‘I’m just going,’ she said.
She looked cold, and a little wan. He glanced at her with silent resentment, and met the wide, vague, rather miserable look of her blue eyes. Instantly a pang went through his bowels.
‘Had yer bin waitin’ ter get in?’ he asked, his accent broader than usual when speaking to her. And he made a small gesture towards the door of the hut.
She thought she detected the touch of derision again in his voice.
‘No, I didn’t want to go in,’ she said quietly.
He waited. He would not open the door of his hut.
‘Didn’t Sir Clifford have no key, like?’ he asked. ‘Did yer ask I him?’
She wondered why he spoke with more of the vernacular than usual.
‘No,’ she said, ‘he hasn’t got one. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about it. If I want to be out of the rain I can sit perfectly well on the door-step. Good-afternoon!’
He did not reply for a moment. Then, as she was going, he said rather loudly:
‘I’m ’ere a good bit mysen, this time o’t’ year.’
Almost she walked away without attending to him. Then something made her turn round and look at him. He had the most peculiar unsmiling sort of smile on his ruddy, rain-washed face.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
He pressed back his head with a little jerk, as a cobra does.
‘I mean now t’ bods’ll start layin’.’
She wondered what he meant.
‘Of course!’ she said vaguely.
‘What you want is to be here by yersen,’ he said. ‘Yo’ wunna want to be here, like, wi’ me potterin’ ’round a’ t’time.’
She looked at him vaguely, still not following.
‘You don’t make any difference,’ she said.
He watched her with queer, narrow eyes.
‘I don’t want to be in your ladyship’s road, if you follow me,’ he said.
‘You won’t be in my way,’ she said.
‘‘Cos yer see it’s like this! Winter-time I might give th’ key up to you, an’ stop away fra th’ hut. This time o’ th’ year, I canna. There’s eggs to sit—’
She felt only dazed. Why this lapse into a half-dialect? ‘But I don’t want you to stay away,’ she said. ‘I should like to be able to come when you’re here, and help you with the little pheasants when they hatch out — ’
She looked at him with her wide, wondering, curiously innocent gaze. In his red-brown eyes little lights flickered, as he seemed to be trying to search her out.
‘It’s as your ladyship likes, as far as that goes. If it was any other time o’ th’ year, I could give th’ hut up, like —’
‘But I don’t want you to give it up. You don’t mind, do you, if I come sometimes in the afternoon when you’re here, to see the hens sitting on the eggs?’
‘Me!’ he said. ‘It’s as your ladyship likes, that is! It’s your own place! On’y I thought as ’appen —’
‘Happen what?’ she said, trapped herself into the vernacular. He gave a quick, odd smile with his eyes. Then he dropped his voice.
‘’Appen you wouldn’t want to be here wi’ on’y me about, like,’ he said in a low, soft, cold voice.
She suddenly, vividly flushed, and felt the pulsebeat in her neck.
‘Only you about!’ she said, indignant. Then she stopped. After all, it was perhaps what she secretly wanted. She changed her feeling, bewildered. Then she looked at him with that wide, blue, vague look of innocence which she could assume. ‘There’s no reason for me to be afraid, is there, of being here alone with you?’
He was baffled. He put back his shoulders with a little jerk. ‘Afraid! No!’ he said almost angrily. ‘I on’y thou’t as ’ow yer’d ’appen not like it.’ And he looked away into the wood.
‘Yes!’ she said softly, with that vague, straying innocence still. ‘I like to be here when you’re here. Then I’m not lonely at all.’
He was completely bewildered. Did she mean she wanted to be with him? What was she after? Did she want to make him feel small? To make a fool of him? Or did she just want the protection of another presence? It must be that.
‘It’s as your ladyship likes,’ he repeated, quietly. ‘But I don’t want you to feel I’m in the way,’ she said. ‘It’s Sir Clifford’s hut,’ he said. ‘An’ your ladyship pleases ’erself.’
‘Very well! Thank you! I may come sometimes, then. Good-afternoon!’ — then she added to the dog: ‘Good-bye, Flossie! You know me, don’t you?’
