God and the Wedding Dress Page 2

  And there was little George to educate — ‘he must go to Cambridge’ — and little Bessie to portion — ‘she must marry a gentleman.’ So, on these grounds alone, the young man was well advised to accept the rectorship of Eyam and the stipend of one penny per lot — every thirteenth dish — of ore obtained from the lead mines that, together with the manor of Eyam, had come to Sir George Savile from his great-aunt, the Countess of Pembroke. Nor was this tithe mean; the income varied from three hundred to nearly five hundred pounds a year and more than sufficed for any possible expenditure that could be made in this place.

  “It will provide for you, your wife and children,” Sir George had said, and William Mompesson resented the money that was the base lure to hold him in this wilderness.

  ‘Am I to die here?’ he thought, with a touch of wildness and glanced round at the sloping banks of the little glen, at the crest of trees and at the mountains beyond as if he surveyed prison walls.

  He had heard how, in the old days, one parson would stay all his life in one parish — how many years? — he had lived but twenty-six himself, forty more would scarcely see his span out.

  Surely the Earl had looked at him shrewdly, wondering what a man of his parts was doing here. Why had he not become a scholar attached to his beloved University, a soldier with the world before him, a curious experimenter in medicine and chemistry? There were livelihoods to be obtained through any of these vocations.

  William Mompesson knew why he had taken Holy Orders. It was because he had felt a searing enthusiasm for God.

  He knew also why he had accepted the chaplaincy with Sir George Savile. It was because he had been tempted by the insidious, not ignoble, bribes offered by life in a magnificent household where intelligence, taste, fondness for beauty, ease, wit and refinement were gratified to the full.

  As he now pondered over his case, he realized as he had never realized before, how that early, sweet and delicate love of God had dwindled and been almost smothered during the five years he had spent in attendance on this splendid and dangerous patron.

  ‘Did I love God, this post would not be hard. Do I not, then, love Him? Am I a hypocrite?’

  He looked down at his little son; the child, suddenly tired, had fallen asleep on the crushed beds of mint and parsley; an unspeakable tenderness touched Mr. Mompesson; he stooped and gathered the warm, drowsy face, the soft, dimpled and relaxed limbs to his bosom. Here was flattering, ready love; here was affection easy to understand.

  The boy awoke and cried out after his boats; but one was sunk and the other gone far down the stream.

  “Will you hear the voice, George?” asked Mr. Mompesson: making a trumpet of his hands he called: “Love God,” and the rocks gave back the echo — “‘Love God.’”

  *

  The young clergyman’s mind was distracted with petty worries that he despised and yet that he could by no means overcome. These clangours of worldly matters overlay his deeper preoccupation with his own soul and his private honour.

  He considered himself the guardian of his wife’s young sister, Elizabeth, and he was not satisfied that she was making a good match with young John Corbyn; Mr. Mompesson was not pleased with the way his own wife delighted in the worldly aspect of this marriage, nor even with her attitude towards her new life. She had been in Eyam since April and more and more could he guess at the dissatisfaction behind her loyal but alarmed reserve.

  Kate had lived as softly as himself at Rufford Park and Thornhill, the friend of Lady Savile, admired, flattered — and now this — a country parson’s wife in this wild place. It was no wonder Kate had welcomed with childish pleasure the excitement of her sister’s wedding and had made far too much of the money and position of the Corbyns.

  ‘I must speak to Kate,’ went constantly through Mr. Mompesson’s mind, always followed by, ‘but what can I say?’

  Then there was the problem of his flock, strange unruly people, secretive, hard to understand, alien to him in everything. Some of the miners in particular were almost savages in the estimation of the cultured scholar. There was one, Sythe Torre, who seemed beyond all discipline and who led his fellows in many disgraceful and indecent pranks; he mocked, almost openly, at the new pastor, though he seemed abashed before his fine wife. And Torre was but one of the odd and difficult characters now in the spiritual charge of Mr. Mompesson; there was Mother Sydall, whom all believed to be a witch, and the herb doctor and the astrologer at The Brass Head in Bakewell — ‘God help me,’ thought Mr. Mompesson, ‘but they are no better than pagans. And their rites and customs come from heathen times.’

