God and the Wedding Dress

by Marjorie Bowen

  “I have not been far, only a little way across the heath. And I am by now so familiar with the place. The people may be savage, but they are honest, too. I do not think anyone would hurt me. I often pass the miners going to and from their work and they salute me courteously.”

  “Still, I would not have you go, Bessie. I believe you go with Kate’s connivance, but you are too loyal to tell me that.”

  She did not answer, and with increased pity and tenderness he continued.

  “I wish that you and Kate understood how much I sympathized with you and how little desire I have to be hard with you. But, Bessie, where you go is to old Mother Sydall, is it not? The wise woman, as they call her, who lives in a hut on the moor.”

  “I went there last autumn,” said Bessie, in a low voice, “to get some amulets against the plague. We all had one — Kate, myself, the children, and Ann Trickett.”

  “I knew as much,” replied the Rector. “I took them from Kate and the children once, but I suppose you fetched others?”

  “Yes.”

  “How little you trust me, Bessie! Did you not think that I could have given you something that would have been as useful to you? Must you believe in these silly practices?”

  The girl stood her ground.

  “If one must believe in demons and angels, why not in witches?” she asked. “This is a good old woman, and may not God use her as an instrument?”

  “God bids us use our wits,” replied the Rector. “And I do not like these arguments, Bessie. These old women are ignorant, if well-meaning, and do more harm than good. But why do you visit her now? The plague, God be praised, has left Eyam.”

  Bessie did not answer and her brother-in-law continued to press her, gently but with authority. When they had almost reached the end of the glen, the girl stopped and looked earnestly up at the Rector.

  She had changed since the days of her bright lustre when she had been preparing for her wedding. William Mompesson knew that Bessie was brave and also that she suffered much from her private grief at the absence of her lover and from the public plague for which, for all her brother-in-law could say, she held herself responsible. As both the tailor and his assistant were dead and there were no others that knew precisely the story of the box of clothes, save Jack Corbyn who had not returned to Eyam, the Rector had kept it quiet and not mentioned to anyone what he believed to be the truth, that the plague had come in the box of clothes from London.

  But he knew if he had expressed his opinion not only would Bessie and Kate have been scorned for their disobedience and vanity, but the two young women would hardly have been able to endure their remorse. Therefore he had spread it about, and even told his wife and sister-in-law, that he thought the plague had come with some of the people who visited St. Helen’s Wake, been brought from Derby, perhaps by the mummers, perhaps by one of the quacks or strolling traders.

  But Kate could never forget that he had told her the plague had come in the clothes, though he had tried to efface that impression, saying that he was mistaken, for he could not endure that these two innocent creatures should have the deaths of thirty-one people at their count, though in his heart he believed that they had been the one and only cause of the arrival of the infection in the mountain village.

  He thought that Bessie was going to speak of this matter now and try, as she had tried before, to clear herself before her own conscience by finding out from him his real opinion of the source of the infection in Eyam.

  But instead she said:

  “Sir, I have been obedient to you in everything; you have the ordering of my actions, the handling of my poor fortune, I live in your house and am subservient to you, but some liberty I must have.”

  “Why, Bess, I hope that thou hast all the liberty that thou need’st?”

  “I must have this,” added the girl anxiously, “to go abroad a little, even to visit this old woman if I will.”

  “But what do you visit her for, Bessie? Two or three times in the last month I have asked for you and Kate has been forced to tell me that you were on this heath, and I have had to come and meet you.”

  “You need not fear for me,” she said earnestly, “I think I am protected.”

  He was a little abashed because her faith was greater than his own, for he was by no means confident where Bessie or Kate were concerned, he knew the miners were rough, savage people, and in particular he dreaded Sythe Torre, who had once, not so many months ago, made a half-confession to him of being a murderer and whose lewd and cruel disposition was well known. Suppose he was straying on the heath when Bessie made her piteous errand? And if he only frightened the girl? Why, it was not to be thought of…

  So the Rector said:

  “Bessie, we have had a sad winter but the spring comes now. See, even the poor wayside herbs lift up their heads and grow green again? And I am assured that Jack Corbyn will return and we shall have our wedding after all, with a deeper rejoicing that the scourge has come and gone.”

  “Will Jack return?” asked Bessie eagerly, putting back the loose dark hair that the wind blew inside her hood from her face. “Will he?”

  “He writes to you, doesn’t he, Bess? And they are the letters of a lover?”

  “Ay, but there are always excuses — his father has lost much money and therefore they cannot reside at the Manor, he has been sick and his mother has been sick, the uncle with whom they live is whimsical and will have him close. Oh! sir, I greatly fear I have lost his love.”

  “It is true that he is but a cold lover,” said the Rector, taking Bessie’s hand through his arm as they went on their way towards the village, “and it would be better if you could put him out of your heart. But if that may not be…Bessie, before we come to the first cottages, tell me this — I would rather ask these questions in the open air than in the Rectory. I have not spoken of this matter, even to Kate, but I ask you now — do you go to the old woman to buy love philtres and charms?”

