The curious thing was that when this child-man, which Clifford was now and which he had been becoming for years, emerged into the world, it was much sharper and keener than the real man he used to be. This perverted child-man was now a real businessman; when it was a question of affairs, he was an absolute he-man, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel. When he was out among men, seeking his own ends, and “making good” his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness, hardness, and a straight sharp punch. It was as if his very passivity and prostitution to the Magna Mater gave him insight into material business affairs, and lent him a certain remarkable inhuman force. The wallowing in private emotion, the utter abasement of his manly self, seemed to lend him a second nature, cold, almost visionary, business-clever. In business he was quite inhuman.
And in this Mrs. Bolton triumphed. “How he’s getting on!” she would say to herself in pride. “And that’s my doing! My word, he’d never have got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a man forward. She wanted too much for herself.”
At the same time, in some corner of her weird female soul, how she despised him and hated him! He was to her the fallen beast, the squirming monster. And while she aided and abetted him all she could, away in the remotest corner of her ancient healthy womanhood she despised him with a savage contempt that knew no bounds. The merest tramp was better than he.
His behaviour with regard to Connie was curious. He insisted on seeing her again. He insisted, moreover, on her coming to Wragby. On this point he was finally and absolutely fixed. Connie had promised to come back to Wragby, faithfully.
“But is it any use?” said Mrs. Bolton. “Can’t you let her go, and be rid of her?”
“No! She said she was coming back, and she’s got to come.”
Mrs. Bolton opposed him no more. She knew what she was dealing with.
“I needn’t tell you what effect your letter has had on me,” he wrote to Connie to London. “Perhaps you can imagine it if you try, though no doubt you won’t trouble to use your imagination on my behalf.
“I can only say one thing in answer: I must see you personally, here at Wragby, before I can do anything. You promised faithfully to come back to Wragby, and I hold you to the promise. I don’t believe anything nor understand anything until I see you personally, here under normal circumstances. I needn’t tell you that nobody here suspects anything, so your return would be quite normal. Then if you feel, after we have talked things over, that you still remain in the same mind, no doubt we can come to terms.”
Connie showed this letter to Mellors.
“He wants to begin his revenge on you,” said he, handing the letter back.
Connie was silent. She was somewhat surprised to find that she was afraid of Clifford. She was afraid to go near him. She was afraid of him as if he were evil and dangerous.
“What shall I do?” she said.
“Nothing, if you don’t want to do anything.”
She replied, trying to put Clifford off. He answered: “If you don’t come back to Wragby now, I shall consider that you are coming back one day, and act accordingly. I shall just go on the same and wait for you here, if I wait for fifty years.”
She was frightened. This was bullying of an insidious sort. She had no doubt he meant what he said. He would not divorce her, and the child would be his, unless she could find some means of establishing its illegitimacy.
After a time of worry and harassment, she decided to go to Wragby. Hilda would go with her. She wrote this to Clifford. He replied: “I shall not welcome your sister, but I shall not deny her the door. I have no doubt she has connived at your desertion of your duties and responsibilities, so do not expect me to show pleasure in seeing her.”
They went to Wragby. Clifford was away when they arrived. Mrs. Bolton received them.
“Oh, your Ladyship, it isn’t the happy homecoming we hoped for, is it!” she said.
“Isn’t it!” said Connie.
So this woman knew! How much did the rest of the servants know or suspect?
She entered the house which now she hated with every fiber in her body. The great, rambling mass of a place seemed evil to her, just a menace over her. She was no longer its mistress, she was its victim.
“I can’t stay long here,” she whispered to Hilda, terrified.
And she suffered going into her own bedroom, reentering into possession as if nothing had happened. She hated every minute inside the Wragby walls.
They did not meet Clifford till they went down to dinner. He was dressed, and with a black tie: rather reserved, and very much the superior gentleman. He behaved perfectly politely during the meal, and kept a polite sort of conversation going: but it seemed all touched with insanity.
“How much do the servants know?” asked Connie, when the woman was out of the room.
“Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever.”
“Mrs. Bolton knows.”
He changed colour.
“Mrs. Bolton is not exactly one of the servants,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t mind.”
There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up to her room.
Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would begin to speak. Connie was so glad that he wasn’t taking the pathetic line, she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat silent and looked down at her hands.
“I suppose you don’t at all mind having gone back on your word?” he said at last.
“I can’t help it,” she murmured.
“But if you
