Their host was an elderly Scotchman who had made a decent fortune in Spain before the war, and who became very rich indeed, during the course of the war. His services in that period were rewarded with a knightship, and he was altogether rather pleased with himself. He was a big, heavy, rather coarse man whose conduct, however, was exemplary, and he had a quiet, sly English wife who had been a governess, and who had a long, sharp nose and an intense desire to be the power behind the throne: her husband being the throne. She also painted ‘sweet’ water-colours, and had a very ‘successful’ exhibition in London where she made over a thousand pounds.
But then, of course, the hospitality of the Melroses was proverbial: and ex-guests could not but buy! Who was there, that was anybody, who had not made use of the Casa Natividad: or the Villa, as most English people called it! Sir Andrew loved to entertain. He loved to say: ‘When the Duchess of Theddlethorpe was here last spring!’ — or else: ‘I am giving you the rooms that my friends the Conde and Condesa de la Huerta have just left —’ Still, he was not really a snob. Titles somehow thrilled his coarse soul, but he was a man who had struggled long and hard in a difficult country; and titles therefore never blinded him to the individuals inside the name. And he judged individuals by their toughness and their power of resistance —even to himself and his wife. For Lady Melrose was a snob. She had never got over her original inferiority, so she had very many quite clever tricks, to make people feel small, and herself aggrandised.
However, with their pleasant rooms to themselves Hilda and Constance hoped to live more or less in their own way. There were seven other guests, besides themselves and their father. One was a young Spanish Count with an American wife and a modest income. There turned up, after a few days, an old friend of Connie’s, Duncan Forbes, a modern and rather impecunious painter. He was returning from Madrid. He had known Connie and Hilda in the Scotch village where their mother’s father was the laird and Forbes’ father was the minister. So they were glad to see him. And there were two elderly ladies of means but not fortune. And there were two Americans. But the company changed every day or two, and practically every day somebody came over from Biarritz for lunch, tea, dinner, or all three. It was something like living in a hotel, except that one was introduced to everybody, and didn’t get a bill.
The house, however, was spacious, and nobody met anybody till luncheon; unless they wished. And some of the guests always lunched out, on a picnic or a jaunt. It was on the whole easy. Yet Lady Melrose’s eagle eye — or sparrow-hawk eye — gradually made itself felt, and her tough will, which at first seemed non-existent, gradually exerted its pressure, She little by little bent her guests and forced them in some direction or other. And though she was discretion itself still she managed to know everybody’s private secrets, and to make it half-apparent that she knew them.
Connie thought of Clifford, who expected her to have affaires d’ amour in this house. Ghastly thought! with Lady Melrose’s sharp nose smelling out the rat. A rat it would be, too! And Sir Andrew giving one the leer, or tipping one the wink, of a man who isn’t going to be a spoil-sport, not he!
It is curious how a personality pervades a house. Ostensibly, the Casa Natividad was Sir Andrew’s creation: the rather luxurious furniture, slightly vulgar: the carved oak, the suits of armour, the private chapel — episcopalian — so comfortably fitted up, but so small an altar space that the chaplain’s foot — there was a private chaplain, but he lived in the village and ‘visited’ the visitors — stuck out beyond the altar rail when he kneeled down before communion. The billiard room was like that of a good hotel. The library was a smoking-room with a few English, French and Spanish books.
Altogether, it struck one as rather like a private hotel run by Sir Andrew. But gradually Lady Melrose’s water-colours, so sweet, almond-blossom under a blue sky, delicate sea between the arms of a bay, flowers among pale rocks! — gradually they made themselves felt, upon the walls. Even Sir Malcolm hated them. And gradually the more tasteful chintzes of the long sitting-room, and the Dresden of the little green room began to hint at her ladyship. And gradually the smooth-faced butler and his two swarthy, but clean-shaven footmen, who bowed quickly at Sir Andrew’s hearty voice, were seen to bow much more apprehensively at the sound of Lady Melrose’s voice. They were afraid of her. And it was a queer sight to see her pale, set face sweep the table at dinner-time, to see if everything was impeccable. And the servants waited nervously for that glance, and for the stony impassivity that followed when there was no fault. But if something was wrong, she would say in a queer, hard, jocular sort of voice, to her husband:
‘Are we a cover short, Sir Andrew? Or am I bad at arithmetic?’
