Chapter V

‘AN ANGEL TALKING TO A MAN’

 

WILLIAM MOMPESSON had withdrawn into the dell nearest the village, where he might find some solitude for meditation and yet be near at hand, should his services be of a sudden required, as was very likely during the plague.

In May, only three had died of the plague, and hope had revived again in Eyam, and there had been a relaxation of the strict rules that the doctor, Mr. Walbeoffe, from Chatsworth, had laid down, and Mr. Mompesson in his reports to my Lord-Lieutenant had been able to write cheerfully of the future.

But it was now June and as uncommonly warm as the winter had been uncommonly severe, and the plague had returned with exceptional malignancy; since the death of young Fulwood, the tailor’s apprentice, seventy-four people had died of the plague or of an illness presumed to be plague; and terrible as that scourge had been, it was as nothing to the desolation that afflicted Eyam now.

Three weeks of June had gone and in that period of time thirty had died and ten more were ill.

The wealthier inhabitants of the village, those who dwelt about the lych-gate on the western side beyond the stream had, many of them, left the district, and all the strangers, such as the masons who had been employed upon repairing the old Manor Hall, had gone, as well as several of the miners who were not natives of Eyam, but had come to lodge there for the convenience of their work. Nor had Mr. Corbyn, the esquire, returned to look upon the grave of his only son, while there had been no word or sign from some of the other considerable families who lived a short distance from Eyam, nor had William Mompesson sent for them.

The situation was fast becoming such as taxed all his resources, almost overcame his courage. There was scarcely labour enough to carry the dead to the churchyard. Unassisted, the Rector had to read the funeral services at the rate of one a day, comfort the sick and dying, hold services, and preach in the church that now was always full.

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 considered 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.

“Good evening, sir,” said the dissenter. “You see that the man whom you spoke of as likely to arrest me is my friend and sent for me. He has been unwell for two days, but did not like to speak of it. I was on my way to see him when I met you but now.”

The constable himself spoke and the Rector stood silent, gazing at his livid face, his dragged mouth, his heavy eyes.

“Sir, I meant no disloyalty nor disrespect to you nor to the Church. Mr. Stanley was my pastor for years, and I wearied after him as did others.”

The dying man coughed and turned his head aside, and the dissenter gave him a glass of plain water, which he sipped slowly; his lips were strained and had a bluish look, his deep chest heaved painfully; he began to fall into a delirium, but through his broken words the Rector understood his deep desire that Mr. Thomas Stanley and the Rector of Eyam should work together at this time of distress.

“Do you not think,” demanded the dissenter, looking straight at Mr. Mompesson, “that God speaks through this poor man’s mouth? The very man whom you would have made the instrument of my punishment? If you will not give me back my ancient post here, at least permit that I remain and help you in your task.”

The Rector was silent, debating in himself, but as the neighbours came in to remove the constable to the pest-house on the green, he felt a strong conflict within himself.

Easy to obey God, if one knew His commands! Had He spoken through the mouth of the village constable who in a few hours would be dead?

“Let thy faith,” urged the dissenter, “take a practical turn, friend. Thou canst not do this work unaided; there is more even than we can contrive to accomplish together.”

“I accept your help,” replied the Rector quietly. “While the plague endures, at least, let us bury ancient controversies and plan together, you and I, how we may meet this trial. First,” he added, “you must come to the Rectory. You can no longer live in the woods and fields, a fugitive from the law.”

“I will come with you gladly, and we will stand together, shoulder to shoulder. There is no situation so terrible that there is not some wise and worthy way of meeting it. Even now, as I did in Derby gaol, I feel God in every breath that passes and every beam that falls.”

That night three more cases of the plague were reported in Eyam, and the Rector and the Puritan sat together in the laboratory making their plans; the first suggestion came from Thomas Stanley.

“You must send away your wife, her sister, and the two children. This sacrifice is not required of you. Have you friends or relations anywhere near?”

