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HANDBOOK OF
APPLIED ECONOMETRICS
AND STATISTICAL INFERENCE
STATISTICS: Textbooks and Monographs
EDITED BY
AMANULLAH
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, California
ALANT. K. WAN
City Universityof Hong Kong
Kowloon, Hong Kong
ANOOPCHATURVEDI
University of Allahabad
Allahabad, India
m
M A R C E L
MARCELDEKKER,
INC. -
N E WYORK BASEL
D E K K E R
ISBN: 0-8247-0652-8
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Headquarters
Marcel Dekker, Inc.
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
tel: 2 12-696-9000; fax: 2 12-685-4540
The publisher offers discounts on this book when ordered in bulk quantities.
For more information, write to Special Sales/Professional Marketing at the
headquarters address above.
Neither this book nor any part may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
microfilming, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system. without permission in writing from the publisher
Inc., 1987), has laid the foundation of much subsequent work in this area.
Several topics included in this volume are directly or indirectly influenced by
his work.
In recent yearstherehave been manymajor developmentsassociated
withtheinterface between appliedeconometrics and statistical inference.
This is true especially for censored models, panel data models. time series
econometrics, Bayesian inference, anddistributiontheory.Thecommon
ground at the interface between statistics and econometrics is of consider-
able importance for researchers, practitioners, and students of both subjects,
and it is also of direct interest to those working in other areas of applied
sciences. The crucial importance of this interface has been reflected in sev-
eral ways. For example, this was part of the motivation for the establish-
ment of the journal Econometric TI?~ory (Cambridge University Press); the
Hctmibook of Storistics series (North-Holland). especially Vol. 11; the North-
Hollandpublication Hcrrldbook of Econonretrics, Vol. I-IV, where the
emphasis is oneconometricmethodology;andtherecent Hnrdbook sf
Applied Ecollornic Stntisrics (Marcel Dekker, Inc.), which contains contribu-
tionsfrom
applied
economists and
econometricians. However, there
remains a considerable range of material and recent research results that
are of direct interest to both of the groups under discussion here, but are
scattered throughout the separate literatures.
1 This Hcrrzdbook aims to disseminate significant research results
econo-
in
metrics and statistics.It is aconsolidated and comprehensive reference
source for researchers and students whose work takes them to the interface
between these two disciplines. This may lead to more collaborative research
4
between members of the two disciplines. The major recent developments in
both the applied econometrics and statistical inference techniques that have
been covered are of direct interest to researchers, practitioneres, and grad-
uate students, not only in econometrics and statistics but in other applied
fields such as medicine, engineering, sociology, and psychology. The book
incorporatesreasonablycomprehensiveandup-to-date reviews of recent
developments in various key areas of applied econometrics and statistical
inference, and it also contains chapters that set the scene for future research
in these areas. The emphasis has been on research contributions with acces-
sibility to practitioners and graduate students.
The thirty-one chapters contained in this Hmdbook have been divided
into seven majorparts, viz.. StatisticalInference andSample Design,
NonparametricEstimationand Testing,HypothesisTesting,Pretestand
Biased Estimation,Time Series Analysis, Estimationand Inference in
EconometricModels,and Applied Econometrics. Part I consists of five
chaptersdealing with issues relatedtoparametric inference procedures
andsample design. In Chapter 1, Barry Arnold,EnriqueCastillo,and
Preface vii
Aman Ullah
Alan T. K. Wan
A110opCllatrrrvedi
I
J
Contents
...
Prefcice 111
Contributors is
Selected Plrbliccrtiorn of V.K. Srivastova xix
5. DesignofSampleSurveysacrossTime 77
Subir Ghosh
Part2NonparametricEstimationandTesting
6. Kernel Estimation in a Continuous Randomized Response
Model 97
Ibrahim A . Ahmad
Index-Free, Density-Based Multinomial Choice 115
Jeffrey S . Racine
Censored Additive Regression Models 143
R . S. Singh and Xuewen Lu
Improved Combined Parametric and Nonparametric
Regressions: Estimation and Hypothesis Testing 159
Mezbahur Ruhman and Aman Ullalz
Part 3 HypothesisTesting
I 10. Neyman’s Smooth Test and Its Applications in Econometrics 177
Ani1 K . Bera and Aurobindo Ghosh
11. Computing the Distribution of a Quadratic Form in Normal
Variables 23 1
R . W. Farebrother
12. Improvements to the Wald Test 25 1
Mu.xwell L . King and Kim-Leng Goh
13. On the Sensitivity of the t-Statistic 277
Jan R . Magnus
Part 7 AppliedEconometrics
28. SemiparametricPanelDataEstimation:AnApplicationto
Immigrants'Homelink Effect on U.S. ProducerTrade Flows 591
Arnan Ullcrk and Kustrnl Mundra
29. Weighting Socioeconomic Indicators of Human Development:
ApproachVariable Latent A 609
A . L. Nugar and Sudip Rnnjan Basu
30. A Survey of Recent Work on Identification, Estimation, and
643Models
Auction
Structural
of Testing
Sanlita Scween
31. Asymmetry of BusinessCycles: The Markov-Switching
Approach 68 7
Baldev Rc~j
Index 71I
I
Contributors
xv
xvi Contributors
DuangkamanChotikapanich SchoolofEconomicsandFinance,Curtin
University of Technology, Perth, Australia
R. W. Farebrother DepartmentofEconomicStudies,Faculty ofSocial
Studies and Law, Victoria University of Manchester, Manchester, England
A. Fieger ServiceBarometer AG, Munich, Germany
Gordon
Fisher Department Economics,
of Concordia
University,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
John W. Galbraith Department of
Economics,
McGill
University,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
AurobindoGhosh DepartmentofEconomics,Universityof Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois
Subir Ghosh Department of Statistics, University of California, Riverside,
Riverside, California
, David E. A. Giles Department Economics,
of University
Victoria,
of
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Judith A. Giles Department of
Economics, University of Victoria,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
!
Kim-Leng Goh Departmentof AppliedStatistics,FacultyofEconomics
and Administration, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
William E. Griffiths Department of Economics, University of Melbourne,
Melbourne, Australia
Hiroyuki Hisamatsu Faculty of Economics,
Kagawa
University,
Takamatsu, Japan
George G . Judge Department ofAgriculturalEconomics,Universityof
California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California
Maxwell L. King Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University,
Clayton, Victoria, Australia
S.N.U.A. Kirmani DepartmentofMathematics, University of Northern
Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa
John L. Knight Department of Economics, University of Western Ontario,
London, Ontario, Canada
ShiqingLing Department of Mathematics,HongKong University of
Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, China
!
Contributors xvii
Books:
1. Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equation Models: Estimation altd
Inference (with D. E. A. Giles), Marcel-Dekker, New York, 1987.
2. The Econometrics of Disequilibrium Models, (with B. Rao), Greenwood
Press, New York, 1990.
Research papers:
1.On
the
Estimation of Generalized
LinearProbability
Model
InvolvingDiscreteRandomVariables (with A. R.Roy), Annals of
the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 20, 1968, 457467.
