Chapter 3

Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness, which was taking possession of her like madness. It thrilled inside her body, somewhere, till she felt she must jump into water and swim to get away from it; a mad restlessness. It made her heart beat violently for no reason. And she was getting thinner.

It was just restlessness. She would rush off across the park, abandon Clifford, and lie in the grass. To get away from the house…she must get away from the house and everybody.

Vaguely she knew herself that she was going to pieces in some way. Vaguely she knew she was out of connexion: she had lost touch with the world. Only Clifford and his books, which did not exist…which had nothing in them! Vaguely she knew. But it was like beating her head against a stone.

Her father told her again: ‘Why don’t you get yourself a beau^[14], Connie? Do you all the good in the world.’

That winter Michaelis came for a few days. He was a young Irishman who had already made a large fortune by his plays in America. He had been taken up quite enthusiastically for a time by smart society^[15] in London, for he wrote smart society plays. Then gradually smart society realized that he had made them look ridiculous. He was discovered to be anti-English, which was to the class worse than the dirtiest crime. He was cut dead, and his corpse thrown into the refuse can^[16].

Nevertheless Michaelis had his apartment in Mayfair^[17], and walked down Bond Street perfectly dressed by the best tailors.

Clifford was inviting the young man of thirty at an unfavorable moment in that young man’s career. Yet Clifford did not hesitate. Michaelis had the ear of a few million people, probably; and would no doubt be grateful to be asked down to Wragby, when the rest of the smart world was cutting him.

Connie wondered a little over Clifford’s instinct to become known as a writer, as a first-class modern writer. Clifford discovered new channels of publicity. He had all kinds of people at Wragby.

Michaelis arrived duly, in a very neat car, with a chauffeur and a manservant. He was absolutely Bond Street! But at sight of him Clifford saw that he wasn’t exactly what his appearance intended to show. To Clifford this was final and enough. Yet he was very polite to the man, because he wanted to sell himself to the goddess of Success also, if only she would have him.

Michaelis obviously wasn’t an Englishman, in spite of all the tailors, hatters, barbers, booters of the very best quarter of London. Poor Michaelis had been much kicked, so that he had a slightly tail-between-the-legs^[18] look even now. He had pushed his way by instinct and impertinence to the stage, with his plays. He had caught the public. And he had thought the kicking days were over. Alas, they weren’t… They never would be. For he, in a sense, asked to be kicked. He pined to be where he didn’t belong…among the English upper classes. And how he hated them!

Nevertheless he travelled with his manservant and his very neat car, this Dublin mongrel.

There was something about him that Connie liked. He didn’t put on airs to himself, he had no illusions about himself. He talked to Clifford briefly, practically, about all the things Clifford wanted to know. He knew he had been asked down to Wragby to be made use of, and like a business man, he let himself be asked questions, and he answered with as little feeling as possible.

‘Money!’ he said. ‘Money is a sort of instinct. It’s a sort of property of nature in a man to make money. Once you start, you make money, and you go on; up to a point, I suppose.’

‘But you’ve got to begin,’ said Clifford.

‘Oh, quite! You’ve got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You should beat your way in. Once you’ve done that, you can’t help it.’

‘And you think it’s a writer of popular plays that you’ve got to be?’ asked Connie.

‘There, exactly!’ he said, turning to her. ‘There’s nothing in popularity. There’s nothing in the public, if it comes to that. There’s nothing really in my plays to make them popular. It’s not that. They just are like the weather…the sort that will have to be…for the time being.’

He turned his slow eyes on Connie, and she trembled a little. He seemed so old; and at the same time he was lonely like a child. An outcast, but with a desperate bravery.

‘At least it’s wonderful what you’ve done at your time of life,’ said Clifford.

‘I’m thirty…yes, I’m thirty!’ said Michaelis, sharply and suddenly, with a curious laugh; triumphant, and bitter.

‘And are you alone?’ asked Connie.

‘How do you mean? Do I live alone? I’ve got my servant. He’s a Greek, so he says. And I’m going to marry. Oh, yes, I must marry.’

‘It sounds like going to have your tonsils cut,’ laughed Connie. ‘Will it be an efof rt?’

He looked at her admiringly. ‘Well, Lady Chatterley, somehow it will! I find… excuse me… I find I can’t marry an Englishwoman, not even an Irishwoman…’

‘Try an American,’ said Clifford.

‘Oh, American!’ He laughed. ‘No, I’ve asked my man if he will find me a Turk or something…something nearer to the Oriental.’