The Rector thought of the uncle in Yorkshire, Mr. Beilby, who would very gladly receive Kate, Bessie, and the children.

“Let the woman who has been so faithful — Ann Trickett — go with them.”

“It might be,” smiled the Rector, “that I should never see any of them again.”

“I do not disguise that you, as well as myself and perhaps everyone in this village, are doomed. It is because of the great danger that I advise you to send these women and children away.”

“It shall be done, they shall go within two days. Though it is difficult now to get carriages and horses, since none who can avoid it come to Eyam, still there is a coach and there are horses at the old Manor Hall, and I think the Corbyns would not begrudge me the use of them.”

“When you have sent away your dear ones,” continued the dissenter, “we must make our plans like good generals. The pest-hut on the green must be enlarged and more women employed to serve there.” “If such can be found.”

“Such can be. They will obey me,” replied Mr. Stanley. “Then such houses as have been deeply affected, where all the family has died, must be shut up and fires burnt in the streets as they were in London. Some physicians say that coal-fires are better, and some prefer wood. But as here we have no coal and but little wood, we must use what we can get. And such rags, furniture, and mattresses from infected houses as we have will serve to feed the flames. All these people must be put upon strict rules. Brandy and strong waters must be forbidden, for those who drink them catch the plague the sooner. We must engage more stout fellows to dig graves, and if death continues at this rate, we must dig a pit in the churchyard and put them all in as they did in London and even in Derby. We must have a cart and a horse and warning bell, and we must have one who goes about and writes ‘God have mercy upon us’ on such houses as have the disease that the others may take heed.”

Mr. Stanley made these statements with an authority and a decision that showed he had been long thinking out the case, and the Rector looked at him with admiration. But he added quietly:

“There is one thing, friend, that you have not thought of, and that is that no one, when I have sent my family away, must leave this place, lest we spread the infection over the whole of Derbyshire.”

“Do you think that we can induce these people to remain where they are? Many have fled already, too many.”

“None of the gentry are left in the district,” admitted the Rector. “But there are still something near five hundred people in the village and the surrounding farms, and I propose to tell them that they must stay where they are. I believe they will obey me, even though they know that they might save their lives by flying.” The dissenter’s eyes flashed encouragement. Such a scheme, heroically bold, appealed to his stern nature. He had the temperament of a martyr, self-sacrifice delighted him.

“Perhaps together we can do it,” he remarked thoughtfully. “I have some influence, as you have seen, with these people. We might put a cordon round the village and the outlying farms, beyond which they must not go. Though we were all to die here, it would be a triumph.”

“There are provisions and medicines to be thought of,” said the Rector. “How are we to obtain those?”

“We must, somehow, get a message to Chatsworth. One might go who was healthy and properly fumigated, and we might arrange that on some stone, say the well above Middleton Dell, or that heathen altar, provisions were placed in return for money. The coins could be placed in running water, or vinegar. My Lord’s physician might come and give us directions across the stream. All that could be contrived without delay or difficulty. For such as have business or trade in other parts of the district, they must be told to delay all such matters until the plague be stayed.”

“A regiment of soldiers,” remarked the Rector, “could not keep these people in, there are so many ways of leaving Eyam — by the moors or the dells or the mountain paths.”

“No,” replied the dissenter, “we shall not employ a regiment of soldiers, but the fear of God.”

A considerable comfort had come over the Rector’s spirit since he had entered into a friendship and an alliance with Thomas Stanley. He felt, in a strange way, set aside from mean doubts and querulous fears and protected, and though the meaning and continuance of this scourge was a mystery to him, still his own part therein seemed now clear. It was with a courage that he had not shown for several days that he went into Kate’s bedroom; since his late great fatigue he had slept in his closet and Kate had taken the two children to sleep with her; she was still proud with life and love.

The hired woman had gone to her people and there was only Ann Trickett to help with the house, and the shadow seemed to thicken on the dulled home, even when the sun shone.