  In his abstraction he stumbled over a stone — this snatched him out of his reverie and at the same moment he heard his name and saw a tall figure coming towards him up the glen.

  “Mr. Mompesson, while you were meditating, your little one was falling into the stream.” And the speaker put forward the child who, with wet skirt and rosy face, clung to his hand.

  The blood rushed into William Mompesson’s cheeks; this man was one whom he disliked, and who was one of his griefs and troubles — Thomas Stanley, the dissenting minister who had been appointed to Eyam under the rule of Oliver Cromwell.

  “I thank you,” he said stiffly, “I was forgetful.” He took his son to his side. “The boy was chasing his paper boat, but it has gone.”

  “Perhaps,” replied the Puritan, “his father chased as trivial a toy — or were your deep musings on holy matters?”

  “Sir, they were private. And your sour censures, whenever we meet, strain my patience.”

  “If your patience never has more to bear than my poor rebukes, you are fortunate,” replied Mr. Stanley steadily; he fell into step beside the young Rector — who foresaw, with vexation, that he would be forced to listen to another tedious discourse from the man whom he so heartily disliked.

  Thomas Stanley was about fifty years of age, healthy and robust, with a deep chest and the slightly bowed legs of a constant horseman; he had been a chaplain to the Parliamentary troops and ridden with them in many campaigns; he was the son of a saddler of Chesterfield and had nothing of what Mr. Mompesson looked for in a gentleman. His coarse, thick grey hair was close-cropped, his blunt, not ill-shaped, features were empurpled and thickened from continuous exposure to the weather; an ugly scar puckered one cheek; his hands were like those of a labourer, and his clumsy homespun black garments were worn and faded, while his stout leather boots were patched and roughly laced with hide thongs over his rudely knit stockings.

  Mr. Mompesson could have endured these offences, but he could not tolerate this ignorant fellow’s assumption of a sacred office, his defiance of the Church of England and his indifference to breeding and scholarship — and his persistent interference in the parish from which he had been ejected on St. Bartholomew’s Day, five years before.

  The new Rector was also galled by the fact that Thomas Stanley had been revered and obeyed in Eyam and that the respectability of his character was in notable contrast with that of Sherland Adams, the man whom he had replaced and who, after the Restoration, had replaced him. Mr. Mompesson was bitterly aware that the Nonconformist still visited several of his former parishioners and, for all he, the Rector, knew, held services on the hill-side on the moors.

  As they reached the mouth of the glen where it widened into the heath, the road and the village, Mr. Mompesson saw Ann, the maidservant, coming towards them, her grey gown and white apron cool in the sunshine; the child was late and his mother had sent for him; ‘careless Kate,’ her husband thought tenderly, ‘was never careless where the children were concerned.’

  He bade the boy run ahead, and when he had seen the woman take charge of him he turned to the sternly disapproving figure at his side.

  “Sir, this is not the first time that you have forced your company on me. Let us come to an issue, so that, hereafter, we may leave one another in peace.”

  “Those are peevish words,” replied the Purita
n, his deep, steady voice touched with scorn. “To what issue can we come?”

  “I bid you look to your ways.” Mr. Mompesson flicked at some thistles with his light cane. “Sir, your interference in this parish will not be tolerated. I am very well with Sir George Savile, who is Lord of the Manor, and with my Lord at Chatsworth, who is Lord-Lieutenant —”

  “But art thou," interrupted Mr. Stanley, “very well with God?”

  “That is between a man and his conscience," retorted Mr. Mompesson curtly.

  “Examine well that conscience of thine," said Mr. Stanley. “For many years I held this post — not always abiding here, but going much among the rude and scattered peoples of the north. Tyranny expelled me and I was forced to watch that unworthy man, Sherland Adams, usurp my place — ”

  “Sir, these complaints are familiar to me,” interrupted Mr. Mompesson impatiently.

  The Puritan continued unheeding:

  “He cared for nothing but his tithes — what he might wring from the mines, and exasperated all with his litigation. You are no better, Mr. Mompesson, with your fopperies and your fine lady wife and the junketing at the Rectory."

