Connie was sorting out one of the Wragby lumber rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffery's father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffery's mother had liked cinquecento furniture. Sir Geoffery himself had liked old carved oak chests, vestry chests. So it went on through the generations. Clifford collected very modern pictures, at very moderate prices.
So in the lumber room there were bad Sir Edwin Landseers and pathetic William Henry Hunt birds' nests: and other Academy stuff, enough to frighten the daughter of an R.A. She determined to look through it one day, and clear it all. And the grotesque furniture interested her.

Wrapped up carefully to preserve it from damage and dry-rot was the old family cradle, of rosewood. She had to unwrap it, to look at it. It had a certain charm: she looked at it a longtime.

`It's thousand pities it won't be called for,' sighed Mrs Bolton, who was helping. `Though cradles like that are out of date nowadays.'

`It might be called for. I might have a child,' said Connie casually, as if saying she might have a new hat.

`You mean if anything happened to Sir Clifford!' stammered Mrs Bolton.

`No! I mean as things are. It's only muscular paralysis with Sir Clifford---it doesn't affect him,' said Connie, lying as naturally as breathing.

Clifford had put the idea into her head. He had said: `Of course I may have a child yet. I'm not really mutilated at all. The potency may easily come back, even if the muscles of the hips and legs are paralysed. And then the seed may be transferred.'

He really felt, when he had his periods of energy and worked so hard at the question of the mines, as if his sexual potency were returning. Connie had looked at him in terror. But she was quite quick-witted enough to use his suggestion for her own preservation. For she would have a child if she could: but not his.

Mrs Bolton was for a moment breathless, flabbergasted. Then she didn't believe it: she saw in it a ruse. Yet doctors could do such things nowadays. They might sort of graft seed.

`Well, my Lady, I only hope and pray you may. It would be lovely for you: and for everybody. My word, a child in Wragby, what a difference it would make!'

`Wouldn't it!' said Connie.

And she chose three R. A. pictures of sixty years ago, to send to the Duchess of Shortlands for that lady's next charitable bazaar. She was called `the bazaar duchess', and she always asked all the county to send things for her to sell. She would be delighted with three framed R. A.s. She might even call, on the strength of them. How furious Clifford was when she called!

But oh my dear! Mrs Bolton was thinking to herself. Is it Oliver Mellors' child you're preparing us for? Oh my dear, that would be a Tevershall baby in the Wragby cradle, my word! Wouldn't shame it, neither!

Among other monstrosities in this lumber room was a largish blackjapanned box, excellently and ingeniously made some sixty or seventy years ago, and fitted with every imaginable object. On top was a concentrated toilet set: brushes, bottles, mirrors, combs, boxes, even three beautiful little razors in safety sheaths, shaving-bowl and all. Underneath came a sort of escritoire outfit: blotters, pens, ink-bottles, paper, envelopes, memorandum books: and then a perfect sewing-outfit, with three different sized scissors, thimbles, needles, silks and cottons, darning egg, all of the very best quality and perfectly finished. Then there was a little medicine store, with bottles labelled Laudanum, Tincture of Myrrh, Ess. Cloves and so on: but empty. Everything was perfectly new, and the whole thing, when shut up, was as big as a small, but fat weekend bag. And inside, it fitted together like a puzzle. The bottles could not possibly have spilled: there wasn't room.

The thing was wonderfully made and contrived, excellent craftsmanship of the Victorian order. But somehow it was monstrous. Some Chatterley must even have felt it, for the thing had never been used. It had a peculiar soullessness.

Yet Mrs Bolton was thrilled.

`Look what beautiful brushes, so expensive, even the shaving brushes, three perfect ones! No! and those scissors! They're the best that money could buy. Oh, I call it lovely!'

`Do you?' said Connie. `Then you have it.'

`Oh no, my Lady!'

`Of course! It will only lie here till Doomsday. If you won't have it, I'll send it to the Duchess as well as the pictures, and she doesn't deserve so much. Do have it!'

`Oh, your Ladyship! Why, I shall never be able to thank you.'

`You needn't try,' laughed Connie.

And Mrs Bolton sailed down with the huge and very black box in her arms, flushing bright pink in her excitement.

Mr Betts drove her in the trap to her house in the village, with the box. And she had to have a few friends in, to show it: the school-mistress, the chemist's wife, Mrs Weedon the undercashier's wife. They thought it marvellous. And then started the whisper of Lady Chatterley's child.

`Wonders'll never cease!' said Mrs Weedon.

But Mrs Bolton was convinced, if it did come, it would be Sir Clifford's child. So there!

Not long after, the rector said gently to Clifford:

`And may we really hope for an heir to Wragby? Ah, that would be the hand of God in mercy, indeed!'

`Well! We may hope,' said Clifford, with a faint irony, and at the same time, a certain conviction. He had begun to believe it really possible it might even be his child.

Then one afternoon came Leslie Winter, Squire Winter, as everybody called him: lean, immaculate, and seventy: and every inch a gentleman, as Mrs Bolton said to Mrs Betts. Every millimetre indeed! And with his old-fashioned, rather haw-haw! manner of speaking, he seemed more out of date than bag wigs. Time, in her flight, drops these fine old feathers.

They discussed the collieries. Clifford's idea was, that his coal, even the poor sort, could be made into hard concentrated fuel that would burn at great heat if fed with certain damp, acidulated air at a fairly strong pressure. It had long been observed that in a particularly strong, wet wind the pit-bank burned very vivid, gave off hardly any fumes, and left a fine powder of ash, instead of the slow pink gravel.

`But where will you find the proper engines for burning your fuel?' asked Winter.

`I'll make them myself. And I'll use my fuel myself. And I'll sell electric power. I'm certain I could do it.'

`If you can do it, then splendid, splendid, my dear boy. Haw! Splendid! If I can be of any help, I shall be delighted. I'm afraid I am a little out of date, and my collieries are like me. But who knows, when I'm gone, there may be men like you. Splendid! It will employ all the men again, and you won't have to sell your coal, or fail to sell it. A splendid idea, and I hope it will be a success. If I had sons of my own, no doubt they would have up-to-date ideas for Shipley: no doubt! By the way, dear boy, is there any foundation to the rumour that we may entertain hopes of an heir to Wragby?'

`Is there a rumour?' asked Clifford.

`Well, my dear boy, Marshall from Fillingwood asked me, that's all I can say about a rumour. Of course I wouldn't repeat it for the world, if there were no foundation.'

`Well, Sir,' said Clifford uneasily, but with strange bright eyes. `There is a hope. There is a hope.'

Winter came across the room and wrung Clifford's hand.

`My dear boy, my dear lad, can you believe what it means to me, to hear that! And to hear you are working in the hopes of a son: and that you may again employ every man at Tevershall. Ah, my boy! to keep up the level of the race, and to have work waiting for any man who cares to work!---'

The old man was really moved.

Next day Connie was arranging tall yellow tulips in a glass vase.

