"But why offer anything? It's not a bargain. It's just that we love one another," she said.
"Nay, nay! It's more than that. Living is moving and moving on. My life won't go down the proper gutters, it just won't. So I'm a bit of a waste ticket by myself. And I've no business to take a woman into my life, unless my life does something and gets somewhere, inwardly at least, to keep us both fresh. A man must offer a womansomemeaning in his life, if it's going to be an isolated life, and if she's a genuine woman. I can't be just your male concubine."
"Why not?" she said.
"Why, because I can't. And you would soon hate it."
"As if you couldn't trust me," she said.
The grin flickered on his face.
"The money is yours, the position is yours, the decisions will lie with you. I'm not just my lady's fucker, after all."
"What else are you?"
"You may well ask. It no doubt is invisible. Yet I'm something to myself at least. I can see the point of my own existence, though I can quite understand nobody else's seeing it."
"And will your existence have less point, if you live with me?"
He paused a long time before replying:
"It might."
She too stayed to think about it.
"And what is the point of your existence?"
"I tell you, it's invisible. I don't believe in the world, not in money, nor in advancement, nor in the future of our civilisation. If there's got to be a future for humanity, there'll have to be a very big change from what now is."
"And what will the real future have to be like?"
"God knows! I can feel something inside me, all mixed up with a lot of rage. But what it really amounts to, I don't know."
"Shall I tell you?" she said, looking into his face. "Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't have, and that will make the future? Shall I tell you?"
"Tell me then," he replied.
"It's the courage of your own tenderness, that's what it is: like when you put your hand on my tail and say I've got a pretty tail."
The grin came flickering on his face.
"That!" he said.
Then he sat thinking.
"Ay!" he said. "You're right. It's that really. It's that all the way through. I knew it with the men. I had to be in touch with them, physically, and not go back on it. I had to be bodily aware of them and a bit tender to them, even if I put 'em through hell. It's a question of awareness, as Buddha said. But even he fought shy of the bodily awareness, and that natural physical tenderness, which is the best, even between men; in a proper manly way. Makes 'em really manly, not so monkeyish! Ay! it's tenderness, really; it's cunt-awareness. Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And it's touch we're afraid of. We're only half-conscious, and half alive. We've got to come alive and aware. Especially the English have got to get into touch with one another, a bit delicate and a bit tender. It's our crying need."
She looked at him.
"Then why are you afraid of me?" she said.
He looked at her a long time before he answered.
"It's the money, really, and the position. It's the world in you."
"But isn't there tenderness in me?" she said wistfully.
He looked down at her, with darkened, abstract eyes.
"Ay! It comes an' goes, like in me."
"But can't you trust it between you and me?" she asked, gazing anxiously at him.
She saw his face all softening down, losing its armour.
"Maybe!" he said.
They were both silent.
"I want you to hold me in your arms," she said. "I want you to tell me you are glad we are having a child."
She looked so lovely and warm and wistful, his bowels stirred towards her.
"I suppose we can go to my room," he said. "Though it's scandalous again."
But she saw the forgetfulness of the world coming over him again, his face taking the soft, pure look of tender passion.
They walked by the remoter streets to Coburg Square, where he had a room at the top of the house, an attic room where he cooked for himself on a gas ring. It was small, but decent and tidy.
She took off her things, and made him do the same. She was lovely in the soft first flush of her pregnancy.
"I ought to leave you alone," he said.
"No!" she said. "Love me! Love me, and say you'll keep me. Say you'll keep me! Say you'll never let me go, to the world nor to anybody."
She crept close against him, clinging fast to his thin, strong naked body, the only home she had ever known.
"Then I'll keep thee," he said. "If tha wants it, then I'll keep thee."
He held her round and fast.
"And say you're glad about the child," she repeated. "Kiss it! Kiss my womb and say you're glad it's there."
But that was more difficult for him.
"I've a dread of puttin' children i' th' world," he said. "I've such a dread o' th' future for 'em."
"But you've put it into me. Be tender to it, and that will be its future already. Kiss it!"
He quivered, because it was true. "Be tender to it, and that will be its future."—At that moment he felt a sheer love for the woman. He kissed her belly and her mound of Venus, to kiss close to the womb and the foetus within the womb.
"Oh, you love me! You love me!" she said, in a little cry like one of her blind, inarticulate love cries. And he went in to her softly, feeling the stream of tenderness flowing in release from his bowels to hers, the bowels of compassion kindled between them.
