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: