She had been very quick and had apprised none of her intentions so that she was not followed. Her husband had soon discovered what she would be at and pityingly bade the people leave her alone; she was light of foot and agile and not likely to come to mischief.
Kate Mompesson went up the stairway, until she came to the top part of the tower where the four bells hung, the first, third, and fourth being inscribed with the mottoes: ‘Jesus be our speed,’ and the dates severally of ‘1590,’ ‘1618,’ ‘1628,’ while the second had the date ‘1618’ and was inscribed: ‘God save this church.’
The belfry was large, there was room for ten bells, though Eyam had never been able to afford more than these four that gave out rich and deep-toned peals when rung by the six men and boys employed as ringers.
Kate took no heed of these bells, but moved to the small lancet-shaped window and there gazed over the village, across the little houses, the old lych-gate, the stream at the western end and at the rude highway that wound over the heath beyond.
The coach went slowly over the uneven ground, the stout horse struggling in the shafts, the coachman driving carefully.
Kate impressed every detail on her mind — the long whip, the curling thong, the boot behind from which the luggage hung clumsily, Bessie leaning from the window and waving to the villagers, and now George’s red-gold head and now that of his sister, Bessie, showing. To her failing eyes the carriage grew smaller and smaller, until it was no larger than the picture in the initial letter in her old Prayer Book.
And then she gave a loud cry that was lost in the boughs of the linden trees, and beat her head against the stone wall, for she was sure that she would never see them again. Angels might be with them, but she would not. Her life seemed purposeless; she felt wasted as a glass of water poured on the sand.
Two more cases of the plague were reported that evening; Thomas Stanley visited one of these and William Mompesson the other, before they attended the meeting that had been called in the church.
The medical treatment the two men employed was the same; it was the best that they knew of after studying so earnestly such books and such knowledge as was available to them. When the fever was declared they gave some soothing medicine such as the plague-waters of Matthias, though they no longer used bark after the Rector’s unfortunate experience. Various elixirs that Mompesson compounded in his laboratory were also administered. Then, when the plague spots appeared, these were dressed with ointment, and if the patient lived long enough, they were cut and cleansed and bandaged with further anointings.
To break the tumours they sometimes used the prescription of the College of Physicians, which was: ‘Take a great onion, hollow it, put in a fig, rue cut small, and a dram of Venice treacle; put it, close stopped, in a wet paper and roast it in the embers. Apply hot to the tumour. Make three or four, one after another; let one he three hours.’
But they had to omit the fig from the prescription as these fruits were not to be obtained in Eyam.
Tobacco was much used and the supply in the village was running short, for such as could obtain it chewed or smoked it continually, for Mr. Mompesson heard that none in London who kept tobacco shops had the plague and that the school at Eton had been spared, because every schoolboy, however young, had smoked a pipe.
They also used some of the recipes recommended by the Paracelsists or Chemical Physicians, though they seemed to Mr. Stanley altogether too mystical. A remedy that had been taught to the people by Mother Sydall was much used secretly. It was made by roasting a dead toad over a vessel of yellow wax and smearing the fat on the sores.
But, despite all this care, precaution, skill and quackery, very few of the patients recovered, though some lingered as many as twelve days and a number to five or six days. But the clergyman knew that many remedies were resorted to besides those that they themselves sanctioned. Not alone Mother Sydall, the witch, but other so-called wise men and women, herbalists and hermits, who dwelt upon the moors, were consulted and many strange and horrible concoctions were brought in secret to the sick beds. There were also many crude operations performed, such as cutting the carbuncles too soon, so that the patients died under the agony. Or making gashes in the sound flesh for the infection to escape, so that many limped about wounded with green or cankered wounds.
The church was full, the door being set wide so that those who could not obtain admission might stand in the outer air and hear the Rector's speech.
He gave first a brief discourse on the text: ‘But go thou thy way to the end, for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the day,’ that was often in his mind.
Mr. Mompesson spoke to his people of how brief and, as it were worthless, was the longest and most splendid life. He declared that it was but a little play before eternity and given to us as a time to prepare for Heaven, and that those who had the most crosses and afflictions in this life were likely to get the highest rewards, when His bright face should beam upon the righteous.
And he spoke of the Judgment Day, when the heavens would be rolled up, and night and day end with one loud blast that would rend the deeps. When all the dead would arise at a second birth, crowding with those who should be living, to the bar of Judgment — fire would rush from the north to the east and sweep up south and west; stars and elements would be confounded and blotted out, and God's thunders would play over chaos. And nothing would matter in the fateful day but cleanliness from sin.
So he spoke to them of the worthless vanity of all the lusts of this earth, and how it behoved them to do God’s will, and to thank Him for any crosses He might send.
And so he came to the main matter of his discourse, which was the desolation of Eyam. There was no need for him to describe the ravages to them, for they had seen it for themselves. Some of those who were there had been sick and recovered, some had lost relatives and friends, others had left sufferers from the scourge at home or in the pest-house, a few yards from them lay the graves of those who died from the plague.
