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GOLD AND INCENSE

[Illustration]

GOLD AND INCENSE

A West Country Story

by

MARK GUY PEARSE

[Publisher's mark]

Forty-seventh Thousand







London
Horace Marshall & Son

Butler & Tanner,
The Selwood Printing Works,
Frome, and London.




          Dedication

     TO SIDNEY HILL ESQ.
      OF LANGFORD HOUSE
           SOMERSET




_It may add to the interest of my story if I state that it is perfectly
true._




Chapter I


To think it is Jennifer Petch of whom I am going to tell--little
Jennifer. How she would laugh if she only knew of it, that shrill,
silvery laugh of hers. It was her great gift. Jennifer was a philosopher
in the matter of laughing; and philosophy is mostly a matter of knowing
how to laugh and when.

[Illustration]

And the village itself would wonder almost as much as Jennifer herself,
for very few of them could see anything to write about in her. Village
people do not see much in what they see always, and Jennifer had lived
among them all her days. There was a time when some of the younger folks
thought they owed her a little bit of a grudge. For Sam Petch was the
tallest, and straightest, and handsomest of the village lads; and the
maidens who strolled down the lane on a summer's evening would go home
with fluttering hearts and delicious dreams if Sam had chanced to come
that way, as somehow he generally did; and if he had loitered laughing
with them in the lane, as he never minded doing.

There was Phyllis, light of hair and blue of eye, light of step and
light of heart, and light of hand, as her butter showed--not one of the
lads had any chance with her so long as Sam was free.

There was Chloe, she of the loose sun-bonnet, with gipsy face and gipsy
eyes, who handled the rake so daintily, and drew the sweet hay together
with such grace that nobody wondered if Sam Petch found it a great deal
easier to turn his head that way than to turn it back again.

And on the Sunday night when the service was over, at the door of the
little chapel, which was the village trysting place, there were half a
dozen of the comeliest of the maidens, who found an excuse to linger
talking, until Sam had gone his way.

It came on them all with an amazement of surprise, especially as events
of that kind were always busily whispered abroad at the slightest hint,
and often without any hint at all--"Sam Petch was going to be married."

"Who to?" asked everybody, brightening with wonder.

After every likely lass had been guessed the voice fell, and the answer
was given almost with a sense of wrong, "Why, to little Jennifer!
Whatever he can see in her I can't think."

For that matter, no more could Jennifer herself. Round and short of
figure, red and brown of face, she had never so much as ventured to
look at Sam, or to think of him either. And even now she was almost
sorry for him that she was only plain little Jennifer, and not like
Phyllis or Chloe.

And because the village maidens could see no reason for it in her looks
they concluded that there must be some hidden wiliness, some depth of
craft for which they were no match. They talked it over as they milked
the cows, the white stream falling with its music into the pail. "She
knew what she was doing, Jennifer did, a regular deep one." It was told
in the lane with a laugh, as if each wanted to show that Sam was
nothing to them, of course.

But the older folks talked of it differently. The women stood in the
doorway of an evening with clusters of children about them, and
according to them it was Sam who was the deep one. He knew what he was
doing, did Sam. There were things, they said, and they spoke feelingly,
that lasted longer than good looks and were worth more. And as the men
came home with heavy steps from the day's work, with a smell about them
like the smell of a field that the Lord hath blessed, they said that a
little thrifty body like Jennifer was a prize for anybody to be proud
of, and Sam Petch was a lucky fellow, that he was.

It was plain enough, whatever Jennifer thought--and she kept her
thoughts mostly to herself--that Sam agreed with these older ones. He
could not do enough to show his pride in Jennifer, and but that she
refused all offers of finery, would have made his plain little
sweetheart as gay as Phyllis or Chloe. Never an evening passed but you
met them walking leisurely together, the declared sign of courtship,
which was also known as "keeping company." It was thus distinguished
from marriage, for which the accepted sign was that the wife kept three
yards behind.