Flossie waved the plume of her tail slightly, and the man watched.
CHAPTER VII
Constance did not go near the hut again for some time, and did not see the keeper. She felt confused, and a little humiliated. Was it the half-suggestion of illicit sex? — surely he had half-suggested the possibility of it. Then he had been thinking about it!
She disliked so intensely any sort of conscious sexuality. It was so ugly and egoistic. Had he been thinking perhaps he could snatch a moment of ugly gratification from her? She shuddered a little. Never that! Better to avoid all sex, than start messing about in ugly self-seeking. A nasty, mechanical sort of self-seeking was the normal sex desire. Not spontaneous at all, but automatic in its cunning will to get the better of the other one, and to extend its own ego.
Was that what he wanted? She knew it was what most men wanted: just to get the better of a woman, in the sexual intercourse; the self-seeking, automatic civilized man trying to extend his ego over a woman, and have a sense of self-aggrandizement by possessing her.
And women? Women, she knew, were worse at that game than men. Take Olive for example. She picked up a man for the sole and simple purpose of putting herself over him, just putting her will over him, and thereby getting a sense of power and enlargement in herself. It was not true sex that she wanted at all. The thing that people call free sex, and living your own life, and all that, is just egoism gone rampant.
This had become very plain to Constance, from her knowledge of women. The true, sensitive flow of sex, women sometimes had with one another. But with men, almost invariably, the whole thing was reversed. The woman’s aquisitive ego rose rampant, and the strange, tender flow of sex was utterly stopped. The acquisitive ego rose rampant, and she saw woman after woman half-insane to ‘get’ a man, in the same sense that they were half-insane to get a new gown or set of furs: to parade herself in the skins of dead animals, or to parade a live animal called a man, it was the same thing, sheer acquisitive greed and self-seeking. The men revolted. But poor things, the next female that wanted to pick them up could always catch them with a little flattery.
It was horrible. It was most horrible in rather elderly women, women between forty and sixty. These were the hyaenas. Unscrupulous, and with a callousness that put the hyaena to shame, their only lust was to acquire a new grip over some man. The men seemed to fight in vain: except men like Tommy Dukes, who fought off all women, as wounded animals still fight off the vultures. All that the woman wanted was to impose her own will and her own ego over the man. It was the same sort of insanity as the money-getting insanity. The heroes of wealth and the heroines of ‘love’ were very much the same: semi-insane horrors of unscrupulous acquisitiveness: mine! Mine! Me! me! got it! got it! got him! got him! It was the horror of our insane civilization.
Our civilization has one horrible cancer, one fatal disease: the disease of acquisitiveness. It is the same disease in the mass as in the individual. The people who count as normal are perhaps even more diseased than those who are neurotic. The neurotic at least show that something is wrong. But the normal consider the very disease part of their normality. They carry on the hideous insanity of acquisitiveness in masses, or in solitary enterprise, with a firm conviction that it is the right thing to do.
And what is this acquisitiveness, looking deeper? It is the lust of self-importance. The individual, the company, the nation, they are alike all possessed with one insanity, the insanity
of conceit, the mania of the swollen ego. The individual, in his normal insanity, wants to swell up his ego bigger and bigger, at any cost. He must be bigger than he is. So he fights and fights and fights to get rich, or to get on. Not many men fight for women any more, to swell up their own egoism that way.
But women, leaving the men to fight for the money, fight for the men. This is called love. ‘She is terribly in love with him,’ that cant phrase means really: ‘she is mad to get him under her will.’ It is all it amounts to. Gentlemen prefer blondes, but they like bonds, especially those that pay well, better still. And blondes prefer gentlemen. They want, more than the money even, the strange sense of power and self-aggrandizement that comes when they’ve ‘got’ a man. Got him!
