“I hope I am; naturally,” she said. “Anyhow the future’s going to have more sense, and a woman needn’t be dragged down by her functions.”
“Perhaps she’ll float off into space altogether,” said Dukes.
“I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the physical disabilities,” said Clifford. “All the love-business, for example; it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed babies in bottles.”
“No!” cried Olive. “That might leave all the more room for fun.”
“I suppose,” said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, “if the love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia, perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everybody.”
“The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a cheerful week-end!” said Jack. “Sounds all right, but where should we be by Wednesday?”
“So long as you can forget your body you are happy,” said Lady Bennerley. “And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it.”
“Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether,” said Winterslow. “It’s quite time man began to improve on his own nature, especially the physical side of it.”
“Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke,” said Connie.
“It won’t happen,” said Dukes. “Our old show will come flop; our civilization is going to fall. It’s going down the bottomless pit, down the chasm. And, believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be the phallus!”
“Oh! do, do be impossible, General!” cried Olive.
“I believe our civilization is going to collapse,” said Aunt Eva.
“And what will come after it?” asked Clifford.
“I haven’t the faintest idea; but something, I suppose,” said the elderly lady.
“Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunized women and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the bridge to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?” said Clifford.
“Oh, don’t bother! Let’s get on with today,” said Olive. “Only hurry up with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off.”
“There might even be real men, in the next phase,” said Tommy. “Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldn’t that be a change, an enormous change from us? We’re not men, and the women aren’t women. We’re only cerebrating makeshifts, mechanical and intellectual experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of our little lot of cleverjacks, all at the intelligence-age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles.”
“Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up,” said Olive.
“Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having,” said Winterslow.
“Spirits!” said Jack, drinking his whiskey-and-soda.
“Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!” said Dukes. “But it’ll come, in time, when we’ve shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then we’ll get a democracy of touch, instead of a democracy of pocket.”
Something echoed inside Connie: “Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body!” She didn’t at all know what it meant, but it comforted her, as meaningless things may do.
Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual rattle of it!
Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold of her body, she couldn’t escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious painfulness, yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about herself. Even Tommy Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right. Only she began to be afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as false teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall Church, and which she saw with such grim plainness from the park. The bristling of the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with a grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be buried there, added to the ghastly host under the tombstones and the monuments, in these filthy Midlands.
She needed help, and she knew it; so she wrote a little cri de coeur to her sister, Hilda. “I’m not well lately, and I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She came in March, alone, driving herself in a nimble two-seater. Up the drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of grass, where the two great wild beech-trees stood, on the flat in front of the house.
Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and kissed her sister.
“But, Connie!” she cried. “Whatever is the matter?”
“Nothing!” said Connie, rather shame-facedly; but she knew how she had suffered in contrast to Hilda. Both sisters had the same rather golden, glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally strong, warm physique. But now Connie was thin and earthy-looking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that stuck out of her jumper.
“But you’re ill, child!” said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless voice, that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite, two years older than Connie.
“No, not ill. Perhaps I’m bored,” said Connie a little pathetically.
The light of battle glowed in Hilda’s face: she was a woman, soft and still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men.
“This wretched place!” she said softly, looking at poor old, lumbering Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and she was an amazon of the real old breed.
She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her. His wife’s family did not have his sort of manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop.
He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn’t care what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if he’d been Pope or Emperor it would have been just the same.
“Connie’s looking awfully unwell,” she said in her soft voice, fixing him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did Connie; but he well knew the stone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.
“She’s a little thinner,” he said.
“Haven’t you done anything about it?”
“Do you think it necessary?” he asked, with his suavest English stiffness, for the two things often go together.
Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her forte, nor Connie’s; so she glowered, and he was much more uncomfortable than if she had said things.
“I’ll take her to a doctor,” said Hilda at length. “Can you suggest a good one round here?”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Then I’ll take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust.”
Though boiling with rage, Clifford said nothing.
“I suppose I may as well stay the night,” said Hilda, pulling off her gloves, “and I’ll drive her to town tomorrow.”
Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and at evening the whites of his eyes were a little yellow too. He ran to liver. But Hilda was consistently modest and maidenly.
“You must have a nurse or somebody to look after you personally. You should really have a man-servant,” said Hilda as they sat, with apparent calmness, at coffee after dinner. Sh
e spoke in her soft, seemingly gentle way, but Clifford felt she was hitting him on the head with a bludgeon.
“You think so?” he said coldly.
“I’m sure! It’s necessary. Either that, or father and I must take Connie away for some months. This can’t go on.”
“What can’t go on?”
“Haven’t you looked at the child?” asked Hilda, gazing at him full stare. He looked rather like a huge, boiled crayfish, at the moment; or so she thought.
