He seemed no more like a human being to her. He was really interested in nothing but these two things: business, and the radio. He had a passion, an obsession about the mines, and his strange, pale-blue eyes would be rapt as if in mystery as he thought out plans. And when all seemed to be going well he seemed to feel a strange, arctic sort of happiness. Constance herself was quite pleased for the money to be coming in. But with him it was something different, a sort of queer, thrilling delight like the humming of some sort of insect. It was the sound of bees thrilled with depositing their honey: and Clifford’s honey was money.
Yet he was not mean. As soon as money began to come in, he was burning to spend it.
‘Have your own car, dear! Have a car of your own and a man of your own,’ he said generously when she had to wait a day for the motor car, once.
‘Oh no, Clifford! I should hate it.’
‘But why? The money is coming in!’
It seemed to be sufficient answer for everything. In quite a short time he had changed like this. She held her breath with amazement. His Plato, his painting, left him as an attack of measles might leave him. His passion now was to build up a fortune and make himself really a personage in the county.
But it was not natural. It was uncanny. He was no longer really human. She looked on him now as some weird bird or some creature whose soul has suddenly left it, while it lives on a sharp, often dislocated will of its own.
So, when pheasant shooting came in he must have a house party. He must have a great bustle round him. It served almost as well as the wireless. There were voices going, going, no matter what they said. And that was enough.
It was as if his soul had suddenly flown away from him and sat, perhaps, in the boughs of some tree somewhere within call. And if there was a noise going on outside him that he could listen to — listen in, as they say — he felt as if his soul was perched inside him again: or at least, as if there was no disjunction.
He was aware of Constance too, by an uncanny second awareness. By the strange owl-like look of his eyes when she came back from Sheffield, she knew that he realised quite well that she had been taking the great journey away from him. Yet there was so complete a rift between what he knew psychically, perhaps by telepathy, and his rational mind that he never for a moment doubted her when she said she had just been shopping. She saw that he accepted her word implicitly, like a child or an imbecile. Yet by his strange, forlorn, owl-like eyes she knew that some part of him was aware.
‘Where’s her ladyship?’
Those were the first words she always heard when he came in after having been out. And if she herself were out she could simply feel him groping after her through the ether. It was uncanny. Even Hilda had said to her:
‘One always feels someone else’s presence about you. Is it Clifford haunting you?’
‘I hope not,’ said Constance, going pale.
And she knew that she had sought refuge in the sanity of her passion for Parkin from the terror she had of the slight insanity of Clifford’s fixation upon herself. She did not want to become fixed in her consciousness of him. Even now she could, if she would, come into a kind of communication or at least connection with him at any hour of the day or night merely by thinking of him. Then it seemed that his ghost or spirit became present to her: not to her body but to her own ghost or spirit. They held a ghostly interview.
And she hated it. It frightened her, and she loathed it. She loathed the baleful cold forces of the spirit and of the spirit world. It seemed like the very flame of corruption and disintegration. She prayed to escape from it.
Parkin had been her escape. She knew if she told him of her dread of Clifford and of the haunting obsession of Wragby, Parkin would really pity her and take her away. But she would not do that. She would not reveal her own weakness as far as that.
She did not tell Clifford that she was pregnant. And again, by the strange vacancy of his blue eye sometimes, she felt he knew. She felt that he knew. She felt that he knew, absurd as it may sound, in his shoulders, in his high, square shoulders of a cripple. But in his everyday mind he would never know and never ask, perhaps never even suspect: not until she told him in so many bald words.
She was frightened: inwardly and coldly frightened. And after her visit to Sheffield she admitted it to herself. She was afraid of the uncanny, of the morbid or disintegrative influence in her life. She was afraid of tense, unremitting human wills that turn into ghouls, fixed and destructive influences within the living ether. She recognised her eagerness for the vulgar healthiness and the warm passion of a common man like Parkin. But she dared not tell him so. She dared never let him see the sickness that was in her soul. She must always play the lady, the donor, she who gives the gift. She dared never let him see her as she was, somewhere in her old, tortured soul, as the leper who could be healed only by the bath of living blood.
Clifford had got a shooting party in the house, and was even talking about joie de vivre. ‘Amazing fact, you know, but you never experience real joie de vivre until half your corpus is knocked out, really half of you is in the grave. Then you know what it is to have a perfect delirium of joie de vivre, the actual joy of actually being alive. Oh, it’s great!’
She heard Clifford saying this to Duncan Forbes. Duncan was a painter, one of the moderns, and she had known him before she knew Clifford. He came from the same village in Scotland as her mother. He was a little older than herself, grave and quiet, though with a sturdy Scotch physique. He and she had always been friends since long before he went to Paris and became queer and modern.
Clifford liked him because he seemed so simple and sympathetic. ‘There’s a great deal of the child about Duncan,’ he said easily. Perhaps there was. But it was of that sort of child which is father to the man. Duncan had a sort of second sight where people were concerned, and he saw through Clifford absolutely. Like some quiet hooded crow from the north, he sat and let the Englishman talk while he himself scented carrion and waited. He saw the macabre side of the affair perfectly.
