When Connie went up to her bedroom she did what she had not done for
a long time: took off all her clothes, and looked at herself naked in
the huge mirror. She did not know what she was looking for, or at, very
definitely, yet she moved the lamp till it shone full on her.
And she thought, as she had thought so often ... what a frail, easily
hurt, rather pathetic thing a human body is, naked; somehow a little
unfinished, incomplete!
She had been supposed to have rather a good figure, but now she was out
of fashion: a little too female, not enough like an adolescent boy.
She was not very tall, a bit Scottish and short; but she had a certain
fluent, down-slipping grace that might have been beauty. Her skin was
faintly tawny, her limbs had a certain stillness, her body should have
had a full, down-slipping richness; but it lacked something.
Instead of ripening its firm, down-running curves, her body was
flattening and going a little harsh. It was as if it had not had enough
sun and warmth; it was a little greyish and sapless.
Disappointed of its real womanhood, it had not succeeded in becoming
boyish, and unsubstantial, and transparent; instead it had gone opaque.
Her breasts were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they were
unripe, a little bitter, without meaning hanging there. And her belly
had lost the fresh, round gleam it had had when she was young, in the
days of her German boy, who really loved her physically. Then it was
young and expectant, with a real look of its own. Now it was going
slack, and a little flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her
thighs, too, that used to look so quick and glimpsey in their female
roundness, somehow they too were going flat, slack, meaningless.
Her body was going meaningless, going dull and opaque, so much
insignificant substance. It made her feel immensely depressed and
hopeless. What hope was there? She was old, old at twenty-seven, with
no gleam and sparkle in the flesh. Old through neglect and denial,
yes denial. Fashionable women kept their bodies bright like delicate
porcelain, by external attention. There was nothing inside the
porcelain; but she was not even as bright as that. The mental life!
Suddenly she hated it with a rushing fury, the swindle!
She looked in the other mirror's reflection at her back, her waist,
her loins. She was getting thinner, but to her it was not becoming.
The crumple of her waist at the back, as she bent back to look, was a
little weary; and it used to be so gay-looking. And the longish slope
of her haunches and her buttocks had lost its gleam and its sense of
richness. Gone! Only the German boy had loved it, and he was ten years
dead, very nearly. How time went by! Ten years dead, and she was only
twenty-seven. That healthy boy with his fresh, clumsy sensuality that
she had then been so scornful of! Where would she find it now? It
was gone out of men. They had their pathetic, two-second spasms like
Michaelis; but no healthy human sensuality, that warms the blood and
freshens the whole being.
Still she thought the most beautiful part of her was the long-sloping
fall of the haunches from the socket of the back, and the slumberous,
round stillness of the buttocks. Like hillocks of sand the Arabs say,
soft and downward-slipping with a long slope. Here the life still
lingered hoping. But here too she was thinner, and going unripe,
astringent.
But the front of her body made her miserable. It was already beginning
to slacken, with a slack sort of thinness, almost withered, going old
before it had ever really lived. She thought of the child she might
somehow bear. Was she fit, anyhow?
She slipped into her nightdress, and went to bed, where she sobbed
bitterly. And in her bitterness burned a cold indignation against
Clifford, and his writings and his talk: against all the men of his
sort who defrauded a woman even of her own body.
Unjust! Unjust! The sense of deep physical injustice burned to her very
soul.
But in the morning, all the same, she was up at seven, and going
downstairs to Clifford. She had to help him in all the intimate things,
for he had no man, and refused a woman-servant. The housekeeper's
husband, who had known him as a boy, helped him, and did any heavy
lifting; but Connie did the personal things, and she did them
willingly. It was a demand on her, but she had wanted to do what she
could.
So she hardly ever went away from Wragby, and never for more than a day
or two; when Mrs. Betts, the housekeeper, attended to Clifford. He, as
was inevitable in the course of time, took all the service for granted.
It was natural he should.
And yet, deep inside herself, a sense of injustice, of being defrauded,
began to burn in Connie. The physical sense of injustice is a dangerous
feeling, once it is awakened. It must have outlet, or it eats away the
one in whom it is aroused. Poor Clifford, he was not to blame. His was
the greater misfortune. It was all part of the general catastrophe.