And he realized as he went in to her that this was the thing he had to do, to come into tender touch, without losing his pride or his dignity or his integrity as a man. After all, if she had money and means, and he had none, he should be too proud and honourable to hold back his tenderness from her on that account. "I stand for the touch of bodily awareness between human beings," he said to himself, "and the touch of tenderness. And she is my mate. And it is a battle against the money, and the machine, and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of the world. And she will stand behind me there. Thank God I've got a woman! Thank God I've got a woman who is with me, and tender and aware of me. Thank God she's not a bully, nor a fool. Thank God she's a tender, aware woman." And as his seed sprang in her, his soul sprang towards her too, in the creative act that is far more than procreative.
She was quite determined now that there should be no parting between him and her. But the ways and means were still to settle.
"Did you hate Bertha Coutts?" she asked him.
"Don't talk to me about her."
"Yes! You must let me. Because once you liked her. And once you were as intimate with her as you are with me. So you have to tell me. Isn't it rather terrible, when you've been intimate with her, to hate her so? Why is it?"
"I don't know. She sort of kept her will ready against me, always, always: her ghastly female will: her freedom! A woman's ghastly freedom that ends in the most beastly bullying! Oh, she always kept her freedom against me, like vitriol in my face."
"But she's not free of you even now. Does she still love you?"
"No, no! If she's not free of me, it's because she's got that mad rage, she must try to bully me."
"But she must have loved you."
"No! Well in specks, she did. She was drawn to me. And I think even that she hated. She loved me in moments. But she always took it back, and started bullying. Her deepest desire was to bully me, and there was no altering her. Herwillwas wrong, from the first."
"But perhaps she felt you didn't really love her, and she wanted to make you."
"My God, it was bloody making."
"But you didn't really love her, did you? You did her that wrong."
"How could I? I began to. I began to love her. But somehow, she always ripped me up. No, don't let's talk of it. It was a doom, that was. And she was a doomed woman. This last time, I'd have shot her like I shoot a stoat, if I'd but been allowed: a raving, doomed thing in the shape of a woman! If only I could have shot her, and ended the whole misery! It ought to be allowed. When a woman gets absolutely possessed by her own will, her own will set against everything, then it's fearful, and she should be shot at last."
"And shouldn't men be shot at last, if they get possessed by their own will?"
"Ay!—the same! But I must get free of her, or she'll be at me again. I wanted to tell you. I must get a divorce if I possibly can. So we must be careful. We mustn't really be seen together, you and I. I never,nevercould stand it if she came down on me and you."
Connie pondered this.
"Then we can't be together?" she said.
"Not for six months or so. But I think my divorce will go through in September, then till March."
"But the baby will probably be born at the end of February," she said.
He was silent.
"I could wish the Cliffords and Berthas all dead," he said.
"It's not being very tender to them," she said.
"Tender to them? Yea, even then the tenderest thing you could do for them, perhaps, would be to give them death. They can't live! They only frustrate life. Their souls are awful inside them. Death ought to be sweet to them. And I ought to be allowed to shoot them."
"But you wouldn't do it," she said.
"I would though! and with less qualms than I shoot a weasel. It anyhow has a prettiness and a loneliness. But they are legion. Oh, I'd shoot them."
"Then perhaps it is just as well you daren't."
"Well."
Connie had now plenty to think of. It was evident he wanted absolutely to be free of Bertha Coutts. And she felt he was right. The last attack had been too grim. This meant her living alone, till spring. Perhaps she could get divorced from Clifford. But how? If Mellors were named, then there was an end tohisdivorce. How loathsome! Couldn't one go right away, to the far ends of the earth, and be free from it all?
One could not. The far ends of the world are not five minutes from Charing Cross, nowadays. While the wireless is active, there are no far ends of the earth. Kings of Dahomey and Lamas of Tibet listen in to London and New York.
Patience! Patience! The world is a vast and ghastly intricacy of mechanism, and one has to be very wary, not to get mangled by it.
Connie confided in her father.
"You see, Father, he was Clifford's gamekeeper: but he was an officer in the army in India. Only he is like Colonel C. E. Florence, who preferred to become a private soldier again."
Sir Malcolm, however, had no sympathy with the unsatisfactory mysticism of the famous C. E. Florence. He saw too much advertisement behind all the humility. It looked just like the sort of conceit the knight most loathed, the conceit of self-abasement.
"Where did your gamekeeper spring from?" asked Sir Malcolm irritably.
