She went to bed feeling dazed and unreal, as if she had lost herself, lost her real virtue. And her soul loathed the process of talk.
And in the morning, when she came down, she was shocked at the change in Clifford. He lay in bed inert and, as it seemed, almost in a state of coma.
‘He’s a little tired after the excitement of meeting you yesterday,’ said Mrs Bolton, speaking of him tenderly, as if he were a patient entirely in her charge.
‘Was it too much for him?’ asked Connie, fear-struck.
‘Oh, I don’t think so! But he suffers from these lapses of energy. You remember he always did. It seems as if men do suffer that way since the war, even men who were never touched, or never even in the war at all. But their energy collapses, without anything being wrong with them. So we mustn’t wonder at Sir Clifford, must we? He was a little too excited yesterday. He has energy like that, in rushes. And then it leaves him. But he’ll be feeling better tomorrow.’
Connie was frightened. It seemed as if the bottom had suddenly fallen out of life. Clifford seemed as if his very soul were paralysed; and he knew it, his eyes were haunted with fear and irritable horror. He hated Connie to see him like that. She had to leave him.
It was Sunday, and a warm, dull morning.
‘Is there anything new in the Parkin scandal?’ she asked Mrs Bolton.
‘No my lady! Nothing new! — I believe Mr Parkin’s wife has gone away somewhere. And Mr Parkin has finished here. He’s going away too — or else gone. To Canada, they say.’
‘But when did he finish here?’
‘Yesterday! At twelve o’clock! He came and saw Sir Clifford, and it was all finished. I believe the new man is already in the cottage.’
Connie said no more. Everything felt burdensome and heavy. But she had said she would see him again, so she supposed she ought to make the effort. She felt, at the moment, in the dislocation of her return, as if nothing mattered very much.
However, she summoned up her energy, and walked out to Tevershall. The bells were ringing in Tevershall old church, pealing away with that forlorn sound which no longer fits our life. And at the Methodist Chapel, the one bell was going tang-tang-tang! She loitered, to let the church-goers get inside their places of worship before she passed. Up at the church, the pealing had stopped, the one bell sounded the last minutes.
Colliers, pale-faced and underworld, a little distorted, stood about in their Sunday clothes, or in their clean shirt-sleeves. They looked at her, but did not salute her. Young men were buzzing away on motor-cycles, others were walking briskly, as if to some appointment, others were strolling in little gangs, purely aimless, some were walking with young women dressed up in the latest fashion, high heels and bare arms and little hats pulled down over their eyes. The place was half-deserted, the shops shut, and the streets curiously alive with people dressed up and strolling about. Everybody watched her as she passed, and, she knew, made comments. But in that place which was her home now, nobody spoke to her or saluted her. She didn’t know the ordinary people. Neither did Clifford.
Motor-cars, motor-cycles, motor-buses went rushing by. It was quite a business to cross the road. But it was Sunday morning. As she passed the Methodist Chapel, they were singing shrilly:
‘I need thee, Oh I need thee
Every hour I need thee!
Oh bless me now my Saviour!
I co-come to-o thee.’
The sound made her shiver: so queer and wild and demonish in its howl. — And as she went on up the hill, the miners who were standing or squatting on the pavement turned after her their pale pit faces, watching her. They were not unkindly or unfriendly: but uncanny, unearthly, or under-earthly. And their bodies too were uncanny, distorted with an under-earth distortion, one shoulder a little higher than the other, legs oddly screwed.
Mrs Parkin lived in one of the old cottages, the end one of a row. It had a little brick yard with the tap outside, and no garden. The door stood open, and she saw the old woman at the table rolling out paste for a gooseberry pie: there was a pie-dish of greenish gooseberries on the table, as well as paste-board and lard and flour.
Connie tapped, and the old woman turned to the door. She had sharp hazel eyes, and tight grey hair, and still a good deal of her old, hard energy and quick, fierce, violent movements. Her face was flushed with heat.
‘Lady Chat’ley!’ she said in some surprise, and then she waited for Connie to speak.
‘Is Parkin in?’ said Connie, on the door-step.