Mr. Mompesson thought: ‘How this cloud has come between us! It is almost as if we were divorced.’ And as he had felt so often a gloomy mist between himself and his God, so he felt, and had indeed felt for some time since, a darkness between himself and his wife.

Since the first outbreak of the plague and the flight of Jack Corbyn his pleasant family life had been disturbed; since the death of Jack Corbyn poor Bess, a widow, as it were, before she was a bride, had been completely broken; all was jangled.

The Rector was amazed now to think that he should ever have complained about the dullness of Eyam or drawn contrast between the life here and the comfort, nay, the splendour he had enjoyed at Rufford Park. He was smitten because of his own ingratitude. He tried to put all these private feelings at the back of his mind, and standing beside his wife he told her that Thomas Stanley had come to live at the Rectory and to help with the onslaught of the plague. She answered quietly that she was glad, for she thought the dissenter was a good, brave and able man.

“Bessie likes him, too,” added Kate, looking at her sleeping babes, so peaceful in their little cots of wickerwork, with the coverlets and curtains she had made herself. And she asked if Mr. Stanley, who seemed to her an experienced person, knew of any fresh treatment for the plague.

The Rector turned aside, he did not like to meet the hope that had been lit in her eyes and that he knew he was bound to quench.

“No, dear heart, Mr. Thomas Stanley knows no more than I do. At least, I do not think he has studied the matter so deeply. He has experimented with the same drugs and medical antidotes, the same fumigants. He suggests that we light fires in the streets as long as we have materials. But while we lack wood for coffins, I do not like to use it for this purpose. He suggests, also, that we should add another hut to the plague-house on the green, get some more women to work there. There are those, who have had the plague slightly or come from houses where it has been and have not been infected, who might be willing.”

“I will go among them to-morrow,” said Kate, “and ask them.”

“No, Kate, you will go nowhere in Eyam to-morrow,” said the Rector firmly. And he told her of the plans he had made with the dissenter to send her, Bessie, Ann Trickett and the children away to Mr. Beilby, in York City; he bade her make everything ready, to fold up and pack the children’s wardrobe, putting a fumigant between the garments, to provide each with a pomander and a bottle of spirit and a bottle of water and to write a letter to her uncle.

“I shall write one, too, Kate. There is not time to advise him of our plans, but I am sure that our little ones will receive a welcome. For what they may cost him, I will be responsible. George is old enough to have some schooling now and your uncle might look out for a learned man in York who could do this for us.”

The Rector spoke of this matter to please and distract Kate, but he saw at once that this little subterfuge was useless, for she was not listening.

“Oh, I’m a selfish, hard-hearted woman!” she exclaimed. “I should be so thankful to see my children so safe from danger, yet I can do nothing but grieve.”

“Indeed, Kate,” said William Mompesson tenderly, “we can none of us do anything but grieve at this moment of dreadful affliction. Yet you may take comfort and retire from this cold, rude place with a good heart, knowing that nothing but our duties divide us, Kate, and our affections keep us close together. I shall write to you often. Neither malice nor neglect must come between us! Kate, don’t cry! York is not so far away.”

“I am not going to York. You waste your words. I made my vows to you — ‘until death do us part’ — do you remember that, Mompesson? Well, it is not death yet. The children shall go, and Bessie and Ann Trickett, but I shall remain.”

He saw her lips tremble, her bosom swell, her eyes become moist. Never, even when she had been younger and more beautiful than she was now, had she seemed so lovely to him. His whole spirit felt refreshed as a fountain that is dry and receives a fresh gush from the ground; the cloud between them cracked and showed vital gold.

