“Now. He who moves hand or foot settles with me. When the words ‘Let us pray’ are pronounced, you will kneel, and you will remain kneeling till the Amen. There’s none here who doesn’t know me; he doesn’t know me who doesn’t do this. When my head bows and my knee bends, by this house and its Master, yours shall!”
A moment longer he stood in the desk, and then left it amid such a silence that the calling of the sheep away by the dam could be heard. They fell from before him as he passed out of the church again; he reappeared alone at the altar, his back to the congregation. Presently Cicely and James Eastwood appeared, the parson following.
The now familiar service was brief. Obediently as children, docile and uncomprehending as children, Back o’ th’ Mooin knelt for the prayer. An Amen or two, well-nigh forgotten, rose to lips as the parson ceased; and then they rose again. The parson gave out a couple of verses of a hymn; only Pim o’ Cuddy and a few others sang it, but all stood in imitative attitudes of reverence, just as at the pieceboards they had imitated gestures of ridicule and derision. They passed out of the church and put on their caps again, and the chief actors entered the vestry where the registers were.
In the afternoon the sheep were shorn and turned off again up the Scout, where they bleated continually. The grey fleeces were stacked in James Eastwood’s yard, and a great drinking and carousing was toward in the “Gooise,” where the parlours and passages were so packed that the ale for the shearers had to be passed out of a window. The noise increased as the afternoon wore on. Mish Murgatroyd, Dick o’ Dean, and certain others, wishing to know what Cope the supervisor weighed, set him on a pair of wool-scales amid uproarious applause—six and a half stone—“six for th’ body and th’ odd half for his legs.” You could have told where Monjoy was by the cheers that rose from time to time. Cicely and Sally and Dooina Benn appeared at an upper window, and there was more cheering; but the biggest cheer of all came when Cicely and Arthur rose hand in hand at the supper-board and Arthur tried to thank them all. But there was no hearing him for the din, and he sat down again. The parson, still in righteous dudgeon (and, maybe, having his own opinion of the big bridegroom’s method of obtaining order in the church), had looked in for a minute and withdrawn again; but as he passed the gate of the yard there arose another tow-row, and half a dozen Back o’ th’ Mooiners brought in Jeremy Cope on a hurdle, as if for a stang-riding, and shuttered him off on to a pile of fleeces. “Fotch Dooina tul him!” they cried; and Cope mopped and mowed and blinked his purple lids. Monjoy rescued him from Dooina’s arms. It grew late. Over the Scout the moon rose mild and yellow, and they began to leave Eastwood’s yard and to assemble in the square outside the “Gooise.” Some began to ascend the sheep-tracks of the Scout, but the most remained till morning, when there was a great swilling and sousing and freshening-up at the horse-troughs. During all the following day they straggled homewards, to celebrate Red Monjoy’s wedding in their own fastnesses; and two days later there came word of rejoicings still continued at Booth, where, with fantastic rites, the effigies of Monjoy and Cicely had been crowned and enthroned, King and Queen of Back o’ th’ Mooin.
CHAPTER VI.
EMMASON.
FROM John Emmason, the magistrate, circuitously through James Eastwood (who, better than anyone else, had the magistrate’s humour), came a word that set Matthew Moon’s brows a-pucker and started him pacing with his fists doubled deep in his breeches pockets. Emmason, meeting the flockmaster near the Piece Hall, had put it after his own fashion.
“Willis is looking very well,” he had remarked, allowing his eyelids to flutter and fall.
Eastwood’s own eyes had narrowed suddenly. “Who is?” he had asked.
“Willis. Parker’s clerk at Ford. I saw him in conversation with our supervisor on one of the feast days.”
“Oh, aye?” Eastwood had replied. “Well, your health’s a grand thing to keep.... How if me and Matthew was to look in for a bit of a chat this evening, John?”