Connie really wondered at this queer, melancholy specimen of extraordinary success; it was said he had an income of fifty thousand dollars from America alone. Sometimes he was handsome. Connie felt a sudden, strange sympathy for him, amounting almost to love. The outsider! And they called him a bounder! How much more bounderish and assertive Clifford looked! How much stupider!

Michaelis knew at once he had made an impression on her. He turned his eyes on her. He was estimating her, and the extent of the impression he had made. For the English he was the outsider. Yet women sometimes fell for him…Englishwomen too.

Breakfast was served in the bedrooms; Clifford never appeared before lunch, and the dining-room was a little gloomy. After coffee Michaelis, restless and ill-sitting soul, wondered what he should do. It was a fine November day. He looked over the melancholy park. My God! What a place!

He sent a servant to ask, could he be of any service to Lady Chatterley: he thought of driving into Shefifeld. The answer came, would he care to go up to Lady Chatterley’s sitting-room.

Connie had a sitting-room on the third floor, the top floor of the central portion of the house. Clifford’s rooms were on the ground floor, of course. Michaelis was flattered by being asked up to Lady Chatterley’s own parlour. In her room he glanced round at the fine German reproductions of Renoir and Cezanne.

‘It’s very pleasant up here,’ he said, with his queer smile. ‘You are wise to get up to the top.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ she said.

Her room was the only gay, modern one in the house, the only spot in Wragby where her personality was revealed. Clifford had never seen it, and she asked very few people up.

Now she and Michaelis sat on opposite sides of the fire and talked. She asked him about himself, his mother and father, his brothers… Michaelis talked frankly about himself, quite frankly, then showing pride in his success.

‘But why are you such a lonely bird?’ Connie asked him; and again he looked at her, with his searching look.

‘Some birds are that way,’ he replied. Then, with a touch of irony: ‘but, look here, what about yourself? Aren’t you by way of being a lonely bird yourself?’ Connie, a little startled, thought about it for a few moments, and then she said: ‘Only in a way! Not altogether, like you!’

‘Am I altogether a lonely bird?’ he asked, with his queer grin of a smile.

‘Why?’ she said, as she looked at him. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

She felt a terrible appeal coming to her from him that made her almost lose her balance.

‘Oh, you’re quite right!’ he said, turning his head away, and looking sideways, downwards.

He looked up at her with the full glance that saw everything, registered everything.

‘It’s awfully nice of you to think of me,’ he said laconically.

‘Why shouldn’t I think of you?’ she exclaimed.

He gave the quick laugh.

‘Oh, in that way!..May I hold your hand for a minute?’ he asked suddenly, fixing his eyes on her with almost hypnotic power, and sending out an appeal that affected her directly.

She stared at him, and he went over and kneeled beside her, and took her two feet close in his two hands, and buried his face in her lap, remaining motionless. She was perfectly shocked, looking down in a sort of amazement at the back of his neck, feeling his face pressing her thighs. She could not help putting her hand, with tenderness and compassion, on the defenceless back of his neck, and he trembled.

Then he looked up at her with that awful appeal in his glowing eyes. She was utterly incapable of resisting it; she must give him anything, anything.

He was a very gentle lover, very gentle with the woman, and yet at the same time aware of every sound outside.

To her it meant nothing except that she gave herself to him. And at length he ceased to quiver any more, and lay quite still. Then, she stroked his head that lay on her breast.

When he rose, he kissed both her hands, then both her feet, and in silence went away to the end of the room, where he stood with his back to her. There was silence for some minutes. Then he turned and came to her again as she sat in her old place by the fire.

‘And now, I suppose you’ll hate me!’ he said in a quiet way. She looked up at him quickly.

‘Why should I?’ she asked.

‘They mostly do,’ he said; then he caught himself up. ‘I mean…a woman is supposed to.’

‘This is the last moment when I ought to hate you,’ she said.

‘I know! It should be so! You’re frightfully good to me…’ he cried miserably.

She wondered why he should be miserable. ‘Won’t you sit down again?’ she said. He glanced at the door.

‘Sir Clifford!’ he said, ‘won’t he…won’t he be…?’

She paused a moment to consider. ‘Perhaps!’ she said. And she looked up at him. ‘I don’t want Clifford to know not even to suspect. It would hurt him so much. But I don’t think it’s wrong, do you?’

‘Wrong! Good God, no! You’re only too good to me…I can hardly bear it.’

