“Nay, John—” he stammered, “if ye want a crown while to-morrow—for some godly purpose—it isn’t neighbourly to refuse it—but al’ays tak’ heed to your steps, John!... Now I’ve wondered many a time if a sixpence wad go down th’ spout o’ that little brass kettle o’ mine o’ th’ chimley-piece—I think a sixpence wad a’most go down....”
The magpie joined in the roar of laughter with a shrill cackle.
Another couple (at the parson’s urgent request) had the spurrins read; and the event that shortly followed coming to Cole’s ears, the clogger made as much of it (while all who heard him writhed in fits and convulsions of laughter) as if in the mere ceremony and solemnization of a union there lay some miraculous virtue and speed and efficacy. Again Pim o’ Cuddy temporised with the Adam within him, and again it was suggested by John Raikes that in order to introduce a sixpence into the brass kettle it was not necessary to remove the lid. And then, nobody volunteering for a full week to put a third crown into his pocket, Pim himself began to experience qualms lest his own marriage, a score of years ago, should not have been regularly blessed and sanctioned.
“I doubt if him ’at wed us were ever right ordained a parson,” he said, troubled in spirit: “I ha’ it on my mind he were no better nor one o’ these broomstick chaps—and th’ wife can’t think on——”
“I should wed a fresh ’un next time,” they advised him.
“Don’t mak’ droll wi’ holy things,” Pim adjured them. “I feel as if I couldn’t live another day wi’out making sure——”
And on the following Sunday he hung his head, shamefast, in the clerk’s desk, while the parson, at the other end of the church, required of those who knew of any impediment why Pim o’ Cuddy and the woman called Mrs. Pim o’ Cuddy should not be joined in matrimony that they should declare the same. The parson was past niceties now.
After that, half the village flocked to be married.
The end of May is always a stirring time Horwick and Wadsworth way, for on the 29th there falls due the Horwick Spring Fair, and within a fortnight or so the sheep-shearing begins. Strangers come to Horwick for the fair, and for three days the pieceboards are converted into stalls for all manner of merchandise, and a big field off the Fullergate is given over to clowns and vagabond players and tumblers, who perform in tents or on wooden stages. All is noise and bustle and gaiety; and that spring, in addition, these weddings were being celebrated almost every day, each with its private feast. Sweethearts and mothers and grandmothers, young men from the looms and old men from the pastures and scanty farms, all were for the churching; there was never anything like it. For the women, some of them had wedding-rings that, nevertheless, had not been put on their fingers in the presence of any priest; some wore rings of their mothers’, or of their mothers’ mothers; and for another batch Pim o’ Cuddy (now very well married indeed, and, moreover, living in intimacy with his wife again) was despatched for the new key of the church door. They stood in the building that their dogs and fowls and ferrets had made profane for them; they shuffled their feet on the new floor-boards; they glanced uneasily at the scratched and disfigured pillars; and children stood up the mountainous Scout to peer in at the windows. Their neighbours gave them in marriage, or they received the service at the hands of Pim o’ Cuddy; and men took to be their wedded wives and to live together the women whose sons and daughters awaited the same Ordinance and their turn to take on themselves the same solemn vows. And all the time the Horwick streets were thronged, and the inns filled to overflowing, and the Back o’ th’ Mooiners, coming down on the Wednesday or Thursday, did not return to their hills till the Saturday or Sunday.
It was worth something, in those days, to hear Cole the clogger make sport of Dooina Benn. For Dooina, with her times and seasons, was utterly lost and bewildered. The clogger, winking at those about him, gave her the news of the marriage of a couple whose ages together totted up to a hundred and twenty or thereabouts, and bade her mark it on her calendar; and poor Dooina could hardly have told plantain from ivy-berries, which are the best and worst things wedded folk can make use of. During this comedy the supervisor of excise came out of his door at the top of the croft; with all this marrying, the supervisor could not be left out; and the Back o’ th’ Mooiners writhed on Cole’s bench and clicked their clogs feebly with delight when Cole suggested that no fitter mate could be found for the dwarf than fat Dooina herself. The jest became current within an hour.