Connie and Clifford came home to Wragby in the autumn of 1920. Miss
Chatterley, still disgusted at her brother's defection, had departed
and was living in a little flat in London.
Wragby was a long low old house in brown stone, begun about the middle
of the eighteenth century, and added on to, till it was a warren of a
place without much distinction. It stood on an eminence in a rather
fine old park of oak trees, but alas, one could see in the near
distance the chimney of Tevershall pit, with its clouds of steam and
smoke, and on the damp, hazy distance of the hill the raw straggle of
Tevershall village, a village which began almost at the park gates,
and trailed in utter hopeless ugliness for a long and gruesome mile:
houses, rows of wretched, small, begrimed, brick houses, with black
slate roofs for lids, sharp angles and wilful, blank dreariness.
Connie was accustomed to Kensington or the Scotch hills or the Sussex
downs: that was her England. With the stoicism of the young she took in
the utter, soulless ugliness of the coal-and-iron Midlands at a glance,
and left it at what it was: unbelievable and not to be thought about.
From the rather dismal rooms at Wragby she heard the rattle-rattle of
the screens at the pit, the puff of the winding-engine, the clink-clink
of shunting trucks, and the hoarse little whistle of the colliery
locomotives. Tevershall pit-bank was burning, had been burning for
years, and it would cost thousands to put it out. So it had to burn.
And when the wind was that way, which was often, the house was full of
the stench of this sulphureous combustion of the earth's excrement. But
even on windless days the air always smelt of something under-earth:
sulphur, iron, coal, or acid. And even on the Christmas roses the smuts
settled persistently, incredible, like black manna from skies of doom.
Well, there it was: fated like the rest of things! It was rather awful,
but why kick? You couldn't kick it away. It just went on. Life, like
all the rest! On the low dark ceiling of cloud at night red blotches
burned and quavered, dappling and swelling and contracting, like burns
that give pain. It was the furnaces. At first they fascinated Connie
with a sort of horror; she felt she was living underground. Then she
got used to them. And in the morning it rained.
Clifford professed to like Wragby better than London. This country had
a grim will of its own, and the people had guts. Connie wondered what
else they had: certainly neither eyes nor minds. The people were as
haggard, shapeless, and dreary as the countryside, and as unfriendly.
Only there was something in their deep-mouthed slurring of the dialect,
and the thresh-thresh of their hobnailed pit-boots as they trailed
home in gangs on the asphalt from work, that was terrible and a bit
mysterious.
There had been no welcome home for the young squire, no festivities, no
deputation, not even a single flower. Only a dank ride in a motorcar up
a dark, damp drive, burrowing through gloomy trees, out to the slope
of the park where grey damp sheep were feeding, to the knoll where the
house spread its dark brown façade, and the housekeeper and her husband
were hovering, like unsure tenants on the face of the earth, ready to
stammer a welcome.
There was no communication between Wragby Hall and Tevershall
village, none. No caps were touched, no curtseys bobbed. The colliers
merely stared; the tradesmen lifted their caps to Connie as to an
acquaintance, and nodded awkwardly to Clifford; that was all. Gulf
impassable, and a quiet sort of resentment on either side. At first
Connie suffered from the steady drizzle of resentment that came from
the village. Then she hardened herself to it, and it became a sort of
tonic, something to live up to. It was not that she and Clifford were
unpopular, they merely belonged to another species altogether from the
colliers. Gulf impassable, breach indescribable, such as is perhaps
non-existent south of the Trent. But in the Midlands and the industrial
North gulf impassable, across which no communication could take place.
You stick to your side, I'll stick to mine! A strange denial of the
common pulse of humanity.
Yet the village sympathised with Clifford and Connie in the abstract.
In the flesh it was--You leave me alone!--on either side.
The rector was a nice man of about sixty, full of his duty, and
reduced, personally, almost to a nonentity by the silent--You leave me
alone!--of the village. The miners' wives were nearly all Methodists.
The miners were nothing. But even so much official uniform as the
clergyman wore was enough to obscure entirely the fact that he was a
man like any other man. No, he was Mester Ashby, a sort of automatic
preaching and praying concern.
This stubborn, instinctive--We think ourselves as good as you, if you
_are_ Lady Chatterley!--puzzled and baffled Connie at first extremely.
The curious, suspicious, false amiability with which the miners' wives
met her overtures; the curiously offensive tinge of--Oh dear me! I
_am_ somebody now, with Lady Chatterley talking to me! But she needn't
think I'm not as good as her for all that!--which she always heard
twanging in the women's half-fawning voices, was impossible. There was
no getting past it. It was hopelessly and offensively nonconformist.
