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: sometimes as he
looked sideways, downwards, and the light fell on him, he had the silent,
enduring beauty of a carved ivory Negro mask, with his rather full eyes, and
the strong queerly-arched brows, the immobile, compressed mouth; that
momentary but revealed immobility, an immobility, a timelessness which the
Buddha aims at, and which Negroes express sometimes without ever aiming at
it; something old, old, and acquiescent in the race! Aeons of acquiescence
in race destiny, instead of our individual resistance. And then a swimming
through, like rats in a dark river. Connie felt a sudden, strange leap of
sympathy for him, a leap mingled with compassion, and tinged with repulsion,
amounting almost to love. The outsider! 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
full, hazel, slightly prominent eyes on her in a look of pure detachment. He
was estimating her, and the extent of the impression he had made. With the
English nothing could save him from being the eternal outsider, not even
love. Yet women sometimes fell for him...Englishwomen too.
He knew just where he was with Clifford. They were two alien dogs which
would have liked to snarl at one another, but which smiled instead,
perforce. But with the woman he was not quite so sure.
Breakfast was served in the bedrooms; Clifford never appeared before
lunch, and the dining-room was a little dreary. After coffee Michaelis,
restless and ill-sitting soul, wondered what he should do. It was a fine
November...day fine for Wragby. 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 Sheffield. 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. He followed blindly after the servant...he never noticed things, or
had contact with Isis surroundings. In her room he did glance vaguely round
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