‘Nothing from Sir Clifford. But I should particularly like to see him for a moment.’
‘Well — I don’t know as he’d want to see yer, if I maun tell the truth. He’s got his mouth all cut and two of his teeth gone where that great bullying collier caught him one. — But Marsden’ll go cock-eyed while he lives, so there’s some comfort in that.’
The old woman had risen. She turned to Constance.
‘Do you want me to call him then?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Am I to say as it’s you? — I won’t guarantee as he’ll come.’
‘Yes, say it’s me.’
The old woman marched through to the inner room, and opened the stairfoot door.
‘Oliver! Oliver!’ she called crossly.
Constance heard a grunt from above.
‘There’s Lady Chatterley come an’ wants ter speak ter yer. Are yer gettin’ up?’
Constance heard the remote voice call sharply:
‘Who?’
‘Lady Chatterley! She’s in t’kitchen. Art comin’ down? She’s waitin’.’
For an answer they heard a thud on the ceiling overhead.
‘He’s comin’,’ said the old woman, returning to the kitchen. Constance’s heart beat terribly, and she felt faint.
‘How hot it is!’ she murmured.
‘Hot enough without havin’ to bake of a day like this!’ said the old woman. And she crossly took up an old curved piece of sheet iron that was blacked glossy and smooth like a shield, and hung it on the bars of the fireplace in front of the fire. Constance little knew how familiar the clang of the little metal fire-screen was to Oliver. She heard his stockinged tread thudding down the creaking stairs, and she sat motionless.
As he came through the inner doorway she rose unconsciously to her feet. She only gazed at him in a sort of fear. He dropped his head and peered at her under his brow, so that she should not see his mouth. Then he moved forward into the kitchen and went and sat in the man’s armchair near the fire, keeping his face averted from her, not looking at her.
‘I only got back today,’ she said, labouring with her breathing.
He turned slowly in his chair and looked at her, showing the whole of his face. His mouth and right cheek were bruised and swollen, his fierce moustache had a piece cut out of it. But she only saw the hard, almost hostile questioning of his eyes and the peculiar little patches of deadness on his cheekbones caused by misery.
‘You are going to leave us?’ she asked, still nervously standing by the door.
He remained seated, looking at her, conscious of his disfigurement. But his voice came harsh and strong.
‘Ay about that!’ he said harshly.
‘Have you got other work?’
‘Soon shall have,’ he said in the same strong voice.
‘Where? Where will you go?’
‘Sheffield!’ he said — and he seemed, in his harsh distance, on the other side of the moon.
‘What will you do?’
‘Me? What shall I do?’
‘Yes. What work will you do?’
‘What work shall I do? I shall drive a lorry, if I’m lucky, wi’ a man as was my mate in th’ war.’
His voice was so harsh, and his tongue seemed so thick, she would not have known it was he speaking.
She remained standing, and he remained seated, his feet, in their grey stockings, wide apart, and his face turned to the screened fire. He reached forward and with a quick cat’s-paw movement jerked the screen by its brass handle and unhooked it from the stove bars. But it burnt him, and he let it drop with a clatter. The old woman, hastily taking a cloth, stooped and picked it up.
‘A fool’s thing to do with a red-hot screen!’ she said. ‘If you’ve burned yourself it’s your own look-out.’
But he did not answer. He now stared into the glow of hot coals, red-hot, that half-filled the grate.
‘Will you go on Saturday?’ asked Constance.
‘Or else Sunday,’ he said, but his voice was dulled now.
‘I brought you a silk handkerchief from France, to thank you for letting me feed the little pheasants when I wasn’t well in the spring,’ she said to him, panting a little as she spoke. ‘Shall I bring it to you to the hut?’
He turned suddenly to the old woman and said in the voice of intimate authority which the ordinary workman uses to his women: ‘Mother, step down to Goddard’s an’ get me an ounce o’ cavendish.’
He fumbled in his trousers pocket for the money. She took it crossly, grumbling about running his errands for him. But she went out just as she was, in her apron, into the street.