And it was to Duncan that Constance confessed her condition. ‘Don’t tell anybody,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a child.’
‘Of Clifford’s?’ The question came like a gunshot.
‘No! Another man’s.’
‘Oh!’ But it was an ‘oh!’ of infinite relief.
‘I haven’t told him yet,’ she said.
But Duncan wasn’t listening. He was in a brown study.
‘My God!’ he said at length. ‘I had a most horrible shock when you said that. I thought it might be Clifford’s, and if that were so—’
‘No, no!’ she said. ‘Far from it.’
He gave a little Scotch laugh.
‘Very far?’ he said. ‘Do you want to tell one how far?’
‘How?’ she asked.
‘Who the “other man” is?’
‘No!’ she said. ‘I’d rather not.’
‘Quite! A secret! — But a nice man?’
‘Yes!’
‘Why don’t you go away and live with him?’
‘I can’t very well. And he doesn’t want me terribly.’
‘Why not? Does he care for you?’
‘Yes! I believe he does.’
‘You don’t care for him?’
‘Yes! I do!’
‘Well then!’ — For this young man, there was no more to be said.
‘There are complications — on both sides,’ she said.
‘None on yours,’ he said hastily.
‘Clifford!’
‘My God! Leave him!’
She went into a brown study, now.
‘What I’m not quite sure,’ she said, ‘is whether I can let him be the child’s father legally.’
‘Would he accept it, do you think?’
‘He has half-hinted he would — when I said I wished I could have children.’
‘Hm, hm! Hm, hm!’ The young man mused. ‘Quite! Son and heir! Pass it off as his own! Local rejoicings! The
young baronet presumptive! Quite.’
‘It’s not altogether unnatural — poor Clifford!’
‘Not at all unnatural as far as that goes. There is to consider, though, as you say, whether you could hand a child over to Clifford: especially if it was a nice man’s child. What does the nice man say by the way? Does he know?’
‘Yes, he knows. He says: it’ll have a good home, won’t it?’ Duncan gave a quick little laugh.
‘That’s a point of view. He’s poor then?’
‘Oh yes! One of the working people.’
‘I see-ee!’
‘But very nice — he doesn’t know life in the least as we know it — not the — the really frightening side of it. He thinks Wragby would be a wonderful home!’
Duncan laughed again.
‘Poor man! He doesn’t know Sir Clifford Chatterley!’
‘He does — as far as it goes — and can’t stand him!’
‘Hm! That’s good anyhow. And what are you going to do then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you set the nice man up in some sort of business and go and live with him?’
‘He won’t let me.’
‘So you’ve mentioned it to him?’
‘Oh yes!’
‘And what’s the objection?’
‘Oh — tiresome! He’s just getting a divorce from a very horrid wife — and he wants to be clear there —’
‘Ah — I see! The gamekeeper story I’ve heard from Clifford! Hm! Hm! — Never mind if you’ve given yourself away. I don’t know him and don’t care. Go on! He wants to get a divorce from a very horrid wife —! When is he starting to get the divorce?’
‘The case was heard yesterday. I saw it in today’s paper — a decree nisi.’
‘Six more months! And when is the child coming?’
‘February — I suppose!’
‘I see! A little too soon. — Do you think the gamekeeper — the nice man, let us call him — would marry you if Clifford divorced you?’
‘Yes! I think I could make him.’
‘What means would you take to make him?’
‘I should show him how frightened I was.’
‘Of what?’
‘Clifford! Myself! Ghouls!’
‘Mmm! Yes! Would it have any effect?’
‘If he thought I was really frightened, really frightened of the unholiness of — of — I don’t know what — of my future — he’d take me.’
‘Would he?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re so sure! Is he so naive?’
‘Oh yes! He’s not a fool.’
‘Can one be naive without being a fool?’
‘Yes! Even I can! I feel I’m far more a fool, not being naive — than — than — But of course, he’s fooled in a way. He thinks Wragby is terribly important and grand.’
‘Quite! That’s what I meant’
‘But it’s only a thin layer of him, the cold crust, that thinks like that. Underneath there’s a sort of fire that doesn’t care, doesn’t know that Wragby exists.’
‘One always hopes it is so,’ Duncan said slowly, ‘with the working people. But one has grave doubts. They seem to have Wragby fetishes very deep in their mental insides. It’s only people like us who chalk ribald words on the fetishes and keep them merely for what they’re worth — indoor space and a hot bath, and fresh vegetables.’
There was a pause.
‘Where is he, by the way — the nice man?’
There came the banging of guns from the woods.
‘Hark! They are killing his pheasants!’ she said.
‘Has Clifford gone in his chair?’
‘Yes! He’s gone too — with his gun!’
‘My God! After the war and all! — and he lets off gunpowder at his own elegant and tame birds! My God! Sits there in a motor-chair and bangs away and bags a few birds, I’ll bet!’
‘Five yesterday!’
Duncan opened his mouth, and doubled up in mirthless joy. ‘I wonder if he cripples any of them in the legs! By Jove, I’ll ask him.’
‘No, don’t!’ she pleaded. ‘It’s all mad, so let the madness go shooting pheasants rather than making scenes at home!’
