She realised now why her sister Hilda disliked him so. Constance had said: ‘Hilda, you seem to hate Clifford.’ To which her sister had replied: ‘No I don’t. But I dislike him, he is distasteful to my pride.’ It had seemed a funny thing to say. And there had been a note of cold despising in Hilda’s voice. — It had puzzled Constance. She had not imagined anyone could coldly despise Clifford. He was fine, and rather noble.
But suddenly she saw the cold, limited egoism in him: his cold will acting like the will of some non-human thing under all his fair and gentlemanly tolerance. Suddenly she saw the cold coils of the serpent that had been closing around her, and she recoiled in revulsion. ‘No!’ she said aloud. ‘You shan’t do that.’ — And a new, severe, hurt look came into her face.
The other man? Would he be the same? — A subtle, insidious bully? She knew his wife had said he was a bully. Was he another of them?
She thought of Parkin, of his fixed, aggressive face. Yes, probably he too would be a bully; but much more openly. With him it would be a clash of wills and perhaps a certain brutality. Violent, ugly, malevolent he would be if he were opposed, like a thing at bay.
But he would never be cold. He would snarl and bite and be beastly: but not this pure, almost spiritual coldness of Clifford’s, that slowly edged itself to its own ends like a serpent, and slowly coiled the folds of its invisible will around one. It was so subtle, so invidious, and somehow so pure. It always seemed pure and white and irreproachable. That was so awful! The white irreproachable purity of the will, that would subjugate her ultimately into nothingness. — Yes, in time she would become just a half-animate automaton worked entirely from Clifford’s will, coming as he willed, going as he willed, thinking only the thoughts he released in her mind, feeling only the feelings he allowed to come forth. And all the time he would appear so selfless, so considerate, so utterly quiet and unassuming. He would seem to leave her absolute liberty. Never would he utter a command, never would he say You must! You shall not! I do not allow it! Never! He would always seem to leave her entirely mistress of her choice. And all the time he would subtly have stolen all choice from her, she could only choose as he willed.
For he himself was absolute in all his universe and she was only a thing to be made use of. His immortality, his heaven of the pure truth, the pure ideal, the pure light, it was only himself in his own oneness exalted to an absolute and everything but himself fused away. No room for her, no room for anything. If she were there in the final white glare of his heaven, she would have to be so fused down that she was gone, gone entirely, become a pure part of him in his final transfiguration.
She shuddered with pure revulsion, and sheer rebellion. ‘Never!’ she said. And again: ‘Never!’
She felt the thing was unrighteous and unholy. She now understood Hilda better, and Hilda’s revolt, and Hilda’s apparent peace, being alone. — For Hilda’s husband in a clumsy way had been the same. Hilda must subserve his immortality. She must melt her mere mortality into his immortality.
Ugh! How gruesome! How repulsive, this white abomination of tyranny! In this respect at least, the gamekeeper was better. He had no preconceived immortality, no sense of his own absoluteness. He might make a woman cook his dinner and mend his clothes, but he would not all the time be sucking her soul away, like a white stoat at her throat. No! He might bully in the obvious way and even hit his wife in the face. But after all, that was not so bad. It was open warfare. Open warfare, open warfare, if there must be war!
And of course, there would only be spells of warfare. After all, when the keeper’s eyes dilated and became full of soft, flashing lightning, she felt so real, so real. She had yielded something to him. That was true. But not to his bullying. Only to his sudden real desire. And yielding, she had come so much more alive, so much more herself.
Bullying was bad. All kinds of bullying were bad. That she decided in herself, absolutely. But far worse than physical bullying, which might hit you with a clenched fist, was this silent, fair, pure bullying of the spirit. That, no, never! It made one lose one’s very soul.
For a time she felt she would leave Clifford and go away with the keeper: buy some little farm in Scotland, and there live with him. She had enough money of her own. And Hilda would help. They might even all live together.
