God and the Wedding Dress

by Marjorie Bowen

  “That shall come afterwards,” said William Mompesson.

  He sat in his study writing a letter to his children of farewell, for he knew himself to be a doomed man and that he could by no means escape the pestilence. Yet his language was formal and stiff, that of a schoolman; though the anguish he felt bubbled up within him, yet he repressed it even in this hour of poignant grief into the language of decorum.

  ‘To my dear children, George and Elizabeth Mompesson, these present with my blessing.

  “DEAR HEARTS,

  ‘This brings you the doleful news of your dear mother’s death, the greatest loss that ever befell you. I am not only deprived of a kind and loving comfort, but you are also bereaved of the most indulgent of mothers that ever dear children had.

  ‘But we must comfort ourselves in God, with this consideration — that the loss is only ours, and that what is our sorrows is her gain. The consideration of her joys, which I do assure myself are unutterable, should refresh our drooping spirits.’

  William Mompesson tried to compose himself, to brush away the dreadful hallucinations that crowded upon himself, to persuade himself that the figures were not springing from the tapestry behind him — the brazen serpent raised in the brawny arms of Moses with the flowing beard, the writhing victims on the ground — these seemed to press about him as he wrote. He mastered his nerves, his hand traced the formal words that covered his perplexed anguish.

  ‘Joys unutterable,’ his Kate was enjoying Paradise…He tried to impress upon himself what those words really meant, but he could only remember how he and Ann Trickett had prepared her for the grave, how quickly she had corrupted, and how her thin white features stood in a peak through the shrouds…How they had pressed rosemary and fennel upon her, but had not been able to stay the stench of decay. The once sweet, loved flesh had soon been in tatters on the small bones.

  The Rector could only remember how he, Ann Trickett, and Jonathan Mortin had carried her into the churchyard between them, for no one would come near the Rectory, each being absorbed in his own woe. Nor would Mr. Mompesson have allowed her to be touched by a strange hand.

  When they had laid her on the parched grass beside the open grave that he and Jonathan Mortin had dug the night before, he had stumbled up the belfry steps and rung one of the great bells himself, that she might not pass wholly unhonoured.

  He pushed these thoughts out of his mind and tried not to see, as if in a hazy vision, the look of the sods falling on the sheet that he had wrapped about her. He had found this one piece of fair linen at the bottom of the press — Ann Trickett had told him that she had kept it there, lest he should die — and now it had been used for herself.

  Were these things the truth, perceived in a horrible kind of half-light? Was what he wrote on the fair paper lies — ‘My dear hearts, your blessed mother lived a most holy life and made a most comfortable and happy end and is now invested with a crown of righteousness.’

  Poor Kate! Poor little Kate! Were these brilliant sayings true of her? He remembered all her little faults, her frivolities, her shallowness, her laughter, and her vanity. He wrote:

  ‘Let me recommend to you her piety and devotion, which were according to the exact principles of the Church of England. In the next place, I can assure you she was composed of modesty and humility, her discourse was ever grave and meek, yet pleasant withal, a vaunting, immodest word was never heard to come from her mouth.

  ‘Again, I can set out in her two other virtues — charity and frugality. She never valued anything she had, when the necessities of a poor neighbour required it.’

  That was true, for Kate was always generous and charitable; his quill continued to scratch the paper.

  ‘She never liked tattling women, and abhorred the custom of going from house to house and wastefully spending precious time. She was ever busy in useful work, yet though prudent she was affable and kind.’

  The Rector could no longer continue this formal panegyric; he could remember nothing but Kate’s love. And he wrote:

  ‘I do believe, my dear hearts, upon sufficient grounds, that she was the kindest wife in the world. I speak from my soul, for she loved me ten times better than herself. For she not only resisted my entreaties that she should fly to you, dear children, from this place of death, but some days before it pleased God to visit my house, she perceived a green matter to come from the issue of my leg, which she fancied a symptom that the infection had found vent that way — when she assured herself that I was passed the malignancy of the disorder. Whereat she rejoiced exceedingly, not considering her own danger thereby.

