Madge was a puzzle to Mrs Caffyn. Mrs Caffyn loved her, and when she was ill had behaved like a mother to her. The newly-born child, a healthy girl, was treated by Mrs Caffyn as if it were her own granddaughter, and many little luxuries were bought which never appeared in Mrs Marshall's weekly bill. Naturally, Mrs Caffyn's affection moved a response from Madge, and Mrs Caffyn by degrees heard the greater part of her history; but why she had separated herself from her lover without any apparent reason remained a mystery, and all the greater was the mystery because Mrs Caffyn believed that there were no other facts to be known than those she knew. She longed to bring about a reconciliation. It was dreadful to her that Madge should be condemned to poverty, and that her infant should be fatherless, although there was a gentleman waiting to take them both and make them happy.

'The hair won't be dark like yours, my love,' she said one afternoon, soon after Madge had come downstairs and was lying on the sofa. 'The hair do darken a lot, but hers will never be black. It's my opinion as it'll be fair.'

Madge did not speak, and Mrs Caffyn, who was sitting at the head of the couch, put her work and her spectacles on the table. It was growing dusk; she took Madge's hand, which hung down by her side, and gently lifted it up. Such a delicate hand, Mrs Caffyn thought. She was proud that she had for a friend the owner of such a hand, who behaved to her as an equal. It was delightful to be kissed--no mere formal salutations--by a lady fit to go into the finest drawing-room in London, but it was a greater delight that Madge's talk suited her better than any she had heard at Great Oakhurst. It was natural she should rejoice when she discovered, unconsciously that she had a soul, to which the speech of the stars, though somewhat strange, was not an utterly foreign tongue.

She retained her hold on Madge's hand.

'May be,' she continued, 'it'll be like its father's. In our family all the gals take after the father, and all the boys after the mother. I suppose as HE has lightish hair?'

Still Madge said nothing.

'It isn't easy to believe as the father of that blessed dear could have been a bad lot. I'm sure he isn't, and yet there's that Polesden gal at the farm, she as went wrong with Jim, a great ugly brute, and she herself warnt up to much, well, as I say, her child was the delicatest little angel as I ever saw. It's my belief as G.o.d-a-mighty mixes Hisself up in it more nor we think. But there WAS nothing amiss with him, was there, my sweet?'

Mrs Caffyn inclined her head towards Madge.

'Oh, no! Nothing, nothing.'

'Don't you think, my dear, if there's nothing atwixt you, as it was a flyin' in the face of Providence to turn him off? You were reglarly engaged to him, and I have heard you say he was very fond of you. I suppose there were some high words about something, and a kind of a quarrel like, and so you parted, but that's nothing. It might all be made up now, and it ought to be made up. What was it about?'

'There was no quarrel.'

'Well, of course, if you don't like to say anything more to me, I won't ask you. I don't want to hear any secrets as I shouldn't hear.

I speak only because I can't abear to see you here when I believe as everything might be put right, and you might have a house of your own, and a good husband, and be happy for the rest of your days. It isn't too late for that now. I know what I know, and as how he'd marry you at once.'

'Oh, my dear Mrs Caffyn, I have no secret from you, who have been so good to me: I can only say I could not love him--not as I ought.'

'If you can't love a man, that's to say if you can't ABEAR him, it's wrong to have him, but if there's a child that does make a difference, for one has to think of the child and of being respectable. There's something in being respectable; although, for that matter, I've see'd respectable people at Great Oakhurst as were ten times worse than those as aren't. Still, a-speaking for myself, I'd put up with a goodish bit to marry the man whose child wor mine.'

'For myself I could, but it wouldn't be just to him.'

'I don't see what you mean.'

'I mean that I could sacrifice myself if I believed it to be my duty, but I should wrong him cruelly if I were to accept him and did not love him with all my heart.'

'My dear, you take my word for it, he isn't so particklar as you are.

A man isn't so particklar as a woman. He goes about his work, and has all sorts of things in his head, and if a woman makes him comfortable when he comes home, he's all right. I won't say as one woman is much the same as another to a man--leastways to all men--but still they are NOT particklar. Maybe, though, it isn't quite the same with gentlefolk like yourself,--but there's that blessed baby a- cryin'.'

Mrs Caffyn hastened upstairs, leaving Madge to her reflections. Once more the old dialectic reappeared. 'After all,' she thought, 'it is, as Clara said, a question of degree. There are not a thousand husbands and wives in this great city whose relationship comes near perfection. If I felt aversion my course would be clear, but there is no aversion; on the contrary, our affection for one another is sufficient for a decent household and decent existence undisturbed by catastrophes. No brighter sunlight is obtained by others far better than myself. Ought I to expect a refinement of relationship to which I have no right? Our claims are always beyond our deserts, and we are disappointed if our poor, mean, defective natures do not obtain the homage which belongs to those of ethereal texture. It will be a life with no enthusiasms nor romance, perhaps, but it will be tolerable, and what may be called happy, and my child will be protected and educated. My child! what is there which I ought to put in the balance against her? If our sympathy is not complete, I have my own little oratory: I can keep the candles alight, close the door, and worship there alone.'

So she mused, and her foes again ranged themselves over against her.

There was nothing to support her but something veiled, which would not altogether disclose or explain itself. Nevertheless, in a few minutes, her enemies had vanished, like a mist before a sudden wind, and she was once more victorious. Precious and rare are those divine souls, to whom that which is aerial is substantial, the only true substance; those for whom a pale vision possesses an authority they are forced unconditionally to obey.