The whole process is one of helpless insanity. All the complexes that were ever located are swallowed up in the grand complex of helpless acquisitiveness, the complex of the swollen ego. It possesses almost every individual in every class of society in every nation on earth. It is a vast disease, and seems to be the special disease of our civilization or our epoch. If you haven’t got the disease, you are abnormal. You have to have the malady in, some form or other: either the fearsome clawing tyranny of ‘love’ and ‘goodness’, which is the horrible clawing attempt to get some victim into the clutches of your own egoistic love, your own egoistic virtue, your own egoistic way of salvation; or you have the less high-minded, more ignoble but perhaps not so deadly clutch-clutch-clutch after money and success. The disease grows as a cancer grows, ever extending its clutch. And now it grows very rapidly.
It is useless to talk of the future of our society. Our society is insane. Its most normal activities, money-getting and love, are a special form of mania. And for the maniac there is no future. None, either, for a maniacal society. Insanity can only be cured by death. The devil is the arch-alienist.
A good deal of this is vaguely felt, by the young: or by some of them. They are paralysed by fear of a maniacal society, into which they have to grow up. The rest are possessed by the mania, and are maniacs of love and success, pure and simple: success being money, and love being something very close akin.
Constance felt the fear paralysing her own soul. The keeper had seemed so alone: his white, lonely body, no more acquisitive than a star! But even he had flickered a queer smile of self-seeking self-gratification at her: even though, perhaps, he didn’t want to.
But at home she had a more subtle example. This was Mrs Bolton getting Clifford under. Mrs Bolton was fascinated by Clifford: his cool detachment, and the way he almost invariably, quite calmly frustrated the will of his nurse.
‘It’s a lovely day! I should go out in my chair a bit if I were you,’ she would say.
‘Would you? Perhaps I may — and perhaps I may not. Do you mind placing that jar of narcissus where the light falls on them?—on the bureau! There! — no, a little forward! — to the right a little! So! Now I can see them at their best. They’re very beautiful, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, they’re lovely’ she would chime in, baffled and frustrated. ‘And their scent!’
‘Their scent I don’t care for, it’s a little funereal.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ she would add.
He was always getting the better of her. Yet by always giving in, she was getting the best of him.
‘Shall I shave you this morning, or will you shave yourself?’
‘I don’t know. There was something I wanted to think about. Do you mind coming again when I ring.’
‘Very good, Sir Clifford!’ she said, so soft, so submissive. But she stored it up. It was all converted into energy for subduing him.
When he rang, after a little while, she would appear in silence. And then he would say:
‘I think I’d rather you shaved me.’
Her heart gave a little thrill, and she said with extra softness:
‘Very good, Sir Clifford!’
She was very deft, with a soft, caressive touch. At first he had resented this infinitely soft touch of her fingers on his face. But now he wanted it every day. He let her shave him every morning. Till she knew in her finger-tips his cheeks and lips, his jaw and under his chin, and the front of his throat, perfectly. They both took a voluptuous pleasure in his morning toilet. His face and throat were handsome, and he was a gentleman. She too was handsome, pale and her face absolutely still, revealing nothing, her eyes bright but expressionless.
She now did everything for him, and he felt less ashamed than with Connie. Mrs Bolton liked handling him and putting him into shape. She liked having him, having his body at least, quite in her power. She had a peculiar pleasure and triumph in it, that Connie had never had. And he gave way, and enjoyed her handling him. He really got a voluptuous pleasure from her soft, lingering touch. But he still bullied her. It was almost a sort of marriage.
Connie watched it at once with relief and with repulsion. It relieved her of Clifford. He wanted less and less of her. When she had pleaded a head-ache in the evening, he had said:
‘Never mind! Mrs Bolton will play chess with me!’ Connie thanked her stars she herself needn’t, for she got intolerably wearied at chess. Nevertheless she found it curiously objectionable to see Mrs Bolton, flushed and tremulous like a young girl, touching her knight or her pawn with uncertain fingers, then drawing away again. And Clifford, faintly smiling with superiority, telling her:
‘You must say j’adoube!’
And she glanced up at him with bright eyes, and murmured very shyly, but obediently:
‘J’adoube!’
Yes, he was educating her, and he enjoyed it. And she was thrilled. She was learning bit by bit all the things the gentry knew. And she was making herself absolutely indispensable to him.
