God and the Wedding Dress

by Marjorie Bowen

  As he sat beside the stream down which George, his little son, had once sent the paper boats folded from sheets of his sermon, his thoughts flew desperately wide. He felt like the general in a besieged city with a scant garrison, few means of defence and a low stock of provisions. But worse than the terror of his position was the sense of the clouds above, weighty and dull, as if he were put away and divorced from the will of God and indeed knew not what his Maker would have him do. Nor could he conceive why the plague that had left the whole country-side free, or shown itself but a little in a city like Derby, should have broken out in this solitary spot.

  And he remembered what Sythe Torre had said, about God’s judgment, and foolish — yes, surely they were foolish — incidents like the driving of the cow into the church before St. Helen’s Wake came into his perturbed mind.

  He was so absorbed in his sad meditation that he did not notice that Merriman, the dissenter’s iron-gray horse, was tethered to an ash tree not far away, for the colour of the beast was easily lost in that of the shadows. So it was with a start that he became aware of Thomas Stanley approaching him; he hardened himself against the Puritan and made a motion of his hand to hold him off, saying:

  “Do not approach me, I may carry the disease of the plague.”

  “You know well enough,” replied Thomas Stanley, with a dour smile, “that I have been in Eyam as much as you have and have probably been infected.”

  “I’ll not endure it,” said Mompesson, whose state of fatigue, strained patience, and apprehension was not such as could endure the persistency of this grim man. “I shall be compelled to warn the constable that you must be arrested, if you persist in interfering with my ministrations.”

  Thomas Stanley seemed to take no offence at this rebuke, indeed he looked kindly, almost with compassion, at the worn features of the Rector, whose attire was not so precise and nice as usual, whose linen bands were ruffled, whose black cravat was untied.

  “I have a proposition to make to you, Mr. Mompesson. These people are mine, I know them, their natures, their stories, their families far better than you can, for I was years in the place that you now hold. You have been here scarce a twelve-month and are still a stranger. Take away your wife, your sister, your children to some safe spot — Sir George Savile will house you at Rufford Park or find you another cure. Leave Eyam to me. You know, sir,” he added simply, “that you can trust me with these poor people in their affliction.”

  The Rector smiled in his turn.

  “Do you think that I would fly my post, leaving it to you?”

  “It was done commonly in London,” replied the dissenter. “Many Church of England clergy went into the sweet air and left the Nonconformists to do their work.”

  Mompesson shook his head.

  “You are a brave man, though obstinate, and fanatic, Mr. Stanley. And even if I were minded to accept your offer it would not be tolerated. Were you to come forward openly in Eyam, you would be re-arrested.”

  “I think not, there are not many who are eager to come to Eyam now, and if I were doing good work for the souls and bodies of these poor people, I think I should be allowed to pursue my task of making the living waters flow even through dry dust.”

  The Rector rose abruptly.

  “You must leave me and leave this talk, and take yourself away, Mr. Stanley, for this plague is beyond all computation horrible. Every day another falls of the disease; so many fast and foul decays unsettle the mind.”

  “It is a strange thing,” remarked the Puritan reflectively, “that it should return. They say you know something of medicine, sir. Have you studied what this plague may be and how it may pass from one to another?”

  The intense interest of this question and his burning eagerness to discuss it with someone cool and intelligent, for there were none such now in Eyam, caused Mr. Mompesson to answer, regardless of their former controversy:

  “I have indeed studied. I do little else in what leisure I have. Since young Fulwood died, I have been investigating the matter. I sent then into Bakewell and to my Lord’s physician for such books as might be had, and I have the tracts published by the Royal College of Physicians. I do not even know what this plague is. Is it the black death that came so often before to England? Is it the African fever bred in Ethiopia or Egypt, of which Pliny speaks? Does it, as he asserts, travel always from south to north?”

  “It is more important to know,” observed the dissenter shrewdly, “not what it is, but how it spreads.”

  “I can get no certainty on that point,” replied Mompesson. “There is one ancient author who mentions a feather-bed that proved mortal and had been carried from one infected family to another. There is a tale that bandages of one who had died of the plague were put between the wainscot and the wall of a house in Paris and many months afterwards the person who took them out immediately died. I have heard tales, too, that in Holland the plague was carried from one village to another in clothes.”

  “It is supposed that it travels in goods of a loose texture which hold imprisoned the seed of the infection,” said the Puritan. “All declare that in this epidemic it came to London by some ships from Cyprus, or the Levant, through Amsterdam and Rotterdam. I have heard, too, that it was brought in some woollen goods from Holland to London last December twelve-month. And is it not true what I have heard whispered in Eyam, that it came through a box of clothes or patterns sent to Vickers, the tailor?”

  “I believe that to be true, then the severity and frost of the winter seemed to kill the plague. Surely it is to do with the heat, the infection must have been lurking in something that lay frozen up during the winter and was released again with the sun. But what it was I cannot think, for everything I could lay hands on that had to do with the infected person I burnt.”

