She was so sick of people with their egos. It made them all so tough, so leathery-hided, so aware only of the surfaces. It made them so subtly bullying. In a curious way Clifford bullied the whole place at Wragby, even his very tolerance was a cold denial of life. Ugh! She was so weary of it, the cold emptiness of that way of life, the toughness, the insentience, the negative sort of tyranny. A tyranny of negation: the warm blood must not flow, it must be chilled.
‘I won’t!’ she said to herself. ‘I won’t take Parkin’s child and hand it over to Clifford! It shall not be a Chatterley and a baronet and a gentlemen and another cold horror. If I’ve warmed my hands at the fire of life I won’t spit in the fire. And Parkin is my fire of life, and he warmed me all the length of my body and through my soul. I’ve been denying him lately, and I’ve felt beastly because of it. I won’t deny him. And I’ll go home and tell it him. And I’ll tell him his penis is more beautiful to me, and better, than all the bodies of all the people in Tevershall and Wragby.’
So she settled the question: not in these set terms but to the same effect. How does one think when one is thinking passionately and with suffering? Not in words at all but in strange surges and crosscurrents of emotion which are only half-rendered by words.
Having worked herself up into a state, Constance decided to go straight home by train via Dieppe.
‘What difference will a few days make?’ asked Hilda.
‘I want to go,’ said Constance. ‘I feel it is time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘I don’t want to leave Parkin in the lurch,’ said Constance, who had told Hilda roughly about the scandal.
‘What do you mean by not leaving him in the lurch? What can you do for him exactly?’
‘I can be there.’
‘But — why should you be? Much better stay out of it, it seems to me.’
Constance looked at her sister with those blue, candid eyes which always looked most innocent when she was battling for her own way against opposition.
‘I’ve thought it out. I can’t let him go out of my life. I’ve thought it out. I must live with him.’
It was Hilda who blushed slowly and deeply.
‘I think you are very foolish,’ she said. ‘Why must you live with anybody?’
‘I want to so much — with him,’ said Constance.
Hilda turned aside and sat down.
‘Aren’t you being foolish?’ she asked quietly.
‘No, Hilda!’ said Constance, still reasonable.
‘And supposing he doesn’t want to live with you? Supposing he’s had enough?’ said Hilda.
Constance watched with those big blue eyes.
‘But you see, Hilda, he hasn’t,’ she said.
‘How do you know?’
There was a pause.
‘Well, goodbye, Hilda!’ said Constance. ‘I’ll get a taxi to the station.’
She crossed by the night boat. It was a still night, and warm. She sat on deck and looked at the stars and the night. She felt a great turmoil outside but a great quietness inside. The yearning that had been tearing at her for weeks now, like a distraction, seemed soothed. She was very still, and the journey passed like a dream.
By one o’clock she was at Uthwaite, where the car would meet her. And on the station platform — Oh God! — was Clifford on crutches? He had learned to go on crutches since she had left! His face, ruddy and healthy-looking, and with that inhuman birdlike keenness, was watching the train as he himself leaned against one of the iron pillars that supported the station roof, his crutches under his armpits. Those eyes, those keen light-blue, hard swift eyes, of an English gentleman! She almost felt them strike her as they lighted on her face. And a curious flame of triumph filled them, inhuman. He was triumphing in his new victory over fate. Poor Clifford!
The man-servant hurried forward to help her. Clifford remained with his back against the pillar, watching tensely. She hurried forward to him.
‘Why Clifford!’ she said in her breathless voice.
‘How are you, dear?’ he said, as he leaned a hand on her shoulder and bent forward to kiss her.
It was almost with surprise that she realised that he was an actuality. He had become a sort of shadow while she was away.
‘But can you really go?’ she cried, looking at the crutches.
‘In a fashion,’ he said.
‘But how wonderful! How — ?’ she could get no further. She was panting, and her cheeks were bright red.
‘Mrs Bolton inspired me. Oh, she’s an amazing woman when she likes.’
‘And — and have you been out before?’
‘Not to Uthwaite. This is the grand celebration of your arrival home!’
He was looking round for Field, his man. Field was a square, powerful, taciturn young man of about twenty-five, with a round and babyish face. He came up saluting.
‘Are yer ready then, Sir Clifford?’ he said.
‘Quite ready.’
The chauffeur took his master from behind and slowly eased him erect till the crutches balanced. There was a queer tension in Clifford’s face, fear and excitement.
‘Let go!’ he said.
And then, with strange swift strokes of his crutches, Clifford was poling himself along the station platform, his dead legs swinging in peculiar inert swoops between the crutches, yet holding firm long enough for their owner to plunge onward in another stroke of the crutches. It was an uncanny, fearsome sight. Field, who looked squat because he was so broad and fat, trotted strangely alongside, watching every second, never for an instant taking his eyes off his master. And Constance, left behind, hurried along in amazement, amazement at Clifford’s new daring and at the chauffeur’s dogged, almost passionate absorption in the new feat.