`Connie,' said Clifford, `did you know there was a rumour that you are going to supply Wragby with a son and heir?'

Connie felt dim with terror, yet she stood quite still, touching the flowers.

`No!' she said. `Is it a joke? Or malice?'

He paused before he answered:

`Neither, I hope. I hope it may be a prophecy.'

Connie went on with her flowers.

`I had a letter from Father this morning,' She said. `He wants to know if I am aware he has accepted Sir Alexander Cooper's Invitation for me for July and August, to the Villa Esmeralda in Venice.'

`July and August?' said Clifford.

`Oh, I wouldn't stay all that time. Are you sure you wouldn't come?'

`I won't travel abroad,' said Clifford promptly. She took her flowers to the window.

`Do you mind if I go?' she said. You know it was promised, for this summer.

`For how long would you go?'

`Perhaps three weeks.'

There was silence for a time.

`Well,' said Clifford slowly, and a little gloomily. `I suppose I could stand it for three weeks: if I were absolutely sure you'd want to come back.'

`I should want to come back,' she said, with a quiet simplicity, heavy with conviction. She was thinking of the other man.

Clifford felt her conviction, and somehow he believed her, he believed it was for him. He felt immensely relieved, joyful at once.

`In that case,' he said,

`I think it would be all right, don't you?'

`I think so,' she said.

`You'd enjoy the change?' She looked up at him with strange blue eyes.

`I should like to see Venice again,' she said, `and to bathe from one of the shingle islands across the lagoon. But you know I loathe the Lido! And I don't fancy I shall like Sir Alexander Cooper and Lady Cooper. But if Hilda is there, and we have a gondola of our own: yes, it will be rather lovely. I do wish you'd come.'

She said it sincerely. She would so love to make him happy, in these ways.

`Ah, but think of me, though, at the Gare du Nord: at Calais quay!'

`But why not? I see other men carried in litter-chairs, who have been wounded in the war. Besides, we'd motor all the way.'

`We should need to take two men.'

`Oh no! We'd manage with Field. There would always be another man there.'

But Clifford shook his head.

`Not this year, dear! Not this year! Next year probably I'll try.'

She went away gloomily. Next year! What would next year bring? She herself did not really want to go to Venice: not now, now there was the other man. But she was going as a sort of discipline: and also because, if she had a child, Clifford could think she had a lover in Venice.

It was already May, and in June they were supposed to start. Always these arrangements! Always one's life arranged for one! Wheels that worked one and drove one, and over which one had no real control!

It was May, but cold and wet again. A cold wet May, good for corn and hay! Much the corn and hay matter nowadays! Connie had to go into Uthwaite, which was their little town, where the Chatterleys were still the Chatterleys. She went alone, Field driving her.

In spite of May and a new greenness, the country was dismal. It was rather chilly, and there was smoke on the rain, and a certain sense of exhaust vapour in the air. One just had to live from one's resistance. No wonder these people were ugly and tough.

The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal-dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling. The stacks of soap in the grocers' shops, the rhubarb and lemons in the greengrocers! the awful hats in the milliners! all went by ugly, ugly, ugly, followed by the plaster-and-gilt horror of the cinema with its wet picture announcements, `A Woman's Love!', and the new big Primitive chapel, primitive enough in its stark brick and big panes of greenish and raspberry glass in the windows. The Wesleyan chapel, higher up, was of blackened brick and stood behind iron railings and blackened shrubs. The Congregational chapel, which thought itself superior, was built of rusticated sandstone and had a steeple, but not a very high one. Just beyond were the new school buildings, expensivink brick, and gravelled playground inside iron railings, all very imposing, and fixing the suggestion of a chapel and a prison. Standard Five girls were having a singing lesson, just finishing the la-me-doh-la exercises and beginning a `sweet children's song'. Anything more unlike song, spontaneous song, would be impossible to imagine: a strange bawling yell that followed the outlines of a tune. It was not like savages: savages have subtle rhythms. It was not like animals: animals mean something when they yell. It was like nothing on earth, and it was called singing. Connie sat and listened with her heart in her boots, as Field was filling petrol. What could possibly become of such a people, a people in whom the living intuitive faculty was dead as nails, and only queer mechanical yells and uncanny will-power remained?

A coal-cart was coming downhill, clanking in the rain. Field started upwards, past the big but weary-looking drapers and clothing shops, the post-office, into the little market-place of forlorn space, where Sam Black was peering out of the door of the Sun, that called itself an inn, not a pub, and where the commercial travellers stayed, and was bowing to Lady Chatterley's car.

The church was away to the left among black trees. The car slid on downhill, past the Miners' Arms. It had already passed the Wellington, the Nelson, the Three Tuns, and the Sun, now it passed the Miners' Arms, then the Mechanics' Hall, then the new and almost gaudy Miners' Welfare and so, past a few new `villas', out into the blackened road between dark hedges and dark green fields, towards Stacks Gate.

Tevershall! That was Tevershall! Merrie England! Shakespeare's England! No, but the England of today, as Connie had realized since she had come to live in it. It was producing a new race of mankind, over-conscious in the money and social and political side, on the spontaneous, intuitive side dead, but dead. Half-corpses, all of them: but with a terrible insistent consciousness in the other half. There was something uncanny and underground about it all. It was an under-world. And quite incalculable. How shall we understand the reactions in half-corpses? When Connie saw the great lorries full of steel-workers from Sheffield, weird, distorted smallish beings like men, off for an excursion to Matlock, her bowels fainted and she thought: Ah God, what has man done to man? What have the leaders of men been doing to their fellow men? They have reduced them to less than humanness; and now there can be no fellowship any more! It is just a nightmare.

She felt again in a wave of terror the grey, gritty hopelessness of it all. With such creatures for the industrial masses, and the upper classes as she knew them, there was no hope, no hope any more. Yet she was wanting a baby, and an heir to Wragby! An heir to Wragby! She shuddered with dread.

Yet Mellors had come out of all this!---Yes, but he was as apart from it all as she was. Even in him there was no fellowship left. It was dead. The fellowship was dead. There was only apartness and hopelessness, as far as all this was concerned. And this was England, the vast bulk of England: as Connie knew, since she had motored from the centre of it.

The car was rising towards Stacks Gate. The rain was holding off, and in the air came a queer pellucid gleam of May. The country rolled away in long undulations, south towards the Peak, east towards Mansfield and Nottingham. Connie was travelling South.

As she rose on to the high country, she could see on her left, on a height above the rolling land, the shadowy, powerful bulk of Warsop Castle, dark grey, with below it the reddish plastering of miners' dwellings, newish, and below those the plumes of dark smoke and white steam from the great colliery which put so many thousand pounds per annum into the pockets of the Duke and the other shareholders. The powerful old castle was a ruin, yet it hung its bulk on the low sky-line, over the black plumes and the white that waved on the damp air below.

