Lady Scatcherd

“ After I had been in the hotel for a few days and watched the Castlecourt party, all apprehension left me, and I felt confident and cool. They were an extremely simple lot. Lady Castlecourt was a beauty—a seductive, smiling, white and gold person, without any sense at all. Her husband adored her. Being a man of some brains, that was what might have been expected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Scattergood knew that the present compelled her interest and that the future thrilled her. She wanted to participate in life, to be in the midst of events—to continue to live so long as the power of movement and of perception remained to her. He was now able to see that the old lady had done much to mold his character, and as he recalled incident after incident his face wore a softer, more melancholy expression than Coldriver was wont to associate with it. ”

“ So the house must have drowsed, evening after evening, before Chase ever came near it, with the only difference that from one of those doors had emerged an old lady dressed in black silk, leaning on a stick, an arbitrary old lady, who had slowly descended the polished stairs, carefully placing the rubber ferule of her stick from step to step, and helping herself on the banisters with the other hand, instead of the alien clerk from Wolverhampton, who hesitated to go downstairs to dinner because he feared there would be a servant in the room to wait upon him. ”

“ There was no story of misfortune but would bring the tears to her eyes and her purse to her hand; generous and soft-hearted she was to every creature that walked.
No one could be angry with her long. I've seen Lord Castlecourt begin to scold her, and end by laughing at her and kissing her. Not but what she respected him and loved him. She did both, and she was afraid of him, too. No one knew better than my lady when it was time to stop trifling with my lord and be serious. ”

“ Dame Satchell’s cheeks glowed a deeper crimson, and her variable anger raged from Clupp to Halfman.
“Call me no names,” she squalled, “though you do call yourself captain, or I’ll call you the son of a—”
However Mistress Satchell intended to finish her objurgation it was not given to the company to learn, for Halfman tripped up her speech with a nimble interruption.
“The son of a pike, so please you,” he suggested, with a smile that softened the virago’s heart. “There, we have toiled enough to-day and it tests our tempers. Dismiss.” ”

“ The last Lord Scarlett, your elder brother, went to Australia because that actress he was madly in love with had a husband who popped up and made himself disagreeable. Oh, I can prove everything against you! And I know where the true Lady Scarlett is at this minute. You can prove nothing against me. You don't know where your son is, and you won't know until you hand that poor child from Australia over to Captain Burns and me. ”

“ It’s what every girl ought to feel, I’m sure.”
Sara Dwight had the greatest admiration for Lady Castlecourt. She’d manage to be standing about in doorways and on the stairs when my lady passed down to go to dinner and to the opera. Then she’d come back and tell me how beautiful my lady was, and how she envied me being her maid. While she was talking she’d help me tidy up the room, and sometimes—because she admired my lady so—I’d let her look at the new clothes from Paris as they hung in the wardrobe. Sara would gape with admiration over [21] them. ”

“ I am of the opinion that they are still in the hands of Sara Wight, who, whether she is an accomplished thief or not, is probably more wary and more versed in such dealings than Lady Castlecourt.
That her ladyship should have been the object of my suspicions from the start may seem peculiar to those to whom she only appears as a person of rank, wealth, and beauty. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Society made much of her; she became one of its most brilliant ornaments. Her husband’s infatuation was well known. During the first years of their marriage he could refuse her nothing, and he stinted himself—for, tho well off, Lord Castlecourt is by no means a millionaire peer—in order to satisfy her whims. The lady very quickly developed great extravagances. She became known as one of the most expensively dressed women in London. ”

“ She paused, out of breath. Brilliana, leaning [Pg 142] forward with an air of infinite gravity, commented:
“It were more to your point, surely, if the gentleman had skill in cook-craft.”
Mistress Satchell was not to be outdone; she clapped her hands together noisily and shrilled her triumph.
“There, too, he meets you. After breakfast this morning, when I asked him how he fared, he overpraised my table, and he gave me a recipe for grilling capons in the Spanish manner—well, you shall know, if you do but live long enough.” ”

“ She had always let herself be dominated by her elder sister. Now, though somewhere inside herself she was weeping, she was free of the dominion of other women. Ah! that in itself was a relief, like being given another life: to be free of the strange dominion and obsession of other women. How awful they were, women!
She was glad to be with her father, whose favourite she had always been. She and Hilda stayed in a little hotel off Pall Mall, and Sir Malcolm was in his club. ”

“ No, no, she would give up her hard bright female power; she was weary of it, stiffened with it; she would sink in the new bath of life, in the depths of her womb and her bowels that sang the voiceless song of adoration. It was early yet to begin to fear the man.
"I walked over by Marehay, and I had tea with Mrs. Flint," she said to Clifford. "I wanted to see the baby. It's so adorable, with hair like red cobwebs. Such a dear! Mr. Flint had gone to market, so she and I and the baby had tea together. ”

“ Master Peter paid her what he believed to be a courtly bow.
“That same nameless lady shall praise me,” he chuckled, and, turning, made for the house with all speed. When they were alone, Brilliana and Halfman looked at each other with the mirth of children who have successfully raided an orchard.
“I have netted them,” Brilliana said. “If it do but happen pat, we shall have served the King and punished two cozening faint-hearts. For the best of it is that neither can complain. Each is neck-high in the mire of lies, each has plundered the other, and must be dumb for shame of his knavery.” ”