She emerged from the station in time to see Clifford taken bodily round the waist and lifted into the open car, heaved up in the most amazing fashion. And there he was, sitting in the car like anybody else, his crutches beside him, the chauffeur holding the door for her and saluting.
‘But Field, it is too wonderful!’ she said as she entered.
‘Wonderful, my lady, eh?’ said the man, beaming a broad smile on his fat face, and looking at Sir Clifford with such pleased pride, as if the baronet had been his own precocious offspring. Then he hurried to secure the luggage. And Constance thought to herself how marvellous it was that one could have such attention and such service for two pounds a week. But then it was obvious the man took an abiding pride in the achievement itself.
‘Well?’ said Clifford, looking round at her benignly. ‘You look blooming. Have you had a good time?’
‘Oh quite!’ she said.
‘Only quite?’ he asked ironically.
‘Well, I thought I was having a perfect time — such sun and bathing! But I wasn’t really. I was deceiving myself.’
‘In what particular?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t interested at all, not in anything we did: I mean, not altogether interested. — But you, you are the wonderful one! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I was afraid I might raise your expectations too high. Are you at all glad to be back?’
‘Very!’ she said. And as she looked round at the spoiled mining country, she spoke with truth. It was real to her. It corresponded with something real in her.
‘That’s good hearing!’ he said, watching her keenly. There was something about her that puzzled him and allured him.
‘So you really didn’t mind coming back?’ he persisted.
She glanced at him.
‘I wanted to come,’ she said.
‘It’s almost too good to be true,’ he said. ‘I can tell you it’s most amazingly good to have you back.’
She felt, somehow, he wasn’t quite sincere.
‘You didn’t mind my being away much, did you?’ she said.
‘Of course I minded! Of course I minded enormously. But I made up my mind not to mind overmuch, and I got through a frightful lot of work.’
He began to tell her about a new experiment he was trying in the mines. And she could see that this was where his life lay now: in the mines, in his mastery of them. He was determined that High Park, at least, should be exploited down to the last possibility and made to pay for many years to come in spite of all obstacles. He had become a larger shareholder in the mine, having bought out one of the members of the company. And he was risking almost everything on his new experiment with chemical by-products.
‘I’ve actually been down High Park once,’ he said. ‘I sat in one of the tubs and was hauled out to the leading stall. It looks to me all right, you know. Since the war the mining proposition in England is a new one, and I think I know how to tackle it in our own case.’
So that was it! He had not learned to go on crutches for her sake but for the mine’s sake: because he wanted to get to the coal face and inspect the conditions. It was the new fight for supremacy, for his master’s rights and his master’s fortune, which fascinated him. The real return for his money and his efforts he might not see for some years to come. But he was looking ahead.
‘You feel so confident of the future?’ she said, looking at him with wide, quiet eyes.
And she saw a shadow of hostility cross his face. He looked away from her.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘If we make the future we can be confident of it.’
There seemed something mechanical in this making of the future. He left out the human factor too much. Men could become exhausted as well as seams of coal, and humanity could cease to be a paying concern as easily as mines.
‘I suppose that’s true, ‘she said.
‘Why doubt it?’ he cried.
‘I haven’t any strong faith in the future,’ she said. ‘I mean I don’t think things will go on being the same.’
‘Precisely! That’s why we have to go in and make the change in time, so that we shan’t be left.’
But she was meaning something else: something in life: something in the way of human feeling.
‘And even supposing I’m not a good life for an insurance agent, there’s Wragby, and there’s you, and possible future developments in your direction.’
What did he mean by that? Perhaps his hopes. that she would have a child. She could feel in the silence that he was inquisitive about her. Questions he would never put audibly he was putting silently, almost forcing her into some kind of speech, some kind of confession, But she held herself mute.
And by the time they were approaching Wragby he was tired. She watched the life in him go grey, and she realised that he was not so vital as he seemed. His hold on life was tense, but there was a numbness somewhere, a partial deadness. He was very glad to be helped indoors. He was wheeled to his room in his chair. And he was almost oblivious of her again, oblivious of her return, of everything.
‘You will rest now,’ she said to him soothingly. ‘And so will I. I am tired too.’
But he did not answer. He was unaware. This too had happened during her absence: except when he deliberately remembered her, she did not exist for him.
She rested; during the afternoon. At tea Clifford was still tired. The great effort of the day had exhausted him.
‘It’s marvellous having you back, you know,’ he said. But she felt the tiredness in him, the absentness. He only spoke in a sort of premeditated way. So she talked to him quietly, desultorily, about France and about the people at the villa near Biarritz. She could see that in his mind he was searching for some possible lover among the company of bathers and dancers and tennis players. He lingered over the account of the mad musician. She was almost tempted to invent some fascinating personality that would give his mind something to play on. But she refrained.
And at length she asked:
‘But you’ve had a quite exciting scandal here. What is the latest development of Parkin and the truant wife, as you call her?’
‘The truant wife was peacefully in gaol for a fortnight. She came out some days ago, with money apparently. I don’t know the details. To tell the truth, I’m a little tired of the affair.’
