They passed through the shining fruit trees and stopped to admire them; then Medora, since Mr. Kellock had been mentioned, felt she might return to that subject.
“I often wonder what he’ll do,” she said. “You feel that he won’t be content to stop at Dene all his life.”
“Why not?” asked Daisy. “He’s got proper good money and is a big man here.”
“He’d be a big man anywhere,” answered Medora. “It isn’t only a matter of wages with him,” she added. “Of course we know as a vatman he’s one of the best in England, and makes as good paper as there is in the world, I suppose. But he’s got more to him than that, Daisy. He’s not content with being prosperous and well-thought of. He thinks great thoughts and has great ambitions. I dare say the people here don’t see that, for he’s a cut above the most of them.”
“He is,” admitted Daisy. “There’s something, I don’t know what about him; but it makes me uncomfortable with him.”
“That’s just his greatness acting on you,” explained Medora. “I felt like that once too, but he did me the kindness to explain himself.”
“We all know he would have given all he’d got to marry you.”
“Don’t speak about that. At any rate I understand him better than any other woman—or man for that matter. And though it wasn’t to be, I understand him still; and I know he’s out for big things sooner or later. He’ll make a mark in the world of labour some day.”
“I’m sure I shouldn’t know what to answer if he talked to me about such deep subjects,” she said. “But then you’re married, and you’ve always got a man in the house to help your brain power.”
Medora, secretly nettled at the preposterous suggestion of Ned enlarging her mental outlook, turned to the blackberries and felt a helpless disappointment that even her friend should guess so little of her difficulties and troubles. For now she began day by day to weave round herself and her married life a hollow and false tissue of imaginary tribulations and trials supposed to be sprung from her union with Edward Dingle. Medora set about a sort of histrionics inspired by nothing but her own vague unrest and her own amazing ignorance of reality. Even to herself she could not explain this futile experiment in emotions, yet she persisted and presently, finding certain of her circle were deceived, and even hearing words of pity on a woman’s lips, she deluded herself as to the truth of her gathering misfortunes and assured her conscience that the disaster came from without and not within. For at first, in the perpetration of this stupid pose, conscience pricked before Ned’s puzzled eyes; but presently, when a silly woman told Medora that she was a martyr, this nonsense of her own brewing seemed indeed the bitter drink life had set to her lips. She echoed and amplified the notion of martyrdom. It was just what she wanted to excuse her own folly to herself. From accepting the idea, she soon began to credit it. To win the full flavour of the make-believe this was necessary. Then developed the spectacle of a masquerading woman, herself creating the atmosphere in which she desired her world to see her suffer and shine.