And yet was he not in a way to blame? This lack of warmth, this lack of
the simple, warm, physical contact, was he not to blame for that? He
was never really warm, nor even kind, only thoughtful, considerate, in
a well-bred, cold sort of way! But never warm as a man can be warm to
a woman, as even Connie's father could be warm to her, with the warmth
of a man who did himself well, and intended to, but who still could
comfort a woman with a bit of his masculine glow.
But Clifford was not like that. His whole race was not like that. They
were all inwardly hard and separate, and warmth to them was just bad
taste. You have to get on without it, and hold your own; which was
all very well if you were of the same class and race. Then you could
keep yourself cold and be very estimable, and hold your own, and enjoy
the satisfaction of holding it. But if you were of another class and
another race it wouldn't do; there was no fun merely holding your own,
and feeling you belonged to the ruling class. What was the point, when
even the smartest aristocrats had really nothing positive of their own
to hold, and their rule was really a farce, not rule at all? What was
the point? It was all cold nonsense.
A sense of rebellion smouldered in Connie. What was the good of it all?
What was the good of her sacrifice, her devoting her life to Clifford?
What was she serving, after all? A cold spirit of vanity, that had no
warm human contacts, and that was as corrupt as any low-born Jew, in
craving for prostitution to the bitch-goddess, Success. Even Clifford's
cool and contactless assurance that he belonged to the ruling class
didn't prevent his tongue lolling out of his mouth, as he panted after
the bitch-goddess. After all, Michaelis was really more dignified in
the matter, and far, far more successful. Really, if you looked closely
at Clifford, he was a buffoon, and a buffoon is more humiliating than a
bounder.
As between the two men, Michaelis really had far more use for her than
Clifford had. He had even more need of her. Any good nurse can attend
to crippled legs! And as for the heroic effort, Michaelis was a heroic
rat, and Clifford was very much of a poodle showing off.
There were people staying in the house, among them Clifford's Aunt
Eva, Lady Bennerley. She was a thin woman of sixty, with a red nose,
a widow, and still something of a "grande dame." She belonged to one
of the best families, and had the character to carry it off. Connie
liked her, she was so perfectly simple and frank, as far as she
intended to be frank, and superficially kind. Inside herself she was
a past-mistress in holding her own, and holding other people a little
lower. She was not at all a snob: far too sure of herself. She was
perfect at the social sport of coolly holding her own, and making other
people defer to her.
She was kind to Connie, and tried to worm into her woman's soul with
the sharp gimlet of her well-born observations.
"You're quite wonderful, in my opinion," she said to Connie. "You've
done wonders for Clifford. I never saw any budding genius myself, and
there he is all the rage."--Aunt Eva was quite complacently proud of
Clifford's success. Another feather in the family cap! She didn't care
a straw about his books, but why should she?
"Oh, I don't think it's my doing," said Connie.
"It must be! Can't be anybody else's. And it seems to me you don't get
enough out of it."
"How?"
"Look at the way you are shut up here. I said to Clifford: If that
child rebels one day you'll have yourself to thank!"
"But Clifford never denies me anything," said Connie.
"Look here, my dear child,"--and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand
on Connie's arm. "A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not
having lived it. Believe me!" And she took another sip of brandy, which
maybe was her form of repentance.
"But I do live my life, don't I?"
"Not in my idea! Clifford should bring you to London, and let you go
about. His sort of friends are all right for him, but what are they for
you? If I were you I should think it wasn't good enough. You'll let
your youth slip by, and you'll spend your old age, and your middle age
too, repenting it."
Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed by the brandy.
But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being steered into the
smart world by Lady Bennerley. She didn't feel really smart, it wasn't
interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness under
it all; like the soil of Labrador, which has gay little flowers on its
surface, and a foot down is frozen.
Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow, and Jack
Strangeways with his wife Olive. The talk was much more desultory than
when only the cronies were there, and everybody was a bit bored, for
the weather was bad, and there was only billiards, and the pianola to
dance to.
Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in
bottles, and women would be "immunised."
"Jolly good thing too!" she said. "Then a woman can live her own life."
Strangeways wanted children, and she didn't.
"How'd you like to be immunised?" Winterslow asked her, with an ugly
smile.
"I hope I am; naturally," she said. "Anyhow the future's going to have
more sense, and a woman needn't be dragged down by her _functions_."
"Perhaps she'll float off into space altogether," said Dukes.
"I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the
physical disabilities," said Clifford. "All the love-business for
example, it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed
babies in bottles."
"No!" cried Olive. "That might leave all the more room for fun."