A turn, and they ran on the high level to Stacks Gate. Stacks Gate, as seen from the highroad, was just a huge and gorgeous new hotel, the Coningsby Arms, standing red and white and gilt in barbarous isolation off the road. But if you looked, you saw on the left rows of handsome `modern' dwellings, set down like a game of dominoes, with spaces and gardens, a queer game of dominoes that some weird `masters' were playing on the surprised earth. And beyond these blocks of dwellings, at the back, rose all the astonishing and frightening overhead erections of a really modern mine, chemical works and long galleries, enormous, and of shapes not before known to man. The head-stock and pit-bank of the mine itself were insignificant among the huge new installations. And in front of this, the game of dominoes stood forever in a sort of surprise, waiting to be played.

This was Stacks Gate, new on the face of the earth, since the war. But as a matter of fact, though even Connie did not know it, downhill half a mile below the `hotel' was old Stacks Gate, with a little old colliery and blackish old brick dwellings, and a chapel or two and a shop or two and a little pub or two.

But that didn't count any more. The vast plumes of smoke and vapour rose from the new works up above, and this was now Stacks Gate: no chapels, no pubs, even no shops. Only the great works', which are the modern Olympia with temples to all the gods; then the model dwellings: then the hotel. The hotel in actuality was nothing but a miners' pub though it looked first-classy.

Even since Connie's arrival at Wragby this new place had arisen on the face of the earth, and the model dwellings had filled with riff-raff drifting in from anywhere, to poach Clifford's rabbits among other occupations.

The car ran on along the uplands, seeing the rolling county spread out. The county! It had once been a proud and lordly county. In front, looming again and hanging on the brow of the sky-line, was the huge and splendid bulk of Chadwick Hall, more window than wall, one of the most famous Elizabethan houses. Noble it stood alone above a great park, but out of date, passed over. It was still kept up, but as a show place. `Look how our ancestors lorded it!'

That was the past. The present lay below. God alone knows where the future lies. The car was already turning, between little old blackened miners' cottages, to descend to Uthwaite. And Uthwaite, on a damp day, was sending up a whole array of smoke plumes and steam, to whatever gods there be. Uthwaite down in the valley, with all the steel threads of the railways to Sheffield drawn through it, and the coal-mines and the steel-works sending up smoke and glare from long tubes, and the pathetic little corkscrew spire of the church, that is going to tumble down, still pricking the fumes, always affected Connie strangely. It was an old market-town, centre of the dales. One of the chief inns was the Chatterley Arms. There, in Uthwaite, Wragby was known as Wragby, as if it were a whole place, not just a house, as it was to outsiders: Wragby Hall, near Tevershall: Wragby, a `seat'.

The miners' cottages, blackened, stood flush on the pavement, with that intimacy and smallness of colliers' dwellings over a hundred years old. They lined all the way. The road had become a street, and as you sank, you forgot instantly the open, rolling country where the castles and big houses still dominated, but like ghosts. Now you were just above the tangle of naked railway-lines, and foundries and other `works' rose about you, so big you were only aware of walls. And iron clanked with a huge reverberating clank, and huge lorries shook the earth, and whistles screamed.

Yet again, once you had got right down and into the twisted and crooked heart of the town, behind the church, you were in the world of two centuries ago, in the crooked streets where the Chatterley Arms stood, and the old pharmacy, streets which used to lead Out to the wild open world of the castles and stately couchant houses.

But at the corner a policeman held up his hand as three lorries loaded with iron rolled past, shaking the poor old church. And not till the lorries were past could he salute her ladyship.

So it was. Upon the old crooked burgess streets hordes of oldish blackened miners' dwellings crowded, lining the roads out. And immediately after these came the newer, pinker rows of rather larger houses, plastering the valley: the homes of more modern workmen. And beyond that again, in the wide rolling regions of the castles, smoke waved against steam, and patch after patch of raw reddish brick showed the newer mining settlements, sometimes in the hollows, sometimes gruesomely ugly along the sky-line of the slopes. And between, in between, were the tattered remnants of the old coaching and cottage England, even the England of Robin Hood, where the miners prowled with the dismalness of suppressed sporting instincts, when they were not at work.

England, my England! But which is my England? The stately homes of England make good photographs, and create the illusion of a connexion with the Elizabethans. The handsome old halls are there, from the days of Good Queen Anne and Tom Jones. But smuts fall and blacken on the drab stucco, that has long ceased to be golden. And one by one, like the stately homes, they were abandoned. Now they are being pulled down. As for the cottages of England---there they are---great plasterings of brick dwellings on the hopeless countryside.

`Now they are pulling down the stately homes, the Georgian halls are going. Fritchley, a perfect old Georgian mansion, was even now, as Connie passed in the car, being demolished. It was in perfect repair: till the war the Weatherleys had lived in style there. But now it was too big, too expensive, and the country had become too uncongenial. The gentry were departing to pleasanter places, where they could spend their money without having to see how it was made.'

This is history. One England blots out another. The mines had made the halls wealthy. Now they were blotting them out, as they had already blotted out the cottages. The industrial England blots out the agricultural England. One meaning blots out another. The new England blots out the old England. And the continuity is not Organic, but mechanical.

Connie, belonging to the leisured classes, had clung to the remnants of the old England. It had taken her years to realize that it was really blotted out by this terrifying new and gruesome England, and that the blotting out would go on till it was complete. Fritchley was gone, Eastwood was gone, Shipley was going: Squire Winter's beloved Shipley.

Connie called for a moment at Shipley. The park gates, at the back, opened just near the level crossing of the colliery railway; the Shipley colliery itself stood just beyond the trees. The gates stood open, because through the park was a right-of-way that the colliers used. They hung around the park.

The car passed the ornamental ponds, in which the colliers threw their newspapers, and took the private drive to the house. It stood above, aside, a very pleasant stucco building from the middle of the eighteenth century. It had a beautiful alley of yew trees, that had approached an older house, and the hall stood serenely spread out, winking its Georgian panes as if cheerfully. Behind, there were really beautiful gardens.

Connie liked the interior much better than Wragby. It was much lighter, more alive, shapen and elegant. The rooms were panelled with creamy painted panelling, the ceilings were touched with gilt, and everything was kept in exquisite order, all the appointments were perfect, regardless of expense. Even the corridors managed to be ample and lovely, softly curved and full of life.

But Leslie Winter was alone. He had adored his house. But his park was bordered by three of his own collieries. He had been a generous man in his ideas. He had almost welcomed the colliers in his park. Had the miners not made him rich! So, when he saw the gangs of unshapely men lounging by his ornamental waters---not in the private part of the park, no, he drew the line there---he would say: `the miners are perhaps not so ornamental as deer, but they are far more profitable.'

But that was in the golden---monetarily---latter half of Queen Victoria's reign. Miners were then `good working men'.