2. The Efficiency of Estimating Seemingly
UnrelatedRegression
Equations, Annals of the Institute of StatisticalMathematics, 22,
1970, 493.
3. Three-Stage
Least-Squares
and
Generalized
Double
k-Class
Estimators: A MathematicalRelationship, InternationalEconomic
Review, Vol. 12, 1971, 312-316.
xix
xx Publications of Srivastava
4. DisturbanceVarianceEstimation in SimultaneousEquations by k-
Class Method, Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 23,
197 1,437-449.
5. DisturbanceVarianceEstimation in SimultaneousEquationswhen
DisturbancesAre
Small, Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 67, 1972, 164-168.
6. The Bias of Generalized Double k-Class Estimators, (with A.R. Roy),
Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 24, 1972, 495-508.
7. The Efficiency of an ImprovedMethodofEstimatingSeemingly
Unrelated Regression Equations, Journal of Econometrics, 1,1973,
341-50.
8. Two-Stage and Three-Stage Least Squares Estimation of Dispersion
Matrix of Disturbances in Simultaneous Equations, (with R. Tiwari),
Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 28, 1976, 41 1-428.
9. Evaluation of Expectationof Product of Stochastic Matrices, (withR.
Tiwari), Scandinavinn Journal of Statistics. 3, 1976. 135-1 38.
10. OptimalityofLeastSquares in SeeminglyUnrelatedRegression
Equation Models (with T. D. Dwivedi), Journal of Econornetrics, 7,
1978, 391-395.
11. LargeSampleApproximations in SeeminglyUnrelatedRegression
Equations (with S. Upadhyay), Annals of the Institute of Statisticnl
Mathematics, 30, 1978,89-96.
12. Efficiency of Two Stage and Three Stage Least Square Estimators,
Econometrics, 46, 1978, 1495-1498.
13. Estimation ofSeeminglyUnrelatedRegression Equations:A Brief
Survey (with T. D. Dwivedi), Journal of Econometrics, 8, 1979, 15-32.
14. GeneralizedTwoStageLeastSquaresEstimatorsforStructural
Equation withBothFixed andRandom Coefficients (with B. Raj
and A. Ullah), International Economic Review, 21, 1980, 61-65.
15. EstimationofLinearSingle-EquationandSimultaneousEquation
Model
under
Stochastic
Linear
Constraints:
Annoted
An
Bibliography, International Statistical Review, 48, 1980, 79-82.
16. Finite Sample Properties of Ridge Estimators (with T. D.Dwivedi and
R. L. Hall), Technometrics, 22, 1980,205-212.
17. The Efficiency of Estimating a Random Coefficient Model, (with B.
Raj and S. Upadhyaya), Journal Oj’Econometrics, 12, 1980, 285-299.
18. A
Numerical Comparison of
Exact,
Large-Sample and
Small-
DisturbanceApproximations ofPropertiesofk-ClassEstimators,
(with T.D. Dwivedi, M. Belinski andR.Tiwari), Inrernational
Economic Review, 21, 1980, 249-252.
Publications of Srivastava xxi
1. INTRODUCTION
Suppose we are given a sample of size I I from a normal distribution with
known variance and unknown mean p, and that, on the basis of sample
values . x l , x ? , . . . ,x,,, we wish to make inference about p. The Bayesian
solution of this problem involves specification of an appropriate representa-
tion of our priorbeliefs about p (summarized in a prior density forw ) which
will be adjusted by conditioning to obtain a relevant posterior density forp
(the conditional density of p, given X = xJ. Proper informative priors are
most easily justified butimproper(nonintegrable)andnoninformative
(locally uniform) priors are often acceptable in the analysis and may be
necessary when the informed scientist insists on some degree of ignorance
about unknown parameters. With a one-dimensional parameter,life for the
Bayesian analyst is relatively straightforward. The worst that can happenis
that the analyst will need to use numerical integration techniques to normal-
ize and to quantify measures of central tendency of the resulting posterior
density.
1
2 Arnold et al.
and
Note that densities of the form (9) form an exponential family with (el +
I)([? + 1) - 1 parameters (since moois a normalizing constant determined by
the other m,,s).
Bhattacharyya's [I] normal conditionals density canbe represented in the
form (9) by suitable identification of the q0s. A second example, which will
arise again in our Bayesian analysis of normal data,involves normal-gamma
conditionals (see Castillo andGalambos [3]). Thus we, inthis case. are
interested in all bivariate distributions with X ( Y = y having a normal dis-
tribution for each*I , and with YIX = .x having a gamma distribution for each
s. These densities will be given by (9) with the following choices for the rs
and qs.
6 Arnold et al.
where
and
0.
0. \\I
0.5
0. -0.5
- lt
~~
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
+ logy + log( 1 Y)
11201 11702 -
In this case the constraints on the ?nos to ensure integrability of (17) are
quite simple:
e
Definition 2 (Conjugate family) A furnil]*3 of priors for is .wid to he a
conjugatefuntily if any member of 3,when contbined with the likelihood the
of
datu, leads to a posterior density whicl1 is clguill u member of 3.
where a > 0.0 < 0, c E [w, d < 0. Densities such as (26) have a gamma
marginal density for t and a conditional distribution for p, given t that is
normal with precision depending on t.
It is notclear why we should force our prior to accommodate to the
particularkind of dependenceexhibited by (26). Inthiscase, if t were
known, it would be natural to use a normal conjugate prior for p. If p
were known,theappropriateconjugatepriorfor t would be agamma
density. Citing ease of assessment arguments, Arnold and Press [7] advo-
cated use of independent normal and gamma priors for ,LL and t (when both
are unknown). They thus proposed prior densities of the form
10 Arnold et al.
f ( ~r ,
) 0: exp(n
log r + br + CF + d p 2 ) (27)
where CI > 0, b < 0, c E R, d < 0. 1
The family (27) is not a conjugate family and in addition it, like (26).
involves a specific assumption about the (lack of) dependence between prior
beliefs about p and r.
It will be noted that densities (26)and (27), both have normal and gamma
conditionals.Indeedbothcanbeembedded in the full class ofnormal-
gamma conditionals densities introduced earlier (see equation ( 1 2)). This
family is a conjugate prior family. It is richer than (26) and (27) and it can
be argued that it provides us with desirable additional flexibility at little cost
since the resulting posterior densities (onwhich our inferential decisions will
be made) will continue to have normal and gamma conditionals and thus are
not difficult to deal with. This is a prototypical example of what we call a
conditionally specified prior. Some practical examples, together with their
corresponding hyperparameter assessments, are given in Arnold et al. [8].
Ifthe possible densitiesfor e
X are given by (f(5: E @]where
0 c R k ,k > 1, then specification of a joint prior for e involves describing
ak-dimensionaldensity. We argued in Section 2 that densities are most
easily visualized in terms of conditional densities. In order to ascertain an
appropriate prior density for e it would then seem appropriate to question
the informed scientific expert regarding prior beliefs about 8 , given specific
values of the other 8;s. Then, we would ask about prior beliefs about Q2
1
given specific values of e(,,
(the other Ois),etc. One clear advantage of this
approach is that we are only asking about univariate distributions, which
are much easier to visualize than multivariate distributions.