“ Lady Saville immediately went up to him. “Oh, Lord Fitzhenry! do second me; for I am trying to persuade your capricious, perverse wife, to give some more parties; 259for she says they don’t repay her for the trouble; that they exhaust her, and that she will have no more. Now have they not been particularly agreeable? and does she not play the part of lady of the revels to perfection?”
Emmeline, who, on her husband’s entrance, had walked to the further end of the room, now began busying herself with a basket of flowers, forgetting that she could no longer have any excuse for the employment. ”

“ A man needed a wife.
The Chatterleys, two brothers and a sister, had lived curiously isolated, shut in with one another at Wragby, in spite of all their connections. A sense of isolation intensified the family tie, a sense of the weakness of their position, a sense of defencelessness, in spite of, or because of the title and the land. They were cut off from those industrial Midlands in which they passed their lives. And they were cut off from their own class by the brooding, obstinate, shut-up nature of Sir Geoffrey, their father, whom they ridiculed, but whom they were so sensitive about. ”

“ She expects me to be an elegant, accomplished young lady like Vere, and I feel a hoyden still, and not a bit a grown-up woman; besides, father said I was to keep young. How am I to please them both, and have time left over to remember Miss Martin’s lessons? It strikes me, Una Sackville, you have got your work cut out. ”

“ As if a valet and a lady's maid couldn't stop for a moment to talk! Poor things! we work hard enough most of the time, I'm sure.
And that we weren't long standing there idle can be seen from the fact that I heard half-past six strike. I was for urging Chawlmers to go then, as Lady Castlecourt might be in at any moment; but he hung about, following me into my lady's room, helping me draw the curtains and turn on all the lights, for my lady can't bear to dress by daylight. ”

“ Evander said, gravely.
Brilliana had lifted the big book onto her lap and was turning the pages tenderly, pausing here and there with loving murmurs.
“Had I been a man,” she said, softly, “I should have turned player for the pleasure to speak such golden words.”
Evander, watching her fair, lowered face under its crown of dark hair, thought of all that Imogen might mean, or Rosalind or Juliet, did each of these dear ones show on the stage like this lady. He gave the odd thought form in speech.
“It is strange,” he said, almost to himself, “that a Cavalier world is content without women players.” ”

“ Brilliana still seemed to hesitate. That word “honor” had frightened her for Evander, had frightened her for herself. She now groped uncertain, who thought to tread so surely.
“Will you do as I wish if I tell you?” she asked, trying to mask anxiety with a jesting manner. And when Evander responded gravely, “If I can,” she pressed him impetuously again.
“Nay, now, make me a square promise.” She looked very fair as she pleaded.
“All that a doomed man can do—” Evander replied, smiling somewhat wistfully.
Brilliana shook her head vehemently and her Royalist curls danced round her bright cheeks. ”

“ Lady Cassandra was the last person from whom she would have expected understanding, but she did understand, and had even confessed to a fellow-feeling. Mary was sufficiently under her mother’s influence to feel that sympathy from the Squire’s wife was doubly valuable, yet she was vaguely disquieted, for what was her new-found money going to procure for her, that was not already in Cassandra’s possession? If material pleasures palled, would the mere fact of liberty be sufficient to fill her heart? Was liberty in her case but another term for loneliness? ”

“ He raised his right hand for a moment as if he had a thought to strike his companion, but then, changing his temper, he let it fall idly upon his knee as he surveyed Thoroughgood with a look that half disdained, half pitied.
“My lady will never surrender,” he said, quietly, with the quiet of a man who enunciates a mathematical axiom. “You know that well enough.”
[Pg 51]
Thoroughgood shrugged plaintive, protesting shoulders.
“We’ve stood this siege for many days,” he muttered. “Food is running out; powder is running out. Even the Lady Brilliana cannot work miracles.”
Halfman rose to his feet. ”

“ She was—as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed—the kind of woman who spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to those who wish women to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive stoicism, very disconcerting. ”

“ Besides her servants, her own family gave her much food for thought and preoccupation: it is true that of her seven children only two—her two Sackville daughters—had lived to grow up, but they by now had produced a cohort of grandchildren, whose visits to Lady Anne were a 78source of infinite pleasure to the old lady. It is, altogether, a pleasant and seemly end to such a life. She had attained the great age of eighty-six; her diary was filled with religious references; she never dwelt upon her death, but it is clear that she can never for one moment have dreaded it. ”

“ Cassandra turned her head and looked up and down the diverging paths. Women everywhere, crowds of women, old and young, and heavily middle-aged, talking, smiling, bearing themselves with complacent airs. It was a ghastly, a hideous thought that they were all suffering some inner smart! She had believed that she was an exception, but according to Mrs Evans it was not the sufferer who was the exception, but the child of the sunshine, who, like fortunate Grizel, was endowed with the gift of happiness. ”

“ 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." ”