Constance saw it all, saw them both rising in their own conceit. Ivy Bolton was flattered when he took trouble with her, and he was flattered by her submissiveness to him, and her girlish thrill. They played into each other’s hands marvellously. And to Connie, he seemed to get more commonplace, more foolish and complacent every day. But perhaps his wife was not a fair judge of another woman’s influence on him. And to Lady Chatterley the tricks of Ivy Bolton seemed crudely transparent. But she had to admit one thing, Ivy Bolton was actually thrilled by her intimate contact with a gentleman, and by the sort of education he was giving her. True, she already had him like a fish on a string. But Connie didn’t want to unhook him. What was the good? At least he was cheerful now, and seemed to enjoy his life more, even if he were getting sillier. But in his case, anything, let him love anything that could keep him cheerful.
Connie couldn’t even really dislike Mrs Bolton. Something about her she loathed: her false submissiveness and her almost unconscious scheming. But if any woman at this late hour could get a tremendous thrill out of being taught chess by Clifford —of course he invariably won, but it didn’t seem to weary him —then let her! She must have something naïve and aspiring in her.
And Connie heard long conversations going on between the two. Clifford would ask Mrs Bolton for all the local news, and she, a born talker, fascinated all her life by the psychology of other people, having lived the lives of the colliers and colliers’ wives vicariously for many years, would tell him all the news. The figures he had known as a boy, when the world still seemed safe, and which he had almost forgotten, she created for him again. There was Henry Paxton, the burly self-made grocer who had been so loud upon the parish council and the urban district council: he was over eighty now, and paralysed, but still a tyrant. His daughter Cassandra, still an old maid, now fifty years old — how Clifford remembered the tall, wild, raw-boned, rather simple young woman — waited on him hand and foot. No, she would never marry now, and she had been born for marriage. But her father, and at the age of eighty-four, was still making a slave of her. There was old James Allsop, the boot-and-shoe Allsop, also over eighty, but nimble as a boy. You would see him walking up Tevershall hill from the station and he never sat down on the seats Lewie Rollings had made t
he Council put on the hill. Yes, Lewie Rollings was still alive: and married again. Yes, he still talked socialism and wrote for the Tevershall and Stacks Gate News. But he hadn’t much influence any more. His kind of socialism was all words and being funny about people like Henry Paxton: the colliers laughed and took no notice. Oh, things were changed! There was more rushing about, and more discontent. Why, the boys thought nothing of going on to Sheffield four or five times a week, with these buses. And then the pictures — and the Miners’ Welfare — Oh, things weren’t as they used to be. The young fellows drank too much at the Miners’ Welfare, and they had no respect. The women, though, had changed most. They had got so much cheekier, and commoner. The things they did, and the things they said, you’d never believe. Swear! They’d as leave swear at you as look at you, many of them. Oh, it wasn’t like that before the war. And spend! They’d give as much as nine guineas for a Winter coat, and two guineas for a little girl’s Sunday hat. Oh, with the women it nearly all went in clothes. They didn’t believe in saving. Since the war! Since the war they believed in nothing, good nor bad, and they had no respect for anything. They’d go and give contributions for a wedding present for the Princess Mary, and then, when they saw in the papers all the grand things that had been given, they’d say: ‘And what right has she to it all! She’s no better than I am. It’s a shame, she marries one of the richest men i’ th’ country, and then the big shops go and give her ever so many sets of furs, at thousands of pounds. And I should like a fur coat myself, this winter, but I know I’m not going to get it, pits doin’ so bad. It’s time there was a revolution, my word, when some women slaves their insides out and gets nothing, and others has things poured over them by the million, just because they’ve got Princess before their name. There’s plenty of Marys in Tevershall every bit as good as she is, and every bit as good-looking. But where’s the tradesman as’ll give them a pair of gloves, let alone a thousand-pound set of furs. It’s not right —’ Oh, the women, it was they who were the mischief nowadays, among the colliers. There was no satisfying them, and the young ones just did as they liked. It had been as much as Mrs Bolton could do, to put up with their ways and their impudence. There was no pleasure in going among the miners any more, the women were that off-hand and nasty with you: far worse than the men.
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