Winter had made this speech, half apologetic, to his guest, the then Prince of Wales. And the Prince had replied, in his rather guttural English:

`You are quite right. If there were coal under Sandringham, I would open a mine on the lawns, and think it first-rate landscape gardening. Oh, I am quite willing to exchange roe-deer for colliers, at the price. Your men are good men too, I hear.'

But then, the Prince had perhaps an exaggerated idea of the beauty of money, and the blessings of industrialism.

However, the Prince had been a King, and the King had died, and now there was another King, whose chief function seemed to be to open soup-kitchens.

And the good working men were somehow hemming Shipley in. New mining villages crowded on the park, and the squire felt somehow that the population was alien. He used to feel, in a good-natured but quite grand way, lord of his own domain and of his own colliers. Now, by a subtle pervasion of the new spirit, he had somehow been pushed out. It was he who did not belong any more. There was no mistaking it. The mines, the industry, had a will of its own, and this will was against the gentleman-owner. All the colliers took part in the will, and it was hard to live up against it. It either shoved you out of the place, or out of life altogether.

Squire Winter, a soldier, had stood it out. But he no longer cared to walk in the park after dinner. He almost hid, indoors. Once he had walked, bare-headed, and in his patent-leather shoes and purple silk socks, with Connie down to the gate, talking to her in his well-bred rather haw-haw fashion. But when it came to passing the little gangs of colliers who stood and stared without either salute or anything else, Connie felt how the lean, well-bred old man winced, winced as an elegant antelope stag in a cage winces from the vulgar stare. The colliers were not personally hostile: not at all. But their spirit was cold, and shoving him out. And, deep down, there was a profound grudge. They `worked for him'. And in their ugliness, they resented his elegant, well-groomed, well-bred existence. `Who's he!' It was the difference they resented.

And somewhere, in his secret English heart, being a good deal of a soldier, he believed they were right to resent the difference. He felt himself a little in the wrong, for having all the advantages. Nevertheless he represented a system, and he would not be shoved out.

Except by death. Which came on him soon after Connie's call, suddenly. And he remembered Clifford handsomely in his will.

The heirs at once gave out the order for the demolishing of Shipley. It cost too much to keep up. No one would live there. So it was broken up. The avenue of yews was cut down. The park was denuded of its timber, and divided into lots. It was near enough to Uthwaite. In the strange, bald desert of this still-one-more no-man's-land, new little streets of semi-detacheds were run up, very desirable! The Shipley Hall Estate!

Within a year of Connie's last call, it had happened. There stood Shipley Hall Estate, an array of red-brick semi-detached `villas' in new streets. No one would have dreamed that the stucco hall had stood there twelve months before.

But this is a later stage of King Edward's landscape gardening, the sort that has an ornamental coal-mine on the lawn.

One England blots out another. The England of the Squire Winters and the Wragby Halls was gone, dead. The blotting out was only not yet complete.

What would come after? Connie could not imagine. She could only see the new brick streets spreading into the fields, the new erections rising at the collieries, the new girls in their silk stockings, the new collier lads lounging into the Pally or the Welfare. The younger generation were utterly unconscious of the old England. There was a gap in the continuity of consciousness, almost American: but industrial really. What next?

Connie always felt there was no next. She wanted to hide her head in the sand: or, at least, in the bosom of a living man.

The world was so complicated and weird and gruesome! The common people were so many, and really so terrible. So she bought as she was going home, and saw the colliers trailing from the pits, grey-black, distorted, one shoulder higher than the other, slurring their heavy ironshod boots. Underground grey faces, whites of eyes rolling, necks cringing from the pit roof, shoulders Out of shape. Men! Men! Alas, in some ways patient and good men. In other ways, non-existent. Something that men should have was bred and killed out of them. Yet they were men. They begot children. One might bear a child to them. Terrible, terrible thought! They were good and kindly. But they were only half, Only the grey half of a human being. As yet, they were `good'. But even that was the goodness of their halfness. Supposing the dead in them ever rose up! But no, it was too terrible to think of. Connie was absolutely afraid of the industrial masses. They seemed so weird to her. A life with utterly no beauty in it, no intuition, always `in the pit'.

Children from such men! Oh God, oh God!

Yet Mellors had come from such a father. Not quite. Forty years had made a difference, an appalling difference in manhood. The iron and the coal had eaten deep into the bodies and souls of the men.

Incarnate ugliness, and yet alive! What would become of them all? Perhaps with the passing of the coal they would disappear again, off the face of the earth. They had appeared out of nowhere in their thousands, when the coal had called for them. Perhaps they were only weird fauna of the coal-seams. Creatures of another reality, they were elementals, serving the elements of coal, as the metal-workers were elementals, serving the element of iron. Men not men, but animas of coal and iron and clay. Fauna of the elements, carbon, iron, silicon: elementals. They had perhaps some of the weird, inhuman beauty of minerals, the lustre of coal, the weight and blueness and resistance of iron, the transparency of glass. Elemental creatures, weird and distorted, of the mineral world! They belonged to the coal, the iron, the clay, as fish belong to the sea and worms to dead wood. The anima of mineral disintegration!

Connie was glad to be home, to bury her head in the sand. She was glad even to babble to Clifford. For her fear of the mining and iron Midlands affected her with a queer feeling that went all over her, like influenza.

`Of course I had to have tea in Miss Bentley's shop,' she said.

`Really! Winter would have given you tea.'

`Oh yes, but I daren't disappoint Miss Bentley.' Miss Bentley was a shallow old maid with a rather large nose and romantic disposition who served tea with a careful intensity worthy of a sacrament.

`Did she ask after me?' said Clifford.

`Of course!---. May I ask your Ladyship how Sir Clifford is!---I believe she ranks you even higher than Nurse Cavell!'

`And I suppose you said I was blooming.'

`Yes! And she looked as rapt as if I had said the heavens had opened to you. I said if she ever came to Tevershall she was to come to see you.'

`Me! Whatever for! See me!'

`Why yes, Clifford. You can't be so adored without making some slight return. Saint George of Cappadocia was nothing to you, in her eyes.'

`And do you think she'll come?'

`Oh, she blushed! and looked quite beautiful for a moment, poor thing! Why don't men marry the women who would really adore them?'

`The women start adoring too late. But did she say she'd come?'

`Oh!' Connie imitated the breathless Miss Bentley, `your Ladyship, if ever I should dare to presume!'

`Dare to presume! how absurd! But I hope to God she won't turn up. And how was her tea?'

`Oh, Lipton's and very strong. But Clifford, do you realize you are the Roman de la rose of Miss Bentley and lots like her?'

`I'm not flattered, even then.'

`They treasure up every one of your pictures in the illustrated papers, and probably pray for you every night. It's rather wonderful.'

She went upstairs to change.

That evening he said to her:

`You do think, don't you, that there is something eternal in marriage?'

She looked at him.

`But Clifford, you make eternity sound like a lid or a long, long chain that trailed after one, no matter how far one went.'

He looked at her, annoyed.

`What I mean,' he said, `is that if you go to Venice, you won't go in the hopes of some love affair that you can take au grand sérieux, will you?'