Clifford left them alone, and she learnt to do the same: she just went
by without looking at them, and they stared as if she were a walking
wax figure. When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty
and contemptuous; one could no longer afford to be friendly. In fact
he was altogether rather supercilious and contemptuous of anyone
not in his own class. He stood his ground, without any attempt at
conciliation. And he was neither liked nor disliked by the people: he
was just part of things, like the pit-bank and Wragby itself.
But Clifford was really extremely shy and self-conscious now he was
lamed. He hated seeing anyone except just the personal servants. For he
had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair. Nevertheless he
was just as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he
wore the careful Bond Street neckties just as before, and from the top
he looked just as smart and impressive as ever. He had never been one
of the modern lady-like young men: rather bucolic even, with his ruddy
face and broad shoulders. But his very quiet, hesitating voice, and
his eyes, at the same time bold and frightened, assured and uncertain,
revealed his nature. His manner was often offensively supercilious, and
then again modest and self-effacing, almost tremulous.
Connie and he were attached to one another, in the aloof modern way.
He was much too hurt in himself, the great shock of his maiming, to be
easy and flippant. He was a hurt thing. And as such Connie stuck to him
passionately.
But she could not help feeling how little connection he really had with
people. The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as
objects rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life,
crude raw phenomena rather than human beings along with him. He was in
some way afraid of them, he could not bear to have them look at him now
he was lame. And their queer, crude life seemed as unnatural as that of
hedgehogs.
He was remotely interested; but like a man looking down a microscope,
or up a telescope. He was not in touch. He was not in actual touch
with anybody, save, traditionally, with Wragby, and, through the close
bond of family defence, with Emma. Beyond this nothing really touched
him. Connie felt that she herself didn't really, not really touch him;
perhaps there was nothing to get at ultimately; just a negation of
human contact.
Yet he was absolutely dependent on her, he needed her every moment.
Big and strong as he was, he was helpless. He could wheel himself
about in a wheeled chair, and he had a sort of bath-chair with a motor
attachment, in which he could puff slowly round the park. But alone he
was like a lost thing. He needed Connie to be there, to assure him he
existed at all.
Still he was ambitious. He had taken to writing stories; curious, very
personal stories about people he had known. Clever, rather spiteful,
and yet, in some mysterious way, meaningless. The observation was
extraordinary and peculiar. But there was no touch, no actual contact.
It was as if the whole thing took place in a vacuum. And since the
field of life is largely an artificially-lighted stage today, the
stories were curiously true to modern life, to the modern psychology,
that is.
Clifford was almost morbidly sensitive about these stories. He wanted
everyone to think them good, of the best, ne plus ultra. They appeared
in the most modern magazines, and were praised and blamed as usual. But
to Clifford the blame was torture, like knives goading him. It was as
if the whole of his being were in his stories.
Connie helped him as much as she could. At first she was thrilled.
He talked every thing over with her monotonously, insistently,
persistently, and she had to respond with all her might. It was as if
her whole soul and body and sex had to rouse up and pass into these
stories of his. This thrilled her and absorbed her.
Of physical life they lived very little. She had to superintend the
house. But the housekeeper had served Sir Geoffrey for many years,
and the dried-up, elderly, superlatively correct female ... you could
hardly call her a parlourmaid, or even a woman ... who waited at table,
had been in the house for forty years. Even the very housemaids were
no longer young. It was awful! What could you do with such a place,
but leave it alone! All these endless rooms that nobody used, all
the Midlands routine, the mechanical cleanliness and the mechanical
order! Clifford had insisted on a new cook, an experienced woman who
had served him in his rooms in London. For the rest the place seemed
run by mechanical anarchy. Everything went on in pretty good order,
strict cleanliness, and strict punctuality; even pretty strict honesty.
And yet, to Connie, it was a methodical anarchy. No warmth of feeling
united it organically. The house seemed as dreary as a disused street.
What could she do but leave it alone...? So she left it alone. Miss
Chatterley came sometimes, with her aristocratic thin face, and
triumphed, finding nothing altered. She would never forgive Connie for
ousting her from her union in consciousness with her brother. It was
she, Emma, who should be bringing forth the stories, these books, with
him; the Chatterley stories, something new in the world, that _they_,
the Chatterleys, had put there. There was no other standard. There was
no organic connection with the thought and expression that had gone
before. Only something new in the world: the Chatterley books, entirely
personal.
