Kellock

“ You know very well indeed that Jordan Kellock’s not a vicious person.”
“I know very well he is, then. And them as don’t go to church, or chapel, like him, have nothing to stand between them and temptation. And this is the result.”
Trenchard laughed at Pinhey.
“That’s where the shoe pinches—eh, Nicholas? But we mustn’t be narrow-minded because we live in a narrow valley. That’s what I tell others besides you. Kellock is a man of high feelings and great ideals. I don’t agree with much that he dreams; but I know this: that the dreamer who makes his dreams come true is the salt of the earth. ”

“ Medora went down through the orchard to her mother’s home at Priory Farm, while Kellock, climbing through the hedge, presently set his face to Dene and strolled down the Corkscrew Lane with his mind full of the future. He found that thought persisted in drifting away from Medora to her husband. He had just told her that she had a man to deal with; and now it was impressed on Kellock that he, also, had to deal with a man. ”

“ We were lost to sense and reality, and acted in a mad and improper manner. In fact, we’ve been everything we could be, except wicked, and silliness is often punished worse than wickedness. But, though Kellock richly deserved to lose his stroke, it’s as much my fault as his own that he has done so, and I’m too sporting to turn my back on him at such a moment. If he’s ruined, then it’s my hard duty to share his trouble, and I won’t be a rat and quit a sinking ship. That’s not the sort of woman Ned Dingle married.’ So Medora argued, no doubt—not knowing, of course, what you’ve said to Kellock. ”

“ We’re both well past our half century and can air our opinions without getting cross. I mean that Kellock is a serious-minded chap with a strong character and steadfast opinions. He’s just as anxious to leave the world better than he found it as you are. And he means to do so; and very likely, if he’s not too deadly in earnest and too narrow in his virtues, he may. You must grant him his good character, Pinhey, and then ask yourself whether a man with his past would have done this without what seemed good and high reasons. ”

“ She had mentioned the subjects which she knew attracted Jordan. It was indeed his wearisome insistence on such things that had made her turn of old to the less intelligent and more ingenuous Dingle. In reality she had no mind for abstractions or social problems.
“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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kellock must be her hero, or [Pg 184] nothing. She must continue to see in him her salvation and her tower of strength; she must let him feel and understand the reverence, the adoration in which she held him and his superb sacrifice on the altar of the conventions. For such a man the things that he had done were greater far than they had been in the case of others. He had his future to think of as well as Medora’s. He must not be allowed off his pedestal in her regard for an instant. ”

“ I’m only a woman—not much more than a girl, you may say; and I’ve done you bitter wrong, but there’s always two sides to everything, and justice will be done to me—in fact, it’s begun. You say Kellock never wanted a flesh and blood woman, and that’s true—truer than you know. So you can see what my future’s going to be. Once you’re free, you can find a better and prettier and wiser creature than me to-morrow ”

“ And the sole question for me is whether Kellock comes back, or does not. He writes very decently, says he is prepared to justify his conduct if I feel it is any concern of mine, and adds that he will be well pleased to return if I want him.”
“Don’t let him slip, for the Lord’s sake,” begged Ernest Trood. “You’ll wait a month of Sundays before you’ll get another vatman in the same street as him. Vatmen will be as rare as curates very soon. He’s a most orderly chap and a rare worker, which the clever ones often are not, and a great believer in discipline. ”

“ He was a type of the slight, kindly [Pg 4] man taken for granted—a man whose worth is under-valued by reason of his unimportance to himself. He had a boundless good nature combined with a modest mind.
Jordan Kellock stood an inch or two shorter than Dingle and was a year or two older. He shaved clean, and brushed his dark, lustreless hair off his high forehead without parting it. Of a somewhat sallow complexion, with grey, deliberate eyes and a clean-cut, thin-lipped mouth, his brow suggested idealism and enthusiasm ”

“ But we old people—as you call us, rather thoughtlessly, Medora—we old people don’t take you children for a model. We’ve been through those stages, and what we understand by love ain’t what you understand by it. We’ve forgotten more than you know. I should have thought now that Kellock—a man so much older than his years—might have given you a glimpse of the beauty and steadfastness of what we’ll call middling to middle-aged love, Medora? ”

“ He’s more than a paper maker. Dingle here, and Life, and old Pinhey, the finisher, and Trood are content to go on their way, and leave other people to do the same. Kellock is not.”
“He’s got ideas,” said Lydia.
“He has. I’ve took a room in the same house where he lodges, and I’ve heard him air his notions. They’re commonplace talk where I come from, but a bit ahead of the times in the West Country. We middle-aged folk ain’t interested in ’em, but the rising generation is. ”

“ 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 ”

“ You must be large-minded, or else you’re lost, and instead of quarrelling with everybody who thinks you’ve done wrong, which will take you all your time, Medora, better be sensible and sing small and tread on nobody’s corns more than you can help. We’ve forgiven you for your dear mother’s sake, and when you’re married to Mr. Kellock, you will be welcome here and treated without any thought of the past. ”

“ Knox the situation.
“Another man might be dangerous,” said Henry Barefoot, “for by all accounts Medora liked him very well and was in two minds to the last which she’d take. But Kellock’s a good and sober creature and a great respecter of law and order. You can trust him not to break out.”
“You speak as a bachelor and your sister’s brother, Henry,” answered Philander. “Where there’s a woman and a man that once loved her, you can no more trust either of ’em not to break out than you can trust a spring in autumn. ”