And Sir Andrew, glancing at the table would say shortly, with command, but not with ill-humour, in Spanish:
‘Another cover, Manuel. We are eleven!’
But it was her ladyship who fixed the smooth-faced Basque with her eye, as he turned quickly to the sideboard, muttering to one of the footmen. The cover appeared in a twinkling the house was well-run. But the prick of the goad had been felt.
The ‘refined’ Lady Melrose was in the end more objectionable than the crude Sir Andrew. He was a bully, in his own way which was the way of a man used to having work done at his order. But she was a bully by suggestion. Connie. came to hate the sight of her, even when she saw her starting off in the morning, in an impeccable Paris coat and skirt of delicate stone-coloured linen, and a wide hat, to go painting, a maid going behind her with a cringing, slinking sort of motion, carrying a board and small easel and folding stool. Lady Melrose’s face was pale and fixed, and she steered silently ahead like a torpedo destroyer, the maid seeming to ramble in her wake like a towed oar boat. But the eyes in the pale, forward-steering face saw sideways, and almost backwards. — She was a woman who could never get over her craving for perfectly tailored coats and skirts, even in the most bare-armed period.
Connie, Hilda, and Duncan Forbes made a trio by themselves. They bathed at their own hours: to the silent fury of Lady Melrose, who liked a bathing party, and who did not quite know what kind of figures the sisters had, and who did not quite know which sister was the mistress of Forbes, but suspected Connie. They played tennis together, usually with a queer little musician called Blood, the last name for such a creature of nerves, who had no money and travelled with a valet who looked as if he had a job in the City. The rest of the visitors they refused to know, except just casually. They did not play golf. They refused to take part in tennis tournaments or swimming contests: said they were not good enough. And they refused to sit in the music-room when the wireless was on, they refused to be interested in crossword puzzles, they slipped away when parlour games were mooted — Sir Andrew had a weakness for them —and, last and worst, Connie refused to dance, and Hilda would only dance with Forbes. She could not bear to be held up against Sir Andrew’s stout coarse body. Altogether, after the first week or ten days, there were various little rifts in the lute. Hilda, however, was superior to the tension. She loved the situation of the house, the bathing, the comfort, the walks and drives into the mountains, the foretaste of Spain. During her married life, she had got hardened to dinner-parties. She managed to go her own way and despite her hostess’ manoeuvres, and make use of her host’s hospitality, jesting with him good-humouredly.
Sir Malcolm was frankly content. He had luxury around him: he had good golf, good swimming, a good club to go to, good bridge, and good-looking women to think him handsome and feel flattered if he drove them in his car. And he had his two daughters there with him in the clover, so to speak.
But an uneasiness, almost a fear, gnawed at Connie’s hear She had, at first, to say she was happy. The weather was perfect, brilliant sun, yet a fresh little breeze that made the olive-trees silver. The mountains folded steep and mysterious, the sea was fresh, invigorating, there were many mountain flowers still, though the roses were passing. It was holiday. It was ‘care-free’.
But underneath t
he ‘care-free’ atmosphere — how she hated the word! — was care, or else a tough resistance. The queer, rubber-necked toughness of that social world made her now want to cry. She used to take it for granted. Now she could not. It seemed inimical to her, to be destroying something in her. She came to hate the meal-times with loathing — those bright holiday faces round the board, the genial sense of plenty of money, the flippant assertion of care-freeness, the hard, insentient chatter of people enjoying themselves by will to do it, and the exasperating but never-ending attempts to be funny, to be witty, to be humorous! Oh humour! Oh that deadly cogwheel sense of humour which starts so many automatic little souls spinning with a sort of self-satisfaction!
