more money on his country than he'd got.
When Miss Chatterley---Emma---came down to London from the Midlands to
do some nursing work, she was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey
and his determined patriotism. Herbert, the elder brother and heir, laughed
outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench props. But
Clifford only smiled a little uneasily. Everything was ridiculous, quite
true. But when it came too close and oneself became ridiculous too...? At
least people of a different class, like Connie, were earnest about
something. They believed in something.
They were rather earnest about the Tommies, and the threat of
conscription, and the shortage of sugar and toffee for the children. In all
these things, of course, the authorities were ridiculously at fault. But
Clifford could not take it to heart. To him the authorities were ridiculous
ab ovo, not because of toffee or Tommies.
And the authorities felt ridiculous, and behaved in a rather ridiculous
fashion, and it was all a mad hatter's tea-party for a while. Till things
developed over there, and Lloyd George came to save the situation over here.
And this surpassed even ridicule, the flippant young laughed no more.
In 1916 Herbert Chatterley was killed, so Clifford became heir. He was
terrified even of this. His importance as son of Sir Geoffrey, and child of
Wragby, was so ingrained in him, he could never escape it. And yet he knew
that this too, in the eyes of the vast seething world, was ridiculous. Now
he was heir and responsible for Wragby. Was that not terrible? and also
splendid and at the same time, perhaps, purely absurd?
Sir Geoffrey would have none of the absurdity. He was pale and tense,
withdrawn into himself, and obstinately determined to save his country and
his own position, let it be Lloyd George or who it might. So cut off he was,
so divorced from the England that was really England, so utterly incapable,
that he even thought well of Horatio Bottomley. Sir Geoffrey stood for
England and Lloyd George as his forebears had stood for England and St
George: and he never knew there was a difference. So Sir Geoffrey felled
timber and stood for Lloyd George and England, England and Lloyd George.
And he wanted Clifford to marry and produce an heir. Clifford felt his
father was a hopeless anachronism. But wherein was he himself any further
ahead, except in a wincing sense of the ridiculousness of everything, and
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>