of her lower body,
she couldn't escape. The days seemed to grind by,  with curious painfulness,
yet nothing happened.  Only she was getting  thinner;  even the  housekeeper
noticed it, and asked her  about herself Even Tommy Dukes  insisted she  was
not well, though she said she  was all right. Only she began to be afraid of
the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar  loathsome whiteness of  Carrara
marble,  detestable as  false teeth, which stuck  up on the  hillside, under
Tevershall  church,  and  which she saw with such  grim painfulness from the
park. The  bristling of the  hideous false teeth  of tombstones  on the hill
affected her with  a  grisly kind of  horror. She felt the time not  far off
when  she  would  be buried  there,  added  to  the  ghastly  host under the
tombstones and the monuments, in these filthy Midlands.
     She needed help, and she knew it: so she wrote a little cri du coeur to
her sister, Hilda.  `I'm not well lately, and I don't know what's the matter
with me.'
     Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she  had taken up her abode. She
came in March, alone, driving herself in a  nimble two-seater. Up the  drive
she came, tooting up the  incline, then sweeping round  the oval  of  grass,
where the two  great wild beech-trees stood,  on  the  flat in  front of the
house.
     Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda  pulled up her car, got out, and
kissed her sister.
     `But Connie!' she cried. `Whatever is the matter?'
     `Nothing!' said Connie, rather  shamefacedly; but she knew  how she had
suffered in  contrast to Hilda.  Both  sisters had  the same rather  golden,
glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally  strong, warm physique. But
now Connie was thin and earthy-looking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that
stuck out of her jumper.
     `But you're  ill, child!' said Hilda, in the  soft,  rather  breathless
voice that  both sisters had alike. Hilda  was  nearly, but not  quite,  two
years older than Connie.
     `No, not ill. Perhaps I'm bored,' said Connie a little pathetically.
     The light of battle glowed in Hilda's face; she was  a woman, soft  and
still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men.
     `This wretched place!' she said softly, looking at poor, old, lumbering
Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and
she was an amazon of the real old breed.
     She  went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how  handsome she  looked,
but  also  he shrank from her. His wife's family did not  have his  sort  of
manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders,  but
once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop.
     He sat square and well-groomed in  his chair, his hair sleek and blond,
and  his  face  fresh,  his  blue eyes pale,  and  a  little  prominent, his
expression inscrutable, but  well-bred. Hilda thought  it sulky  and stupid,
and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn't care what he had an
air of; she  was up in arms, and if  he'd been Pope or Emperor it would have
been just the same.
     `Connie's looking awfully  unwell,' she said in her  soft voice, fixing
him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes.  She looked so maidenly, so did
Connie; but he well knew the tone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.
     `She's a little thinner,' he said.
     `Haven't you done anything about it?'
     `Do  you  think it  necessary?' he  asked,  with  his  suavest  English
stiffness, for the two things often go together.
     Hilda only glowered  at  him without  replying;  repartee was  not  her
forte,  nor Connie's; so  she  glowered, and he was  much more uncomfortable
than if she had said things.
     `I'll take her to a doctor,' said Hilda at length. `Can  you  suggest a
good one round here?'
     `I'm afraid I can't.'
     `Then I'll take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust.'
     Though boiling with rage, Clifford said nothing.
     `I suppose  I may as well stay the night,'  said Hilda, pulling off her
gloves, `and I'll drive her to town tomorrow.'
     Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and  at evening the whites
of his eyes  were a  little  yellow too.  He ran  to  liver. But  Hilda  was
consistently modest and maidenly.
     `You  must have a nurse or somebody,  to look after you personally. You
should really have a manservant,'  said Hilda  as they  sat,  with  apparent
calmness,  at coffee after dinner. She  spoke  in her soft, seemingly gentle
way, but Clifford felt she was hitting him on the head with a bludgeon.
     `You think so?' he said coldly.
     `I'm  sure! It's  necessary.  Either  that, or  Father and I must  take
Connie away for some months. This can't go on.'
     `What can't go on?'
     `Haven't  you  looked  at  the child!' asked  Hilda, gazing at him full
stare. He looked rather  like  a huge, boiled  crayfish at the moment; or so
she thought.
