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 God-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 aËrial is substantial, the only true substance; those for whom a pale vision possesses an authority they are forced unconditionally to obey.