But Medora was out for blood and her carnivorous instincts extended even to Kellock himself. He too must suffer, that she might complete her performance with due triumph. She pictured Jordan ostracised and turning to her for comfort and support. She saw herself doubted, misunderstood, but presently triumphing over everybody. She imagined Kellock lifted to heights unattainable without her steadfast aid. She felt a boundless confidence in her own intelligence and inspiration to help him. But he must certainly run away with her as a preliminary. He must outrage convention, focus all eyes and appear in the lurid light that beats on people who have the courage to do such things. She told him so and assisted at the simple preliminaries.
He was about to take a fortnight’s holiday and it was decided that a day after he left Dene, Medora would join him at Newton Abbot and proceed to London with him.
He agreed to this arrangement as the most seemly, and together they concocted the letter which Mr. Dingle would receive by post on the morning of Medora’s disappearance. She invited Jordan to assist her in this composition, but was sorry afterwards that she had done so, for her lover differed from her on certain particulars and deprecated the writing of several things that she desired to write.
They planned the communication in the secrecy of the Priory ruin on a Sunday afternoon, and it was some time before the man had produced a clean draft for Medora to take away and copy. She wished to insert a demand, couched somewhat insolently, that Mr. Dingle would divorce his wife as swiftly as possible; but Kellock forbade this, because he felt that advice to Ned under such circumstances was undignified and altogether improper.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “You must be reasonable and take it in a high-minded way. It’s for you to tell him what you’re going to do and the reason; but it ain’t for you to tell him what he’s got to do. You can safely leave that to him. You see in these cases, when they get in the papers, that a man and woman always go to an hotel together; and when that’s proved, the other man divorces her as a matter of course. That’s all there is to it.”
At other points also he declined to support Medora’s wishes. She had designed some rather flagrant sentiments for this letter and felt that her action needed them. It was to be the letter of her life and, as she said, it had become her first wish to make Dingle feel what he had made her feel. But Kellock was calm and collected upon the subject, and finding composition of the letter awakened very considerably passion in Medora, he begged her to let him draft it and accept his idea of what such a document should be.
“It may be read in open Court some day,” he said—a possibility that cheered her.
She agreed therefore and hid her disappointment at what she regarded as a very colourless indictment. Jordan’s idea was something as lifeless as a lawyer’s letter, but equally crushing in its cold and remorseless statement of fact. Not a shadow of emotion marked it. There was nothing but the statement that finding she failed to please or satisfy her husband, and knowing their continued union could only destroy their happiness and self-control and self-respect, therefore—for both their sakes—Medora had decided to leave Ned and cast in her lot with Jordan Kellock, who was willing and anxious to make her his wife. Neither anger nor sorrow appeared in this communication as it left Kellock’s hands.
She took the letter and thanked him gratefully for helping her. Then they tore up into very tiny fragments the various attempts before the finished article and so parted—not to meet again until they met for ever.
And Medora, when alone, read his letter again and liked it less than before. That night her husband was out and she began her transcription, but when it came actually to copying Kellock’s sentences, their icy restraint began to annoy her. She stopped once or twice to ask herself how it was possible for any human being to write in a manner so detached. First she praised him for such amazing power and such remarkable reserve; then she reminded herself that this was to be her letter to her husband, not Jordan’s. Jordan proposed to write himself from London. She wondered a great deal what Jordan’s letter would be like. If the letter he had written for her made her shiver, surely the letter he wrote for himself would be a freezing matter. She told herself that Kellock was a saint. She felt uneasily proud of him already. She kept his heroism in her mind, and felt proud of herself, too, that such a man was willing to let her share his future, brilliant as it must certainly be.