‘How awful!’ she said breathless, her eyes awe-stricken.
She had known the fact all along. But she had never realised till now that a man could be, in his body, the living clue to all the world to a woman.
‘I don’t know how you lived through it,’ she said.
‘No! I didn’t know myself. — But I made up my mind when I looked at him before they closed the coffin: I’ll never forget you, lad! I believe you’d never have left me. And I’ll never leave you! — And I haven’t.’
Constance looked stealthily at the nurse. A colour had come into her cheeks, a flush of the youth and the fire of the young wife.
‘Was he good looking?’ Constance asked softly.
‘No! — Not what you might call particularly good looking. But —he looked to me like no other man did before or since: though I’ve had far better offers, as you may say, than him. But no! I never forgot him. And I never forgot his face neither as he lay there dead. He’d got a red moustache, though his hair was so nice and fair. And his mouth looked as if it would say something to me if it but could. It did. His lips were shut, you know, but like life: as if they was just goin’ to speak to me. An’ I waited for it. Yes, I did. — But I knew what he wanted to say—’
‘What?’ whispered Constance, her eyes full of tears.
‘Ivy!’ said the other woman, and her face began to quiver. But she gathered herself together, and became stern and remote. ‘He just wanted to say my name. — And I’ve heard him saying it ever since. I have! — I promised never to leave him. — An’ I never have left thee, lad, have I?’ she ended, speaking with strange, quiet fierceness to the dead.
And Constance felt another presence in the air, something male and reassuring. Not a spirit. But as if there were present in the house the man whose very existence is a reassurance to a woman.
‘And then they said he was a coward, running away because he was frightened!’ said the woman, stilt speaking with indignation into the void, as if to the man himself.
‘Who said it?’ asked Constance.
‘The masters! — And those that were for them, on the inquiry.’
There was silence between the two women.
‘And you never felt he really went away from you?’ asked Constance.
‘Never!’ emphatically declared the other woman. ‘Never! I lost him. But he’s never left me. I miss him, God knows. But I’ve never been apart from him. And the heart makes up for a lot.’
Constance was pondering. The heart! Did the heart rule, after all, once it was awakened? How strange, the awakening of the heart! She thought she had loved Clifford. And she had loved him. But, she knew it now, not with her heart. Her heart had never wakened to him, and left to him, never would have wakened. No, not if he had never been to the war at all. — His terrible accident, his paralysis or whatever it was, was really symbolical in him. He was always paralysed, in some part of him. That part in a man which can wake a woman’s heart once and for all was always dead in him. As it is dead in thousands of men like him. All the women who have men like him live with unawakened hearts. Perhaps many of them prefer it. An awakened heart is a strange other self, and a great responsibility.
‘Is it your heart which never forgets him?’ she asked of the nurse.
Mrs Bolton gave her a quick look.
‘That’s how it feels. Once a wife, in your heart, always a wife, I say. That is, if you’ve got a heart. Many hasn’t. And many don’t believe in it. But having a man goes to the heart with very few, as far as I can see. With me it did and does, and will now while I live.’
Constance was thinking: Will it with me the same? And it seemed a strange bondage. But also a relief. She quivered a little in her heart: it was so unbelievable that she should never again be free of that man, the keeper. Unless, of course, with her pride she determined to make her heart cold. She could do that. But the penalty was too great. Better put up with anything than have only a cold heart. She knew it too well.
‘And are men the same?’ she asked: the old, old question.
‘I don’t know so much about men,’ the nurse said. ‘I’ve not had much to do with them. But it seems to me they must be very much the same, only they don’t think about it as much as women do. And of course, a good-hearted man, if a woman makes an appeal to him, she can get almost anything out of him. I find among the colliers, if one woman’s got into a man’s heart, any other woman can get pretty well what she likes out of him, if she’s only a bit appealing, on the right string. I know I could coax most of them into almost anything. It’s only with the hard ones, and these sneering young ones that are coming up today, that you can do nothing. But they’re mostly good-hearted, good-hearted to a woman, even if they’re a bit common sometimes.’
