lady chatterly 15-17

Chapter 15



There was a letter from Hilda on the breakfast-tray. 'Father 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,
Thursday. Then we could start at teatime, and sleep perhaps in
Grantham. It is no use our spending an evening with Clifford. 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 reason, 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 industry alive there must be more industry, like a
madness.

It was a madness, and it required a madman to succeed in it. Well, he
was a little mad. Connie thought so. His very intensity and acumen in
the affairs of the pits seemed like a manifestation of madness to her,
his very inspirations were the inspirations of insanity.

He talked to her of all his serious schemes, and she listened in a kind
of wonder, and let him talk. Then the flow ceased, and he turned on the
loudspeaker, and became a blank, while apparently his schemes coiled on
inside him like a kind of dream.

And every night now he played pontoon, that game of the Tommies, with
Mrs Bolton, gambling with sixpences. And again, in the gambling he was
gone in a kind of unconsciousness, or blank intoxication, or
intoxication of blankness, whatever it was. Connie could not bear to
see him. But when she had gone to bed, he and Mrs Bolton would gamble
on till two and three in the morning, safely, and with strange lust.
Mrs Bolton was caught in the lust as much as Clifford: the more so, as
she nearly always lost.

She told Connie one day: 'I lost twenty-three shillings to Sir Clifford
last night.'

'And did he take the money from you?' asked Connie aghast.

'Why of course, my Lady! Debt of honour!'

Connie expostulated roundly, and was angry with both of them. The
upshot was, Sir Clifford raised Mrs Bolton's wages a hundred a year,
and she could gamble on that. Meanwhile, it seemed to Connie, Clifford
was really going deader.

She told him at length she was leaving on the seventeenth.

'Seventeenth!' he said. 'And when will you be back?'

'By the twentieth of July at the latest.'

'Yes! the twentieth of July.'

Strangely and blankly he looked at her, with the vagueness of a child,
but with the queer blank cunning of an old man.

'You won't let me down, now, will you?' he said.

'How?'

'While you're away, I mean, you're sure to come back?'

'I'm as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come back.'

'Yes! Well! Twentieth of July!'

He looked at her so strangely.

Yet he really wanted her to go. That was so curious. He wanted her to
go, positively, to have her little adventures and perhaps come home
pregnant, and all that. At the same time, he was afraid of her going.

She was quivering, watching her real opportunity for leaving him
altogether, waiting till the time, herself, himself, should be ripe.

She sat and talked to the keeper of her going abroad.

'And then when I come back,' she said, 'I can tell Clifford I must
leave him. And you and I can go away. They never need even know it is
you. We can go to another country, shall we? To Africa or Australia.
Shall we?'

She was quite thrilled by her plan.

'You've never been to the Colonies, have you?' he asked her.

'No! Have you?'

'I've been in India, and South Africa, and Egypt.'

'Why shouldn't we go to South Africa?'

'We might!' he said slowly.

'Or don't you want to?' she asked.

'I don't care. I don't much care what I do.'

'Doesn't it make you happy? Why not? We shan't be poor. I have about
six hundred a year, I wrote and asked. It's not much, but it's enough,
isn't it?'

'It's riches to me.'

'Oh, how lovely it will be!'

'But I ought to get divorced, and so ought you, unless we're going to
have complications.'

There was plenty to think about.

Another day she asked him about himself. They were in the hut, and
there was a thunderstorm.

'And weren't you happy, when you were a lieutenant and an officer and a
gentleman?'

'Happy? All right. I liked my Colonel.'

'Did you love him?'

'Yes! I loved him.'

'And did he love you?'

'Yes! In a way, he loved me.'

'Tell me about him.'

'What is there to tell? He had risen from the ranks. He loved the army.
And he had never married. He was twenty years older than me. He was a
very intelligent man: and alone in the army, as such a man is: a
passionate man in his way: and a very clever officer. I lived under his
spell while I was with him. I sort of let him run my life. And I never
regret it.'

'And did you mind very much when he died?'

'I was as near death myself. But when I came to, I knew another part of
me was finished. But then I had always known it would finish in death.
All things do, as far as that goes.'

She sat and ruminated. The thunder crashed outside. It was like being
in a little ark in the Flood.

'You seem to have such a lot BEHIND you,' she said.

'Do I? It seems to me I've died once or twice already. Yet here I am,
pegging on, and in for more trouble.'

She was thinking hard, yet listening to the storm.

'And weren't you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel
was dead?'

'No! They were a mingy lot.' He laughed suddenly. 'The Colonel used to
say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty
times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would
give them a stoppage. They're the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever
invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their
boot-laces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the
right. That's what finishes me up. Kow-tow, kow-tow, arse-licking till
their tongues are tough: yet they're always in the right. Prigs on top
of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball
each--'

Connie laughed. The rain was rushing down.

'He hated them!'

'No,' said he. 'He didn't bother. He just disliked them. There's a
difference. Because, as he said, the Tommies are getting just as
priggish and half-balled and narrow-gutted. It's the fate of mankind,
to go that way.'

'The common people too, the working people?'

'All the lot. Their spunk is gone dead. Motor-cars and cinemas and
aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them. I tell you, every generation
breeds a more rabbity generation, with india rubber tubing for guts and
tin legs and tin faces. Tin people! It's all a steady sort of
bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping the
mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their
real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making
mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They're all alike. The world
is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin,
two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine-fucking!--It's
all alike. Pay 'em money to cut off the world's cock. Pay money, money,
money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave 'em all
little twiddling machines.'

He sat there in the hut, his face pulled to mocking irony. Yet even
then, he had one ear set backwards, listening to the storm over the
wood. It made him feel so alone.

'But won't it ever come to an end?' she said.

'Ay, it will. It'll achieve its own salvation. When the last real man
is killed, and they're ALL tame: white, black, yellow, all colours of
tame ones: then they'll ALL be insane. Because the root of sanity is in
the balls. Then they'll all be INSANE, and they'll make their grand
auto da fe. You know AUTO DA FE means act of faith? Ay, well, they'll
make their own grand little act of faith. They'll offer one another
up.'

'You mean kill one another?'

'I do, duckie! If we go on at our present rate then in a hundred years'
time there won't be ten thousand people in this island: there may not
be ten. They'll have lovingly wiped each other out.' The thunder was
rolling further away.

'How nice!' she said.

'Quite nice! To contemplate the extermination of the human species and
the long pause that follows before some other species crops up, it
calms you more than anything else. And if we go on in this way, with
everybody, intellectuals, artists, government, industrialists and
workers all frantically killing off the last human feeling, the last
bit of their intuition, the last healthy instinct; if it goes on in
algebraical progression, as it is going on: then ta-tah! to the human
species! Goodbye! darling! the serpent swallows itself and leaves a
void, considerably messed up, but not hopeless. Very nice! When savage
wild dogs bark in Wragby, and savage wild pit-ponies stamp on
Tevershall pit-bank! TE DEUM LAUDAMUS!'

Connie laughed, but not very happily.

'Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshevists,' she said.
'You ought to be pleased that they hurry on towards the end.'

'So I am. I don't stop 'em. Because I couldn't if I would.'

'Then why are you so bitter?'

'I'm not! If my cock gives its last crow, I don't mind.'

'But if you have a child?' she said.

He dropped his head.

'Why,' he said at last. 'It seems to me a wrong and bitter thing to do,
to bring a child into this world.'

'No! Don't say it! Don't say it!' she pleaded. 'I think I'm going to
have one. Say you'll he pleased.' She laid her hand on his.

'I'm pleased for you to be pleased,' he said. 'But for me it seems a
ghastly treachery to the unborn creature.

'Ah no!' she said, shocked. 'Then you CAN'T ever really want me! YOU
CAN'T want me, if you feel that!'

Again he was silent, his face sullen. Outside there was only the
threshing of the rain.

'It's not quite true!' she whispered. 'It's not quite true! There's
another truth.' She felt he was bitter now partly because she was
leaving him, deliberately going away to Venice. And this half pleased
her.

