MRS CAFFYN’S house was a roomy old cottage near the church, with a
bow-window in which were displayed bottles of ‘suckers,’ and of Day &
Martin’s blacking, cotton stuffs, a bag of nuts and some mugs, cups and
saucers. Inside were salt butter, washing-blue, drapery, treacle,
starch, tea, tobacco and snuff, cheese, matches, bacon, and a few drugs,
such as black draught, magnesia, pills, sulphur, dill-water, Dalby’s
Carminative, and steel-drops. There was also a small stock of
writing-paper, string and tin ware. A boy was behind the counter. When
Mrs Caffyn was out he always asked the customers who desired any article,
the sale of which was in any degree an art, to call again when she
returned. He went as far as those things which were put up in packets,
such as what were called ‘grits’ for making gruel, and he was also
authorised to venture on pennyworths of liquorice and peppermints, but
the sale of half-a-dozen yards of cotton print was as much above him as
the negotiation of a treaty of peace would be to a messenger in the
Foreign Office. In fact, nobody, excepting children, went into the shop
when Mrs Caffyn was not to be seen there, and, if she had to go to
Dorking or Letherhead on business, she always chose the middle of the
day, when the folk were busy at their homes or in the fields. Poor
woman! she was much tried. Half the people who dealt with her were in
her debt, but she could not press them for her money. During winter-time
they were discharged by the score from their farms, but as they were not
sufficiently philosophic, or sufficiently considerate for their fellows
to hang or drown themselves, they were obliged to consume food, and to
wear clothes, for which they tried to pay by instalments during spring,
summer and autumn. Mrs Caffyn managed to make both ends meet by the help
of two or three pigs, by great economy, and by letting some of her
superfluous rooms. Great Oakhurst was not a show place nor a Spa, but
the Letherhead doctor had once recommended her to a physician in London,
who occasionally sent her a patient who wanted nothing but rest and fresh
air. She also, during the shooting-season, was often asked to find a
bedroom for visitors to The Towers.
She might have done better had she been on thoroughly good terms with the
parson. She attended church on Sunday morning with tolerable regularity.
She never went inside a dissenting chapel, and was not heretical on any
definite theological point, but the rector and she were not friends. She
had lived in Surrey ever since she was a child, but she was not Surrey
born. Both her father and mother came from the north country, and
migrated southwards when she was very young. They were better educated
than the southerners amongst whom they came; and although their daughter
had no schooling beyond what was obtainable in a Surrey village of that
time, she was distinguished by a certain superiority which she had
inherited or acquired from her parents. She was never subservient to the
rector after the fashion of her neighbours; she never curtsied to him,
and if he passed and nodded she said ‘Marnin’, sir,’ in just the same
tone as that in which she said it to the smallest of the Great Oakhurst
farmers. Her church-going was an official duty incumbent upon her as the
proprietor of the only shop in the parish. She had nothing to do with
church matters except on Sunday, and she even went so far as to neglect
to send for the rector when one of her children lay dying. She was
attacked for the omission, but she defended herself.
‘What was the use when the poor dear was only seven year old? What call
was there for him to come to a blessed innocent like that? I did tell
him to look in when my husband was took, for I know as before we were
married there was something atween him and that gal Sanders. He never
would own up to me about it, and I thought as he might to a clergyman,
and, if he did, it would ease his mind and make it a bit better for him
afterwards; but, Lord! it warn’t no use, for he went off and we didn’t so
much as hear her name, not even when he was a-wandering. I says to
myself when the parson left, “What’s the good of having you?”’
Mrs Caffyn was a Christian, but she was a disciple of St James rather
than of St Paul. She believed, of course, the doctrines of the
Catechism, in the sense that she denied none, and would have assented to
all if she had been questioned thereon; but her belief that ‘faith, if it
hath not works, is dead, being alone,’ was something very vivid and very
practical.
Her estimate, too, of the relative values of the virtues and of the
relative sinfulness of sins was original, and the rector therefore told
all his parishioners that she was little better than a heathen. The
common failings in that part of the country amongst the poor were
Saturday-night drunkenness and looseness in the relations between the
young men and young women. Mrs Caffyn’s indignation never rose to the
correct boiling point against these crimes. The rector once ventured to
say, as the case was next door to her,—
‘It is very sad, is it not, Mrs Caffyn, that Polesden should be so
addicted to drink. I hope he did not disturb you last Saturday night. I
have given the constable directions to look after the street more closely
on Saturday evening, and if Polesden again offends he must be taken up.’
Mrs Caffyn was behind her own counter. She had just served a customer
with two ounces of Dutch cheese, and she sat down on her stool. Being
rather a heavy woman she always sat down when she was not busy, and she
never rose merely to talk.
‘Yes, it is sad, sir, and Polesden isn’t no particular friend of mine,
but I tell you what’s sad too, sir, and that’s the way them people are
mucked up in that cottage. Why, their living room opens straight on the
road, and the wind comes in fit to blow your head off, and when he goes
home o’ nights, there’s them children a-squalling, and he can’t bide
there and do nothing.’
‘I am afraid, though, Mrs Caffyn, there must be something radically wrong
with that family. I suppose you know all about the eldest daughter?’
‘Yes, sir, I _have_ heard it: it wouldn’t be Great Oakhurst if I hadn’t,
but p’r’aps, sir, you’ve never been upstairs in that house, and yet a
house it isn’t. There’s just two sleeping-rooms, that’s all; it’s
shameful, it isn’t decent. Well, that gal, she goes away to service.
Maybe, sir, them premises at the farm are also unbeknown to you. In the
back kitchen there’s a broadish sort of shelf as Jim climbs into o’
nights, and it has a rail round it to keep you from a-falling out, and
there’s a ladder as they draws up in the day as goes straight up from
that kitchen to the gal’s bedroom door. It’s downright disgraceful, and
I don’t believe the Lord A’mighty would be marciful to neither of _us_ if
we was tried like that.’
Mrs Caffyn bethought herself of the ‘us’ and was afraid that even she had
gone a little too far; ‘leastways, speaking for myself, sir,’ she added.
The rector turned rather red, and repented his attempt to enlist Mrs
Caffyn.
‘If the temptations are so great, Mrs Caffyn, that is all the more reason
why those who are liable to them should seek the means which are provided
in order that they may be overcome. I believe the Polesdens are very lax
attendants at church, and I don’t think they ever communicated.’
Mrs Polesden at that moment came in for an ounce of tea, and as Mrs
Caffyn rose to weigh it, the rector departed with a stiff ‘good-morning,’
made to do duty for both women.