But then something inside her said: No! — No, she must not take him away from his own surroundings. She must not try to make of him, even in the mildest form, a gentleman. It would only start a confusion. No! She must not even try to make him develop along those lines, the lines of educated consciousness. She must leave him to his own way. His instinct was against education. His instinct made him refuse to speak King’s English, even to her. He stuck to the clumsy vernacular in a sort of defiance.
She sighed wearily. Apparently it was impossible to have a whole man in any man. Her two men were two halves. And she did not want to forfeit either half, to forego either man. Yet neither would she be bullied by either of them in his halfness.
No! If Clifford forced her to it, she would leave him. But it would mean leaving the other man too. She could not, and would not take him along. It would be too humiliating for both. She would go alone, to Hilda. It would be best to be alone, as Hilda found it.
She arrived home tired and heavy, and almost blank of feeling altogether. She had not the energy to notice whether Clifford were amiable or unamiable, or if she noticed she was not able to feel anything in response.
As a matter of fact, he seemed remote, affecting the snows of Everest. Which was all to the good. Let him wear the snows of Everest on his loftiness for ever, so long as it kept him detached, without encroaching on her.
They passed a short, silent evening, reading. She only pretended to read. Her brain felt like a piece of cork. And she had no feelings whatsoever, except the abysmal lethargy of nullity, corklike and insentient. So that as early as possible she rose to go to bed.
‘Good night Clifford!’
‘Good night Con! Sleep well!’
His voice so perfectly pleasant and kindly as ever. She wanted to say to him: ‘Do drop it! I am not taken in.’ — But of course, she did nothing so vulgar. She softly closed the door, with well-bred attention.
The next morning he was the same, but a little wan, a touch of the small boy in his solemnity. Constance felt nothing much — what was the use of feeling anything? Only she hated this nullity which came over her emotions when they had been wound up too tight. She felt an absolute nausea at the thought of any more struggles of will between herself and Clifford, or between herself and anybody else. Ah! just to be alone, and not forced into tension ! —Why couldn’t Clifford be as good as his word? Had he only said that he wanted her to bring no sacrifice, just in order to throw another cold coil of his power around her? Well, she had taken him at his word, so now he could either uncoil or coil upon himself alone.
It was raining again, and no escape from the house. During the course of the morning, as she was passing Clifford’s study, she heard the sound of men’s voices and went in. It was the gamekeeper asking for certain instructions, and Clifford, very alert and competent, giving them.
Parkin turned and met her eyes as she entered. In his red-brown eyes with the small pupils there was question and a sort of fear, an animal anxiety. He could read nothing in her wide blue eyes.
‘Good morning!’ she said quietly.
‘Good morning my lady!’ he replied, saluting hastily.
‘How are the young pheasants?’ she asked.
‘Ay! my lady! — doin’ nicely,’ he said.
‘I want to come and see them again soon.’
‘Ay! Come then! Ay!’ — He hesitated, then turned again to Sir Clifford. ‘Well, I s’ll get summonses for the two of ’em then, that’s what you mean?’
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Sir Clifford.
‘All right! Then I’ll go down to Clipstone about it?
‘Who are you taking out summons against?’ asked Constance.
‘Two Stacks Gate colliers — third time they’ve been caught, and poaching rabbits out of season,’ said Sir Clifford. He seemed to have brisked up, taking action against somebody.
‘Where were they poaching?’ she asked, turning to the game-keeper.
He gave a sweep of the arm.
‘On the south side — in the park. I catched ’em wi’ six snares an’ two rabbits.’
‘When?’ she asked.
‘This mornin’, just come daybreak. I was waitin’ for ’em, so I had my nephew Jack there an’ a’,’ he said loudly.
He too seemed to have been on the warpath. He stared down at Constance with his small-pupilled eyes like some animal that hunts. And in him she could read no expression now, for the peculiar animal anxiety had gone. Only his small eyes were searching for something in her, as an animal might search the human face, missing all human contact.
‘Isn’t it a pity to prosecute,’ she said slowly, turning to Clifford. Not that she really cared.