He turned aside, and she saw that in another moment he would be sobbing.

‘But we needn’t let Clifford know, need we?’ she pleaded. ‘It would hurt him so. And if he never knows, never suspects, it hurts nobody.’

‘Me!’ he said, almost fiercely; ‘he’ll know nothing from me! You see if he does. Me give myself away! Ha! Ha!’ he laughed cynically, at such an idea. She watched him in wonder. He said to her: ‘May I kiss your hand and go? I’ll run into Shefifeld I think, and lunch there, if I may, and be back to tea. May I do anything for you? May I be sure you don’t hate me? – and that you won’t?’—he ended desperately.

‘No, I don’t hate you,’ she said. ‘I think you’re nice.’

‘Ah!’ he said to her, ‘I’d rather you said that to me than said you love me^[19]! It means such a lot more…Till afternoon then. I’ve plenty to think about till then.’ He kissed her hands humbly and was gone.

‘I don’t think I can stand that young man,’ said Clifford at lunch.

‘Why?’ asked Connie.

‘He’s such a bounder underneath his veneer.’

‘I think people have been so unkind to him,’ said Connie.

‘Do you wonder? And do you think he wastes time doing deeds of kindness?’

‘I think he has a certain sort of generosity.’

‘Towards whom?’

‘I don’t quite know.’

‘Naturally you don’t. I’m afraid you mistake unscrupulousness for generosity.^[20]’

Connie paused. Did she? It was just possible. In his way Michaelis had conquered the world, which was what Clifford wanted to do. Ways and means…? The goddess of Success was hunted by thousands of dogs. The one that got her first was the real dog among dogs, if you go by success! So Michaelis could keep his tail up^[21].

Which he didn’t. He came back towards tea-time with a large handful of violets and lilies, and the same sad expression. Connie wondered sometimes if it were a sort of mask, because it was almost too fixed. Was he really such a sad dog?

Connie was in love with him, but she managed to sit with her embroidery and let the men talk, and not give herself away. As for Michaelis, he was perfect; exactly the same melancholic, attentive young fellow of the previous evening. Connie felt he must have forgotten the morning. He had not forgotten. But he knew where he was…in the same old place outside.

He didn’t take the love-making altogether personally. He knew it would not change him from an ownerless dog into a comfortable society dog. His isolation was a necessity to him; just as the mixing-in with the smart people was also a necessity.

But occasional love, as a comfort and soothing, was also a good thing, and he was not ungrateful. On the contrary, he was very grateful for a piece of natural, spontaneous kindness: almost to tears. His child’s soul was sobbing with gratitude to the woman, and burning to come to her again.

He found an opportunity to say to her, as they were lighting the candles in the hall:

‘May I come?’

‘I’ll come to you,’ she said.

‘Oh, good!’

He waited for her a long time…but she came.

He was the trembling excited sort of lover, whose crisis soon came, and was finished. There was something curiously childlike and defenceless about his naked body: as children are naked. He roused in the woman a wild sort of compassion and yearning, and a wild physical desire. The physical desire he did not satisfy in her; he was always come and finished so quickly, while she lay disappointed, lost.

But then she soon learnt to hold him, to keep him there inside her when his crisis was over. And there he was generous and curiously potent; he stayed firm inside her, while she was active… wildly, passionately active, coming to her own crisis. And as he felt her achieving her own satisfaction, he had a curious sense of pride.

‘Ah, how good!’ she whispered, and she became quite still, clinging to him. And he lay there in his own isolation, but somehow proud.

He stayed that time only the three days, and to Clifford was exactly the same as on the first evening; to Connie also.

He wrote to Connie with the same melancholy note as ever, sometimes witty. A kind of hopeless affection he seemed to feel for her, and the remoteness remained the same.

Connie never really understood him, but, in her way, she loved him. So they went on for quite a time, writing, and meeting occasionally in London. She still wanted the physical, sexual thrill she could get with him by her own activity. And he still wanted to give it her. Which was enough to keep them connected.

She was very cheerful at Wragby. And she used all her cheerfulness and satisfaction to stimulate Clifford, so that he wrote his best at this time, and was almost happy in his strange blind way. He really reaped the fruits^[22] of the sensual satisfaction she got out of Michaelis inside her. But of course he never knew it, and if he had, he wouldn’t have said thank you!

Yet when those days of her joyful cheerfulness were gone and she was depressed and irritable, how Clifford longed for them again! Perhaps if he’d known he might even have wished to get her and Michaelis together again.