“And is Holdsworth Head made o’ this? Did ye say Holdsworth Head?—Ay, lie down a bit.”
Monjoy had stretched himself, half-naked as he was, on the floor; he broke immediately into loud snoring. Ellah continued to look, now at him, and now at the beads of silver.
After a while he blew out the candle and stretched himself on the floor by the side of his companion.
CHAPTER V.
THE WADSWORTH WEDDING.
FOR one thing above all others Wadsworth is even yet renowned—its famous wedding. This memorable event came to pass about that time, and it began with the procuring by the new parson from John Emmason, the Horwick magistrate, the list of the King’s Hearth Tax.
You have heard of the state in which the parson had found his church, and of the repairs which he had undertaken at his own cost. These repairs had not been effected in a day, nor for that matter in a couple of months; and Pim o’ Cuddy’s pigeons still fluttered against the new louver-boards of the belfry, seeking entrance. But the parson had contrived to instil such a fear into his bandy-legged clerk that Pim went in an extreme of penitence and humility; and for the humours of Pim’s re-conversion and of his vacillating conscience—well, Cole the clogger was the man to hear on that.
From the magistrate, then, the parson procured this list. His church being at last ready, maybe he judged it expedient to make the nearer acquaintance of his parishioners. He set forth on a round of visits.
Then followed something that puzzled the weavers of Wadsworth exceedingly.
At ten o’clock in the morning the parson had begun, and from house to house he had passed during the greater part of the day, talking now with the women in the yards and kitchens, now with the men in the loom-lofts. At five o’clock he had passed quickly up the street, and had been seen to enter his own house almost at a run. That evening he sent for his verger. He asked him this and that, cried aloud on his God, and went to his room without preparing his supper—for he had got rid of his housekeeper and now fended for himself. He came out the next morning still fasting, and was seen to ascend the Scout, and to disappear in the direction of the Causeway; and about midday a packman, leaving his string of horses with lime from Fluett at the top of the Scout, came down into Wadsworth, and reported that beyond Holdsworth Head he had heard lamentations, and, stepping aside, had seen a man on his knees in prayer.
That was on the Friday. On the following Sunday morning, in the renovated church, the parson made an announcement. Only half a dozen women and a lad or two heard it, but hardly was the Benediction out of his mouth, before, with incredible speed, it was all over the village, and already on its way to Horwick. It was this: That, to make (in effect) the best of a very bad job, thenceforward all marriage fees would be remitted, and the clerk’s proper perquisite would be paid out of the same canvas bag that had already provided the money for the new floorboards and windows and the rest of the repairs to the fabric of the church.