‘Quite! Quite!’
There was another pause.
‘Have you any idea what you’ll do? Do you think you might stay here and present Clifford with a son and heir? Come to think of it, that’s a good joke!’
Constance, however, was gloomy.
‘I don’t think I can,’ she said.
‘You don’t! If you can’t take the child as a joke you’d better not.’
The crimson flooded up her neck and face.
‘I can’t take the child as a joke,’ she said.
‘Nor the nice man either?
‘Take him as a joke? Sometimes! But even he’s got under my skin, so the joke is against myself.’
‘I see!’
‘Supposing I — I couldn’t go to the other man —’ she stammered —‘and I had to go somewhere — would you help me a bit?’
‘I? You mean come forward as the missing father? That’s a good joke too!’ But he spoke ironically.
‘Would you hate it?’ she said.
‘I’ve no idea at all! I’ve no idea how I should react. I should have to think for ages before I knew what I should feel in such a complicated issue. — You know you and I were once engaged — what a lovely word!’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘It would be very fitting if we married after all — with a nice man’s child thrown in for luck.’
‘Yes! Quite!’
‘Well! Suggest it to the nice man and see what he says.’
‘One does feel free with you, Duncan, to be ironical about everything. It’s a relief!’
‘But a constant diet of it would be like living on iced cocktails. Yes, I know! And do you know, you make even me more ironical than I usually am. What does somebody say that irony is — the cleverness of a shallow heart? Something equally sapient! You and I must have very shallow hearts so that when we are together the shallowness goes off in sparks. Don’t you think so?’
‘I don’t know what I think. I’m most frightfully tangled up. The world seems like all cheap descendants of the House of Atreus.’
‘Well, you have one resource, you know.’
‘What?’
‘You can make yourself pitiful to the nice man! Save her, Mr Hercules, for she cannot save herself! It would take a man of the people to rise to it. But if it works it’s fine.’
‘I think I wanted you to jeer at me,’ she said. ‘It drives me back to my real sanity.’
‘Quite! Don’t look so blue about your real sanity, though. If ever you do need my helping hand, tell me, and I’ll think about it. I’ll do that much anyhow. So long as you don’t ask for some more vital part of my anatomy —’
Constance went indoors to prepare for the return of the brave cohort of sportsmen. She heard the faint pip-pip of Clifford’s chair.
That evening in the drawing-room Duncan said to her:
‘You remember, Constance, when we were at the Villa Real de León?’
‘Were you at the Villa Real then?’ interrupted Clifford.
‘For a very little while,’ said Duncan coldly, bored by the interruption. And he still looked at Constance.
‘Yes!’ she said.
‘There was an amusing little musician — I mean a little man who writes music and has no money but still has a valet — do you remember?’
‘Yes!’ said Constance.
But she was thinking of Clifford’s face when he discovered that Duncan had been a guest at the villa near Biarritz. Constance had never mentioned the fact — Duncan had stayed a few days only on his way back from Spain. And now into Clifford’s face had come a faint, subtle smile of hatred. The two men suddenly really hated one another for some reason. Previously they had been rather ironical friends, but all this visit they had been on hot bricks with one ano
ther. Now she saw the thin smile of real nervous hate on Clifford’s face, and on Duncan’s the blank of stony indifference: assumed of course, for his nerves were like hot needles.
‘Well, he won about half a million francs at Monte Carlo, and the very next day the franc fell from seventy-five to a hundred and ten.’
‘Bad luck!’ said Constance.
‘Yes! But what do you think he did next?’
‘Changed into English money, I hope.’
‘Not a bit! He gave all the money to the valet, and the sack as well. Yes! He said to the valet: I want to pay you off. Take this! And leave my services at once. — And he gave him the whole half-million francs.’
‘Oh but he’s mad!’
‘I don’t think so. But listen to the rest. The valet immediately wired to the man’s mother for instructions — yes, he’s got an old mother over seventy —’
‘Connie, do you mind coming here for a moment!’ said Clifford coolly and distinctly.
‘Sorry!’ icily answered Duncan. ‘But I’m just telling her a little incident which I must finish.’
‘Really!’ said Clifford. ‘And I absolutely must have Connie’s assistance for a moment —’
She rose and went over to him, to move his leg and ease it of a certain cramp he had sometimes.
When she came back she said:
‘And what is the rest of the story?’
‘I can’t remember. I’ve got a cramp of the brain. Do you mind hitting me over the head?’
‘What for?’
‘To make me forget the last two minutes, and take away my brain cramp.’
‘Supposing we put on a fox-trot?’ said Clifford’s cousin, Anne Maitland, with utmost sang froid. And she rose to look at the music-rolls.
The next morning Constance received a letter.
‘Dear Lady Chatterley, I thought you might like to know that my case was tried yesterday, and the judge gave me a decree nisi. It will be absolute in six months from yesterday, all being well. Mrs Tewson sends her respects and hopes you are well. She says perhaps you will drop in one day for a talk on socialism if not bolshevism with Mr Tewson. With respects from your obedient servant, O.P.’
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 22