"He was a collier's son in Tevershall. But he's absolutely presentable."
The knighted artist became more angry.
"Looks to me like a gold-digger," he said. "And you're a pretty easy gold-mine, apparently."
"No, Father, it's not like that. You'd know if you saw him. He's a man. Clifford always detested him for not being humble."
"Apparently he had a good instinct, for once."
What Sir Malcolm could not bear, was the scandal of his daughter's having an intrigue with a gamekeeper. He did not mind the intrigue: he minded the scandal.
"I care nothing about the fellow. He's evidently been able to get round you all right. But by God, think of all the talk. Think of your step-mother, how she'll take it!"
"I know," said Connie. "Talk is beastly: especially if you live in society. And he wants so much to get his own divorce. I thought we might perhaps say it was another man's child, and not mention Mellors' name at all."
"Another man's! What other man's?"
"Perhaps Duncan Forbes. He has been our friend all his life. And he's a fairly well-known artist. And he's fond of me."
"Well, I'm damned! Poor Duncan! And what's he going to get out of it?"
"I don't know. But he might rather like it, even."
"He might, might he? Well, he's a funny man, if he does. Why you've never even had an affair with him, have you?"
"No! But he doesn't really want it. He only loves me to be near him, but not to touch him."
"My God, what a generation!"
"He would like me most of all to be a model for him to paint from. Only I never wanted to."
"God help him! But he looks down-trodden enough for anything."
"Still, you wouldn't mind so much the talk about him?"
"My God, Connie, all the bloody contriving!"
"I know! It's sickening! But what can I do?"
"Contriving, conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes a man think he's lived too long."
"Come, Father, if you haven't done a good deal of contriving and conniving in your time, you may talk."
"But it was different, I assure you."
"It'salwaysdifferent."
Hilda arrived, also furious, when she heard of the new developments. And she also simply could not stand the thought of a public scandal about her sister and a gamekeeper. Too, too humiliating!
"Why should we not just disappear, separately, to British Columbia, and have no scandal?" said Connie.
But that was no good. The scandal would come out just the same. And if Connie was going with the man, she'd better be able to marry him. This was Hilda's opinion. Sir Malcolm wasn't sure. The affair might still blow over.
"But will you see him, Father?"
Poor Sir Malcolm! he was by no means keen on it. And poor Mellors, he was still less keen. Yet the meeting took place: a lunch in a private room at the club, the two men alone, looking one another up and down.
Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whiskey, Mellors also drank. And they talked all the while about India, on which the young man was well informed.
This lasted during the meal. Only when coffee was served, and the waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar and said, heartily:
"Well, young man, and what about my daughter?"
The grin flickered on Mellors's face.
"Well, Sir, and what about her?"
"You've got a baby in her all right."
"I have that honour!" grinned Mellors.
"Honour, by God!" Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. "Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what!?"
"Good!"
"I'll bet it was! Ha-ha! My daughter, chip of the old block, what! I never went back on a good bit of fucking, myself. Though her mother, oh, holy saints!" he rolled his eyes to heaven. "But you warmed her up, oh, you warmed her up, I can see that. Ha-ha! My blood in her! You set fire to her haystack all right. Ha-ha-ha! I was jolly glad of it, I can tell you. She needed it. Oh, she's a nice girl, she's a nice girl, and I knew she'd be good going, if only some damned man would set her stack on fire! Ha-ha-ha! A gamekeeper, eh, my boy! Bloody good poacher, if you ask me. Ha-ha! But now, look here, speaking seriously, what are we going to do about it? Speaking seriously, you know!"
Speaking seriously, they didn't get very far. Mellors, though a little tipsy, was much the soberer of the two. He kept the conversation as intelligent as possible: which isn't saying much.
"So you're a gamekeeper! Oh, you're quite right! That sort of game is worth a man's while, eh, what? The test of a woman is when you pinch her bottom. You can tell just by the feel of her bottom if she's going to come up all right. Ha-Ha! I envy you, my boy. How old are you?"
"Thirty-nine."
The knight lifted his eyebrows.
"As much as that! Well, you've another good twenty years, by the look of you. Oh, gamekeeper or not, you're a good cock. I can see that with one eye shut. Not like that blasted Clifford! A lily-livered hound with never a fuck in him, never had. I like you, my boy. I'll bet you've a good cod on you; oh, you're a bantam, I can see that. You're a fighter. Gamekeeper! Ha-ha, by crikey, I wouldn't trust my game to you! But look here, seriously, what are we going to do about it? The world's full of blasted old women."
