MR FRANK PALMER was back again in England. He was much distressed when
he received that last letter from Mrs Caffyn, and discovered that Madge’s
resolution not to write remained unshaken. He was really distressed, but
he was not the man upon whom an event, however deeply felt at the time,
could score a furrow which could not be obliterated. If he had been a
dramatic personage, what had happened to him would have been the second
act leading to a fifth, in which the Fates would have appeared, but life
seldom arranges itself in proper poetic form. A man determines that he
must marry; he makes the shop-girl an allowance, never sees her or her
child again, transforms himself into a model husband, is beloved by his
wife and family; the woman whom he kissed as he will never kiss his
lawful partner, withdraws completely, and nothing happens to him.
Frank was sure he could never love anybody as he had loved Madge, nor
could he cut indifferently that other cord which bound him to her.
Nobody in society expects the same paternal love for the offspring of a
housemaid or a sempstress as for the child of the stockbroker’s or
brewer’s daughter, and nobody expects the same obligations, but Frank was
not a society youth, and Madge was his equal. A score of times, when his
fancy roved, the rope checked him as suddenly as if it were the lasso of
a South American Gaucho. But what could he do? that was the point.
There were one or two things which he could have done, perhaps, and one
or two things which he could not have done if he had been made of
different stuff; but there was nothing more to be done which Frank Palmer
could do. After all, it was better that Madge should be the child’s
mother than that it should belong to some peasant. At least it would be
properly educated. As to money, Mrs Caffyn had told him expressly that
she did not want it. That might be nothing but pride, and he resolved,
without very clearly seeing how, and without troubling himself for the
moment as to details, that Madge should be entirely and handsomely
supported by him. Meanwhile it was of great importance that he should
behave in such a manner as to raise no suspicion. He did not
particularly care for some time after his return from Germany to go out
to the musical parties to which he was constantly invited, but he went as
a duty, and wherever he went he met his charming cousin. They always
sang together; they had easy opportunities of practising together, and
Frank, although nothing definite was said to him, soon found that his
family and hers considered him destined for her. He could not retreat,
and there was no surprise manifested by anybody when it was rumoured that
they were engaged. His story may as well be finished at once. He and
Miss Cecilia Morland were married. A few days before the wedding, when
some legal arrangements and settlements were necessary, Frank made one
last effort to secure an income for Madge, but it failed. Mrs Caffyn met
him by appointment, but he could not persuade her even to be the bearer
of a message to Madge. He then determined to confess his fears. To his
great relief Mrs Caffyn of her own accord assured him that he never need
dread any disturbance or betrayal.
‘There are three of us,’ she said, ‘as knows you—Miss Madge, Miss Clara
and myself—and, as far as you are concerned, we are dead and buried. I
can’t say as I was altogether of Miss Madge’s way of looking at it at
first, and I thought it ought to have been different, though I believe
now as she’s right, but,’ and the old woman suddenly fired up as if some
bolt from heaven had kindled her, ‘I pity you, sir—you, sir, I say—more
nor I do her. You little know what you’ve lost, the blessedest,
sweetest, ah, and the cleverest creature, too, as ever I set eyes on.’
‘But, Mrs Caffyn,’ said Frank, with much emotion, ‘it was not I who left
her, you know it was not, and, and even—’
The word ‘now’ was coming, but it did not come.
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Caffyn, with something like scorn, ‘_I_ know, yes, I do
know. It was she, you needn’t tell me that, but, God-a-mighty in heaven,
if I’d been you, I’d have laid myself on the ground afore her, I’d have
tore my heart out for her, and I’d have said, “No other woman in this
world but you”—but there, what a fool I am! Goodbye, Mr Palmer.’
She marched away, leaving Frank very miserable, and, as he imagined,
unsettled, but he was not so. The fit lasted all day, but when he was
walking home that evening, he met a poor friend whose wife was dying.
‘I am so grieved,’ said Frank ‘to hear of your trouble—no hope?’
