Gold and Incense: A West Country Story

by Mark Guy Pearse

Presently she slips the hand away so skilfully that her husband does not seem to know it, and takes off her bonnet and shawl.

The lads meanwhile have set the things for the Sunday dinner. It did not need much setting. On the rickety table was placed a knife—they had but one. There were three slices of bread, a thick round off the loaf, and on each slice a bit of cheese; "Double Gloucester" was, I think, the local name of it. The one big mug was filled from a large earthen pitcher.

Jennifer herself had set the kettle down by the wood fire, for if she had a weakness it was her cup of tea. But there was not much promise of any water boiling in a hurry; the tiny spark was almost lost in the big fireplace, a hearth opening into the chimney, and so constructed that a great deal more cold seemed to come down than heat went up.

The little family group stood and bent their heads in devout thanksgiving to the heavenly Father, and then the hungry lads fell to. As for Jennifer herself it seemed as if she never got her dinner at all. All her concern was to try and tempt her husband's appetite with a piece of bread and butter daintily cut; and there was for him, too, a drop of milk. Yet even her hypocrisy could not manage to keep up her happy looks on nothing.

This was Sunday: a day indeed of rest and gladness. Other days she had to be up and about early to get the little lads their breakfast; and to make them ready for school; and to set her husband by the fire. Then she herself was off with the dawn, and sometimes before, to work all day in the fields. Her rough dress was stained earth colour from head to foot; a sack was tied round the skirts which were tucked well up out of the way. A big sun-bonnet protected her more often from the bleak winds and bitter rains than from the sun. From dawn till dusk she worked for sixpence a day; and then came home thanking God right heartily for the three shillings a week. And on that Jennifer managed to feed and clothe her household, and to pay the rent and to keep up her good looks.

The fact is, Jennifer was as we have said, a philosopher, and had made a great discovery. It was certainly worthy to be set alongside of the most famous inventions; and like many of them it had the one great defect—so few knew how to use it. Jennifer had little, it is true. She was, so to speak, but a moulting bird, half starved and shivering in the dreariest and dullest of cages—that is, if you looked at what was. But Jennifer found another world, in which she had a boundless freedom and strength, and here she went soaring like an eagle right up into the sun. It was what wasn't that she made so much of.

You pitied her, and spoke mournfully about her husband, as if he were a burden and worry. But Jennifer never seemed to hear it, and certainly could not see it.

"Poor dear," she said, "I can mind the day he asked me to be his wife. I did jump. And all the maidens in the parish would have liked him. When they heard about it they all went wondering whatever he could see in a poor little plain thing like me; but none of them wondered so much as I did. I never could do enough for him when he was well, and now that I have got my chance I should be ashamed if I did not make the best of it. Poor dear, he is as much to me as ever, and more too—husband and child all in one." And she said it over tenderly to herself, "Poor dear!"

But this was Jennifer's sentiment, and her sentiments were sacred and kept mostly for home use. It was the philosopher that met you more commonly. You spoke to her pitifully of her husband's affliction, and were almost startled at the tone of her cheery voice.