"I suppose," said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, "if the
love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia
perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully
refreshing for everybody."
"The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a
cheerful weekend!" said Jack. "Sounds all right, but where should we be
by Wednesday?"
"So long as you can forget your body you are happy," said Lady
Bennerley. "And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are
wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to forget
our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it."
"Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether," said Winterslow. "It's
quite time man began to improve on his own nature, especially the
physical side of it."
"Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke," said Connie.
"It won't happen," said Dukes. "Our old show will come flop; our
civilization is going to fall. It's going down the bottomless pit, down
the chasm. And believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be the
phallus!"
"Oh do! _do_ be impossible, General!" cried Olive.
"I believe our civilization is going to collapse," said Aunt Eva.
"And what will come after it?" asked Clifford.
"I haven't the faintest idea, but something, I suppose," said the
elderly lady.
"Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunised
women, and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the bridge
to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?" said Clifford.
"Oh, don't bother! let's get on with today," said Olive. "Only hurry up
with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off."
"There might even be real men, in the next phase," said Tommy. "Real,
intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldn't that
be a change, an enormous change from us? _We're_ not men, and the
women aren't women. We're only cerebrating make-shifts, mechanical and
intellectual experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine
men and women, instead of our little lot of clever-jacks, all at the
intelligence-age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of
smoke or babies in bottles."
"Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up," said
Olive.
"Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having," said
Winterslow.
"Spirits!" said Jack, drinking his whiskey and soda.
"Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!" said Dukes. "But
it'll come, in time, when we've shoved the cerebral stone away a bit,
the money and the rest. Then we'll get a democracy of touch, instead of
a democracy of pocket."
Something echoed inside Connie: "Give me the democracy of touch, the
resurrection of the body!" She didn't at all know what it meant, but it
comforted her, as meaningless things may do.
Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored
by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow,
and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual
rattle of it!
Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued
plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold of her lower
body, she couldn't escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious
painfulness, yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even
the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about herself. Even Tommy
Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right.
Only she began to be afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that
peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as false
teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall church, and
which she saw with such grim plainness from the park. The bristling of
the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with a
grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be
buried there, added to the ghastly host under the tombstones and the
monuments, in these filthy Midlands.
She needed help, and she knew it; so she wrote a little _cri de coeur_
to her sister, Hilda. "I'm not well lately, and I don't know what's the
matter with me."
Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She
came in March, alone, driving herself in a nimble two-seater. Up the
drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of
grass, where the two great wild beech trees stood, on the flat in front
of the house.
Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and
kissed her sister.
"But Connie!" she said. "Whatever is the matter?"
"Nothing!" said Connie, rather shame-facedly; but she knew how she had
suffered in contrast to Hilda. Both sisters had the same rather golden,
glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally strong, warm physique.
But now Connie was thin and earthy-looking, with a scraggy, yellowish
neck, that stuck out of her jumper.
"But you're ill, child!" said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless
voice, that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite,
two years older than Connie.
"No, not ill. Perhaps I'm bored," said Connie a little pathetically.
The light of battle glowed in Hilda's face: she was a woman, soft and
still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men.
"This wretched place!" she said softly, looking at poor old, lumbering
Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe
pear, and she was an amazon of the real old breed.
She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked,
but also he shrank from her. His wife's family did not have his sort of
manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders,
but once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop.
He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond,
and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his
expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and
stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn't care
what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if he'd been Pope or
Emperor it would have been just the same.
"Connie's looking awfully unwell," she said in her soft voice, fixing
him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so
did Connie; but he well knew the stone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.
"She's a little thinner," he said.
"Haven't you done anything about it?"
"Do you think it necessary?" he asked, with his suavest English
stiffness, for the two things often go together.
Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not
her forte, nor Connie's; so she glowered, and he was much more
uncomfortable than if she had said things.
"I'll take her to a doctor," said Hilda at length, "Can you suggest a
good one round here?"
"I'm afraid I can't."
"Then I'll take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust."
Though boiling with rage, Clifford said nothing.
"I suppose I may as well stay the night," said Hilda, pulling off her
gloves, "and I'll drive her to town tomorrow."
Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and at evening the whites
of his eyes were a little yellow too. He ran to liver. But Hilda was
consistently modest and maidenly.
