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 Geoffery's father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffery's mother had liked cinquecento furniture. Sir Geoffery 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 longtime.
"It's 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 "Though cradles like that are out of date nowadays."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 quite 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 moment breathless, flabbergasted. Then she didn't believe it: she saw in it a ruse. Yet doctors could do such things nowadays. They might sort of graft seed.
"Well, my Lady, I only hope and pray you may. It would be lovely for you: and for everybody. My word, a child in Wragby, what a difference it would make!"
"Wouldn't it!" said Connie.
And she chose three R. A. pictures of sixty years ago, to send to the Duchess of Shortlands for that lady's next charitable bazaar. She was called `the bazaar duchess', and she always asked all the county to send things for her to sell. She would be delighted with three framed R. A.'s. She might even call, on the strength of them. How furious Clifford was when she called!
But oh my dear! Mrs. Bolton was thinking to herself. Is it Oliver Mellors' child you're preparing us for? Oh my dear, that would be a Tevershall baby in the Wragby cradle, my word! Wouldn't shame it, neither!
Among other monstrosities in this lumber room was a largish black japanned box, excellently and ingeniously made some sixty or seventy years ago, and fitted with every imaginable object. On top was a concentrated toilet set: brushes, bottles, mirrors, combs, boxes, even three beautiful little razors in safety sheaths, shaving-bowl and all. Underneath came a sort of escritoire outfit: blotters, pens, ink-bottles, paper, envelopes, memorandum books: and then a perfect sewing- outfit, with three different sized scissors, thimbles, needles, silks and cottons, darning egg, all of the very best quality and perfectly finished. Then there was a little medicine store, with bottles labelled Laudanum, Tincture of Myrrh, Ess. Cloves and so on: but empty. Everything was perfectly new, and the whole thing, when shut up, was as big as a small, but fat weekend bag. And inside, it fitted together like a puzzle. The bottles could not possibly have spilled: there wasn't room.
The thing was wonderfully made and contrived, excellent craftsmanship of the Victorian order. But somehow it was monstrous. Some Chatterley must even have felt it, for the thing had never been used. It had a peculiar soullessness.
Yet Mrs. Bolton was thrilled.
"Look what beautiful brushes, so expensive, even the shaving brushes, three perfect ones! No! and those scissors! They're the best that money could buy. Oh, I call it lovely!"
"Do you?" said Connie. "Then you have it."
"Oh no, my Lady!"
"Of course! It will only lie here till Doomsday. If you won't have it, I'll send it to the Duchess as well as the pictures, and she doesn't deserve so much. Do have it!"
"Oh, your Ladyship! Why, I shall never be able to thank you."
"You needn't try," laughed Connie.
And Mrs. Bolton sailed down with the huge and very black box in her arms, flushing bright pink in her excitement.
Mr. Betts drove her in the trap to her house in the village, with the box. And she had to have a few friends in, to show it: the school-mistress, the chemist's wife, Mrs. Weedon the under-cashier's wife. They thought it marvellous. And then started the whisper of Lady Chatterley's child.
"Wonders'll never cease!" said Mrs. Weedon.
But Mrs. Bolton was convinced, if it did come, it would be Sir Clifford's child. So there!
Not long after, the rector said gently to Clifford:
"And may we really hope for an heir to Wragby? Ah, that would be the hand of God in mercy, indeed!"
"Well! We may hope," said Clifford, with a faint irony, and at the same time, a certain conviction. He had begun to believe it really possible it might even be his child.
Then one afternoon came Leslie Winter, Squire Winter, as everybody called him: lean, immaculate, and seventy: and every inch a gentleman, as Mrs. Bolton said to Mrs. Betts. Every millimetre indeed! And with his old-fashioned, rather haw- haw! manner of speaking, he seemed more out of date than bag wigs. Time, in her flight, drops these fine old feathers.
They discussed the collieries. Clifford's idea was, that his coal, even the poor sort, could be made into hard concentrated fuel that would burn at great heat if fed with certain damp, acidulated air at a fairly strong pressure. It had long been observed that in a particularly strong, wet wind the pit-bank burned very vivid, gave off hardly any fumes, and left a fine powder of ash, instead of the slow pink gravel.
"But where will you find the proper engines for burning your fuel?" asked Winter. "I'll make them myself. And I'll use my fuel myself. And I'll sell electric power. I'm certain I could do it."
"If you can do it, then splendid, splendid, my dear boy. Haw! Splendid! If I can be of any help, I shall be delighted. I'm afraid I am a little out of date, and my collieries are like me. But who knows, when I'm gone, there may be men like you. Splendid! It will employ all the men again, and you won't have to sell your coal, or fail to sell it. A splendid idea, and I hope it will be a success. If I had sons of my own, no doubt they would have up-to-date ideas for Shipley: no doubt! By the way, dear boy, is there any foundation to the rumour that we may entertain hopes of an heir to Wragby?'"
"Is there a rumour?'" asked Clifford.
"Well, my dear boy, Marshall from Fillingwood asked me, that's all I can say about a rumour. Of course I wouldn't repeat it for the world, if there were no foundation."
"Well, Sir," said Clifford uneasily, but with strange bright eyes. "There is a hope. There is a hope."
Winter came across the room and wrung Clifford's hand.
"My dear boy, my dear lad, can you believe what it means to me, to hear that! And to hear you are working in the hopes of a son: and that you may again employ every man at Tevershall. Ah, my boy! to keep up the level of the race, and to have work waiting for any man who cares to work!---"
The old man was really moved.
Next day Connie was arranging tall yellow tulips in a glass vase.
"Connie," said Clifford, "did you know there was a rumour that you are going to supply Wragby with a son and heir?"
Connie felt dim with terror, yet she stood quite still, touching the flowers. "No!" she said. "Is it a joke? Or malice?"
He paused before he answered:
"Neither, I hope. I hope it may be a prophecy." Connie went on with her flowers.
"I had a letter from Father this morning," She said. "He wants to know if I am aware he has accepted Sir Alexander Cooper's Invitation for me for July and August, to the Villa Esmeralda in Venice."
"July and August?" said Clifford.
"Oh, I wouldn't stay all that time. Are you sure you wouldn't come?"
"I won't travel abroad," said Clifford promptly. She took her flowers to the window. "Do you mind if I go?" she said. You know it was promised, for this summer.
"For how long would you go?"
"Perhaps three weeks."
There was silence for a time.
"Well," said Clifford slowly, and a little gloomily. "I suppose I could stand it for three weeks: if I were absolutely sure you'd want to come back."
"I should want to come back," she said, with a quiet simplicity, heavy with conviction. She was thinking of the other man.
Clifford felt her conviction, and somehow he believed her, he believed it was for him.