  ‘I think, however, that she was mistaken in the nature of the discharge she saw. Certainly, it was the salve that made it look so green, but her rejoicing on that account was a strong testimony of her love for me. For I am clear that she cared not, if I were safe, though her own dear self was in ever so much pain and jeopardy.’

  He paused, took a sip from the cordial in the glass by his side, and continued writing, trying to put on the paper to his children some account of the death of Kate. But the words seemed stiff and cold.

  He folded the letter and sealed it — Thomas Stanley would see that it was taken and placed on one of the stones on the boundary ring and sent to Mr. Beilby in York.

  He sat with his face propped in his hands, the candle guttering unheeded beside him.

  He remembered the days at Rufford Park, the gables, the square tower of Sir George Savile’s mansion swam before his mind, and he hardly believed that life had been his; he had not valued his happiness when he had had it, like most poor wretched men ever grumbling and complaining, but not seeing what misery was before them.

  His heart pinched in what was an acute physical pain when he recalled Kate seated at her music in her brocade gown, gay and lovely, sparkling with happiness; his children in their little wicker cots, Bess so gallant from her happiness with Jack Corbyn.

  To distract himself from these intolerable remembrances, he pulled another sheet of paper towards him and wrote to his patron, the Lord of Rufford Park.

  ‘HONOURED AND DEAR SIR,

  ‘This is the saddest news that ever my pen could write, the Destroying Angel having taken up his quarters within my habitation, my dearest wife has gone to her eternal rest and is invested with a crown of righteousness, having made a happy end. Indeed, had she loved herself as well as me, she had fled from the pit of destruction with the sweet babes and might have prolonged her days.

  ‘But she was resolved to die a martyr to my distress. A crown of righteousness, joys unutterable…’

  He groaned, the quill dropped from his stiff fingers, and he leaned back in his chair. He felt a heaviness and a giddiness that surely presaged the end; he could not doubt that he was doomed. He had lived among corruption and breathed infection for months now; he was withered, even his grief lacked passion; he remembered his duty to that kind friend, Sir George Savile and his lady, and added some formal lines, tracing the words with an effort:

  ‘Sir, this paper is to bid you a hearty farewell for ever, and to bring you my humble thanks for all your noble favours. And I hope you will believe a dying man, I have as much love as honour for you.

  ‘But, dear sir, let your dying chaplain recommend this truth to you and your family, that no happiness or solid comfort can be found in this vale of tears like living a pious life. Pray, ever remember this rule — never do anything upon which you dare not first ask the blessing of God upon the success thereof.

  ‘Sir, I made bold in my will with your name as executor, and I hope you will not take it ill. I have joined two others with you who will take from you the trouble; your favourable aspect will, I know, be a great comfort to my distressed orphans.’

  His will! He leant back in the chair again, putting his hand over his forehead. Yes, he had made that and locked it away in his cabinet. Thomas Stanley knew where it was and Ann Trickett. But he was confused by distress — perhaps they might
all die and his will never be found.

  But he crushed these displeasing thoughts that ‘bit,’ as he said to himself, ‘like the flies of Hell in my distracted brain,’ and continued his letter, bending low over the paper, steadying his right hand with his left hand.

  ‘Sir, I thank God I am contented to shake hands with all the world, and have many comfortable assurances that God will accept me through His Son. I find the goodness of God greater than ever I thought or imagined, and I wish from my soul that it were not so much abused or condemned. I desire, Sir, that you will be pleased to make choice of a humble pious man to succeed me in my parsonage. Could I see your face before my departure hence, I would inform you in what manner I think he may live comfortable among his people, which would be some satisfaction to me before I die.’

