‘What I mean, you know,’ said Lady Eva, becoming more involved in her own vagueness: ‘men don’t mean much to a woman, in her real life. Women mean a lot more to one another. Don’t you think so?’ She looked round, with queer searching.
‘Yes, perhaps!’ said Constance, thinking of her sister Hilda.
‘Still some men do give you a warm, safe feeling. I know that,’ continued the elder woman, ‘and as you grow older, that’s what you value. It’s so awful to be alone and always to make your own decisions. My father was a tyrant, but one did feel safe when he was about.’
‘Yes!’
‘And what I mean to say, with you and Clifford — perhaps you ought to fall in love with a nice, strong young fellow who would think the world of you — if only for a time —’
She drifted off vaguely, and Constance waited.
‘I think, if I had to live my life over again, I should marry one of those nice, healthy, fresh-faced young policemen, you see, with lots of fun in their eyes. I do seriously!’
Constance only laughed at this Ethel M. Dell touch suddenly coming out in her well-born aunt.
‘A woman nearly always chooses the wrong thing for herself,’ Lady Eva rambled on. ‘I chose Edward because he was so refined-looking, and interested in politics,’ and so clever; and of course because I was wildly in love with him. — But I was wrong, you know, in a way! It’s awful to be growing into an old woman, and feel no safety anywhere round you. And feel you’ve never had the right man’s arms round you, you know, to make you feel safe, really safe! I wish I’d let a young, fresh-faced policeman fall in love with me!’
‘Then why didn’t you?’ laughed Connie: thinking that Lady Eva had let the good-natured Collingwood fall in love with her, in his own way, without taking much notice of him.
‘Oh, I could never give myself to a man of that class! never! Women having their chauffeurs for lovers! it seems to me so humiliating! — But still! if one only had some warm and comforting thought somewhere! — It’s so awful to grow old!’
She turned her vague blue eyes on Constance like some spectre, and Constance shuddered.
‘But you’re not old, Aunt Eva!’ she said.
‘Oh! I’m an old woman! I’m sixty-one! And believe me or not, it’s pretty awful. It’s pretty awful, going on making your own decisions, without any idea, or any feeling at the back of you, to keep you up. — But you’re strong-minded, and I never was that!’
‘‘No, I’m not strong-minded!’ said Constance, in a murmur.
‘You are more than I was. — But if I were you, I’d be awfully careful what I did with my youth. It seems to me, if I’d ever had the arms of a real nice man — you know! I say a nice policeman with a jolly face! you know what I mean! — well, if I’d had the arms of a man like that round me when I was young, perhaps I shouldn’t feel so stiff and stark now I’m getting old.’
‘But Sir Edward was in love with you,’ said Constance.
‘Oh yes! Oh, deeply, deeply! But you know what I mean, there’s ways and ways of being in love! My husband was a higher type of man altogether. So it was very different.’
‘And wasn’t it enough?’ said Constance.
‘You mean isn’t that enough for me to remember? — That’s what’s so awful! It seems like nothing at all. My sides feel so cold and stark, if you know what I mean.’
‘And don’t you think policemen’s wives feel their sides are cold and stark when they grow old?’ asked Constance, laughing.
‘No!’ said Lady Eva, with a queer snap. ‘No! No, I don’t believe they do.’
‘But you’ve never known any!’
‘I haven’t! But I don’t believe they do! And if I were you, I wouldn’t drift into a stark old age if I could help it: I wouldn’t really, Clifford or no Clifford. He won’t thank you, in the end. Believe me, you must look out for yourself, and look out in time. — You’re, a faithful girl, as I was. I was always faithful to my husband, I couldn’t help it, if you know what I mean. And that’s how you are! Not like Olive! She’s quite another plate of soup, is Olive —’
There was silence for some minutes, then Constance said suddenly, ‘But your children! Don’t they make you feel less lonely?’