‘And has Parkin gone?’
‘He is due to go on Saturday, having procured the mild Joe and a returned Canadian called Albert to look after the wood. I hope they’re on duty at the moment, the pheasants seem splendid this year.’
‘And will all three be in the wood? It seems so many.’
‘Probably not. In fact, Parkin himself may be in gaol this time. I haven’t inquired.’
‘What for, in gaol?’
‘Why — oh, I’m tired of it — for having a regular stripped fight with Marsden on Sunday.’
‘Who is Marsden?’
‘Marsden is the lucky collier who threw out the truant wife, and now, apparently, has taken her back, having no one to cook his dinner for him in the afternoons.’
‘And why did they fight?’
‘Who?’
‘Parkin and Marsden.’
‘As two dogs will, over a coy female, I suppose.’
‘And what was the result?’
‘As a sporting contest, I can’t say. I only heard that they spent Sunday night in the lock-up. But Parkin is supposed to have been on duty in the wood last night. I am finished with him on Saturday.’
‘And what will become of him?’
‘I haven’t asked. Find work, I suppose.’
Constance finished her questioning. Clifford was tired, and apparently Parkin had offended him. At any rate, he had dismissed the fellow out of his emotions. Clifford was like that. He could blow out his feelings as one blows out a candle, and re-kindle them at his own convenience. If, indeed, one could call them feelings. In the vital sense, Clifford had no emotions. He had feelings as he had clothes, to cover his naked intention. Having virtually got rid of Parkin, after having been either thwarted in his will or injured in his self-esteem by the fellow, Clifford now blew out the candle which represented the gamekeeper in his own consciousness and emotion, and there was no Parkin. It was quite final. For Clifford there was no more Parkin. The candle was not only blown out, it was stone cold, and thrown in the waste box with other candle ends, the dead ends of feelings for people who had ceased to exist in Clifford’s mind.
‘But he has worked very faithfully for you,’ said Constance.
‘Quite! And now he chooses to work for me no more, and informs me he is no man’s servant.’
‘Why?’
‘Who knows why? He is a malcontent in any case. I suppose he feels he is too good to serve a master.’
‘He used to wheel your chair very nicely.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes, didn’t he?’
‘He wheeled my chair, it is true. He could hardly do less when asked. As for the niceness with which he did it, I only know I never noticed it.’
‘Then perhaps you ought’
‘What?’
‘When people do kind things for you you ought at least to know.’
‘I never ask them to do kind things for me.’
‘But Clifford! Look at Field! He is kindness itself.’
‘I hope not. He gets ten shillings a week extra for the small amount of personal service he does me.’
‘But the way he does it: and he’s so pleased—’
‘My dear child, then he experiences his own pleasure. I don’t choose to mix up my feelings with my servants’ feelings.’
‘You should at least be aware of them.’
‘On the contrary, to be aware of them is the greatest mistake any master can make when dealing with servants.’
‘Parkin was hardly a servant.’
‘Well! — say gamekeepers then. You change from Field to Parkin like a hare on a course. And by the way, why do you never put up such a good plea for the women servants?’
‘I would, if there were occasion.’
‘Occasion! Occasion! my dear child! There never was an occasion that wasn’t made.’
‘I shall go and see old Mrs Parkin.’
/> ‘Do, if it will amuse you to hear more unsavoury things.’
‘They won’t tell me unsavoury things. But I shall go and ask her what Parkin is going to do when he leaves you.’
‘Do play the benevolent lady of the manor, if it amuses you.’
‘Yes, I shall go now.’
‘Have the car.’
‘No, I shall walk.’
She did so, on the hot July evening when the miners were standing about in gangs or sitting on the kerb-stone. Very few of them took any notice of her. None touched their hats. Only some tradespeople and the schoolmaster bowed obsequiously — and even then, not the tradespeople from whom she bought nothing. These, like the colliers, ignored her: but not at all in an unfriendly way. She did not mind walking past all the miners. Their pale faces were not unkindly, nor were their uncouth, slightly distorted bodies. A certain peculiar warmth came from them to her, like the scent of pit clothes: a certain strength.
Old Mrs Parkin was tidy but flushed with heat. The little kitchen was hot as an oven. There was a good smell of newly baked loaves.
‘Oh, Lady Chatterley! I heard you was away.’
‘Yes! I’m back! May I come in?’
‘You’ll be broiled alive — it’s bake day, and with two men as won’t eat baker’s bread—’
Constance sat down. The old woman waited to hear what she had come for.
‘Is Parkin going away?’ Constance asked.
‘You mean Oliver?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s thinking of it, I believe.’
‘Where is he going?’
‘He’s never let on.’
‘Where is he now? Is he at the wood?’ She had espied his nailed boots and leather leggings in a corner under the sofa.
‘No! He’s lying down. He’s going out tonight.’
‘Could I speak to him?’
Constance’s heart suddenly went white-hot in her breast, and she felt she would faint.
‘Well — he’s having a bit of a rest before he goes out. Was it anything from Sir Clifford — anything particular?’
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 17