After she had been at the Villa Natividad for a fortnight, Connie was pining to go away, to go back to Tevershall, which was by no means care-free, thank God! But she dared not suggest it to Hilda, and it would have been sheer unkindness even to hint it to Sir Malcolm. He thought everyone was really disporting on the hill o’ beans. But Connie did manage to get a trip of a few days with Hilda and with Duncan Forbes, across the base of the Pyrenees. Forbes was supposed to be taking the train to Paris. He said goodbye to his host and hostess. But he made this little trip with the two sisters, before he shipped himself back.
When she and Hilda returned to the Villa, Connie found two letters from Clifford. She thought of him with affection, in her new surroundings. Whatever he was, he was not a shallow, complacent little fool, he was not small beer in a champagne glass. He wrote quite good letters: and she diligently answered. There was no news of Parkin. And, being caught up in the wrong spirit, she did not think of him. Only some sense of loss gnawed in her soul. She felt she had lost some treasure out of her being, and she wanted to hurry back on her steps, to look for it, to find where she had dropped it.
She began to suspect, also, that she was pregnant. She could not, of course, be certain. But she waited in a queer suspense, almost certain. And that made her uneasy too. She had thought she would be glad. But she wasn’t. She was uneasy. She would almost have liked to put it off. There, in that tough society, she felt afraid, as if she were putting herself in some nasty jeopardy. And she felt again as if she would never get out, never escape. It was ‘the world’.
She no longer wondered why she had married Clifford. He was golden, by comparison, being much better bred and more intelligent. But perhaps he was the same, in having the tough indiarubber bowels these ‘care-free’ people all seemed to have. They were hard inside as golf-balls.
Then came a letter from Clifford containing an unexpected blow: a horrid blow.
‘We too have had our mild local excitement,’ he wrote. ‘Parkin’s wife came back to him unexpectedly, two days ago, and, it seems, was unwelcome. He turned her out of the house and locked the door, but when he came back from the wood, report has it he found the lady in his bed, in puris naturalibus, not so much as a shift to cover her rather battered nudity. The intimate facts of course I don’t know: but it appears he retired to Tevershall, to his mother’s house, for the night. The wife, however, says she has come to stay: I believe she is still at the cottage: and Parkin, I believe, is domiciled with his mother in Tevershall. I shall not send for him until he comes to me.
‘I have this bit of local garbage from our particular garbage bird, our scavenger crow, our sacred ibis, our intimate buzzard, Mrs Ivy Bolton. I would not have handed it on, had not she exclaimed: What would her ladyship say!
‘I like your picture of Sir Malcolm in the sea, with his white hair washed over his forehead, like a bonny babe in a bath. He is the most mortal of mortals: one might almost envy it him. He washes off any smear of immortality every time he takes a bath, and emerges a rosy incarnate mortal of mortals who may really live for ever, there is so little reason why he should die. I suppose mortality is a gift: or would you call it an acquirement? or an attainment? I think it is a gift. To be immortal requires some effort, but —?’
Connie read no more. She only glanced to see if there was any further news. Nothing. So she was left to swallow the bitter pill of Parkin and Bertha Coutts. And she had to dress, for it was dinner-time. She had to go down among the guests — there would be heaven knows how many new ones — and renew the subtle fight for prestige, which is the essential game of society, now and always. What prestige amounts to, nobody knows. But it is, the essential, and if you are in the world, you must use your elbows and fight for it. It is something like getting first on to the bus.
But Connie was feeling angry, very angry. She was angry with Parkin, because Bertha Coutts existed, and because it was possible for ‘that woman’ to force her way back into the cottage. That she should force her way in, and take possession! And that he should meekly abandon the field to her! Rage filled the female soul of Lady Chatterley.
Connie retired early, and sat silent and motionless by her window. Hilda could feel the vibration of the storm in her sister, She asked anxiously:
‘Is anything wrong? Have you had any news?’
‘No!’ said Connie.