1 Often we can still takeadvantage of
conjugacy concepts in our effort
to
pin down prior beliefs using a conditional approach. Suppose that for each
e,
coordinate 8; of if the other 8,s (i.e. e,,))were known, a convenient con-
jugate prior family, sayf,(O,lp). p, E A , , is available. In this notation the g,s
are "hyperparameters" of the conjugate prior families. If this is the case, we
e.
propose to use, as a conjugate prior family for all densities which have the
property that, for each i, the conditional density of O,, given e,, belongs to
the familyf,. It is not difficult to verify that this is a conjugate prior family
so that the posterior densities will also have conditionals in the prescribed
families.
3.1 ExponentialFamilies
If, in the above scenarios, each of the prior familiesf, (the prior for Oi,given
e(,,)is an C,-parameter exponential family, then,
- from Theorem 1, the result-
ing conditionally conjugate prior family will itself be an exponential family.
Bayesian
Inference Using Conditionally Specified Priors 11
x-
It will have a large number of hyperparameters (namely n(t,+ 1) - 1),
i= 1
providing flexibility for matching informed or vague prior beliefs about @.
Formally, if for each i a natural conjugate prior for 0, (assuming e(,) is
known) is an [,-parameter exponential family of the form
then a convenient family of priors for the full parameter vector @ will be of
the form
1
I
and precision
+
l/var(plt) = - 2 ( n ~ ~m~lt + / w 2 log r) (33)
2. The conditional density of t given p is gamma with shape parameter
a(p) and intensity parameter A(@). i.e.,
f(t[p) t 4 4 - ~ ~ - w ~
(34)
with mean and variance
var(slp) =
1+ m o 2 + m12p+ nt22p’ (36)
(!?to, + ml1p + nz21p?)2
are willing to accept improper priors we can allow each of them to range
over [w.
In order to easily characterize the posterior density which will arise when
a prior of the form (31) is combined with the likelihood (30), it is convenient
to rewrite the likelihood as follows:
A prior of the form (31) combined with the likelihood (37) will yield a
posterior density again in the family (31) with prior and posterior hyper-
parameters related as shown in Table 1. From Table 1 we may observe that
four of the hyperparameters are unaffected by the data. They are the four
hyperparameters appearing in the first factor in (31). Their influence on the
prior is eventually “swamped” by the data but, by adopting the condition-
ally conjugate prior family, we do not force them arbitrarily to be zero as
would be done if we were to use the “natural” conjugate prior (26).
Reiterating. the choice 11100 = t w o = i n l 2 = m 2 2 = 0 yields the natural
conjugateprior.The choice l n I 1= i n l 2 = = n12? = 0 yields priorswith
independent normal and gamma marginals. Thus both of the commonly
proposed prior families are subsumed by (31) and in all cases we end up
with a posterior with normal-gamma conditionals.
.fx(s;
a, r ) = n11
i= 1
ra(r.xi)-(a+’)z(r.xl> I )
(39)
If r were known, the natural conjugate prior family for a would be the
gamma family. If a were known, the natural conjugate prior family for r
would be the Pareto family. We are then led to consider the conditionally
conjugate prior family which will include the joint densities for ( a ,r ) with
gamma and Pareto conditionals. It is not difficult to verify that this is a six
(hyper) parameter family of priors of the form
+
logr r r l z l log a log r]
.f(a, r ) o( exp[mol
+ +
x exp[mIoa n720 loga /??lIalogr]Z(rc > 1) (40)
It willbe obvious that this is not an exponential family of priors. The
support depends on one of the hyperparameters. In (40). the hyperpara-
meters in the first factor are those which are unchanged in the posterior.
The hyperparameters in the second factor are the ones that are affected by
the data.If a density is of the form (40) is used as a prior in conjunction with
the likelihood (39), i t is evident that the resulting posterior densityis again in
the family (40). The prior and posterior hyperparameters are related in the
manner shown in Table 2.
The density (40). having gamma and Pareto conditionals, is readily simu-
lated using a Gibbs sampler approach. The family (40) includes thetwo
most frequently suggested families of joint priors for (a. r), namely:
Bayesian Inference Using Conditionally Specified Priors 15
4. SOME CLASSICALPROBLEMS
4.1 The Behrens-FisherProblem
In this setting we wish to compare the means of two or more normal popu-
lations with unknown and possibly different precisions. Thus our data con-
sists of k independent samples from normal populations with
Our interest is in the values of the pis. The ris (the precisions) are here
classic examples of (particularly pernicious) nuisance parameters. Our like-
lihood will involve 2k parameters. If all the parameters save pJ are known,
then a natural conjugate prior for pJ would be a normal density. If all the
parameters save rJ are known, then a natural conjugate prior for rj will be a
gamma density. Consequently, the general conditionally conjugate prior for
( p , z) will be one in which the conditional density of each p J ,given the other
2k - 1 parameters, is normal and the conditional density of rj, given the
other 2k - 1 parameters, is of the gamma type. The resulting family of joint
priors in then given by
16 Arnold et al.
where
YIO(c(,) =1 f
Y,I(PLi)=P,.
q ; & 4 = P?
q:,”(ri)= 1,
s:s1(r1,)=-rl,,
q;.2(t,.)= log t,,
.
-
the observation period) for each treatment. Thus our data consists
independent random variables ( X , . X , ) where X , bi~zomicrl(n,,p,).
of two
Bayesian Inference Using Conditionally Specified Priors 17
is of interest in this setting. A natural conjugate prior forp l (if p., is known)
is a beta distribution. Analogously, a beta prior is natural for p z (if p I is
known). The corresponding conditionally conjugate prior for ( p , , p 2 ) will
have beta conditionals (cf. equation (18)) and is given by
. f ( P I . P ? ) = b I ( 1 --PI)P.,(l -P2)1-I
+
x exp[tnII logpl logp2 t n 1 2logpl log(1 - p z )
+ m . , l log(l - PI) logp: + 11122 log(1 - PI) log( 1 - p z )
+ +
I H O ] logp., +
n10., log( 1 - p2) moo]
x Z(0 <PI < 1)1(0 < p2 < 1) (44)
When such a prior is combined with the likelihood corresponding to the
two independent binomial X,s, the posterior density is again in the family
(44). Only some of the hyperparameters are affected by the data.
The usual prior in this situation involves independent beta priors for pI
and p z . Priors of this form are of course included as special cases in (44) but
it is quitereasonableto expect non-independentprior beliefs about the
efficacy of the two treatment regimes. Observe that simulated realizations
from a posterior of the form (44) are readily generated using a Gibbs sam-
pler algorithm (with beta conditionals). This permits ready simulation of the
posterior distribution of the parametric function of interest (the odds ratio
(43)).
4.3 Regression
The conditionally specified prior approach can alsobe used in other classical
situations. We will describe an example involving simple linear regression.
but analogous ideas can be developed in more complex settings.