  “Yes, that is true,” said the Rector, “I do have many comfortable assurances that God Himself will accept me. I will believe, I will l What does all this suffering mean but a little waiting in the ante-chamber that leads us to eternal life?”

  He looked round the shadows that fluttered in the light cast by the lengthening candle flame. He saw the threatening figures in the tapestry, which seemed to loom larger. The casement slipped the catch and blew wide, a gust of foul air came in from the infected churchyard.

  As the Rector turned in his chair he saw his motto worked by Kate’s impatient fingers in the tapestry: ‘For God Alone.’ And it seemed to him he could hear a rustling and a hissing about him and he felt like crumbled dust blown upon by evil spirits.

  To fortify himself he took the quill again and wrote:

  ‘Dear Sir, I beg the prayers of all about you that I may not be daunted by the powers of Hell, and that I may when dying be graced with pity and with tears. I beg that when you are praying for fatherless orphans, you will remember my two pretty babes.

  ‘Pardon the rude style of this paper and believe me that I am, dear sir, your humble and obedient servant,

  ‘WILLIAM MOMPESSON.’

  That letter sealed and placed with the other, he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. A great weakness was upon him and the air seemed full of voices as if he was called in this direction and that.

  “What am I,” he muttered, “but a quickening mass of clay?”

  Even an attempt to reason with God’s dealings was a presumption, even to make an inner cry of anguish against the fate that had robbed him of his wife, that had put this task upon him — even that was a sin. ‘I must go on, I must be patient, I must do His will. And perhaps afterwards my God will give me a sunshine after tempest — a drop of bright essence after so much foul mud.’ The Rector scarcely noticed Ann Trickett and Bessie going about the house on their several duties. They seemed to him but flat shapes without substance or colour. He answered their questions kindly and ate the food they put before him. Sometimes he roused himself to bid them both leave the Rectory, for he and Thomas Stanley could shift for themselves, and surely he was a doomed man. He felt a grave indisposition upon him and believed he hastened his death with every breath he sucked in. Once he spoke to Bessie with great tenderness.

  “Thou hast done enough, child, and mayst now think of purer air. Go up into one of the cottages in the mountains and live there until the infection is over/’ But his thoughts soon went even from Bessie, and he did not hear her answer. But as through many mists he saw her smiling and guessed at her denial. Bessie, like himself, was consecrate. But no symptoms of the plague appeared on any of the inhabitants of the Rectory and the Rector went about his duty, though expecting every time he bared his bosom to see the spots that were the mark of death placed there.

  Five days after his wife’s death he made up the register again.

  There had only been three days — the sixth, the twenty-sixth, and the last day of August — in which no one had died, while the whole number who perished in the other twenty-eight days was seventy-eight. The number of people in the village on the first of that month had been under two hundred.

  “There are now,” said Thomas Stanley, as he helped the Rector fill up the register, “few left to die. Our tasks grow lighter, sir, there are not so many now to visit. The houses eastwards and to the middle of the village are nearly all empty.”

  “Ay,” replied William Mompesson, “and those at the west, and they are but few I think, have shut themselves in and will let none cross the stream. How many do you consider are left?”

  Thomas Stanley, who was the more active of the two and the one who went more frequently abroad and knew the desolation that reigned in the farms, the outlying huts and hovels, made out that the souls under their joint care were then under one hundred persons.

  If the plague did not abate, but continued at this rate of mortality, everyone in the village would be extinct by the first or second week in October.

  Thomas Stanley calculated that there would be ten or a dozen corpses left unburied — the last survivors having no choice but to fall and corrupt in the street or on the threshold of their homes. With an iron fortitude that caused William Mompesson to shudder, he made his plans that he now put before the Rector.

  For, as he said drily, the plague might increase instead of decreasing, and if it occurred at a higher rate than hitherto, all might be extinct in another fortnight or three weeks. Therefore they should prepare a paper, giving the state of affairs clearly, and enclose it with a copy of their Wills and the register in as stout a parchment case as they could and have it ready to set upon one of the boundary stones when they saw the final catastrophe occurring.