Seriously, they didn't do anything about it, except establish the old freemasonry of male sensuality between them.
"And look here, my boy, if ever I can do anything for you, you can rely on me. Gamekeeper! Christ, but it's rich! I like it! Oh, I like it! Shows the girl's got spunk. What? After all, you know, she has her own income, moderate, moderate, but above starvation. And I'll leave her what I've got. By God, I will. She deserves it, for showing spunk, in a world of old women. I've been struggling to get myself clear of the skirts of old women for seventy years, and haven't managed it yet. But you're the man, I can see that."
"I'm glad you think so. They usually tell me, in a sideways fashion, that I'm the monkey."
"Oh, they would! My dear fellow, what could you be but a monkey, to all the old women."
They parted most genially, and Mellors laughed inwardly all the time for the rest of the day.
The following day he had lunch with Connie and Hilda, at some discreet place.
"It's a very great pity it's such an ugly situation all round," said Hilda.
"I had a lot o' fun out of it," said he.
"I think you might have avoided putting children into the world until you were both free to marry and have children."
"The Lord blew a bit too soon on the spark," said he.
"I think the Lord had nothing to do with it. Of course, Connie has enough money to keep you both, but the situation is unbearable."
"But then you don't have to bear more than a small corner of it, do you?" said he.
"If you'd been in her own class."
"Or if I'd been in a cage at the Zoo."
There was silence.
"I think," said Hilda, "it will be best if she names quite another man as co-respondent, and you stay out of it altogether."
"But I thought I'd put my foot right in."
"I mean, in the divorce proceeding."
He gazed at her in wonder. Connie had not dared mention the Duncan scheme to him.
"I don't follow," he said.
"We have a friend who would probably agree to be named as co-respondent, so that your name need not appear," said Hilda.
"You mean a man?"
"Of course!"
"But she's got no other?"
He looked in wonder at Connie.
"No, no!" she said hastily. "Only that old friendship, quite simple, no love."
"Then why should the fellow take the blame? If he's had nothing out of you?"
"Some men are chivalrous and don't only count what they get out of a woman," said Hilda.
"One for me, eh? But who's the johnny?"
"A friend whom we've known since we were children in Scotland, an artist."
"Duncan Forbes!" he said at once, for Connie had talked of him. "And how would you shift the blame on to him?"
"They could stay together in some hotel, or she could even stay in his apartment."
"Seems to me a lot of fuss for nothing," he said.
"What else do you suggest?" said Hilda. "If your name appears, you will get no divorce from your wife, who is apparently quite an impossible person to be mixed up with."
"All that!" he said grimly.
There was a long silence.
"We could go right away," he said.
"There is no right away for Connie," said Hilda. "Clifford is too well known."
Again the silence of pure frustration.
"The world is what it is. If you want to live together without being persecuted, you will have to marry. To marry, you both have to be divorced. So how are you both going about it?"
He was silent for a long time.
"How areyougoing about it for us?" he said.
"We will see if Duncan will consent to figure as co-respondent: then we must get Clifford to divorce Connie: and you must go on with your divorce, and you must both keep apart till you are free."
"Sounds like a lunatic asylum."
"Possibly! And the world would look on you as lunatics: or worse."
"What is worse?"
"Criminals, I suppose."
"Hope I can plunge in the dagger a few more times yet," he said grinning. Then he was silent, and angry.
"Well!" he said at last. "I agree to anything. The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do my best. But you're right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can."
He looked in humiliation, anger, weariness and misery at Connie.
"Ma lass!" he said. "The world's goin' to put salt on thy tail."
"Not if we don't let it," she said.
She minded this conniving against the world less than he did.
Duncan, when approached, also insisted on seeing the delinquent gamekeeper, so there was a dinner, this time in his flat: the four of them. Duncan was a rather short, broad, dark-skinned, taciturn Hamlet of a fellow with straight black hair and a weird Celtic conceit of himself. His art was all tubes and valves and spirals and strange colours, ultra modern, yet with a certain power, even a certain purity of form and tone: only Mellors thought it cruel and repellent. He did not venture to say so, for Duncan was almost insane on the point of his art; it was a personal cult, a personal religion with him.
They were looking at the pictures in the studio, and Duncan kept his smallish brown eyes on the other man. He wanted to hear what the gamekeeper would say. He knew already Connie's and Hilda's opinions.