Assume that we have I I independent random variables XI .X2. . . . , X,,
whose marginal distributions follow a linear regression model. Thus
X, - ~ ( +apt,. 2 ) , i = 1 , . 7 . . . . , I T (45)
where the t,s are knownquantitiesandtheparameters CY,p, and 0' are
unknown. Here CY E 0 8 , b E R and 0
' E R'. Often (Y and j3 are the parameters
of interest whereas a2is a nuisance parameter. As we have done in previous
sections, we reparameterize in terms of precision t ( = 1 / 0 2 ) If
. and r were
18 Arnold et al.
known, we would use a normal prior forCY.If CY and r were known, a normal
I
prior for @ would be used. If CY and B were known, a routinely used prior for
I
r would be a gamma distribution. Our conditionalspecification route would
then lead to a joint prior with normal, normal, and gamma conditionals.
Thus we would use
I
family (46). It is not easy to justify the dependence structure that is implicitly
assumed when using such a restrictive prior.
Another possibility would involve independentpriorsfor a, p, and r.
Whether we pick a prior in the full family (46) or from some subfamily,
we will still be able to use a simple Gibbs sampler approach to simulating
realizations from the posterior density with its normal, normal, and gamma
conditionals.
CHAPTER VI
"Why don't men and women really like one another nowadays?"
Connie asked Tommy Dukes, who was more or less her oracle.
"Oh, but they do! I don't think since the human species was
invented, there has ever been a time when men and women have
liked one another as much as they do today. Genuine liking! Take
myself ... I really like women better than men; they are braver, one
can be more frank with them."
Connie pondered this.
"Ah, yes, but you never have anything to do with them!" she said.
"I? What am I doing but talking perfectly sincerely to a woman at
this moment?"
"Yes, talking...."
"And what more could I do if you were a man, than talk perfectly
sincerely to you?"
"Nothing perhaps. But a woman...."
"A woman wants you to like her and talk to her, and at the same
time love her and desire her; and it seems to me the two things are
mutually exclusive."
"But they shouldn't be!"
"No doubt water ought not to be so wet as it is; it overdoes it in
wetness. But there it is! I like women and talk to them, and
therefore I don't love them and desire them. The two things don't
happen at the same time in me."
"I think they ought to."
"All right. The fact that things ought to be something else than what
they are, is not my department."
Connie considered this. "It isn't true," she said. "Men can love
women and talk to them. I don't see how they can love them
without talking, and being friendly and intimate. How can they?"
"Well," he said, "I don't know. What's the use of my generalising? I
only know my own case. I like women, but I don't desire them. I like
talking to them; but talking to them, though it makes me intimate in
one direction, sets me poles apart from them as far as kissing is
concerned. So there you are! But don't take me as a general
example, probably I'm just a special case: one of the men who like
women, but don't love women, and even hate them if they force me
into a pretence of love, or an entangled appearance."
"But doesn't it make you sad?"
"Why should it? Not a bit! I look at Charlie May, and the rest of the
men who have affairs.... No, I don't envy them a bit! If fate sent me
a woman I wanted, well and good. Since I don't know any woman I
want, and never see one ... why, I presume I'm cold, and I really like
some women very much."
"Do you like me?"
"Very much! And you see there's no question of kissing between us,
is there?"
"None at all!" said Connie. "But oughtn't there to be?"
"Why, in God's name? I like Clifford, but what would you say if I
went and kissed him?"
"But isn't there a difference?"
"Where does it lie, as far as we're concerned? We're all intelligent
human beings, and the male and female business is in abeyance.
Just in abeyance. How would you like me to start acting up like a
continental male at this moment, and parading the sex thing?"
"I should hate it."
"Well then! I tell you, if I'm really a male thing at all, I never run
across the female of my species. And I don't miss her, I just like
women. Who's going to force me into loving, or pretending to love
them, working up the sex game?"
"No, I'm not. But isn't something wrong?"
"You may feel it, I don't."
"Yes, I feel something is wrong between men and women. A woman
has no glamour for a man any more."
"Has a man for a woman?"
She pondered the other side of the question.
"Not much," she said truthfully.
"Then let's leave it all alone, and just be decent and simple, like
proper human beings with one another. Be damned to the artificial
sex-compulsion! I refuse it!"
Connie knew he was right, really. Yet it left her feeling so forlorn, so
forlorn and stray. Like a chip on a dreary pond, she felt. What was
the point, of her or anything?
It was her youth which rebelled. These men seemed so old and cold.
Everything seemed old and cold. And Michaelis let one down so; he
was no good. The men didn't want one; they just didn't really want a
woman, even Michaelis didn't.
And the bounders who pretended they did, and started working the
sex game, they were worse than ever.
It was just dismal, and one had to put up with it. It was quite true,
men had no real glamour for a woman: if you could fool yourself into
thinking they had, even as she had fooled herself over Michaelis,
that was the best you could do. Meanwhile you just lived on and
there was nothing to it. She understood perfectly well why people
had cocktail parties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were
ready to drop. You had to take it out some way or other, your youth,
or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! you felt as old
as Methuselah, and yet the thing fizzed somehow, and didn't let you
be comfortable. A mean sort of life! And no prospect! She almost
wished she had gone off with Mick, and made her life one long
cocktail party, and jazz evening. Anyhow that was better than just
mooning yourself into the grave.
On one of her bad days she went out alone to walk in the wood,
ponderously, heeding nothing, not even noticing where she was. The
report of a gun not far off startled and angered her.
Then, as she went, she heard voices, and recoiled. People! She
didn't want people. But her quick ear caught another sound, and she
roused; it was a child sobbing. At once she attended; someone was
ill-treating a child. She strode swinging down the wet drive, her
sullen resentment uppermost. She felt just prepared to make a
scene.
Turning the corner, she saw two figures in the drive beyond her: the
keeper, and a little girl in a purple coat and moleskin cap, crying.
"Ah, shut it up, tha false little bitch!" came the man's angry voice,
and the child sobbed louder.
Constance strode nearer, with blazing eyes. The man turned and
looked at her, saluting coolly, but he was pale with anger.
"What's the matter? Why is she crying?" demanded Constance,
peremptory but a little breathless.
A faint smile like a sneer came on the man's face. "Nay, yo' mun ax
'er," he replied callously, in broad vernacular.
Connie felt as if he had hit her in the face, and she changed colour.
Then she gathered her defiance, and looked at him, her dark-blue
eyes blazing rather vaguely.
"I asked you," she panted.
He gave a queer little bow, lifting his hat. "You did, your Ladyship,"
he said; then, with a return to the vernacular: "but I canna tell yer."
And he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance.
Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black-haired thing of nine or ten.
"What is it, dear? Tell me why you're crying!" she said, with the
conventionalised sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, self-
conscious. Still more sweetness on Connie's part.
"There, there, don't you cry! Tell me what they've done to you!" ...
and intense tenderness of tone. At the same time she felt in the
pocket of her knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.
"Don't you cry then!" she said, bending in front of the child. "See
what I've got for you!"
Sobs, snuffles, a fist taken from a blubbered face, and a black
shrewd eye cast for a second on the sixpence. Then more sobs, but
subduing. "There, tell me what's the matter, tell me!" said Connie,
putting the coin into the child's chubby hand, which closed over it.