But when Sam and Jennifer were married they still went on "keeping
company;" even though his long stride needed three of Jennifer's short
steps, she was never behind, and Sam would have taken steps as short as
hers before she should be. And if it be true that light hearts make easy
travelling, they might well keep together, up hill and down. A glance
was enough to show that things were flourishing with them. Their
cottage stood on the top of the hill, all set about with a garden fair,
and at the side and back of the house grew "stuff" enough to send to
market. Sam had rented a bit of a meadow where a couple of cows gave
Jennifer the chance of showing her skill at clotted cream and butter.
There, too, a troop of fowls had their run, and away in a corner three
pigs added to the importance of Sam and to the cares of Jennifer. She,
thrifty soul, made enough out of her department to pay the rent; up
early, and always at work, her song only ceasing to make way for her
silvery laugh. The older folks repeated their opinion now as a prophecy
fulfilled, and took to themselves as much credit as if the prediction
had been the chief cause of the prosperity.

Before three years had gone Jennifer's department was increased by the
birth of two sturdy little sons. They were both the image of Sam, so the
women declared; but the men saw in each the image of their mother, and
counted it a pity that they were not girls, for the like of Jennifer
they reckoned scarce.




Chapter II


It was an evening toward the end of August, and the harvest was being
gathered in. The fields on every side were dotted with the tented
sheaves piled up as the custom is in the "catching" weather of the West,
one sheaf reversed on the top of the cluster, so as to form a kind of
roof. The long shadows of the shocks fell across the fields in
the evening light. All the country was beautiful with that rich
restfulness which comes in the autumn, as if the earth had finished its
work. The glories of the sunset gave the sky a hundred delicate tints of
gold and purple.

[Illustration]

Here and there the women brought the sheaves, whilst the men piled them
on the wagons. Away over the hill country in the east the great harvest
moon was rising.

Jennifer, busy as ever, had got her two little ones settled for the
night, and now was preparing a dainty supper for Sam's return; the
savoury smell of it filled the place.

[Illustration]

Then it was that, as to Job of old, one came breathless to the house
with sad tidings. Sam had slipped from the stack and fallen on his head.

"Is--he--dead?" gasped Jennifer.

No, he was not dead; but he had not spoken since his fall, and was quite
unconscious. A messenger had been sent for the doctor, and the men were
bringing Sam home, and would be here in a few minutes.

Up the hill came the group with the injured man in their midst, to all
appearance dead. A great hush fell on the village as they passed slowly
on, men in their shirt sleeves just as they had hurried in from the
harvest field. The women and children stood at the doors with faces full
of sympathy.

They bore him in at the little gate and through the garden and up the
stairs, and laid him on the bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

For weeks Sam lay on his bed, whilst day and night Jennifer waited on
him.

The neighbours stopped the doctor to ask about him, and the answer was
ever the same:

"He'll pull through; he'll pull through," and the doctor tightened his
mouth and nodded his head; "but he would have been a dead man long ago
if it had not been for that brave little wife of his."

Fracture of the skull and concussion of the brain, and a host of other
ills, made it a desperate fight with death. But Jennifer fought and
won. Even in his unconsciousness Sam seemed to know the touch of her
hand, and it soothed him; and the tone of her voice, and the moaning
ceased.

But bit by bit their little fortune was swept away. The savings of those
three or four years were quickly spent; the cows had to be sold, and the
meadow given up; the pigs and fowls were parted with.

The garden lay untended. And when, at last, the doctor had done with
Sam, it was only to leave him an imbecile--helpless as a baby, and a
great deal more troublesome--sometimes muttering to himself for hours
together a round of unmeaning words; sometimes just crying all day long,
and then again cross and peevish and perverse as any spoilt child.

The cottage was given up; they could not afford the rent of that.

Another was taken, the cheapest in all the village--one that was too bad
for anybody else.

Half a crown a week and a loaf of bread from the parish was all that
came in to supplement Jennifer's poor earnings of sixpence a day in the
fields.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was some few years after this had happened that I came to know
Jennifer.

There she sat in the little chapel, her round and ruddy face without a