The Project Gutenberg eBook, Gold and Incense, by Mark Guy Pearse

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Title: Gold and Incense

A West Country Story

Author: Mark Guy Pearse

Release Date: January 18, 2013 [eBook #41870]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOLD AND INCENSE***

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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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GOLD AND INCENSE

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FORTY-SEVENTH
THOUSAND

LONDON
HORACE MARSHALL & SON

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

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Dedication

TO SIDNEY HILL ESQ.
OF LANGFORD HOUSE
SOMERSET

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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.

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