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 nobody 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 nobler 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, 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 repetition would have been felt with the force of novelty. He took a scrap 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.’

‘They ought then to have heaps of work, or they ought to have a lot of children to look after; but, perhaps, being born and bred in the country, I do not know what people in London are. Recollect you were country born and bred yourself, or, at anyrate, you have lived in the country for the most of your life.’

‘Dull! we must all expect to be dull.’

‘There’s nothing worse. I’ve had rheumatic fever, and I say, give me the fever rather than what comes over me at times here. If Marshall had not been so good to me, I do not know what I should have done with myself.’

Madge turned round and looked Mrs Marshall straight in the face, but she did not flinch.

‘Marshall is very good to me, but I was glad when mother and you and your sister came to keep me company when he is not at home. It tired me to have my meals alone: it is bad for the digestion; at least, so he says, and he believes that it was indigestion that was the matter with me. I should be sorry for myself if you were to go away; not that I want to put that forward. Maybe I should never see much more of you: he is rich: you might come here sometimes, but he would not like to have Marshall and mother and me at his house.’

Not a word was spoken for at least a minute.

Suddenly Mrs Marshall took Madge’s hand in her own hands, leaned over her, and in that kind of whisper with which we wake a sleeper who is to be aroused to escape from sudden peril, she said in her ear,—

‘Madge, Madge: for God’s sake leave him!’

‘I have left him.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite.’

‘For ever?’

‘For ever!’

Mrs Marshall let go Madge’s hand, turned her eyes towards her intently for a moment, and again bent over her as if she were about to embrace her. A knock, however, came at the door, and Mrs Caffyn entered with the cup of coffee which she always insisted on bringing before Madge rose. After she and her daughter had left, Madge read the letter once more. There was nothing new in it, but formally it was something, like the tolling of the bell when we know that our friend is dead. There was a little sobbing, and then she kissed her child with such eagerness that it began to cry.

‘You’ll answer that letter, I suppose?’ said Mrs Caffyn, when they were alone.

‘No.’

‘I’m rather glad. It would worrit you, and there’s nothing worse for a baby than worritin’ when it’s mother’s a-feedin it.’

Mr Caffyn wrote as follows:—

‘Dear Sir,—I was sorry as you couldn’t come; but I believe now as it was better as you didn’t. I am no scollard, and so no more from your obedient, humble servant,

‘Mrs Caffyn.

‘P.S.—I return the money, having no use for the same.