‘Yes, you be off, the whole lot of you,’ said Mrs Caffyn. ‘I know every tree there, and I ain’t going there this afternoon. Somebody must stay here to look after the baby; you can’t wheel her, you’ll have to carry her, and you won’t enjoy yourselves much more for moiling along with her up that hill.’
Everybody protested, but Clara was firm. She was tired, and the sun had given her a headache. Madge pleaded that it was she who ought to remain behind, but at last gave way for her sister looked really fatigued.
‘There’s a dear child,’ said Clara, when Madge consented to go. ‘I shall lie on the grass and perhaps go to sleep.’
‘It is a pity,’ said Baruch to Madge as they went away, ‘that we are separated; we must come again.’
‘Yes, I am sorry, but perhaps it is better she should be where she is; she is not particularly strong, and is obliged to be very careful.’
In due time they all came to the famous yews, and sat down on one of the seats overlooking that wonderful gate in the chalk downs through which the Mole passes northwards.
‘We must go,’ said Marshall, ‘a little bit further and see the oak.’
‘Not another step,’ said his wife. ‘You can go it you like.’
‘Content; nothing could be pleasanter than to sit here,’ and he pulled out his pipe; ‘but really, Miss Madge, to leave Norbury without paying a visit to the oak is a pity.’
He did not offer, however, to accompany her.
‘It is the most extraordinary tree in these parts,’ said Baruch; ‘of incalculable age and with branches spreading into a tent big enough to cover a regiment. Marshall is quite right.’
‘Not above a couple of hundred yards further; just round the corner.’
‘No; it is not visible here; it stands a little way back. If you come a little further you will catch a glimpse of it.’
She followed him and presently the oak came in view. They climbed up the bank and went nearer to it. The whole vale was underneath them and part of the weald with the Sussex downs blue in the distance. Baruch was not much given to raptures over scenery, but the indifference of Nature to the world’s turmoil always appealed to him.
‘You are not now discontented because you cannot serve under Mazzini?’
There was nothing in her reply on the face of it of any particular consequence to Baruch. She might simply have intended that the beauty of the fair landscape extinguished her restlessness, or that she saw her own unfitness, but neither of these interpretations presented itself to him.