Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black-haired thing of nine or ten. What is it, dear? Tell me why youre crying! she said, with the conventionalized sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, self-conscious. Still more sweetness on Connies part.
There, there, dont you cry! Tell me what theyve done to you! an intense tenderness of tone. At the same time she felt in the pocket of her knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.
Dont you cry then! she said, bending in front of the child. See what Ive got for you!
Sobs, snuffles, a fist taken from a blubbered face, and a black shrewd eye cast for a second on the sixpence. Then more sobs, but subduing. There, tell me whats the matter, tell me! said Connie, putting the coin into the childs chubby hand, which closed over it.
Its the its the pussy!
Shudders of subsiding sobs.
What pussy, dear?
After a silence the shy fist, clenching on sixpence, pointed into the bramble brake.
There!
Connie looked, and there, sure enough, was a big black cat, stretched out grimly, with a bit of blood on it.
Oh! she said in repulsion.
A poacher, your Ladyship, said the man satirically.
She glanced at him angrily. No wonder the child cried, she said, if you shot it when she was there. No wonder she cried!
He looked into Connies eyes, laconic, contemptuous, not hiding his feelings. And again Connie flushed; she felt she had been making a scene, the man did not respect her.
What is your name? she said playfully to the child. Wont you tell me your name?
Sniffs; then very affectedly in a piping voice: Connie Mellors!
Connie Mellors! Well, thats a nice name! And did you come out with your Daddy, and he shot a pussy? But it was a bad pussy!
The child looked at her, with bold, dark eyes of scrutiny, sizing her up, and her condolence.
I wanted to stop with my Gran, said the little girl.
Did you? But where is your Gran?
The child lifted an arm, pointing down the drive. At th cottidge.
At the cottage! And would you like to go back to her?
Sudden, shuddering quivers of reminiscent sobs. Yes!
Come then, shall I take you? Shall I take you to your Gran? Then your Daddy can do what he has to do. She turned to the man. It is your little girl, isnt it?
He saluted, and made a slight movement of the head in affirmation.
I suppose I can take her to the cottage? asked Connie.
If your Ladyship wishes.
Again he looked into her eyes, with that calm, searching detached glance. A man very much alone, and on his own.
Would you like to come with me to the cottage, to your Gran, dear?
The child peeped up again. Yes! she simpered.
Connie disliked her; the spoilt, false little female. Nevertheless she wiped her face and took her hand. The keeper saluted in silence.
Good morning! said Connie.
It was nearly a mile to the cottage, and Connie senior was well bored by Connie junior by the time the game-keepers picturesque little home was in sight. The child was already as full to the brim with tricks as a little monkey, and so self-assured.
At the cottage the door stood open, and there was a rattling heard inside. Connie lingered, the child slipped her hand, and ran indoors.
Gran! Gran!
Why, are yer back aready!
The grandmother had been blackleading the stove, it was Saturday morning. She came to the door in her sacking apron, a blacklead-brush in her hand, and a black smudge on her nose. She was a little, rather dry woman.
Why, whatever? she said, hastily wiping her arm across her face as she saw Connie standing outside.
Good morning! said Connie. She was crying, so I just brought her home.
The grandmother looked around swiftly at the child:
Why, wheer was yer Dad?
The little girl clung to her grandmothers skirts and simpered.
He was there, said Connie, but hed shot a poaching cat, and the child was upset.
Oh, youd no right tave bothered, Lady Chatterley, Im sure! Im sure it was very good of you, but you shouldnt ave bothered. Why, did ever you see! and the old woman turned to the child: Fancy Lady Chatterley takin all that trouble over yer! Why, she shouldnt ave bothered!
It was no bother, just a walk, said Connie smiling.
Why, Im sure twas very kind of you, I must say! So she was crying! I knew thered be something afore they got far. Shes frightened of im, thats wheer it is. Seems es almost a stranger to er, fair a stranger, and I dont think theyre two asd hit it off very easy. Hes got funny ways.
Connie didnt know what to say.
Look, Gran! simpered the child.
The old woman looked down at the sixpence in the little girls hand.
An sixpence an all! Oh, your Ladyship, you shouldnt, you shouldnt. Why, isnt Lady Chatterley good to yer! My word, youre a lucky girl this morning!
