“I’m glad you can keep so cool and sensible, Ned. Nothing’s gained by getting angered, though I’m angered I promise you, and anger’s a righteous thing sometimes. I’m struck to the heart over this; and if I’d thought for an instant ’twas in her wicked mind even as a shadow, I’d have given you due notice. But I never dreamed it. I’ve talked to her again and again and tried to show her sense; but she’s doomed herself by her own nature.”
“The mischief is I couldn’t read her,” answered Mr. Dingle. “Not that I didn’t at first. She married me for love—no other reason—and for the first six months—nay ten—of our life together, I read her like a book. But after that she changed. And she got stranger and stranger, as we went on, till be damned if I didn’t find myself living with a different woman! And, mind this, I was never rough nor harsh to her, till she’d egged me on to being so. I put up with a devil of a lot and kept my temper in a manner that surprised myself if not her; but she was out to make me lose it, because, till I did so, the things she wanted to happen couldn’t. And after a bit I did lose it. Who wouldn’t? Yet God’s my judge I was never very much enraged with her, because I always felt she was play-acting and making believe half the time; and that had a funny side; and sometimes it amused me more than it angered me. And above that was the sure knowledge that any open quarrel would be an unmanly thing and might lead to lasting trouble; and above that, again, was the fact that I loved Medora well. I never ceased to love her in her maddest tantrums.
“Then comes this letter, and I can assure you it’s a bolt from the blue. And yet it’s all unreal somehow—I can’t grasp it home to me. I can’t believe it. I could almost laugh and say to myself it’s a dream and I shall wake up alongside Medora any minute.”
His face was full of pain, as yet he showed more stunned surprise than anger.
“I knew her so well—think of it,” he went on. “She must have her bit of fun and her bit of flattery; and she got both with me. But him—good God Almighty—she turned him down once for all eighteen months ago, and she told me why in very good plain words. And now she’s gone to him. Yet he’s not changed. He can’t change. There’s men I can see her with perhaps—though none as easy as I can see her with me—but him—Kellock—he’ll never satisfy her. It’s impossible.”
“You’re right there,” said Lydia. “My daughter’s not the sort to be content to shine with her husband’s reflected light. The little fool wants to be somebody herself. It’s vanity quite as much as wickedness has made her do this. But she won’t shine with Kellock anyway; and after doing such a hateful, wicked thing, he won’t shine either. His light’s out now in the eyes of all self-respecting, honourable people.”
“No, it isn’t,” he answered. “It will make a deuce of a lot of difference to Medora, but not to him, because he’s the sort that don’t let any outward thing alter their inward disposition. He’s thought it all out. He knows there’s not half a dozen men in the kingdom can make paper like him, and so he’s safe and beyond any punishment whatever he does. He’s done nothing the law can touch him for. And when I touch him, the law will be on his side against me.”
Ned was still amazingly calm. Indeed his self-control astonished her.
“So far I don’t know what’s happening,” he proceeded. “I don’t know where they are, or what they have planned. I’m keeping an open mind. I shall see him presently. I may swing for him yet; or I may find—Lord knows what I may find. It’s all hidden so far.”
“I feel as if I was twenty years older for this news—older and broken too,” said Lydia. “If there was time, I’d weep a river for this, and I shall yet; but not now. There’s a baby coming upstairs, and you can’t think of two things to once and do ’em both justice. I’ll see you to-morrow in the dinner hour. Perhaps you’ll hear more by then. Kellock was a man very nice on speech, as well as manners. He’ll feel it’s up to him to—there, what am I saying?—the strangeness! Well may you say as though you was in a dream. So I feel; and I won’t throw up hope either. God often waits till the very last minute afore He throws the light of truth into a mind. He may prevail with Medora, and so I wouldn’t say nothing yet—nothing to nobody.”