“ He was carrying a “cross,” the little tool used to hang the paper on the lines, and he tapped his points against the wall of the flat room as he uttered them.
“It seems Kellock, who is on holiday, has run away with Mrs. Dingle. I’ve just heard from him stating the facts as far as they may be supposed to concern me. He doesn’t seem to think it is anybody’s business but his own.”
“A man may be ill and not know it,” said Mr. Pinhey, “and he may be suffering from the sickness of sin and not know it. But we know it.”
“I’m not a sin-doctor—I’m a paper maker, Nicholas. ”

“ Jordan Kellock stared with round, horrified eyes. Even in his dismay and grief he could wonder how the simple Ned had reached this high present standpoint, and was able to address him like a father lecturing a child. He began to recognise the hand of Mr. Knox.
Now he pulled himself together, rose, and prepared to be gone.
“I can only imagine that others have helped you to this extraordinary decision, Dingle.”
[Pg 266] “I don’t deny it. I never was one to think I could run my own show, or play a lone hand. A pity you didn’t feel the same. A lone hand always comes to grief. ”

“ Trivett supported him frankly and she introduced an element of mystery into the scandal, for she continued to declare it was not in Kellock’s character to do this thing. Even the fact that he had done it was powerless to alter her reiterated assertion. She never greatly blamed Kellock, even when others pointed out that men do not run away with other men’s wives on compulsion; and one fact she never ceased to dwell upon, which comforted Dingle in a negative sort of fashion.
She repeated her assurance this evening; for now there came to Dingle, Lydia and the girl, Daisy Finch, Medora’s friend. ”

“ Kellock thought twice about going to see Ned Dingle, for instinct told him that what might seem a reasonable course to such a reasonable being as himself, would possibly appear in another light to Medora’s husband. But he reflected that, as the more intelligent and better educated man, it was his place to act. Even should Dingle use violence, that much he must be prepared to face, if by so doing he could advance the situation between them. ”

“ But if she’d took Jordan Kellock, then she’d have known what reality was, and very likely gone down under it, like a mole under a cart wheel. He’s a wonderful good, earnest man [Pg 61] —worth all the rest of us put together, I dare say; but as a husband for a young, pretty, laughter-loving woman—no. He ain’t built that way, and if your Medora finds that Dingle isn’t all she dreamed—as what man is after the gilt’s off the gingerbread?—then let her be sure she’d have done still worse along with Kellock. ”

“ To his order of mind the situation appealed with the uttermost gravity, for not an inkling of the true Medora tinctured his impression and he was as ignorant of the true Ned. He trusted the woman absolutely and he loved her. He steadfastly believed now that the most precious life in the world to him was in torment and in danger. She had, under dreadful stress of emotion as it appeared, more than once expressed her regret at the fatal step in the past. She had mourned frankly and explicitly at taking Dingle, when she might have married Kellock himself. ”

“ None hesitated to regret the departure of Ned Dingle, and none attempted to conceal that regret in the presence of Kellock. A few men refused to recognise him farther, and when he saluted them as usual, cut him. Robert Life was one of these, and he found that those who came immediately under the influence of Nicholas Pinhey—the men at the glazing rollers—had been imbued with particular animosity. There Medora herself had worked.
As for her, she lived through a familiar experience, and discovered that anticipation is greater than reality, both for good and evil. ”

“ Kellock, “and knowing that, I abide by it and don’t risk losing the only thing that matters, and don’t put myself in such a position that Medora shall ever think less of me than she does now.”
“I think more of you—more of you every minute of my life!” sobbed Medora.
“So there it is, Mrs. Trivett,” summed up the man. “I’m glad you called and I wish it was in my power to make you see the light in this matter. But we shall appeal to the future and we’re not in the least afraid of the verdict of posterity. There’s no support like the consciousness of right. ”

“ Kellock’s clearly a virtuous soul, and he certainly won’t break out if he can help it. You can see by his eyes he’s not a lady’s man, and never will be in any large and generous sense. But so much the more danger, [Pg 39] for where that sort dines they sleeps when love’s the trouble. Let them love once and they’ll love for ever, no matter what happens; and if she was fool enough to go playing about with him, she might overthrow him to his own loss in the long run. ”

“ Indeed he proved a paper maker of the first rank, and while Mr. Trood deprecated Knox’s very unusual stroke, he admitted that the result was as good as possible.
Of this matter they were now speaking.
“Ernest Trood is a great formalist,” said Kellock. “He believes in what you may call tradition and a sort of stroke that you’d say was the perfection of the craft. But you can’t make a man to a model. You can show him another man who works on a good pattern—no more.”
“The stroke comes just like every other stroke, whether it’s cricket, or billiards, or shooting, I reckon,” said Ned Dingle. ”

“ There’s more in it than meets the eye, and Jordan Kellock is the sort of man to feel the punishment of his own conscience much sharper than the voice, or vote, of his fellow men.”
“‘Conscience!’” exclaimed Mr. Pinhey. “How can you say that the man who does a thing like that have got a conscience, Mrs. Trivett?”
“Because I know he has—so do you if you’ll think. There’s very few so fussy and nice about life and its duties and bearings as Jordan Kellock. We all know what he is ”

“ 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 ”