The Love That Prevailed

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“Is it I—is it I who am an unprofitable servant?” he cried out of the depth of his despondency. “Is it I that have been the cause of the enemy's blasphemy? What have I done that I should be made a witness of this wreckage of all that I hoped to see accomplished through my work?”

For some time he felt as did the man who cried “It is enough! I am not better than my fellows.”

He let his rein drop on his horse's neck when approaching the house where he was to be a guest. The day was one of grey mists rolling from the sea through the valley, spreading wisps of gauze over the higher slopes, which soon whirled into muslin scarfs with an occasional ostrich plume shot through with sunshine. At times a cataract of this grey sea vapour would plunge over the slopes of a gorge and spread abroad into a billowy lake that swirled round the basin of the valley and then suddenly lifted, allowing a cataract of sunshine to pour down into the hollows which were dewy damp from the mist.

It was a strange atmosphere with innumerable changes from minute to minute.

“For me the shadows of the mist—the shadows touched by no ray of sunshine,” he cried when he felt the cold salt breath of the vapour upon his face.

And then he bowed his head and prayed that the shadows might flee away and the Daystar arise once more to lighten the souls of the people as he had hoped that they would be enlightened.

When he unclosed his eyes, after that solemn space in which a man stretches out weak hands, “groping blindly in the darkness,” hoping that they will touch God's right hand in that darkness and be guided into a right path, he saw the tall figure of a man standing on a crag watching him.

The man had the aspect of a statue of stone looking out of a whirl of sea-mist.

Wesley saw that it was Bennet, the man by whom he had been met when he was walking through this Talley for the first time with Nelly Polwhele. He had heard a great deal about the man during the few weeks that he had sojourned in the neighbourhood. He found that he was a man of some education—certainly with a far more intimate knowledge of the classics than was possessed by most of the parsons west of Exeter. He had been a schoolmaster in Somerset, but his erratic habits had prevented him from making any position for himself. He had become acquainted with Nelly Polwhele at Bristol, and his devotion to her amounted almost to a madness. It was all to no purpose that she refused to listen to him; he renewed his suit in season and out of season until his persistence amounted to persecution. Of course Nelly found many self-constituted champions, and Bennet was attacked and beaten more than once when off his guard. When, however, he was prepared for their assault he had shown himself to be more than a match for the best of them. The fact that he had disabled for some weeks two of his assailants did not make him any more popular than he had been in the neighbourhood.

There he stood looking at Wesley, and there he remained for several minutes, looking more than ever like a grey stone figure on a rough granite pedestal.