“As we grow older, we naturally go for the subjects that matter,” said Kellock. “I’ve always wanted to leave the world better than I found it, you know, Medora.”
“And so you will—you’re built to do it,” declared she. “And I shall watch you do it, Jordan. And though I’ve lost it all, I shall see some other woman at your right hand helping you to make a name in the world. And I shall envy her—yes, I shall. I can say that to you, because I can trust you never to repeat it.”
“You shake me up to the roots of my being when you talk like this,” he assured her. “Oh, my God, Medora, it seems a cruel sort of thing that just at the critical time, and before it was too late, you couldn’t have seen and felt what you see and feel now. It was bad enough then. You’ll never know or guess what I felt when you had to say ‘no’ to me. But I had one thing to keep me going then—the certainty you were too clever to make a mistake. I said to myself a million times: ‘She knows best; she knows that Dingle will make her a happier woman than I could.’ But now—now—when you say what you’ve said. Where am I now?”
They talked in this emotional strain for ten minutes, and she wove with native art a web of which both warp and woof were absurdly unreal. Her nature was such that in a task of this sort she succeeded consummately. By a thousand little touches—sighs, looks, and shakes or droops of the head—she contributed to her comedy. She abounded in suggestions. Her eyes fell, her sentences were left unfinished. Then came heroic touches, and a brave straight glance with resolution to take up the staggering weight of her cross and bear it worthily to the end.
Medora was charming, and in her subconscious soul she knew that her performance carried conviction in every word and gesture. She revelled in her acting, and rejoiced in the effect it occasioned on the listener. Long ago, Kellock had set her, as she guessed, as a lovely fly in amber, never to change, though now for ever out of his reach. He had accepted his loss, but he continued to regard her as his perfect woman, and she cherished the fact as a great possession. Perhaps, had it been otherwise, she had not entered upon her present perilous adventure; but she knew that Jordan Kellock was a knight of weak causes, and one who always fought for the oppressed, when in his power to do so; and now she had created a phantom of oppression, which his bent of mind and attitude to herself prevented him from recognising as largely unreal.
Kellock was young; he had loved Medora in the full measure of a reserved nature, and to-day she deluded him to the limit of his possibilities. Her complete triumph indeed almost frightened her. For a few moments he became as earnestly concerned as on the great occasion when he had asked her to marry him. Then she calmed the man down, and told him that he must not waste his time on her troubles.
“It’s selfish of me to tell you these things—perhaps it’s wrong,” she said, truly enough; but he would not grant that. His emotion was intense; his pain genuine. Her intuition told her that here was a man who might err—if ever he erred—in just such a situation as she was creating. She was surprised to find the ease with which it was possible to rouse him, and felt this discovery enough for that day. She grew elated, but uneasy at the unexpected power she possessed. Her sense of humour even spoke in a still, small voice, for humour she had.
Chance helped her to end the scene, and, a hundred yards from home, Ned himself appeared with his gun over his shoulder and a hare in his hand.
Dingle was in cheerful spirits.
“A proper afternoon I’ve had,” he said. “Ernest Trood asked me to go out shooting along with him and some friends, and we’ve enjoyed sport, I promise you. A rare mixed bag. We began in the bottom above the Mill, and got a woodcock first go off, and then we worked up and had a brace and a half of partridges, a brace of pheasants, and a hare, and eight rabbits. I knew what you’d like, Medora, and I took a partridge, and the hare for my lot. I shot them, and four rabbits and one of the pheasants.”