She pulled open his clothing and uncovered his belly, and kissed his
navel. Then she laid her cheek on his belly and pressed her arm round
his warm, silent loins. They were alone in the flood.

'Tell me you want a child, in hope!' she murmured, pressing her face
against his belly. 'Tell me you do!'

'Why!' he said at last: and she felt the curious quiver of changing
consciousness and relaxation going through his body. 'Why I've thought
sometimes if one but tried, here among th' colliers even! They're
workin' bad now, an' not earnin' much. If a man could say to 'em: Dunna
think o' nowt but th' money. When it comes ter WANTS, we want but
little. Let's not live for money--'

She softly rubbed her cheek on his belly, and gathered his balls in her
hand. The penis stirred softly, with strange life, but did not rise up.
The rain beat bruisingly outside.

'Let's live for summat else. Let's not live ter make money, neither for
us-selves nor for anybody else. Now we're forced to. We're forced to
make a bit for us-selves, an' a fair lot for th' bosses. Let's stop it!
Bit by bit, let's stop it. We needn't rant an' rave. Bit by bit, let's
drop the whole industrial life an' go back. The least little bit o'
money'll do. For everybody, me an' you, bosses an' masters, even th'
king. The least little bit o' money'll really do. Just make up your
mind to it, an' you've got out o' th' mess.' He paused, then went on:

'An' I'd tell 'em: Look! Look at Joe! He moves lovely! Look how he
moves, alive and aware. He's beautiful! An' look at Jonah! He's clumsy,
he's ugly, because he's niver willin' to rouse himself I'd tell 'em:
Look! look at yourselves! one shoulder higher than t'other, legs
twisted, feet all lumps! What have yer done ter yerselves, wi' the
blasted work? Spoilt yerselves. No need to work that much. Take yer
clothes off an' look at yourselves. Yer ought ter be alive an'
beautiful, an' yer ugly an' half dead. So I'd tell 'em. An' I'd get my
men to wear different clothes: appen close red trousers, bright red,
an' little short white jackets. Why, if men had red, fine legs, that
alone would change them in a month. They'd begin to be men again, to be
men! An' the women could dress as they liked. Because if once the men
walked with legs close bright scarlet, and buttocks nice and showing
scarlet under a little white jacket: then the women 'ud begin to be
women. It's because th' men AREN'T men, that th' women have to be.--An'
in time pull down Tevershall and build a few beautiful buildings, that
would hold us all. An' clean the country up again. An' not have many
children, because the world is overcrowded.

'But I wouldn't preach to the men: only strip 'em an' say: Look at
yourselves! That's workin' for money!--Hark at yourselves! That's
working for money. You've been working for money! Look at Tevershall!
It's horrible. That's because it was built while you was working for
money. Look at your girls! They don't care about you, you don't care
about them. It's because you've spent your time working an' caring for
money. You can't talk nor move nor live, you can't properly be with a
woman. You're not alive. Look at yourselves!'

There fell a complete silence. Connie was half listening, and threading
in the hair at the root of his belly a few forget-me-nots that she had
gathered on the way to the hut. Outside, the world had gone still, and
a little icy.

'You've got four kinds of hair,' she said to him. 'On your chest it's
nearly black, and your hair isn't dark on your head: but your moustache
is hard and dark red, and your hair here, your love-hair, is like a
little brush of bright red-gold mistletoe. It's the loveliest of all!'

He looked down and saw the milky bits of forget-me-nots in the hair on
his groin.

'Ay! That's where to put forget-me-nots, in the man-hair, or the
maiden-hair. But don't you care about the future?'

She looked up at him.

'Oh, I do, terribly!' she said.

'Because when I feel the human world is doomed, has doomed itself by
its own mingy beastliness, then I feel the Colonies aren't far enough.
The moon wouldn't be far enough, because even there you could look back
and see the earth, dirty, beastly, unsavoury among all the stars: made
foul by men. Then I feel I've swallowed gall, and it's eating my inside
out, and nowhere's far enough away to get away. But when I get a turn,
I forget it all again. Though it's a shame, what's been done to people
these last hundred years: men turned into nothing but labour-insects,
and all their manhood taken away, and all their real life. I'd wipe the
machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch
absolutely, like a black mistake. But since I can't, an' nobody can,
I'd better hold my peace, an' try an' live my own life: if I've got one
to live, which I rather doubt.'

The thunder had ceased outside, but the rain which had abated, suddenly
came striking down, with a last blench of lightning and mutter of
departing storm. Connie was uneasy. He had talked so long now, and he
was really talking to himself not to her. Despair seemed to come down
on him completely, and she was feeling happy, she hated despair. She
knew her leaving him, which he had only just realized inside himself
had plunged him back into this mood. And she triumphed a little.

She opened the door and looked at the straight heavy rain, like a steel
curtain, and had a sudden desire to rush out into it, to rush away. She
got up, and began swiftly pulling off her stockings, then her dress and
underclothing, and he held his breath. Her pointed keen animal breasts
tipped and stirred as she moved. She was ivory-coloured in the greenish
light. She slipped on her rubber shoes again and ran out with a wild
little laugh, holding up her breasts to the heavy rain and spreading
her arms, and running blurred in the rain with the eurhythmic dance
movements she had learned so long ago in Dresden. It was a strange
pallid figure lifting and falling, bending so the rain beat and
glistened on the full haunches, swaying up again and coming
belly-forward through the rain, then stooping again so that only the
full loins and buttocks were offered in a kind of homage towards him,
repeating a wild obeisance.

He laughed wryly, and threw off his clothes. It was too much. He jumped
out, naked and white, with a little shiver, into the hard slanting
rain. Flossie sprang before him with a frantic little bark. Connie, her
hair all wet and sticking to her head, turned her hot face and saw him.
Her blue eyes blazed with excitement as she turned and ran fast, with a
strange charging movement, out of the clearing and down the path, the
wet boughs whipping her. She ran, and he saw nothing but the round wet
head, the wet back leaning forward in flight, the rounded buttocks
twinkling: a wonderful cowering female nakedness in flight.

She was nearly at the wide riding when he came up and flung his naked
arm round her soft, naked-wet middle. She gave a shriek and
straightened herself and the heap of her soft, chill flesh came up
against his body. He pressed it all up against him, madly, the heap of
soft, chilled female flesh that became quickly warm as flame, in
contact. The rain streamed on them till they smoked. He gathered her
lovely, heavy posteriors one in each hand and pressed them in towards
him in a frenzy, quivering motionless in the rain. Then suddenly he
tipped her up and fell with her on the path, in the roaring silence of
the rain, and short and sharp, he took her, short and sharp and
finished, like an animal.

He got up in an instant, wiping the rain from his eyes.

'Come in,' he said, and they started running back to the hut. He ran
straight and swift: he didn't like the rain. But she came slower,
gathering forget-me-nots and campion and bluebells, running a few steps
and watching him fleeing away from her.

When she came with her flowers, panting to the hut, he had already
started a fire, and the twigs were crackling. Her sharp breasts rose
and fell, her hair was plastered down with rain, her face was flushed
ruddy and her body glistened and trickled. Wide-eyed and breathless,
with a small wet head and full, trickling, naitve haunches, she looked
another creature.

He took the old sheet and rubbed her down, she standing like a child.
Then he rubbed himself having shut the door of the hut. The fire was
blazing up. She ducked her head in the other end of the sheet, and
rubbed her wet hair.

'We're drying ourselves together on the same towel, we shall quarrel!'
he said.

She looked up for a moment, her hair all odds and ends.

'No!' she said, her eyes wide. 'It's not a towel, it's a sheet.' And
she went on busily rubbing her head, while he busily rubbed his.

Still panting with their exertions, each wrapped in an army blanket,
but the front of the body open to the fire, they sat on a log side by
side before the blaze, to get quiet. Connie hated the feel of the
blanket against her skin. But now the sheet was all wet.

She dropped her blanket and kneeled on the clay hearth, holding her
head to the fire, and shaking her hair to dry it. He watched the
beautiful curving drop of her haunches. That fascinated him today. How
it sloped with a rich down-slope to the heavy roundness of her
buttocks! And in between, folded in the secret warmth, the secret
entrances!