He waited till she was well gone. Then he said in a small voice, sarcastically: ‘Yo’ve ’eered all about our dustup, ’ave you?’
‘I’ve heard about it. I’m very sorry.’
‘Ay! Summat ter think abaht.’
His eyes were hard and unyielding, but there were little white patches on his cheeks, on the cheekbones, which troubled her more than his cut and swollen mouth and the missing teeth that showed their gap when he spoke, his tongue clumsy.
‘I —’ she said stammering — ‘I mind about it awfully. I don’t want you to go away.’
He hung his head, and she saw the veins stick out in his loose, hanging hands. Then he gave his head a tiny shake as he looked up.
‘I canna stop now,’ he said.
It was the finality of destiny, and she accepted it.
‘But shan’t I come to the hut to you before you go?’ she said. ‘Shall I come tonight?’
The hardness of his eyes darkened to misery as he watched her.
‘Yo’ dunna want ter do that,’ he said dully, as if to a child. ‘You niver know who’s follerin’ and doggin’ me now. Nay, yer dunna want ter do that.’
He spoke with a kind of dreary indulgence, as if to a child that didn’t understand, and he himself were stupefied.
‘But I don’t want you to go away from me. I’d leave Clifford and come and live with you if you’d have me,’ she said to him.
He looked at her, then looked round anxiously. Then he rose and came and stood in the open doorway, looking across the little brick yard into the street. In the full light his face was a sorry specimen.
He turned and said in a low voice:
‘You wouldn’t do such a thing though, would yer?’
‘I would come to you if you wanted me to,’ she said.
His eyes slowly softened but still were dulled with misery. And he shook his head.
‘Yer don’t want to do anything like that, you know. You aren’t mentioned. You keep yoursen out of it,’ he said in a gentle voice, still as if to a child.
‘But I missed you so when I was away. I don’t want to miss you all my life,’ she moaned.
His eyes looked at her, wondering if she really meant it. Then seeing suddenly the soft, lovely appeal of her face, his heart all at once ran into flame that tortured the stiff mask of his face and of his soul. She saw the light leap in his eyes and drop down.
‘Yo’ canna want the likes o’ me,’ he said, unbelieving.
‘Don’t you care about me?’ she asked in the queer moan.
He looked at her, afraid. He was afraid of caring for her.
‘Me! What’s the good o’ me carin’?’ he said.
‘Care for me! Care for me!’ she moaned.
‘Ah ber though!’ he began with his old jerk. ‘Dost want it?’ The old, impulsive passion was spreading through him again.
She could only nod, nod, nod her head.
He heaved a deep sigh, fascinated. He knew! And he didn’t want to know.
‘Ay my God!’ he jerked. ‘If a man knowd what he should do! —Yo’ mun leave me alone, yer know.’
‘Can’t I come to you?’ she said, still in the queer moan.
‘When?’ he asked, looking down into her eyes. She saw the sudden slight tremor go over him.
‘Tonight! to the hut!’
He gazed into her eye
s, and a funny light, like a smile, had come into his own eyes. Then he went to the yard entrance and looked down the street. He came back.
‘There’s my mother!’ he said in a low voice, warning but reckless. ‘Ay, come if yer like. But dunna come afore midnight. An’ if there’s any other bugger i’ t’ wood afore then I s’ll put a bullet in ’im. Come if tha’ wilt. I s’ll be theer.’
She looked up at him.
‘I shall try to come,’ she murmured.
The old woman appeared in the little brick yard.
‘Ta’e thy ‘bacca then, an’ theer’s a ha’pny change.’
He took both without a word.
‘Well, if I can do anything for you I will: and I’m sure Sir Clifford would,’ said Constance, moving through the door.
‘Ay! Thank yer!’
‘Good evening!’
She was gone, leaving him to explain to his mother what he liked.
‘What’s ’er want?’ asked the mother.
‘Ter know if I’ve got a job.’
‘’Appen so! An’ what besides?’