“Would you stay with me, Kate?” he asked; then putting a stern restraint on his emotion, he hurried on to tell her of the great danger she would be in, and of how neither he nor Thomas Stanley thought there was any hope of the abatement of the plague, nor could they see any means to stay it. And he repeated to her the resolve they had made — that all should be begged to stay in Eyam, “save only those, like yourself, my heart’s delight, who come from houses not yet infected and who wish to go at once. Any mother or old person or child may leave, and I will give them all help.”

She made a sign for him to cease.

“The children go to-morrow with Bessie and Ann Trickett. Say no more, my place is here, and you know it. Do you think I am such an easy, light creature that I could leave you now? Were our vows mere stage and show? Do you think fear could eclipse my heart?” She rose and put her small hands on his shoulders; her tired eyes searched his face.

“You may be ill yourself, you look already worn. I know you suffer. I am so glad you have the help of this good man, Mr. Stanley. I can help, too, though I am young and inexperienced and little. I can nurse and go among the women, and when I am free from my own children, I can look after those of others.”

He put his arms round her, unable to speak, and for a space they clung together, hardly able to believe that this terror had overtaken them in their harmlessness, when all life lay before them, a fair, fresh field.

But she would not be moved; he could not force her away against her will. And he did not know even if he was in the right in trying to move her.

“To be away from you,” she whispered, while he held her close, “is to be dead alive. I should be like a body without its soul. I should be blind and deaf and dumb! Mompesson, it cannot be! I am no spruce wanton to fade when sorrow comes. He who binds and loosens death will help me to be strong.”

“But can you endure to part with the children?”

She did not answer, but kissed him wildly, and he was quite spent with love and pity and wished for the ease of sleep, safe from passion, corruption and fear.

William Mompesson put the case to his colleague, and Thomas Stanley agreed that Kate’s place, if she so chose, was in the Rectory by her husband’s side. But there was no question but that Bessie and the children must go. He himself, being a resolute man of action, made the arrangements within a few hours.

He went to the old Manor Hall and engaged the servant in charge there to lend the carriage and horses in this matter of emergency. He spoke to Ann Trickett and to Bessie and both readily agreed to take the children to York. Ann made no comment; Bessie said she perceived a divided loyalty, but she would go with the children and try to be a mother to them. All was a mystery to her; she was glad to have a plain duty to perform.

Then Mr. Stanley went to the Rector’s study and wrote out fairly a placard to affix to the churchyard porch. And this, which he got the Rector to sign, stated that the two children, the sister-in-law and the maidservant of William Mompesson were leaving the next day for York City, because of the plague, and if there were any other young children or young mothers into whose houses the sickness had not yet come, they were invited to leave the village themselves or to send their babes away, and all help would be given them in the hire of horses or waggons and the provision of lodging for them in some distant farms, if they had no friends of their own.

But for the rest of the inhabitants, all those into whose homes the plague had already come, and all who were not young, having children, or being with child, were required to come to the church that evening, as the Rector had to speak to them on the matter of the scourge that had afflicted Eyam.

Such of the villagers as could read had spelt out the placard by midday and told it to the others, so that there was a fairly large crowd to see William Mompesson’s children depart.

Contrary to the Rector’s expectations, none seemed willing to send their children away. The mothers would not part with them and feared the dangers that might be beyond their native village more than they feared the plague. He had noticed before how isolated these people were from the outer world, and how they dreaded and disliked anyone, even from Bakewell, as a foreigner. They were extremely jealous of their descent and the entire village consisted of perhaps no more than six or seven families who constantly inter-married; therefore, even at this crisis, they were loth to trust their children to strangers. And the only women that were willing, and even these were somewhat reluctant to send their children away, were those in whose homes the plague had already been; and these the Rector would not allow to depart.

But such of them as were not at work in the mines or fields — and every day there were less and less of these through sickness and the apprehension of sickness — had gathered round the low churchyard wall under the golden linden trees and watched the carriage from the old Manor Hall and Ann Trickett, in her best gown and hood and scarf, and Bessie in a black mourning dress with white bands, and the two children come out of the Rectory and enter the carriage that was driven by Corbyn’s old coachman.