  “I no longer heed these charges that you bring against me so continuously," replied Mr. Mompesson with warmth. “But since your railings are vexatious, you rude man, I must bid you begone from my parish, Eyam, Foolow, Eyam Woodland, Bretton, Hazelford, my boundaries, the brooks and the river that you know so well.”

  “You bid me!” smiled the Puritan. “What are you or your patrons, or your boundaries, to me? I perform the will of God.”

  And he would not be silenced, but ran over his charges against the new Rector, his worldly elegance, the refinements of his household, the Papist ornaments he had introduced into the church, the frivolity of his wife and sister-in-law, who thought nothing of the poor, but who kept themselves for such gentle families as there might be in this Hundred of the High Peak, such as the Corbyns and the Lysons — and what better than neglect and worldliness could be expected from one who had been a courtier to a great lord and who bowed before such a notable malignant as the Earl at Chatsworth? Courtesy at first kept Mr. Mompesson in his place, then an ironic amusement that such bold speech should come from one so. forlorn. For the dissenter was penniless and proscribed; Mr. Mompesson did not know how he contrived to live, though he shrewdly suspected that some of his former parishioners subscribed to support Stanley; and the Rector remembered, with some shame, that the fine stipend that he enjoyed had never been drawn by the dissenter. During the suspension of the manorial rights, the tithe on the product of the lead mines had been abandoned and Stanley had received, for labours that none doubted had been zealous and arduous, a mere pittance. But Mr. Mompesson put that out of his mind and said sternly:

  “I respect you for an honest man and I advise you for your own good. You have no business here. I know that you go still from house to house, helping the ignorant people with their business and their letter-writing, and under this colour praying with them.”

  “I have not denied it.”

  The Rector struck again at the thistles. “It is against the law. I think, too, that you dare to hold meetings — up in the hills or moors. It is known that last year you would not pay the steeple rate. Nor would you contribute to the Easter offering.”

  Mr. Stanley replied quietly: “For the first, one shilling and fourpence was demanded, and for the second, five pence. And they took my horse, whose value was over five pounds.”

  “For your field preachings, I might set the constable on you, yea, have the soldiers from Derby. You mind how those people called Quakers were dispersed last year?”

  “Yea, and dragged away by the legs, with their heads on the ground,” replied Mr. Stanley, “and taken before a Justice of the Peace, who sent them mittimus to Derby Gaol. There they were kept in a cell where they could not stand upright and their keeper struck them in the face when they prayed to God.”

  “Such is the law against dissenters,” said Mr. Mompesson firmly, “and I have been long-suffering.” He turned towards the village, the warm wind lifting the auburn curls from his shoulders, a flush on the handsome face that provoked the Puritan’s contempt. “But you, sir, must leave my flock alone. Mr. Sherland Adams was lamentably indifferent to spiritual matters. But I stand for the Church of England.”

  Mr. Stanley dropped into his easy stride beside the young man and answered: “How deeply art thou mistaken! Both in thy menaces to me and thy confidence in thyself! I shall abate nothing of my ways because of thee. It maybe that thou shalt abate thine because of me. It maybe that God will speak to thee in this place, which is to thee so wild and savage. And then thou wilt leave thy easy living, thy music, ribbons, idols, dancings, perfumes and curlings.”

  Mr. Mompesson looked curiously over his shoulder at the speaker, “I am not the idler you think me, Mr. Stanley,” he smiled, his vexation gone, for he felt that beneath a rude exterior this man was modest, humble and brave. “I have studied, worked and pondered.”

  “I make nothing of thy learning, Mr. Mompesson, Master of Arts, as thou mayest be. Nor of thy ponderings. Take heed to these people in thy charge. Their souls will not be saved from the Pit by shows of images or lute playings or honey-sweet talk. Look to these wakes, sir, they begin shortly. See if you can control the wild, the wicked and the blasphemous in these days of festival and licence.”

  “Could you, when you were Pastor here?” demanded Mr. Mompesson.