     `Connie and I will discuss it,' he said.
     `I've already discussed it with her,' said Hilda.
     Clifford had been  long enough in the hands of nurses; he  hated  them,
because they left him no real privacy. And a manservant!...he couldn't stand
a man hanging round him. Almost better any woman. But why not Connie?
     The two sisters drove off in the morning, Connie looking rather like an
Easter lamb, rather small  beside Hilda, who held the wheel. Sir Malcolm was
away, but the Kensington house was open.
     The doctor examined Connie carefully, and asked her all about her life.
`I  see  your photograph,  and Sir  Clifford's,  in  the illustrated  papers
sometimes. Almost notorieties, aren't you? That's how the quiet little girls
grow  up, though you're only  a quiet little girl even now, in spite of  the
illustrated papers. No, no! There's nothing organically wrong,  but it won't
do! It won't do! Tell  Sir Clifford he's  got to bring you to  town, or take
you abroad, and amuse you. You've got to be amused, got to! Your vitality is
much too low; no reserves, no reserves. The nerves  of the heart a bit queer
already: oh, yes! Nothing but nerves; I'd put you right in a month at Cannes
or  Biarritz. But it  mustn't go  on, mustn't,  I  tell  you,  or I won't be
answerable for consequences. You're  spending your life without renewing it.
You've got to be  amused, properly,  healthily  amused. You're spending your
vitality  without  making  any.  Can't  go on, you  know. Depression!  Avoid
depression!'
     Hilda set her jaw, and that meant something.
     Michaelis heard they were  in town, and came running with  roses. `Why,
whatever's wrong?' he cried. `You're a shadow of yourself. Why, I never  saw
such a change! Why ever didn't  you  let me know? Come to Nice with me! Come
down to Sicily! Go on, come to Sicily with me. It's  lovely  there just now.
You  want sun! You want life! Why, you're wasting away!  Come away  with me!
Come to Africa!  Oh, hang  Sir Clifford! Chuck him, and come along with  me.
I'll marry you the minute he divorces you. Come along and  try a life! God's
love! That place Wragby  would kill anybody. Beastly place! Foul place! Kill
anybody! Come away with me into the  sun! It's the sun you  want, of course,
and a bit of normal life.'
     But  Connie's heart simply  stood still  at  the thought  of abandoning
Clifford there and then. She couldn't do it. No...no! She just couldn't. She
had to go back to Wragby.
     Michaelis was disgusted.  Hilda didn't like Michaelis,  but  she almost
preferred him to Clifford. Back went the sisters to the Midlands.
     Hilda talked to  Clifford,  who still had yellow eyeballs when they got
back. He,  too, in  his way,  was overwrought;  but he had to  listen to all
Hilda  said, to all the doctor had  said, not  what Michaelis had  said,  of
course, and he sat mum through the ultimatum.
     `Here is the  address  of a good manservant,  who  was with  an invalid
patient of the doctor's till he died  last month. He is really  a  good man,
and fairly sure to come.'
     `But I'm not  an  invalid,  and  I will not  have  a  manservant,' said
Clifford, poor devil.
     `And here are  the addresses of two women; I saw one of them, she would
do very well; a woman of about fifty,  quiet,  strong, kind, and  in her way
cultured...'
     Clifford only sulked, and would not answer.
     `Very well,  Clifford.  If we  don't settle something  by  to-morrow, I
shall telegraph to Father, and we shall take Connie away.'
     `Will Connie go?' asked Clifford.
     `She doesn't want  to,  but she  knows she must. Mother died of cancer,
brought on by fretting. We're not running any risks.'
     So next day Clifford suggested Mrs  Bolton,  Tevershall  parish  nurse.
Apparently Mrs Betts  had thought of her. Mrs Bolton was  just retiring from
her parish  duties  to  take  up private nursing jobs.  Clifford had a queer
dread of  delivering himself into  the hands  of a  stranger,  but this  Mrs
Bolton had once nursed him through scarlet fever, and he knew her.