‘Do you think working people are more good-hearted than the others?’ asked Constance.
‘Well —’ the woman hesitated. ‘You mean the gentry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well! — They aren’t half so nice in their ways. But it seems to me, they’re more good-hearted. Mind you, I know them better. And I’ve done a good deal for them, even if it is my duty. So if they’re not good-hearted with me, who will they be? — And of course, I don’t know the gentry in the same way. How could I?’
‘No!’ said Constance, looking with wide, vague eyes at the other woman. She was wondering if he was good-hearted. She knew he was. But she wanted this woman’s verdict too.
‘And I suppose, even those that seem disagreeable have good hearts underneath,’ she said.
‘Often they have. Why the good-hearted ones, they often take things harder than the others, and then they’re like a bear with a sore nose. You have to handle them a bit gently.’
She spoke with a motherly kind of toleration, as if she were the old mother to a thousand men.
‘Like our gamekeeper,’ said Constance. ‘He seems always to be wanting to summon somebody. But I suppose he’s not so bad underneath?’
The wily nurse knew her ground at once.
‘Why his wife,’ she said, ‘was one of these florid sort of women, on the loose side, and that may have turned him. Anyhow his old mother sticks up for him. “They can say what they like about our Oliver, if .they leave him alone he’s no harm to anybody: but them as meddles with him knows it.” — She’s a bit of a tanger herself, she is: and likes her glass of beer. But I get on all right with her. “Eh, Nurse, you’re one o’ them downy birds, you are! It’s not often you give a squawk.”’
The nurse laughed to herself.
‘What does she mean?’ asked Constance.
‘She means they won’t get much out of me. And they won’t. Oh, she’s a bit rough, but she’s all right. The father was one of those easygoing men who drank too much, so she brought the boys up, and she brought them up rough. “Oh, get out o’ th’ house, gret lorrapin’ nuisances!” — She drove them out of the house: she was too clean and tidy to have sons about. She made life a regular battle, and now none of them can live with their wives. She’s proud of it. “Never a woman as can live with ’em! So what has their mother had to put up with!” — But she made them like it.’
‘And do they drink?’ asked Constance.
‘No, not to speak of. Their father cured them that way. But it’s a word and a blow with them all. — Though I don’t know much about Oliver — the keeper here. He lives all to himself, and it seems to suit him better than the mine.’
‘Is he much disliked?’ asked Constance.
‘Oh, they hate him. You see, they used to be allowed to poach rabbits while Sir Clifford was at the war and Parkin was a Tommy. So there’s been nothing but battle royals since he’s been back in the cottage. Oh, I’ve heard them vow and declare they’d lay him out, more than once. But they won’t. They know he’s doing his duty. I always tell them so. — But they mortally hate him, even the women. He’s so hateful if he catches the children getting a few bluebells!’
‘Yes!’ murmured Constance.
‘But Sir Clifford sa
ys he’s a marvellous keeper, and I can well believe it. There’s two sides to everything. It’s just which side you’re on.’
‘I think he’s really a nice man,’ said Constance suddenly, a little flush in her cheeks.
‘Oh, yes! I often say, the nastiest are the nicest, if you know how to handle them. But there’s not many as sticks up for the keeper: except his old mother, and she says he’s ruined because his father would never give him a leathering. It’s always the father’s fault, to hear her talk. But in my opinion the fault’s hers if it’s anybody’s. And anyhow as she says, he harms nobody if they don’t meddle with him and his rabbits. But you’ll see a different side to him, maybe: you and Sir Clifford.’
‘He seems a nice man, to me,’ said Constance quietly.
‘Ay, well! — He doesn’t like me, I’ve scolded him more than once, and he’s unforgiving.’
‘But how old is he? Are you so much older?’