"You must have a nurse or somebody, to look after you personally. You
should really have a manservant," said Hilda as they sat, with apparent
calmness, at coffee after dinner. She spoke in her soft, seemingly
gentle way, but Clifford felt she was hitting him on the head with a
bludgeon.
"You think so?" he said coldly.
"I'm sure! It's necessary. Either that, or father and I must take
Connie away for some months. This can't go on."
"What can't go on?"
"Haven't you looked at the child?" asked Hilda, gazing at him full
stare. He looked rather like a huge, boiled crayfish, at the moment; or
so she thought.
"Connie and I will discuss it," he said.
"I've already discussed it with her," said Hilda.
Clifford had been long enough in the hands of nurses; he hated them,
because they left him no real privacy. And a manservant! ... he
couldn't stand a man hanging round him. Almost better any woman. But
why not Connie?
The two sisters drove off in the morning, Connie looking rather like an
Easter lamb, rather small beside Hilda, who held the wheel. Sir Malcolm
was away, but the Kensington house was open.
The doctor examined Connie carefully, and asked her all about her life.
"I see your photograph, and Sir Clifford's, in the illustrated papers
sometimes. Almost notorieties, aren't you? That's how the quiet little
girls grow up, though you're only a quiet little girl even now, in
spite of the illustrated papers. No, no! There's nothing organically
wrong, but it won't do! it won't do! Tell Sir Clifford he's got to
bring you to town, or take you abroad, and amuse you. You've got to
be amused, got to! Your vitality is much too low; no reserves, no
reserves. The nerves of the heart a bit queer already: oh, yes! Nothing
but nerves; I'd put you right in a month at Cannes or Biarritz. But
it mustn't go on, _mustn't_, I tell you, or I won't be answerable for
consequences. You're spending your life without renewing it. You've
got to be amused, properly, healthily amused. You're spending your
vitality without making any. Can't go on, you know. Depression! avoid
depression!"
Hilda set her jaw, and that meant something.
Michaelis heard they were in town, and came running with roses. "Why,
whatever's wrong?" he cried. "You're a shadow of yourself. Why, I never
saw such a change! Why ever didn't you let me know? Come to Nice with
me! Come down to Sicily! Go on, come to Sicily with me, it's lovely
there just now. You want sun! You want life! Why you're wasting away!
Come away with me! Come to Africa! Oh, hang Sir Clifford! Chuck him,
and come along with me. I'll marry you the minute he divorces you. Come
along and try a life! God's love! That place Wragby would kill anybody.
Beastly place! Foul place! Kill anybody! Come away with me into the
sun! It's the sun you want, of course, and a bit of normal life."
But Connie's heart simply stood still at the thought of abandoning
Clifford there and then. She couldn't do it. No ... no! She just
couldn't. She had to go back to Wragby.
Michaelis was disgusted. Hilda didn't like Michaelis, but she _almost_
preferred him to Clifford. Back went the sisters to the Midlands.
Hilda talked to Clifford, who still had yellow eyeballs when they got
back. He, too, in his way, was over-wrought; but he had to listen to
all Hilda said, to all the doctor had said, not what Michaelis had
said, of course, and he sat mum through the ultimatum.
"Here is the address of a good manservant, who was with an invalid
patient of the doctor's till he died last month. He is really a good
man, and fairly sure to come."
"But I'm _not_ an invalid, and I will _not_ have a manservant," said
Clifford, poor devil.
"And here are the addresses of two women; I saw one of them, she would
do very well; a woman of about fifty, quiet, strong, kind, and in her
way cultured...."
Clifford only sulked, and would not answer.
"Very well, Clifford. If we don't settle something by tomorrow, I shall
telegraph to father, and we shall take Connie away."
"Will Connie go?" asked Clifford.
"She doesn't want to, but she knows she must. Mother died of cancer,
brought on by fretting. We're not running any risks."
So next day Clifford suggested Mrs. Bolton, Tevershall parish nurse.
Apparently Mrs. Betts had thought of her. Mrs. Bolton was just retiring
from her parish duties to take up private nursing jobs. Clifford had
a queer dread of delivering himself into the hands of a stranger, but
this Mrs. Bolton had once nursed him through scarlet fever, and he knew
her.
The two sisters at once called on Mrs. Bolton, in a newish house in
a row, quite select for Tevershall. They found a rather good-looking
woman of forty-odd, in a nurse's uniform, with a white collar and
apron, just making herself tea, in a small, crowded sitting-room.