     The  two sisters at once called  on  Mrs Bolton, in a newish house in a
row, quite select for Tevershall. They found a rather good-looking  woman of
forty-odd, in a nurse's uniform, with a white collar  and apron, just making
herself tea in a small crowded sitting-room.
     Mrs Bolton was most attentive and polite, seemed quite nice, spoke with
a bit of a  broad  slur,  but in heavily  correct English, and  from  having
bossed  the  sick colliers for a good many years, had a very good opinion of
herself, and  a fair amount of assurance. In short, in her tiny way, one  of
the governing class in the village, very much respected.
     `Yes, Lady Chatterley's  not  looking at all well! Why, she used  to be
that bonny, didn't  she now? But  she's  been failing  all winter! Oh,  it's
hard, it is. Poor Sir Clifford! Eh, that war, it's a lot to answer for.'
     And Mrs Bolton  would come to Wragby at once,  if Dr Shardlow would let
her  off. She had another  fortnight's parish nursing to do, by rights,  but
they might get a substitute, you know.
     Hilda posted off to Dr Shardlow, and on the following Sunday Mrs Bolton
drove up in Leiver's  cab  to Wragby with two trunks. Hilda had  talks  with
her; Mrs Bolton was ready  at any moment  to talk.  And she seemed so young!
The  way  the  passion  would  flush  in  her  rather pale  cheek.  She  was
forty-seven.
     Her husband,  Ted Bolton, had been killed in the  pit, twenty-two years
ago, twenty-two years last  Christmas, just  at Christmas  time, leaving her
with  two children, one a baby in arms. Oh, the baby was married now, Edith,
to a young  man in  Boots Cash Chemists in Sheffield. The  other  one  was a
schoolteacher in Chesterfield; she came home weekends, when she wasn't asked
out somewhere.  Young folks enjoyed themselves nowadays, not  like when she,
Ivy Bolton, was young.
     Ted Bolton  was  twenty-eight when lie was killed in  an explosion down
th' pit.  The butty  in  front  shouted to them all to lie down quick, there
were four of them. And they all lay down in  time,  only Ted, and it  killed
him. Then at  the inquiry,  on the  masters' side they  said  Ted  had  been
frightened, and trying to run  away, and not obeying orders, so  it was like
his fault really.  So  the  compensation was only  three hundred pounds, and
they made out as if it was more  of a gift than  legal compensation, because
it was really the man's  own fault. And they wouldn't let her have the money
down;  she wanted to have  a  little  shop.  But they  said  she'd  no doubt
squander it, perhaps  in drink!  So she had to  draw it  thirty shillings  a
week. Yes, she had to go every Monday morning down to the offices, and stand
there a couple  of hours  waiting her  turn;  yes, for almost four years she
went every  Monday. And what  could she do with  two little children  on her
hands?  But Ted's mother was very  good to her.  When the baby  could toddle
she'd  keep both  the children  for the day, while  she, Ivy Bolton, went to
Sheffield, and attended classes in ambulance, and  then the  fourth year she
even  took a  nursing course  and got  qualified.  She  was determined to be
independent  and  keep  her  children.  So  she  was  assistant  at Uthwaite
hospital,  just a little  place,  for a  while. But  when  the Company,  the
Tevershall Colliery Company, really Sir Geoffrey, saw that she  could get on
by herself, they were very good  to  her,  gave her the parish nursing,  and
stood by her, she  would  say that for  them. And she'd  done it ever since,
till now it  was getting a  bit much for  her;  she needed  something  a bit
lighter, there was such a lot  of traipsing around if  you  were a  district
nurse.
     `Yes, the Company's been very good to me, I always say it. But I should
never  forget what they said about Ted,  for he was as steady and fearless a
chap  as ever set  foot  on the  cage, and it was as good  as branding him a
coward. But there, he was dead, and could say nothing to none of 'em.'