"It is like a pure bit of murder," said Mellors at last; a speech Duncan by no means expected from a gamekeeper.
"And who is murdered?" asked Hilda, rather coldly and sneeringly.
"Me! It murders all the bowels of compassion in a man."
A wave of pure hate came out of the artist. He heard the note of dislike in the other man's voice, and the note of contempt. And he himself loathed the mention of bowels of compassion. Sickly sentiment!
Mellors stood rather tall and thin, worn-looking, gazing with flickering detachment that was something like the dancing of a moth on the wing, at the pictures.
"Perhaps stupidity is murdered; sentimental stupidity," sneered the artist.
"Do you think so? I think all these tubes and corrugated vibrations are stupid enough for anything, and pretty sentimental. They show a lot of self-pity and an awful lot of nervous self-opinion, seems to me."
In another wave of hate, the artist's face looked yellow. But with a sort of silent hauteur he turned the pictures to the wall.
"I think we may go to the dining-room," he said.
And they trailed off, dismally.
After coffee, Duncan said:
"I don't at all mind posing as the father of Connie's child. But only on the condition that she'll come and pose as a model for me. I've wanted her for years, and she's always refused." He uttered it with the dark finality of an inquisitor announcing anauto da fé.
"Ah!" said Mellors. "You only do it on condition, then?"
"Quite! I only do it on that condition." The artist tried to put the utmost contempt of the other person into his speech. He put a little too much.
"Better have me as a model at the same time," said Mellors. "Better do us in a group, Vulcan and Venus under the net of art. I used to be a blacksmith, before I was a gamekeeper."
"Thank you," said the artist. "I don't think Vulcan has a figure that interests me."
"Not even if it was tubified and titivated up?"
There was no answer. The artist was too haughty for further words.
It was a dismal party, in which the artist henceforth steadily ignored the presence of the other man, and talked only briefly, as if the words were wrung out of the depths of his gloomy portentousness, to the women.
"You didn't like him, but he's better than that, really. He's really kind," Connie explained as they left.
"He's a little black pup with a corrugated distemper," said Mellors.
"No, he wasn't nice today."
"And will you go and be a model to him?"
"Oh, I don't really mind any more. He won't touch me. And I don't mind anything, if it paves the way to a life together for you and me."
"But he'll only shit on you on canvas."
"I don't care. He'll only be painting his own feelings for me, and I don't mind if he does that. I wouldn't have him touch me, not for anything. But if he thinks he can do anything with his owlish arty staring, let him stare. He can make as many empty tubes and corrugations out of me as he likes. It's his funeral. He hated you for what you said: that his tubified art is sentimental and self-important. But of course it's true."
CHAPTER XIX
"Dear Clifford, I am afraid what you foresaw has happened. I am really in love with another man, and I do hope you will divorce me. I am staying at present with Duncan in his flat. I told you he was at Venice with us. I'm awfully unhappy for your sake: but do try to take it quietly. You don't really need me any more, and I can't bear to come back to Wragby. I'm most awfully sorry. But do try to forgive me, and divorce me and find someone better. I'm not really the right person for you, I am too impatient and selfish, I suppose. But I can't ever come back to live with you again. And I feel so frightfully sorry about it all, for your sake. But if you don't let yourself get worked up, you'll see you won't mind so frightfully. You didn't really care about me personally. So do forgive me and get rid of me."
Clifford was notinwardlysurprised to get this letter. Inwardly, he had known for a long time she was leaving him. But he had absolutely refused any outward admission of it. Therefore, outwardly, it came as the most terrible blow and shock to him. He had kept the surface of his confidence in her quite serene.
And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.
Clifford was like a hysterical child. He gave Mrs. Bolton a terrible shock, sitting up in bed ghastly and blank.
"Why, Sir Clifford, whatever's the matter?"
No answer! She was terrified lest he had had a stroke. She hurried and felt his face, took his pulse.
"Is there a pain? Do try and tell me where it hurts you. Do tell me!"
No answer!
"Oh dear, oh dear! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr. Carrington, and Dr. Lecky may as well run round straight away."
She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:
"No!"
She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank, and like the face of an idiot.
"Do you mean you'd rather I didn't fetch the doctor?"
"Yes! I don't want him," came the sepulchral voice.
"Oh, but Sir Clifford, you're ill, and I daren't take the responsibility. Imustsend for the doctor, orIshall be blamed."