Therefore Mr. Mompesson said nothing of the scourge, but he reminded them that they were all in God’s hands, and that nothing they could do could save those who were marked and that those who were protected could walk immune among the fiercest contagion.
“It may be that you or I, or my wife or your wife, will be the next. But we must go on and do our part, each of us.”
So, in view of the judgment visited upon them, he exhorted them to be industrious and sober and Godfearing, to have no wallowing in impure thoughts and scurrilous conceits, for the day might be at hand when every idle word should be accounted for, and how desperate then should be the condition of those who, instead of grace and life, had thought only of sin and death! And in this moment of terror to leave piety and sobriety would be an inexcusable desertion. But those who would conduct themselves soberly might remember that a door would be opened for them in Heaven.
Mr. Mompesson here paused and looked round the faces of his congregation. There had been a hush among them while he spoke, and their countenances, some brutal, some simple, some comely and some vile, had been tense in expression. As they crowded together in the chancel and aisles, they stood pressed round the ancient stone font, lead lined, where most of them had been christened, and leaned into that aperture in the north aisle through which, legend said, the confession of sins was whispered in ancient times; the common people, and this was an unheard-of thing, were even in the pews of the gentry, which had long since been empty.
All the one-time ornaments of the church had been removed by the Puritans, many by the zealous hands of Thomas Stanley himself, but there still remained the grotesque figure of a Talbot, or dog, on one of the wooden cross-beams, the crest of the arms of the Earls of Shrewsbury, formerly Lords of the Manor of Eyam and patrons of the village. While in one of the windows a few fragments of coloured glass had been suffered, through disdain, to remain, and the July sunlight falling on these cast blurs of gold, blue and red on the tense
, anxious faces below.
Mr. Mompesson, in his black gown and white bands, stood silent with his fine fingers on the edge of the pulpit, as if speech had suddenly failed him, and looked down on the stout figure of the dissenter, who stood below him, against the pulpit.
Mr. Mompesson felt he had obtained an added strength from this man’s presence, and the fact that Thomas Stanley was by his side had served to overawe and impress the villagers, who seemed to listen to him with a deeper respect than ever before.
He felt suddenly weary, fatigue, like a great wave, swept over and drenched his spirit. There was much more he had to say, indeed he had not come to the crucial part of his argument, but he stammered and could not put his words together. And then stepping, almost stumbling, down from the pulpit, he touched the dissenter on the shoulder and said:
“You speak to them.”
‘If this is blasphemy,’ he thought, ‘surely God will forgive me.’ He remembered thankfully that Heaven had permitted Thomas Stanley for many years to preach in that pulpit.
With only a slight inclination of his head as acknowledgment, the dissenter at once mounted the humble pulpit. His sunken, wrinkled, yet still keen eyes flashed at once to the three letters, ‘I.H.S.,’ on one of the beams before him. Though he was no scholar he knew the three Latin words they stood for: ‘Jesus Hominum Salvator’ — and they had often been his encouragement and his inspiration.
He spoke briefly with none of the emotion and flowery, if faltering, phrases that William Mompesson used.
“I have been asked by the present Rector of Eyam to help him in this affliction, and we have decided to remain together in the village and do what we can for those who suffer both in soul and body. And we have decided to ask you all to remain enclosed here, dying like true soldiers at your post, sooner than carry the disease far afield.
“We have asked you to be soldiers, and we are prepared ourselves to be generals. We have thought out our plan, for the nursing of the sick, the tending of the sound, the burial of the dead.
“A messenger went to-day to my Lord at Chatsworth, and he will send supplies, both of food, medicines and such other things as may be needed. We shall ask for voluntary workers, some to serve in the pest-house, some to bury the dead. And, as there is no longer sufficient wood for coffins and no labourers to make them, from henceforth the dead will be buried in their shrouds only. And until happier times, there will be no headstones, but all will be placed in a pit in the churchyard so that one burial service may be said over several.
“And so we shall await God’s judgment.”
A shudder passed through the congregation; one heard again some of the women begin to weep, bowing their heads on those near them. Another one near the door fell down and cried out and was passed from one hand to another into the open air.
The scene began to flicker before William Mompesson’s tired eyes. He saw the broad beams of golden sunlight coming through the open doorway, the breath of fresh air mingling with the fetid breath of the people, their sweating odours, and the sickly and acrid fumes of the vinegar and spices they used. He saw those squares of colour from the glass and wondered idly why Thomas Stanley had not removed that as he had removed every other beautiful object from the church.
The young man despised himself for the faintness that was upon him, he remembered that he had eaten very little food that day. The scene of the morning was impressed on his vision and seemed more real than that which surrounded him — the carriage going away with the children, Bessie and Ann Trickett, and Kate running from him and hastening up to the belfry to get a last look at her children; when she had returned she had said to him: “I am sure I shall never see them again.” And he had tried to argue her out of such uncomfortable thoughts, but with little feeling in his words.
He tried to see her now, she was seated somewhere in that press, too faint to stand, on a rush chair by a pillar. His soul revolted against the task put upon him — his Kate even now breathing in the infection.