There was not very much baggage, for there was but little accommodation for it — only the children’s toys, puppets and animals, made of cloth and wool, were put into the carriage with the children as were their wicker cradles, their bedding and their baskets of clothes.

Little George in his blue tiffany suit was excited by the novelty of a long drive and by the tales his mother had told him of the splendours of York and the treatment he would have from his uncle, who would surely give him a fair entertainment. But little Bessie cried at leaving her father and mother and had to be lifted into the carriage with her rosy fists in her eyes; she was pale and pretty as a primrose; a heavy pomander hung from her neck.

The curious, sullen villagers watched the sisters cling together, Bessie and Kate, with their sunk cheeks pressing close. Ann Trickett seemed cheerful, as if she too enjoyed the prospect of an escape from this place that was always dull and now plague-stricken.

William Mompesson spoke as cheerful words as he could find and kissed the travellers gravely and with a passionate sincerity. Bessie put the letters to Mr. Beilby in her bosom and Ann Trickett had the responsibility of the money that would be required for the journey. So, in little commonplaces and exclamations and running to and fro, the departure took place.

As soon as the little party started, Kate ran to an upper window to stare at the carriage, but it was soon out of sight. She came down the stairs again and without a word either to her husband or to those gathered about the gate, crossed the churchyard where the graves now lay so thickly. In the corner known as the plague spot, she entered the church and went up to the belfry by the stairs the ringers used on Sunday and that she had never trodden before.

She had been very quick and had apprised none of her intentions so that she was not followed. Her husband had soon discovered what she would be at and pityingly bade the people leave her alone; she was light of foot and agile and not likely to come to mischief.

Kate Mompesson went up the stairway, until she came to the top part of the tower where the four bells hung, the first, third, and fourth being inscribed with the mottoes: ‘Jesus be our speed,’ and the dates severally of ‘1590,’ ‘1618,’ ‘1628,’ while the second had the date ‘1618’ and was inscribed: ‘God save this church.’

The belfry was large, there was room for ten bells, though Eyam had never been able to afford more than these four that gave out rich and deep-toned peals when rung by the six men and boys employed as ringers.

Kate took no heed of these bells, but moved to the small lancet-shaped window and there gazed over the village, across the little houses, the old lych-gate, the stream at the western end and at the rude highway that wound over the heath beyond.

The coach went slowly over the uneven ground, the stout horse struggling in the shafts, the coachman driving carefully.

Kate impressed every detail on her mind — the long whip, the curling thong, the boot behind from which the luggage hung clumsily, Bessie leaning from the window and waving to the villagers, and now George’s red-gold head and now that of his sister, Bessie, showing. To her failing eyes the carriage grew smaller and smaller, until it was no larger than the picture in the initial letter in her old Prayer Book.

And then she gave a loud cry that was lost in the boughs of the linden trees, and beat her head against the stone wall, for she was sure that she would never see them again. Angels might be with them, but she would not. Her life seemed purposeless; she felt wasted as a glass of water poured on the sand.

Two more cases of the plague were reported that evening; Thomas Stanley visited one of these and William Mompesson the other, before they attended the meeting that had been called in the church.

The medical treatment the two men employed was the same; it was the best that they knew of after studying so earnestly such books and such knowledge as was available to them. When the fever was declared they gave some soothing medicine such as the plague-waters of Matthias, though they no longer used bark after the Rector’s unfortunate experience. Various elixirs that Mompesson compounded in his laboratory were also administered. Then, when the plague spots appeared, these were dressed with ointment, and if the patient lived long enough, they were cut and cleansed and bandaged with further anointings.

To break the tumours they sometimes used the prescription of the College of Physicians, which was: ‘Take a great onion, hollow it, put in a fig, rue cut small, and a dram of Venice treacle; put it, close stopped, in a wet paper and roast it in the embers. Apply hot to the tumour. Make three or four, one after another; let one he three hours.’

