God and the Wedding Dress

by Marjorie Bowen

  “The link! The link!” cried William Mompesson. “Ay, that’s it — the link ‘twixt God and me. Sometimes a dead sleep is upon me, I shrink and pine, I cannot feel that I am next to Him. Is it enough to pay one’s debts, to face death and do one’s duty?

  “Surely,” replied the Puritan, “it is not enough. But thou dost more. Thou hast thy moments of prayer. Thou hast no vices or sins, Mompesson, to soil and haunt thy door. Thou canst be cured — and speedily. Thou mayest yet feed among the lilies.”

  The Rector did not answer. He stood with downcast eyes leaning heavily on the back of the chair on which his arms were embroidered by Kate’s impatient fingers. And the Puritan added:

  “And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption — to wit, the redemption of our bodies.”

  September continued in sultry heat, and William Mompesson kept under his hand his Will:

  ‘Inasmuch as a great calamity has befallen this town or village of Eyam, and death has already visited my dwelling, as all are in daily expectation of death, and as I humbly consider myself on the verge of eternity, I therefore while in sound mind do give and bequeath as hereafter noted my worldly effects…’

  The gates of the churchyard were now closed against the dead; even those who had money could not purchase a shroud, much less a coffin. Those whom Sythe Torre did not draw with a napkin round the neck were taken out on an old door or chair to serve as bier.

  Nearly forty people died during September. This death toll was not as high as the dissenter had expected, and they came into October with still more than fifty souls under their charge.

  Nor had the seeds of the disease ripened within the Rector. He said he had cast off the indisposition that had seized him soon after the death of his wife, and seemed despite all his privations and fatigues to be restored to a perfect health. Nor was Thomas Stanley touched.

  No one broke the solemn injunctions laid upon them by the two clergymen to attempt to leave the village. Apart from their habit of obedience and any generous resolve they might have made to stay the infection spreading over the district, they well knew they would be beaten back, if they tried to pass the boundary into a neighbouring village; for a woman who had tried thus to escape and who had been found in a field about a mile or two beyond the boundary, had been stoned by a farmer and his children and forced, bruised and exhausted, to return.

  Nor did the Lord-Lieutenant send any help beyond encouraging letters and such provisions and medicines as were left upon the stones. He wrote in terms of warm admiration of the work done by William Mompesson and Thomas Stanley, and rewarded their efforts, as he put it, by informing them that save one or two scattered instances that had been promptly dealt with, the plague was concentrated in Eyam and had not spread to the neighbouring places or towns, and the outbreaks that there had been in Buxton and Derby had been quelled. Indeed, the whole neighbourhood was healthy, except this village of desolation, which seemed to have been offered up as a sacrifice or scapegoat in order that Derbyshire might escape the pest.

  When the Rector read this letter, he was in the field at the back of the church, and the autumn landscape was gold and bronze and honey-coloured about him, and the sky was purple overhead and the air infected with a sickly, faint, yet luscious smell, as if the last autumn flowers that straggled in the hedgerows were tainted by the corruption of the soil.

  He folded up the letter, which had been brought him by Sythe Torre, and thrust it in his bosom, and a dull spasm of revolt shook his frame. ‘Why was I elected to do this work? I did not like these people, I did not belong to them, I have lost my Kate and all my happiness.’

  He wished that the plague would move more swiftly and by death end this expectation of death. If but two a day died, another month would see them all at peace.

  William Mompesson longed to burst the bonds of his own fatigued flesh and prove for himself the reality of Heaven and reunion with Catherine. He had glorified his love for her, so that now in his memory it surpassed that of lovers or husband and wife and became a mystical passion.

  And so did the desolation about him, and his fatigue, and the constant sight of suffering and death, and the stern fortitude of Thomas Stanley exalt and support him, that he scarcely noted when Bessie died.

  She had looked, he knew, for days pale and sad, but he could hardly remember when she had looked otherwise. And when he missed her from the supper table and Ann Trickett said she was a-bed, he had risen up almost mechanically and gone to his laboratory and opened the new stock of cordials and physics sent by the Earl and taken out what was needful for the early stages of the plague and gone to Bessie’s room.

  She had refused everything, though with sweetness. For months she had been slowly detaching herself from life and now she welcomed, with ecstasy, release. She had a secret to tell him before she went. That was something that startled him, even apart as he was from worldly things.

  Bessie Carr, before she died, told her brother-in-law that Janot or Nell, the mummers’ girl, who had been the paramour of Jack Corbyn, was living in the deserted old Hall.

  “And I used to take her food every day, for she dare not come out, as the villagers think she is a witch and a wanton and would probably stone or drown her. You know, since the old woman, Mother Sydall, died, Janot has nowhere to go. So she crept out there. And once when I went, because it had been Jack’s home and was going to be mine, I found her.”

  William Mompesson moistened the girl’s dry lips.

  “I know what you would ask me, dear heart — that I should continue to protect this wretched creature.”

  “Yes, she is truly repentant. She is prepared to die. But do not let it be like a dog’s death, without comfort.”