“Connie and I will discuss it,” he said.
“I’ve already discussed it with her,” said Hilda.
Clifford had been long enough in the hands of nurses; he hated them, because they left him no real privacy. And a man-servant!… he couldn’t stand a man hanging round him. Almost better any woman. But why not Connie?
The two sisters drove off in the morning, Connie looking rather like an Easter lamb, rather small beside Hilda, who held the wheel. Sir Malcolm was away, but the Kensington house was open.
The doctor examined Connie carefully, and asked her all about her life. “I see your photograph, and Sir Clifford’s, in the illustrated papers sometimes. Almost notorieties, aren’t you? That’s how the quiet little girls grow up, though you’re only a quiet little girl even now, in spite of the illustrated papers. No, no! There’s nothing organically wrong, but it won’t do! It won’t do! Tell Sir Clifford he’s got to bring you to town, to take you abroad, and amuse you. You’ve got to be amused, got to! Your vitality is much too low; no reserves, no reserves. The nerves of the heart a bit queer already: oh, yes. Nothing but nerves; I’d put you right in a month at Cannes or Biarritz. But it mustn’t go on, mustn’t, I tell you, or I won’t be anwerable for consequences. You’re spending your life without renewing it. You’ve got to be amused, properly, healthily amused. You’re spending your vitality without making any. Can’t go on, you know. Depression! avoid depression!”
Hilda set her jaw, and that meant something.
Michaelis heard they werein town, and came running with roses. “Why, whatever’s wrong?” he cried. “You’re a shadow of yourself. Why, I never saw such a change! Why ever didn’t you let me know? Come to Nice with me! Come down to Sicily! Go on, come to Sicily with me, it’s lovely there just now. You want sun! You want life! Why, you’re wasting away! Come away with me! Come to Africa! Oh, hang Sir Clifford! Chuck him, and come along with me. I’ll marry you the minute he divorces you. Come along and try a life! God’s love! That place Wragby would kill anybody. Beastly place! Foul place! Kill anybody! Come away with me into the sun! It’s the sun you want, of course, and a bit of normal life.”
But Connie’s heart simply stood still at the thought of abandoning Clifford there and then. She couldn’t do it. No… no! She just couldn’t. She had to go back to Wragby.
Michaelis was disgusted. Hilda didn’t like Michaelis, but she almost preferred him to Clifford. Back went the sisters to the Midlands.
Hilda talked to Clifford, who still had yellow eyeballs when they got back. He, too, in his way was overwrought; but he had to listen to all Hilda said, to all the doctor had said, not to what Michaelis had said, of course, and he sat mum through the ultimatum.
“Here is the address of a good man-servant, who was with an invalid patient of the doctor’s till he died last month. He is really a good man, and fairly sure to come.”
“But I’m not an invalid, and I will not have a man-servant,” said Clifford, poor devil.
“And here are the addresses of two women; I saw one of them, she would do very well; a woman of about fifty, quiet, strong, kind, and in her way cultured.…”
Clifford only sulked, and would not answer.
“Very well, Clifford. If we don’t settle something by tomorrow, I shall telegraph to father, and we shall take Connie away.”
“Will Connie go?” asked Clifford.
“She doesn’t want to, but she knows she must. Mother died of cancer, brought on by fretting. We’re not running any risks.”
So next day Clifford suggested Mrs. Bolton, the Tevershall parish nurse. Apparently Mrs. Betts had thought of her. Mrs. Bolton was just retiring from her parish duties to take up private nursing jobs. Clifford had a queer dread of delivering himself into the hands of a stranger, but this Mrs. Bolton had once nursed him through scarlet fever, and he knew her.
The two sisters at once called on Mrs. Bolton, in a newish house in a row, quite select for Tevershall. They found a rather good-looking woman of forty-odd, in a nurse’s uniform, with a white collar and apron, just making herself tea, in a small, crowded sitting-room.
Mrs. Bolton was most attentive and polite, seemed quite nice, spoke with a bit of a broad slur, but in heavily correct English, and from having bossed the sick colliers for a good many years, had a very good opinion of herself, and a fair amount of assurance. In short, in her tiny way, one of the governing class in the village, very much respected.
“Yes, Lady Chatterley’s not looking at all well! Why she used to be that bonny, didn’t she now? But she’s been failing all winter! Oh, it’s hard, it is. Poor Sir Clifford! Eh, that war, it’s a lot to answer for.”
And Mrs. Bolton would come to Wragby at once, if Dr. Shardlow would let her off. She had another fortnight’s parish nursing to do, by rights, but they might get a substitute, you know.