‘I’m fifty. Yes! I was a year younger than Ted. Fifty! And I never seem to myself any older than twenty-seven; and him twenty-eight. Yes, he’s never got any older than twenty-eight, as you may say. —But I’m fifty by reckoning. — So I suppose Oliver Parkin, he’ll be about thirty-six or seven. He’d be a lad of thirteen or fourteen when I first began nursing, and his father was ill, and died with hardening of the liver —’
‘Perhaps,’ said Constance, ‘they hurt his pride when he was a boy.’
‘Perhaps they did. But he was a defiant little demon, you could have killed him and he wouldn’t budge an inch. I believe he liked his drunken father. “Oliver, ma duckie, shall ter go ter th’ Three Tunns for me,” I can hear him wheedling. “It’ll ma’e thee bad!” the lad would say. “Eh, ma lad, it’ll ’appen ma’e me a little better.” And that boy would find threepence somewhere for a pint, while his mother was slaving taking in washing. If she caught him she’d drink the beer herself. My, the battle royals! She’s as hard as whit-leather, and she’d get hold of his hand that held the can, and he’d fight and call her all the names and try to spill the beer. But there’d be a drop for her to drink. And then he’d call her such names and just disappear, gone for a day or two. — There was never much love lost between that woman and her sons. But she slaved for them —’
‘How many sons were there?’
‘Three others. This one was next to the youngest. The youngest, Albert, he is more steady. He lives with his mother and Oliver’s little girl.’
‘Don’t you think Parkin likes his little girl?’
‘It seems to be in the family not to care for your children. — But she’s like her mother, on the brazen side.’
There was a pause.
‘You must know so many people,’ said Constance.
‘Oh, among the colliers! I know most of them. I don’t know much about Oliver Parkin, because since he became keeper I’ve hardly seen anything of him. He was cheeky to me when he was a boy: but what could you expect? And you never know. He may have a good heart, if ever anybody could get there. But it would take a different sort of woman from most. With most women he’d just put their backs up. But of course he’d show a different side up at the house here.’
Constance paused, wondering if the woman suspected anything. She was a queer creature, with her dead young husband in her heart, and her endless intimacy with the mining population, and her odd histrionic power of making people real. She was an actress in a curious way. Her real heart contained only her dead husband. To the rest she was a sort of actress. And secret as the grave, where she wanted to be.
‘It isn’t much of a life for a woman,’ said Constance, ‘if her heart never wakes, is it?’
‘It isn’t, my lady! And a woman who has a heart in her will wash away if it isn’t wakened: or else go queer in some other way. Oh, I know! There’s many that have no real hearts. I know them. But those that have, blessed be the man to her whose heart needed wakening and he wakes it. Be he who he may! If you’ve got a heart you don’t want to live for money and things, you leave all that to those with poor little hearts. That’s why the wealthy, for all their niceness, have no hearts when you come to the bottom of them.’
‘But perhaps you don’t know them,’ murmured Constance.
‘No, perhaps I don’t. Perhaps I don’t want to. My own man meant more to me than all the wealth and the wealthy ever could, and they said he was a coward. — But never mind! And if a wealthy man won’t go to your heart, a poor one may. And then, let him be what he will, he’s done more for you than the others. It just depends what you’re willing to abide by.’
‘Yes!’ said Constance, rising.
‘And no matter what our station in life, we have our thoughts, and we make our judgments. And nobody can ever stop it.’
‘Why should they try?’ said Constance, trying to get away.
‘And if there’s something in you, my lady, makes one say more than one should it’s because you’re a woman, and a true woman, and a body’s heart burns for you and not against you.’
‘I know you wouldn’t do anything against me,’ said Constance.
‘Neither shall anyone else, if I can help it,’ said the nurse, her eyes flashing. Then she went to the door and departed without another word.
Constance was a little afraid of her. She seemed a bit mad.
