“Mr. Knox says they’ll both get their punishment and he hopes you’ll let ’em be. And if you did, that would be the worst punishment. In Philander’s opinion there’s no call for anybody to interfere, because let ’em alone and they’ll punish each other to their dying day. That’s the terrible picture he paints of it.”
“I’ll never understand,” he answered. “I’ll never know what choked her off me. There must have been secret enemies at work lying against me I reckon. But she could never put a case against me worth its weight in words, and to the last I didn’t dream what she was up to. A base, treacherous bit of play-acting I call it. And to crown all by that beastly letter.”
“If you could believe in such things, I’d say Medora had the evil eye put upon her and was ill-wished into this,” said Daisy. “Such a girl as she was—so happy, and so fond of an outing, and so fond of cheerful company; and used to be so fond of Ned, I’m sure, for when you was first married, she was always telling me how she cared for you. Then the change came over her like bad weather. What did Jordan Kellock say, Ned, if I may ask?”
“There’s no secrets. The letter’s like the man—cut and dried. Nobody else on God’s earth could have written it I should think. He feels that Medora made a mistake, but that it needn’t be fatal to all three of us; and that, as we all respect ourselves, and are responsible members of society, we can put the mistake right in a reasonable and dignified sort of way. Never a word of shame. He seems to think he’s only got to state the facts, as he sees them, for me to fall in with them. He says, of course, my first thought will be consideration for Medora, so that her sensitive and delicate nature may be spared as much as possible. He feels quite sure that he can leave the subject in my hands, and assures me that he will do everything possible to assist me. That’s the divorce of course. Medora wasn’t so nice in her letter. She ordered me to divorce her sharp. But even so, I’d sooner have her insults than his civility. Civility by God! From him. She’d worked herself up to a pitch of temper when she wrote that trash, and let out the poison he’s put into her mind. She’s a damned silly woman and that’s all there is to her; but faithless, worthless wretch that she is, I can forgive her easier than him. I don’t feel as if I wanted to shoot her, or cut her throat, or anything like that. My feeling to her is beyond my power to put into words at present, though no doubt it will clear itself. But I see him clear enough for a foul hypocrite—smug and sly and heartless. He’s played for his own hand for a year and slowly worked her up to the outrage she’s put on me. In fact I don’t see how I can very well help breaking his neck, when it comes to the point.”
“It ain’t for me to stand up for him against you,” admitted Lydia. “All the same, my instinct tells me to pray you not to be rough, Ned. You’ve got right on your side, and it’s easier in some ways to suffer wrong than commit it.”
“Depends what you call wrong,” he answered. “If Kellock thought it no wrong to kindiddle my wife away from me, why should I think it wrong to get back a bit of my own? Men have killed men for less than this, and a jury of husbands have said they wasn’t guilty. I may not be the sort to kill anybody; but I’ll let him that bleats such a lot about self-respect see I’ve got my self-respect as well as he has, and mean to act according. It’s all in the air—I don’t know what I shall do. I’ve got to make him eat his self-respect somehow and show him what he is; and that’s a long way different from what he thinks he is. I’ll make ’em look a pair of fools sooner or later—if no worse.”
“So you will then; and take it in a high spirit and do nought to make yourself look a fool,” urged Lydia; but he declared that it was too late for that.
“I look a fool all right,” he said. “I’m not such a sand-blind sort of man that I don’t know very well what I look like. People always laugh at a chap in my fix. Let ’em. Perhaps I shall laugh too presently. The difference between me and that man is that I can stand a bit of laughter; but he couldn’t. Laughter would kill him. He’d stand up to blame and hard words and curses. He likes ’em—he told me so—because it shows his ideas go deep and fret people’s accepted opinions. Every reformer must make enemies, or he’s not doing his job right—so he said to Knox one day, and I heard him. But laughter and scorn and contempt—that’s different.”
They reached Ned’s house and, for his sake, set about their painful task with resolution.
“It’s like as if we was going through a dead woman’s things,” whispered Daisy to Mrs. Trivett and the elder agreed.