  “You made good use of fumigants, too,” said the dissenter. “The place smelt like a spice box.”

  “Yet it was not sufficient and I blame myself. I am the only educated man in this place- — the Corbyns and the country gentry scarcely come here, and their minds are so little on these things. And I have studied medicine, yet I could not prevent this.”

  “It was not God’s will that you should do so,” remarked the Puritan sadly. And the conventional words had a double-edged meaning to Mompesson’s mind.

  “It must be God’s will that we should suffer so,” he agreed. “Tell me why this foul horror should be sent and I placed here to face it, all unfitted and unwilling as I am?”

  “I cannot interpret God’s mind to you,” said Thomas Stanley, “I can only assure you that it is God’s will that the plague is in Eyam and His will that you face it. And if, humanly speaking, there is nothing you can do, then you must stay among your people — since you obstinately refuse my relief — and comfort them as best you may.”

  “Has it to do with the weather?” The Rector frowned and put his weary hand over his wrinkled brow. “I have heard that pestilences come with earthquakes, droughts, excessive rains, or pestiferous winds. Yet there was nothing here, save the extreme cold of the winter, and the heat now — it is something excessive for June in the mountains.”

  “I have read,” said Mr. Stanley, “that three hundred years ago or more, when the black death went through Europe, the foundations of the earth were shaken from China to the Atlantic, and we may suppose that it is the baleful influence of the atmosphere that brings the pest. Sometimes it comes, they say, in a thick stinking mist; at one time this lay right over Italy and it was of such deadly nature that thousands fell down and expired in agony.”

  “But what is this contagion,” asked Mr. Mompesson, “something invisible? That is what I cannot understand — what is it that leaps from one to another? It is certain there is no law about it, it is utterly unreasonable. A woman who died four days ago had a child five months old, who lay in the same bed with her, but it has escaped the disorder. And there is another ancient woman, upwards of seventy years old, who had it, but
has recovered. Her two little grandchildren, who were in the same house with her, received the infection and died.”

  “It is not for us to probe these mysteries,” replied the Puritan, “but to do the task assigned to us.”

  “It is my task, not yours,” replied the Rector, with a sigh. “I thank you for your offer, Mr. Stanley. I admire your bravery, but you must leave me alone at my post.”

  “You undertake to do more than it is in the capacity of one man to perform,” said the Puritan in a note of warning. “Do you think that you, hampered as you are by your love for your wife, your sister, your two children, by your care and affection for your servants, can administer to all these people? What will you do if the plague becomes worse?”

  “God help me! It can hardly be worse,” exclaimed the Rector mournfully.

  “It well may be. A hundred thousand, they say, died in the last year in London. You had about six hundred persons under your care and so far only a hundred have died. Supposing all of them are sick, supposing they fall round you quicker than you can count? Who is to bury them, who is to keep some order among them, who is to administer to their souls? You have not even a doctor, you have no skilled help!”

  The Rector was for a moment tempted to take into an alliance this courageous and intelligent man, who seemed more full of the fear of God than he was himself, who was not tortured by his own sensitiveness, his doubts and conflicts. But it was against his principles to have dealings with any who did not belong to the Church of England. So, making very few words about the matter, he declined the help of the Nonconformist and once more begged him to be out of the district that was now so terribly infected, and to leave him to do as best he could in Eyam.

  And he thought it his duty to add a warning, that he had defied the law for the sake of his kindly feeling for the dissenter long enough and could do so no more.

  And that if Mr. Stanley was found in Eyam it would be his, the Rector’s, duty to tell the constable to take him to Bakewell and so to the gaol in Derby.

  The dissenter did not reply, save by a curt inclination of his head, and turning away loosed Merriman from the ash tree and led him along the glen in the direction of Chatsworth.

  William Mompesson felt that he had done his duty both in declining the help of the dissenter and in threatening him with prison. Yet it was with regret that he watched the shabby, stalwart figure disappearing behind the tree-grown rocks and boulders; he, Mompesson, not Thomas Stanley, had been broken by the rebuke.

  When he returned to the Rectory, Jonathan Mortin, without a word, showed him a paper on which was written the names of three more families infected since that forenoon with the plague.

  William Mompesson said nothing. He washed his hands with vinegar, put another pomander in his pocket, took up his box of chemical antidotes and went out into the village street.

  It is always difficult to become accustomed to a great calamity, terror weighs intermittently on the spirit and always has the aspect of an evil dream. So the young Rector, coming out of his pleasant home and skirting the churchyard wall and pausing for a moment under the golden fragrance of the linden trees, could hardly believe that this dreadful horror had befallen him.

  He looked at the graves; the last were roughly made, the sexton and the two miners who had given up their work to help him had cut the turfs hurriedly and hastily put them into place. There were many now who had no headstones nor were there any wreaths of spring flowers about their resting places.

  Three more families infected…Death set all out of joint, even the tranquil summer day.

  He walked slowly down the street, there were few people in sight. He reflected again and anxiously upon the fact that those upon the western side behind the stream seemed to be free from the infection, and he wondered if it was the running water that stayed the plague.