  That night Bessie Carr died herself, and Ann Trickett swathed her in all that was left to them of linen — two petticoats ripped open and joined down the middle, and Jonathan Mortin and the two clergymen carried her out, and though the churchyard was closed, they took her in at night and laid her beside her sister, close in one grave.

  “We must believe,” said William Mompesson, “that God loves us. We must believe that He will respect our courage and our dignity. We must believe that in His infinite goodness He sent the plague into Eyam in a wedding gown.”

  When he had said these words to himself, the Rector leant forward, and dating his letter ‘November the twentieth, sixteen sixty-six,’ he wrote to John Beilby, Esquire, the uncle of his wife, who had in charge the two children.

  ‘DEAR SIR,

  ‘I suppose this letter will seem to you no less than a miracle. That my habitation is inter vivos.

  ‘I have got these lines transcribed by a friend, being loth to affright you with a letter from my hand.

  ‘You are sensible of my state, the loss of the kindest wife in the world, whose life was amiable and end most comfortable. Had I been as thankful as my condition did deserve, I might have had my dearest dear in my bosom. Now farewell all happy days, and God grant that I may repent my sad ingratitude.

  ‘The condition of this place has been so sad that I persuade myself it did exceed all history and example. The town has become a Golgotha, the place of a skull, and had there not been a small remnant left we had been as Sodom and Gomorrah. My ears never heard such doleful lamentations, my nose never smelled such horrid smells, and my eyes never beheld such ghastly spectacles. There have been seventy-six families visited within my parish, out of which two hundred and fifty-nine people died. Now, blessed be God, all our fears are over, for none have died since the eleventh of October and the pest-houses have long been empty.

  ‘I intend, God willing, to spend this week seeing all woollen clothes fumed and purified for the satisfaction and safety of the country. There have been such burning of goods that the like, I think, was never known.

  ‘For my part, I have scarcely apparel to shelter my body, having wasted m
ore than I needed merely for example. During this dreadful visitation I have not had the least symptom of disease nor have I ever had better health. My man had the distemper and upon the appearance of the tumours I gave him some chemical antidotes which operated and after the rising broke he was very well. My maid continues in health, which was a blessing, for had she failed, I should have been ill-set to wash and have gotten my provisions.

  ‘I know I have your prayers, and I conclude that the prayers of good people have rescued me from the jaws of death. Certainly I had been in the dust, had not violence been conquered by holy omnipotence.

  ‘I have largely tasted of the goodness of the Creator, and the grim looks of death never yet affrighted me. I always had a firm faith that my babes would do well, which made me willing to shake hands with the unkind and froward world. Yet I shall esteem it a mercy, if I am frustrated in the hopes I had of a translation to a better place.

  ‘And God grant that with patience I may await for my change and that I may make a right use of His mercy. As the one has been tart, so the other has been sweet and comfortable.

  ‘I perceive by a letter from Mistress Newby your concern for my welfare. I make no question that I have your unfailing love and affection. I assure you that during my troubles you have had a great deal of room in my thoughts. Be pleased, dear sir, to accept this as a sign of my kind respect for you and all my dear relations.

  ‘I can assure you that a line from your hand will be welcome to your sorrowful and affectionate nephew,

  ‘WILLIAM MOMPESSON.’

  He concluded the letter and sealed it, placing it in another envelope addressed to the Lord-Lieutenant with the desire that it might be fumigated again at Chatsworth and copied by a safe hand, that of my Lord’s secretary, Mr. Newton. For he did not wish to send direct to the house where his children sheltered any letter from the infected town.

  Then he rose and glanced round the bare room. The tapestry was gone, and the chair embroidered by Kate’s hand, and the carpet on the floor, and the Persian drapery on the side table.

  As he said, he had wasted more than he needed for the sake of an example. All these treasures had been burnt on the village common, together with the poor rags used by the patients in the pest-house and the simple hangings and rude bedclothes of the villagers.

  Mr. Mompesson was even a little cold, for he had tossed into the flames most of the woollen suits that he had worn during the preceding winter, it being his rooted conviction that the germs lurked longest in woollen material. And he had left but one cloth cloak, and that an old one that he had kept at the back of the press and that was not, therefore, he thought, tainted.

  He left the room with his letter and gave it to Ann Trickett, who was putting out food on a tray.

  “Take this up to the stone, Ann,” he said, “for Jonathan Mortin must come with me. We try to finish the burning this week.”

  The manservant joined him; he was yellow and bent, his face marked with purple scars, for he had, by a miracle as all exclaimed, recovered from the plague, and with, his recovery, regained much of his strength. Always a silent man, he now seldom spoke at all, and the Rector would have thought that he had lost touch with God save that he was always assiduous at morning and evening prayer, and always came when a service was held in the Cucklett Dell, kneeling throughout, not sitting as some did, through apathy or languor, on the stones.

  The Rector thought that these outdoor services might now cease. The weather was becoming colder, there were frosts at night and the fallen leaves lay thick on the winter-bitten ground.

  Fumigants had been burnt in the church and William Mompesson and Thomas Stanley agreed it might be used again. There were now, counting those who straggled in from the hovels they had built themselves on the moors and in the rocks, about thirty people to attend these services.