She had suddenly remembered her cousin Elsa, who was at the moment exploring Darkest Africa, or whatever place was to be considered as darkest; and her cousin, Sir Egbert, who had married a New York Jewish millionaire’s daughter, kept up a great country establishment with very expensive stables and gentlemen forever in ‘pink’ and ladies in whatever they thought was most surprising and who was a little impatient of his mother, ‘Poor dear Lady Eva!’
‘Yes!’ said Lady Eva, suddenly reminded of them. ‘Yes! I love to hear that they are happy. I love it when I hear they are doing well—’
CHAPTER VI
Christmas was over, the guests were gone, Constance was alone with Clifford once more. Clifford seemed irritable and exhausted, now the excitement of the strangers had passed. He had a good deal of pain, and lay a good deal in bed. And Constance felt she could not do much for him. He would remain for hours in the ashy silence of a sort of burnt-out resentment. Of her existence he was strictly unaware. And it seemed to cut her off even from her mere existence.
If ever she could have made him better, she would not have minded. If she could have hoped. But there was little or nothing to hope for. And there was no faith. Sometimes she sincerely wished they could both have been good christians. But they couldn’t, so it was no good wishing.
As it was, they were nothing, and they had nothing to draw upon but the resources of their own, stoical will. The will itself did not fail. But the power of life which kept the will alive, that did collapse. It collapsed completely in Clifford, and he merely lay in bed and was ash. But it collapsed also in Constance, and that frightened her. She foresaw the day when she too would lie in bed unable to think or to will any further. And that terrified her.
She kept on her plodding round from day, to day. But she felt as if she were labouring inside a vacuum. No life came in to her, and what life she had oozed out spent. Her mere vital energy was giving out. And this produced in her a sense of profound terror.
She began to go thinner, and her heart did queer things. There was a pulse in her neck which she could see shaking, when she looked at herself in the mirror. She began to see now that the pride in her own will was a mere conceit. She could not do as she wished, even with herself. There was that mysterious flow of life-energy which she had never known existed, until it began to fail her. She had thought her life was her own, till she came to the point where she needed it most bitterly, and it failed her. Her own life failed her. No energy flowed into her, from the sources. It seemed all used up, the fountains run dry.
In six weeks she was a changed creature. She kept her golden-ruddy colour, but it had gone earthy. And she was thin as a rail. She had never been thin in her life before, so it was strange to rub her thin arms and thin thighs. It filled her with a dim wonder. She felt like a grey, unreal changeling.
At last she wrote to Hilda. ‘I haven’t been well lately, and seem to have gone very thin, but I don’t know what’s the matter.’
Hilda at once prepared to descend on Wragby. She came in March, alone, driving herself in her small car. When she saw Connie, really a mere ghost of the old Connie, pathetic and dumb like one who is dying, tears of rage and pity sprang to her eyes.
‘But Connie! What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you’re really ill! What do you imagine it is?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t much energy, that’s all.’
Hilda went to interview Clifford, and found him remote, irresponsive, also dead.
‘What’s the matter with Connie, Clifford? She’s gone so dreadfully thin.’
‘She is thinner! But I don’t think there is anything wrong with her, is there?’
‘Well! I think we’d better find out.’
Fear roused him a little from his dismal apathy, and he made arrangements for Connie to see a doctor. But Hilda insisted she should be taken up to London, to Hilda’s own doctor. So the two sisters prepared to drive off.
‘We shall only be away one night, Clifford! You don’t mind?’ said Constance to him.
‘I do hate being left to Marshall!’ he said, with an irritable, resentful sort of pathos.
‘You must have a nurse,’ said Hilda to him.
‘I don’t want a nurse. I’ve had enough of nurses,’ he replied.
‘When you’ve worn Connie out, so that she can do nothing for you, what will you do then? Then you’ll have to have a nurse each. You’re not a cheerful man to wait on, Clifford. I should think you know that.’
‘Am I expected to be cheerful?’
