God and the Wedding Dress

by Marjorie Bowen

  “Ann Trickett is here, too, Mompesson,” smiled the younger sister. “We must all stay together.”

  “Jonathan Mortin will be glad to see her. He goes about with me now, carrying the medicine chest. I think,” added the Rector, with enthusiasm, “that God’s blessing is on this house, for none of us has been affected, and I feel as well as ever I did in my life. And though Kate is a little tired, that is from doing the housework, not from any illness.”

  “Yes, indeed, and now that Bessie is here, I am tired no more.”

  Mrs. Mompesson felt inspired by her husband’s words. Perhaps God spoke through him, and they were really protected, and she dared to bring her thoughts from Heaven, which to her was but a dim though golden place, and to cast them again on her children and on her future, when they might all be together. Surely when the plague was over, she and Mompesson would have done their duty by Eyam and they might go away to some other cure that might be in the gift of Sir George Savile, or even stay in Rufford Park again, when they should be purged of all infection.

  So there was more happiness in the Rectory that evening than there had been for some time. And when Mr. Stanley came in, they sat down at a meal prepared by Ann Trickett quickly and deftly, and there was a certain peace upon them.

  Yet there was a torment in the Rector’s heart, too, though he spoke cheerfully, for he realized in his state of happiness how he still clung to worldly things. What pleasure he got from Kate and Bess and the thought of his children and the little tales the younger girl told of the children’s behaviour upon the road, and of the warm and generous welcome given them by Mr. Beilby, and of the kind messages he had sent!

  He thought to himself: ‘How my poor short hour, my few wretched sands and crumbs of life revolt and flinch at the thought of dispersing. Nay, though there’s a heavenly crown offered above, still I must grovel here in poor joys.’

  He turned his tired eyes to the side cupboard on which stood a large hour-glass and watched, as if fascinated, the sands running through. And his faith wavered and almost sank as he thought of the death scattered abroad, and how any minute there might be a knock at the door and he be summoned to yet another who was stricken.

  He heard Bessie’s sweet, tired voice say: “Mr. Beilby had heard that to make an incision in the leg or arm was efficacious, for the infection would run out through the wound.” She added that many who lived in York and had occasion to go to Derby, where there was the plague, had tried this and had not been struck.

  “Did you do it?” asked the Rector.

  “No, I hadn’t the courage to make the wound. Besides,” she smiled, and all could read her thought, which was that she would take no precaution against the plague that had slain Jack Corbyn.

  But Kate took her up eagerly. She besought her husband and Mr. Stanley to make such an incision in their legs or arms and to keep it open daily.

  The dissenter refused this cowardly precaution as he termed it, but Mr. Mompesson said he would oblige his wife’s restless hope.

  Words would not suffice Kate Mompesson, but she must see the wound made and bind it up herself. So after supper, there being no further call upon him, the Rector went with his wife into the study.

  William Mompesson sank down in the great chair with arms; it was a long time since he had had any leisure to spend in his library and the room had become unfamiliar to him. His head was giddy and waves of fatigue swept over his limbs. His head was rested against the uncertain lettering of Kate’s embroidering of his motto, his eyes were turned unseeingly towards the tapestry that with so much pride and pleasure he had garnished the walls with little more than a year ago. He could recall through all his weariness those petty discontents — how ashamed he was of them now, when he had first come to the Rectory and found it so mean compared to Rufford Park.

  Kate was looking at him with pity touched with terror. He was too tired to do more than smile at her, and tried to raise his hand reassuringly.

  He said:

  “Go into the laboratory, Kate, and bring me the little knife by the marble slab where I keep the medicines, and some of the yellow ointment and the bandage. See, child, this is all to please you. If you wish, I will not do it.”

  Her face seemed to recede, as objects lose their true perspective, when one who is in a fever gazes at them. The figures on the tapestry loomed terrific and their meaning suddenly became plain to him. He had never before noticed the subject of that tapestry, save in a most superficial manner.

