with Lady Chatterley talking to me! But she needn't think I'm not as good as
her for all that!---which she always heard twanging in the women's
half-fawning voices, was impossible. There was no getting past it. It was
hopelessly and offensively nonconformist.
Clifford left them alone, and she learnt to do the same: she just went
by without looking at them, and they stared as if she were a walking wax
figure. When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty and
contemptuous; one could no longer afford to be friendly. In fact he was
altogether rather supercilious and contemptuous of anyone not in his own
class. He stood his ground, without any attempt at conciliation. And he was
neither liked nor disliked by the people: he was just part of things, like
the pit-bank and Wragby itself.
But Clifford was really extremely shy and self-conscious now he was
lamed. He hated seeing anyone except just the personal servants. For he had
to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair. Nevertheless he was just
as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he wore the
careful Bond Street neckties just as before, and from the top he looked just
as smart and impressive as ever. He had never been one of the modern
ladylike young men: rather bucolic even, with his ruddy face and broad
shoulders. But his very quiet, hesitating voice, and his eyes, at the same
time bold and frightened, assured and uncertain, revealed his nature. His
manner was often offensively supercilious, and then again modest and
self-effacing, almost tremulous.
Connie and he were attached to one another, in the aloof modern way. He
was much too hurt in himself, the great shock of his maiming, to be easy and
flippant. He was a hurt thing. And as such Connie stuck to him passionately.
But she could not help feeling how little connexion he really had with
people. The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as objects
rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life, crude raw
phenomena rather than human beings along with him. He was in some way afraid
of them, he could not bear to have them look at him now he was lame. And
their queer, crude life seemed as unnatural as that of hedgehogs.
He was remotely interested; but like a man looking down a microscope,
or up a telescope. He was not in touch. He was not in actual touch with
anybody, save, traditionally, with Wragby, and, through the close bond of
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