‘For God’s sake —!’ he exclaimed. But at that moment Parkin put the chair down, and it moved, under his control, slowly backwards.
‘She’s loose,’ he gasped.
Then he looked round.
‘If you’d give me that bit of a log!’ he said to Constance, pointing. She brought him the piece of tree root, and he scotched the chair. He put on his coat, wiped his face with a red handkerchief and strode for his gun.
‘Are yer all right then?’ he said quite gently to Sir Clifford when he had hold of the chair again.
‘Quite all right, thanks.’
‘Shall we be movin’, like?’
‘Do let’s get out of here.’
And the keeper put his weight behind the heavy chair. It was not easy, the thing was heavy. He scotched with his foot, and took his coat off again. Then, sweating, he pushed slowly up the incline. When he paused to breathe, his chest heaving, Clifford said:
‘I’m awfully sorry to be so much trouble.’
‘Don’t you mind about me — it’s a warm day, like.’
Curious the two men were, so polite, so careful of one another, walking round one another. Constance had had visions of friendship between the two men: she could unite them in understanding and friendship. Now she saw that she might as well try to unite fire and water. There was a categorical opposition between them. Each made the other feel a fool, and each resented it in his own way.
All the way home Parkin did not speak, and he did not even look at Constance. He wheeled in silence, his gun slung across his shoulders — he had put on his coat at the park gate — and his dog at his heels. Clifford made a little conversation to his wife about his Aunt Eva, about a new chemical by-product at the mines.
When they came to the house Parkin helped Sir Clifford into his house chair gently enough, then went away without ever looking at Constance.
‘Do have a meal and some beer in the kitchen — and thanks awfully!’ said Sir Clifford, whose conscience smote him because of his temper.
The man saluted and was gone.
‘He’s quite a good sort, Parkin,’ said Clifford at luncheon. ‘You know that as soon as a man handles you. But he’s something of a fool— and rather on the insolent side.’
‘Do you think he’s insolent?’ said Constance.
‘Dunna yer think so yersen, like?’ said Clifford, mocking the vernacular.
‘It only seemed to me his way.’
‘Exactly! He thinks he’s a whole hill o’ beans, himself — as the Americans say — and we’re a pair of hand-fed cockatoos. He’s no real respect for us. None of them have nowadays. Not even Mrs Bolton, nice as she is. They know we’re lenient and on the whole good to them. They respect what we’ve got, all right, but they don’t respect what we are.’
‘And ought they to?’ she asked naïvely, also looking a much bigger fool than she was. Clifford spread his hands and lifted his shoulders.
‘And do we respect them for what they are?’ she said. ‘Don’t we only respect them for what they do for us?’
‘What are they, apart from what they do for us, after all? After all, what is Parkin apart from keeping the game. Why should I take him seriously?’
‘No reason at all. You don’t anyhow. — But I suppose he thinks: What are we apart from what we’ve got!’
‘Apart from what we’ve got, we keep life going — we renovate the mines, we find employment for him and all the likes of him — we make it possible for all the Parkins of this world to exist. If they don’t know it they must be taught.’
‘Perhaps they will never believe it.’
‘Then they’ll have to. After all, what is Parkin apart from a pheasant and a gun? You wouldn’t raise a shout about his immortal soul, would you? — He’s just so much live human meat, no more.’
‘Do you think so?’ she said. ‘You don’t think there’s any life-mystery in him?’
He pulled up short.
‘Oh, as to life-mystery!’ he said. ‘That remains mysterious. He’s just a half-tame animal with a certain animal niceness and a certain half-tame nastiness.’
Constance left it at that.
She had promised to spend the night in the keeper’s cottage: let her remember that. — ‘Just a half-tamed animal with a certain animal niceness and a certain half-tame nastiness.’ Poor Clifford! It was rather sour grapes, perhaps. Well! ‘A half-tame animal, with a certain animal niceness’! What more was she herself? And Clifford wasn’t even that.
She was going. She spent the afternoon thinking about it. She would have to steal out like a thief in the night. But what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve. And she had no patience with a heart which grieved merely because the eye told it to. Prying, restless, insatiable, indecent eyes of other people, they saw far too much, and swamped the heart in their miserable visions. The heart can feel what it has to feel, in the dark as well as in the light: perhaps better. She herself wanted to pry into nobody’s secrets. Her own were enough for her.
Therefore she made her plans slowly and calmly, without fear. She felt she did her duty to Clifford. The rest was her own. But she would avoid messes as far as possible.
And she was in no burning hurry to be gone. It was a responsibility, going to that other man. He too was insisting already that she should be his wife, even if only while she was in the wood. A circumscribed area in which she was to be his wife. His cottage being her ‘home’ within the wood area.
Always responsibility! Men were like that. He had one wife. What did he want another for, even if only in the wood? If they were nice, they were serious. And if they were not serious, they were not nice. Men!
In the evening she played cards with Clifford. She did not like difficult games, so they played bezique. She was quite happy playing with him. But at ten o’clock she left off and kissed him goodnight.