‘Nowt, as I know on.’
The old woman stared at him.
‘Well!’ she said. ‘Tha’rt a picture, tha art.’
He took no notice.
As a matter of fact, the hot, defiant blood was rousing in him, and he felt, if Constance liked to risk herself, let her.
She spent a quiet evening with Clifford, but they were not in harmony. She found in him a certain arrogance, and he resented in her a certain heavy, cloying emotionalism. He told her that Linley, the pit manager, was retiring, and they had found a younger man, a man with energy and will.
‘He’ll put some discipline into the work. It’s drive we need, and discipline. These ca’canny tricks have got to stop.’
Constance herself had no belief in the ca’canny method. At the same time she saw in Clifford the arousing of a new naked will which would compel work from men. He was clever, almost weirdly so. If the men had ca’canny tricks, he had ca’uncanny ones. And who would win?
She looked at her husband’s light-blue eyes in a sort of admiration but also with dislike. He was a kind of robot after all, and she was not with him in his assertion of will.
‘But do you think those methods will work?’ she asked.
‘What methods precisely?’
‘Bullying.’
‘There is no bullying to be done. Discipline! If you call discipline bullying. The mines have got to pay, or even the miners starve. And if the mines are going to pay the men must work for it like everybody else. They must. And we will see that they shall.’
‘But you’re not really thinking about them, whether they starve or not.’
‘Am I not? And if that is not the first consideration with me, let it be so with them. They must submit to my control or ultimately they must starve.’
‘Perhaps they’d rather.’
‘Starve? Then it shows what fools they are, and that they must not be allowed to have their own way.’
She was silent for some time.
‘I don’t believe in that sort of control,’ she said sulkily at last.
‘Then what kind do you believe in?’ he asked witheringly.
‘There’s got to be some sort of rapprochement. You’ve got to have feeling for one another.’
‘Who exactly?’
‘You and the miners. You must draw nearer to one another and touch one another like human beings. What it needs is a warmth of heart between you.’
‘But my dear child, we aren’t women. We’re men. We are masters and men. And warmth of heart, as you call it, like the warmth of sweat, has to go into hard work. You can’t hew coal with emotion: especially from a poor seam.’
‘I think you can,’ she said.
‘Oh well!’ he threw out his hands. ‘It isn’t your funeral, you see!’
They became silent, and the evening seemed long and oppressive, because they were opposed in flow.
‘What did you do in the evenings when I was away?’ she asked.
‘I worked a good deal. And the new engineer Spencer came up sometimes. He’s a very intelligent fellow and has an instinct for mining.’
‘And did Mrs Bolton manage all right?’
‘She managed splendidly. She knows very well what I want.’
Constance paused. Then she said: ‘And what does she want. If she knows so well what you want, why don’t you know what she wants?’
He stopped dead and stared at her.
‘Because, Connie,’ he said, ‘that is by no means my affair.’
She said she was tired, and went up to bed.
If there must be a battle of wills she would fight too, even with her heavy passivity. And she was not on Clifford’s side in his arrogance.
She came downstairs and sat in the moonlight in her own small sitting-room that had window-doors opening to the garden. There was a smell of honeysuckle, almost overpowering. At eleven o’clock she just walked out of the garden and into the park. It was bright moonlight.
There was no one at the wood-gate: neither was he at the hut. She had her key. Inside the hut was the bed he used now, of dry bracken and a couple of blankets. She sat down a moment. Then restless, seeing the bright moon outside, she slipped off her dress and went out stark naked into the cool shadows, breathing deep, because she wanted to be fresh. She felt stale and unfresh.
The dog came running towards her, and she heard his footstep. Naked save for her thin shoes, she walked across the moonlight to him.
‘I am a little early?’ she said.
He did not answer, being afraid of her.
‘Turn your face to the moonlight,’ she said to him. ‘Let me see you.’
He did as she said, and she delicately touched the discoloured, swollen mouth. He stiffened a little. She pushed back his lip and saw the torn place where two of his teeth were knocked out. He was really disfigured. She felt depressed, yet she kissed the swollen place on his mouth.