  “And we must leave directions,” added the dissenter, “that my Lord, at Chatsworth, shall send hardy people, preferably those who have had the plague, down into the village to bury the remaining dead, to burn the furniture and linen in the pest-house, and to send another clergyman here to consecrate such graves as still be forlorn.”

  “Yes, we will do that,” replied the Rector, steadying himself. “And I will leave instructions on my wife’s grave of the tomb that I desire set above it, and the inscription. A square, solid tomb with at the corners four stone pillars and thus I would have the inscription.”

  He drew a piece of paper under his hand, on which he had written in a clear writing and elegant Latin:

  ‘Catherine, wife of William Mompesson, Rector of this church, daughter of Ralph Carr, Esquire, late of Cockden, in the County of Durham, was buried on the twenty-fifth day of August, Sixteen Sixty-six.’

  “It is well enough,” said the dissenter. “Why concern yourself about such matters now?”

  Taking no heed of this interruption, the Rector continued, smiling to himself slowly and sadly: “I would have an hour-glass cut between two extended wings — she died so young — and underneath on a tablet ‘Cave,’ and nearer the base the words: ‘Nescitas horam,’ while at the other end shall be a skull with the words: ‘Mors mihi lucrum.’ Why do I linger here?”

  “These are but trifles and frivolities,” rebuked the Puritan. “There are still nearly a hundred souls in our charge, and all of them are in distress, wailing with pain or mortal anguish. As I passed by Sythe Torre’s hut this morning, I heard rude lamentations issuing, and when I entered the place, I found that his wife, Joan, had died and the son whom he greatly cherished. So I believe that hard heart has been struck at last. He told me, with many horrible blasphemies, that his wife had often entreated him not to bring the goods from the infected cottages into his place. But he would, and had hoarded them there. And I consoled him for that, for it was like enough the woman and boy had died in any case.”

  “But he seems immune,” said the Rector, with a look of horror, “as if the Devil indeed did protect him.”

  “Maybe he does. Satan has a certain power,” admitted Thomas Stanley grimly. “I have been myself twice to the spot that Sythe Torre has told me of and where he says he has seen the Enemy of Man grinning from an ivyed rock. But I saw nothing. Yet if I did, I believe I could force the foul fiend to give a
n account of himself.” He spoke with such emphasis that the Rector was moved even out of his own bemusement to look at him shrewdly and say:

  “You are a strong man yourself, Thomas Stanley.”

  “I have been through war and prison and other pestilence than this. I have had my blind and desperate fits, I have been through my heap of dark days. But it seems that God has made a truce with this dust that I am.”

  “Thou art assured of salvation?” asked the Rector, folding up the register of dead. “Tell me, before once more we go about this work that seems so useless, thou art assured of Paradise?”

  The two men looked at each other steadily across the golden morning light that filled the study where they stood. For William Mompesson had risen with his question and the dissenter had never been seated.

  “Dost thou doubt?” asked the Puritan steadily.

  “I did not speak of myself, but of thee,” replied William Mompesson.” Methinks thou hast no great gladness or radiancy about thee as a man who expects to be soon in eternal glory, but rather a doggedness as one who does a duty out of a native courage and obstinacy.”

  A smile softened Thomas Stanley’s coarse features.

  “Did He not beckon out my brutish soul, even from the grave and womb of darkness? Dost thou think the link between Him and me could be broken now? Though I go my way in silence, I am not asleep. What is it to be, what shall it be to you that this pestilence has a little abridged our life? View thy forerunners, William Mompesson, are they not all humble dust, crushed beneath the foot or left to the winds? Do not all things teach us to die, point out the way we must go? Do not birds, beasts, trees, flowers, herbs in the fields, take their leave and die? Have they not one large language — Death? What is to turn mist to beams, damps to day but the glory of the Spirit?”