She pronounced the name, as all the people did: Chatley. Isnt Lady Chatley good to you! Connie couldnt help looking at the old womans nose, and the latter again vaguely wiped her face with the back of her wrist, but missed the smudge.
Connie was moving away Well, thank you ever so much, Lady Chatley, Im sure. Say thank you to Lady Chatley! this last to the child.
Thank you, piped the child.
Theres a dear! laughed Connie, and she moved away, saying Good morning, heartily relieved to get away from the contact.
Curious, she thought, that that thin, proud man should have that little, sharp woman for a mother!
And the old woman, as soon as Connie had gone, rushed to the bit of mirror in the scullery, and looked at her face. Seeing it, she stamped her foot with impatience. Of course she had to catch me in my coarse apron, and a dirty face! Nice idea shed get of me!
Connie went slowly home to Wragby. Home! it was a warm word to use for that great, weary warren. But then it was a word that had had its day. It was somehow cancelled. All the great words, it seemed to Connie, were cancelled for her generation: love, joy, happiness, home, mother, father, husband, all these great, dynamic words were half dead now, and dying from day to day. Home was a place you lived in, love was a thing you didnt fool yourself about, joy was a word you applied to a good Charleston, happiness was a term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people, a father was an individual who enjoyed his own existence, a husband was a man you lived with and kept going in spirits. As for sex, the last of the great words, it was just a cocktail term for an excitement that bucked you up for a while, then left you more raggy than ever. Frayed! It was as if the very material you were made of was cheap stuff, and was fraying out to nothing.
All that really remained was a stubborn stoicism: and in that there was a certain pleasure. In the very experience of the nothingness of life, phase after phase, tape after tape, there was a certain grisly satisfaction. So thats that! Always this was the last utterance: home, love, marriage, Michaelis: So thats that! And when one died, the last words to life would be: So thats that!
Money? Perhaps one couldnt say the same there. Money one always wanted. Money, Success, the bitch-goddess, as Tommy Dukes persisted in calling it, after Henry James, that was a permanent necessity. You couldnt spend your last sou,[45] and say finally: So thats that! No, if you lived even another ten minutes, you wanted a few more sous for something or other. Just to keep the business mechanically going, you needed money. You had to have it. Money you have to have. You neednt really have anything else. So thats that!
Since, of course, its not your own fault you are alive. Once you are alive, money is a necessity, and the only absolute necessity. All the rest you can get along without, at a pinch. But not money. Emphatically, thats that!
She thought of Michaelis, and the money she might have had with him; and even that she didnt want. She preferred the lesser amount which she helped Clifford to make by his writing. That she actually helped to make. Clifford and I together, we make twelve hundred a year out of writing; so she put it to herself. Make money! Make it! Out of nowhere. Wring it out of the thin air! The last feat to be humanly proud of! The rest all-my-eye-Betty-Martin.
So she plodded home to Clifford, to join forces with him again, to make another story out of nothingness: and a story meant money. Clifford seemed to care very much whether his stories were considered first-class literature or not. Strictly, she didnt care. Nothing in it! said her father. Twelve hundred pounds last year! was the retort simple and final.
If you were young, you just set your teeth, and bit on and held on, till the money began to flow from the invisible; it was a question of power. It was a question of will; a subtle, subtle, powerful emanation of will out of yourself brought back to you the mysterious nothingness of money a word on a bit of paper. It was a sort of magic, certainly it was triumph. The bitch-goddess! Well, if one had to prostitute oneself, let it be to a bitch-goddess! One could always despise her even while one prostituted oneself to her, which was good.
Clifford, of course, had still many childish taboos and fetishes. He wanted to be thought really good, which was all cock-a-hoopy nonsense. What was really good was what actually caught on. It was no good being really good and getting left with it. It seemed as if most of the really good men just missed the bus. After all you only lived one life, and if you missed the bus, you were just left on the pavement, along with the rest of the failures.
Connie was contemplating a winter in London with Clifford, next winter. He and she had caught the bus all right, so they might as well ride on top for a bit, and show it.
The worst of it was, Clifford tended to become vague, absent, and to fall into fits of vacant depression. It was the wound to his psyche coming out. But it made Connie want to scream. Oh God, if the mechanism of the consciousness itself was going to go wrong, then what was one to do? Hang it all, one did ones bit! Was one to be let down absolutely?