"It's the ... it's the ... pussy!"
Shudders of subsiding sobs.
"What pussy, dear?"
After a silence the shy fist, clenching on sixpence, pointed into the
bramble brake.
"There!"
Connie looked, and there, sure enough, was a big black cat,
stretched out grimly, with a bit of blood on it.
"Oh!" she said in repulsion.
"A poacher, your Ladyship," said the man satirically.
She glanced at him angrily. "No wonder the child cried," she said, "if
you shot it when she was there. No wonder she cried!"
He looked into Connie's eyes, laconic, contemptuous, not hiding his
feelings. And again Connie flushed; she felt she had been making a
scene, the man did not respect her.
"What is your name?" she said playfully to the child. "Won't you tell
me your name?"
Sniffs; then very affectedly in a piping voice; "Connie Mellors!"
"Connie Mellors! Well, that's a nice name! And did you come out
with your Daddy, and he shot a pussy? But it was a bad pussy!"
The child looked at her, with bold, dark eyes of scrutiny, sizing her
up, and her condolence.
"I wanted to stop with my Gran," said the little girl.
"Did you? But where is your Gran?"
The child lifted an arm, pointing down the drive. "At th' cottidge."
"At the cottage! And would you like to go back to her?"
Sudden, shuddering quivers of reminiscent sobs. "Yes!"
"Come then, shall I take you? Shall I take you to your Gran? Then
your Daddy can do what he has to do." She turned to the man. "It is
your little girl, isn't it?"
He saluted, and made a slight movement of the head in affirmation.
"I suppose I can take her to the cottage?" asked Connie.
"If your Ladyship wishes."
Again he looked into her eyes, with that calm, searching detached
glance. A man very much alone, and on his own.
"Would you like to come with me to the cottage, to your Gran,
dear?"
The child peeped up again. "Yes!" she simpered.
Connie disliked her; the spoilt, false little female. Nevertheless she
wiped her face, and took her hand. The keeper saluted in silence.
"Good morning!" said Connie.
It was nearly a mile to the cottage, and Connie senior was well
bored by Connie junior by the time the gamekeeper's picturesque
little home was in sight. The child was already as full to the brim
with tricks as a little monkey, and so self-assured.
At the cottage the door stood open, and there was a rattling heard
inside. Connie lingered, the child slipped her hand, and ran indoors.
"Gran! Gran!"
"Why, are yer back a'ready!"
The grandmother had been blackleading the stove, it was Saturday
morning. She came to the door in her sacking apron, a blacklead-
brush in her hand, and a black smudge on her nose. She was a little,
rather dry woman.
"Why, whatever?" she said, hastily wiping her arm across her face as
she saw Connie standing outside.
"Good morning!" said Connie. "She was crying, so I just brought her
home."
The grandmother looked round swiftly at the child:
"Why, wheer was yer Dad?"
The little girl clung to her grandmother's skirts and simpered.
"He was there," said Connie, "but he'd shot a poaching cat, and the
child was upset."
"Oh, you'd no right t'ave bothered, Lady Chatterley, I'm sure! I'm
sure it was very good of you, but you shouldn't 'ave bothered. Why,
did ever you see!"—and the old woman turned to the child: "Fancy
Lady Chatterley takin' all that trouble over yer! Why, she shouldn't
'ave bothered!"
"It was no bother, just a walk," said Connie smiling.
"Why, I'm sure t'was very kind of you, I must say! So she was
crying! I knew there'd be something afore they got far. She's
frightened of 'im, that's wheer it is. Seems 'e's almost a stranger to
'er, fair a stranger, and I don't think they're two as'd hit it off very
easy. He's got funny ways."
Connie didn't know what to say.
"Look, Gran!" simpered the child.
The old woman looked down at the sixpence in the little girl's hand.
"An' sixpence an' all! Oh, your Ladyship, you shouldn't, you
shouldn't. Why, isn't Lady Chatterley good to yer! My word, you're a
lucky girl this morning!"
She pronounced the name, as all the people did: Chat'ley.—"Isn't
Lady Chat'ley good to you!"—Connie couldn't help looking at the old
woman's nose, and the latter again vaguely wiped her face with the
back of her wrist, but missed the smudge.
Connie was moving away.... "Well, thank you ever so much, Lady
Chat'ley, I'm sure. Say thank you to Lady Chat'ley!"—this last to the
child.
"Thank you," piped the child.
"There's a dear!" laughed Connie, and she moved away, saying
"Good morning," heartily relieved to get away from the contact.
Curious, she thought, that that thin, proud man should have that
little, sharp woman for a mother!
And the old woman, as soon as Connie was gone, rushed to the bit
of mirror in the scullery, and looked at her face. Seeing it, she
stamped her foot with impatience. "Of course she had to catch me in
my coarse apron, and a dirty face! Nice idea she'd get of me!"
Connie went slowly home to Wragby. "Home!" ... it was a warm
word to use for that great, weary warren. But then it was a word
that had had its day. It was somehow cancelled. All the great words,
it seemed to Connie, were cancelled for her generation: love, joy,
happiness, home, mother, father, husband, all these great, dynamic
words were half dead now, and dying from day to day. Home was a
place you lived in, love was a thing you didn't fool yourself about,
joy was a word you applied to a good Charleston, happiness was a
term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people, a father was an
individual who enjoyed his own existence, a husband was a man you
lived with and kept going in spirits. As for sex, the last of the great
words, it was just a cocktail term for an excitement that bucked you
up for a while, then left you more raggy than ever. Frayed! It was as
if the very material you were made of was cheap stuff, and was
fraying out to nothing.
All that really remained was a stubborn stoicism: and in that there
was a certain pleasure. In the very experience of the nothingness of
life, phase after phase, étape after étape, there was a certain grisly
satisfaction. So that's that! Always this was the last utterance: home,
love, marriage, Michaelis: So that's that!—And when one died, the
last words to life would be: So that's that!—
Money? Perhaps one couldn't say the same there. Money one always
wanted. Money, success, the bitch-goddess, as Tommy Dukes
persisted in calling it, after Henry James, that was a permanent
necessity. You couldn't spend your last sou, and say finally: So that's
that!—No, if you lived even another ten minutes, you wanted a few
more sous for something or other. Just to keep the business
mechanically going, you needed money. You had to have it. Money
you have to have. You needn't really have anything else. So that's
that!—
Since, of course, it's not your own fault you are alive. Once you are
alive, money is a necessity, and the only absolute necessity. All the
rest you can get along without, at a pinch. But not money.
Emphatically, that's that!—
She thought of Michaelis, and the money she might have had with
him; and even that she didn't want. She preferred the lesser amount
which she helped Clifford to make by his writing. That she actually
helped to make.—"Clifford and I together, we make twelve hundred
a year out of writing;" so she put it to herself. Make money! Make it!
Out of nowhere! Wring it out of the thin air! The last feat to be
humanly proud of! The rest all-my-eye-Betty-Martin.
So she plodded home to Clifford, to join forces with him again, to
make another story out of nothingness: and a story meant money.
Clifford seemed to care very much whether his stories were
considered first class literature or not. Strictly, she didn't care.