Mrs. Bolton was most attentive and polite, seemed quite nice, spoke
with a bit of a broad slur, but in heavily correct English, and from
having bossed the sick colliers for a good many years, had a very
good opinion of herself, and a fair amount of assurance. In short, in
her tiny way, one of the governing class in the village, very much
respected.
"Yes, Lady Chatterley's not looking at all well! Why, she used to be
that bonny, didn't she now? But she's been failing all winter! Oh, it's
hard, it is. Poor Sir Clifford! Eh, that war, it's a lot to answer for."
And Mrs. Bolton would come to Wragby at once, if Dr. Shardlow would let
her off. She had another fortnight's parish nursing to do, by rights,
but they might get a substitute, you know.
Hilda posted off to Dr. Shardlow, and on the following Sunday Mrs.
Bolton drove up in Leiver's cab to Wragby, with two trunks. Hilda had
talks with her; Mrs. Bolton was ready at any moment to talk. And she
seemed so young! the way the passion would flush in her rather pale
cheek. She was forty-seven.
Her husband, Ted Bolton, had been killed in the pit, twenty-two years
ago, twenty-two years last Christmas, just at Christmas time, leaving
her with two children, one a baby in arms. Oh, the baby was married
now, Edith, to a young man in Boots Cash Chemists in Sheffield.
The other one was a school-teacher in Chesterfield, she came home
weekends, when she wasn't asked out somewhere. Young folks enjoyed
themselves nowadays, not like when she, Ivy Bolton, was young.
Ted Bolton was twenty-eight when he was killed in an explosion down
th' pit. The butty in front shouted to them all to lie down quick,
there were four of them. And they all lay down in time, only Ted, and
it killed him. Then at the enquiry, on the masters' side they said Ted
had been frightened, and trying to run away, and not obeying orders,
so it was like his fault really. So the compensation was only three
hundred pounds, and they made out as if it was more of a gift than
legal compensation, because it was really the man's own fault. And they
wouldn't let her have the money down; she wanted to have a little shop.
But they said she'd no doubt squander it, perhaps in drink!! So she had
to draw it thirty shillings a week. Yes, she had to go every Monday
morning down to the offices, and stand there a couple of hours waiting
her turn; yes, for almost four years she went every Monday. And what
could she do with two little children on her hands? But Ted's mother
was very good to her. When the baby could toddle she'd keep both the
children for the day, while she, Ivy Bolton, went to Sheffield, and
attended classes in ambulance, and then the fourth year she even took a
nursing course and got qualified. She was determined to be independent
and keep her children. So she was assistant at Uthwaite hospital, just
a little place, for a while. But when the Company, the Tevershall
Colliery Company, really Sir Geoffrey, saw that she could get on by
herself, they were very good to her, gave her the parish nursing, and
stood by her, she would say that for them. And she'd done it ever
since, till now it was getting a bit much for her, she needed something
a bit lighter, there was such a lot of traipsing round if you were a
district nurse.
"Yes, the Company's been very good to _me_, I always say it. But I
should never forget what they said about Ted, for he was as steady and
fearless a chap as ever set foot on the cage, and it was as good as
branding him a coward. But there, he was dead, and could say nothing to
none of 'em."
It was a queer mixture of feelings the woman showed as she talked. She
liked the colliers, whom she had nursed for so long; but she felt very
superior to them. She felt almost upper class; and at the same time a
resentment against the ruling class smouldered in her. The masters! In
a dispute between masters and men, she was always for the men. But when
there was no question of contest, she was pining to be superior, to be
one of the upper classes. The upper classes fascinated her, appealing
to her peculiar English passion for superiority. She was thrilled to
come to Wragby; thrilled to talk to Lady Chatterley, my word, different
from the common colliers' wives! She said so in so many words. Yet one
could see a grudge against the Chatterleys peep out in her; the grudge
against the masters.
"Why, yes, of course, it would wear Lady Chatterley out! It's a mercy
she had a sister to come and help her. Men don't think, high and low
alike, they take what a woman does for them for granted. Oh, I've told
the colliers off about it many a time. But it's very hard for Sir
Clifford, you know, crippled like that. They were always a haughty
family, standoffish in a way, as they've a right to be. But then to be
brought down like that! And it's very hard on Lady Chatterley, perhaps
harder on her. What she misses! I only had Ted three years, but my
word, while I had him I had a husband I could never forget. He was one
in a thousand, and jolly as the day. Who'd ever have thought he'd get
killed? I don't believe it to this day somehow, I've never believed it,
though I washed him with my own hands. But he was never dead for me, he
never was. I never took it in."