‘Isn’t it a pity to poach rabbits, or anything else,’ said Clifford, ‘in breeding season?’
‘Horrid! And I do dislike those snares,’ she said.
‘We s’ll ’ave ’em all ower t’wood if we dunna lay hold when we ’n got ’em,’ said Parkin, with a certain hard satisfaction.
‘You’re quite right, Parkin! You step down to Clipstone,’ said Sir Clifford.
‘Ay!’ said Parkin. And saluting, he departed with a tread of heavy boots.
‘That man does love laying his fellow-men by the heels,’ said Clifford, smiling.
‘Horrid!’ she said.
‘Very useful in a gamekeeper,’ he said contentedly.
‘I suppose all men are gamekeepers one way or another: something is game to them,’ she said bitterly. And she too left the room.
From the front window she could see Parkin striding down the drive, determined to draw blood. The skirts of his big coat flapped, his brown dog ran at his heels. He was once more going to take the world by the nose. It would make him more unpopular: the whole mining population resented the summoning of poachers intensely. But it seemed to give him satisfaction. He strode with a grand sort of stride, baggy coat-tails flapping. The son of man goes forth to war! She smiled to herself grimly.
Nevertheless, she liked the cool way he had met her in Clifford’s presence. He wouldn’t have roused suspicion, not if the whole of Scotland Yard had been present. Yet he had been afraid something was wrong. She had seen it in his eyes. Perhaps he had been afraid lest she had given him away. Then he was at once reassured again and no more concerned than his own little brown dog. Amusing, too, the way he had come up, right into the lion’s den, to find out.
At luncheon Clifford seemed in quite a good humour. He went out in his chair in the afternoon, the weather having cleared up, and she walked across the park and through the fields to be alone. She was still rather angry. And of course, she was in suspense, not knowing what Clifford would finally say.
She had waited now for two days for his reply. This evening she would approach him again. And if he tried to put anything over her she would depart the next day to Scotland, to Hilda.
Having passed Marehay Farm, she turned, taking the footpath that went uphill through a corner of the wood, through the thick fir plantation called the Warren. It was very unlikely indeed that Parkin would be anywhere about: his game did not lie in this direction even if he were back from his errand in the village.
Having climbed the rail fence into the wood, she hastened along on the disused path between the dense fir trees. She always disliked this shut-in density of youngish, bristling trees. She always hurried through to get to the open park. There was something sinister and very lonely about the place.
A bird broke out, startled. And as she turned the bend, nearly through this isolated place, a man stepped out of the dense wall of the firs. Her heart stood still: but it was only Parkin.
What a savage instinct the man had! She had hoped to escape him!
He stood motionless while she came slowly up. Then he touched his cap, still waiting till she was quite near. She mumbled a sort of greeting.
‘Ah was wonderin’ if there was ow’t amiss, like!’ he said in a constrained voice, his eyes on her flushed, perplexed, weary face.
‘Nothing particular,’ she said, pushing her hair aside fretfully. ‘I told Sir Clifford there was a man I liked, and I might have a child by him.’
He was staring in her face with that keen, animal look of search. She met his eyes for a second, and for a second she turned all molten, beyond herself.
‘Yer didn’t say who it was?’ he asked.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Didn’t ’e ask yer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yer didn’t tell him, like?’
His quick, smallish, brilliant eyes were moving on her face in a dazzling way.
‘No!’
He waited. And she could tell it was with a great effort he refrained from coming towards her. There was a powerful force that drew his breast strings to hers as by a strong magnetism. She could feel it.
‘What then?’ he asked, short.
She looked up at him helplessly. And in the instant he was to her and had his arms around her, and she was lying against his breast, where she had to be.
‘Tha wor na slivin’ past me, wor ta?’ he asked, in a low, crooning, pained voice that had triumph in it too.
She did not answer. She turned molten again, in strong waves, as if, surge after surge, she was losing her solidity and her consciousness and becoming a pure molten flux. She looked in his face as her consciousness left her mind, and she saw only the curious concentrated dazzle of his eyes.