Hilda posted off to Dr. Shardlow, and on the following Sunday Mrs. Bolton drove up in Leiver’s cab to Wragby, with two trunks. Hilda had talks with her; Mrs. Bolton was ready at any moment to talk. And she seemed so young! the way the passion would flush in her rather pale cheek. She was forty-seven.
Her husband, Ted Bolton, had been killed in the pit, twenty-two years ago, twenty-two years last Christmas, just at Christmas time, leaving her with two children, one a baby in arms. Oh, the baby was married now—Edith—to a young man in Boots Cash Chemists in Sheffield. The other one was a schoolteacher in Chesterfield, she came home week-ends, when she wasn’t asked out anywhere. Young folks enjoyed themselves nowadays; not like when she, Ivy Bolton, was young.
Ted Bolton was twenty-eight when he was killed in an explosion down th’ pit. The butty in front shouted to them all to tie down quick; there were four of them. And they all lay down in time, only Ted, and it killed him. Then at the enquiry, on the masters’ side they said Ted had been frightened, and trying to run away, and not obeying orders, so it was like his fault really. So the compensation was only three hundred pounds, and they made out as if it was more of a gift than legal compensation, because it was really the man’s own fault. And they wouldn’t let her have the money down; she wanted to have a little shop. But they said she’d no doubt squander it, perhaps in drink! So she had to draw it thirty shillings a week. Yes, she had to go every Monday morning down to the offices, and stand there a couple of hours waiting her turn; yes, for almost four years she went every Monday. And what could she do with two little children on her hands? But Ted’s mother was very good to her. When the baby could toddle she’d keep both the children for the day, while she, Ivy Bolton, went to Sheffield, and attended classes in ambulance, and then the fourth year she even took a nursing course and got qualified. She was determined to be independent and keep her children. So she was assistant at Uthwaite hospital, just a little place, for a while. But when the Company, the Tevershall Colliery Company, really Sir Geoffrey, saw that she could get on by herself, they were very good to her, gave her the parish nursing, and stood by her, she would say that for them. And she’d done it ever since, till now it was getting a bit too much for her, she needed something a bit lighter, there was such a lot of traipsing round if you were a district nurse.
“Yes, the Company’s been very good to me, I always say it. But I should never forget what they said about Ted, for he was as steady and fearless a chap as ever set foot on the cage, and it was as good as branding him a coward. But there, he was dead, and could say nothing to none of ’em.”
It was a queer mixture of feelings the woman showed as she talked. She lik
ed the colliers, whom she had nursed for so long; but she felt very superior to them. She felt almost upper class; and at the same time a resentment against the ruling class smoldered in her. The masters! In a dispute between masters and men, she was always for the men. But when there was no question of contest, she was pining to be superior, to be one of the upper class. The upper classes fascinated her, appealing to her peculiar English passion for superiority. She was thrilled to come to Wragby, thrilled to talk to Lady Chatterley; my word, different from the common colliers’ wives! She said so in so many words. Yet one could see a grudge against the Chatterleys peep out in her; the grudge against the masters.
“Why, yes, of course, it would wear Lady Chatterley out! It’s a mercy she has a sister to come and help her. Men don’t think; high and low alike, they take what a woman does for them for granted. Oh, I’ve told the colliers off about it many a time. But it’s very hard for Sir Clifford, you know, crippled like that. They were always a haughty family, stand-offish in a way, as they’ve a right to be. But then, to be brought down like that! And it’s very hard on Lady Chatterley, perhaps harder on her. What she misses! I only had Ted three years, but my word, while I had him I had a husband I could never forget. He was one in a thousand, and jolly as the day. Who’d ever have thought he’d get killed? I don’t believe it to this day, somehow; I’ve never believed it, though I washed him with my own hands. But he was never dead for me, he never was. I never took it in.”
This was a new voice in Wragby, very new for Connie to hear; it roused a new ear in her.
For the first week or so, Mrs. Bolton, however, was very quiet at Wragby; her assured, bossy manner left her, and she was nervous. With Clifford she was shy, almost frightened and silent. He liked that, and soon recovered his self-possession, letting her do things for him without even noticing her.
“She’s a useful nonentity!” he said. Connie opened her eyes in wonder, but did not contradict him. So different are impressions on two different people!
And he soon became rather superb, somewhat lordly with the nurse. She had rather expected it, and he played up without knowing. So susceptible we are to what is expected of us! The colliers had been so like children, talking to her, and telling her what hurt them, while she bandaged them, or nursed them. They had always made her feel so grand, almost superhuman in her administrations. Now Clifford made her feel small, and like a servant, and she accepted it without a word, adjusting herself to the upper classes.
Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 13