This was a new voice in Wragby, very new for Connie to hear; it roused
a new ear in her.
For the first week or so, Mrs. Bolton, however, was very quiet at
Wragby; her assured, bossy manner left her, and she was nervous. With
Clifford she was shy, almost frightened, and silent. He liked that,
and soon recovered his self-possession, letting her do things for him
without even noticing her.
"She's a useful nonentity!" he said. Connie opened her eyes in wonder,
but did not contradict him. So different are impressions on two
different people!
And he soon became rather superb, somewhat lordly with the nurse.
She had rather expected it, and he played up without knowing. So
susceptible we are to what is expected of us! The colliers had been so
like children, talking to her, and telling her what hurt them, while
she bandaged them, or nursed them. They had always made her feel so
grand, almost super-human in her administrations. Now Clifford made
her feel small, and like a servant, and she accepted it without a word,
adjusting herself to the upper classes.
She came very mute, with her long, handsome face, and downcast eyes, to
administer to him. And she said very humbly: "Shall I do this now, Sir
Clifford? Shall I do that?"
"No, leave it for a time, I'll have it done later."
"Very well, Sir Clifford."
"Come in again in half an hour."
"Very well, Sir Clifford."
"And just take those old papers out, will you?"
"Very well, Sir Clifford."
She went softly, and in half an hour she came softly again. She was
bullied, but she didn't mind. She was experiencing the upper classes.
She neither resented nor disliked Clifford; he was just part of a
phenomenon, the phenomenon of the high-class folks, so far unknown to
her, but now to be known. She felt more at home with Lady Chatterley,
and after all it's the mistress of the house matters most.
Mrs. Bolton helped Clifford to bed at night, and slept across the
passage from his room, and came if he rang for her in the night. She
also helped him in the morning, and soon valeted him completely, even
shaving him, in her soft, tentative woman's way. She was very good and
competent, and she soon knew how to have him in her power. He wasn't so
very different from the colliers after all, when you lathered his chin,
and softly rubbed the bristles. The stand-offishness and the lack of
frankness didn't bother her, she was having a new experience.
Clifford, however, inside himself, never quite forgave Connie for
giving up her personal care of him to a strange hired woman. It killed,
he said to himself, the real flower of the intimacy between him and
her. But Connie didn't mind that. The fine flower of their intimacy was
to her rather like an orchid, a bulb stuck parasitic on her tree of
life, and producing, to her eyes, a rather shabby flower.
Now she had more time to herself she could softly play the piano, up
in her room, and sing: "Touch not the nettle ... for the bonds of love
are ill to loose." She had not realised till lately how ill to loose
they were, these bonds of love. But thank Heaven she had loosened them!
She was so glad to be alone, not always to have to talk to him. When he
was alone he tapped-tapped-tapped on a typewriter, to infinity. But
when he was not "working," and she was there, he talked, always talked;
infinite small analysis of people and motives, and results, characters
and personalities, till now she had had enough. For years she had loved
it, until she had enough, and then suddenly it was too much. She was
thankful to be alone.
It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of
consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass,
till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly,
subtly she was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers,
breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience
to get clear. But the bonds of such love are more ill to loose even
than most bonds; though Mrs. Bolton's coming had been a great help.
But he still wanted the old intimate evenings of talk with Connie; talk
or reading aloud. But now she could arrange that Mrs. Bolton should
come at ten to disturb them. At ten o'clock Connie could go upstairs
and be alone. Clifford was in good hands with Mrs. Bolton.
Mrs. Bolton ate with Mrs. Betts in the housekeeper's room, since they
were all agreeable. And it was curious how much closer the servants'
quarters seemed to have come; right up to the doors of Clifford's
study, when before they were so remote. For Mrs. Betts would sometimes
sit in Mrs. Bolton's room, and Connie heard their lowered voices, and
felt somehow the strong, other vibration of the working people almost
invading the sitting-room, when she and Clifford were alone. So changed
was Wragby merely by Mrs. Bolton's coming.
And Connie felt herself released, in another world, she felt she
breathed differently. But still she was afraid of how many of her
roots, perhaps mortal ones, were tangled with Clifford's. Yet still,
she breathed freer, a new phase was going to begin in her life.