A pause: then the hollow voice said:
"I'm not ill. My wife isn't coming back." It was as if an image spoke.
"Not coming back? you mean her ladyship?" Mrs. Bolton moved a little nearer to the bed. "Oh, don't you believe it. You can trust her ladyship to come back."
The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the counterpane.
"Read it!" said the sepulchral voice.
"Why, if it's a letter from her ladyship, I'm sure her ladyship wouldn't want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford. You can tell me what she says, if you wish."
But the face with the fixed blue eyes sticking out did not change.
"Read it!" repeated the voice.
"Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford," she said.
And she read the letter.
"Well, Iamsurprised at her ladyship," she said. "She promised so faithfully she'd come back!"
The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs. Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease.
She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must haveknownhis wife was in love with somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself. If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it; or if he would have admitted it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that would have been acting like a man. But no! he knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him. This state of falsity had now brought on that crisis of falsity and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity. "It comes," she thought to herself, hating him a little, "because he always thinks of himself. He's so wrapped up in his own immortal self, that when he does get a shock he's like a mummy tangled in its own bandages. Look at him!"
But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to pull him out. Any attempt to rouse his manhood and his pride would only make him worse: for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally. He would only squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more dislocated.
The only thing was to release his self-pity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die.
So Mrs. Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. "I would never have believed it of her ladyship, I wouldn't!" she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something to weep for.
Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs. Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him.
"Now don't you fret, Sir Clifford!" she said, in a luxury of emotion. "Now don't you fret, don't, you'll only do yourself an injury!"
His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. "There, there! There, there! Don't you fret, then, don't you! Don't you fret!" she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his dusky-blond hair and said: "There! There! There! There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!"
And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale-blue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last.
So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: "Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you've come down to!" And finally he even went to sleep, like a child. And she felt worn-out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! such a come-down! so shameful! And itwasso upsetting as well.
After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs. Bolton. He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said: "Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!" And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same: "Do kiss me!" and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery.
And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna-worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exaltation, the exaltation of perversity of being a child when he was a man.
Mrs. Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated it. Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked him. And they drew into a closer physical intimacy, an intimacy of perversity, when he was a child stricken with an apparent candour and an apparent wonderment, that looked almost like a religious exaltation: the perverse and literal rendering of: "except ye become again as a little child." While she was the Magna Mater, full of power and potency, having the great blond child-man under her will and her stroke entirely.
The curious thing was that when this child-man, which Clifford was now and which he had been becoming for years, emerged into the world, it was much sharper and keener than the real man he used to be. This perverted child-man was now arealbusinessman; when it was a question of affairs, he was an absolute he-man, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel. When he was out among men, seeking his own ends, and "making good" his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness, hardness, and a straight sharp punch. It was as if his very passivity and prostitution to the Magna Mater gave him insight into material business affairs, and lent him a certain remarkable inhuman force. The wallowing in private emotion, the utter abasement of his manly self, seemed to lend him a second nature, cold, almost visionary, business-clever. In business he was quite inhuman.
And in this Mrs. Bolton triumphed. "How he's getting on!" she would say to herself in pride. "And that's my doing! My word, he'd never have got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a man forward. She wanted too much for herself."
At the same time, in some corner of her weird female soul, how she despised him and hated him! He was to her the fallen beast, the squirming monster. And while she aided and abetted him all she could, away in the remotest corner of her ancient healthy womanhood she despised him with a savage contempt that knew no bounds. The merest tramp was better than he.
His behaviour with regard to Connie was curious. He insisted on seeing her again. He insisted, moreover, on her coming to Wragby. On this point he was finally and absolutely fixed. Connie had promised to come back to Wragby, faithfully.
"But is it any use?" said Mrs. Bolton. "Can't you let her go, and be rid of her?"
"No! She said she was coming back, and she's got to come."
Mrs. Bolton opposed him no more. She knew what she was dealing with.
"I needn't tell you what effect your letter has had on me," he wrote to Connie to London. "Perhaps you can imagine it if you try, though no doubt you won't trouble to use your imagination on my behalf.
"I can only say one thing in answer: I must see you personally, here at Wragby, before I can do anything. You promised faithfully to come back to Wragby, and I hold you to the promise. I don't believe anything nor understand anything until I see you personally, here under normal circumstances. I needn't tell you that nobody here suspects anything, so your return would be quite normal. Then if you feel, after we have talked things over, that you still remain in the same mind, no doubt we can come to terms."
Connie showed this letter to Mellors.