`A love affair in Venice au grand sérieux? No. I assure you! No, I'd never take a love affair in Venice more than au très petit sérieux.'

She spoke with a queer kind of contempt. He knitted his brows, looking at her.

Coming downstairs in the morning, she found the keeper's dog Flossie sitting in the corridor outside Clifford's room, and whimpering very faintly.

`Why, Flossie!' she said softly. `What are you doing here?'

And she quietly opened Clifford's door. Clifford was sitting up in bed, with the bed-table and typewriter pushed aside, and the keeper was standing at attention at the foot of the bed. Flossie ran in. With a faint gesture of head and eyes, Mellors ordered her to the door again, and she slunk out.

`Oh, good morning, Clifford!' Connie said. `I didn't know you were busy.' Then she looked at the keeper, saying good morning to him. He murmured his reply, looking at her as if vaguely. But she felt a whiff of passion touch her, from his mere presence.

`Did I interrupt you, Clifford? I'm sorry.'

`No, it's nothing of any importance.'

She slipped out of the room again, and up to the blue boudoir on the first floor. She sat in the window, and saw him go down the drive, with his curious, silent motion, effaced. He had a natural sort of quiet distinction, an aloof pride, and also a certain look of frailty. A hireling! One of Clifford's hirelings! `The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.'

Was he an underling? Was he? What did he think of her?

It was a sunny day, and Connie was working in the garden, and Mrs Bolton was helping her. For some reason, the two women had drawn together, in one of the unaccountable flows and ebbs of sympathy that exist between people. They were pegging down carnations, and putting in small plants for the summer. It was work they both liked. Connie especially felt a delight in putting the soft roots of young plants into a soft black puddle, and cradling them down. On this spring morning she felt a quiver in her womb too, as if the sunshine had touched it and made it happy.

`It is many years since you lost your husband?' she said to Mrs Bolton as she took up another little plant and laid it in its hole.

`Twenty-three!' said Mrs Bolton, as she carefully separated the young columbines into single plants. `Twenty-three years since they brought him home.'

Connie's heart gave a lurch, at the terrible finality of it. `Brought him home!'

`Why did he get killed, do you think?' she asked. `He was happy with you?'

It was a woman's question to a woman. Mrs Bolton put aside a strand of hair from her face, with the back of her hand.

`I don't know, my Lady! He sort of wouldn't give in to things: he wouldn't really go with the rest. And then he hated ducking his head for anything on earth. A sort of obstinacy, that gets itself killed. You see he didn't really care. I lay it down to the pit. He ought never to have been down pit. But his dad made him go down, as a lad; and then, when you're over twenty, it's not very easy to come out.'

`Did he say he hated it?'

`Oh no! Never! He never said he hated anything. He just made a funny face. He was one of those who wouldn't take care: like some of the first lads as went off so blithe to the war and got killed right away. He wasn't really wezzle-brained. But he wouldn't care. I used to say to him: "You care for nought nor nobody!" But he did! The way he sat when my first baby was born, motionless, and the sort of fatal eyes he looked at me with, when it was over! I had a bad time, but I had to comfort him. "It's all right, lad, it's all right!" I said to him. And he gave me a look, and that funny sort of smile. He never said anything. But I don't believe he had any right pleasure with me at nights after; he'd never really let himself go. I used to say to him: Oh, let thysen go, lad!---I'd talk broad to him sometimes. And he said nothing. But he wouldn't let himself go, or he couldn't. He didn't want me to have any more children. I always blamed his mother, for letting him in th' room. He'd no right t'ave been there. Men makes so much more of things than they should, once they start brooding.'

`Did he mind so much?' said Connie in wonder.

`Yes, he sort of couldn't take it for natural, all that pain. And it spoilt his pleasure in his bit of married love. I said to him: If I don't care, why should you? It's my look-out!---But all he'd ever say was: It's not right!'

`Perhaps he was too sensitive,' said Connie.

`That's it! When you come to know men, that's how they are: too sensitive in the wrong place. And I believe, unbeknown to himself he hated the pit, just hated it. He looked so quiet when he was dead, as if he'd got free. He was such a nice-looking lad. It just broke my heart to see him, so still and pure looking, as if he'd wanted to die. Oh, it broke my heart, that did. But it was the pit.'

She wept a few bitter tears, and Connie wept more. It was a warm spring day, with a perfume of earth and of yellow flowers, many things rising to bud, and the garden still with the very sap of sunshine.

`It must have been terrible for you!' said Connie.

`Oh, my Lady! I never realized at first. I could only say: Oh my lad, what did you want to leave me for!---That was all my cry. But somehow I felt he'd come back.'

`But he didn't want to leave you,' said Connie.

`Oh no, my Lady! That was only my silly cry. And I kept expecting him back. Especially at nights. I kept waking up thinking: Why he's not in bed with me!---It was as if my feelings wouldn't believe he'd gone. I just felt he'd have to come back and lie against me, so I could feel him with me. That was all I wanted, to feel him there with me, warm. And it took me a thousand shocks before I knew he wouldn't come back, it took me years.'

`The touch of him,' said Connie.

`That's it, my Lady, the touch of him! I've never got over it to this day, and never shall. And if there's a heaven above, he'll be there, and will lie up against me so I can sleep.'

Connie glanced at the handsome, brooding face in fear. Another passionate one out of Tevershall! The touch of him! For the bonds of love are ill to loose!

`It's terrible, once you've got a man into your blood!' she said. `Oh, my Lady! And that's what makes you feel so bitter. You feel folks wanted him killed. You feel the pit fair wanted to kill him. Oh, I felt, if it hadn't been for the pit, an' them as runs the pit, there'd have been no leaving me. But they all want to separate a woman and a man, if they're together.'

`If they're physically together,' said Connie.

`That's right, my Lady! There's a lot of hard-hearted folks in the world. And every morning when he got up and went to th' pit, I felt it was wrong, wrong. But what else could he do? What can a man do?'

A queer hate flared in the woman.

`But can a touch last so long?' Connie asked suddenly. `That you could feel him so long?'

`Oh my Lady, what else is there to last? Children grows away from you. But the man, well! But even that they'd like to kill in you, the very thought of the touch of him. Even your own children! Ah well! We might have drifted apart, who knows. But the feeling's something different. It's 'appen better never to care. But there, when I look at women who's never really been warmed through by a man, well, they seem to me poor doolowls after all, no matter how they may dress up and gad. No, I'll abide by my own. I've not much respect for people.'