  If he had but a little more knowledge! Was there any wise man anywhere who could inform him of what to do? But he consoled himself a little by remembering that in the capital, where the most skilled physicians in the country had gathered together in conclave, and where public-spirited men had worked diligently at every possible expedient, still the scourge had not been stayed until the great city was desolate.

  He began to turn over in his mind what they had done there. He remembered some tales coming through to Rufford Park of Sir George Savile sending a handsome subscription to the Lord Mayor’s Fund for the relief of the victims, and how arrangements had been made to take food into the stricken districts, and how nurses had been employed by the City Fathers to go to those families where there was none left well enough to nurse the others.

  Mr. Mompesson remembered, too, some of the tales about these nurses. How they robbed the sick, sometimes pulling from under them the very sheets that should have served them for a shroud, and he thought that if he could find some such cool and hardened creatures in Eyam, it would help him in his task.

  At the first house that he visited a little girl was ill. She lay on two pillows on the floor in an upper room where all the windows were closed and the air was thick and sweet. The plague spots had already appeared on her breast, and her mother, kneeling beside her, was giving vent to piercing lamentations.

  William Mompesson was already well used to the progress of this disease. It varied little in its manifestations; it began with shivering, hot and cold fits, headaches, sickness, then delirium; then the appearance of the fatal tokens, the plague spots on the breast and thighs that meant immediate death. At best the illness never took more than three days; sometimes it was sudden, as in the case of Jack Corbyn. A man or woman would fall down at his or her work, a child at his play, and be dead before they could be carried to the pest-house.

  In this case, as in others, the Rector found a painful difficulty in removing the patient from her home. The mother protested and wailed, the father stood by, sullen and inactive. And he had to send for Jonathan Mortin to help him carry the child to the little plague-house on the green.

  When they reached this, the Rector left the child to be cared for by the two women who worked there — one was the district midwife, the other a woman who was supposed to have much skill in nursing. Both had already had the infection last October and were supposed to be immune.

  There were four sick people in the pest-house, and these, seeing the Rector, made a clamour to him to speak to them, for they had been but recently smitten. Indeed, so rapid was the plague in its progress that those in the pest-house were either lively or dead.

  The Rector could not stay long, for he remembered two other infected families that he had to visit, but he went up to the bed of one man to whom he had given a dose of Peruvian bark that had been sent him by Sir George Savile with a letter that it had been used with great effect in Spain and Belgium, and that in the recent plague in Holland had not failed in a single case in Delft. It was supposed to keep down the fermentation of the blood and thus lower the fever and the paroxysm of delirium.

  But this man, who had had the new and costly remedy — two pounds was charged for as much as would make twenty doses at The Black Spotted Eagle in the Old Bailey, or at Mr. John Crooks, Booksellers, at the sign of The Ship in St. Paul’s Churchyard — appeared no better. He complained of headache and want of sleep and said he had axes and hammers and fireworks in his head that he could not bear.

  The Rector gave him a quieting potion and turned to the other patients, two of whom in their delirium had fallen off their truckle beds and lay on the floor, the women being unable to lift them. And indeed Mr. Mompesson could see that labour spent on them would be wasted, for they were plainly marked for death. He still felt surprised by this calamity, which seemed too gross for relief. He winced before the horror that lay in ambush for his soul.

  He went on his way through the village, resolving with deep distress, that he would not try the Peruvian bark again, for it might be well enough in an ague or a seizure, but it was clearly useless in the plague. And as he conside
red how unreliable these medicines were, he could not blame the poor people who kept charms in their bosom or tied round their wrist and who, despite all he could say, crept out at night to visit old Mother Sydall upon the moor, or who sent in whenever it was possible to do so to The Brass Head at Bakewell to buy amulets and potions.

  At the next house he visited, a young man had been stricken. He was a miner and had fallen down on returning from his work. His wife was in the apathy of despair. She declared that she had expected this, since she had seen the white cricket only four days ago, while the death watch had ticked for three successive nights.

  Mr. Mompesson saw that the young man was too far gone to think of moving him to the pest-house, so he sat beside him and read the service for the dying, although the patient, ranting in his delirium, took no heed.

  And then he went his way to the third family, and here an old woman was ill, lying on the floor in a paroxysm, while her widow daughter and three children stood staring at her in curiosity and dismay. Before he could do anything to relieve this patient, a boy came running up and told the Rector that there was another man ill in the house by the stream that divided the village.

  When William Mompesson, now feeling faint, sick, and weary himself, reached with a lagging step this house, Jonathan Mortin walking behind him with the medicine-box and the Prayer Book, he found that it was Ealott, the constable of the village, who had been smitten, a strong man who had weathered many sicknesses, including the sweating and the pox.

  This fellow sat on his chair by his hearth and was shivering, yet complained of burning heat. He had his senses, though his speech was thick and his eyesight double, but what concerned the Rector most was that by his chair stood Thomas Stanley, in his coarse country clothes, which brought a scent of the heather in the air sullied by sickness.