But they had to omit the fig from the prescription as these fruits were not to be obtained in Eyam.

Tobacco was much used and the supply in the village was running short, for such as could obtain it chewed or smoked it continually, for Mr. Mompesson heard that none in London who kept tobacco shops had the plague and that the school at Eton had been spared, because every schoolboy, however young, had smoked a pipe.

They also used some of the recipes recommended by the Paracelsists or Chemical Physicians, though they seemed to Mr. Stanley altogether too mystical. A remedy that had been taught to the people by Mother Sydall was much used secretly. It was made by roasting a dead toad over a vessel of yellow wax and smearing the fat on the sores.

But, despite all this care, precaution, skill and quackery, very few of the patients recovered, though some lingered as many as twelve days and a number to five or six days. But the clergyman knew that many remedies were resorted to besides those that they themselves sanctioned. Not alone Mother Sydall, the witch, but other so-called wise men and women, herbalists and hermits, who dwelt upon the moors, were consulted and many strange and horrible concoctions were brought in secret to the sick beds. There were also many crude operations performed, such as cutting the carbuncles too soon, so that the patients died under the agony. Or making gashes in the sound flesh for the infection to escape, so that many limped about wounded with green or cankered wounds.

The church was full, the door being set wide so that those who could not obtain admission might stand in the outer air and hear the Rector's speech.

He gave first a brief discourse on the text: ‘But go thou thy way to the end, for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the day,’ that was often in his mind.

Mr. Mompesson spoke to his people of how brief and, as it were worthless, was the longest and most splendid life. He declared that it was but a little play before eternity and given to us as a time to prepare for Heaven, and that those who had the most crosses and afflictions in this life were likely to get the highest rewards, when His bright face should beam upon the righteous.

And he spoke of the Judgment Day, when the heavens would be rolled up, and night and day end with one loud blast that would rend the deeps. When all the dead would arise at a second birth, crowding with those who should be living, to the bar of Judgment — fire would rush from the north to the east and sweep up south and west; stars and elements would be confounded and blotted out, and God's thunders would play over chaos. And nothing would matter in the fateful day but cleanliness from sin.

So he spoke to them of the worthless vanity of all the lusts of this earth, and how it behoved them to do God’s will, and to thank Him for any crosses He might send.

And so he came to the main matter of his discourse, which was the desolation of Eyam. There was no need for him to describe the ravages to them, for they had seen it for themselves. Some of those who were there had been sick and recovered, some had lost relatives and friends, others had left sufferers from the scourge at home or in the pest-house, a few yards from them lay the graves of those who died from the plague.

Therefore Mr. Mompesson said nothing of the scourge, but he reminded them that they were all in God’s hands, and that nothing they could do could save those who were marked and that those who were protected could walk immune among the fiercest contagion.

“It may be that you or I, or my wife or your wife, will be the next. But we must go on and do our part, each of us.”

So, in view of the judgment visited upon them, he exhorted them to be industrious and sober and Godfearing, to have no wallowing in impure thoughts and scurrilous conceits, for the day might be at hand when every idle word should be accounted for, and how desperate then should be the condition of those who, instead of grace and life, had thought only of sin and death! And in this moment of terror to leave piety and sobriety would be an inexcusable desertion. But those who would conduct themselves soberly might remember that a door would be opened for them in Heaven.

Mr. Mompesson here paused and looked round the faces of his congregation. There had been a hush among them while he spoke, and their countenances, some brutal, some simple, some comely and some vile, had been tense in expression. As they crowded together in the chancel and aisles, they stood pressed round the ancient stone font, lead lined, where most of them had been christened, and leaned into that aperture in the north aisle through which, legend said, the confession of sins was whispered in ancient times; the common people, and this was an unheard-of thing, were even in the pews of the gentry, which had long since been empty.