康妮正在一间旧物贮藏室里收拾着。勒格贝有好几间边样的贮藏室，这林厦真是个么贮藏库，而这家人却永不把旧东西南卖。佐佛莱男爵的父亲喜欢收藏图画，佐佛莱男爵的母亲喜欢收藏十六世纪的意大利家具。佐佛莱男爵他自己喜欢收藏橡木雕刻的老箱子，教堂里的圣衣箱。边样一代一代地传下来。克利福收藏些近代画，一些不大值钱的近代画。

在这旧物贮藏室里，有些兰德西尔的坏作品，有些韩特的可怜的鸟巢和其他一堆庸俗的皇家艺术学会会员的绘画，都是足使一个皇家艺术学会会员的女人吓倒的。她决意把这一切东西查阅一遍，整理出来，那些粗重的有具使她觉得有趣。

她发现了一个家传的红木老摇篮。这摇篮被谨慎地包捆着，以防尘埃和损坏。她把它拆开了。这摇篮有着某种可人的地方；她审视了一番。

“真可借用不着这个摇篮。”在旁边帮着忙的被太太叹着气说，“虽然这样的摇篮现在已经太旧式了。”

“也许有一天用得着的，我也许要有个孩子呢。”康妮从容地说，仿佛说着她也许可以有一顶新帽子似地轻易。

“难道你是说克利福男爵可以好些么？”波太太结结巴巴地说。

“不必等到他好些了，我是照他现在的情况说。他只是筋肉的瘫痪罢了——这对他是没有妨碍的。”康妮自然得象呼吸似地说着谎。

那是克利福给她的主意，她说过，“自然啦，我还可以生个孩子的。我并不是真的残废了，纵令臀部和腿部的筋肉瘫痪了，而且殖力是可以容易恢复的，那时种子便可以传递了。”

他对于彩矿问题是这样的致力，在这种活泼奋勇的日子里，他真的好象觉得他的性功能就要恢复了。康妮恐怖地望着他。但是她是够机警地把他的暗示拿来当作她自己的武器的。因为假如她能够的话，她定要有个孩子的，不过那决不是克利福的孩子。

波太大气窒着呆了一会，过后，她知道了这只是欺骗的话罢了，不足相信的，不过，今日的医生们是能做这种事的；他们很能够做接种这类的事情的。

“呵，夫人，我只希望和褥着你可以有个孩子，对于你和对于大家，那是件多么可喜的事！老实说，勒格贝大厦里有个孩子，事情就大不同了！”

“可不是？”康妮说。

她选了三张六十年前的皇家艺术学会会员的图画，去送给学兰公爵夫人主办的慈善贩卖会。人家叫她做“贩卖会会爵

夫人”，她是常常向所有的有爵位的人征求物品给她贩卖的，

她得了这三张装了框、署了皇家艺术学会会员的名的图画，定

要得意极了，她也许还要亲自来拜谢呢，克利福是顶讨厌她的造访的！

“但是，天呀！”波太太心里想，“你准备给我们的是不是梅乐士的孩子啊？天呀，天呀，那简直是一个达娃斯哈的孩子在勒格贝大厦摇篮里了！不过那也可以无愧于这个摇篮的！”

在这旧物贮藏室堆积着的许多离奇古怪的东西中，有一日黑漆的大箱子，做得非常巧妙，这是六七十年前的东西，里面安排着各种各样的物件，上面是一些梳妆用品；刷子、瓶子、镜子、梳子、小盒子甚至三个精致的保险小剃刀、肥皂、确和一切刮脸用品。下面是写字台用品：吸水纸、笔、墨水瓶、纸、信封、记事薄。再下全是在女红用具；三把大小不同的剪刀、针、信封、记事簿。再下便是女红用具；三把大小不同的剪刀、针、针箍、丝线、棉线。补缀用的木球，这一切都是精细的上品，此外还有个放药品的格子，瓶子上标着名种药名：“鸦片药酒”、“松香水”、“丁香精”等，但都是空的。一切都是没有用过的东西。整个箱子台起来的时候，象一个小而拥肿的提箱。里面摆布得迷魂阵一样的密。密到子里的，水都流不出来：因为一点空也都没有了。

做工和设计都非常精美，这是维多利亚时代的手艺但是这箱子却有点太怪异了。购置这日箱子的查太莱前辈一定也有这种感觉所以从来没有人拿来使用过，这是一口无灵魂的死箱子。

虽然，波太太却喜欢极了。

看看多美丽的刷子这么值钱的东西，甚至那三把刮脸用的肥筇刷，都是无美不备啊！还有那些剪刀！那是钱所能买的最精致的东西了。呵！真可爱！”

“你觉得么？”康妮说，“那么，你拿去罢。”

“呵，不！夫人。”

“是的，拿去罢！否则它要在这儿搁到地球末日呢。假如你不要，我便拿来和图画一起送给公爵夫人了，她是不配受用这许多东西的。真的，拿去罢！”

“呵！夫人！我真不知道怎么感谢你才好。”

“那么不要感谢好了。”康妮笑着说。

波太太手里抱着那只大而黝黑的箱子，兴奋得满面春风地走下楼来。

女管家白蒂斯太太驶着车，把波太太利她的箱子，带到村里她家中去。那得请几位朋友来玩赏玩赏于是她请了药剂师的女儿、女教员和一个掌柜助手的女人维顿太太到家里来。她们赏叹了一番之后，开始低谈着查太莱男爵夫人要生小孩了。

“神奇的事情是常常有的。”维顿太太说。

但是波太太坚信着，如果孩子真出世了，那定是克得福男爵的孩子。便是这样！

不久以后，教区的牧师来对克利福慈祥地说：

“我们是不是可以希望一个勒格贝的继承者呢？呵，要是这样，那真是圣灵显迹了！

”晤！我们可以这样希望吧。”克利福带着微徽和讥讽同时又有着某种信心地说。他开始相信那是很可能的。甚至相信孩子也许是他的限。

一天下午，大家都叫他做“乡绅文达”的来斯里·文达来了，这是个清瘦、修洁的、七十岁的老先生。“从头到脚都是贵绅。”正始波太太对白蒂斯太太说的一样。的确！他说起话来那种“咳咳！”不绝曰的古老样子，好象比从前戴假发的绍绅还来得冬烘。飞奔的时光，把这些古雅的东西都淘汰了。

他们讨论着煤矿问题。克利福的意思，以为他的煤炭的品质给纵令不佳．但是可以做成一种集中燃料，这种燃料如果加以某种带酸的湿空气，好好强压起来，是能够发出很大的热力的，很久以来，人们已注意过这种事实了。在一种强有力的湿风之中，煤炕边燃烧出来的火是畅亮的，差不多没有烟的，剩下来的只是些灰粉，而不是粉红色的粗大砂砾。

“但是你到哪里去找到适当的机器去用你的燃料呢？”文达问道。

“我要自己去制造这种机器，并且自己去消用这种燃料。这样产生出来的电力我便拿出来卖。我确信这是可以做的。”

“假如你做得到的话，那好极了，好极了，我的孩子。咳！好极了！要是我能够帮什么忙的话，我是很愿意的。我恐怕我自己利我的煤矿场都是不太合时宜了。但是谁知道呢？当我瞑目以后，还可以有象你一样的人，好极了！这一来所有的工人又有工作了，那时代不要再管煤销不销了。真是好主意，我希望这主意可以成功，要是我自已有儿子的话，无疑地他们会曾希勃来矿场出些新主意。无疑的！顺便问一句，我的亲爱的孩子，外面传的风声，究竟真不真？我们是不是可以希望个勒格贝的继承人？”

