Page 316 - lady-chatterlys-lover

Chapter 15

here was a letter from Hilda on the breakfast-tray. ‘Fa-
Tther is going to London this week, and I shall call for you
on Thursday week, June 17th. You must be ready so that we
can go at once. I don’t want to waste time at Wragby, it’s an
awful place. I shall probably stay the night at Retford with
the Colemans, so I should be with you for lunch, Thurs-
day. Then we could start at teatime, and sleep perhaps in
Grantham. It is no use our spending an evening with Clif-
ford. If he hates your going, it would be no pleasure to him.’
So! She was being pushed round on the chess-board
again.
Clifford hated her going, but it was only because he
didn’t feel SAFE in her absence. Her presence, for some rea-
son, made him feel safe, and free to do the things he was
occupied with. He was a great deal at the pits, and wrestling
in spirit with the almost hopeless problems of getting out
his coal in the most economical fashion and then selling
it when he’d got it out. He knew he ought to find some way
of USING it, or converting it, so that he needn’t sell it, or
needn’t have the chagrin of failing to sell it. But if he made
electric power, could he sell that or use it? And to convert
into oil was as yet too costly and too elaborate. To keep in-
dustry alive there must be more industry, like a madness.
It was a madness, and it required a madman to succeed

1