He stroked her tail with his hand, long and subtly taking in the curves
and the globe-fullness.

'Tha's got such a nice tail on thee,' he said, in the throaty caressive
dialect. 'Tha's got the nicest arse of anybody. It's the nicest, nicest
woman's arse as is! An' ivery bit of it is woman, woman sure as nuts.
Tha'rt not one o' them button-arsed lasses as should be lads, are ter!
Tha's got a real soft sloping bottom on thee, as a man loves in 'is
guts. It's a bottom as could hold the world up, it is!'

All the while he spoke he exquisitely stroked the rounded tail, till it
seemed as if a slippery sort of fire came from it into his hands. And
his finger-tips touched the two secret openings to her body, time after
time, with a soft little brush of fire.

'An' if tha shits an' if tha pisses, I'm glad. I don't want a woman as
couldna shit nor piss.'

Connie could not help a sudden snort of astonished laughter, but he
went on unmoved.

'Tha'rt real, tha art! Tha'art real, even a bit of a bitch. Here tha
shits an' here tha pisses: an' I lay my hand on 'em both an' like thee
for it. I like thee for it. Tha's got a proper, woman's arse, proud of
itself. It's none ashamed of itself this isna.'

He laid his hand close and firm over her secret places, in a kind of
close greeting.

'I like it,' he said. 'I like it! An' if I only lived ten minutes, an'
stroked thy arse an' got to know it, I should reckon I'd lived ONE life,
see ter! Industrial system or not! Here's one o' my lifetimes.'

She turned round and climbed into his lap, clinging to him. 'Kiss me!'
she whispered.

And she knew the thought of their separation was latent in both their
minds, and at last she was sad.

She sat on his thighs, her head against his breast, and her
ivory-gleaming legs loosely apart, the fire glowing unequally upon
them. Sitting with his head dropped, he looked at the folds of her body
in the fire-glow, and at the fleece of soft brown hair that hung down
to a point between her open thighs. He reached to the table behind, and
took up her bunch of flowers, still so wet that drops of rain fell on
to her.

'Flowers stops out of doors all weathers,' he said. 'They have no
houses.'

'Not even a hut!' she murmured.

With quiet fingers he threaded a few forget-me-not flowers in the fine
brown fleece of the mound of Venus.

'There!' he said. 'There's forget-me-nots in the right place!'

She looked down at the milky odd little flowers among the brown
maiden-hair at the lower tip of her body.

'Doesn't it look pretty!' she said.

'Pretty as life,' he replied.

And he stuck a pink campion-bud among the hair.

'There! That's me where you won't forget me! That's Moses in the
bull-rushes.'

'You don't mind, do you, that I'm going away?' she asked wistfully,
looking up into his face.

But his face was inscrutable, under the heavy brows. He kept it quite
blank.

'You do as you wish,' he said.

And he spoke in good English.

'But I won't go if you don't wish it,' she said, clinging to him.

There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire.
The flame glowed on his silent, abstracted face. She waited, but he
said nothing.

'Only I thought it would be a good way to begin a break with Clifford.
I do want a child. And it would give me a chance to, to--,' she
resumed.

'To let them think a few lies,' he said.

'Yes, that among other things. Do you want them to think the truth?'

'I don't care what they think.'

'I do! I don't want them handling me with their unpleasant cold minds,
not while I'm still at Wragby. They can think what they like when I'm
finally gone.'

He was silent.

'But Sir Clifford expects you to come back to him?'

'Oh, I must come back,' she said: and there was silence.

'And would you have a child in Wragby?' he asked.

She closed her arm round his neck.

'If you wouldn't take me away, I should have to,' she said.

'Take you where to?'

'Anywhere! away! But right away from Wragby.'

'When?'

'Why, when I come back.'

'But what's the good of coming back, doing the thing twice, if you're
once gone?' he said.

'Oh, I must come back. I've promised! I've promised so faithfully.
Besides, I come back to you, really.'

'To your husband's game-keeper?'

'I don't see that that matters,' she said.

'No?' He mused a while. 'And when would you think of going away again,
then; finally? When exactly?'

'Oh, I don't know. I'd come back from Venice. And then we'd prepare
everything.'

'How prepare?'

'Oh, I'd tell Clifford. I'd have to tell him.'

'Would you!'

He remained silent. She put her arms round his neck.

'Don't make it difficult for me,' she pleaded.

'Make what difficult?'

'For me to go to Venice and arrange things.'

A little smile, half a grin, flickered on his face.

'I don't make it difficult,' he said. 'I only want to find out just
what you are after. But you don't really know yourself. You want to
take time: get away and look at it. I don't blame you. I think you're
wise. You may prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don't blame you.
I've no Wragbys to offer. In fact, you know what you'll get out of me.
No, no, I think you're right! I really do! And I'm not keen on coming
to live on you, being kept by you. There's that too.'

She felt somehow as if he were giving her tit for tat.

'But you want me, don't you?' she asked.

'Do you want me?'

'You know I do. That's evident.'

'Quite! And WHEN do you want me?'

'You know we can arrange it all when I come back. Now I'm out of breath
with you. I must get calm and clear.'

'Quite! Get calm and clear!'

She was a little offended.

'But you trust me, don't you?' she said.

'Oh, absolutely!'

She heard the mockery in his tone.

'Tell me then,' she said flatly; 'do you think it would be better if I
DON'T go to Venice?'

'I'm sure it's better if you do go to Venice,' he replied in the cool,
slightly mocking voice.

'You know it's next Thursday?' she said.

'Yes!'

She now began to muse. At last she said:

'And we SHALL know better where we are when I come back, shan't we?'

'Oh surely!'

The curious gulf of silence between them!

'I've been to the lawyer about my divorce,' he said, a little
constrainedly.

She gave a slight shudder.

'Have you!' she said. 'And what did he say?'

'He said I ought to have done it before; that may be a difficulty. But
since I was in the army, he thinks it will go through all right. If
only it doesn't bring HER down on my head!'

'Will she have to know?'

'Yes! she is served with a notice: so is the man she lives with, the
co-respondent.'

'Isn't it hateful, all the performances! I suppose I'd have to go
through it with Clifford.'

There was a silence.

'And of course,' he said, 'I have to live an exemplary life for the
next six or eight months. So if you go to Venice, there's temptation
removed for a week or two, at least.'

'Am I temptation!' she said, stroking his face. 'I'm so glad I'm
temptation to you! Don't let's think about it! You frighten me when you
start thinking: you roll me out flat. Don't let's think about it. We
can think so much when we are apart. That's the whole point! I've been
thinking, I must come to you for another night before I go. I MUST come
once more to the cottage. Shall I come on Thursday night?'

'Isn't that when your sister will be there?'

'Yes! But she said we would start at tea-time. So we could start at
tea-time. But she could sleep somewhere else and I could sleep with
you.

'But then she'd have to know.'

'Oh, I shall tell her. I've more or less told her already. I must talk
it all over with Hilda. She's a great help, so sensible.'

He was thinking of her plan.

'So you'd start off from Wragby at tea-time, as if you were going to
London? Which way were you going?'

'By Nottingham and Grantham.'

'And then your sister would drop you somewhere and you'd walk or drive
back here? Sounds very risky, to me.'

'Does it? Well, then, Hilda could bring me back. She could sleep at
Mansfield, and bring me back here in the evening, and fetch me again in
the morning. It's quite easy.'

'And the people who see you?'

'I'll wear goggles and a veil.'

He pondered for some time.

'Well,' he said. 'You please yourself as usual.'

'But wouldn't it please you?'

'Oh yes! It'd please me all right,' he said a little grimly. 'I might
as well smite while the iron's hot.'

'Do you know what I thought?' she said suddenly. 'It suddenly came to
me. You are the "Knight of the Burning Pestle"!'

'Ay! And you? Are you the Lady of the Red-Hot Mortar?'

'Yes!' she said. 'Yes! You're Sir Pestle and I'm Lady Mortar.'

'All right, then I'm knighted. John Thomas is Sir John, to your Lady
Jane.'

