第27章

When Connie went up to her bedroom she did what she had not done for a long time:took off all her clothes,and looked at herself naked in the huge mirror.She did not know what she was looking for,or at,very definitely,yet she moved the lamp till it shone full on her.

And she thought,as she had thought so often,what a frail,easily hurt,rather pathetic thing a human body is,naked;somehow a little unfinished,incomplete!

She had been supposed to have rather a good figure,but now she was out of fashion:a little too female,not enough like an adolescent boy.

She was not very tall,a bit Scottish and short;but she had a certain fluent,down-slipping grace that might have been beauty.Her skin was faintly tawny,her limbs had a certain stillness,her body should have had a full,down-slipping richness;but it lacked something.

Instead of ripening its firm,down-running curves,her body was flattening and going a little harsh.It was as if it had not had enough sun and warmth;it was a little greyish and sapless.

Disappointed of its real womanhood,it had not succeeded in becoming boyish,and unsubstantial,and transparent;instead it had gone opaque.

Her breasts were rather small,and dropping pear-shaped.But they were unripe,a little bitter,without meaning hanging there.And her belly had lost the fresh,round gleam it had had when she was young,in the days of her German boy,who really loved her physically.Then it was young and expectant,with a real look of its own.Now it was going slack,and a little flat,thinner,but with a slack thinness.Her thighs,too,they used to look so quick and glimpsy in their female roundness,somehow they too were going flat,slack,meaningless.

Her body was going meaningless,going dull and opaque,so much insignificant substance.It made her feel immensely depressed and hopeless.What hope was there?She was old,old at twenty-seven,with no gleam and sparkle in the flesh.Old through neglect and denial,yes,denial.Fashionable women kept their bodies bright like delicate porcelain,by external attention.

There was nothing inside the porcelain;but she was not even as bright as that.The mental life!Suddenly she hated it with a rushing fury,the swindle!

She looked in the other mirror's reflection at her back,her waist,her loins.She was getting thinner,but to her it was not becoming.The crumple of her waist at the back,as she bent back to look,was a little weary;and it used to be so gay-looking.And the longish slope of her haunches and her buttocks had lost its gleam and its sense of richness.Gone!Only the German boy had loved it,and he was ten years dead,very nearly.How time went by!Ten years dead,and she was only twenty-seven.The healthy boy with his fresh,clumsy sensuality that she had then been so scornful of!Where would she find it now?It was gone out of men.They had their pathetic,two-seconds spasms like Michaelis;but no healthy human sensuality,that warms the blood and freshens the whole being.

Still she thought the most beautiful part of her was the long-sloping fall of the haunches from the socket of the back,and the slumberous,round stillness of the buttocks.Like hillocks of sand,the Arabs say,soft and downward-slipping with a long slope.Here the life still lingered hoping.

But here too she was thinner,and going unripe,astringent.

But the front of her body made her miserable.It was already beginning to slacken,with a slack sort of thinness,almost withered,going old before it had ever really lived.She thought of the child she might somehow bear.

Was she fit,anyhow?

She slipped into her nightdress,and went to bed,where she sobbed bitterly.

And in her bitterness burned a cold indignation against Clifford,and his writings and his talk:against all the men of his sort who defrauded a woman even of her own body.

Unjust!Unjust!The sense of deep physical injustice burned to her very soul.

But in the morning,all the same,she was up at seven,and going downstairs to Clifford.She had to help him in all the intimate things,for he had no man,and refused a woman-servant.The housekeeper's husband,who had known him as a boy,helped him,and did any heavy lifting;but Connie did the personal things,and she did them willingly.It was a demand on her,but she had wanted to do what she could.

So she hardly ever went away from Wragby,and never for more than a day or two;when Mrs Betts,the housekeeper,attended to Clifford.He,as was inevitable in the course of time,took all the service for granted.

It was natural he should.

And yet,deep inside herself,a sense of injustice,of being defrauded,had begun to burn in Connie.The physical sense of injustice is a dangerous feeling,once it is awakened.It must have outlet,or it eats away the one in whom it is aroused.Poor Clifford,he was not to blame.His was the greater misfortune.It was all part of the general catastrophe.

And yet was he not in a way to blame?This lack of warmth,this lack of the simple,warm,physical contact,was he not to blame for that?He was never really warm,nor even kind,only thoughtful,considerate,in a well-bred,cold sort of way!But never warm as a man can be warm to a woman,as even Connie's father could be warm to her,with the warmth of a man who did himself well,and intended to,but who still could comfort it woman with a bit of his masculine glow.

But Clifford was not like that.His whole race was not like that.They were all inwardly hard and separate,and warmth to them was just bad taste.