     It was  a queer mixture of feelings the woman showed as she talked. She
liked the  colliers, whom  she  had nursed for so  long; but she  felt  very
superior  to  them.  She felt  almost  upper class; and at the  same time  a
resentment against the ruling  class smouldered in her.  The masters!  In  a
dispute between  masters and men, she was always for the men. But when there
was no question of contest, she was pining  to be superior, to be one of the
upper class.  The upper classes  fascinated her, appealing  to  her peculiar
English  passion  for  superiority. She  was  thrilled  to  come to  Wragby;
thrilled to  talk to Lady Chatterley,  my  word,  different from  the common
colliers'  wives! She said so in so many words. Yet  one could  see a grudge
against the Chatterleys peep out in her; the grudge against the masters.
     `Why,  yes,  of course, it would wear Lady Chatterley out! It's a mercy
she had a sister to come and help her.  Men don't think, high and low-alike,
they take what a woman does for them for granted. Oh, I've told the colliers
off  about it many a time. But  it's  very hard for  Sir Clifford, you know,
crippled like that. They were always a haughty family, standoffish in a way,
as they've a right to be.  But then  to be brought down  like that! And it's
very hard on Lady Chatterley, perhaps harder on her. What she misses! I only
had  Ted three years, but  my word, while I had  him I had a husband I could
never forget. He  was one in  a thousand, and jolly as  the day. Who'd  ever
have thought he'd get killed?  I  don't believe it to this day somehow, I've
never  believed it, though I washed him  with my own hands. But he was never
dead for me, he never was. I never took it in.'
     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 she  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  super-human  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 stand-offishness  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 realized  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.

        Chapter 8

     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 going out at all.
     It was a blowy day soon  after  Hilda had gone,  that Mrs Bolton  said:
`Now  why  don't you go for  a walk through the wood, and look at  the daffs
behind  the  keeper's cottage? They're the prettiest sight you'd  see  in  a
day's march. And you  could put  some in your room; wild daffs are always so
cheerful-looking, aren't they?'
     Connie  took it in good part, even daffs for daffodils. Wild daffodils!
After  all,  one  could  not  stew  in  one's  own juice.  The  spring  came
back...`Seasons return,  but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of
Ev'n or Morn.'
     And  the  keeper,  his thin, white  body, like a  lonely pistil  of  an
invisible flower! She had forgotten  him  in her unspeakable depression. But
now something roused...`Pale beyond porch and portal'...the thing  to do was
to pass the porches and the portals.
     She was  stronger,  she could  walk better,  and iii the  wood the wind
would not be so  tiring  as it was across the bark, flatten against her. She
wanted to forget, to forget the world, and all the dreadful,  carrion-bodied
people. `Ye must be  born again! I believe in the resurrection  of the body!
Except a grain of wheat fall  into  the earth and  die, it shall by no means
bring forth.  When the crocus cometh  forth I  too will emerge  and  see the
sun!' In the wind of March endless phrases swept through her consciousness.
     Little  gusts  of sunshine  blew,  strangely  bright, and  lit  up  the
celandines at  the  wood's  edge,  under  the hazel-rods, they  spangled out
bright and yellow.  And  the wood  was  still, stiller, but yet  gusty  with
crossing  sun. The first windflowers were out, and all the wood  seemed pale
with  the pallor of  endless  little  anemones, sprinkling the shaken floor.
`The  world  has grown  pale  with  thy breath.' But it was  the  breath  of
Persephone, this time; she was out  of hell on  a cold morning. Cold breaths
of wind came, and overhead there was an anger of entangled wind caught among
the twigs.  It,  too,  was caught and trying to  tear itself free, the wind,
like  Absalom. How  cold  the  anemones looked,  bobbing  their  naked white
shoulders over  crinoline  skirts of  green. But they stood  it. A few first
bleached little primroses too,  by  the  path,  and  yellow  buds  unfolding
themselves.
     The  roaring  and swaying was  overhead,  only  cold currents came down
below. Connie was strangely excited in the wood,  and the colour flew in her
cheeks, and burned  blue in her eyes. She  walked  ploddingly, picking a few
primroses  and  the  first violets, that  smelled sweet  and cold, sweet and
cold. And she drifted on without knowing where she was.
