第6章

But Clifford was really extremely shy and self-conscious now he was lamed.He hated seeing anyone except just the personal servants.For he had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair.Nevertheless he was just as carefully dressed as ever,by his expensive tailors,and he wore the careful Bond Street neckties just as before,and from the top he looked just as smart and impressive as ever.He had never been one of the modern ladylike young men:rather bucolic even,with his ruddy face and broad shoulders.But his very quiet,hesitating voice,and his eyes,at the same time bold and frightened,assured and uncertain,revealed his nature.His manner was often offensively supercilious,and then again modest and self-effacing,almost tremulous.

Connie and he were attached to one another,in the aloof modern way.

He was much too hurt in himself,the great shock of his maiming,to be easy and flippant.He was a hurt thing.And as such Connie stuck to him passionately.

But she could not help feeling how little connexion he really had with people.The miners were,in a sense,his own men;but he saw them as objects rather than men,parts of the pit rather than parts of life,crude raw phenomena rather than human beings along with him.He was in some way afraid of them,he could not bear to have them look at him now he was lame.And their queer,crude life seemed as unnatural as that of hedgehogs.

He was remotely interested;but like a man looking down a microscope,or up a telescope.He was not in touch.He was not in actual touch with anybody,save,traditionally,with Wragby,and,through the close bond of family defence,with Emma.Beyond this nothing really touched him.Connie felt that she herself didn't really,not really touch him;perhaps there was nothing to get at ultimately;just a negation of human contact.

Yet he was absolutely dependent on her,he needed her every moment.

Big and strong as he was,he was helpless.He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair,and he had a sort of bath-chair with a motor attachment,in which he could puff slowly round the park.But alone he was like a lost thing.He needed Connie to be there,to assure him he existed at all.

Still he was ambitious.He had taken to writing stories;curious,very personal stories about people he had known.Clever,rather spiteful,and yet,in some mysterious way,meaningless.The observation was extraordinary and peculiar.But there was no touch,no actual contact.It was as if the whole thing took place in a vacuum.And since the field of life is largely an artificially-lighted stage today,the stories were curiously true to modern life,to the modern psychology,that is.

Clifford was almost morbidly sensitive about these stories.He wanted everyone to think them good,of the best,ne plus ultra .They appeared in the most modern magazines,and were praised and blamed as usual.But to Clifford the blame was torture,like knives goading him.It was as if the whole of his being were in his stories.

Connie helped him as much as she could.At first she was thrilled.He talked everything over with her monotonously,insistently,persistently,and she had to respond with all her might.It was as if her whole soul and body and sex had to rouse up and pass into theme stories of his.This thrilled her and absorbed her.

Of physical life they lived very little.She had to superintend the house.But the housekeeper had served Sir Geoffrey for many years,arid the dried-up,elderly,superlatively correct female you could hardly call her a parlour-maid,or even a woman...who waited at table,had been in the house for forty years.Even the very housemaids were no longer young.

It was awful!What could you do with such a place,but leave it alone!

All these endless rooms that nobody used,all the Midlands routine,the mechanical cleanliness and the mechanical order!Clifford had insisted on a new cook,an experienced woman who had served him in his rooms in London.For the rest the place seemed run by mechanical anarchy.Everything went on in pretty good order,strict cleanliness,and strict punctuality;even pretty strict honesty.And yet,to Connie,it was a methodical anarchy.

No warmth of feeling united it organically.The house seemed as dreary as a disused street.

What could she do but leave it alone?So she left it alone.Miss Chatterley came sometimes,with her aristocratic thin face,and triumphed,finding nothing altered.She would never forgive Connie for ousting her from her union in consciousness with her brother.It was she,Emma,who should be bringing forth the stories,these books,with him;the Chatterley stories,something new in the world,that they ,the Chatterleys,had put there.There was no other standard.There was no organic connexion with the thought and expression that had gone before.Only something new in the world:the Chatterley books,entirely personal.