“I can’t tell as to that. Like the rest of us, he was a lot surprised that you could come back here after a thing like this. And Mr. Knox said your point of view was beyond his experience. He wondered if you expected to see a triumphal arch put up. But Ned feels more like an ordinary, decent person, I reckon. He’s going. He’s left the Mill, and he’s going to put up his house for sale.”
“If he’s took it like a Christian, as you say, perhaps he’ll go farther still,” suggested Kellock. “There’s only one house in these parts that’s like to suit Medora and myself; but perhaps Dingle’s house—?”
His dry mind saw nothing impossible about the idea, but Lydia stared at him.
“What on earth are you made of?” she asked.
“It sounds unreasonable to you? But, if you think of it, there’s nothing unreasonable really. If we’re all going to carry this through in a high-minded way, there’s no more reason why I shouldn’t buy, or rent, Dingle’s house than anybody else.”
“Except me,” said Medora. “And mother’s right there. I wonder at you thinking of such a thing, and putting me in such a false position—seeing his ghost at every corner, and hearing him whistling at every turn. You haven’t got no imagination, Jordan. I wouldn’t go back to that house or cross the threshold, not if it was built of gold with diamond windows.”
“I stand corrected,” answered Kellock mildly. “As for imagination, Medora, you mustn’t think I lack for that. I’ve got my vision, else I shouldn’t have done what I have done, or be going to do what I hope to do; but I grant that while the house is only bricks and mortar to me, like another, it means more to you—a prison and a place of torment.”
“Tom-foolery!” said Lydia. “Nobody ever tormented Medora but her own silly self, and if you’d got half the sense you think you’ve got, Jordan Kellock, you’d have found that out long ago. However, you will find it out; and I say it before her, for I’d never say a word behind her back that I’d fear to say to her face. You’ve took her at her own valuation.”
“No—no,” he replied, flushing. “I take her at a much higher valuation than her own. I want to put her in a place worthy of her, where she can expand, and be herself, and reveal what she really is. I want for Medora to show the world all that’s hid in her. She doesn’t know herself yet; but I know her, and I’m going to help her to let the world see what she is. And I hope as you’re not for us, at any rate, you won’t be against us, Mrs. Trivett.”
“If anybody had told me you’d ever do a thing like this, I wouldn’t have believed them,” she answered. “I’m not going to pretend to you, or Medora either, that I’m on your side. I think you’ve done a very wicked thing, and what beats me, and will always beat me, is how such a man as you could have done it.”