     Till  she came  to the clearing, at the end of  the wood,  and  saw the
green-stained stone cottage, looking almost rosy,  like the flesh underneath
a mushroom, its stone warmed  in a burst of sun. And there was  a sparkle of
yellow jasmine by the door; the closed door. But no sound; no smoke from the
chimney; no dog barking.
     She went quietly round to the back, where the bank rose up;  she had an
excuse, to see the daffodils.
     And they were there, the short-stemmed flowers, rustling and fluttering
and shivering, so bright and alive, but with nowhere to hide their faces, as
they turned them away from the wind.
     They shook their  bright,  sunny little rags in bouts of distress.  But
perhaps they liked it really; perhaps they really liked the tossing.
     Constance  sat  down  with her  back to a  young  pine-tree, that wayed
against  her with curious life, elastic, and powerful, rising up. The erect,
alive thing, with  its  top in the  sun! And she watched the  daffodils turn
golden,  in  a burst of sun that was warm on  her  hands  and lap.  Even she
caught the faint, tarry scent of  the flowers. And then, being so  still and
alone, she seemed to bet into the current of her own proper destiny. She had
been  fastened  by a  rope,  and jagging  and snarring  like  a boat  at its
moorings; now she was loose and adrift.
     The sunshine  gave way to chill; the  daffodils were in shadow, dipping
silently. So they would dip through the  day  and  the long  cold night.  So
strong in their frailty!
     She rose, a  little  stiff, took  a  few  daffodils, and went down. She
hated breaking the flowers, but she wanted just one  or  two to go with her.
She would  have  to go back to Wragby and its walls, and now she  hated  it,
especially its thick walls. Walls! Always walls! Yet one needed them in this
wind.
     When she got home Clifford asked her:
     `Where did you go?'
     `Right across the wood! Look,  aren't the little daffodils adorable? To
think they should come out of the earth!'
     `Just as much out of air and sunshine,' he said.
     `But modelled in the earth,' she retorted, with a prompt contradiction,
that surprised her a little.
     The  next afternoon she went to the wood  again. She followed the broad
riding that  swerved round  and  up through the larches to a  spring  called
John's Well. It was cold on this hillside, and not a flower  in the darkness
of larches.  But the icy little spring softly  pressed upwards from its tiny
well-bed  of  pure,  reddish-white  pebbles.  How  icy  and  clear  it  was!
Brilliant! The new keeper had no doubt put in fresh pebbles.  She heard  the
faint tinkle of water, as the tiny overflow trickled over and downhill. Even
above  the  hissing  boom  of  the  larchwood,  that  spread its  bristling,
leafless, wolfish darkness  on the down-slope, she heard  the  tinkle as  of
tiny water-bells.
     This  place was a little sinister, cold, damp.  Yet  the well must have
been  a drinking-place for hundreds of years. Now no  more. Its tiny cleared
space was lush and cold and dismal.
     She rose and  went slowly towards home. As  she went  she heard a faint
tapping away on the right, and stood still to listen. Was it hammering, or a
woodpecker? It was surely hammering.
     She  walked on, listening. And then  she noticed a narrow track between
young fir-trees, a track that seemed to lead nowhere. But  she  felt  it had
been used.  She turned  down it adventurously, between the thick young firs,
which  gave way soon to  the old oak wood. She  followed the track, and  the
hammering grew nearer, in the silence of the  windy  wood, for trees make  a
silence even in their noise of wind.
     She saw  a secret  little clearing,  and  a secret little hot  made  of
rustic poles. And she had  never been here before!  She realized  it was the
quiet  place where  the growing  pheasants were reared; the  keeper  in  his
shirt-sleeves was kneeling, hammering. The dog trotted forward with a short,
sharp bark, and  the keeper lifted his face  suddenly  and saw her. He had a
startled look in his eyes.
     He  straightened himself and  saluted, watching  her in silence, as she
came forward with  weakening limbs. He resented the intrusion; he  cherished
his solitude as his only and last freedom in life.
     `I  wondered  what the  hammering  was,' she  said,  feeling  weak  and
breathless, and a little afraid of him, as he looked so straight at her.
     `Ah'm gettin' th' coops ready for th' young  bods,'  he said,  in broad
vernacular.