And for the first time in her life Constance felt a quiver of dread, a fear, as it were, of far-off revolution. She knew a good deal about the terrible revolution in Russia, and the convulsive class hatred which had wreaked itself without expending itself there. But Russia was Russia, romantic and awful and anyhow incomprehensible. England was another matter. ‘We are not divided, all one body we —’ She had always felt that this was true, underneath, they were all one body. She had never in her life felt the smallest fear, class fear, of her countrymen.
Now a strange twinge, like a premonitory twinge of travail pain in a woman who has so far borne no children, went through her. She felt a twinge of indefinite and awful dread, a dread of her own fellow-men and women, a special class fear. For a long time she would not believe where the strange twinge of fear-anguish came from. But at last, she had to admit, it was from her contact with the lower class.
She had touched them, in actual passionate contact. And out of the touch came a twinge of wild, unknown fear. Perhaps they were her destroyers, the destroyers of her and her class! Perhaps even now the keeper was gloating over a certain subtle destruction of her. She remembered the infinite subtle malice of his voice when he said: ‘Don’t you feel you’ve lowered yourself, with the likes of me?’ —Did he feel that somewhere she had lowered herself with him? And did he gloat over it? And Mrs Bolton? There was something sinister in her friendliness. Was she too gloating over a fall?
This thought caused a tremendous revulsion in Constance’s soul and threw her back towards Clifford. He and she were on one side in the division. All her class loyalty returned upon her. The flow started again between her and her husband.
And in the fear of the new danger, she walked to the wood to speak to the keeper. He was there at the hut because it was after tea, her time. He saluted as she approached. What was he thinking? Was he triumphing again over the fallen ‘my lady’? Was he thinking, ‘Here she comes, my lady, my strumpet’?
‘I mustn’t stay,’ were her first words to him. ‘I have to be back at once. — Are you all right?’
‘Ay, I’m all right!’ he said.
‘Clifford,’ she began — then hesitated. Should she continue to say ‘Sir Clifford’ to this man? No, it was too late. ‘Clifford knows I am not faithful to him — I told you.’
‘Ay!’
‘Well! I don’t think he suspects who it is.’
‘No!’ he said, utterly without meaning.
(Pages 137 – 138 of the original manuscript missing)
The keeper thought about it, but his mind resolved nothing.
‘So you can go on like you have been doing?’ he asked.
‘I don’t ever want
anybody to know about us — about you and me,’ she said. ‘You don’t, do you?’
‘I shan’t tell anybody,’ he said, laconic.
There was a long pause.
‘What makes yer come to a feller like me?’ he asked at length, getting a question off his mind. ‘Cause yer think yer can take it or leave it as you like?’
She too pondered. Why had she come to this man?
‘I don’t know!’ she said slowly. ‘But once I saw you washing at the back of your cottage, and I thought you were beautiful.’
‘Me!’ he said with a grinning, mocking incredulity.
‘I thought your body was beautiful,’ she said. ‘And — and I wanted you — I don’t know why.’
‘My body was beautiful!’ he reiterated, still grinning.
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I still think it is. There is something beautiful in you. I should be glad to have your children.’
He had turned his face aside and was staring through the little window, silent. Then he looked round at her, and there was a queer little smile on his face: even now, as if he’d been insulted.
‘That’s a rum un,’ he said, ‘as I should be — bewtiful, as you ca’ it— to one like you, who knows all the tip-top young fellers, eh?’
‘I don’t mean handsome,’ she said.
‘Handsome is as handsome does, ’appen!’ he said irrelevantly but grimly. Then he added: ‘But you don’t take me serious, do you?’
‘In what way, serious?’
‘Not like you would one of your own sort?’
‘Why not?’
‘You’d niver marry me — not if you was free as the wind — you’d niver marry me,’ he said, in a certain contempt for their relationship.
She was silent for a long time. Then she said:
‘You’d never want me to, would you?’
It was his turn to ponder.
‘If you wasn’t above me, I should. Ay! You’re above me, though, an’ I’d non want ter marry a woman a lot above me.’
She held her peace for a time. At length she asked him:
‘Are you sorry we’ve come together — as much as we have?’
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 9