Lady Chatterley’s Lover · Chapter 11 (3/3)

“Yes! And she looked as rapt as if I had said the heavens had opened to you. I said if she ever came to Tevershall she was to come and see you.”

“Me! Whatever for! See me!”

“Why yes, Clifford. You can’t be so adored without making some slight return. Saint George of Cappadocia was nothing to you, in her eyes.”

“And do you think she’ll come?”

“Oh, she blushed! and looked quite beautiful for a moment, poor thing! Why don’t men marry the women who would really adore them?”

“The women start adoring too late. But did she say she’d come?”

“Oh!” Connie imitated the breathless Miss Bentley, “your Ladyship, if ever I should dare to presume!”

“Dare to presume! how absurd! But I hope to God she won’t turn up. And how was her tea?”

“Oh, Lipton’s and very strong! But Clifford, do you realise you are the Roman de la rose of Miss Bentley and lots like her?”

“I’m not flattered, even then.”

“They treasure up every one of your pictures in the illustrated papers, and probably pray for you every night. It’s rather wonderful.”

She went upstairs to change.

That evening he said to her:

“You do think, don’t you, that there is something eternal in marriage?”

She looked at him.

“But Clifford, you make eternity sound like a lid or a long, long chain that trailed after one, no matter how far one went.”

He looked at her, annoyed.

“What I mean,” he said, “is that if you go to Venice, you won’t go in the hopes of some love affair that you can take au grand sérieux, will you?”

“A love affair in Venice au grand sérieux? No, I assure you! No, I’d never take a love affair in Venice more than au très petit sérieux.”

She spoke with a queer kind of contempt. He knitted his brows, looking at her.

Coming downstairs in the morning, she found the keeper’s dog Flossie sitting in the corridor outside Clifford’s room, and whimpering very faintly.

“Why Flossie!” she said softly, “What are you doing here?”

And she quietly opened Clifford’s door. Clifford was sitting up in bed, with the bed-table and typewriter pushed aside, and the keeper was standing attention at the foot of the bed. Flossie ran in. With a faint gesture of head and eyes, Mellors ordered her to the door again, and she slunk out.

“Oh, good morning Clifford!” Connie said. “I didn’t know you were busy.” Then she looked at the keeper, saying good morning to him. He murmured his reply, looking at her as if vaguely. But she felt a whiff of passion touch her, from his mere presence.

“Did I interrupt you, Clifford? I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s nothing of any importance.”

She slipped out of the room again, and up to the blue boudoir on the first floor. She sat in the window, and saw him go down the drive, with his curious, silent motion, effaced. He had a natural sort of quiet distinction, an aloof pride, and also a certain look of frailty. A hireling! One of Clifford’s hirelings! “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Was he an underling? Was he? What did he think of her?

It was a sunny day, and Connie was working in the garden, and Mrs. Bolton was helping her. For some reason, the two women had drawn together, in one of the unaccountable flows and ebbs of sympathy that exist between people. They were pegging down carnations, and putting in small plants for the summer. It was work they both liked. Connie especially felt a delight in putting the soft roots of young plants into a soft black puddle, and cradling them down. On this spring morning she felt a quiver in her womb too, as if the sunshine had touched it and made it happy.

“It is many years since you lost your husband?” she said to Mrs. Bolton, as she took up another little plant and laid it in its hole.

“Twenty-three!” said Mrs. Bolton, as she carefully separated the young columbines into single plants. “Twenty-three years since they brought him home.”

Connie’s heart gave a lurch, at the terrible finality of it. “Brought him home!”

“Why did he get killed, do you think?” she asked. “He was happy with you?”

It was a woman’s question to a woman. Mrs. Bolton put aside a strand of hair from her face, with the back of her hand.

“I don’t know, my Lady! He sort of wouldn’t give in to things: he wouldn’t really go with the rest. And then he hated ducking his head for anything on earth. A sort of obstinacy, that gets itself killed. You see he didn’t really care. I lay it down to the pit. He ought never to have been down pit. But his dad made him go down, as a lad; and then, when you’re over twenty, it’s not very easy to come out.”

