‘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.’