     She did not know what to say, and she felt weak. `I  should like to sit
down a bit,' she said.
     `Come  and sit 'ere i' th'  'ut,' he said, going in front of her to the
hut,  pushing aside  some  timber and stuff, and drawing out a rustic chair,
made of hazel sticks.
     `Am Ah t' light yer a little fire?' he asked,  with the curious naîvetè
of the dialect.
     `Oh, don't bother,' she replied.
     But he looked  at  her hands; they were rather blue. So he quickly took
some larch  twigs  to the  little brick fire-place in the corner, and  in  a
moment the yellow flame was  running up the  chimney. He made a place by the
brick hearth.
     `Sit 'ere then a bit, and warm yer,' he said.
     She obeyed him. He  had that  curious kind of protective  authority she
obeyed  at once.  So she sat and warmed her hands at the blaze,  and dropped
logs on the fire, whilst outside he  was hammering again. She did not really
want to sit,  poked in  a corner by the  fire; she would rather have watched
from the door, but she was being looked after, so she had to submit.
     The hut was quite cosy, panelled with unvarnished deal, having a little
rustic table and stool beside her chair, and a carpenter's bench, then a big
box, tools, new boards, nails; and many things hung from pegs: axe, hatchet,
traps,  things in  sacks,  his coat.  It had  no  window, the light  came in
through the  open  door. It was a jumble, but  also it was a sort  of little
sanctuary.
     She listened  to  the tapping of the man's hammer; it was not so happy.
He was oppressed. Here was a trespass on his privacy, and a dangerous one! A
woman! He had  reached the point where all  he  wanted on  earth  was  to be
alone. And yet he was powerless to preserve his privacy; he was a hired man,
and these people were his masters.
     Especially  he did not want to come into contact with a woman again. He
feared it; for he had a big wound from old contacts. He felt if he could not
be alone, and if he could not be left alone, he  would  die. His recoil away
from the outer  world  was  complete; his last refuge was this wood; to hide
himself there!
     Connie grew warm by the fire, which she had made too big: then she grew
hot. She went and sat on the stool in the doorway, watching the man at work.
He  seemed  not  to  notice her,  but  he  knew. Yet  he  worked on,  as  if
absorbedly, and his brown  dog sat on  her tail near  him,  and surveyed the
untrustworthy world.
     Slender, quiet and  quick,  the  man finished  the coop he was  making,
turned it over, tried  the sliding door,  then set it aside.  Then he  rose,
went for an old coop, and took it to the chopping log where he was  working.
Crouching, he tried the bars; some broke  in his hands; he began to draw the
nails. Then he turned the coop over and deliberated, and  he gave absolutely
no sign of awareness of the woman's presence.
     So Connie watched him fixedly. And  the same solitary aloneness she had
seen in him naked, she now saw in him clothed: solitary, and intent, like an
animal that  works alone, but also brooding, like a soul that  recoils away,
away from all human contact. Silently, patiently, he was recoiling away from
her even now. It was the stillness, and the  timeless sort of patience, in a
man impatient and passionate,  that touched Connie's womb. She saw it in his
bent head,  the  quick quiet hands, the crouching of  his slender, sensitive
loins; something patient and withdrawn.  She felt  his  experience  had been
deeper and wider  than her  own; much  deeper  and wider, and  perhaps  more
deadly. And this relieved her of herself; she felt almost irresponsible.
     So she  sat in the doorway of  the hut  in  a dream, utterly unaware of
time and of particular  circumstances.  She  was  so drifted  away  that  he
glanced up at her  quickly,  and saw the utterly still, waiting look  on her
face.  To him it was a  look of waiting. And a  little thin  tongue  of fire
suddenly flickered in his loins, at the root of his back, and  he groaned in
spirit. He dreaded with a repulsion almost of death, any further close human
contact. He wished above all things she would go away, and  leave him to his
own  privacy. He dreaded her  will,  her female will,  and her modern female
insistency. And  above all  he dreaded  her  cool,  upper-class impudence of
having her own way.  For after  all he was only  a hired  man. He  hated her
presence there.
