God and the Wedding Dress

by Marjorie Bowen

  A new mine, known as the Edgeside vein, had lately been discovered and found to be very rich in ore, and this promised fortune showed in the lively preparations being made this year for the St. Helen’s Wake. Mr. Mompesson knew that this meant added riches for himself — some said that his stipend would be raised to something near a thousand pounds a year presently. Kate and Bessie had been very pleased at this talk, but he had felt uneasy. And he felt uneasy now again when he recalled the grim rebukes of Thomas Stanley.

  The villagers returned his graceful salutation kindly; if he had not much impressed them as a man of God like Mr. Stanley, they bore with him because he was a handsome, amiable young gentleman, who always spoke to them courteously and who did not much interfere with them.

  The Rectory stood back from the road, close to the church and in considerable grounds. Mr. Sherland Adams had let it fall into disrepair, and Mr. Stanley had turned it into a poor-house save for one room in which he lived, so Kate had burst into tears when she had first seen her new dwelling. But Sir George Savile had allowed repairs to be made and sent furniture from Rufford Park, while Kate and her sister had travelled as far as York to buy hangings and mirrors.

  Then the Rector had sent to Nottingham for such chattels of his own as his parents had left him and had been stored with a relative, and Kate’s uncle, Mr. Beilby, had sent some gifts, so that now, four months after their arrival in Eyam, the Mompessons were set out in a state that rivalled that of the few gentle families in the district, the Corbyns, who were rebuilding the old Manor House, the Lysons of the Hall, near Middleton Dale, and a few others of the better sort, who resided near Eyam. Yet Mr. Mompesson was conscious of a return of that distaste of his new surroundings which he had not yet been able to overcome. Eyam was truly in the wilderness and the Rectory a mean place compared to Rufford Park; he was ashamed to find that he was calculating how soon the profits from the new lead mine might come, and if they would justify him in adding a wing to the house that had been so much too large and fine for Thomas Stanley.

  *

  The two women were in the large panelled room that looked on the rose garden and, through the gate in that, to the orchard where the beehives stood beneath the fruit trees; the sunshine was full on the group in front of the handsome mirror with the tortoise-shell frame and the bands of dark blue glass that had been a present from Lady Halifax.

  Catherine Mompesson was seated on a low stool and Elizabeth Carr on a cushion by her side; the young matron wore a gown of pale grey cloth with a falling lace collar and laid seams of green braid, she had sea-green ribbons in her hair, at her bosom and wrists; she was a slight, gay creature, with fine, bright brown ringlets and large hazel eyes, her features childishly small and pretty, her complexion too brilliant to need the velvet patch she had stuck by her delicate chin.

  Five years of marriage and the birth of two children had not sobered the Rector’s wife into any gravity or heaviness of deportment; at twenty-four years of age, she seemed no older or more serious than the younger sister who sat beside her, wearing a gold coloured gown of a bird’s-eye pattern and holding up to the dazzling light a sample of white satin.

  Bessie Carr was darker than Kate, an abundance of glossy, chestnut curls hung gracefully from her small head, and charm was given her insignificant features by her animation, sparkle and radiancy of her clear eyes and pure complexion. In the cushioned window seat slept the other Elizabeth, the Rector’s little daughter, curled up in her muslins and silks, with the curtains drawn forward to shield her from the sun’s bright rays.

  William Mompesson paused at the door and smiled tenderly at this peaceful scene. But he recalled the stinging rebukes of the dissenter and inwardly admitted that there was truth in them. The room was handsomely furnished; there were inlaid cabinets, a sideboard with silver flagons, portraits in gilt frames, damask hangings, chairs with velvet cushions, cups and platters, and the two young women in their expensive garments, with patterns of tinsels, satins, buckrams, braids and fringes scattered over their knees and on the floor beside them.

  “We are choosing the wedding clothes,” smiled Catherine. “And yours, too, my dear — even if you must wear gown and bands, I’ll see that they are of the finest quality.” He had no heart for a rebuke, though he thought they made too much of this wedding and spent a good deal of time and thought on the preparations for it, rejoicing, besides, with too open a guileless pleasure, on the worldly advantages of the match.

