Cardiff and back; and so, on Sunday evening, July 18th, towards London. On Tuesday morning he dismounted by the door of the Foundry, having left it just two months before.

To his surprise it was opened by Hetty: but at once he guessed the reason.

"Mother?"

"Hist! The end is very near—a few hours perhaps." She kissed him.
"I have been with her these five days, taking turns with the others.
They are all here—Emmy and Sukey and Nancy and Pat. Charles cannot
be fetched in time, I fear."

"He was in North Wales when he last wrote."

"Listen!"—a sound of soft singing came down the stairway. "They are singing his hymn to her: she begs us constantly to sing to her."

     "Jesu, Lover of my soul,
        Let me to thy bosom fly
      While the nearer waters roll—"

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 God. 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 God.

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 God, 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 hardships 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 God 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 fellowship 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."