‘You mean our Oliver? He’s in bed. He’s not got up yet?
Connie didn’t quite know what to say.
‘Isn’t he well?’ she asked.
‘He’s better than he was. But he was out most o’ th’ night in th’ wood, I suppose. He’s finished his job with Sir Clifford, you know?
‘Yes!’ Connie hesitated. ‘Is he going away?’
‘He’s going tonight.’
The little woman’s sentences came out sharp and short, like a rap on the knuckles.
‘Could I speak to him?’ said Connie.
The old woman eyed her with those shrewd, hard hazel eyes.
‘D’you want me to call him?’ she said.
Connie still stood on the doorstep, the old woman, in a white apron and with floury hands caked with paste, stopping the way.
‘Would you mind? Would he be getting up soon?’
‘I s’h’d call him for his dinner, anyhow. Come in! Though you’ll be broiled to death, I’m just cooking Sunday dinner. Sit down, and don’t notice the pig-sty I’m in. You can’t keep clean an’ cook and do.’
The place was small, hot, crowded, and vigorously clean. The linoleum on the floor was polished bright, the white hearth was speckless, the old fireplace was like black velvet, the copper kettle like new gold. Everything was rigidly in its place. Only the table had a litter of pastry-making.
Connie sat on the edge of the sofa, and the old woman clumped into the back room, which was the little sitting-room out of which the stairfoot door opened.
‘Oliver! Oliver!’ came the old woman’s hard, shrewd voice. There was a sort of grunt from above.
‘Get up then! You’re wanted.’
Connie heard his cross voice, in broad vernacular, upstairs:
‘Who wants me?’
‘Get up an’ see,’ said the old woman, shutting the stairfoot door and returning to her pastry.
Connie heard the thud of a foot on the floor overhead. How near everything was! How terribly close and on top of one another! Every sound that anybody made, audible to everybody else!
‘It’s that hot you can hardly breathe!’ said the old woman, suddenly snatching the iron screen, that was like an iron shield, polished glossy black, and hanging it on the fire-bar, in front of the glowing coal fire.
Connie heard his footsteps, in stocking feet, cross the floor overhead and descend the creaking stairs. She gazed sideways in a sort of fear, at the inner doorway, to see him come through, as she sat on the sofa at the side of the door.
He came stooping a little through the low doorway, not seeing her on the first instant. But she saw his face, still slightly bruised, his moustache ragged, and his cut mouth not healed: and on his face the dogged, expressionless look of an animal. At that instant his eye saw her, and he stopped as he passed her. He was wearing navy -blue trousers and a clean shirt. He glanced at her, holding his face aside.
There’s Lady Chat’ley come for you!’ said the mother roughly, rolling out her pastry with a certain ferocity.
His eyes met Connie’s, and she felt a vivid pain at her heart. She saw the peculiar little patches of dead pallor on his cheek-bones, caused by acute misery, and the abstract tension of his eyes. His mouth was still swollen out of shape.
‘I got back last night,’ she said, in her soft, breathless way.
‘Yes! I ’eered,’ he said.
He was aware again of his mother. He went across the room, stooped to a little cupboard, moving the arm-chair
before he could open the door, and took out his slippers. Then he put the chair in place, put on his slippers, sitting down in the corner by the cupboard and the window.
‘You are going away?’ said Connie, across the room.
He held his face lowered, to hide the disfigurement. The light was behind him. But his voice came harsh and strong:
‘Yes! Tonight!’
‘Where?’
‘To Sheffield.’
‘Have you got other work?’
‘Yes.’
There was a sort of thick lisp in his speech.
‘What kind of work?’ she said.
‘Labouring! in Jephson’s Steel Works.’
His voice was so harsh and distant, and his tongue seemed so queer, she would hardly have known it was he speaking.
‘I thought you wasn’t tellin’ nobody!’ snapped his mother, in censure.
He looked up at her sharply.
‘I’m not talking to you, am I?’ he said.
The old woman made no sign of having heard, whipping paste-crust on to the pie, and trimming the edges with sharp movements. There was silence for a moment. The room was very hot.