  The Rector and Jonathan Mortin, carrying between them a pile of napkins, cloths and the hangings from Kate’s bed, which the Rector had spared to the last, proceeded through the winter afternoon to the common.

  The bonfire was lit; a straggle of flame rose against a murk of smoke that obscured the infected houses whose black windows and open doors showed their emptiness.

  Janot was helping two other women to pile some fragments of wood from the pest-house on the heap of charred furniture and hangings.

  William Mompesson took from his servant Kate’s bed curtains worked with her design of foxes and acorns and laid them by the bonfire.

  Chapter VIII

  THY BEGGAR GLAD

  THEN the Lord-Lieutenant learned from the letters left upon the boundary stones that the plague had ceased in Eyam, and that a month had passed without there being any sign of it either in the village or on the surrounding farms, he came with his servants, secretary, and physician to visit the place to see who might be surviving and to offer his help to Thomas Stanley and William Mompesson with whom he had kept in such close touch during all the time of the desolation. For my Lord had refused all entreaties from his family to leave Chatsworth and had remained at his post, using great diligence and skill in procuring even the most outlandish demands of the two clergymen and their flock in the way of medicines and antidotes, so that on some occasions ingredients worth many pounds had been sought for from afar and left on the stones without price.

  Shortly before his visit to the village, the Earl had been wandering in a gloomy mood in the large grounds of Chatsworth, which then were covered with a light fall of early snow.

  He had been musing by the banks of a small rivulet, which the frost was not yet strong enough to lock up, and he had seen stranded among the submerged pebbles and smooth stones a piece of paper folded like a child’s paper boat, and he had recalled at once how he and William Mompesson had stood talking together, before the plague was even thought of in Derbyshire, while the little boy had made these boats from sheets of his father’s sermon and had sent them floating down the stream.

  So he went on one knee and caught the piece of paper up from between the stones. On it was written some incoherent words in an ink that had been washed but not become illegible: ‘The year of the plague, sixteen hundred and sixty-six:

  There’s not a wind can stir,

  Or beam pass by,

  But straight I think, though far,

  Thy hand is nigh.

  ‘Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father. To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Amen. Amen.’

  The Earl had this poor paper in his pouch as he rode through the stricken village.

  Everything was changed in Eyam, even to the superficial glance of the outward eye. The houses, having lacked for some while any repair, were most of them dilapidated. Doors hung askew, window-frames empty, the roofs were broken, the chimneys fallen. Grass, now winter-parched and dying, choked the wide streets, and lank lush weeds, still kept fresh by the running water, hampered the stream that divided the western from the eastern end. There was no guard at the old lych-gate where for so many generations the villagers had taken turn to watch.

  “How many left alive did Mr. Mompesson say?” the Earl gravely asked his companion, Mr. Walbeoffe, the physician, and he answered: “He said thirty persons. And of those, my Lord, I believe some half live in the outlying farms.”

  “There is no smoke from any of the chimneys,” said my Lord, “although the winds are surly.”

  It was a grey and frost-bitten day; dark curling clouds eclipsed the winter sun when the little cavalcade reached the common that had been the scene of St. Helen’s Wake. The melancholy sky overhung bare trees, trampled and defaced grass, a heap of fallen masonry where the pest-house had once stood and a great space of burnt ground and ashes, from the centre of which rose a column of smoke steadily into the still air from a small bonfire.

  Round this moved a group of dull figures that my Lord, reining his ambling horse in softly, looked at w
ith amazement, for he knew none of them.

  These people had their heads bound with rags, brown in colour from repeated dippings in vinegar, but not foul. Indeed, my Lord observed as he approached that these people, though but scarecrow wretches in their general outline, were wondrous clean, their hands being discoloured and sodden from scrubbing, their faces chapped, cheeks close-shaven, their hair cropped.

  They wore coarse country clothes and sprigs of herbs were thrust into their nostrils. Two of them smoked short clay pipes.

  As they moved about their work, which was the burning of garments and pieces of furniture, which they broke first with mallets and hammers, they sang, to a rude native melody, a hymn. Their voices, though harsh, were sure and full of zeal.

  ‘Leave, leave thy gadding thoughts,

  Who pores And spies

  Still out of doors,

  Decries

  Within them naught.

  The skin and shell of things Though fair Are not

  Thy wish, nor pray’r,

  But got

  By mere despair Of wings.

  To rack old elements Or dust And say

  Sure here He must Needs stay

  Is not the way Nor just.

  Search well another world; who studies this Travels in clouds, seeks manna where none is.’

  Hearing the horses, these haggard people stared up, stayed their singing and one lean wretch cried:

  “What, hast thou brought us more stuff to burn? Soon there will not be a napkin or a wollen coat in the whole of the Peak.”

  “Mr. Mompesson!” cried my Lord, deeply shocked. “Mr. Thomas Stanley! Who is here? I entreat you to come forward!”

  He now perceived in the fore-front of the miserable group three men and a woman, the latter defaced by what seemed a leprosy over her countenance. There was nothing in raiment or looks to distinguish them, and it was a moment or two before my Lord knew these ragged men to be Mr. William Mompesson, Mr. Thomas Stanley, and Jonathan Mortin, the servant.