Page 232 - lady-chatterlys-lover

tion 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 col-
liers 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 alto-
gether.
Squire Winter, a soldier, had stood it out. But he no lon-
ger cared to walk in the park after dinner. He almost hid,
indoors. Once he had walked, bare-headed, and in his pat-
ent-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 col-
liers 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 hos-
tile: 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 el-
egant, well-groomed, well-bred existence. ‘Who’s he!’ It was
the DIFFERENCE they resented.
And somewhere, in his secret English heart, being a good

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