Nothing in it! said her father. Twelve hundred pounds last year! was
the retort simple and final.
If you were young, you just set your teeth, and bit on and held on,
till the money began to flow from the invisible; it was a question of
power. It was a question of will; a subtle, subtle, powerful
emanation of will out of yourself brought back to you the mysterious
nothingness of money: a word on a bit of paper. It was a sort of
magic, certainly it was triumph. The bitch-goddess! Well, if one had
to prostitute oneself, let it be to a bitch-goddess! One could always
despise her even while one prostituted oneself to her, which was
good.
Clifford, of course, had still many childish taboos and fetishes. He
wanted to be thought "really good," which was all cock-a-hoopy
nonsense. What was really good was what actually caught on. It was
no good being really good and getting left with it. It seemed as if
most of the "really good" men just missed the bus. After all you only
lived one life, and if you missed the bus, you were just left on the
pavement, along with the rest of the failures.
Connie was contemplating a winter in London with Clifford, next
winter. He and she had caught the bus all right, so they might as
well ride on top for a bit, and show it.
The worst of it was, Clifford tended to become vague, absent, and to
fall into fits of vacant depression. It was the wound to his psyche
coming out. But it made Connie want to scream. Oh God, if the
mechanism of the consciousness itself was going to go wrong, then
what was one to do? Hang it all, one did one's bit! Was one to be let
down absolutely?
Sometimes she wept bitterly, but even as she wept she was saying
to herself: Silly fool, wetting hankies! As if that would get you
anywhere!
Since Michaelis, she had made up her mind she wanted nothing.
That seemed the simplest solution of the otherwise insoluble. She
wanted nothing more than what she'd got; only she wanted to get
ahead with what she'd got: Clifford, the stories, Wragby, the Lady-
Chatterley business, money, and fame, such as it was ... she wanted
to go ahead with it all. Love, sex, all that sort of stuff, just water-
ices! Lick it up and forget it. If you don't hang on to it in your mind,
it's nothing. Sex especially ... nothing! Make up your mind to it, and
you've solved the problem. Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted
about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to about the
same thing.
But a child, a baby! that was still one of the sensations. She would
venture very gingerly on that experiment. There was the man to
consider, and it was curious, there wasn't a man in the world whose
children you wanted. Mick's children! Repulsive thought! As lief have
a child to a rabbit! Tommy Dukes?... he was very nice, but somehow
you couldn't associate him with a baby, another generation. He
ended in himself. And out of all the rest of Clifford's pretty wide
acquaintance, there was not a man who did not rouse her contempt,
when she thought of having a child by him. There were several who
would have been quite possible as lovers, even Mick. But to let them
breed a child on you! Ugh! Humiliation and abomination.
So that was that!
Nevertheless, Connie had the child at the back of her mind. Wait!
wait! She would sift the generations of men through her sieve, and
see if she couldn't find one who would do.—"Go ye into the streets
and byways of Jerusalem, and see if ye can find a man." It had been
impossible to find a man in the Jerusalem of the prophet, though
there were thousands of male humans. But a man! C'est une autre
chose!
She had an idea that he would have to be a foreigner: not an
Englishman, still less an Irishman. A real foreigner.
But wait! wait! Next winter she would get Clifford to London; the
following winter she would get him abroad to the South of France,
Italy. Wait! She was in no hurry about the child. That was her own
private affair, and the one point on which, in her own queer, female
way, she was serious to the bottom of her soul. She was not going
to risk any chance comer, not she! One might take a lover almost at
any moment, but a man who should beget a child on one ... wait!
wait! it's a very different matter.—"Go ye into the streets and byways
of Jerusalem...." It was not a question of love; it was a question of a
man. Why, one might even rather hate him, personally. Yet if he was
the man, what would one's personal hate matter? This business
concerned another part of oneself.
It had rained as usual, and the paths were too sodden for Clifford's
chair, but Connie would go out. She went out alone every day now,
mostly in the wood, where she was really alone. She saw nobody
there.
This day, however, Clifford wanted to send a message to the keeper,
and as the boy was laid up with influenza,—somebody always
seemed to have influenza at Wragby,—Connie said she would call at
the cottage.
The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were slowly dying. Grey
and clammy and silent, even from the shuffling of the collieries, for
the pits were working short time, and today they were stopped
altogether. The end of all things!
In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell
from the bare boughs, with a hollow little crash. For the rest, among
the old trees was depth within depth of grey, hopeless, inertia,
silence, nothingness.
Connie walked dimly on. From the old wood came an ancient
melancholy, somehow soothing to her, better than the harsh
insentience of the outer world. She liked the inwardness of the
remnant of forest, the unspeaking reticence of the old trees. They
seemed a very power of silence, and yet a vital presence. They, too,
were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and giving off a potency
of silence. Perhaps they were only waiting for the end; to be cut
down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all
things. But perhaps their strong and aristocratic silence, the silence
of strong trees, meant something else.
As she came out of the wood on the north side, the keeper's
cottage, a rather dark, brown stone cottage, with gables and a
handsome chimney, looked uninhabited, it was so silent and alone.
But a thread of smoke rose from the chimney, and the little railed-in
garden in the front of the house was dug and kept very tidy. The
door was shut.
Now she was here she felt a little shy of the man, with his curious
far-seeing eyes. She did not like bringing him orders, and felt like
going away again. She knocked softly, no one came. She knocked
again, but still not loudly. There was no answer. She peeped through
the window, and saw the dark little room, with its almost sinister
privacy, not wanting to be invaded.
She stood and listened, and it seemed to her she heard sounds from
the back of the cottage. Having failed to make herself heard, her
mettle was roused, she would not be defeated.
So she went round the side of the house. At the back of the cottage
the land rose steeply, so the backyard was sunken, and enclosed by
a low stone wall. She turned the corner of the house and stopped.
In the little yard two paces beyond her, the man was washing
himself, utterly unaware. He was naked to the hips, his velveteen
breeches slipping down over his slender loins. And his white slim
back was curved over a big bowl of soapy water, in which he ducked
his head, shaking his head with a queer, quick little motion, lifting his
slender white arms, and pressing the soapy water from his ears,
quick, subtle as a weasel playing with water, and utterly alone.
Connie backed away round the corner of the house, and hurried
away to the wood. In spite of herself, she had had a shock. After all,
merely a man washing himself; common-place enough, Heaven
knows!
Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her
in the middle of the body. She saw the clumsy breeches slipping
down over the pure, delicate, white loins, the bones showing a little,
and the sense of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed
her. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and
inwardly alone. And beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure
creature. Not the stuff of beauty, not even the body of beauty, but a
lambency, the warm, white flame of a single life, revealing itself in
contours that one might touch: a body!
Connie had received the shock of vision in her womb, and she knew
it; it lay inside her. But with her mind she was inclined to ridicule. A
man washing himself in a backyard! No doubt with evil-smelling
yellow soap!—She was rather annoyed; why should she be made to
stumble on these vulgar privacies?
So she walked away from herself, but after a while she sat down on
a stump. She was too confused to think. But in the coil of her
confusion, she was determined to deliver her message to the fellow.
