'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.