‘None, I am afraid.’
‘It is very dreadful.’
‘Yes, it is hard to bear, but to what is inevitable we must submit.’
This new phrase struck Frank very much, and it seemed very philosophic to
him, a maxim, for guidance through life. It did not strike him that it
was generally either a platitude or an excuse for weakness, and that a
nobler duty is to find out what is inevitable and what is not, to declare
boldly that what the world oftentimes affirms to be inevitable is really
evitable, and heroically to set about making it so. Even if revolt be
perfectly useless, we are not particularly drawn to a man who prostrates
himself too soon and is incapable of a little cursing.
As it was impossible to provide for Madge and the child now, Frank
considered whether he could not do something for them in the will which
he had to make before his marriage. He might help his daughter if he
could not help the mother.
But his wife would perhaps survive him, and the discovery would cause her
and her children much misery; it would damage his character with them and
inflict positive moral mischief. The will, therefore, did not mention
Madge, and it was not necessary to tell his secret to his solicitor.
The wedding took place amidst much rejoicing; everybody thought the
couple were most delightfully matched; the presents were magnificent; the
happy pair went to Switzerland, came back and settled in one of the
smaller of the old, red brick houses in Stoke Newington, with a lawn in
front, always shaved and trimmed to the last degree of smoothness and
accuracy, with paths on whose gravel not the smallest weed was ever seen,
and with a hot-house that provided the most luscious black grapes. There
was a grand piano in the drawing-room, and Frank and Cecilia became more
musical than ever, and Waltham Lodge was the headquarters of a little
amateur orchestra which practised Mozart and Haydn, and gave local
concerts. A twelvemonth after the marriage a son was born and Frank’s
father increased Frank’s share in the business. Mr Palmer had long
ceased to take any interest in the Hopgoods. He considered that Madge
had treated Frank shamefully in jilting him, but was convinced that he
was fortunate in his escape. It was clear that she was unstable; she
probably threw him overboard for somebody more attractive, and she was
not the woman to be a wife to his son.
One day Cecilia was turning out some drawers belonging to her husband,
and she found a dainty little slipper wrapped up in white tissue paper.
She looked at it for a long time, wondering to whom it could have
belonged, and had half a mind to announce her discovery to Frank, but she
was a wise woman and forbore. It lay underneath some neckties which were
not now worn, two or three silk pocket handkerchiefs also discarded, and
some manuscript books containing school themes. She placed them on the
top of the drawers as if they had all been taken out in a lump and the
slipper was at the bottom.
‘Frank my dear,’ she said after dinner, ‘I emptied this morning one of
the drawers in the attic. I wish you would look over the things and
decide what you wish to keep. I have not examined them, but they seem to
be mostly rubbish.’
He went upstairs after he had smoked his cigar and read his paper. There
was the slipper! It all came back to him, that never-to-be-forgotten
night, when she rebuked him for the folly of kissing her foot, and he
begged the slipper and determined to preserve it for ever, and thought
how delightful it would be to take it out and look at it when he was an
old man. Even now he did not like to destroy it, but Cecilia might have
seen it and might ask him what he had done with it, and what could he
say? Finally he decided to burn it. There was no fire, however, in the
room, and while he stood meditating, Cecilia called him. He replaced the
slipper in the drawer. He could not return that evening, but he intended
to go back the next morning, take the little parcel away in his pocket
and burn it at his office. At breakfast some letters came which put
everything else out of mind. The first thing he did that evening was to
revisit the garret, but the slipper had gone. Cecilia had been there and
had found it carefully folded up in the drawer. She pulled it out,
snipped and tore it into fifty pieces, carried them downstairs, threw
them on the dining-room fire, sat down before it, poking them further and
further into the flames, and watched them till every vestige had
vanished. Frank did not like to make any inquiries; Cecilia made none,
and thence-forward no trace existed at Waltham Lodge of Madge Hopgood.