  “Where do the patterns come from?” he asked, trying to show a courteous interest in their dainty task.

  “From Derby,” said Kate. “Mr. Vickers got them for us; they came by the carrier this morning. Mr. Vickers is a clever tailor, for this outlandish place.”

  “But is not your finery complete?” asked the Rector pleasantly; he took the place beside his tiny daughter in the window seat and looked with a deep affection at the sleeping infant.

  “Not complete,” cried Elizabeth Carr, who was always ready to chatter. “Most of the dresses are made, but there are household furnishings and ornaments to attend to — you know that John says I am to have new goods in a new house…”

  “And there, Mompesson,” put in Kate quickly, “is a chance for you to read us a homily, on a new heart too.”

  “I cannot preach to you, Kate.” Mr. Mompesson smiled a little sadly. “Save when you go to church and then, I think, you do not listen.”

  “Nay, but I do, and think what a fine figure you make in the pulpit…”

  “Do not laugh, Kate, for I am like to make but a poor figure in Eyam. These people give no heed to me. To them I am not only a stranger, but almost a foreigner.”

  The women spoke together.

  “They are so barbarous, so wild…”

  Mr. Mompesson hushed this pretty clamour. “They are given into my charge. And when this wedding is over, Kate, you must go among them more, and make friends with them, and help them.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Mompesson gave her lord a mischievous glance. “I must, indeed! Why, I hardly understand what they say — and they stare at me as if I was a mummer at a fair…”

  “And I’m sure,” added Bessie eagerly, “I don’t know how you expect Kate to remain in this lonely place…”

  “Will not you live here?” asked the Rector. “What of the fine new Manor House, Bess?”

  “John has promised to take me to Derby and to Buxton. John will not be tied here, as you will be. We shall have a coach, we might even go to London. And we’ll carry Kate with us, too, say what you will, dear sir.”

  “Truly,” put in Mrs. Mompesson eagerly. “I hope we do not stay here long, even now in the summer I feel shut in by these mountains — so far away from the rest of the world; and what must it be, for desolation, in the winter…”

  “We are not in Muscovy or Cathay,” said the Rector gently, “but a few miles and you are in a fine town, Buxton or Sheffield…”

  “He protests against himself, dear,” smiled Bessie to her sister. “He feels exiled here, too; how different his spirits are from what they were at Rufford Park! Is he not often apart in a melancholy?”

  “It is true,” agreed Kate tenderly. “Where were you to-day? You had George abroad so long I sent Ann after you, and she found you where I knew you would be, in that solitary glen.”

  The Rector was impressed by this picture that the two young women, with simple sincerity, gave him of himself. It was true that he had fallen into a pensive, inactive habit, had become slothful and languid, since he had been confronted with the difficulties of his new post. “I must amend my own ways,” he admitted, “the task I have weighs on me. I feel that it is one for a better man. One older and of more power. I should do more with these people, who have become very irreligious under Sherland Adams’s idle ministry…” He did not add the thought that was in his mind — that there were many in his parish who were God-fearing, but that these were secretly followers of the Rev. Thomas Stanley and heeded him
, William Mompesson, not at all.

  “Let it go,” said Kate easily. “You do your duty and the people are content. I wonder only that Sir George sent you here. Pray, before the winter comes, beg him to send us to another living or take us again to Rufford Park.”

  “Nay, my Kate, we have been cream fed, cushioned on silk, too long.”

  The young women laughed and their delicate mockery roused him; he saw, with a sudden painful clarity, the whole pleasant scene as an enchanter’s delusion. These two lovely girls, the beautiful infant, the handsome room, the prospect beyond, honey, roses, fruit, all the symbols of ease, of luxury, of rich idleness — what manner of man, of priest was he to be content with this?

