The daylight began to rustle into the world, and the dark figure seemed to go smaller and more defined. She made out the gun and gaiters and baggy jacket—it would be Oliver Mellors, the keeper. Yes, for there was the dog nosing around like a shadow, and waiting for him!
And what did the man want? Did he want to rouse the house? What was he standing there for, transfixed, looking up at the house like a lovesick male dog outside the house where the bitch is!
Goodness! The knowledge went through Mrs. Bolton like a shot. He was Lady Chatterley’s lover! He! He!
To think of it! Why, she, Ivy Bolton, had once been a tiny bit in love with him herself! When he was a lad of sixteen and she a woman of twenty-six. It was when she was studying, and he had helped her a lot with the anatomy and things she had had to learn. He’d been a clever boy, had a scholarship from Sheffield Grammar School, and learned French and things: and then after all had become an overhead blacksmith shoeing horses, because he was fond of horses, he said: but really because he was frightened to go out and face the world, only he’d never admit it.
But he’d been a nice lad, a nice lad, had helped her a lot, so clever at making things clear to you. He was quite as clever as Sir Clifford: and always one for the women. More with women than men, they said.
Till he’d gone and married that Bertha Coutts, as if to spite himself. Some people do marry to spite themselves, because they’re disappointed of something. And no wonder it had been a failure.—For years he was gone, all the time of the war: and a lieutenant and all: quite the gentleman, really quite the gentleman!—Then to come back to Tevershall and go as a gamekeeper! Really, some people can’t take their chances when they’ve got them! And talking broad Derbyshire again like the worst, when she, Ivy Bolton, knew he spoke like any gentleman, really.
Well well! So her ladyship had fallen for him! Well—her ladyship wasn’t the first: there was something about him. But fancy! A Tevershall lad born and bred, and she her ladyship in Wragby Hall! My word, that was a slap back at the high-and-mighty Chatterleys!
But he, the keeper, as the day grew, had realised: it’s no good! It’s no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You’ve got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they’ve got to come. You can’t force them.
With a sudden snap the bleeding desire that had drawn him after her broke. He had broken it, because it must be so. There must be a coming together on both sides. And if she wasn’t coming to him, he wouldn’t track her down. He mustn’t. He must go away, till she came.
He turned slowly, ponderingly, accepting again the isolation. He knew it was better so. She must come to him: it was no use his trailing after her. No use!
Mrs. Bolton saw him disappear, saw his dog run after him.
“Well well,” she said. “He’s the one man I never thought of; and the one man I might have thought of. He was nice to me when he was a lad, after I lost Ted. Well well! Whatever would he say if he knew!”
And she glanced triumphantly at the already sleeping Clifford, as she stepped softly from the room.
XI
Connie was sorting out one of the Wragby lumber rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffrey’s father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffrey’s mother had liked cinquecento furniture. Sir Geoffrey himself had liked old carved oak chests, vestry chests. So it went on through the generations. Clifford collected very modern pictures, at very moderate prices.
So in the lumber room there were bad Sir Edwin Landseers and pathetic William Henry Hunt birds’ nests: and other Academy stuff, enough to frighten the daughter of an R.A. She determined to look through it one day, and clear it all. And the grotesque furniture interested her.
Wrapped up carefully to preserve it from damage and dry-rot was the old family cradle, of rosewood. She had to unwrap it, to look at it. It had a certain charm: she looked at it a long time.
“It’s a thousand pities it won’t be called for,” sighed Mrs. Bolton, who was helping. “Though cradles like that are out of date nowadays.”
“It might be called for. I might have a child,” said Connie casually, as if saying she might have a new hat.
“You mean if anything happened to Sir Clifford!” stammered Mrs. Bolton.
“No! I mean as things are. It’s only muscular paralysis with Sir Clifford—it doesn’t affect him,” said Connie, lying as naturally as breathing.
Clifford had put the idea into her head. He had said: “Of course I may have a child yet. I’m not really mutilated at all. The potency may easily come back, even if the muscles of the hips and legs are paralysed. And then the seed may be transferred.”
He really felt, when he had his periods of energy and worked so hard at the question of the mines, as if his sexual potency were returning. Connie had looked at him in terror. But she was quick-witted enough to use his suggestion for her own preservation. For she would have a child if she could: but not his.
Mrs. Bolton was for a
