Gold and Incense Part 3

"Yes, Jennifer, take a day by all means." And he rose to go. "Only remember that you will make out of the coppice more in a month than you can make in the fields in a year; and be your own mistress, too, and come and go as you like."

"In a month!" she said gravely. "Then I am afraid I should be putting my heart in the broken teapot, instead of my money."

However, the next day's thought in the fields showed her a hundred advantages for the boys in the proposal, whatever it might mean for her husband and herself. And the cottage, too; the very suggestion of a new one seemed to make the cracks bigger and the leaks worse. Something would have to be done if she stayed there. So it was settled, yet not without a sigh. This was to be her farewell of the fields.

The sun was setting as she took up her hoe and turned homeward. At the gate she stayed a minute or two, as if to say good-bye. To her eyes the scene was almost sacred. There were the fields with all the young growth of the early spring, and beyond this was the rough outline of the hedges where the rabbits played. There were the hills where the brown trees reached up to the firs, and from beyond which there often came the roar of the ground swell when the great Atlantic breakers thundered on the sh.o.r.e. The very birds had been her company and friends, and she loved them every one--the lark that went soaring upward with an evening hymn; the thrush and the blackbird that piped from the tree top; the rooks that went slowly homeward, a very cloud in the sky, all had come as if to solace and gladden her, and she blessed them all. Her heart went out in thanks to G.o.d, as the memory of a thousand mercies rose within her.

She took the old worn mittens from her rough, red hands with a sigh, and shut the gate as if she were shutting that chapter of her life.

Chapter V

But Jennifer found that it was more than a new chapter in her life--it was a new world into which she stepped at once: a world where everything was so much more than she ever dared to ask or think, that half the time she was like one in a dream, and shook herself, as she said, to see if she were really awake. Before she could get to her door, the lads came rushing out to meet her with the news that a pair of leggings had come for each of them, and a couple of billhooks; and there in all their pride they stood, ready to go forth at once and cut down all the forests of the world, if they had but the chance. And they must needs take their mother, hungry and tired as she was, away to the edge of the coppice, to show her the place that was cleared for their new cottage. Poor Jennifer sighed a prayer that the Lord would keep her humble; worthy of it all she felt she never could be.

At dawn the next day the boys were up--men in the estimate of themselves, and more than most men in their eagerness to get at the work, sweetened as the thought of it was by the fact that every stroke was to make the coming cottage their own. Breakfast to-day was a duty somewhat begrudged. They were impatient of its delay. At last they were off and at it, coat and waistcoat flung aside.

An old labourer had been sent on that first day to direct them in the work, for there are two ways even of cutting down a coppice--a right and a wrong--and of tying f.a.ggots. But he got there only to find a good half-day's work had somehow already been got through.

But Jennifer herself never did so little. To her it was all so new and strange that she could scarcely steady herself to do anything. In place of the silent fields there came the cheery voices of her lads, and the hacking of the billhook; then the bending of the tough boughs was new to her, and the binding of the f.a.ggots.

And underneath all was a certain glow of gladness that disturbed her.

She was so near home, and was now her own mistress too, that she could not resist the temptation of going off to look after her "poor dear," as she called her husband.

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And instead of hurrying back, she stayed to wrap him up, and then must needs bring him out along the lane and over the thick bed of dead leaves and through the rough undergrowth of the coppice to sit on the first f.a.ggot that she had bound. And there she sat beside him, while the sun peeped in at them between the young leaves; and the bold robin hopped up to look at them in wonder; and all the birds sang to them, and the sweet breath of things came with its benediction. Presently, as if ashamed of herself, she hurried off to join the busy sons. Yet before long there was Jennifer,--the hardest-working woman in the parish at other times--creeping slyly over to have a cheery word with her husband, and trying to amuse him by her skill in this craft, until her happy laughter rang out upon the silence, and even he tried to join. In a day or two, however, both mother and sons had got into the mysteries of the art; and went on steadily clearing the place, amazing themselves and everybody else at the speed with which the work was done. No hour seemed too early to begin, and none too late to leave off.

Soon there arrived the man who had bought the wood and f.a.ggots, and then began the further mystery of accounts, each f.a.ggot duly entered and each payment recorded. And Jennifer's pride found a new subject in the cleverness of her sons, for the minutest matters seemed to require the two heads to settle it.

But now it was that there came Jennifer's great trouble. Such joy could not fail to bring with it some bitterness somewhere.

Three pounds an acre was the price to be given for the clearing. And twenty acres came to nothing less than _sixty pounds_.

To Jennifer, who had not seen a bit of gold for years until she had given the half sovereign to the new chapel, it was really a terrible thing to have to do with so much money. The little broken teapot looked full, and the top of the dresser was no safe place in which to keep such treasures. She could not sleep at night, but must needs get up and go fumbling about to feel if it was all right. She dreaded to leave home, and went back three or four times to see to her husband, she said; but even he had to wait until she had looked at the teapot. The little that she spent upon the household was a mere nothing. She feared to carry so much all at once to her good friend to whom it was to be paid toward the new cottage. At last the lads were sent off to him with a message entreating him to come as soon as possible. "I shall go out of my mind or into the 'sylum," Jennifer declared, and began to wish once more for the sweet simplicity of the fields and her sixpence a day. However, that trouble was soon done with, and time, the kindly healer of our griefs, made even this tolerable.

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The work was by no means done when the coppice was cleared. Roots and stumps had to be dug up, and the ground to be cleared for planting the potatoes, and the seed had to be bought; in all of which her good friend took as much interest as if it was his own, and more. And here was a new lot of accounts to be duly recorded. Jennifer was glad to leave all that to her boys, who sat every evening figuring away until it seemed to her, as she looked over their shoulders, that they did more business than all the rest of the world put together.

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Chapter VI

It was five or six years afterwards that I saw Jennifer again. At that time the coppice and cottage were her own freehold. The cottage was covered with creepers: the little garden was full of fruit trees and flowers. A row of beehives was ranged across one side of it. At the back there strutted and clucked a great host of fowls. Farther away a dozen pigs lay in their sties, and grunted their satisfaction with the best possible of worlds.

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The potato ground was wonderful; no such potatoes grew anywhere else.

The soil, enriched by the decay of the woods for years, yielded prolifically, and the first potatoes of the district that came to the market were Mrs. Petch's, as they called her now. But Mrs. Petch herself was just the same dear old Jennifer, as simple as of old. Her husband had pa.s.sed away; without pain he had sunk to rest. The lads were big, broad-shouldered fellows who walked beside their little mother with more pride of her than ever.

At every collection now there is a bit of gold from somebody, and if it ever has to be announced, it still is read out, "Gold and Incense." But even gold has lost something of its charm to Jennifer, and on special occasions she whispers, "No other colour is good enough for Him, except it is a five-pound note."

But there is one matter in which Jennifer sticks to her opinion and will yield to n.o.body.

"You may say what you mind to, after all said and done, crusties is more nourishinger and strengthener than tea. I've a-tried both, and do know _that_."

Butler & Tanner, Frome and London.