     Connie came to herself  with sudden uneasiness. She rose. The afternoon
was turning to evening, yet she could not go away. She went over to the man,
who stood up at attention, his worn face stiff and blank, his eyes  watching
her.
     `It is so nice  here, so restful,' she  said.  `I have never been  here
before.'
     `No?'
     `I think I shall come and sit here sometimes.
     `Yes?'
     `Do you lock the hut when you're not here?'
     `Yes, your Ladyship.'
     `Do  you  think  I  could have  a key too,  so that  I  could  sit here
sometimes? Are there two keys?'
     `Not as Ah know on, ther' isna.'
     He had lapsed into the vernacular. Connie hesitated;  he was putting up
an opposition. Was it his hut, after all?
     `Couldn't  we  get another  key?'  she  asked in  her  soft voice, that
underneath had the ring of a woman determined to get her way.
     `Another!' he said, glancing at her with a flash of anger, touched with
derision.
     `Yes, a duplicate,' she said, flushing.
     `'Appen Sir Clifford 'ud know,' he said, putting her off.
     `Yes!' she said,  `he might have another. Otherwise we  could  have one
made from the one you have. It  would only take a  day or so, I suppose. You
could spare your key for so long.'
     `Ah canna tell yer, m'Lady! Ah know nob'dy as ma'es keys round 'ere.'
     Connie suddenly flushed with anger.
     `Very well!' she said. `I'll see to it.'
     `All right, your Ladyship.'
     Their eyes met.  His had a cold, ugly look of dislike and contempt, and
indifference to what would happen. Hers were hot with rebuff.
     But her heart sank, she saw how utterly he  disliked her, when she went
against him. And she saw him in a sort of desperation.
     `Good afternoon!'
     `Afternoon,  my Lady!' He  saluted  and turned  abruptly  away. She had
wakened the sleeping  dogs  of old voracious anger in him, anger against the
self-willed female. And he was powerless, powerless. He knew it!
     And she was angry  against the self-willed  male. A  servant  too!  She
walked sullenly home.
     She found Mrs Bolton  under the  great beech-tree on the knoll, looking
for her.
     `I just wondered if you'd be coming, my Lady,' the woman said brightly.
     `Am I late?' asked Connie.
     `Oh only Sir Clifford was waiting for his tea.'
     `Why didn't you make it then?'
     `Oh, I  don't think  it's hardly my  place. I don't  think Sir Clifford
would like it at all, my Lady.'
     `I don't see why not,' said Connie.
     She  went indoors to Clifford's study, where  the  old brass kettle was
simmering on the tray.
     `Am I  late, Clifford?'  she  said, putting  down  the few  flowers and
taking up the  tea-caddy, as she stood before the tray in her hat and scarf.
`I'm sorry! Why didn't you let Mrs Bolton make the tea?'
     `I didn't think  of  it,' he  said ironically. `I don't  quite  see her
presiding at the tea-table.'
     `Oh, there's nothing sacrosanct about a silver tea-pot,' said Connie.
     He glanced up at her curiously.
     `What did you do all afternoon?' he said.
     `Walked and sat  in  a sheltered place.  Do  you  know  there are still
berries on the big holly-tree?'
     She took off her scarf, but  not her hat, and sat down to make tea. The
toast  would certainly be  leathery. She put the  tea-cosy over the tea-pot,
and rose  to get a little glass for her violets. The poor flowers hung over,
limp on their stalks.
     `They'll revive again!'  she said,  putting  them before him  in  their
glass for him to smell.
     `Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,' he quoted.
     `I  don't see  a bit  of connexion with the  actual violets,' she said.
`The Elizabethans are rather upholstered.'
     She poured him his tea.
     `Do  you  think there is a second  key to that little hut not far  from
John's Well, where the pheasants are reared?' she said.
     `There may be. Why?'
     `I happened to find it  today---and I'd never seen it before.  I  think
it's a darling place. I could sit there sometimes, couldn't I?'
     `Was Mellors there?'
     `Yes! That's how I found it: his hammering. He didn't seem  to like  my
intruding at all. In fact he was  almost  rude when I  asked about a  second
key.'
     `What did he say?'