‘Not if you don’t want to be. But you mustn’t pour all your depression over Connie. You can see what it does to her. You’ll have to have a nurse.’
‘Are you the person to tell me so?’
‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’
They went down to London, the two sisters, to have Constance examined. The doctor made a careful examination: then he asked about Connie’s life. And he said, ‘There’s nothing organically wrong, that I can find. But the vitality is terribly low. Lady Chatterley will have to make a change in her life. She is living too much off her reserves — and now she’s got no reserve left. She must get away, and take her mind off the things that trouble her. She must. If she doesn’t, I wouldn’t answer for the consequences, within another six months.’
‘What sort of consequences, for example?’ Hilda insisted.
‘Well! Her mother died of cancer, didn’t she? Those things start out of some depression, or repression which lowers the vitality—’
Hilda was determined now to take her sister away from Clifford. But she had reckoned without Constance.
‘I can’t leave him for long, Hilda! I can’t!’
‘But if you’re going to bring something awful on yourself?’
Constance pondered for a long time, then she said:
‘Perhaps we’d better get a nurse for Clifford, And when he’s used to her I might leave them for a time: in the summer.’
The. two sisters struggled together. Hilda wanted to take Connie straight away to Italy.
‘I can’t, Hilda! I can’t! I can’t!’
And Hilda had to give way. But about the nurse she was firm, and Connie did not resist her. Only she pondered: she knew how Clifford disliked efficient and trained nurses.
‘Perhaps we could get Mrs Bolton,’ she said at last.
Mrs Bolton was a widow of forty-five or forty-six, who had been parish nurse for Tevershall for ten years and more. Constance had met her once or twice, in connection with charities. She was a Tevershall woman, her husband had been killed in the pit, years ago. Constance rather liked her, she seemed so sensible and so human. She was good-looking, too, in a quiet way, with strong features and grey eyes. Her manner was just a little bossy, with having handled the colliers and their families for so many years. But there was a certain dignity about her, of a woman who really is able to put herself aside to attend to others, but who, at the same time, insists on being properly respected. Oh yes! she was used to obedience and a certain amount of deference from the colliers and their wives, she took it as her due, almost as one of the ruling classes.
Clifford probably would not object to her. He had known her by sight, and known about her all his life.
Constance therefore at once suggested Mrs Bolton to Clifford, when she got back to Wragby. He agreed very unwillingly: he hated giving himself into strange hands: and Connie knew how cruel it was for him. But Hilda was there, so there was no getting away from it.
The two sisters called to see Mrs Bolton, in her house in Tevershall. She was in her nurse’s uniform, very clean, rather handsome, and with an odd, girlish impulsiveness in her manner that was rather attractive, contrasting with her professional benevolent severity. It was evident she had a very good opinion of herself. She received so much respect from collier people, and had so much authority with them, she considered herself one of the bosses, as it were. And as such, she was not in the least daunted by the visit of the two ladies.
‘Why, yes! Lady Chatterley’s not looking at all well. She’s usually so bonny. But she’s been failing all winter. Oh, it’s very hard on a woman, nobody knows —’
As it happened, Mrs Bolton was glad of Lady Chatterley’s offer. She was getting tired of the heavy work of parish nursing, and felt herself due to rise a little in her profession. But of course, she would have to serve a month’s notice — unless Dr Shardlow would agree to get a substitute.
Off went Hilda to Dr Shardlow, who, of course, was willing to do anything to oblige Sir Clifford, but he’d have to get the consent of the Board. Obstacles, however, only roused Hilda to greater speed. Round she went! She got the consent of everybody necessary, and she speeded up Dr Shardlow. So that Mrs Bolton would be able to come to Wragby Hall on Monday.
Hilda went to have a talk with her.
‘I’m so glad you can come!’ she said. ‘Sir Clifford does so hate the thought of a nurse. But he knows you, so that makes it much easier.’