'Yes! John Thomas is knighted! I'm my-lady-maiden-hair, and you must
have flowers too. Yes!'

She threaded two pink campions in the bush of red-gold hair above his
penis.

'There!' she said. 'Charming! Charming! Sir John!'

And she pushed a bit of forget-me-not in the dark hair of his breast.

'And you won't forget me there, will you?' She kissed him on the
breast, and made two bits of forget-me-not lodge one over each nipple,
kissing him again.

'Make a calendar of me!' he said. He laughed, and the flowers shook
from his breast.

'Wait a bit!' he said.

He rose, and opened the door of the hut. Flossie, lying in the porch,
got up and looked at him.

'Ay, it's me!' he said.

The rain had ceased. There was a wet, heavy, perfumed stillness.
Evening was approaching.

He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the
riding. Connie watched his thin, white figure, and it looked to her
like a ghost, an apparition moving away from her.

When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of
the hut, with a blanket round her, looking into the drenched,
motionless silence.

But he was coming back, trotting strangely, and carrying flowers. She
was a little afraid of him, as if he were not quite human. And when he
came near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the
meaning.

He had brought columbines and campions, and new-mown hay, and oak-tufts
and honeysuckle in small bud. He fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round
her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her
navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden-hair were
forget-me-nots and woodruff.

'That's you in all your glory!' he said. 'Lady Jane, at her wedding
with John Thomas.'

And he stuck flowers in the hair of his own body, and wound a bit of
creeping-jenny round his penis, and stuck a single bell of a hyacinth
in his navel. She watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And
she pushed a campion flower in his moustache, where it stuck, dangling
under his nose.

'This is John Thomas marryin' Lady Jane,' he said. 'An' we mun let
Constance an' Oliver go their ways. Maybe--'

He spread out his hand with a gesture, and then he sneezed, sneezing
away the flowers from his nose and his navel. He sneezed again.

'Maybe what?' she said, waiting for him to go on.

He looked at her a little bewildered.

'Eh?' he said.

'Maybe what? Go on with what you were going to say,' she insisted.

'Ay, what WAS I going to say?'

He had forgotten. And it was one of the disappointments of her life,
that he never finished.

A yellow ray of sun shone over the trees.

'Sun!' he said. 'And time you went. Time, my Lady, time! What's that as
flies without wings, your Ladyship? Time! Time!'

He reached for his shirt.

'Say goodnight! to John Thomas,' he said, looking down at his penis.
'He's safe in the arms of creeping Jenny! Not much burning pestle about
him just now.'

And he put his flannel shirt over his head.

'A man's most dangerous moment,' he said, when his head had emerged,
'is when he's getting into his shirt. Then he puts his head in a bag.
That's why I prefer those American shirts, that you put on like a
jacket.' She still stood watching him. He stepped into his short
drawers, and buttoned them round the waist.

'Look at Jane!' he said. 'In all her blossoms! Who'll put blossoms on
you next year, Jinny? Me, or somebody else? "Good-bye, my bluebell,
farewell to you!" I hate that song, it's early war days.' He then sat
down, and was pulling on his stockings. She still stood unmoving. He
laid his hand on the slope of her buttocks. 'Pretty little Lady Jane!'
he said. 'Perhaps in Venice you'll find a man who'll put jasmine in
your maiden-hair, and a pomegranate flower in your navel. Poor little
lady Jane!'

'Don't say those things!' she said. 'You only say them to hurt me.'

He dropped his head. Then he said, in dialect:

'Ay, maybe I do, maybe I do! Well then, I'll say nowt, an' ha' done
wi't. But tha mun dress thysen, all' go back to thy stately homes of
England, how beautiful they stand. Time's up! Time's up for Sir John,
an' for little Lady Jane! Put thy shimmy on, Lady Chatterley! Tha might
be anybody, standin' there be-out even a shimmy, an' a few rags o'
flowers. There then, there then, I'll undress thee, tha bob-tailed
young throstle.' And he took the leaves from her hair, kissing her damp
hair, and the flowers from her breasts, and kissed her breasts, and
kissed her navel, and kissed her maiden-hair, where he left the flowers
threaded. 'They mun stop while they will,' he said. 'So! There tha'rt
bare again, nowt but a bare-arsed lass an' a bit of a Lady Jane! Now
put thy shimmy on, for tha mun go, or else Lady Chatterley's goin' to
be late for dinner, an' where 'ave yer been to my pretty maid!'

She never knew how to answer him when he was in this condition of the
vernacular. So she dressed herself and prepared to go a little
ignominiously home to Wragby. Or so she felt it: a little ignominiously
home.

He would accompany her to the broad riding. His young pheasants were
all right under the shelter.

When he and she came out on to the riding, there was Mrs Bolton
faltering palely towards them.

'Oh, my Lady, we wondered if anything had happened!'

'No! Nothing has happened.'

Mrs Bolton looked into the man's face, that was smooth and new-looking
with love. She met his half-laughing, half-mocking eyes. He always
laughed at mischance. But he looked at her kindly.

'Evening, Mrs Bolton! Your Ladyship will be all right now, so I can
leave you. Good-night to your Ladyship! Good-night, Mrs Bolton!'

He saluted and turned away.



Chapter 16



Connie arrived home to an ordeal of cross-questioning. Clifford had
been out at tea-time, had come in just before the storm, and where was
her ladyship? Nobody knew, only Mrs Bolton suggested she had gone for a
walk into the wood. Into the wood, in such a storm! Clifford for once
let himself get into a state of nervous frenzy. He started at every
flash of lightning, and blenched at every roll of thunder. He looked at
the icy thunder-rain as if it dare the end of the world. He got more
and more worked up.

Mrs Bolton tried to soothe him.

'She'll be sheltering in the hut, till it's over. Don't worry, her
Ladyship is all right.'

'I don't like her being in the wood in a storm like this! I don't like
her being in the wood at all! She's been gone now more than two hours.
When did she go out?'

'A little while before you came in.'

'I didn't see her in the park. God knows where she is and what has
happened to her.'

'Oh, nothing's happened to her. You'll see, she'll be home directly
after the rain stops. It's just the rain that's keeping her.'

But her ladyship did not come home directly the rain stopped. In fact
time went by, the sun came out for his last yellow glimpse, and there
still was no sign of her. The sun was set, it was growing dark, and the
first dinner-gong had rung.

'It's no good!' said Clifford in a frenzy. 'I'm going to send out Field
and Betts to find her.'

'Oh don't do that!' cried Mrs Bolton. 'They'll think there's a suicide
or something. Oh don't start a lot of talk going. Let me slip over to
the hut and see if she's not there. I'll find her all right.'

So, after some persuasion, Clifford allowed her to go.

And so Connie had come upon her in the drive, alone and palely
loitering.

'You mustn't mind me coming to look for you, my Lady! But Sir Clifford
worked himself up into such a state. He made sure you were struck by
lightning, or killed by a falling tree. And he was determined to send
Field and Betts to the wood to find the body. So I thought I'd better
come, rather than set all the servants agog.

She spoke nervously. She could still see on Connie's face the
smoothness and the half-dream of passion, and she could feel the
irritation against herself.

'Quite!' said Connie. And she could say no more.

The two women plodded on through the wet world, in silence, while great
drops splashed like explosions in the wood. When they came to the park,
Connie strode ahead, and Mrs Bolton panted a little. She was getting
plumper.

'How foolish of Clifford to make a fuss!' said Connie at length,
angrily, really speaking to herself.

'Oh, you know what men are! They like working themselves up. But he'll
be all right as soon as he sees your Ladyship.'

Connie was very angry that Mrs Bolton knew her secret: for certainly
she knew it.

Suddenly Constance stood still on the path.

'It's monstrous that I should have to be followed!' she said, her eyes
flashing.

'Oh! your Ladyship, don't say that! He'd certainly have sent the two
men, and they'd have come straight to the hut. I didn't know where it
was, really.'

Connie flushed darker with rage, at the suggestion. Yet, while her
passion was on her, she could not lie. She could not even pretend there
was nothing between herself and the keeper. She looked at the other
woman, who stood so sly, with her head dropped: yet somehow, in her
femaleness, an ally.