  It represented the plague, Moses with the brazen serpent, and the writhing bodies of the victims in the foreground, looking vivid in the blue and green tints of the threads.

  A little sultry breeze eddied the tapestry so that the bodies seemed to fill out and move towards the Rector. He put his hand across his eyes, raised his head, and, pressing his hands on the arms of the chair, got to his feet. And then as he turned he saw the motto on the back of the chair that Kate had worked, and that, too, had its meaning: ‘For God only.’

  ‘Give me strength,’ he prayed. ‘Oh, God, how can I do Thy will unless Thou givest me strength? I feel as if all the flies of Hell were buzzing in my head!’

  But he forced a smile for Kate’s sake when she returned with her knife, ointment, and bandage. A lamp was kept always burning in the library, it was but small and gave a pin-point glow, which helped to create the fantasies that tormented William Mompesson.

  Kate now lit the larger lamp and put it at the edge of the table. Her husband rolled down his long stocking and put his leg across another chair on a cushion Kate provided, she all the while frowning and anxious.

  “Child,” he said forcing, though sick and spent, an air of courage, “this is but a whimsy, let us leave it. It will only cause you distress.” Then, trying to smile, he added: “Wound yourself, dear Kate, your life is the more precious.”

  She shook her head, then hesitated.

  “Perhaps I will, but now we must think of you. Take the knife, and I will look another way, but be ready with the ointment and the bandage.”

  The Rector took the knife and indifferently gashed his leg. The pain was small and sharp; he watched the bright blood drop on the bandage placed ready, then staunched the wound with the wads of cotton that Kate handed him. He saw the pity and distress in her face as she watched the blood flow, and yet a certain eagerness and hope, too. How she believed in this cure!

  Thick yellow ointment was smeared over the wound and it was bound up and the stocking drawn over it.

  Then William Mompesson caught his wife by the waist and drew her down to the arm of his chair and rested his tired head on her shoulder and bosom.

  “When shall we have peace, Kate, peace and rest? Must men have either toys or care? Have we no hopes in any place? Kate, somewhere we have a home! But we get nowhere. It seems so far away that we have forgotten the direction.”

  “Do not try to shake my faith, dearest dear,” she said, caressing his damp locks, “for I have little enough. All is so cloudy and dark.”

  “Kate! Kate!” He held her close. “You must not say such things! How can we solve these rare and intricate questions? We must have faith, we must believe in the justice of God’s dealing with us. Oh, my wife, my darling! I, too, am stung with fear at my own frailty! Comfort me!”

  “What comfort have I?” she said, and tears of weariness stained her cheeks. “All I can say is, happy are the dead who are asleep below. Mompesson, every day I see more graves from my window or rather see that one large grave increase. Mompesson, they say the plague has gone to the outlying parts now.”

  “Not outside the cordon?” he asked anxiously, sitting up. “Thou hast heard no case of that, Kate?” he said, clasping his hand.

  “Nay, none! But those who left the village to build themselves huts upon the heath — they say the plague is there. I heard the family at Riley had sickened. William, I heard this — when I was tending a sick child to-day, a woman came in who lived in a farm
near to Riley, at least near enough for her to see, for the stream divides them, and she said there was something wrong. She had seen mistress Riley digging.”

  “Not a grave, Kate?”

  “I don’t know. All is in a fog. Come, does your leg still hurt?”

  “I had forgotten it. But you, Kate, we must try this on you, too. It is possible there may be some hope. Bare your arm and look another way. I have the courage for this if you have. Think of our babes, Kate.”

  “The pain is nothing,” she said simply, “but I do not like the blood.”