‘Oh yes! I’ve known Sir Clifford since he was a tiny toddler, and a lively one he was—’
Hilda drew Ivy Bolton’s story from her. Queer, how young the woman seemed, how the passion would flush in her cheek and the light in her eye! She was forty-seven years old, and seemed hardly forty.
Ted Bolton, her husband, had been killed in the pit twenty-two years ago: twenty-two years last Christmas. He had left her with two little children, one a baby in arms. The baby was married now, and had a baby of her own. The other was a school-mistress in Sheffield. Yes, they’d both done well.
It seemed to Hilda, Ivy Bolton had loved her husband: he had been so steady, and so good to his wife! He was only twenty-eight when he was killed in an explosion. The butty ahead had called to the other men to lie down, feeling it was coming, and they’d all lain down in time except Ted, and he was round the corner and didn’t hear. So the explosion caught him, and never hurt the other men.
At the enquiry, they said, on the master’s side, that Bolton had, been frightened and tried to run away, and that was how he came to get killed. They found him lying on his side as if he’d been running away from the explosion. That was what they said. If he’d lain down, he would have been safe like the others. But his own cowardice was the cause of his death. Yes! That was what they said.
So the compensation was only three hundred pounds, and it was more of a charity gift to the widow, under the circumstances, than legal compensation. Yes, that was what the Company said! And even then she, Ivy Bolton, wasn’t allowed to have the money down. They said she might drink it, or do something wasteful with it. She wanted to start a little shop, with the money. But they wouldn’t give it her. They doled it out to her, thirty shillings a week. Yes, she had to go every Monday morning, with her baby in her arms, down to the officer, and stand waiting with a lot of others who wanted their accident pay, or whatever it was: sometimes she’d have to stand for a couple of hours before she got her thirty shillings, and a baby in her arms!
Well, three hundred pounds at thirty shillings a week didn’t last long: not four years! And what could she do, with two little children on her hands? But his mother had been very good to her, oh, very good! Nobody could have been better than Ted’s mother. She’d look after the children every time, when Ivy was learning to become a nurse. So Ivy worked hard, and attended courses in Sheffield and had special ambulance courses. She was determined to be independent, and to bring up her children in independence. So she had got a place as assistant nurse at Uthwaite hospital for a time, and then they’d made her district visiting nurse for Tevershall. She would say that for the Company, they’d always treated her well, as nurse. But what rankled in her was what they’d said about Ted: as steady and fearless a fellow as ev
er went down a pit, and then to give it out as it was his own cowardice that killed him!
Hilda wondered at the fire in the woman still. She spoke of Ted as if he were just as much alive as ever, as if he would be coming home from work soon. And she spoke so curiously of the Company. All her queer suave ladylike way fell off he when she mentioned the Company, and it was very obvious she had never forgiven them the insult to the dead Ted, nor to herself, doling her out the thirty shillings. Somewhere very deep in her was a resentment against all bosses and all owners. Her sympathy was with the colliers: but of course she liked to play my-lady-benevolent to them.
And it was obvious she did not like Sir Clifford. She did not like the Chatterleys. In a subtle, undefined way, they were to her the enemy. Yet she envied them their power. She wanted to find out about that, and to get the secret of it: the power of the gentry. She did not believe them .to have any heart, any ordinary human feeling at all. That you found among the colliers, and that was what made you lower class: your ordinary feelings. The upper classes didn’t have them. What then did they have? What was the secret of their supposed superiority? She was keen to find out.
Hilda could see this: but she did not mind. Only she wanted to get the woman’s sympathy for Constance.
‘And I do wish you’d do what you can for my sister — for Lady Chatterley. I’m afraid Sir Clifford is just using up her life, and killing her. Not that he means to do it, of course! But he can’t really help it. He will have her there all the time. We’ve had such a fight to make him agree to have a nurse. But the doctor in London said plainly that my sister wouldn’t live, unless she got some relief. And naturally we don’t want to see her killed off. — I do hope you’ll persuade her to go out, away from that house, as much as she can.’
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 9