  “Yes,” answered the Puritan simply. “But under Mr. Sherland Adams bad customs prevailed again; last year it was like a heathen rioting. And the Rector himself sat in an ale-house, The Miners’ Arms, and drank and jested.”

  At this talk of the coming merrymaking, known in Eyam as St. Helen's Wake, Mr. Mompesson's spirits sank; he did indeed feel unequal to the prospect offered by the outburst of profanity and licence, idleness and buffoonery, that he had been assured characterized this festival of harvest, which remained pagan in almost all its aspects; especially did he dislike this thought, because St. Helen’s Wake coincided with Bessie’s marriage, another matter before which he felt inadequate.

  “You are afraid,” said Mr. Stanley, who had been observing him closely. “This charge is too heavy for you, Mr. Mompesson. For you have a conscience.”

  The village on its pleasant valley was now before them, and the Puritan, giving the other no time to reply, abruptly turned and retraced his steps along the paths, purple with the flush of red heather, that wound towards the dell.

  Mr. Mompesson looked back after his sturdy figure and almost envied him, for Thomas Stanley knew the peace of a single mind and a steadfast heart. Almost, not quite, for William Mompesson would not have cared to live, as the dissenter probably lived, in holes in the rocks, in barns, on charity. William Mompesson would not have cared to go roughly clad and to exist without all those pleasures that gilded life for him, nor without Kate and his two children.

  *

  The village of Eyam, which William Mompesson slowly approached on the late afternoon of this warm July day, lay in the south-east part of the Parish of that name and six miles from Bakewell. Two little townships, Foolow and Eyam Woodland, and two hamlets, Bretton and Hazelford, completed the Parish; the whole was confined in the Honour of Peverel of the Peak, and in the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry.

  The Rector faced a wide street, nearly a mile in length, as he approached the Rectory from the dale, built, who knew how long ago, on a tableland of limestone, sandstone and shale, which curved through the valley surrounded by the lofty hills of the Peak. The street, of uncommon width, was guarded at the eastern or Town end by the gate known as the lych-gate; this the villagers took it in turn to watch by at night, more out of regard for ancient custom than through fear of any possible danger. Beyond this gate, which stood open in the daytime, the street widened to the spacious green and Cross, then narrowed again to the Townhead, or western part.

  The village
took a serpentine course and there branched from this long street, twisted lanes, the Causey or Causeway, the Dale and the Water Lane. In the centre rose the church, almost completely hidden at this season of the year by the foliage of some magnificent linden trees; above these boughs, amber-coloured from the sunlight, only the squat grey tower with the four finials was visible.

  The dwellings that lined the street were simple, one-storeyed cottages, some tiled, some thatched, some flush on the wide road, others with stone-walled gardens round them; some detached, in a square of ground, others in a row; such as had space possessed neat ranks of straw-covered beehives, and many had a little pasturage in the rear where a cow was kept.

  A capacious inn with a wide entrance for carriages stood on the green. The efforts of a journeyman painter had depicted a glossy and gigantic Bull's Head on the sign. Further on there were two ale-houses of modest pretensions, The Foresters' Arms and The Miners' Arms, while another inn, The Townhead, and two other alehouses, The Rose and Crown and The Royal Oak, furnished the western part of the village. To the open disgust of Mr. Stanley and the secret dismay of Mr. Mompesson, this village of less than three hundred houses and less than five hundred inhabitants had six ale-houses.

  Eyam was almost deserted as the Rector walked slowly along the main street, a few old folk and children, with sleeping dogs and yawning cats, sat at their doors, spinning, gossiping or dozing in the sun. The men divided their time between the lead mines situated in the rocks of the Peak and agriculture; most families were self-supporting with their cows, poultry, bees and hay. The mines were very old and paid better every year; a man did not need to work long hours there in order to earn a good income for a labourer or peasant. These mines, besides supporting the Church, paid a tithe to the Lord of the Manor, and the expenses of their own administration by a Barmaster, Steward and yearly court called the Barmoot. The mines themselves belonged to the Parish of Eyam by virtue of a Charter supposed to have been given by King John, which no one, however, had seen.