"He wants to begin his revenge on you," said he, handing the letter back.
Connie was silent. She was somewhat surprised to find that she was afraid of Clifford. She was afraid to go near him. She was afraid of him as if he were evil and dangerous.
"What shall I do?" she said.
"Nothing, if you don't want to do anything."
She replied, trying to put Clifford off. He answered: "If you don't come back to Wragby now, I shall consider that you are coming back one day, and act accordingly. I shall just go on the same and wait for you here, if I wait for fifty years."
She was frightened. This was bullying of an insidious sort. She had no doubt he meant what he said. He would not divorce her, and the child would be his, unless she could find some means of establishing its illegitimacy.
After a time of worry and harassment, she decided to go to Wragby. Hilda would go with her. She wrote this to Clifford. He replied: "I shall not welcome your sister, but I shall not deny her the door. I have no doubt she has connived at your desertion of your duties and responsibilities, so do not expect me to show pleasure in seeing her."
They went to Wragby. Clifford was away when they arrived. Mrs. Bolton received them.
"Oh, your Ladyship, it isn't the happy homecoming we hoped for, is it!" she said.
"Isn't it!" said Connie.
So this woman knew! How much did the rest of the servants know or suspect?
She entered the house which now she hated with every fiber in her body. The great, rambling mass of a place seemed evil to her, just a menace over her. She was no longer its mistress, she was its victim.
"I can't stay long here," she whispered to Hilda, terrified.
And she suffered going into her own bedroom, re-entering into possession as if nothing had happened. She hated every minute inside the Wragby walls.
They did not meet Clifford till they went down to dinner. He was dressed, and with a black tie: rather reserved, and very much the superior gentleman. He behaved perfectly politely during the meal, and kept a polite sort of conversation going: but it seemed all touched with insanity.
"How much do the servants know?" asked Connie, when the woman was out of the room.
"Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever."
"Mrs. Bolton knows."
He changed colour.
"Mrs. Bolton is not exactly one of the servants," he said.
"Oh, I don't mind."
There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up to her room.
Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would begin to speak. Connie was so glad that he wasn't taking the pathetic line, she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat silent and looked down at her hands.
"I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?" he said at last.
"I can't help it," she murmured.
"But if you can't, who can?"
"I suppose nobody."
He looked at her with curious cold rage. He was used to her. She was as it were embedded in his will. How dared she now go back on him, and destroy the fabric of his daily existence? How dared she try to cause this derangement of his personality!
"And forwhatdo you want to go back on everything?" he insisted.
"Love!" she said. It is best to be hackneyed.
"Love of Duncan Forbes? But you didn't think that worth having, when you met me. Do you mean to say you now love him better than anything else in life?"
"One changes," she said.
"Possibly! Possibly you may have whims. But you still have to convince me of the importance of the change. I merely don't believe in your love of Duncan Forbes."
"But whyshouldyou believe in it? You have only to divorce me, not to believe in my feelings."
"And why should I divorce you?"
"Because I don't want to live here any more. And you really don't want me."
"Pardon me! I don't change. For my part, since you are my wife, I should prefer that you should stay under my roof in dignity and quiet. Leaving aside personal feelings, and I assure you, on my part it is leaving aside a great deal, it is bitter as death to me to have this order of life broken up, here in Wragby, and the decent round of daily life smashed, just for some whim of yours."
After a time of silence she said:
"I can't help it. I've got to go. I expect I shall have a child." He too was silent for a time.
"And is it for the child's sake you must go?" he asked at length.
She nodded.
"And why? Is Duncan Forbes so keen on his spawn?"
"Surely keener than you would be," she said.
"But really? I want my wife, and I see no reason for letting her go. If she likes to bear a child under my roof, she is welcome, and the child is welcome: provided that the decency and order of life is preserved. Do you mean to tell me that Duncan Forbes has a greater hold over you? I don't believe it."
There was a pause.
"But don't you see," said Connie. "Imustgo away from you, and Imustlive with the man I love."
"No, I don't see it! I don't give tuppence for your love, nor for the man you love. I don't believe in that sort of cant."
"But you see, I do."
"Do you? My dear Madam, you are too intelligent, I assure you, to believe in your own love for Duncan Forbes. Believe me, even now you really care more for me. So why should I give in to such nonsense!"
She felt he was right there. And she felt she could keep silent no longer.
"Because it isn't Duncan that Idolove," she said, looking up at him. "We only said it was Duncan, to spare your feelings."