Why had he been sent here? Why had this sacrifice been asked of him? He wanted to go, to leave this accursed place, these people whom he had never liked and who demanded of him now his life’s blood and that of his beloved.
He heard the harsh voice of the dissenter droning on overhead, talking, instructing the people, for though he had put the case to them briefly enough, he must now expand and embroider it with many texts and allusions of moralizing. And the gaping, sweating villagers stood listening, as intent and overawed as if an angel spoke to them.
When at last Thomas Stanley left the pulpit, the people stirred and sighed and groaned and began to talk among themselves, and so streamed out into the sunlight and stood among the graves discussing the matter.
Thomas Stanley spoke to none of them, but went to the Cross that was so old that it was supposed to have been cut in heathen times and the Christian carvings now on it placed there at a later date. Such as they were, they were of Popish origin, and Thomas Stanley had at one time thought of defacing them. But he had decided to let them be, arguing that they had been placed there by a pious hand; but he had been severe on those whom he had found creeping out at night to kneel in prayer before these figures that represented the Virgin and Child.
On the arms of the Cross were spirits blowing trumpets and others holding crosses and books. On the side were knots, and whatever any Rector, Nonconformist or Church of England, might say or do, the villagers regarded this Cross with as much awe as indeed, in secret, they regarded the gray stones that seemed to be of a like ancestry upon the moors.
William Mompesson and Thomas Stanley took their position against the shaft, and here it was Stanley who spoke again.
Raising his bony hand he cried out gravely:
“Let those who are willing to abide by what we have decided and to promise to remain in the village within a distance that we shall mark out, come forward, give his or her name and swear to observe this pact, which I take to be made with God Almighty Himself.”
There was silence for a moment and Mompesson, with his tired eyes glancing over these rude people, some of whom he knew to be savage, cruel and vicious, thought: ‘Why should they thus doom themselves to save strangers?’
Then one or two of the better sort began to argue together and put forward as a spokesman the carpenter, who was supported by Sythe Torre; this man, towering above his fellows, seemed to be in better spirits than any there. The carpenter, coming forward cap in hand, asked the two clergymen if they could answer for it that the plague was carried by one person to another?
“For it seems,” said he humbly, “that nothing is certain about the pest. And that even you learned gentlemen…”
“Not learned,” protested Mompesson faintly under his breath; but Thomas Stanley made no demur.
“You learned gentlemen,” continued the carpenter, fearful at the sound of his own voice before so many people, “do not know much of the nature of this plague, nor even how it came to Eyam, though there is talk of a box of clothes…” He paused, then picked up his words again: “What I mean, reverend sirs, is — if we were to stay here, making the promise that is required of us, could we be assured that we spared others and kept the plague here instead of spreading it over maybe the whole of the Peak?”
“Can you answer them, Mr. Stanley?” asked Mr. Mompesson. “For myself, though I have studied the matter, I have to confess to a great ignorance.”
“My ignorance is great too,” said the dissenter, but with relish. “But this I am certain of, and you can judge it for yourself — that the disease is passed from one to another, and if we all remain enclosed here and refuse to go abroad and have any trade or truck with the outside world, then surely, even though we all die at our posts, we shall prevent it from spreading in Derbyshire. Though if it slay us all it can but slay five or six hundred souls, yet if it get spread through the Peak it may slay as many thousands. And leaping on its course may waste the north.”
&nb
sp; “That is enough, sir,” said the carpenter without a pause, “and I for my part am prepared to make this pact.”
“And I! And I!” came the voices of his fellows behind him. They pushed up through the docks and nettles that had grown round the ancient shaft and one by one they made their promise and took their oath. Those who had left their families at home gave the promise for them also.
Mr. Stanley seemed to accept this ready sacrifice as a matter of course, but William Mompesson was profoundly moved.
Before the meeting was over, three of those who were there fell down with the plague and were carried to the pest-house, upon which many began shouting hymns in a light-hearted manner.
Chapter VI
‘RUDE, BARREN HOURS’
This is worse than death,” thought Catherine Mompesson, ‘for death means that something ends.’ And she straightened her aching back and with a hand coarsened from much bathing with rough soap and water and vinegar, put back the tousled hair from her eyes.
The day was so hot, and it seemed noisome, too, so that she half-believed what her husband declared was a whimsy, that the contagion was in the air and did not pass from person to person.
She leant, hand to head, against the mullions of the kitchen window; she was overborne with toil, for since Bessie and Ann Trickett went away, she had had all the household work to do herself with but little assistance, for such women as did not have their own families to tend were employed in the pest-house or in nursing those who were threatened by sickness. Sythe Torre's wife came in now and then to help Kate, but for the rest she did all herself, save for the drawing of water, a task that one of the men performed for her when he could.
She did more, too, than her own housework. Her husband had shown her how to help in preparing the medical remedies he used. She must cut up, too, even those fine linen sheets that had been given her by Lady Savile into strips for bandages. She made soups and jellies that were sent to the poor and these she distributed herself as far as her strength was able.
God and the Wedding Dress Page 17