All the one-time ornaments of the church had been removed by the Puritans, many by the zealous hands of Thomas Stanley himself, but there still remained the grotesque figure of a Talbot, or dog, on one of the wooden cross-beams, the crest of the arms of the Earls of Shrewsbury, formerly Lords of the Manor of Eyam and patrons of the village. While in one of the windows a few fragments of coloured glass had been suffered, through disdain, to remain, and the July sunlight falling on these cast blurs of gold, blue and red on the tense, anxious faces below.

Mr. Mompesson, in his black gown and white bands, stood silent with his fine fingers on the edge of the pulpit, as if speech had suddenly failed him, and looked down on the stout figure of the dissenter, who stood below him, against the pulpit.

Mr. Mompesson felt he had obtained an added strength from this man’s presence, and the fact that Thomas Stanley was by his side had served to overawe and impress the villagers, who seemed to listen to him with a deeper respect than ever before.

He felt suddenly weary, fatigue, like a great wave, swept over and drenched his spirit. There was much more he had to say, indeed he had not come to the crucial part of his argument, but he stammered and could not put his words together. And then stepping, almost stumbling, down from the pulpit, he touched the dissenter on the shoulder and said:

“You speak to them.”

‘If this is blasphemy,’ he thought, ‘surely God will forgive me.’ He remembered thankfully that Heaven had permitted Thomas Stanley for many years to preach in that pulpit.

With only a slight inclination of his head as acknowledgment, the dissenter at once mounted the humble pulpit. His sunken, wrinkled, yet still keen eyes flashed at once to the three letters, ‘I.H.S.,’ on one of the beams before him. Though he was no scholar he knew the three Latin words they stood for: ‘Jesus Hominum Salvator’ — and they had often been his encouragement and his inspiration.

He spoke briefly with none of the emotion and flowery, if faltering, phrases that William Mompesson used.

“I have been asked by the present Rector of Eyam to help him in this affliction, and we have decided to remain together in the village and do what we can for those who suffer both in soul and body. And we have decided to ask you all to remain enclosed here, dying like true soldiers at your post, sooner than carry the disease far afield.

“We have asked you to be soldiers, and we are prepared ourselves to be generals. We have thought out our plan, for the nursing of the sick, the tending of the sound, the burial of the dead.

“A messenger went to-day to my Lord at Chatsworth, and he will send supplies, both of food, medicines and such other things as may be needed. We shall ask for voluntary workers, some to serve in the pest-house, some to bury the dead. And, as there is no longer sufficient wood for coffins and no labourers to make them, from henceforth the dead will be buried in their shrouds only. And until happier times, there will be no headstones, but all will be placed in a pit in the churchyard so that one burial service may be said over several.

“And so we shall await God’s judgment.”

A shudder passed through the congregation; one heard again some of the women begin to weep, bowing their heads on those near them. Another one near the door fell down and cried out and was passed from one hand to another into the open air.

The scene began to flicker before William Mompesson’s tired eyes. He saw the broad beams of golden sunlight coming through the open doorway, the breath of fresh air mingling with the fetid breath of the people, their sweating odours, and the sickly and acrid fumes of the vinegar and spices they used. He saw those squares of colour from the glass and wondered idly why Thomas Stanley had not removed that as he had removed every other beautiful object from the church.

The young man despised himself for the faintness that was upon him, he remembered that he had eaten very little food that day. The scene of the morning was impressed on his vision and seemed more real than that which surrounded him — the carriage going away with the children, Bessie and Ann Trickett, and Kate running from him and hastening up to the belfry to get a last look at her children; when she had returned she had said to him: “I am sure I shall never see them again.” And he had tried to argue her out of such uncomfortable thoughts, but with little feeling in his words.

He tried to see her now, she was seated somewhere in that press, too faint to stand, on a rush chair by a pillar. His soul revolted against the task put upon him — his Kate even now breathing in the infection.

