something in their deep-mouthed slurring of the dialect, and the
thresh-thresh of their hob-nailed pit-boots as they trailed home in gangs on
the asphalt from work, that was terrible and a bit mysterious.
There had been no welcome home for the young squire, no festivities, no
deputation, not even a single flower. Only a dank ride in a motor-car up a
dark, damp drive, burrowing through gloomy trees, out to the slope of the
park where grey damp sheep were feeding, to the knoll where the house spread
its dark brown facade, and the housekeeper and her husband were hovering,
like unsure tenants on the face of the earth, ready to stammer a welcome.
There was no communication between Wragby Hall and Tevershall village,
none. No caps were touched, no curtseys bobbed. The colliers merely stared;
the tradesmen lifted their caps to Connie as to an acquaintance, and nodded
awkwardly to Clifford; that was all. Gulf impassable, and a quiet sort of
resentment on either side. At first Connie suffered from the steady drizzle
of resentment that came from the village. Then she hardened herself to it,
and it became a sort of tonic, something to live up to. It was not that she
and Clifford were unpopular, they merely belonged to another species
altogether from the colliers. Gulf impassable, breach indescribable, such as
is perhaps nonexistent south of the Trent. But in the Midlands and the
industrial North gulf impassable, across which no communication could take
place. You stick to your side, I'll stick to mine! A strange denial of the
common pulse of humanity.
Yet the village sympathized with Clifford and Connie in the abstract.
In the flesh it was---You leave me alone!---on either side.
The rector was a nice man of about sixty, full of his duty, and
reduced, personally, almost to a nonentity by the silent---You leave me
alone!---of the village. The miners' wives were nearly all Methodists. The
miners were nothing. But even so much official uniform as the clergyman wore
was enough to obscure entirely the fact that he was a man like any other
man. No, he was Mester Ashby, a sort of automatic preaching and praying
concern.
This stubborn, instinctive---We think ourselves as good as you, if you
are Lady Chatterley!---puzzled and baffled Connie at first extremely. The
curious, suspicious, false amiability with which the miners' wives met her
overtures; the curiously offensive tinge of---Oh dear me! I am somebody now,
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