‘Can’t yer leave that a bit?’ he said to his mother.
‘Why what d’ yer want?’ she snapped at him. ‘No! I can’t leave it.’
‘Go up an’ ma’e my bed,’ he said.
‘Ay! An’ leave my cookin’ in th’ middle! I sh’d think so!’ she retorted obstinately.
He waited a minute, while she finished the pie. Then he repeated, in hard, broad vernacular:
‘Tha can leave it now. Goo up an’ ma’e my bed.’
‘Interferin’ nuisance!’ she muttered, as she whipped out of the house to the tap, to wash her hands, then returned, wiping her hands hastily on her coarse white apron.
‘An’ if you get your dinner at two o’clock, don’t blame me,’ she said, as she went with that odd, rushing impetuosity into the inner room and up the stairs. On the stairs she called back:
‘Look at th’ meat!’
‘Ay!’ he said, short.
Then they heard her footsteps overhead, heavy and pegging for a little woman.
He opened the oven door. There came a smell of beef roasting, and a faint sound of sizzling. He looked in apathetically, yet attentively, then shut the door again.
‘I’m afraid you had a bad time,’ said Connie to him. He glanced at her across the little room, and smiled with faint indifference, but said nothing.
‘I wish I could have come back sooner,’ she said.
‘It wouldn’t ha’ helped none,’ he said.
‘Not if you’d had me there?’ she enquired wistfully. He glanced at her again, but said nothing. There was something unyielding in his eyes and his body, but also, something dead. A pain went through her bowels. She saw, in some way, death in connection with him.
‘Look, I brought you a hanky,’ she said, tears filling her eyes, as she looked in her little bag and got out the gaily coloured silk handkerchief. He was watching her. She held it out to him, and he rose suddenly and came across the room to take it. But his face did not change from its stiff, deadened look.
She caught his hand and held it, looking up into his eyes. In her own eyes the tears had risen again, seeing the queer white, dead places on his cheekbones, and the unseeing of his eyes.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she faltered. ‘You won’t blame me, will you?’
He looked down at her almost irritably.
‘You? What for?’ There was only a pain and a hardness and an irritation in his eyes.
‘You won’t, will you? — And you’ll talk to me before you go away? Will you come to the hut this afternoon, so that we can talk things over?’ she said.
‘I wasn’t going to the wood no more. Albert’s in the cottage,’ he said, averting his face. But she saw a gap in his mouth, where it seemed a tooth was gone.
‘But you can come! Will you? After lunch? Will you? And let us talk?’
He was silent, but she clung to his hand. Then he looked down at her and shook his head slowly.
‘You shouldn’t run no risks,’ he said dully.
‘There’s no risk. Where’s the risk? You’ll come, won’t you?’
She gazed up at him with the tears in her eyes, and in her distress she was very beautiful, at least to him. He swallowed, and a pressure lifted from his face.
‘I’ll come!’ he said. ‘It seems I always do the wrong thing.’
‘Not the wrong thing!’ she pleaded, cheering up.
And suddenly she put his hand to her cheek, then kissed it furtively, quickly. Then she looked up at him, to see the first sharp little lightnings of passion stirring in his eyes, and his chest filling again. He was like a flower that revives in water. And she was pleased.
They heard his mother stamping across the floor upstairs. Connie let go his hand, and rose to her feet. He stood on hearthrug near her: looked at the handkerchief, then stuffed it in his trousers’ pocket.
‘I shall come after lunch,’ said Connie, in her soft, breathless voice, looking at him. He met her eyes, and nodded. He was listening to his mother, coming downstairs.
The little woman darted into the room, rushed at the oven, looked at the meat, turned it, shut the door, snatched the screen from before the fire, set it aside, and taking the poker, eased the red fire carefully near the oven, so that the black coal above began to smoke dense yellow under the bonnet, then leaped into flame. Whereupon the old woman set the screen before the fire again, and immediately darted the lid off the iron saucepan, peering into the steam. And all this time she had not even noticed the presence of her son and of Connie: or had refused to take notice. Then she kneeled to remove from the white hearth the crumbs of black coal that had rolled out from the fire.