Why had he been sent here? Why had this sacrifice been asked of him? He wanted to go, to leave this accursed place, these people whom he had never liked and who demanded of him now his life’s blood and that of his beloved.

He heard the harsh voice of the dissenter droning on overhead, talking, instructing the people, for though he had put the case to them briefly enough, he must now expand and embroider it with many texts and allusions of moralizing. And the gaping, sweating villagers stood listening, as intent and overawed as if an angel spoke to them.

When at last Thomas Stanley left the pulpit, the people stirred and sighed and groaned and began to talk among themselves, and so streamed out into the sunlight and stood among the graves discussing the matter.

Thomas Stanley spoke to none of them, but went to the Cross that was so old that it was supposed to have been cut in heathen times and the Christian carvings now on it placed there at a later date. Such as they were, they were of Popish origin, and Thomas Stanley had at one time thought of defacing them. But he had decided to let them be, arguing that they had been placed there by a pious hand; but he had been severe on those whom he had found creeping out at night to kneel in prayer before these figures that represented the Virgin and Child.

On the arms of the Cross were spirits blowing trumpets and others holding crosses and books. On the side were knots, and whatever any Rector, Nonconformist or Church of England, might say or do, the villagers regarded this Cross with as much awe as indeed, in secret, they regarded the gray stones that seemed to be of a like ancestry upon the moors.

William Mompesson and Thomas Stanley took their position against the shaft, and here it was Stanley who spoke again.

Raising his bony hand he cried out gravely:

“Let those who are willing to abide by what we have decided and to promise to remain in the village within a distance that we shall mark out, come forward, give his or her name and swear to observe this pact, which I take to be made with God Almighty Himself.”

There was silence for a moment and Mompesson, with his tired eyes glancing over these rude people, some of whom he knew to be savage, cruel and vicious, thought: ‘Why should they thus doom themselves to save strangers?’

Then one or two of the better sort began to argue together and put forward as a spokesman the carpenter, who was supported by Sythe Torre; this man, towering above his fellows, seemed to be in better spirits than any there. The carpenter, coming forward cap in hand, asked the two clergymen if they could answer for it that the plague was carried by one person to another?

“For it seems,” said he humbly, “that nothing is certain about the pest. And that even you learned gentlemen…”

“Not learned,” protested Mompesson faintly under his breath; but Thomas Stanley made no demur.

“You learned gentlemen,” continued the carpenter, fearful at the sound of his own voice before so many people, “do not know much of the nature of this plague, nor even how it came to Eyam, though there is talk of a box of clothes…” He paused, then picked up his words again: “What I mean, reverend sirs, is — if we were to stay here, making the promise that is required of us, could we be assured that we spared others and kept the plague here instead of spreading it over maybe the whole of the Peak?”

“Can you answer them, Mr. Stanley?” asked Mr. Mompesson. “For myself, though I have studied the matter, I have to confess to a great ignorance.”

“My ignorance is great too,” said the dissenter, but with relish. “But this I am certain of, and you can judge it for yourself — that the disease is passed from one to another, and if we all remain enclosed here and refuse to go abroad and have any trade or truck with the outside world, then surely, even though we all die at our posts, we shall prevent it from spreading in Derbyshire. Though if it slay us all it can but slay five or six hundred souls, yet if it get spread through the Peak it may slay as many thousands. And leaping on its course may waste the north.”

“That is enough, sir,” said the carpenter without a pause, “and I for my part am prepared to make this pact.”

“And I! And I!” came the voices of his fellows behind him. They pushed up through the docks and nettles that had grown round the ancient shaft and one by one they made their promise and took their oath. Those who had left their families at home gave the promise for them also.

Mr. Stanley seemed to accept this ready sacrifice as a matter of course, but William Mompesson was profoundly moved.

Before the meeting was over, three of those who were there fell down with the plague and were carried to the pest-house, upon which many began shouting hymns in a light-hearted manner.