'Oh well!' she said. 'If it is so it is so. I don't mind!'

'Why, you're all right, my Lady! You've only been sheltering in the
hut. It's absolutely nothing.'

They went on to the house. Connie marched in to Clifford's room,
furious with him, furious with his pale, over-wrought face and prominent
eyes.

'I must say, I don't think you need send the servants after me,' she
burst out.

'My God!' he exploded. 'Where have you been, woman, You've been gone
hours, hours, and in a storm like this! What the hell do you go to
that bloody wood for? What have you been up to? It's hours even since
the rain stopped, hours! Do you know what time it is? You're enough to
drive anybody mad. Where have you been? What in the name of hell have
you been doing?'

'And what if I don't choose to tell you?' She pulled her hat from her
head and shook her hair.

He looked at her with his eyes bulging, and yellow coming into the
whites. It was very bad for him to get into these rages: Mrs Bolton had
a weary time with him, for days after. Connie felt a sudden qualm.

But really!' she said, milder. 'Anyone would think I'd been I don't
know where! I just sat in the hut during all the storm, and made myself
a little fire, and was happy.'

She spoke now easily. After all, why work him up any more!

He looked at her suspiciously.

And look at your hair!' he said; 'look at yourself!'

'Yes!' she replied calmly. 'I ran out in the rain with no clothes on.'

He stared at her speechless.

'You must be mad!' he said.

'Why? To like a shower bath from the rain?'

'And how did you dry yourself?'

'On an old towel and at the fire.'

He still stared at her in a dumbfounded way.

'And supposing anybody came,' he said.

'Who would come?'

'Who? Why, anybody! And Mellors. Does he come? He must come in the
evenings.'

'Yes, he came later, when it had cleared up, to feed the pheasants with
corn.'

She spoke with amazing nonchalance. Mrs Bolton, who was listening in
the next room, heard in sheer admiration. To think a woman could carry
it off so naturally!

'And suppose he'd come while you were running about in the rain with
nothing on, like a maniac?'

'I suppose he'd have had the fright of his life, and cleared out as
fast as he could.'

Clifford still stared at her transfixed. What he thought in his
under-consciousness he would never know. And he was too much taken
aback to form one clear thought in his upper consciousness. He just
simply accepted what she said, in a sort of blank. And he admired her.
He could not help admiring her. She looked so flushed and handsome and
smooth: love smooth.

'At least,' he said, subsiding, 'you'll be lucky if you've got off
without a severe cold.'

'Oh, I haven't got a cold,' she replied. She was thinking to herself of
the other man's words: Tha's got the nicest woman's arse of anybody!
She wished, she dearly wished she could tell Clifford that this had
been said her, during the famous thunderstorm. However! She bore
herself rather like an offended queen, and went upstairs to change.

That evening, Clifford wanted to be nice to her. He was reading one of
the latest scientific-religious books: he had a streak of a spurious
sort of religion in him, and was egocentrically concerned with the
future of his own ego. It was like his habit to make conversation to
Connie about some book, since the conversation between them had to be
made, almost chemically. They had almost chemically to concoct it in
their heads.

'What do you think of this, by the way?' he said, reaching for his
book. 'You'd have no need to cool your ardent body by running out in
the rain, if only we have a few more aeons of evolution behind us. Ah,
here it is!--"The universe shows us two aspects: on one side it is
physically wasting, on the other it is spiritually ascending."'

Connie listened, expecting more. But Clifford was waiting. She looked
at him in surprise.

'And if it spiritually ascends,' she said, 'what does it leave down
below, in the place where its tail used to be?'

'Ah!' he said. 'Take the man for what he means. ASCENDING is the
opposite of his WASTING, I presume.'

'Spiritually blown out, so to speak!'

'No, but seriously, without joking: do you think there is anything in
it?'

She looked at him again.

'Physically wasting?' she said. 'I see you getting fatter, and I'm sot
wasting myself. Do you think the sun is smaller than he used to be?
He's not to me. And I suppose the apple Adam offered Eve wasn't really
much bigger, if any, than one of our orange pippins. Do you think it
was?'

'Well, hear how he goes on: "It is thus slowly passing, with a
slowness inconceivable in our measures of time, to new creative
conditions, amid which the physical world, as we at present know it,
will he represented by a ripple barely to be distinguished from
nonentity."'

She listened with a glisten of amusement. All sorts of improper things
suggested themselves. But she only said:

'What silly hocus-pocus! As if his little conceited consciousness could
know what was happening as slowly as all that! It only means HE'S a
physical failure on the earth, so he wants to make the whole universe a
physical failure. Priggish little impertinence!'

'Oh, but listen! Don't interrupt the great man's solemn words!--"The
present type of order in the world has risen from an unimaginable part,
and will find its grave in an unimaginable future. There remains the
inexhaustive realm of abstract forms, and creativity with its shifting
character ever determined afresh by its own creatures, and God, upon
whose wisdom all forms of order depend."--There, that's how he winds
up!'

Connie sat listening contemptuously.

'He's spiritually blown out,' she said. 'What a lot of stuff!
Unimaginables, and types of order in graves, and realms of abstract
forms, and creativity with a shifty character, and God mixed up with
forms of order! Why, it's idiotic!'

'I must say, it is a little vaguely conglomerate, a mixture of gases,
so to speak,' said Clifford. 'Still, I think there is something in the
idea that the universe is physically wasting and spiritually
ascending.'

'Do you? Then let it ascend, so long as it leaves me safely and solidly
physically here below.'

'Do you like your physique?' he asked.

'I love it!' And through her mind went the words: It's the nicest,
nicest woman's arse as is!

'But that is really rather extraordinary, because there's no denying
it's an encumbrance. But then I suppose a woman doesn't take a supreme
pleasure in the life of the mind.'

'Supreme pleasure?' she said, looking up at him. 'Is that sort of
idiocy the supreme pleasure of the life of the mind? No thank you! Give
me the body. I believe the life of the body is a greater reality than
the life of the mind: when the body is really wakened to life. But so
many people, like your famous wind-machine, have only got minds tacked
on to their physical corpses.'

He looked at her in wonder.

'The life of the body,' he said, 'is just the life of the animals.'

'And that's better than the life of professional corpses. But it's not
true! the human body is only just coming to real life. With the Greeks
it gave a lovely flicker, then Plato and Aristotle killed it, and Jesus
finished it off. But now the body is coming really to life, it is
really rising from the tomb. And It will be a lovely, lovely life in
the lovely universe, the life of the human body.'

'My dear, you speak as if you were ushering it all in! True, you are
going away on a holiday: but don't please be quite so indecently elated
about it. Believe me, whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the
guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher,
more spiritual being.'

'Why should I believe you, Clifford, when I feel that whatever God
there is has at last wakened up in my guts, as you call them, and is
rippling so happily there, like dawn. Why should I believe you, when I
feel so very much the contrary?'

'Oh, exactly! And what has caused this extraordinary change in you?
running out stark naked in the rain, and playing Bacchante? desire for
sensation, or the anticipation of going to Venice?'

'Both! Do you think it is horrid of me to be so thrilled at going off?'
she said.

'Rather horrid to show it so plainly.'

'Then I'll hide it.'

'Oh, don't trouble! You almost communicate a thrill to me. I almost
feel that it is I who am going off.'

'Well, why don't you come?'

'We've gone over all that. And as a matter of fact, I suppose your
greatest thrill comes from being able to say a temporary farewell to
all this. Nothing so thrilling, for the moment, as Good-bye-to-all!--But
every parting means a meeting elsewhere. And every meeting is a new
bondage.'

'I'm not going to enter any new bondages.'

'Don't boast, while the gods are listening,' he said.

She pulled up short.

'No! I won't boast!' she said.

But she was thrilled, none the less, to be going off: to feel bonds
snap. She couldn't help it.

Clifford, who couldn't sleep, gambled all night with Mrs Bolton, till
she was too sleepy almost to live.

