“I guess your meaning,” he said. “As for me, I’m marking time, though I can’t much longer. I must go on with my work and I’ve got a very good offer for Liverpool; but I don’t see myself in a town somehow. And there’s people at Ivybridge could do with me; but the money’s less. I’m all over the shop, to be honest. Of course it won’t go no farther. But I can trust you. I keep a stiff upper-lip, being a man; but this have knocked the stuffing out of me. I don’t care what becomes of me really, though of course I pretend I’m all right.”
Knox nodded.
“You’ve took a very proper line in the opinion of me and Mrs. Trivett,” he said. “Mrs. Trivett shares your feelings about it. As for me, I’m properly sorry, because one can’t do nothing to help. She’s done for herself now, and she’ll smart long after you’ve done smarting, if that’s any consolation.”
“I know; but I don’t want her to smart particular,” said Ned. “She’s been sinned against—took at her own ridiculous valuation. She had to be herself, poor wretch; but the more I think of it—I ain’t sure now if it wouldn’t be best to break that man’s neck, Knox. Yes, I reckon I’ll go to Liverpool. I don’t want to bide here within a few miles of her. A clean break’s the best. How’s the new beaterman going on?”
“None too well. Trenchard don’t like him and Trood hates him. He told Trood to mind his own business last week; and coming from Bulstrode—Bulstrode’s his name—to the foreman, that was a startler. In fact Trood won’t be himself till Bulstrode’s gone now. He’s a doomed man you may say. Then there was a little affair with Trenchard too. He wants some more of the advertisements made—the pictures—and he explained the pulp to Bulstrode, and Bulstrode, good though he is at everyday work, have a rigid mind and said he was there to make paper pulp, not do conjuring tricks. An unyielding sort of man in fact; and though of course he’s doing what he’s told as well as he can, he don’t like it, and no doubt he’ll soon be gone.”
“He was here a bit ago—Kellock, I mean,” said Ned. “I often wonder how I keep my hands off the man that’s ruined my home; but so far I have. There’s something uncanny to him. He ain’t human, Knox. He’s got a something else in him that puts him outside the run of humans. A bit of fish or frog. I ain’t frightened of smiting him; I may come to it; but I can’t explain. He’s not like other people. I always feel he’s an image—a machine made to look and talk like a man.”
“I understand that. If another chap had done this, I should have expected you to go for him; but I quite see the case is altered with Kellock. Because you feel he’s not stuffed with the same stuffing as most of us. Stop me if I’m on dangerous ground; but such a man has the qualities of his failings. He’s got a properly absurd side—like all such owl-like people, who never laugh. He’s a crank and amazingly ignorant in some directions. If he don’t approve of the law, he won’t obey it. He puts religion and morals higher than law; but he brews his own religion and don’t know in his innocence that religion in this country always does what the State tells it. You’d think religion might up and speak to the law, in the name of its Master sometimes. Kellock pointed that out. He would do things and talk to the law if he had the power, because he’s fearless and doesn’t waste his energy, but concentrates. He said, speaking of natural children, that under our laws they were treated with wicked injustice. He said to me about it, ‘If the Archbishop of Canterbury got up in the House of Lords and said that it was a black, damnable disgrace to England to have such a law blotting the Statute Book and leaving us behind Scotland and Germany and America—if he did that, all men and women of good will would support him and the State would have to end the loathsome scandal.’ But I told him to hope nothing either from bishops or lawyers. ‘The man who alters that infamous law will be somebody bigger than either one or t’other,’ I told Kellock. ‘He’ll be a brave man, ashamed to face both ways and sit on the fence for his own safety; and he’ll be a man who knows that mankind wasn’t made for the lawyers, but the lawyers for mankind.’ There are such men still, thank God.”
“Kellock ain’t human, so how should he care for the ways of the world? It’s a blind to his villainy.”
“I’ve had a good deal of speech with him of late and heard his opinions. He’s dead sure he’s right. It’s all in a nutshell. He had to rescue your wife from you, and now he’s as jealous for her as a hen with one chick. It’s damned hard to look at the situation from his point of view, Dingle—hard for me or anybody—and impossible for you; but he sees it in a certain way and no doubt she’s helped him to do so. And now he won’t have a breath on her name and feels he’s got to stand between her and the rest of the world. He smarts worse than she does when hard things are said. He’s a lot more high strung than your wife herself. In fact he’s so delicate about her that he’d rather die than leave her in a false position. It’s an attitude that would be cant in most chaps, but coming from him you’re bound to believe it. It may be part fish or frog, as you say; but so it is. Of course nobody who didn’t know him would believe it; but I do believe it.”
“Believe what?” asked Dingle.