Connie moved to the door.
‘Good-morning Mrs Parkin!’ she said. ‘I must go now.’
‘Good-morning Lady Chat’ley,’ said the old woman, not deigning to look at her, from the hearth where she kneeled.
Connie glanced at him. He was looking down with a queer, half tolerant, half weary look at his mother. Then he glanced at Connie in the doorway, and faintly smiled. But there was a touch of genuine amusement in the smile, and Connie went off, cheered.
Nevertheless, as she walked down the hill, she was aware of one predominant thing: and that was, that he might fairly easily die. He was not tough. She saw in him, she knew not how to describe it, but she saw in him the danger of death. She felt it in her heart, as children sometimes do. And it touched her with acute pain, such as she had never known before. No, he was not tough! Nothing can be more easily wounded, in our day, and mortally wounded, than the passionate soul. It is the passionless soul which is tough and rubbery, almost indestructible. The survival of the fittest.
The day was hot, and smelled of Sunday, roast beef and spring cabbage cooking, a host of Sunday dinners still in the oven, and everybody’s waiting. The roast beef of Old England mostly came from the Argentine, or from Australia: but what’s in a name!
She went in the hot afternoon across the park to the hut. It was the last time she would be going to meet him there. A certain anger filled her, against the stupidity of circumstance. Really, life itself was now almost entirely at the mercy of the ugly concatenation of circumstance, dragged along a helpless victim. Oh, if somebody would only start to break the mesh of chains.
There was still no one at the hut when she arrived. She opened the door, and saw the place very tidy, the traps and workbench and tools all in order, but all the odd little things of Parkin’s own, were gone. This place too had died for her, in the clutch of circumstance.
She wandered disconsolately, and presently heard voices. Flossie came running joyfully to her, and she welcomed the brown dog with a pang of pain. Then two men emerged from the path, Parkin, in a navy-blue Sunday suit and a black soft at, and Albert, the new gamekeeper.
Albert was a colonial, a tall, stringy fellow, clean-shaven, with a clo
se-pressed mouth and hard, keen blue eyes that had seen all around the world without having seen much in it. He was dressed in a khaki cloth shirt and black tie, belted khaki trousers and leather leggings, and an old brown hat: and a gun. He was at once spruce and careless, watchful and indifferent, unsure of himself, and yet cocksure: a real colonial. Seeing Connie, lifted his hat a little, not quite knowing how to behave, watchful, yet with the backwoodsman’s curious self-assertion in his bearing.
‘This is the new gamekeeper, my lady! Albert Adam!’ said Parkin.
Albert watched to see if she were going to shake hands. She was not.
‘How do you do?’ said Connie. ‘You are living in the cottage?
‘Yes Mam!’
‘Do you think you’ll be all right?’
‘Fine!’
‘And will your wife like it, do you think?’
‘Oh, it’ll suit her fine. Just what she’s been craving for, to be back on the old place.’
‘She’s a Tevershall girl — was in service in Wragby before the war — afore she went to New Zealand,’ said Parkin.
It was queer, the difference in the two men’s speech: Albert so prompt and distinct, with an American twang, Parkin seeming by contrast so much softer, vaguer, but to mean more.
‘Oh, you are a New Zealander?’ said Connie to Albert, who stood easy in front of her, resting his long, wiry length on one leg, and leaving the other knee loose.
‘Yes Mam! But I’ve spent a lot of my time in California, so I’m half an American, so to speak.’
‘What did you do in California?’
‘I was mining most of the time: cattle-punching some of it.’
‘And then you went back to New Zealand?’
‘Yes Mam. I joined up in 1915. And at the end of the war I married my wife, who’s given me no peace till I’ve brought her back to the old place.’ He smiled a slight complacent smile.
‘I suppose England will seem very small to you! — and this wood quite tiny!’
‘Oh, it’s not such a bad little bunch o’ trees! I got used to Europe in the war, you may say.’
John Thomas and Lady Jane Page 37
