`The scent is what I object to,' he said. `It's a little funereal.'
`Do you think so!' she exclaimed in surprise, just a little offended,
but impressed. And she carried the hyacinths out of the room, impressed by
his higher fastidiousness.
`Shall I shave you this morning, or would you rather do it yourself?'
Always the same soft, caressive, subservient, yet managing voice.
`I don't know. Do you mind waiting a while. I'll ring when I'm ready.'
`Very good, Sir Clifford!' she replied, so soft and submissive,
withdrawing quietly. But every rebuff stored up new energy of will in her.
When he rang, after a time, she would appear at once. And then he would
say:
`I think I'd rather you shaved me this morning.'
Her heart gave a little thrill, and she replied with extra softness:
`Very good, Sir Clifford!'
She was very deft, with a soft, lingering touch, a little slow. At
first he had resented the infinitely soft touch of her lingers on his face.
But now he liked it, with a growing voluptuousness. He let her shave him
nearly every day: her face near his, her eyes so very concentrated, watching
that she did it right. And gradually her fingertips knew his cheeks and
lips, his jaw and chin and throat perfectly. He was well-fed and
well-liking, his face and throat were handsome enough and he was a
gentleman.
She was handsome too, pale, her face rather long and absolutely still,
her eyes bright, but revealing nothing. Gradually, with infinite softness,
almost with love, she was getting him by the throat, and he was yielding to
her.
She now did almost everything for him, and he felt more at home with
her, less ashamed of accepting her menial offices, than with Connie. She
liked handling him. She loved having his body in her charge, absolutely, to
the last menial offices. She said to Connie one day: `All men are babies,
when you come to the bottom of them. Why, I've handled some of the toughest
customers as ever went down Tevershall pit. But let anything ail them so
that you have to do for them, and they're babies, just big babies. Oh,
there's not much difference in men!'
At first Mrs Bolton had thought there really was something different in
a gentleman, a real gentleman, like Sir Clifford. So Clifford had got a good
start of her. But gradually, as she came to the bottom of him, to use her
own term, she found he was like the rest, a baby grown to man's proportions:
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