  He rose and approached the laughing Bessie and the smiling Kate and said to them earnestly and with deep tenderness:

  “I am at fault. I should set you a better example. I conjure you, both of you, to give no cause for mockery. I am the Rector, Kate, and you are the Rector’s wife. What was suitable for Rufford Park is not suitable here,” he glanced at the boxes of patterns, the cuttings of braid and tinsel. “I will have this wedding plain, Bessie. You have no other guardian save your uncle, Mr. Beilby, and he is of my mind. All must be sober, even plain. Besides that, gauds are not fitting our station, we cannot afford them.”

  “John is well enough for money,” pouted Bessie, fingering a length of azure ribbon.

  “His father’s settlements are not very generous, dear. And whatever he has, your provision does not come from him until you are his wife. I’ll have no debts, Bessie. No useless expense. It is my charge to see your little fortune wisely bestowed.”

  “How serious you are, Mompesson!” protested Kate. “Is this a time for homilies?”

  “Alas, if I speak lightly, you give no heed to what I say. I have observed much hustle and coming and going here…”

  Kate flushed; she had always been so affectionately dealt with by her husband that the least reproof from him wounded her keenly; lately she had, with the sensitiveness of a young, delicately nurtured woman, resented his absent-mindedness, his fits of melancholy, his long withdrawals to the solitudes of the mountains and the glens, as much as she had resented the uncouthness and isolation of Eyam. “I hope I know a woman’s business best,” she said warmly. “Bess needs much stuff before she can set up housekeeping. I make what economies I can. But my sister cannot go like a beggar… ”

  “She need not go, either, like a great gentlewoman,” replied Mr. Mompesson. “Indeed, Kate, I want no pomp that is likely to set us above our rank and to rouse malice and unkindness among those to whom we should be an example of humility…”

  Kate bit her lip, silenced by this show of authority, but hurt and rebellious; Bessie hung her head and the Rector left the room conscious of having ill played his part, of an uneasiness and uncertainty in himself that ill fitted him to play the mentor to anyone.

  He had more serious grounds for concern than the charming, if exasperating frivolity of the two young women; his man, Jonathan Mortin, had met him on his return and told him that, during his absence, Sythe Torre had come to the Rectory, speaking of an urgent matter on which he wished to see the Rector. Urgent it must be, Mr. Mompesson reflected, for the miner to have left his work so early, and he shrank from any contact with this uncouth, almost savage fellow, who had so bad a character even among his coarse fellows. ‘I suppose he comes a-begging,’ and he told the servant that he would see Torre when he returned, as he had promised to return that evening. ‘It is my plain duty,’ he told himself; he had another, even more disagreeable. He must go to the Manor House and speak to John Corbyn on a matter that had come to his knowledge — a thing, perhaps, of no importance, and yet perhaps a thing of great moment.

  He did not like the Corbyns, a proud, hard family, he thought, which was not diffident about expressing a sense of condescension in marrying their heir to the Rector’s portionless sister-in-law. The haughty parents, Mr. Mompesson knew, had been heard to say that the match would never have been made had not John Corbyn met Elizabeth at Rufford Park, where he had gone to pay his devoirs to the new Lord of the Manor. Only the kindness of the Saviles for the bride-to-be had made her acceptable to the Corbyns, and the appointment of William Mompesson to Eyam, which might have seemed so apposite, had rather irritated these local gentlefolk, who would rather have had Sir George’s chaplain than the Rector of Eyam in the family.

  Of these feelings Mr. Mompesson was well aware, and they did not help to increase his liking for his new position. Nor did he feel altogether easy at trusting the happiness of little Bessie, which was so closely woven with the happiness of his Kate, to John Corbyn, for whom he had little respect. But outwardly it was a fine match and Bessie was deeply in love, so there was nothing for the Rector to do but to make the best of it, and he set out through the summer gold towards the Manor House, which stood a little beyond the village.

  The sun was declining and the miners were returning to work in their little fields and gardens before the evening meal; self-absorbed as he was, William Mompesson took no heed of these rude parishioners beyond a casual touch of his beaver; he was thinking, with compassionate love, of the two young women, whose pleasure he had perhaps spoiled by his rebukes. How pleased they would have been had they known that he had met the Earl, how eager to go to Chatsworth, that was even more splendid than Rufford Park.