She had thought it out calmly enough. She went to bed, lay down and pressed her hollow in the bed, and lay awhile still. Then she got up, took off her pyjamas and flung them on the bed as she did in the morning. She slipped on a batiste nightdress, over that her woolen dress, over that a dark, thin mackintosh. Her hair she plaited and twisted under a dark hat, and on her feet she had rubber-soled shoes. It was done in a moment.
She looked round her room. It looked exactly as it did in the morning when she got up. If the maid came in early, before she was home, she would conclude that her mistress had done as she often did: gone for a stroll before breakfast. No one would be surprised to see Constance coming home through the park at half-past seven.
Then she listened. Clifford had ears like a lynx. She went softly down the long corridor and down the service stairs, through the leather door, so into the kitchen. The servants were in bed: she had ascertained that before going upstairs herself. By the light of her flashtorch she unfastened the kitchen door and went out, closing it softly behind her. Tonight it would have to stay unlocked.
She spoke a quiet word to the dog, and in another minute was out of the yard and crossing the garden at the back. So, she came to the park, for she had unlocked the garden door in the afternoon.
The night was warm, half-dark, with clouds and a gleam of a biggish star through murk of clouds. The big foundry at Cross Gate made a glare on the low clouds, and this gave back an uncanny lustre into the night, so that once she was accustomed to the dazing unreality, she could dimly see her way. In the vague sky she saw a black place that was rain. And the soft wind blew the edges of fine rain at her. But it was not much.
She went quietly and soberly alone in the night and came at last to the big gate at the wood. She saw nobody. She opened it quietly, and was closing it behind her, when she started. He was there.
‘You’ve come then,’ he said in a low tone.
‘Obviously,’ she murmured secretly, in reply.
‘You wanted to, did you?’
‘Yes! Or I shouldn’t have come.’
They went forward. It was much darker in the wood, and she
stumbled.
‘Shall yer have my arm?’
She bumped into him. So she took his arm, and he pressed it to his side. She could feel the thud of his heart. And they went in silence, feeling strange to one another, yet magnetised together.
It was a long way through the wood. But he went with that tramping certainty she knew in him, and he supported her.
‘There are so many strange noises,’ she whispered.
‘Eh?’
‘There are so many strange sounds in the wood.’
‘Ay! It’s the trees creakin’ an’ rubbin’ together.’
At length they saw a dim light. It was the cottage.
‘Did you leave a light?’ she asked.
‘I allers do at night,’ he said, ‘whether I’m out or in.’
He quietly unlocked the door, and she entered. He fastened the door behind her, and turned up the lamp. There was a low fire in the fireplace, and on the table plates and glasses.
‘Shall y’eat a bit?’ he asked.
He had hung up his coat and his gun and his coat, and was in his shirt-sleeves. His eyes were flashing and changing, and he was rather pale. She sat down on the sofa in the small, cosy room. He sat down in his Windsor arm-chair, and began to unfasten his leather gaiters and take off his heavy boots. The dog in the scullery was rather noisily lapping something.
She looked round. The varnished dresser stood on glass supports and had on it various cottage ornaments. Over it hung an enlarged photograph of a young, fairish man with a rather thin, sticking-out moustache and square shoulders, and a woman, dark and with frizzed hair, wearing a black satin blouse and a big lace collarette. She looked common.
‘Do you ever see your wife?’ she asked.
‘Eh?’
He had placed his boots and leggings at the side of the white hearth, and was in grey worsted stockings. He glanced up quickly, and followed her glance to the enlarged photograph.
‘My wife! No! She’s livin’ wi’ somebody else.’
‘Don’t you want to see her?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
He glanced at her quickly. Their eyes met, and from his a spark flew.
‘I dunna want to. — Should we go up then? Shanna ter take thy things off?’
‘Yes. Upstairs!’ she said.
He lit a candle, blew out the lamp, and she followed him to the stairs.
‘Shut stairfoot door,’ he said, ‘for t’ dog.’
Balanced on one stair, she carefully closed the stairfoot door behind her. The steep stairs creaked as he went up in stocking feet, and she followed. Probably the other woman had followed him like this.
On the tiny landing were two doors, one open. She followed him into the crowded small bedroom. The big iron bedstead was pushed against the wall, the bed covered with a white quilt. A yellow chest of drawers was against the opposite wall, and by the window, under the slope of the roof, a dressing table with a swivel mirror stood penned down. The room was colourless and ordinary.
‘Do you always sleep here?’ she asked.
‘Me? Ay! I sleep in this bed.’
She took off her hat and mackintosh and hung them on the nail behind the door. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and slowly pulled off her shoes.
‘Did you never like your wife?’ she asked him.
He had been standing motionless by the door. He gave a writhing movement of repudiation.
‘Dunna talk about her. It’s not what ter’s come for, is it?’ He looked at her strangely, anxiously.
‘No!’ she said. ‘Only I had to think about her.’
‘Eh!’ he said.’ ‘Er’s not a nice woman, an’ ’er niver was.’
‘But you liked her once?’
‘Eh! I liked what I had of her — for a bit. An’ then I didn’t like ’er— an’ don’t. It’s enough.’
