About a fortnight afterwards, on a Sunday afternoon, Cohen went to the Marshalls’. He had called there once or twice since his mother-in-law came to London, but had seen nothing of the lodgers. It was just about tea-time, but unfortunately Marshall and his wife had gone out. Mrs Caffyn insisted that Cohen should stay, but Madge could not be persuaded to come downstairs, and Baruch, Mrs Caffyn and Clara had tea by themselves. Baruch asked Mrs Caffyn if she could endure London after living for so long in the country.

‘Ah! my dear boy, I have to like it.’

‘No, you haven’t; what you mean is that, whether you like it, or whether you do not, you have to put up with it.’

‘No, I don’t mean that. Miss Hopgood, Cohen and me, we are the best of friends, but whenever he comes here, he allus begins to argue with me. Howsomever, arguing isn’t everything, is it, my dear? There’s some things, after all, as I can do and he can’t, but he’s just wrong here in his arguing that wasn’t what I meant. I meant what I said, as I had to like it.’

‘How can you like it if you don’t?’

‘How can I? That shows you’re a man and not a woman. Jess like you men. You’d do what you didn’t like, I know, for you’re a good sort—and everybody would know you didn’t like it—but what would be the use of me a-livin’ in a house if I didn’t like it?—with my daughter and these dear, young women? If it comes to livin’, you’d ten thousand times better say at once as you hate bein’ where you are than go about all day long, as if you was a blessed saint and put upon.’

Mrs Caffyn twitched at her gown and pulled it down over her knees and brushed the crumbs off with energy. She continued, ‘I can’t abide people who everlastin’ make believe they are put upon. Suppose I were allus a-hankering every foggy day after Great Oakhurst, and yet a-tellin’ my daughter as I knew my place was here; if I was she, I should wish my mother at Jericho.’

‘Then you really prefer London to Great Oakhurst?’ said Clara.

‘Why, my dear, of course I do. Don’t you think it’s pleasanter being here with you and your sister and that precious little creature, and my daughter, than down in that dead-alive place? Not that I don’t miss my walk sometimes into Darkin; you remember that way as I took you once, Baruch, across the hill, and we went over Ranmore Common and I showed you Camilla Lacy, and you said as you knew a woman who wrote books who once lived there? You remember them beech-woods? Ah, it was one October! Weren’t they a colour—weren’t they lovely?’

Baruch remembered them well enough. Who that had ever seen them could forget them?

‘And it was I as took you! You wouldn’t think it, my dear, though he’s always a-arguin’, I do believe he’d love to go that walk again, even with an old woman, and see them heavenly beeches. But, Lord, how I do talk, and you’ve neither of you got any tea.’

‘Have you lived long in London, Miss Hopgood?’ inquired Baruch.

‘Not very long.’

‘Do you feel the change?’

‘I cannot say I do not.’

‘I suppose, however, you have brought yourself to believe in Mrs Caffyn’s philosophy?’

‘I cannot say that, but I may say that I am scarcely strong enough for mere endurance, and I therefore always endeavour to find something agreeable in circumstances from which there is no escape.’

The recognition of the One in the Many had as great a charm for Baruch as it had for Socrates, and Clara spoke with the ease of a person whose habit it was to deal with principles and generalisations.

‘Yes, and mere toleration, to say nothing of opposition, at least so far as persons are concerned, is seldom necessary. It is generally thought that what is called dramatic power is a poetic gift, but it is really an indispensable virtue to all of us if we are to be happy.’

Mrs Caffyn did not take much interest in abstract statements. ‘You remember,’ she said, turning to Baruch, ‘that man Chorley as has the big farm on the left-hand side just afore you come to the common? He wasn’t a Surrey man: he came out of the shires.’

‘Very well.’

‘He’s married that Skelton girl; married her the week afore I left. There isn’t no love lost there, but the girl’s father said he’d murder him if he didn’t, and so it come off. How she ever brought herself to it gets over me. She has that big farm-house, and he’s made a fine drawing-room out of the livin’ room on the left-hand side as you go in, and put a new grate in the kitchen and turned that into the livin’ room, and they does the cooking in the back kitchen, but for all that, if I’d been her, I’d never have seen his face no more, and I’d have packed off to Australia.’

‘Does anybody go near them?’

‘Near them! of course they do, and, as true as I’m a-sittin’ here, our parson, who married them, went to the breakfast. It isn’t Chorley as I blame so much; he’s a poor, snivellin’ creature, and he was frightened, but it’s the girl. She doesn’t care for him no more than me, and then again, although, as I tell you, he’s such a poor creature, he’s awful cruel and mean, and she knows it. But what was I a-goin’ to say? Never shall I forget that wedding. You know as it’s a short cut to the church across the farmyard at the back of my house. The parson, he was rather late—I suppose he’d been giving himself a finishin’ touch—and, as it had been very dry weather, he went across the straw and stuff just at the edge like of the yard. There was a pig under the straw—pigs, my dear,’ turning to Clara, ‘nuzzle under the straw so as you can’t see them. Just as he came to this pig it started up and upset him, and he fell and straddled across its back, and the Lord have mercy on me if it didn’t carry him at an awful rate, as if he was a jockey at Epsom races, till it come to a puddle of dung water, and then down he plumped in it. You never see’d a man in such a pickle! I heer’d the pig a-squeakin’ like mad, and I ran to the door, and I called out to him, and I says, “Mr Ormiston, won’t you come in here?” and though, as you know, he allus hated me, he had to come. Mussy on us, how he did stink, and he saw me turn up my nose, and he was wild with rage, and he called the pig a filthy beast. I says to him as that was the pig’s way and the pig didn’t know who it was who was a-ridin’ it, and I took his coat off and wiped his stockings, and sent to the rectory for another coat, and he crept up under the hedge to his garden, and went home, and the people at church had to wait for an hour. I was glad I was goin’ away from Great Oakhurst, for he never would have forgiven me.’

There was a ring at the front door bell, and Clara went to see who was there. It was a runaway ring, but she took the opportunity of going upstairs to Madge.

‘She has a sister?’ said Baruch.

‘Yes, and I may just as well tell you about her now—leastways what I know—and I believe as I know pretty near everything about her. You’ll have to be told if they stay here. She was engaged to be married, and how it came about with a girl like that is a bit beyond me, anyhow, there’s a child, and the father’s a good sort by what I can make out, but she won’t have anything more to do with him.’

‘What do you mean by “a girl like that.”’

‘She isn’t one of them as goes wrong; she can talk German and reads books.’

‘Did he desert her?’

‘No, that’s just it. She loves me, although I say it, as if I was her mother, and yet I’m just as much in the dark as I was the first day I saw her as to why she left that man.’

Mrs Caffyn wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron.

‘It’s gospel truth as I never took to anybody as I’ve took to her.’

After Baruch had gone, Clara returned.

‘He’s a curious creature, my dear,’ said Mrs Caffyn, ‘as good as gold, but he’s too solemn by half. It would do him a world of good if he’d somebody with him who’d make him laugh more. He can laugh, for I’ve seen him forced to get up and hold his sides, but he never makes no noise. He’s a Jew, and they say as them as crucified our blessed Lord never laugh proper.