She would not be balked. She must give him time to dress himself,
but not time to go out. He was probably preparing to go out
somewhere.
So she sauntered slowly back, listening. As she came near, the
cottage looked just the same. A dog barked, and she knocked at the
door, her heart beating in spite of herself.
She heard the man coming lightly downstairs. He opened the door
quickly, and startled her. He looked uneasy himself, but instantly a
laugh came on his face.
"Lady Chatterley!" he said. "Will you come in?"
His manner was so perfectly easy and good, she stepped over the
threshold into the rather dreary little room.
"I only called with a message from Sir Clifford," she said in her soft,
rather breathless voice.
The man was looking at her with those blue, all-seeing eyes of his,
which made her turn her face aside a little. He thought her comely,
almost beautiful, in her shyness, and he took command of the
situation himself at once.
"Would you care to sit down?" he asked, presuming she would not.
The door stood open.
"No thanks! Sir Clifford wondered if you would ..." and she delivered
her message, looking unconsciously into his eyes again. And now his
eyes looked warm and kind, particularly to a woman, wonderfully
warm, and kind, and at ease.
"Very good, your Ladyship. I will see to it at once."
Taking an order, his whole self had changed, glazed over with a sort
of hardness and distance. Connie hesitated, she ought to go. But
she looked round the clean, tidy, rather dreary little sitting-room with
something like dismay.
"Do you live here quite alone?" she asked.
"Quite alone, your Ladyship."
"But your mother...?"
"She lives in her own cottage in the village."
"With the child?" asked Connie.
"With the child!"
And his plain, rather worn face took on an indefinable look of
derision. It was a face that changed all the time, baffling.
"No," he said, seeing Connie stand at a loss, "my mother comes and
cleans up for me on Saturdays; I do the rest myself."
Again Connie looked at him. His eyes were smiling again, a little
mockingly, but warm and blue, and somehow kind. She wondered at
him. He was in trousers and flannel shirt and a grey tie, his hair soft
and damp, his face rather pale and worn-looking. When the eyes
ceased to laugh they looked as if they had suffered a great deal, still
without losing their warmth. But a pallor of isolation came over him,
she was not really there for him.
She wanted to say so many things, and she said nothing. Only she
looked up at him again, and remarked:
"I hope I didn't disturb you?"
The faint smile of mockery narrowed his eyes.
"Only combing my hair, if you don't mind. I'm sorry I hadn't a coat
on, but then I had no idea who was knocking. Nobody knocks here,
and the unexpected sounds ominous."
He went in front of her down the garden path to hold the gate. In
his shirt, without the clumsy velveteen coat, she saw again how
slender he was, thin, stooping a little. Yet, as she passed him, there
was something young and bright in his fair hair, and his quick eyes.
He would be a man about thirty-seven or eight.
She plodded on into the wood, knowing he was looking after her; he
upset her so much, in spite of herself.
And he, as he went indoors, was thinking: "She's nice, she's real!
she's nicer than she knows."
She wondered very much about him; he seemed so unlike a
gamekeeper, so unlike a working-man anyhow; although he had
something in common with the local people. But also something very
uncommon.
"The gamekeeper, Mellors, is a curious kind of person," she said to
Clifford; "he might almost be a gentleman."
"Might he?" said Clifford. "I hadn't noticed."
"But isn't there something special about him?" Connie insisted.
"I think he's quite a nice fellow, but I know very little about him. He
only came out of the army last year, less than a year ago. From
India, I rather think. He may have picked up certain tricks out there,
perhaps he was an officer's servant, and improved on his position.
Some of the men were like that. But it does them no good, they
have to fall back into their old place when they get home again."
Connie gazed at Clifford contemplatively. She saw in him the peculiar
tight rebuff against anyone of the lower classes who might be really
climbing up, which she knew was characteristic of his breed.
"But don't you think there is something special about him?" she
asked.
"Frankly, no! Nothing I had noticed."
He looked at her curiously, uneasily, half-suspiciously. And she felt he
wasn't telling her the real truth; he wasn't telling himself the real
truth, that was it. He disliked any suggestion of a really exceptional
human being. People must be more or less at his level, or below it.
Connie felt again the tightness, niggardliness of the men of her
generation. They were so tight, so scared of life!
CHAPTER VII
When Connie went up to her bedroom she did what she had not
done for a long time: took off all her clothes, and looked at herself
naked in the huge mirror. She did not know what she was looking
for, or at, very definitely, yet she moved the lamp till it shone full on
her.
And she thought, as she had thought so often ... what a frail, easily
hurt, rather pathetic thing a human body is, naked; somehow a little
unfinished, incomplete!
She had been supposed to have rather a good figure, but now she
was out of fashion: a little too female, not enough like an adolescent
boy. She was not very tall, a bit Scottish and short; but she had a
certain fluent, down-slipping grace that might have been beauty. Her
skin was faintly tawny, her limbs had a certain stillness, her body
should have had a full, down-slipping richness; but it lacked
something.
Instead of ripening its firm, down-running curves, her body was
flattening and going a little harsh. It was as if it had not had enough
sun and warmth; it was a little greyish and sapless.
Disappointed of its real womanhood, it had not succeeded in
becoming boyish, and unsubstantial, and transparent; instead it had
gone opaque.
Her breasts were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they
were unripe, a little bitter, without meaning hanging there. And her
belly had lost the fresh, round gleam it had had when she was
young, in the days of her German boy, who really loved her
physically. Then it was young and expectant, with a real look of its
own. Now it was going slack, and a little flat, thinner, but with a
slack thinness. Her thighs, too, that used to look so quick and
glimpsey in their female roundness, somehow they too were going
flat, slack, meaningless.
Her body was going meaningless, going dull and opaque, so much
insignificant substance. It made her feel immensely depressed and
hopeless. What hope was there? She was old, old at twenty-seven,
with no gleam and sparkle in the flesh. Old through neglect and
denial, yes denial. Fashionable women kept their bodies bright like
delicate porcelain, by external attention. There was nothing inside
the porcelain; but she was not even as bright as that. The mental
life! Suddenly she hated it with a rushing fury, the swindle!
She looked in the other mirror's reflection at her back, her waist, her
loins. She was getting thinner, but to her it was not becoming. The
crumple of her waist at the back, as she bent back to look, was a
little weary; and it used to be so gay-looking. And the longish slope
of her haunches and her buttocks had lost its gleam and its sense of
richness. Gone! Only the German boy had loved it, and he was ten
years dead, very nearly. How time went by! Ten years dead, and she
was only twenty-seven. That healthy boy with his fresh, clumsy
sensuality that she had then been so scornful of! Where would she
find it now? It was gone out of men. They had their pathetic, two-
second spasms like Michaelis; but no healthy human sensuality, that
warms the blood and freshens the whole being.
Still she thought the most beautiful part of her was the long-sloping
fall of the haunches from the socket of the back, and the
slumberous, round stillness of the buttocks. Like hillocks of sand the
Arabs say, soft and downward-slipping with a long slope. Here the
life still lingered hoping. But here too she was thinner, and going
unripe, astringent.