CHAPTER XXI

Mrs Caffyn was unhappy, and made up her mind that she would talk to Frank herself. She had learned enough about him from the two sisters, especially from Clara, to make her believe that, with a very little management, she could bring him back to Madge. The difficulty was to see him without his father's knowledge. At last she determined to write to him, and she made her son-in-law address the envelope and mark it private. This is what she said:-

'DEAR SIR,--Although unbeknown to you, I take the liberty of telling you as M. H. is alivin' here with me, and somebody else as I think you ought to see, but perhaps I'd better have a word or two with you myself, if not quite ill-convenient to you, and maybe you'll be kind enough to say how that's to be done to your obedient, humble servant,

'MRS CAFFYN.'

She thought this very diplomatic, inasmuch as n.o.body but Frank could possibly suspect what the letter meant. It went to Stoke Newington, but, alas! he was in Germany, and poor Mrs Caffyn had to wait a week before she received a reply. Frank of course understood it.

Although he had thought about Madge continually, he had become calmer. He saw, it is true, that there was no stability in his position, and that he could not possibly remain where he was. Had Madge been the commonest of the common, and his relationship to her the commonest of the common, he could not permit her to cast herself loose from him for ever and take upon herself the whole burden of his misdeed. But he did not know what to do, and, as successive considerations and reconsiderations ended in nothing, and the distractions of a foreign country were so numerous, Madge had for a time been put aside, like a huge bill which we cannot pay, and which staggers us. We therefore docket it, and hide it in the desk, and we imagine we have done something. Once again, however, the flame leapt up out of the ashes, vivid as ever. Once again the thought that he had been so close to Madge, and that she had yielded to him, touched him with peculiar tenderness, and it seemed impossible to part himself from her. To a man with any of the n.o.bler qualities of man it is not only a sense of honour which binds him to a woman who has given him all she has to give. Separation seems unnatural, monstrous, a divorce from himself; it is not she alone, but it is himself whom he abandons. Frank's duty, too, pointed imperiously to the path he ought to take, duty to the child as well as to the mother. He determined to go home, secretly; Mrs Caffyn would not have written if she had not seen good reason for believing that Madge still belonged to him. He made up his mind to start the next day, but when the next day came, instructions to go immediately to Hamburg arrived from his father. There were rumours of the insolvency of a house with which Mr Palmer dealt; inquiries were necessary which could better be made personally, and if these rumours were correct, as Mr Palmer believed them to be, his agency must be transferred to some other firm. There was now no possibility of a journey to England. For a moment he debated whether, when he was at Hamburg, he could not slip over to London, but it would be dangerous. Further orders might come from his father, and the failure to acknowledge them would lead to evasion, and perhaps to discovery. He must, therefore, content himself with a written explanation to Mrs Caffyn why he could not meet her, and there should be one more effort to make atonement to Madge. This was what went to Mrs Caffyn, and to her lodger:-

'DEAR MADAM,--Your note has reached me here. I am very sorry that my engagements are so pressing that I cannot leave Germany at present.

I have written to Miss Hopgood. There is one subject which I cannot mention to her--I cannot speak to her about money. Will you please give me full information? I enclose 20 pounds, and I must trust to your discretion. I thank you heartily for all your kindness.--Truly yours,

'FRANK PALMER.'

'MY DEAREST MADGE,--I cannot help saying one more word to you, although, when I last saw you, you told me that it was useless for me to hope. I know, however, that there is now another bond between us, the child is mine as well as yours, and if I am not all that you deserve, ought you to prevent me from doing my duty to it as well as to you? It is true that if we were to marry I could never right you, and perhaps my father would have nothing to do with us, but in time he might relent, and I will come over at once, or, at least, the moment I have settled some business here, and you shall be my wife.

Do, my dearest Madge, consent.'

When he came to this point his pen stopped. What he had written was very smooth, but very tame and cold. However, nothing better presented itself; he changed his position, sat back in his chair, and searched himself, but could find nothing. It was not always so.

Some months ago there would have been no difficulty, and he would not have known when to come to an end. The same thing would have been said a dozen times, perhaps, but it would not have seemed the same to him, and each succeeding repet.i.tion would have been felt with the force of novelty. He took a sc.r.a.p of paper and tried to draft two or three sentences, altered them several times and made them worse. He then re-read the letter; it was too short; but after all it contained what was necessary, and it must go as it stood. She knew how he felt towards her. So he signed it after giving his address at Hamburg, and it was posted.

Three or four days afterwards Mrs Marshall, in accordance with her usual custom, went to see Madge before she was up. The child lay peacefully by its mother's side and Frank's letter was upon the counterpane. The resolution that no letter from him should be opened had been broken. The two women had become great friends and, within the last few weeks, Madge had compelled Mrs Marshall to call her by her Christian name.

'You've had a letter from Mr Palmer; I was sure it was his handwriting when it came late last night.'

'You can read it; there is nothing private in it.'

She turned round to the child and Mrs Marshall sat down and read.

When she had finished she laid the letter on the bed again and was silent.

'Well?' said Madge. 'Would you say "No?"'

'Yes, I would.'

'For your own sake, as well as for his?'

Mrs Marshall took up the letter and read half of it again.

'Yes, you had better say "No." You will find it dull, especially if you have to live in London.'

'Did you find London dull when you came to live in it?'

'Rather; Marshall is away all day long.'

'But scarcely any woman in London expects to marry a man who is not away all day.'