And Hilda retired, to leave her to it. But Connie could not sleep. She tossed and tossed in her bed, consumed by an anger that felt like fever. She hated the villa, she hated the life there. It was a nasty substitute for life, as margarine is for butter. At the same time, she no longer wanted to go back to Wragby. She felt a violent repulsion from Wragby and all its environments.
With the first dawn, she got up and wrote a note to Mrs Bolton, casually asking for particulars of Parkin’s affairs. As soon as she heard the first servants, she went downstairs and out to the post. She hated the mountains going up so steep and theatrical against the early sun: mere theatricality. She hated the sight of the sea in the bay, like a great bath-tub laid out by the servant for the ‘visitors’. She hated the sound of the first motor-car going down with a bunch of before-breakfast bathers, the energetic type. She hated the idiocy of holiday in the coming blaze of the day.
When she got back she found Hilda looking for her.
‘Do say if anything is wrong, Connie!’ her sister urged.
‘Nothing is wrong! Things are never more than idiotic!’ said Connie, handing Clifford’s letter to her sister.
Hilda had a look of distaste on her face as she read. For some time she said nothing. Then at last she remarked:
‘Yes, it is annoying. But after all — if you have the child —perhaps it is the best finish to the intrigue, if he takes his wife back.’
The intrigue! If he takes his wife back! — the child! the child!
Every phrase was a mortal insult to Connie. The child indeed: the child! Why, she didn’t know if it was even conceived. And if it was, she felt she almost hated it in advance for foisting itself on her. The child! It would be another substitute. It would once more be the margarine, when she asked for butter. And everybody, her family even, and Clifford, would think that now, now, with the child, the margarine for the rest of her days, she should be purely satisfied. How they loved to force substitutions on to one: all of them!
Hard and angry, she waited for the letter from Mrs Bolton. Her heart had shut against Hilda. And in her queer rage, she found a certain sympathy in Archie Blood, the grey-faced little musician. He was a man, a bachelor, of nearly fifty, but he seemed also like a petulant boy. He composed rather charming Elizabethan sort of music, very old English in taste — and he played the piano very well. He earned his hospitality playing occasionally to the other guests, and hating them for listening so stupidly.
She found him in the late morning sitting alone in the music room, in absolute despondency.
‘Aren’t these places awful!’ he said as she sat by him. ‘Of course I’m going mad.’
‘You mean these holiday places?’ she said.
‘No! These rich, made-over villas! I’m going perfectly mad, from staying in them.’
‘Then why do you stay in them?’
‘What else am I to do, with an income like mine, when I must have a certain amount of lu
xury. I know it is manie de la grandeur, and perfectly ridiculous. But I must have it. It is part of the first stage of my insanity.’
‘But you can’t be insane, if you know it.’
‘On the contrary, not only do the most insane people know it, but they are proud of it. They are proud of their insanity. It is part of the disease.’
‘You are cheerful!’ she said, a little relieved to find someone in a worse condition than herself.
‘We’ve got cold feet,’ he said. ‘You know how the Americans say: And then he got cold feet! — That’s what’s the matter with us.’
‘And do cold feet affect the brain?’ she laughed.
‘Assuredly! after a while! They say Schiller used to sit with his feet in a tub of cold water, when he wrote his immortal works.’
‘I wouldn’t be immortal at the price,’ she laughed.
‘Quite! Well, I think I do the same here. I’m an insignificant person, really. That’s why I must have a valet de chambre. — Only I think my music is good. But I’m an insignificant person really. That’s why I have to stay in a home with six footmen and perhaps sit next to the Duchess of Toadstool at dinner. I’m furious if I don’t sit next to the duchess. Yet all the time I am sitting with my feet in a tub of cold water. And not even creating anything as good as Don Carlos, at that.’
‘Then why don’t you go away?’ said Connie, laughing.
He looked at her with queer, rather beautiful, haunted pale eyes.
‘Because I’m insignificant. And because I’m going mad. I’ve got cold feet. All of us in this house have got cold feet. Like lobsters and crabs, which crawl about eating putrefaction. We should all go scarlet if we were boiled.’
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 33