  She turned up her rough drugget sleeve and the plain undersleeve of linen, and he took the knife and after wiping it made a gash in her forearm. As she turned, she smiled at his pallor, for it struck him to the heart to have wounded her. He helped her to bandage up the arm and drew down the sleeve again. And they did begin to feel a certain comfort; supposing there was efficacy in this cure, they might yet be saved for happiness…

  They clung together with sad caresses, taking much comfort in their mutual love. And he reminded her, gazing over her bent head at the tapestry where Moses held up the brazen serpent:

  “Though we are but wandering clods, Kate, there is One above Who keeps track of our step, and even in the masks and shadows through which we move, I see, sometimes, the hand that beckons to the sacred way. Remember He is with us in all things, although He is invisible.”

  The dawn was hot and yellow, the first colourless light had soon faded and there were storms in the air.

  Kate looked into the little room where Bessie slept. The girl was sunk in a swoon of fatigue, there were large shadows under her eyes, her hair was uncombed on her brow, her shift untied at her neck.

  Catherine closed the door carefully and then went to the closet where her husband slept, and found him too sunk in an unconsciousness deeper than sweet peaceful sleep. Carefully she lifted the coverlet and turned down the cotton stocking that he wore. There was the bandage still in place and a stain of dried blood on it. She puzzled if the wound was still open, surely as long as it were and an issue came from it there was good hope that by that means the infection would leave the body.

  The gash on her own arm had died and closed; she wondered if she should open it again or if she should accept this omen of ill-fortune.

  Then she closed her husband’s door. Let them sleep, they had toiled excessively. But for herself, all repose seemed to have left her. She had dressed herself in her plainest gown and put on a hood and cloak of light material. Now she went into the kitchen; Ann Trickett was not yet abroad, but all was in order.

  She put together some parcels of food, bread, apples, honey, cakes, and folded them in a linen napkin in her basket. She never touched linen now, but thought how poor their store was becoming. She went lightly upstairs to the laboratory and took two pots of ointment such as her husband and Thomas Stanley used for anointing the plague spots, and a roll of bandage and a bottle of plague water, two pomanders and a packet of cinnamon. Then she turned to leave the house.

  But she was not unobserved; the dissenter was already abroad. He seemed to have an iron strength, since she had hardly seen him rest. She drew back, startled, and tried to put her basket behind her. But he perceived it and understood her errand.

  “I wanted to let my husband and Bessie sleep,” she stammered.

  “Why should you not sleep, Mistress Mompesson? You have toiled as hard as they.”

  “I could not catch at sleep,” she replied. “I’m going abroad on my errand. Pray do not stay me, sir.”

  “Why should I stay you?” he answered quietly. “Go where God directs you, Catherine Mompesson. But where do you go?”

  “Keep my counsel,” asked the young woman gravely. cc I am going up to the Riley farm, I believe they are stricken there. No one will go.”

  “I will go,” said Thomas Stanley. “I was there a few days back and all were well.”

  “And I heard a horrible story, sir — that Elizabeth Riley was seen digging a grave. Perhaps they’re dying about her — and she is alone. Indeed I am going.”

  “I would come with you at once,” said the dissenter, “but I have promised to go into the village to watch by two who are dying — it is the boy who used to serve at The Bull Inn, and his sister.”

  “Yes, yes, you must go, that is your duty plain before you,” said Catherine hurriedly. “I may be wrong, I may find that these families are well. But they live so far away and nobody has seen them recently in the village.”

  “I will come up presently, perhaps in two hours. If you stay there I will help you, if I meet you on the way coming back you must give me their news. There are other farms that we should visit besides those at Riley.”

  The two stepped out into the air, still thick and sweet and golden. It was towards the end of August and the leaves were dry and yellow on the linden trees and the grass was fading in the churchyard, the weeds were brown and broken round the great Cross.

  The dissenter told Mrs. Mompesson that yesterday a man had come with a load of wood from Bubnell, and that the villagers had turned him back, refusing to allow him to pass through the village, though the fellow, who was in fine robust health, laughed at them and said he was not fearful of the plague.