“外面有这么一个风声么？”克利福问道。

“是的，亲爱的孩子，住在惠灵坞的马沙尔向我问起这事是不是真的，这便是我听到的风声，自然，要是这是无稽之谈，我决不向外多嘴的。”

“晤，文达先生。”克利福不安地说，但是两只眼睛发着异光。“希望是有一个的，希望是有一个的。”

文达从房子的那边踱了过来，把克利福的手紧握着。

“我亲爱的孩子，我亲爱的朋友，你知道不知道我听了心里多快活？知道你抱着得子的希望工作着，也许那一天达娃斯哈的工人都要重新受雇于你了！呵，我的孩子、能够保持着家声，和有着现成的工作给有意工作的任何人……”

老头儿实在感动了。

第二天康妮正把一些黄色的郁金香安置在一个玻璃瓶里。

“康妮，”克利福说，“你知道外边传说着你就要给勒格贝生一个继承人了吗？”

康妮觉得给恐怖笼罩着了。但是她却安泰地继续布摆着她的花。

“我不知道。”她说，“那是笑话呢，还是有意中伤？”

他静默了一会，然后答道：

“我希望两样都不是。我希望那是一个预言。”

康妮还是在整理着她的花。

“我今早接了父亲一封信。”她说，“他问我，他已经替我答应过亚力山大·柯泊爵士，在七月和八月到他的威尼斯的‘爱斯姆拉达别墅去度署的事，忘记了没有。”

“七月和八月？”克利福说。

“呵，我不会留两个月他么久的，你真的不能一起去么”

“我不愿到国外旅行去。”克利福迅速地说。

她把花拿到窗前去。

“在是我去，你不介意罢？”她说，“你知道那是答应了的事情。”

你要去多少时候？”

“也许三个星期。”

大家静默了一会。”

“那吗，”克利福慢慢地、带几分忧郁地说，“假如你去了一定还想回来的话，我想三个星期我是可以忍受的。”

“我一定要回来的。”她质朴地娴静地说，心里确信着她是一定要回来的。她正想着另一个男子。

克利福觉着她的确信，他相信她，他相信那是为了他的缘故。他觉得心上的一块石头松了，他马上笑逐颜开起来。

“这样吗，”他说，“我想是没有问题的，是不是？”

“是的。”她说。

“换换空气，你定要觉得快乐罢？”

她的奇异的蓝色的眼睛望着他。

“我很喜欢再见见威尼斯，”她说，“并且在那浅水湖过去的小岛的沙滩上洗洗澡。但是你知道我是厌恶丽岛的！我相信我不会喜欢亚力大·柯泊爵士和柯泊爵士夫人的。但是有希尔达在那儿，并且假如我们有一只自己的游艇，那么，是的，那定是有趣的。我实在希望你也能一起去呢。”

她说这话是出于至诚的。她根愿意在这种小事情上使他快乐快乐的。

“唉，但是想象一下我在巴黎北车站或加来码头上的情形罢！”

“但是那有什么关系呢？我看过其他的在大战中受了伤的人，用异床抢着呢。何况我们是可以坐汽车去呢。”

“那么我们得带两个仆人去了。”

“呵，用不着，我们带非尔德去全蚝了，那边总会有个仆人的。”

但是克利福摇了摇头。

“今年不动了，亲爱的，今年不去！或者明年再看罢。”

她忧愁地走开，明年！明年他又将怎样么？

她忧愁地走开了，明年！明年他又将怎样么？她自己实在并不想到威尼斯去，现在不，现在是有了那个男了了，但是她还是要去，为了要服从生活的纪律的缘故；而且，要是她有了孩子的话，克利福会相信她是在威尼斯有了个情人的缘故。

现在已经是五月了，他们是打算在六月间便要出发的。老是这一类的安排！一个人的生命老是安排定了。轮子转着，转着，把人驱使着，驾双着，人实在是莫可奈何的。

已经是五月了，但是天气又寒冷而多雨起来。俗话说的：“寒冷多雨再五月，利于五谷和草秣。”五欲和草袜在我们日重要的东西了！康妮得上啊斯魏去走一趟，这是他们的小市镇。那儿，查太莱的姓名依旧是威风赫赫的，她是一个人去的，非尔得驶着她的汽车。

虽然是五月天，而且处处是嫩绿，但是乡间景色是忧郁的。天气是够冷的，雨中杂着烟雾。空气里浮荡着某种倦怠的感觉。一个人不得不在抵抗中生活。无怪乎这些人都是丑恶而粗钝的了。

汽车艰辛地爬着上坡，哟过达娃斯哈的散漫龌龊的村落，一些黑色砖墙的屋子，它们的黑石板的屋顶的尖锐的边缘发着亮光，地上的泥土夹着煤屑，颜色是黑的。行人道是湿而黑的。仿佛一切的一切都给凄凉郁的情绪所浸透了。丝没有自然的美，丝毫没有生之乐趣，甚至一只鸟、一只野兽所有的美的本能都全部消失了，人类的直觉官能都全部死了。这种情形是令人寒心的。杂货店的一堆一堆的肥皂，蔬菜店的大黄莱和柠檬，时装钥的丑怪帽了，一幕一幕地在丑恶中过去，跟着是俗不可面的电影戏院，广告画上标着：“妇人之爱！”和原始派监理会的新的大教堂，它的光滑的砖墙和窗上的带青带红的大快玻璃实在是够原始的。再过去，是维斯莱源的小教堂，墙砖是黝黑的，直立在铁栏和一些黑色的小树后边，自由派的小教堂，自以为高人一等，是用乡村风味的沙石筑成的，而且有个钟楼，但并不是个很高的钟楼。就在那后边，有个新建的校舍，是用高价的红砖筑成的，前面有个沙地的运动场，用铁栅环绕着，整个看起来是很堂皇的，又象教堂又象监狱。女孩子们在上着唱歌课，刚刚练习完了“拉一米一多一拉”，正开始唱着一首儿单的短歌。世上再也没有比这个更不象歌唱一自然的歌唱一的东西了：这只是一阵奇异的呼号，带了点腔调的模样罢了。那还赶不上野蛮人；野蛮人还有微妙的节奏。那还赶不上野兽；野兽呼号起来的时候还是有意义的。世上没有象这样可怖的东西，而这种东西却叫做唱歌！当非尔德去添汽油的时候，康妮坐在车里觉得肉麻地听着。这样一种人民，直觉的官能已经死尽，只剩下怪异的机械的呼号和乖房的气力，这种人民会有什么将来呢？