He took her aside, among the dense trees, and in the thicket her short, almost whimpering cries of passion, purely unconscious, sounded in his soul in a sort of ecstasy of triumph.
But when she came to herself she would not stay with him. ‘I must go,’ she whispered. ‘I must go.’ But not just yet. Then her voice became more her own. ‘I must go,’ she said in a low tone. And he rose and helped her with simple decency.
Even as she stood gathering herself together she thought of the cunning of the man. There was a low pile of fir boughs on the ground, and he had flung his coat over them.
He had expected it then! And she had been taken so utterly off her guard!
Silently, with dropped head, he was pulling on his coat.
‘Am I all right?’ she asked.
He looked at her, and brushed dry fir needles from her coat behind, and took them from her hair.
‘Ay!’ he said.
‘I must be quick,’ she said.
There was a pause.
‘What did yer tell ’im, then?’ he asked, in a low voice.
‘Oh!’ she felt very vague, and not very much interested about it all now. ‘What I told him? — Why I said — I said I would never tell him who. And I said he’d have to promise not to ask me or bother me or I’d go away.’
‘Where?’
‘To Scotland, to my sister.’
‘By yourself?’
‘Yes!’
Their eyes met for a moment. He looked away into the trees.
‘What did you tell him for?’ he asked.
‘Well! — It came out. And if I were to have a child — it would be legally his — it wouldn’t be fair.’
He did not answer for some moments. Then he looked at her.
‘You think, as ’appen you might have a child, like?’ he said.
‘Yes. Don’t you think?’
Her eyes met his for a moment, and she saw the passion still in his reddish-brown glance.
‘Yer wouldn’t mind, then?’ he said a little awkwardly.
‘I? — I should like it — for myself. — But I must go. — If ever he even suspects about you I shall go right away.’
‘What for?’
‘I can’t live with you. And I couldn’t live with him if he had thoughts abou
t you.’
He was silent for what seemed a long time.
‘Then we’d best stop as we are, like: if we can manage?’ he said rather sadly, perplexedly.
‘Why yes!’ she said, a little impatiently.
He turned to accompany her.
‘Don’t come with me,’ she said shortly.
‘Nobbut ter th’ road,’ he said, hurt.
They crackled through the dead boughs without speaking till they came to the path.
‘Yer wouldn’t fret, like, if yer went away somewhere an’ niver seed me again?’ he asked.
She glanced up at him and saw the pondering in his eyes. ‘I should mind,’ she said. ‘But what else could I do?’
He looked at her for a long time.
‘Should you mind?’ she asked him.
‘Me! Ay! —’ He seemed to think. ‘Ay!’ he said again, as if with far-reaching thoughts.
‘Well!’ she said, a little impatiently. ‘You’ve got a wife and I’ve got a husband — so we have to take what we can get — and — and make the best of it.’
‘Ay!’ he said slowly. ‘Ay! — But —’ he hesitated. ‘I should like yer ter lie a night wi’ me — Ah should!’
‘Goodbye!’ she said, to get away from the peculiar hypnotising spell of his fox-red eyes. ‘I shall come to the hut.’
‘If I’m not there,’ he said, ‘yer might chop a bit o’ wood so’s I s’ll hear, yer know. I s’ll hear.’
She went on, and he turned into the trees whence they had come.
She ran into the park, running with impatience, as if running away from something. She recognised the power that passion had assumed over her. She felt strange, different from herself. It was all very well entering on these voyages of new and passionate adventure, but they carried you away from yourself. They did not leave you where you were, nor what you were. No, she was aware of a strange woman inside herself, a woman wakened up and imperious. She was running now to get home to tea, but she was running also to get away from this new thing that had come upon her. She was running to escape from the woman inside herself, the woman who felt so fierce and so tender at the same time, so soft and boundless and gentle, but also so remorseless, like the sea.
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 7