  She did not answer but he saw her delicate face harden, her lips quiver, and he knew it was useless to question further that frail obstinacy. No doubt she had been near to Hell these last months since her broken wedding, and he would not for that have her slip into folly. So he argued with her tenderly, yet with a touch of authority, telling her that she might cause great mischief by dabbling in drugs and charms, of the virtues and strengths of which she knew nothing. Not by magic would love be forced. If her lover had for any reason forsaken her, nothing could bring him back save her own loyalty and constancy. And in the end the Rector gave the advice, knowing well how useless it was, that Jack Corbyn was hardly worth the wearying for and that one so sweet and fair and gently bred as herself would find in time a better mate.

  Bessie did not answer, neither did she weep William Mompesson had noticed before that her tears did not come as easily as Kate’s; she had a curious inner strength of character.

  She thanked him for his care and withdrew her hand from his arm and they walked side by side and suddenly estranged down the winding village street, through the larger houses at the western end, from which many of the inhabitants had fled last autumn and where they had now all returned, through the lych-gate, where the villagers stood on duty ready for the night watch, and so past the green and The Bull, the churchyard with the bare linden trees and the Rectory.

  William Mompesson found his wife in the parlour that looked upon the gray, bare orchard. She was giving her elder child a lesson out of a horn-book, but when her husband came in she sent the boy away.

  The Rector stood leaning against the tapestried walls close to her and spoke to her, reluctantly, about Bessie and her visits to old Mother Sydall…No harm in the thing, but it was a folly, and yet it should not be countenanced. Not only was it ill for herself, but in the effects it might have on the villagers to whom it might give but an odious example.

  “They are sunk enough in crafts and superstitions and I know not what black ignorance, already,” said t
he Rector.

  Catherine stopped him, saying almost in the words that Bessie had used:

  “But you teach us to believe in angels and devils, how are we to know what is true and what is not, Mompesson? If we are not to believe in the baying of Gabriel’s Hounds, how are we to believe in guardian angels?”

  “Woman,” he answered sadly, “you must not argue with me on these points. Both as your husband and as your priest, I must be your guide. I tell you, you and I and Bessie are but one dusty story, these follies will live after us as an ill example. See that Bessie goes no more upon the moors. I have no time to spend following her or meeting her in the dells, covering up her foolishness.”

  “I cannot control Bessie,” smiled Kate quietly, “her heart has been almost broken since John Corbyn went away, since we had the plague in Eyam. What do you think life has been for her, or for me? We have done what we could to help.”

  “You have done very nobly,” replied the Rector, “I have no reproofs to make there. And well do I know your grief and disappointment. But, Kate, how is it that this has not brought us all nearer together, instead of sending us, as I think, farther apart?”

  “There has been the cloud of death upon the village and upon this house,” replied his wife, and her pretty lips trembled piteously.

  “That is over, Kate, and we should lift up our hearts But something is wrong, and I think the fault must be mine. I feel it in my parishioners, too. This trouble has not brought us nearer, though I have worked hard for them and they seemed grateful I think it is because I cannot discern where the hand of God moves.”

  “That may well be a mystery,” said Kate bitterly. “Why should God send death in that wedding dress?”

  “Kate, I have not said He did, I do not know from whence the plague came.”

  “You said so, once, though you’ve tried to take it back. Why should God send death in the wedding dress, to kill those innocent people?”

  “We do not know, Kate. You must not question His wisdom. Let be.”

  Catherine Mompesson raised her tired eyes and looked at her husband with deep love, but it was the love that gazes across a gulf. They had been separated, if not estranged, during the tribulations of the winter, Bessie’s distress and the public calamity; and though she had stood by his side and worked with him, still in some things they had been divided. And she could not, any more than he, put a name to this division.

  He looked now at his own features in the tortoiseshell mirror, as if he expected to see a great change there. But the trouble that had marked the sensitive delicacy of Kate’s and Bessie’s features had not marred his own comeliness. The face that looked back at him did not seem to his own consideration that of a priest, though it was sad, grave and serene. The features were too worldly handsome, the expression too aloof; there was too much cool pride in the brow, too much haughty self-containment in the set of the lips. Sloth was on his spirit and lethargy on his lips.

  ‘What are we?’ he thought, staring into the mirror, ‘but God’s truce with dust?’

  And it was in his mind then to write to Sir George Savile and tell him that he was not fitted to have the cure of souls, that he would return to some humbler post — not the gilded idleness of chaplain in the great man’s house, but some small cure where he might work under some holy man and not be what he was not fitted to be — his own master.

  But even as the thought came into his mind it was checked by another, and a worldly one. He had no means to support Kate and Bessie and his children, if he had a meaner living than Eyam. He had already deprived them of worldly pleasures and comforts by bringing them to this solitary place. Should he, for the sake of his own spiritual peace, condemn them to more hardships?