  This reflection brought sharply to his mind what my Lord had said: ‘If they do not know, do not tell them.’

  For a second Mr. Mompesson could not recall to what this referred; the matter was vague and, compared to the affairs that he had on his mind, unimportant. But it was as well for him to recall the Lord Lieutenant’s warning, which was this — the plague that had been so frightful a scourge in the capital last year that the court had removed to Oxford had, after subsiding during the winter, returned, in some slight degree, to London.

  Well, he smiled to himself, they were as safe here as if they had been in Cathay, shut a hundred and fifty miles away in this mountain fastness; but if poor, sweet Bess really tried to induce her groom to take her to London, why, then, he must tell her of the Earl’s warning; but his smile deepened as he reflected how over-cautious my Lord was in even mentioning this recurrence of the plague in London — why, if it had been in Derby even, there would have been no fear, so cut off from the rest of the world was this little community in the Peak.

  And it was with a pang near to regret that Mr. Mompesson recalled that neither he nor his wife had as much as an acquaintance in the capital, for he, when he had visited London with Sir George, had much admired the splendour and eager energy of the life that his patron and his friends led in Whitehall.

  The Manor House had long been leased by the Corbyn family, who farmed a large district and owned a lead mine in another part of the Peak; wealthy marriages had increased their importance considerably, and Catherine Mompesson was justified, from a worldly point of view, in rejoicing that her sister had made so good a match as young John Corbyn, only child of Ambrose Corbyn and heir to all his property.

  The Rector paused at the gate and looked at what was to be Bessie’s house; the stone-masons were working on the new wing and the portion that was being rebuilt was covered with scaffolding poles. It would be some months before the work was completed and meanwhile the young couple were supposed to lodge in the Dower House, a small antique dwelling lower down the valley, so incommodious that it afforded Bessie a fair excuse to travel.

  Mr. Mompesson passed through the gardens, now disturbed by the builders, and stood before the old Manor House south door; above this was a circular stone, on which was the crest of the Corbyns cut deeply. A raven on a wreath, perching under a vine, with the date 1560 cut beneath. As the Rector’s hand went out to the iron bell-pull, he saw young John Corbyn coming towards him through the orchard at the side of the house, and he turned aside to meet him, coming up with him in the field known as the Manor Yard.

  The two
young men exchanged greetings and spoke of the wake, for which the Corbyns made extensive preparations. They feasted and entertained their tenants and servants and this year this rejoicing was to be on a large scale, for on the last day of the wake John Corbyn was to marry Bessie Carr. This family had a peculiar connection with the festival, for they held their lease on the condition that they should keep a lamp perpetually burning before the altar of the patroness of the wakes, St. Helen, in the Parish Church.

  John Corbyn seemed surprised at this visit from the Rector and, when he had talked rather boastfully about the handsome show his family would make, he fell into a silence that was slightly awkward and left the conversation to the other man.

  Bessie’s betrothed was a fine young man, tall and well shaped, with thick yellow hair cut square on his forehead, light grey eyes that easily assumed a sullen expression, and good features, slightly thick and coarse. His country clothes were expensive and not free from a hint of foppery in the bunches of ribbons on his shoulders and at his wrist.

  “I have to speak to you on a vexatious matter.”

  John Corbyn at once became hostile; he had never made any disguise of his ill-concealed dislike to the Rector; he protested — what tiresome affair would be brought up now?

  “Your conduct in Bakewell,” said Mr. Mompesson kindly. “Upon a hint I determined to make inquiries and found that your behaviour has been such as I must take notice of…”

  “You put an affront on me!” replied the young man, his sanguine face flushed darkly.

  “I am Bessie’s guardian,” said the Rector, who had expected this anger, “so pray check your wrath and way of thinking. You are not a month off your wedding and you sit in ale houses with mummer’s wenches.”

  “Who told you?” demanded John Corbyn, pausing in his walk and sticking his hands on his hips.