     `Oh, nothing: just his manner; and he said he knew nothing about keys.'
     `There  may be one in Father's study. Betts knows them all, they're all
there. I'll get him to look.'
     `Oh do!' she said.
     `So Mellors was almost rude?'
     `Oh,  nothing, really!  But  I don't  think he  wanted  me  to have the
freedom of the castle, quite.'
     `I don't suppose he did.'
     `Still, I don't see  why he should mind. It's not his home, after  all!
It's not his private abode. I don't see  why I shouldn't sit there if I want
to.'
     `Quite!' said Clifford. `He thinks too much of himself, that man.'
     `Do you think he does?'
     `Oh, decidedly! He thinks he's something exceptional. You know he had a
wife he didn't get on with, so he joined up in 1915 and was sent to India, I
believe. Anyhow he was blacksmith to the cavalry in Egypt for a time; always
was  connected  with  horses, a clever  fellow that way.  Then  some  Indian
colonel took a  fancy to him, and he  was made a lieutenant. Yes,  they gave
him a commission. I believe  he  went back to India with his colonel, and up
to the north-west frontier. He was ill; he was a pension. He didn't come out
of the army till last  year,  I believe, and then, naturally, it  isn't easy
for a man  like that to get  back  to his own level. He's bound to flounder.
But he does his duty all right, as far as I'm concerned. Only I'm not having
any of the Lieutenant Mellors touch.'
     `How could they make him an officer when he speaks broad Derbyshire?'
     `He doesn't...except by fits  and starts. He can  speak perfectly well,
for him. I suppose he has an idea if he's come down to the ranks again, he'd
better speak as the ranks speak.'
     `Why didn't you tell me about him before?'
     `Oh, I've no  patience with these  romances. They're  the  ruin  of all
order. It's a thousand pities they ever happened.'
     Connie was  inclined to agree. What was the good of discontented people
who fitted in nowhere?
     In the spell of fine weather Clifford, too, decided to go to the  wood.
The wind was cold,  but  not so  tiresome, and  the  sunshine  was like life
itself, warm and full.
     `It's amazing,' said Connie, `how  different one feels  when there's  a
really  fresh  fine day. Usually one feels the very air is half dead. People
are killing the very air.'
     `Do you think people are doing it?' he asked.
     `I  do. The steam of so  much  boredom, and discontent and anger out of
all the people, just kills the vitality in the air. I'm sure of it.'
     `Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere  lowers the vitality  of  the
people?' he said.
     `No, it's man that poisons the universe,' she asserted.
     `Fouls his own nest,' remarked Clifford.
     The chair puffed on. In the hazel copse catkins were hanging pale gold,
and in  sunny places the wood-anemones were wide open, as if exclaiming with
the  joy of life,  just as good as  in past days, when people could  exclaim
along with them. They had a faint scent of apple-blossom. Connie  gathered a
few for Clifford.
     He took them and looked at them curiously.
     `Thou still unravished bride of quietness,' he quoted. `It seems to fit
flowers so much better than Greek vases.'
     `Ravished is  such  a  horrid word!' she  said. `It's only  people  who
ravish things.'
     `Oh, I don't know...snails and things,' he said.
     `Even snails only eat them, and bees don't ravish.'
     She was  angry  with him, turning  everything  into words. Violets were
Juno's  eyelids,  and windflowers were  on  ravished  brides. How  she hated
words,  always  coming  between  her  and life: they did  the ravishing,  if
anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the life-sap out  of
living things.
     The walk with Clifford was not quite a success.  Between him and Connie
there was a tension that each  pretended  not to notice, but  there  it was.
Suddenly, with all the force of  her  female instinct, she  was  shoving him
off. She wanted to be clear of him, and especially of his consciousness, his
words,  his  obsession  with himself,  his endless  treadmill obsession with
himself, and his own words.
     The weather came  rainy again. But after a  day or two she went  out in
the rain, and she went  to  the  wood. And  once there, she went towards the
hut. It was raining, but not so cold,  and  the  wood  felt  so  silent  and
remote, inaccessible in the dusk of rain.
     She came to the clearin