She slowly pulled off her stockings and garters, while he still stood there against the door, motionless and inscrutable. Then she slipped her dress over her head, and stood in her thin, delicate white nightgown. She laid her dress and stockings over the bed-rail. And he still had not moved.
‘Shall yer sleep agen t’wa’?’
She got quietly into bed.
And then, only then, he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and untied his tape garters and pulled off his stockings. He stood up to push off his cord breeches, and she saw his feet white and clean but gnarled out of shape by clumsy heavy boots.
He stood in his shirt — she had known he wouldn’t change it — and looked at her.
‘I canna believe as yer really want me,’ he said, looking down at her with dark, glowing eyes. He was a mature man, not a boy.
She smiled at him faintly. And the last thing she saw was his face as he bent near the candle and blew out the light with a quick breath. His face, lit up intensely like that, had something — it seemed so ridiculous — of the pure masculine angel about it. She smiled again, in the dark room, as he touched her. She realised how he had recoiled from all women after that common wife of his: and how his desire fought against his recoil and mistrust; his old dislike of the hard, unloving woman he had known in his mother also fighting furiously against his intense desire of a mature, lonely man for a woman to believe in with his body. A woman with a gentle, warm soul and a warm, soft desirous body! that was the burning flicker of his hope. But the ache of experience drew back and resisted, told him not to want her.
She had understood a good deal, looking at the ‘enlargement’ of a bold woman in a black satin blouse, and that young man with the square shoulders and defiant eyes.
‘There then!’ she thought, as she softly stroked his male, live body. ‘I won’t deceive you in my heart, at least.’
Because, when he did break away from his cramping mistrust, his was such a clean passion.
He slept with her right breast cupped in his left hand, for she had her back to him. And she knew that at first he must have slept with his wife like that, because his hand came like a child’s, and gathered her breast and held it as in a cup. If she moved his hand it came back while he slept, by instinct, and found her breast and held it softly enclosed. And it was as if he balanced the whole of her gently in the hollow of his hand, as if she were no more than a dove nestling, all nestled in the strong palm of his hand.
She lay perfectly still, yet not asleep. All her body was asleep under the heavy arm laid across her. Only her mind, like a small star of consciousness, shone faintly and wondered. His arm lay across her, her breast was balanced in his hand, she was encircled and enclosed by him even while he slept.
So this was what it was to be a wife! How implicitly he made a wife of her even if he had got her only for this one night! The curious united circle of the man and the woman! It was a kind of prison too.
No, not a prison! If one thought in that way it was really a prison to have a body at all. If one wanted to be so tremendously free one must evaporate into nothingness. That hard little freedom of a separate, completely separated individual, that was worse than a prison. It was just a nail through one’s heart.
She didn’t want to escape him since he didn’t want to let her go. Curious how he made a circle round her! No, she did not want to escape him. Never! Never! She wanted to feel the circle more inevitably and absolutely around her.
Slipping round under his arm, she clung to him and kissed him on the face, on the shut eyes, waking him again to her passion, his mind still dead asleep. And then she too slept. The star of her consciousness set, she disappeared this time entirely under the heavy arch of his arm, her breast slipped back again into the palm of his hand as if into a socket.
It was dawn when she awoke with a slight start, utterly unaware of where she was. That strange low window. She turned round. He was already awake, and he looked at her. Strange, the red-brown eyes, wide open, looking at her so near. She felt immediately drawn to his breast.
‘Is it day?’ she said, laying her head on his breast, suddenly.<
br />
‘Ay! It’s about five.’
She heard the resonance of his voice, and opened his shirt, to lay her ear over his heart. Thud! Thud! So deep! She softly kissed the man’s breast-nipple. He had drawn her close and with infinite delicate pleasure was stroking the full, soft, voluptuous curve of her loins. She did not know which was his hand and which was her body, it was like a full bright flame, sheer loveliness. Everything in her fused down in passion, nothing but that.
Then afterwards, she became aware of the sounds of the wood, birds calling, and the noise of a train in the cutting.
‘Is it a fine day?’ she said.
He got out of bed and drew the curtains of the low window, stooping to look out. So he must stoop and look out each dawn. What a lonely man he was, really! And rather absurd in a shirt with a tail to it.
‘Yes!’ he said, when he had scrutinised closely. ‘It’s fine.’
She lifted her head. She had heard the whimpering of a dog downstairs.
‘It’s Flossie!’ he said. ‘She thinks I’m late.’
‘What time?’
He looked at his watch on the chair.
‘Just after six.’
‘It doesn’t matter if I’m not home so very early — I shall just say I went for a walk,’ she told him. ‘I often do before breakfast.’
‘Do you?’ he said, sitting down on the bed.
She felt lazy and voluptuous. He looked at her.
‘Should I get your breakfast?’ he asked.
He was restless now, to be up. She sighed.
‘No!’ she said. ‘I shall have to be home for breakfast.’
‘What time shall you start?’
‘I shall have to be home by about eight at the latest.’
‘I’ll make a cup o’ tea.’
‘Will you?’
He pulled on his stockings and breeches with a certain alacrity, and turned to go.
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 12