  He put his hand into the thick chestnut curls that hung damp on his brow (for he still, as he went constantly among the sick, kept his forehead bathed with vinegar), and turned and made a movement to his Kate as if he would invite her into his arms. But she did not look up and he stood mute and sated, his eyes gazing at her delicate face, the long throat, the pure lips now only faintly coloured, the large dark eyes shadowed beneath.

  Then he made an effort to overcome his spirits and said:

  “Kate, I saw the flowers and the mosses and the herbs springing green to-day. Spring is coming, even in this isolated place, even on the mountain.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said, “the spring! But I do not think anything will be the same again.”

  Bessie Carr sat in her sweet self-privacy, handling her lover’s letters. About once a month a messenger came from Yorkshire with a missive from Jack Corbyn for her. There was not much in these short epistles, but they were sufficient for her love and loyalty to feed upon. Through all her cloudy doubts and fears she clung to these few lines, reading them often, carrying them, sewn into a silk cover, placing them under her pillow at night.

  She wrote to him, but out of delicacy no more frequently than he wrote to her, and always over her letters she said the charm that had been taught her by Mother Sydall and then held them over a pan of smouldering fumigants so that there might be no danger that the plague or any other illness would touch her lover.

  He spoke now of returning, he thought his affairs were something settled, that work might begin again upon the Manor Hall, and that they might be married about Eastertide.

  Her lover’s desertion and the illness that she still blamed herself for having brought into the village had much changed Bessie. She was no longer laughing, frivolous and careless, but grave, attentive to her duties, dressed soberly and often sitting alone with a book of devotion or walking in the outskirts of the village, where the waters headlong and loose fell over the boulders, or on the heath and moors by the ancient altar, where her wedding gown had been burned last September.

  This evening she went on her knees by her simple bed and gave thanks to God for removing the plague from Eyam, and then, something soothed but still restless, she thought she would do as she so often did — go abroad and walk through the village streets enquiring at the houses where there were still people recovering from illness, or old folk, or little children, if she could be of any service to them. These errands completed, she would walk around by the Hall yard and the old Manor and look at the house, where she had hoped to live as mistress, where perhaps she might yet live happily with John Corbyn. Even her brother-in-law could have no objection to this amount of liberty.

  So she went downstairs and passed the parlour, where was Kate with Ann Trickett and the children, and the study where the Rector was enclosed, and came out by the churchyard walls and the bare linden trees, made her way round the village and back again to the Manor Hall.

  She passed inside the gates and went to the fishpond and looked about her. No one slept in the half-demolished partly rebuilt house, though some servant came in the daytime to set all in order. The snow was now quite gone from the valleys and the low-lying places and remained only in patches on the hills. The air was still sharp and the new moon was like a chip of crystal hanging above the high chimney-pots of the ancient house.

  And as Bessie, a small figure in her modest cloak and hood, gazed at Jack Corbyn’s home, she saw lights in one of the upper rooms. The sight of this gave her an unutterable pang that another should have the right to be there and she not at all. Then a wild hope sprang up as she saw a large shadow pass in front of the light. She went round to the stable and found a horse there, newly rubbed down, feeding from the manger, while his harness hung from its place. Only one thought and one action were then possible for Bessie Carr. She ran round to the front door of the house and knocked at the door.

  It was Jack Corbyn who opened to her and his greeting was such as she most dearly hoped for.

  “Bess!” he cried. “My dearest dear!” And took her in his arms and drew her inside the house.

  They clung together for a moment, kissing and speaking incoherently.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  �
��Why did you not tell me you were coming? What chance brought you? Are you alone?”

  Till they both laughed.

  “We perplex one another with questions,” he laughed. “They have lit me a fire in the large parlour, come in there and I will talk to you.”

  The fire was burning brightly on the wide hearth beneath the overmantel carved with the arms of the Corbyns, the crowned birds and the motto.

  Jack drew Bessie down on the old oak settle and told her she had not changed a whit for all her waiting and her misfortune and the horror of the plague. And that was true enough while he said the words, for joy had sent a lovely flush over the girl’s face, given a sparkle to her eyes, and a lustre to her whole person so that she was radiant.

  How could she have doubted him? All her suspicions were gone like cobwebs swept away by a strong, impatient hand.

  He explained himself, gaily and easily, putting the blame on his parents, on his old uncle, on the loss of money, on this and that, till by the time that he was finished talking, Bessie was persuaded that she had no grief at all, that she was foolish to have even given a thought to this long postponement of her wedding day.

  “Everything shall be as it was. My uncle is dead and I have come into four thousand pounds. We will continue with rebuilding the old Hall and I dare say the masons can have it ready by Easter.”

  He ran on in a headstrong, boasting style that was, however, to Bessie all that was just and proper. She sat, leaning forward and gazing at him with delight, taking in every detail of his handsome person. Whatever illness he had suffered, it had left no mark upon him; his rounded features were full and comely, his yellow hair was glossy and curling on his heavy shoulders, he had his ribbons and his lovelock and his finely appointed riding attire.

  He took a purse of money out of his pocket and showed it to Bessie, the gold glittering through the silver meshes of the silk.