Sometimes she wept bitterly, but even as she wept she was saying to herself: Silly fool, wetting hankies! As if that would get you anywhere!
Since Michaelis, she had made up her mind she wanted nothing. That seemed the simplest solution of the otherwise insoluble. She wanted nothing more than what shed got; only she wanted to get ahead with what shed got: Clifford, the stories, Wragby, the Lady-Chatterley business, money and fame, such as it was she wanted to go ahead with it all. Love, sex, all that sort of stuff, just water-ices! Lick it up and forget it. If you dont hang on to it in your mind, its nothing. Sex especially nothing! Make up your mind to it, and youve solved the problem. Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to about the same thing.
But a child, a baby! That was still one of the sensations. She would venture very gingerly on that experiment. There was the man to consider, and it was curious, there wasnt a man in the world whose children you wanted. Micks children! Repulsive thought! As lief have a child to a rabbit! Tommy Dukes? he was very nice, but somehow you couldnt associate him with a baby, another generation. He ended in himself. And out of all the rest of Cliffords pretty wide acquaintance, there was not a man who did not rouse her contempt, when she thought of having a child by him. There were several who would have been quite possible as lover, even Mick. But to let them breed a child on you! Ugh! Humiliation and abomination.
So that was that!
Nevertheless, Connie had the child at the back of her mind. Wait! wait! She would sift the generations of men through her sieve, and see if she couldnt find one who would do. Go ye into the streets and by ways of Jerusalem, and see if you can find a man.[46] It had been impossible to find a man in the Jerusalem of the prophet, though there were thousands of male humans. But a man! Сest une autre chose![47]
She had an idea that he would have to be a foreigner: not an Englishman, still less an Irishman. A real foreigner.
But wait! wait! Next winter she would get Clifford to London; the following winter she would get him abroad to the South of France, Italy. Wait! She was in no hurry about the child. That was her own private affair, and the one point on which, in her own queer, female way, she was serious to the bottom of her soul. She was not going to risk any chance comer, not she! One might take a lover almost at any moment, but a man who should beget a child on one wait! wait! its a very different matter. Go ye into the streets and byways of Jerusalem It was not a question of love; it was a question of a man. Why, one might even rather hate him, personally. Yet if he was the man, what would ones personal hate matter? This business concerned another part of oneself.
It had rained as usual, and the paths were too sodden for Cliffords chair, but Connie would go out. She went out alone every day now, mostly in the wood, where she was really alone. She saw nobody there.
This day, however, Clifford wanted to send a message to the keeper, and as the boy was laid up with influenza, somebody always seemed to have influenza at Wragby, Connie said she would call at the cottage.
The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were slowly dying. Grey and clammy and silent, even from the shuffling of the collieries, for the pits were working short time, and today they were stopped altogether. The end of all things!
In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell from the bare boughs, with a hollow little crash. For the rest, among the old trees was depth within depth of grey, hopeless inertia, silence, nothingness.
Connie walked dimly on. From the old wood came an ancient melancholy, somehow soothing to her, better than the harsh insentience of the outer world. She liked the inwardness of the remnant of forest, the unspeaking reticence of the old trees. They seemed a very power of silence, and yet a vital presence. They, too, were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and giving off a potency of silence. Perhaps they were only waiting for the end; to be cut down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all things. But perhaps their strong and aristocratic silence, the silence of strong trees, meant something else.
As she came out of the wood on the north side, the keepers cottage, a rather dark, brown stone cottage, with gables and a handsome chimney, looked uninhabited, it was so silent and alone. But a thread of smoke rose from the chimney, and the little railed-in garden in the front of the house was dug and kept very tidy. The door was shut.
Now she was here she felt a little shy of the man, with his curious far-seeing eyes. She did not like bringing him orders, and felt like going away again. She knocked softly, no one came. She knocked again, but still not loudly. There was no answer. She peeped through the window, and saw the dark little room, with its almost sinister privacy, not wanting to be invaded.
She stood and listened, and it seemed to her she heard sounds from the back of the cottage. Having failed to make herself heard, her mettle was roused, she would not be defeated.