"To spare my feelings?"
"Yes! Because who I really love, and it'll make you hate me, is Mr. Mellors, who was our gamekeeper here."
If he could have sprung out of his chair, he would have done so. His face went yellow, and his eyes bulged with disaster as he glared at her.
Then he dropped back in the chair, gasping and looking up at the ceiling.
At length he sat up.
"Do you mean to say you're telling me the truth?" he asked, looking gruesome.
"Yes! You know I am."
"And when did you begin with him?"
"In the spring."
He was silent like some beast in a trap.
"And itwasyou, then, in the bedroom at the cottage?"
So he had really inwardly known all the time.
"Yes!"
He still leaned forward in his chair, gazing at her like a cornered beast.
"My God, you ought to be wiped off the face of the earth!"
"Why?" she ejaculated faintly.
But he seemed not to hear her.
"That scum! That bumptious lout! That miserable cad! And carrying on with him all the time, while you were here and he was one of my servants! My God, my God, is there any end to the beastly lowness of women!"
He was beside himself with rage, as she knew he would be.
"And you mean to say you want to have a child to a cad like that?"
"Yes! I'm going to."
"You're going to! You mean you're sure! How long have you been sure?"
"Since June."
He was speechless, and the queer blank look of a child came over him again.
"You'd wonder," he said at last, "that such beings were ever allowed to be born."
"What beings?" she asked.
He looked at her weirdly, without an answer. It was obvious he couldn't even accept the fact of the existence of Mellors, in any connection with his own life. It was sheer, unspeakable, impotent hate.
"And do you mean to say you'd marry him?—and bear his foul name?" he asked at length.
"Yes, that's what I want."
He was again as if dumbfounded.
"Yes!" he said at last. "That proves that what I've always thought about you is correct: you're not normal, you're not in your right senses. You're one of those half-insane, perverted women who must run after depravity, thenostalgie de la boue."
Suddenly he had become almost wistfully moral, seeing himself the incarnation of good, and people like Mellors and Connie the incarnation of mud, of evil. He seemed to be growing vague, inside a nimbus.
"So don't you think you'd better divorce me and have done with it?" she said.
"No! You can go where you like, but I shan't divorce you," he said idiotically.
"Why not?"
He was silent, in the silence of imbecile obstinacy.
"Would you even let the child be legally yours, and your heir?" she said.
"I care nothing about the child."
"But if it's a boy it will be legally your son, and it will inherit your title, and have Wragby."
"I care nothing about that," he said.
"But youmust! I shall prevent the child from being legally yours, if I can. I'd so much rather it were illegitimate, and mine: if it can't be Mellors'."
"Do as you like about that."
He was immovable.
"And won't you divorce me?" she said. "You can use Duncan as a pretext! There'd be no need to bring in the real name. Duncan doesn't mind."
"Ishall never divorce you," he said, as if a nail had been driven in.
"But why? Because I want you to?"
"Because I follow my own inclination, and I'm not inclined to."
It was useless. She went upstairs, and told Hilda the upshot.
"Better get away tomorrow," said Hilda, "and let him come to his senses."
So Connie spent half the night packing her really private and personal effects. In the morning she had her trunks sent to the station, without telling Clifford. She decided to see him only to say good-bye, before lunch.
But she spoke to Mrs. Bolton.
"I must say good-bye to you, Mrs. Bolton, you know why. But I can trust you not to talk."
"Oh, you can trust me, your Ladyship, though it's a sad blow for us here, indeed. But I hope you'll be happy with the other gentleman."
"The other gentleman! It's Mr. Mellors, and I care for him. Sir Clifford knows. But don't say anything to anybody. And if one day you think Sir Clifford may be willing to divorce me, let me know, will you? I should like to be properly married to the man I care for."
"I'm sure you would, my Lady! Oh, you can trust me. I'll be faithful to Sir Clifford, and I'll be faithful to you, for I can see you're both right in your own ways."
"Thank you! And look! I want to give you this—may I?—" So Connie left Wragby once more, and went on with Hilda to Scotland. Mellors went into the country and got work on a farm. The idea was, he should get his divorce, if possible, whether Connie got hers or not. And for six months he should work at farming, so that eventually he and Connie could have some small farm of their own, into which he could put his energy. For he would have to have some work, even hard work, to do, and he would have to make his own living, even if her capital started him.
So they would have to wait till spring was in, till the baby was born, till the early summer came round again.