Medora, again weeping freely, and leaving her bunch of flowers on the ground at his feet, departed without any more words. For once, her tears were real and her sorrows genuine. They were genuine, yet contained a measure of sweetness, and comforted her by their reality. This was an order of grief that she had not known. She persisted in it for a long time, after she had gone out of his sight, and found a sunny spot among the bluebells. There she sat and heaped reproaches on her head; and self-blame was a sensation so novel that it soothed instead of crushed her. But this phase passed in contemplation of Ned. He had changed in some mysterious way. He was formidable, masculine—a thing infinitely superior to herself. Could she dare to say that Ned was now superior to Kellock? She fled from that thought as from chaos; but it pursued her; it made to itself feet and wings, and clung to her mind. She resisted, but it stuck like a burr. Ned was surely translated into something fine and admirable; while Kellock, now about to be a conqueror, had waned almost to a second-rate being in Medora’s vision.
A sensation of physical sickness overtook her before this horrible discovery; for what could such a conclusion do but wreck her future utterly and hopelessly? If Kellock were to fall from his pedestal, who was left?
And a hundred yards off, still buried in the thoughts sprung from this remarkable conversation, Ned set up his rod, cast out ground bait, and began to fish for dace and perch. His mind, however, was far from his float, and presently his eyes followed Medora, as she moved pensively along the road on the other side of the pond. She would tell Kellock to come and see him, and then Ned would—he did not know what he would do.
His thoughts turned to Philander Knox and their last interview. Medora had said nothing to contradict the vatman’s assurances. Indeed, she had implicitly supported them. And she was obviously changed. She had apparently enough proper feeling to be miserable; but whether that misery was pretended, or sprang from her conscience, or arose from her futile conjunction with Kellock under the present unsupportable conditions, Ned could not determine. He examined his own emotions respecting Medora, and found that she had slightly modified them. He despised her, and began even to pity her, since, on her own showing, she was having a bad time. But was she ever built to have a good time? Dingle doubted it.
CHAPTER XXV
THE EXPLANATION
After the medley of emotions awakened by her meeting with her husband, no solid foundation remained to Medora’s mind. Indeed, everything solid seemed to crumble before the apparition of Ned so close; before all the little familiar marks of him, his mannerisms, his vibrant voice, his virility, the flushing colour on his cheeks, the masculine sound and sight of him. Against that vision, which haunted her pillow at Priory Farm, arose the spectacle of Kellock—the difference between a stout, shadow-casting man and one himself a shadow. Kellock was a great hero still (she clave to that), but none the less he had become something spectral for her. Ned she knew—her recent meeting reminded her how well; but Kellock she did not know, and from that long night of thought there emerged one steadfast emotion: she began to cease to want to know. Perception of this startling indifference frightened Medora. It was half-past four o’clock in the morning, and an early thrush already sang when she made this discovery. She shivered at such a sentiment, set it down to hunger, and so arose and descended to the larder. She ate and slept, and in the morning told her mother of the talk with Dingle.
They walked together to Dene, and before Lydia went to the rag house, she had heard disquieting things. It was not the facts that concerned her, for they were to the good. That Ned wished to see Kellock and had determined not to claim damages, comforted Mrs. Trivett, for that argued an intention on Ned’s part to be done with the matter, and take such steps as should enable her daughter to marry at the earliest opportunity permitted by law; but it was Medora’s attitude to Dingle that surprised her, and as she reached the Mill, she voiced her astonishment.
“You’ll keep me ’mazed to my dying day, I reckon,” she said. “My own daughter, and yet never, never do you do, or say, or look at things how I should expect.”