Connie's father, when he paid a flying visit to Wragby, said in private
to his daughter: As for Clifford's writing, it's smart, but there's
nothing in it. It won't last!... Connie looked at the burly Scottish
knight who had done himself well all his life, and her eyes, her big,
still-wondering blue eyes became vague. Nothing in it! What did he mean
by _nothing in it_? If the critics praised it, and Clifford's name was
almost famous, and it even brought in money ... what did her father
mean by saying there was nothing in Clifford's writing? What else could
there be?
For Connie had adopted the standard of the young: what there was in
the moment was everything. And moments followed one another without
necessarily belonging to one another.
It was in her second winter at Wragby her father said to her: "I
hope, Connie, you won't let circumstances force you into being a
_demi-vierge_."
"A _demi-vierge_!" replied Connie vaguely. "Why? Why not?"
"Unless you like it, of course!" said her father hastily. To Clifford
he said the same, when the two men were alone: "I'm afraid it doesn't
quite suit Connie to be a _demi-vierge_."
"A half-virgin!" replied Clifford, translating the phrase to be sure of
it.
He thought for a moment, then flushed very red. He was angry and
offended.
"In what way doesn't it suit her?" he asked stiffly.
"She's getting thin ... angular. It's not her style. She's not the
pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she's a bonny Scotch trout."
"Without the spots, of course!" said Clifford.
He wanted to say something later to Connie about the _demi-vierge_
business ... the half-virgin state of her affairs. But he could not
bring himself to do it. He was at once too intimate with her and not
intimate enough. He was so very much at one with her, in his mind and
hers, but bodily they were non-existent to one another, and neither
could bear to drag in the _corpus delicti_. They were so intimate, and
utterly out of touch.
Connie guessed, however, that her father had said something, and that
something was in Clifford's mind. She knew that he didn't mind whether
she were _demi-vierge_ or _demi-monde_, so long as he didn't absolutely
know, and wasn't made to see. What the eye doesn't see and the mind
doesn't know, doesn't exist.
Connie and Clifford had now been nearly two years at Wragby, living
their vague life of absorption in Clifford and his work. Their
interests had never ceased to flow together over his work. They talked
and wrestled in the throes of composition, and felt as if something
were happening, really happening, really in the void.
And thus far it was a life: in the void. For the rest it was
non-existence. Wragby was there, the servants ... but spectral, not
really existing. Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods
that joined the park, and enjoyed the solitude and the mystery, kicked
the brown leaves of autumn, and picked the primroses of spring. But
it was all a dream; or rather it was like the simulacrum of reality.
The oak-leaves were to her like oak-leaves seen ruffling in a mirror,
she herself was a figure somebody had read about, picking primroses
that were only shadows or memories, or words. No substance to her or
anything ... no touch, no contact! Only this life with Clifford, this
endless spinning of webs of yarn, of the minutiae of consciousness,
these stories Sir Malcolm said there was nothing in, and they wouldn't
last. Why should there be anything in them, why should they last?
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Sufficient unto the moment
is the _appearance_ of reality.
Clifford had quite a number of friends, acquaintances really, and he
invited them to Wragby. He invited all sorts of people, critics and
writers, people who would help to praise his books. And they were
flattered at being asked to Wragby, and they praised. Connie understood
it all perfectly. But why not? This was one of the fleeting patterns in
the mirror. What was wrong with it?
She was hostess to these people ... mostly men. She was hostess also
to Clifford's occasional aristocratic relations. Being a soft, ruddy,
country-looking girl, inclined to freckles, with big blue eyes, and
curling, brown hair, and a soft voice, and rather strong, female loins
she was considered a little old-fashioned and "womanly." She was not a
"little pilchard sort of fish," like a boy, with a boy's flat breast
and little buttocks. She was too feminine to be quite smart.
So the men, especially those no longer young, were very nice to her
indeed. But, knowing what torture poor Clifford would feel at the
slightest sign of flirting on her part, she gave them no encouragement
at all. She was quiet and vague, she had no contact with them and
intended to have none. Clifford was extraordinarily proud of himself.
His relatives treated her quite kindly. She knew that the kindliness
indicated a lack of fear, and that these people had no respect for you
unless you could frighten them a little. But again she had no contact.
She let them be kindly and disdainful, she let them feel they had no
need to draw their steel in readiness. She had no real connection with
them.
Time went on. Whatever happened, nothing happened, because she was so
beautifully out of contact. She and Clifford lived in their ideas and
his books. She entertained ... there were always people in the house.
Time went on as the clock does, half-past eight instead of half-past
seven.