在雨中，一辆煤车在轰轰地下着山坡，非尔德添好了油，把车向山坡上开行，经过了那些大的但是凄凉的裁缝店、布匹店和邮政局，来到了寂寞的市场上，那儿，杉·布勒克正在他的所谓“太阳旅店”的酒肆里。伺望着外边的行人，并且向查泰莱男爵夫人的汽车行了士个鞠躬。

大教堂是在左边的黑树丛中，汽车现在下坡了，经过“矿工之家”咖啡店。汽车已经经过了“威录敦”、“纳尔逊”、“三桶”和“太阳”这些咖啡酒肆，现在打“矿工之家”门前经过了，然后再经过了“机师堂”，又经过了新开的够华丽的“矿工之乐”，最后经过了几个新的所谓“别墅”而到了上史德门去的黝黑的路，两旁是灰暗的篱笆和暗青色的草原。

达娃斯哈！那便是达娃斯哈！快乐的英格兰！莎士比亚的英格兰！晤！不！那是今日的英格兰。自从康妮在那儿居住以后，她明白了。这英格半正生产着一种新的人类，迷醉于金钱及社会政治生活，而自然的直觉的官能却是死灭了的新人类。这是些半死的尸体，但是，活着的一半却奇异地、固执地生活着。这一切都是怪涎的，乖庚的。这是个地下的世界，不可以臆测的世界，我们怎样能够明白这些行尸的反应呢？康妮看见一些大的运货车，里面装满着雪菲尔德钢铁厂的工人，一些具有人类模样的、歪曲的、妖怪样的小东西，正向着蔑洛克去作野外旅行，她的心不禁酸楚起来。她想：唉，上帝呵，人类把自己弄成怎么样了？人类的领导者们，把他们同胞开弄成怎么样了？他们把他们的人性都消灭了，现在世上再也不能有友爱了！那只是一场恶梦！

她在—种恐怖的波浪中，重新觉得这一切都是灰色的、令人寒心的失望。这些生物便是工人群众；而上层阶级的内容怎样也是她所深知的，那是没有希望的了，再也没有什么希望的了。可是，她却希望着一个孩子，一个继承人！一个勒格贝的继承人！她不禁惊悸起来。

而梅乐士却是从这一切中出来的！是的，但是他与这一切却远隔着，如她自己与这一切无隔着一样。不过，甚至在他那里也没有什么友爱了。友爱死了，那儿只有孤寂与失望。这便是英格兰，英格兰的大部分。康妮很知道，因为她今天是从这样的英格兰的大部分的中心经过的。

汽车正向着史德门上去。雨渐渐停止了，空气中浮着一种奇异的、透明的五月之光。乡景一幕一幕地卷了过去，往南是毕克，往东是门司非德和诺汀汉。康妮正向着南方走去。

当汽车驶到了高原上面时，她看向见左手边，在一个高临乡野的高地上，那深灰色的，暗淡而雄壮的华梭勃宫堡，下面是些带红色的半新的工人住宅。再下面，便是煤场的大工厂，还正在曰着一缕缕的灰暗的烟和自蒸气，这工厂每年是要把几千几万金镑放在公爵和其他股东的腰包里的。这雄壮的老宫堡；败了，然而它还是高耸天际，俯视着下面湿空气中的黑烟和白雾。

转了个弯，他们在高原上向着史德门前进。从这路上看起来，史德门只是个庞大的壮丽的新饭店。离路不远的地方，金碧辉煌的柯宁斯贝饭店，在一种荒寂的情况中耸立着。但是，细看起来，你便看得见左手边一排排精致的“摩登”住宅，安排得象滑牌戏似的，一家家用花园互相隔离着，这是几个妖怪的“主子们”在这块糠人的土地上所玩的一种奇异的骨牌戏。在这个住宅区过去，耸立着一些真正近代矿场的骇人的凌空建筑，一些化学工厂巨大的长廓，它们的形式是前此人类所梦想不到的。在这种庞大的新设备中间，连矿场矿坑本身都不算什么了。在这大建筑的前面，那骨牌戏都是惊奇地摆在那儿，等待着主干们去玩它。

这便是战后新兴的史德门。但是事实上，尽管康妮并不认识它，老史德门是在那“饭店”下边半英里路之遥，那是一个老的小矿场，一些黑砖筑的老住宅，一两个小教堂，一两间商店和一两间小酒店。

但是这一切都算不得什么了。新工厂里冒着浓烟和蒸汽的地方才是现在的史德门。那儿没有教堂，没有小酒店、甚至没有商店，只有些大工厂。这是现代的奥式皮亚神国里面有着一切的神的殿堂；此外便些模范住宅和饭店，所谓饭店、虽然看起来怪讲究的，其实只是个故工们的酒店罢了。

这块新地方，其至是从康妮到勒格贝以后才建筑起来的。那些模范住宅里，住满着从四方八面来的一些流氓，这些人所干的勾安之一，便是去偷捕克利福的兔子。

汽车在高原上走着，她望着整个的州府，一起一伏地开憎爱分明过去。这个州府往昔是个骄做的、威风赫赫的州府呢！在好怖前，那直立天际，象是海市蜃楼的房屋，便是查维克大厦。它的窗户占了墙壁的大部分，这是伊丽莎白时代的一个最出名的宫堡。它孤独地、高贵地站在一个大花园的上头。虽然是古旧了。过时了。但是人们还当作一个荣耀的遗物似地保存着。“瞧瞧我们的祖先是多么的显贵！”

那是过去，现在是在那下面。将来呢，只有上帝知道在哪里了。汽车已经转着弯了，两旁是些老而黑的矿工的小村舍，汽车正向着阿斯魏下去。在这阴湿的日子里，阿斯魏正冒着一阵阵的烟和蒸汽，好象为什么天神焚香似的。阿斯魏是在那山谷的下面，到雪非尔德的所有的铁道线都打这儿穿过，那些长烟囱里冒着烟和闪光的煤矿场和钢铁厂，那教堂上的螺钻似的凄惨的小钟楼，虽然就要倒塌了，但是依旧还矗立在烟雾中，这样的阿斯魏，常常总使康妮觉得奇怪地感动。这是个山谷中央在古老的村镇。有一个主要的旅舍名叫“查太莱”。阿斯魏人都谯勒格贝是一个地方的总名，而不是一个屋名。

矿工们的勤黑的村舍是平着行人道起的，狭小得象百多年前的矿工住宅一样。这些村舍都是洞着道路起，道路于是成了一条街了。当你走进这街里面的时候，你便要立刻忘记了那开豁的、起伏的原野。这原野上还有着富堡和大厦耸立着，但是和鬼影一般了。现在康妮正到了那光赤的铁道网的上头，那儿四面都起着高大的镀冶金属的工厂和其他的工厂，歙人觉得四周只是些墙壁，铁的声音在嚣响着，庞大的载货车震动着地皮，号笛叫着。

然而当你沿着这条路下去，到了那曲折撤搂的市镇中心时，在那教堂的后面，你便进到了一个两世