He talked earnestly, but Cicely shook her head from time to time. He asked her questions—he was exceedingly curious regarding her husband; she allowed him to remain so. She displayed no great fervour about attending church herself; but to that he half persuaded her. In half an hour she rose; again he noted her handsome colour and magnificent carriage, and he knew that if his end was to be gained, he was beginning in the right quarter. They left the church together.
Thereafter they had many conversations, and Cicely attended church intermittently; but she refused to attempt to influence her husband.
Ellah never used now the ear-trumpet that Monjoy had given him, and there were symptoms that his moroseness was bringing on another igg. It came, a flood of excited babbling that all the world was against him, and so forth, and Cicely put him into his chair and smoothed his brow with her hands. The touch seemed to bring him relief, and once, when she pressed his hot temples, he seemed to sleep, but opened his eyes and muttered when she ceased. He was persuaded that he was spied on, that the most unlikely folk had malign influence over him, and that half the village had gone off their heads; and one afternoon, as Cicely bathed his throbbing temple-arteries with water, he suddenly said, “I wouldn’t lay a finger on ye, lass, not ever so.” He recovered, and began to show a passionate fondness for roast pork.
The heat continued, so that paint blistered on wood and the tar glistened and bubbled on the roofs of sheds; and, maybe, the heat was the cause of the softening of moral fibre that became apparent in Pim o’ Cuddy, the verger and bellringer. More than once he was caught hugging to his breast the little brass kettle, under the lid of which he slipped the crown-pieces and down the spout the sixpences of usury; and then one night Arthur Monjoy took him over the moor. That marked a sad period. Thenceforward two men struggled within him. The clerk contemned worldly riches, but Pim o’ Cuddy chuckled “Ho! ho!” to himself at odd moments, rubbed his palm against wood, and made no secret of the dilly-spoons and weaving-candlesticks he would have, all of heavy silver, at no distant date. “A silver wedding too, Pim—don’t forget that,” they rallied him.
Many now took the pack-causeway by night. Probably the only man in the village who was ignorant of what was toward was the parson; but they laughed, and said that parsons were all alike in that. Eastwood Ellah’s iggs were treated with a sort of respect; there was something in an igg like that; and one or two were by no means sure that he could not, if he had wished, have produced not silver, but gold.
Whether from her conversations with the parson or not, Cicely became thoughtful, and sat sometimes for half an hour at her roving-wheel, not working, but turning her wedding-ring round and round on her finger. Arthur had made the ring himself; whence the gold, she knew very well; and as she turned it, an uneasiness seemed to communicate itself to her from the gold hoop. One afternoon she spoke of this to him.
He had just risen, not having gone to bed till broad day, and she sat on the edge of his unmade bed, turning the ring again. Presently, without looking up, she said, “Arthur, dear—” He took her on his knee, and she made herself small against his breast.
“What is it, Cis?” he asked, his great hand wandering in her bright hair; and she drew the ring slowly back and forth to the end of her finger.
“I don’t feel, somehow, right wed, Arthur,” she said timorously.
“What!” he exclaimed, trying to see her face. “But there’s many a lass would like to be as well wed as this! What’s the matter, Cis?”