“Did he say he hated it?”

“Oh no! Never! He never said he hated anything. He just made a funny face. He was one of those who wouldn’t take care: like some of the first lads as went off so blithe to the war and got killed right away. He wasn’t really wezzle-brained. But he wouldn’t care. I used to say to him: ‘You care for nought nor nobody!’ But he did! The way he sat when my first baby was born, motionless, and the sort of fatal eyes he looked at me with, when it was over! I had a bad time, but I had to comfort him. ’It’s all right, lad, it’s all right!’ I said to him. And he gave me a look, and that funny sort of smile. He never said anything. But I don’t believe he had any right pleasure with me at nights after; he’d never really let himself go. I used to say to him: ’Oh, let thysen go, lad!’⁠—I’d talk broad to him sometimes. And he said nothing. But he wouldn’t let himself go, or he couldn’t. He didn’t want me to have any more children. I always blamed his mother, for letting him in th’ room. He’d no right t’ave been there. Men makes so much more of things than they should, once they start brooding.”

“Did he mind so much?” said Connie in wonder.

“Yes, he sort of couldn’t take it for natural, all that pain. And it spoilt his pleasure in his bit of married love. I said to him: If I don’t care, why should you? It’s my lookout!⁠—But all he’d ever say was: It’s not right!”

“Perhaps he was too sensitive,” said Connie.

“That’s it! When you come to know men, that’s how they are: too sensitive in the wrong place. And I believe, unbeknown to himself, he hated the pit, just hated it. He looked so quiet when he was dead, as if he’d got free. He was such a nice looking lad. It just broke my heart to see him, so still and pure looking, as if he’d wanted to die. Oh, it broke my heart, that did. But it was the pit.”

She wept a few bitter tears, and Connie wept more. It was a warm spring day, with a perfume of earth and of yellow flowers, many things rising to bud, and the garden still with the very sap of sunshine.

“It must have been terrible for you!” said Connie.

“Oh, my Lady! I never realised at first. I could only say: Oh my lad, what did you want to leave me for!⁠—That was all my cry. But somehow I felt he’d come back.”

“But he didn’t want to leave you,” said Connie.

“Oh, no, my Lady! That was only my silly cry. And I kept expecting him back. Especially at nights. I kept waking up thinking: Why he’s not in bed with me!⁠—It was as if my feelings wouldn’t believe he’d gone. I just felt he’d have to come back and lie against me, so I could feel him with me. That was all I wanted, to feel him there with me, warm. And it took me a thousand shocks before I knew he wouldn’t come back, it took me years.”

“The touch of him,” said Connie.

“That’s it, my Lady! the touch of him! I’ve never got over it to this day, and never shall. And if there’s a heaven above, he’ll be there, and will lie up against me so I can sleep.”

Connie glanced at the handsome, brooding face in fear. Another passionate one out of Tevershall! The touch of him! For the bonds of love are ill to loose!

“It’s terrible, once you’ve got a man into your blood!” she said.

“Oh, my Lady! And that’s what makes you feel so bitter. You feel folks wanted him killed. You feel the pit fair wanted to kill him. Oh, I felt, if it hadn’t been for the pit, an’ them as runs the pit, there’d have been no leaving me. But they all want to separate a woman and a man, if they’re together.”

“If they’re physically together,” said Connie.

“That’s right my Lady! There’s a lot of hardhearted folks in the world. And every morning when he got up and went to th’ pit, I felt it was wrong, wrong. But what else could he do? What can a man do?”

A queer hate flared in the woman.

“But can a touch last so long?” Connie asked suddenly. “That you could feel him so long?”

“Oh my Lady, what else is there to last? Children grows away from you. But the man, well⁠—! But even that they’d like to kill in you, the very thought of the touch of him. Even your own children! Ah well! We might have drifted apart, who knows. But the feeling’s something different. It’s ’appen better never to care. But there, when I look at women who’s never really been warmed through by a man, well, they seem to me poor dool-owls after all, no matter how they may dress up and gad. No, I’ll abide by my own. I’ve not much respect for people.”