And the day came round for Hilda to arrive. Connie had arranged with
Mellors that if everything promised well for their night together, she
would hang a green shawl out of the window. If there were frustration,
a red one.

Mrs Bolton helped Connie to pack.

'It will be so good for your Ladyship to have a change.'

'I think it will. You don't mind having Sir Clifford on your hands
alone for a time, do you?'

'Oh no! I can manage him quite all right. I mean, I can do all he needs
me to do. Don't you think he's better than he used to be?'

'Oh much! You do wonders with him.'

'Do I though! But men are all alike: just babies, and you have to
flatter them and wheedle them and let them think they're having their
own way. Don't you find it so, my Lady?'

'I'm afraid I haven't much experience.'

Connie paused in her occupation.

'Even your husband, did you have to manage him, and wheedle him like a
baby?' she asked, looking at the other woman.

Mrs Bolton paused too.

'Well!' she said. 'I had to do a good bit of coaxing, with him too. But
he always knew what I was after, I must say that. But he generally gave
in to me.'

'He was never the lord and master thing?'

'No! At least there'd be a look in his eyes sometimes, and then I knew
I'D got to give in. But usually he gave in to me. No, he was never lord
and master. But neither was I. I knew when I could go no further with
him, and then I gave in: though it cost me a good bit, sometimes.'

'And what if you had held out against him?'

'Oh, I don't know, I never did. Even when he was in the wrong, if he
was fixed, I gave in. You see, I never wanted to break what was between
us. And if you really set your will against a man, that finishes it. If
you care for a man, you have to give in to him once he's really
determined; whether you're in the right or not, you have to give in.
Else you break something. But I must say, Ted 'ud give in to me
sometimes, when I was set on a thing, and in the wrong. So I suppose it
cuts both ways.'

'And that's how you are with all your patients?' asked Connie.

'Oh, That's different. I don't care at all, in the same way. I know
what's good for them, or I try to, and then I just contrive to manage
them for their own good. It's not like anybody as you're really fond
of. It's quite different. Once you've been really fond of a man, you
can be affectionate to almost any man, if he needs you at all. But it's
not the same thing. You don't really CARE. I doubt, once you've REALLY
cared, if you can ever really care again.'

These words frightened Connie.

'Do you think one can only care once?' she asked.

'Or never. Most women never care, never begin to. They don't know what
it means. Nor men either. But when I see a woman as cares, my heart
stands still for her.'

'And do you think men easily take offence?'

'Yes! If you wound them on their pride. But aren't women the same? Only
our two prides are a bit different.'

Connie pondered this. She began again to have some misgiving about her
going away. After all, was she not giving her man the go-by, if only for
a short time? And he knew it. That's why he was so queer and sarcastic.

Still! the human existence is a good deal controlled by the machine of
external circumstance. She was in the power of this machine. She
couldn't extricate herself all in five minutes. She didn't even want
to.

Hilda arrived in good time on Thursday morning, in a nimble two-seater
car, with her suit-case strapped firmly behind. She looked as demure
and maidenly as ever, but she had the same will of her own. She had the
very hell of a will of her own, as her husband had found out. But the
husband was now divorcing her.

Yes, she even made it easy for him to do that, though she had no lover.
For the time being, she was 'off' men. She was very well content to be
quite her own mistress: and mistress of her two children, whom she was
going to bring up 'properly', whatever that may mean.

Connie was only allowed a suit-case, also. But she had sent on a trunk
to her father, who was going by train. No use taking a car to Venice.
And Italy much too hot to motor in, in July. He was going comfortably
by train. He had just come down from Scotland.

So, like a demure arcadian field-marshal, Hilda arranged the material
part of the journey. She and Connie sat in the upstairs room, chatting.

'But Hilda!' said Connie, a little frightened. 'I want to stay near
here tonight. Not here: near here!'

Hilda fixed her sister with grey, inscrutable eyes. She seemed so calm:
and she was so often furious.

'Where, near here?' she asked softly.

'Well, you know I love somebody, don't you?'

'I gathered there was something.'

'Well he lives near here, and I want to spend this last night with him. I
must! I've promised.'

Connie became insistent.

Hilda bent her Minerva-like head in silence. Then she looked up.

'Do you want to tell me who he is?' she said.

'He's our game-keeper,' faltered Connie, and she flushed vividly, like
a shamed child.

'Connie!' said Hilda, lifting her nose slightly with disgust: a motion
she had from her mother.

'I know: but he's lovely really. He really understands tenderness,'
said Connie, trying to apologize for him.

Hilda, like a ruddy, rich-coloured Athena, bowed her head and pondered.
She was really violently angry. But she dared not show it, because
Connie, taking after her father, would straight away become
obstreperous and unmanageable.

It was true, Hilda did not like Clifford: his cool assurance that he
was somebody! She thought he made use of Connie shamefully and
impudently. She had hoped her sister WOULD leave him. But, being solid
Scotch middle class, she loathed any 'lowering' of oneself or the
family. She looked up at last.

'You'll regret it,' she said,

'I shan't,' cried Connie, flushed red. 'He's quite the exception. I
REALLY love him. He's lovely as a lover.'

Hilda still pondered.

'You'll get over him quite soon,' she said, 'and live to be ashamed of
yourself because of him.'

'I shan't! I hope I'm going to have a child of his.'

'CONNIE!' said Hilda, hard as a hammer-stroke, and pale with anger.

'I shall if I possibly can. I should be fearfully proud if I had a
child by him.'

It was no use talking to her. Hilda pondered.

'And doesn't Clifford suspect?' she said.

'Oh no! Why should he?'

'I've no doubt you've given him plenty of occasion for suspicion,' said
Hilda.

'Not at all.'

'And tonight's business seems quite gratuitous folly. Where does the
man live?'

'In the cottage at the other end of the wood.'

'Is he a bachelor?'

'No! His wife left him.'

'How old?'

'I don't know. Older than me.'

Hilda became more angry at every reply, angry as her mother used to be,
in a kind of paroxysm. But still she hid it.

'I would give up tonight's escapade if I were you,' she advised calmly.

'I can't! I MUST stay with him tonight, or I can't go to Venice at all.
I just can't.'

Hilda heard her father over again, and she gave way, out of mere
diplomacy. And she consented to drive to Mansfield, both of them, to
dinner, to bring Connie back to the lane-end after dark, and to fetch
her from the lane-end the next morning, herself sleeping in Mansfield,
only half an hour away, good going.

But she was furious. She stored it up against her sister, this balk in
her plans.

Connie flung an emerald-green shawl over her window-sill.

On the strength of her anger, Hilda warmed toward Clifford.

After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the
better: so much the less to quarrel about! Hilda wanted no more of that
sex business, where men became nasty, selfish little horrors. Connie
really had less to put up with than many women if she did but know it.

And Clifford decided that Hilda, after all, was a decidedly intelligent
woman, and would make a man a first-rate helpmate, if he were going in
for politics for example. Yes, she had none of Connie's silliness,
Connie was more a child: you had to make excuses for her, because she
was not altogether dependable.

There was an early cup of tea in the hall, where doors were open to let
in the sun. Everybody seemed to be panting a little.

'Good-bye, Connie girl! Come back to me safely.'

'Good-bye, Clifford! Yes, I shan't be long.' Connie was almost tender.

'Good-bye, Hilda! You will keep an eye on her, won't you?'

'I'll even keep two!' said Hilda. 'She shan't go very far astray.'

'It's a promise!'

'Good-bye, Mrs Bolton! I know you'll look after Sir Clifford nobly.'

'I'll do what I can, your Ladyship.'

'And write to me if there is any news, and tell me about Sir Clifford,
how he is.'

'Very good, your Ladyship, I will. And have a good time, and come back
and cheer us up.'

Everybody waved. The car went off Connie looked back and saw Clifford,
sitting at the top of the steps in his house-chair. After all, he was
her husband: Wragby was her home: circumstance had done it.

Mrs Chambers held the gate and wished her ladyship a happy holiday. The
car slipped out of the dark spinney that masked the park, on to the
highroad where the colliers were trailing home. Hilda turned to the
Crosshill Road, that was not a main road, but ran to Mansfield. Connie
put on goggles. They ran beside the railway, which was in a cutting
below them. Then they crossed the cutting on a bridge.