But the front of her body made her miserable. It was already
beginning to slacken, with a slack sort of thinness, almost withered,
going old before it had ever really lived. She thought of the child she
might somehow bear. Was she fit, anyhow?
She slipped into her nightdress, and went to bed, where she sobbed
bitterly. And in her bitterness burned a cold indignation against
Clifford, and his writings and his talk: against all the men of his sort
who defrauded a woman even of her own body.
Unjust! Unjust! The sense of deep physical injustice burned to her
very soul.
But in the morning, all the same, she was up at seven, and going
downstairs to Clifford. She had to help him in all the intimate things,
for he had no man, and refused a woman-servant. The
housekeeper's husband, who had known him as a boy, helped him,
and did any heavy lifting; but Connie did the personal things, and
she did them willingly. It was a demand on her, but she had wanted
to do what she could.
So she hardly ever went away from Wragby, and never for more
than a day or two; when Mrs. Betts, the housekeeper, attended to
Clifford. He, as was inevitable in the course of time, took all the
service for granted. It was natural he should.
And yet, deep inside herself, a sense of injustice, of being
defrauded, began to burn in Connie. The physical sense of injustice
is a dangerous feeling, once it is awakened. It must have outlet, or it
eats away the one in whom it is aroused. Poor Clifford, he was not
to blame. His was the greater misfortune. It was all part of the
general catastrophe.
And yet was he not in a way to blame? This lack of warmth, this lack
of the simple, warm, physical contact, was he not to blame for that?
He was never really warm, nor even kind, only thoughtful,
considerate, in a well-bred, cold sort of way! But never warm as a
man can be warm to a woman, as even Connie's father could be
warm to her, with the warmth of a man who did himself well, and
intended to, but who still could comfort a woman with a bit of his
masculine glow.
But Clifford was not like that. His whole race was not like that. They
were all inwardly hard and separate, and warmth to them was just
bad taste. You have to get on without it, and hold your own; which
was all very well if you were of the same class and race. Then you
could keep yourself cold and be very estimable, and hold your own,
and enjoy the satisfaction of holding it. But if you were of another
class and another race it wouldn't do; there was no fun merely
holding your own, and feeling you belonged to the ruling class. What
was the point, when even the smartest aristocrats had really nothing
positive of their own to hold, and their rule was really a farce, not
rule at all? What was the point? It was all cold nonsense.
A sense of rebellion smouldered in Connie. What was the good of it
all? What was the good of her sacrifice, her devoting her life to
Clifford? What was she serving, after all? A cold spirit of vanity, that
had no warm human contacts, and that was as corrupt as any low-
born Jew, in craving for prostitution to the bitch-goddess, Success.
Even Clifford's cool and contactless assurance that he belonged to
the ruling class didn't prevent his tongue lolling out of his mouth, as
he panted after the bitch-goddess. After all, Michaelis was really
more dignified in the matter, and far, far more successful. Really, if
you looked closely at Clifford, he was a buffoon, and a buffoon is
more humiliating than a bounder.
As between the two men, Michaelis really had far more use for her
than Clifford had. He had even more need of her. Any good nurse
can attend to crippled legs! And as for the heroic effort, Michaelis
was a heroic rat, and Clifford was very much of a poodle showing
off.
There were people staying in the house, among them Clifford's Aunt
Eva, Lady Bennerley. She was a thin woman of sixty, with a red
nose, a widow, and still something of a "grande dame." She
belonged to one of the best families, and had the character to carry
it off. Connie liked her, she was so perfectly simple and frank, as far
as she intended to be frank, and superficially kind. Inside herself she
was a past-mistress in holding her own, and holding other people a
little lower. She was not at all a snob: far too sure of herself. She
was perfect at the social sport of coolly holding her own, and making
other people defer to her.
She was kind to Connie, and tried to worm into her woman's soul
with the sharp gimlet of her well-born observations.
"You're quite wonderful, in my opinion," she said to Connie. "You've
done wonders for Clifford. I never saw any budding genius myself,
and there he is all the rage."—Aunt Eva was quite complacently
proud of Clifford's success. Another feather in the family cap! She
didn't care a straw about his books, but why should she?
"Oh, I don't think it's my doing," said Connie.
"It must be! Can't be anybody else's. And it seems to me you don't
get enough out of it."
"How?"
"Look at the way you are shut up here. I said to Clifford: If that child
rebels one day you'll have yourself to thank!"
"But Clifford never denies me anything," said Connie.
"Look here, my dear child,"—and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand
on Connie's arm. "A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not
having lived it. Believe me!" And she took another sip of brandy,
which maybe was her form of repentance.
"But I do live my life, don't I?"
"Not in my idea! Clifford should bring you to London, and let you go
about. His sort of friends are all right for him, but what are they for
you? If I were you I should think it wasn't good enough. You'll let
your youth slip by, and you'll spend your old age, and your middle
age too, repenting it."
Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed by the
brandy.
But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being steered into
the smart world by Lady Bennerley. She didn't feel really smart, it
wasn't interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness
under it all; like the soil of Labrador, which has gay little flowers on
its surface, and a foot down is frozen.
Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow,
and Jack Strangeways with his wife Olive. The talk was much more
desultory than when only the cronies were there, and everybody
was a bit bored, for the weather was bad, and there was only
billiards, and the pianola to dance to.
Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be
bred in bottles, and women would be "immunised."
"Jolly good thing too!" she said. "Then a woman can live her own
life." Strangeways wanted children, and she didn't.
"How'd you like to be immunised?" Winterslow asked her, with an
ugly smile.
"I hope I am; naturally," she said. "Anyhow the future's going to
have more sense, and a woman needn't be dragged down by her
functions."
"Perhaps she'll float off into space altogether," said Dukes.
"I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the
physical disabilities," said Clifford. "All the love-business for example,
it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed babies
in bottles."
"No!" cried Olive. "That might leave all the more room for fun."
"I suppose," said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, "if the love-
business went, something else would take its place. Morphia
perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully
refreshing for everybody."
"The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a
cheerful weekend!" said Jack. "Sounds all right, but where should we
be by Wednesday?"
"So long as you can forget your body you are happy," said Lady
Bennerley. "And the moment you begin to be aware of your body,
you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to
forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing
it."
"Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether," said Winterslow. "It's
quite time man began to improve on his own nature, especially the
physical side of it."
"Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke," said Connie.
"It won't happen," said Dukes. "Our old show will come flop; our
civilization is going to fall. It's going down the bottomless pit, down
the chasm. And believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be
the phallus!"
"Oh do! do be impossible, General!" cried Olive.
"I believe our civilization is going to collapse," said Aunt Eva.
"And what will come after it?" asked Clifford.
"I haven't the faintest idea, but something, I suppose," said the
elderly lady.
"Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunised
women, and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the
bridge to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?" said
Clifford.
"Oh, don't bother! let's get on with today," said Olive. "Only hurry up
with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off."
"There might even be real men, in the next phase," said Tommy.
"Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women!
Wouldn't that be a change, an enormous change from us? We're not
men, and the women aren't women. We're only cerebrating make-