This was a new voice in Wragby, very new for Connie to hear; it roused a new ear in her.
For the first week or so, Mrs. Bolton, however, was very quiet at Wragby; her assured, bossy manner left her, and she was nervous. With Clifford she was shy, almost frightened, and silent. He liked that, and soon recovered his self-possession, letting her do things for him without even noticing her.
“She’s a useful nonentity!” he said. Connie opened her eyes in wonder, but did not contradict him. So different are impressions on two different people!
And he soon became rather superb, somewhat lordly with the nurse. She had rather expected it, and he played up without knowing. So susceptible we are to what is expected of us! The colliers had been so like children, talking to her, and telling her what hurt them, while she bandaged them, or nursed them. They had always made her feel so grand, almost superhuman in her administrations. Now Clifford made her feel small, and like a servant, and she accepted it without a word, adjusting herself to the upper classes.
She came very mute, with her long, handsome face, and downcast eyes, to administer to him. And she said very humbly: “Shall I do this now, Sir Clifford? Shall I do that?”
“No, leave it for a time, I’ll have it done later.”
“Very well, Sir Clifford.”
“Come in again in half an hour.”
“Very well, Sir Clifford.”
“And just take those old papers out, will you?”
“Very well, Sir Clifford.”
She went softly, and in half an hour she came softly again. She was bullied, but she didn’t mind. She was experiencing the upper classes. She neither resented nor disliked Clifford; he was just part of a phenomenon, the phenomenon of the high-class folks, so far unknown to her, but now to be known. She felt more at home with Lady Chatterley, and after all it’s the mistress of the house matters most.
Mrs. Bolton helped Clifford to bed at night, and slept across the passage from his room, and came if he rang for her in the night. She also helped him in the morning, and soon valeted him completely, even shaving him, in her soft, tentative woman’s way. She was very good and competent, and she soon knew how to have him in her power. He wasn’t so very different from the colliers after all, when you lathered his chin, and softly rubbed the bristles. The standoffishness and the lack of frankness didn’t bother her, she was having a new experience.
Clifford, however, inside himself, never quite forgave Connie for giving up her personal care of him to a strange hired woman. It killed, he said to himself, the real flower of the intimacy between him and her. But Connie didn’t mind that. The fine flower of their intimacy was to her rather like an orchid, a bulb stuck parasitic on her tree of life, and producing, to her eyes, a rather shabby flower.
Now she had more time to herself she could softly play the piano, up in her room, and sing: “Touch not the nettle … for the bonds of love are ill to loose.” She had not realised till lately how ill to loose they were, these bonds of love. But thank Heaven she had loosened them! She was so glad to be alone, not always to have to talk to him. When he was alone he tapped-tapped-tapped on a typewriter, to infinity. But when he was not “working,” and she was there, he talked, always talked; infinite small analysis of people and motives, and results, characters and personalities, till now she had had enough. For years she had loved it, until she had enough, and then suddenly it was too much. She was thankful to be alone.
It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly she was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear. But the bonds of such love are more ill to loose even than most bonds; though Mrs. Bolton’s coming had been a great help.
But he still wanted the old intimate evenings of talk with Connie; talk or reading aloud. But now she could arrange that Mrs. Bolton should come at ten to disturb them. At ten o’clock Connie could go upstairs and be alone. Clifford was in good hands with Mrs. Bolton.
Mrs. Bolton ate with Mrs. Betts in the housekeeper’s room, since they were all agreeable. And it was curious how much closer the servants’ quarters seemed to have come; right up to the doors of Clifford’s study, when before they were so remote. For Mrs. Betts would sometimes sit in Mrs. Bolton’s room, and Connie heard their lowered voices, and felt somehow the strong, other vibration of the working people almost invading the sitting-room, when she and Clifford were alone. So changed was Wragby merely by Mrs. Bolton’s coming.
And Connie felt herself released, in another world, she felt she breathed differently. But still she was afraid of how many of her roots, perhaps mortal ones, were tangled with Clifford’s. Yet still, she breathed freer, a new phase was going to begin in her life.
VIII
Mrs. Bolton also kept a cherishing eye on Connie, feeling she must extend to her her female and professional protection. She was always urging her ladyship to walk out, to drive to Uthwaite, to be in the air. For Connie had got into the habit of sitting still by the fire, pretending to read, or to sew feebly, and hardly