'That's the lane to the cottage!' said Connie.

Hilda glanced at it impatiently.

'It's a frightful pity we can't go straight off!' she said. We could
have been in Pall Mall by nine o'clock.'

'I'm sorry for your sake,' said Connie, from behind her goggles.

They were soon at Mansfield, that once-romantic, now utterly
disheartening colliery town. Hilda stopped at the hotel named in the
motor-car book, and took a room. The whole thing was utterly
uninteresting, and she was almost too angry to talk. However, Connie
HAD to tell her something of the man's history.

'HE! HE! What name do you call him by? You only say HE,' said Hilda.

'I've never called him by any name: nor he me: which is curious, when
you come to think of it. Unless we say Lady Jane and John Thomas. But
his name is Oliver Mellors.'

'And how would you like to be Mrs Oliver Mellors, instead of Lady
Chatterley?'

'I'd love it.'

There was nothing to be done with Connie. And anyhow, if the man had
been a lieutenant in the army in India for four or five years, he must
be more or less presentable. Apparently he had character. Hilda began
to relent a little.

'But you'll be through with him in awhile,' she said, 'and then you'll
be ashamed of having been connected with him. One CAN'T mix up with the
working people.'

'But you are such a socialist! you're always on the side of the working
classes.'

'I may be on their side in a political crisis, but being on their side
makes me know how impossible it is to mix one's life with theirs. Not
out of snobbery, but just because the whole rhythm is different.'

Hilda had lived among the real political intellectuals, so she was
disastrously unanswerable.

The nondescript evening in the hotel dragged out, and at last they had
a nondescript dinner. Then Connie slipped a few things into a little
silk bag, and combed her hair once more.

'After all, Hilda,' she said, 'love can be wonderful: when you feel you
LIVE, and are in the very middle of creation.' It was almost like
bragging on her part.

'I suppose every mosquito feels the same,' said Hilda. 'Do you think it
does? How nice for it!'

The evening was wonderfully clear and long-lingering, even in the small
town. It would be half-light all night. With a face like a mask, from
resentment, Hilda started her car again, and the two sped back on their
traces, taking the other road, through Bolsover.

Connie wore her goggles and disguising cap, and she sat in silence.
Because of Hilda's opposition, she was fiercely on the sidle of the
man, she would stand by him through thick and thin.

They had their head-lights on, by the time they passed Crosshill, and
the small lit-up train that chuffed past in the cutting made it seem
like real night. Hilda had calculated the turn into the lane at the
bridge-end. She slowed up rather suddenly and swerved off the road, the
lights glaring white into the grassy, overgrown lane. Connie looked
out. She saw a shadowy figure, and she opened the door.

'Here we are!' she said softly.

But Hilda had switched off the lights, and was absorbed backing, making
the turn.

'Nothing on the bridge?' she asked shortly.

'You're all right,' said the man's voice.

She backed on to the bridge, reversed, let the car run forwards a few
yards along the road, then backed into the lane, under a wych-elm tree,
crushing the grass and bracken. Then all the lights went out. Connie
stepped down. The man stood under the trees.

'Did you wait long?' Connie asked.

'Not so very,' he replied.

They both waited for Hilda to get out. But Hilda shut the door of the
car and sat tight.

'This is my sister Hilda. Won't you come and speak to her? Hilda! This
is Mr Mellors.'

The keeper lifted his hat, but went no nearer.

'Do walk down to the cottage with us, Hilda,' Connie pleaded. 'It's not
far.'

'What about the car?'

'People do leave them on the lanes. You have the key.'

Hilda was silent, deliberating. Then she looked backwards down the
lane.

'Can I back round the bush?' she said.

'Oh yes!' said the keeper.

She backed slowly round the curve, out of sight of the road, locked the
car, and got down. It was night, but luminous dark. The hedges rose
high and wild, by the unused lane, and very dark seeming. There was a
fresh sweet scent on the air. The keeper went ahead, then came Connie,
then Hilda, and in silence. He lit up the difficult places with a
flash-light torch, and they went on again, while an owl softly hooted
over the oaks, and Flossie padded silently around. Nobody could speak.
There was nothing to say.

At length Connie saw the yellow light of the house, and her heart beat
fast. She was a little frightened. They trailed on, still in Indian
file.

He unlocked the door and preceded them into the warm but bare little
room. The fire burned low and red in the grate. The table was set with
two plates and two glasses on a proper white table-cloth for once.
Hilda shook her hair and looked round the bare, cheerless room. Then
she summoned her courage and looked at the man.

He was moderately tall, and thin, and she thought him good-looking. He
kept a quiet distance of his own, and seemed absolutely unwilling to
speak.

'Do sit down, Hilda,' said Connie.

'Do!' he said. 'Can I make you tea or anything, or will you drink a
glass of beer? It's moderately cool.'

'Beer!' said Connie.

'Beer for me, please!' said Hilda, with a mock sort of shyness. He
looked at her and blinked.

He took a blue jug and tramped to the scullery. When he came back with
the beer, his face had changed again.

Connie sat down by the door, and Hilda sat in his seat, with the back
to the wall, against the window corner.

'That is his chair,' said Connie softly.' And Hilda rose as if it had
burnt her.

'Sit yer still, sit yer still! Ta'e ony cheer as yo'n a mind to, none
of us is th' big bear,' he said, with complete equanimity.

And he brought Hilda a glass, and poured her beer first from the blue
jug.

'As for cigarettes,' he said, 'I've got none, but 'appen you've got
your own. I dunna smoke, mysen. Shall y' eat summat?' He turned direct
to Connie. 'Shall t'eat a smite o' summat, if I bring it thee? Tha can
usually do wi' a bite.' He spoke the vernacular with a curious calm
assurance, as if he were the landlord of the Inn.

'What is there?' asked Connie, flushing.

'Boiled ham, cheese, pickled wa'nuts, if yer like.--Nowt much.'

'Yes,' said Connie. 'Won't you, Hilda?'

Hilda looked up at him.

'Why do you speak Yorkshire?' she said softly.

'That! That's non Yorkshire, that's Derby.'

He looked back at her with that faint, distant grin.

'Derby, then! Why do you speak Derby? You spoke natural English at
first.'

'Did Ah though? An' canna Ah change if Ah'm a mind to 't? Nay, nay, let
me talk Derby if it suits me. If yo'n nowt against it.'

'It sounds a little affected,' said Hilda.

'Ay, 'appen so! An' up i' Tevershall yo'd sound affected.' He looked
again at her, with a queer calculating distance, along his cheek-bone:
as if to say: Yi, an' who are you?

He tramped away to the pantry for the food.

The sisters sat in silence. He brought another plate, and knife and
fork. Then he said:

'An' if it's the same to you, I s'll ta'e my coat off like I allers
do.'

And he took off his coat, and hung it on the peg, then sat down to
table in his shirt-sleeves: a shirt of thin, cream-coloured flannel.

''Elp yerselves!' he said. ''Elp yerselves! Dunna wait f'r axin'!' He
cut the bread, then sat motionless. Hilda felt, as Connie once used to,
his power of silence and distance. She saw his smallish, sensitive,
loose hand on the table. He was no simple working man, not he: he was
acting! acting!

'Still!' she said, as she took a little cheese. 'It would be more
natural if you spoke to us in normal English, not in vernacular.'

He looked at her, feeling her devil of a will.

'Would it?' he said in the normal English. 'Would it? Would anything
that was said between you and me be quite natural, unless you said you
wished me to hell before your sister ever saw me again: and unless I
said something almost as unpleasant back again? Would anything else be
natural?'

'Oh yes!' said Hilda. 'Just good manners would be quite natural.'

'Second nature, so to speak!' he said: then he began to laugh. 'Nay,'
he said. 'I'm weary o' manners. Let me be!'

Hilda was frankly baffled and furiously annoyed. After all, he might
show that he realized he was being honoured. Instead of which, with his
play-acting and lordly airs, he seemed to think it was he who was
conferring the honour. Just impudence! Poor misguided Connie, in the
man's clutches!