  “It is most admirable the spirit that has got into them,” declared the dissenter with enthusiasm. “They refused to let this fellow endanger himself and so he turned back. And it must be now six weeks since any stranger came within the boundaries of our affliction.”

  Then they parted by the churchyard wall, and Kate, who felt a little strength with the brightening of the day and with the zeal of her errand, left the Nonconformist and turned eastwards towards Riley, where lived the families who were known by the common name of Riley from the place where they lived, and also of Talbot and Hancock.

  The farms where these families lived were about a quarter of a mile eastward of Eyam on the slope of a hill where the heather and the harebells had now withered, the first to a faint brownish-coloured foliage, the second altogether away. The low wind that stirred the withered grasses around Catherine Mompesson’s path gave her a sense of desolation, yet one of exaltation.

  As she mounted above the village, she felt lifted from her usual petty cares, for so she tried to term everything that was worldly, even her affection for her children. Curling clouds, still tinged with the rosy hues of the sunrise, for it was early, were high overhead. And looking up at them she felt that invisible and dim, yet surely, there was the presence of God and that He was blessing her errand. And there was a pleasant stop to all her busy sorrows.

  The air was pure and fresh, different, surely, from what it was down in the village. She paused more than once to put down her basket and run her fingers through the stream that leaped through the heather and mosses on the hill-side.

  When she came in sight of the two farms that lay a little distance one from the other, she noticed at once that no smoke rose from the chimneys. Even on such a hot day as this at least one fire in each house would be kept alight for cooking and the heating of water. Nor could Catherine see any signs of life nor hear any sound — a barking dog, a crowing cock, the cry of a child.

  The Talbots were blacksmiths and had a smithy joining the small plot of land they farmed, for close by passed the upland road from Manchester to Sheffield. Catherine Mompesson knew these people — a man, his wife, three sons, three daughters, all at home save the eldest son, who had found employment in Bakewell.

  They were fine, comely children, more lively and full of grace than the villagers. Catherine had often admired them when they came down to Eyam to the church or to the festivals. She had seen them garlanded with flowers proceeding to St. Helen’s Wake last year. They had been warned like all the other families, who occupied outlying farms, to remain in their high and airy situation; Catherine remembered this and still hoped that they might have escaped the contagion.

  A little orchard lay at the back of Ril
ey and this was fenced about. When Catherine Mompesson came there, she paused at the latch gate and set down her basket, for it was heavy for her frail and now almost exhausted strength, and putting her hand cupped round her lips she called out, halloing, asking who was there.

  There was no answer.

  The ripened apples had fallen into the long, dry grass, and as she stared, hushing her own voice and listening in vain for a reply, she saw in the further part of the orchard, where there had been an open patch for beehives, that these had been removed and the ground disturbed. She gazed at the rough outline of seven crude graves.

  Catherine Mompesson went through the orchard. This was the most terrible tragedy of the scourge; these people must have been buried — one by one — each by the hands of the survivors. And who had buried the last? She counted the graves again — seven! Father, mother, two sons, three daughters.

  The Hancocks, then! Had the plague touched them?

  She went into the farm kitchen and placed her basket — the contents were useless now — on the table. There was a mattress on the floor, an overturned chair, on the table some bowls and cooking utensils, a heap of neglected ashes lay on the hearth: there was a spent lamp, some torn, stained linen, a heavy putrid smell.

  She went upstairs, thinking perhaps there might be someone there, even though all the family were accounted for. Her mind was not functioning clearly, she fumbled at the door latches. She moved, wasting time, from one room to another, calling under her breath. But the house was empty.

  Kate left it, mechanically picking her basket up again and passing through the front garden where a few flowers bowed their heads before the lonely chill winds, for the heat seemed to have left the air in this solitary place, or else it was Catherine’s spirit that made all around her seem cold.

  She passed to the next cottage, that was that of the Hancocks. It was a small cottage, and on the patch of ground beside it Catherine saw more hummocks, close together, cut out of the withered heath.