‘My love!’ she murmured. ‘I’m so angry! Are you?’
‘I’m angry enough,’ he said.
‘Take your things off too,’ she said, ‘and be naked with me. We’re so angry. Take your things off and be naked and angry with me.’
‘An’ what if somebody comes?’
‘We’ll shoot them.’
He went into the hut and took off his coat. He had hurried and was hot, But he got his coat off carefully, having a shoulder that was painful.
‘Does it hurt you?’ she asked.
‘Ay, it hurts if I twist it.’
As a matter of fact, he smelled of liniment. She realised the smell now.
‘I’d better not ta’e ’em a’ off,’ he said, hesitating, meaning his clothes.
‘Yes, do! Do! I want you to.’
He came naked into the moonlight with her and she saw the discoloured bruises on his arms and breasts and sides.
‘Do they hurt?’ she asked.
‘Eh!’ he said impatiently. ‘A bit.’
‘You smell of Elliman’s embrocation.’
‘Ay, I expect I do.’
‘Do you think I am beautiful?’ she asked, standing back from him naked and white in the moonlight. To him the shadows where her eyes were made her ghostly.
‘I should think so,’ he said, noncommittal, without any feeling at all.
She laughed.
‘You don’t!’ she said. ‘Not a bit. And I don’t even think you are. We are Adam and Eve naked in the garden and with no desire left in us. But I don’t care. I like us as we are.’
She went and picked campion flowers and stuck some in the hairs of his breast, some in the hairs below the navel. And she made a trail of honeysuckle stay round her own breasts.
‘Look at me!’ she said. ‘Do I look nice?’
‘You look a figure!’ he said, smiling.
‘Suppose we walked through Tevershall village like this! — Wait, your flowers are falling!’ She fastened long flowers round his
thighs and round his neck. ‘Suppose we walk through Tevershall village like this! What would they all say, do you think?’
‘Eh!’ he ejaculated. ‘Nawt afresh.’
‘Wouldn’t they? I wish we could! And I wish I could hit every one of them across the face with this guelder-rose switch for having no nakedness as they should have, for which I hate them.’
She swished the air with the bough and lightly beat him on the body and the legs.
‘Does it hurt you?’ she said.
‘No!’ he replied, laughing.
‘I’m dusting it off you. I’m dusting you clean.’ And she continued lightly to switch him with the leaves of the guelder rose.
‘Thy sort o’ dustin’!’ he said, laughing as the leaves tickled him.
‘I hate them all,’ she said.
‘Tha hates ’em?’
‘Yes! I hate them all, that they can’t be naked like the moon. Look at the moon!’ She put her hands under her breasts and tilted them at the moon. ‘Kiss me, moon! Kiss me!’
He saw her white and sturdy, with full thighs, tilting her body to the moon.
‘Tha’re a rum ’un!’ he said.
‘You tell the moon,’ she said. ‘You speak to her!’
He suddenly spread his arms to the sky.
‘Ay, come!’ he said. ‘Come down!’
But she suddenly ran into his arms, and he felt her cold freshness against him and the sprays of honeysuckle between. And the bloom of cold, jasmine-like beauty filled him like another sort of consciousness, her beauty occupied his whole body.
‘Open to me! Open to me wide!’ he said softly.
She kissed him, and clung to him.
‘I’m going to have a child,’ she murmured. She felt the pause in him, and the drop.
‘Wait for me,’ she murmured. ‘Love me and hold me and wait for me. I’m going to have your child.’
She felt the long, slow rhythm of his breathing, and crept closer to him.
‘Hold me!’ she murmured. ‘Hold me!’
He held her close, covering her with his arms and looking over her hair at the white moon.
‘Folks like you,’ he said, ‘is more like the moon than this world.’
‘But my world is the real world. Tevershall isn’t real. They aren’t real, all of them. Only the moon is real, and you and me. Say I’m real to you!’
She clung to him in supplication.
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 18