The three ate in silence. Hilda looked to see what his table-manners
were like. She could not help realizing that he was instinctively much
more delicate and well-bred than herself. She had a certain Scottish
clumsiness. And moreover, he had all the quiet self-contained assurance
of the English, no loose edges. It would be very difficult to get the
better of him.

But neither would he get the better of her.

'And do you really think,' she said, a little more humanly, 'it's worth
the risk.'

'Is what worth what risk?'

'This escapade with my sister.'

He flickered his irritating grin.

'Yo' maun ax 'er!' Then he looked at Connie.

'Tha comes o' thine own accord, lass, doesn't ter? It's non me as
forces thee?'

Connie looked at Hilda.

'I wish you wouldn't cavil, Hilda.'

'Naturally I don't want to. But someone has to think about things.
You've got to have some sort of continuity in your life. You can't just
go making a mess.'

There was a moment's pause.

'Eh, continuity!' he said. 'An' what by that? What continuity ave yer
got i' YOUR life? I thought you was gettin' divorced. What continuity's
that? Continuity o' yer own stubbornness. I can see that much. An' what
good's it goin' to do yer? You'll be sick o' yer continuity afore yer a
fat sight older. A stubborn woman an er own self-will: ay, they make a
fast continuity, they do. Thank heaven, it isn't me as 'as got th'
'andlin' of yer!'

'What right have you to speak like that to me?' said Hilda.

'Right! What right ha' yo' ter start harnessin' other folks i' your
continuity? Leave folks to their own continuities.'

'My dear man, do you think I am concerned with you?' said Hilda softly.

'Ay,' he said. 'Yo' are. For it's a force-put. Yo' more or less my
sister-in-law.'

'Still far from it, I assure you.

'Not a' that far, I assure YOU. I've got my own sort o' continuity,
back your life! Good as yours, any day. An' if your sister there comes
ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after.
She's been in my bed afore: which you 'aven't, thank the Lord, with
your continuity.' There was a dead pause, before he added: '--Eh, I
don't wear me breeches arse-forrards. An' if I get a windfall, I thank
my stars. A man gets a lot of enjoyment out o' that lass theer, which
is more than anybody gets out o' th' likes o' you. Which is a pity, for
you might appen a' bin a good apple, 'stead of a handsome crab. Women
like you needs proper graftin'.'

He was looking at her with an odd, flickering smile, faintly sensual
and appreciative.

'And men like you,' she said, 'ought to be segregated: justifying their
own vulgarity and selfish lust.'

'Ay, ma'am! It's a mercy there's a few men left like me. But you
deserve what you get: to be left severely alone.'

Hilda had risen and gone to the door. He rose and took his coat from
the peg.

'I can find my way quite well alone,' she said.

'I doubt you can't,' he replied easily.

They tramped in ridiculous file down the lane again, in silence. An owl
still hooted. He knew he ought to shoot it.

The car stood untouched, a little dewy. Hilda got in and started the
engine. The other two waited.

'All I mean,' she said from her entrenchment, 'is that I doubt if
you'll find it's been worth it, either of you!'

'One man's meat is another man's poison,' he said, out of the darkness.
'But it's meat an' drink to me.

The lights flared out.

'Don't make me wait in the morning,'

'No, I won't. Goodnight!'

The car rose slowly on to the highroad, then slid swiftly away, leaving
the night silent.

Connie timidly took his arm, and they went down the lane. He did not
speak. At length she drew him to a standstill.

'Kiss me!' she murmured.

'Nay, wait a bit! Let me simmer down,' he said.

That amused her. She still kept hold of his arm, and they went quickly
down the lane, in silence. She was so glad to be with him, just now.
She shivered, knowing that Hilda might have snatched her away. He was
inscrutably silent.

When they were in the cottage again, she almost jumped with pleasure,
that she should be free of her sister.

'But you were horrid to Hilda,' she said to him.

'She should ha' been slapped in time.'

'But why? and she's SO nice.'

He didn't answer, went round doing the evening chores, with a quiet,
inevitable sort of motion. He was outwardly angry, but not with her. So
Connie felt. And his anger gave him a peculiar handsomeness, an
inwardness and glisten that thrilled her and made her limbs go molten.

Still he took no notice of her.

Till he sat down and began to unlace his boots. Then he looked up at
her from under his brows, on which the anger still sat firm.

'Shan't you go up?' he said. 'There's a candle!'

He jerked his head swiftly to indicate the candle burning on the table.
She took it obediently, and he watched the full curve of her hips as
she went up the first stairs.

It was a night of sensual passion, in which she was a little startled
and almost unwilling: yet pierced again with piercing thrills of
sensuality, different, sharper, more terrible than the thrills of
tenderness, but, at the moment, more desirable. Though a little
frightened, she let him have his way, and the reckless, shameless
sensuality shook her to her foundations, stripped her to the very last,
and made a different woman of her. It was not really love. It was not
voluptuousness. It was sensuality sharp and searing as fire, burning
the soul to tinder.

Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret
places. It cost her an effort to let him have his way and his will of
her. She had to be a passive, consenting thing, like a slave, a
physical slave. Yet the passion licked round her, consuming, and when
the sensual flame of it pressed through her bowels and breast, she
really thought she was dying: yet a poignant, marvellous death.

She had often wondered what Abelard meant, when he said that in their
year of love he and Heloise had passed through all the stages and
refinements of passion. The same thing, a thousand years ago: ten
thousand years ago! The same on the Greek vases, everywhere! The
refinements of passion, the extravagances of sensuality! And necessary,
forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt out the heaviest
ore of the body into purity. With the fire of sheer sensuality.

In the short summer night she learnt so much. She would have thought a
woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died.
Shame, which is fear: the deep organic shame, the old, old physical
fear which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased
away by the sensual fire, at last it was roused up and routed by the
phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle
of herself. She felt, now, she had come to the real bed-rock of her
nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked
and unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how
it was! That was life! That was how oneself really was! There was
nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate
nakedness with a man, another being.

And what a reckless devil the man was! really like a devil! One had to
be strong to bear him. But it took some getting at, the core of the
physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame. The
phallos alone could explore it. And how he had pressed in on her!

And how, in fear, she had hated it. But how she had really wanted it!
She knew now. At the bottom of her soul, fundamentally, she had needed
this phallic hunting out, she had secretly wanted it, and she had
believed that she would never get it. Now suddenly there it was, and a
man was sharing her last and final nakedness, she was shameless.

What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted
sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming,
rather awful sensuality. To find a man who dared do it, without shame
or sin or final misgiving! If he had been ashamed afterwards, and made
one feel ashamed, how awful! What a pity most men are so doggy, a bit
shameful, like Clifford! Like Michaelis even! Both sensually a bit
doggy and humiliating. The supreme pleasure of the mind! And what is
that to a woman? What is it, really, to the man either! He becomes
merely messy and doggy, even in his mind. It needs sheer sensuality
even to purify and quicken the mind. Sheer fiery sensuality, not
messiness.

Ah, God, how rare a thing a man is! They are all dogs that trot and
sniff and copulate. To have found a man who was not afraid and not
ashamed! She looked at him now, sleeping so like a wild animal asleep,
gone, gone in the remoteness of it. She nestled down, not to be away
from him.

Till his rousing waked her completely. He was sitting up in bed,
looking down at her. She saw her own nakedness in his eyes, immediate
knowledge of her. And the fluid, male knowledge of herself seemed to
flow to her from his eyes and wrap her voluptuously. Oh, how voluptuous
and lovely it was to have limbs and body half-asleep, heavy and
suffused with passion.

'Is it time to wake up?' she said.

'Half past six.'

She had to be at the lane-end at eight. Always, always, always this
compulsion on one!

'I might make the breakfast and bring it up here; should I?' he said.

'Oh yes!'

Flossie whimpered gently below. He got up and threw off his pyjamas,
and rubbed himself with a towel. When the human being is full of
courage and full of life, how beautiful it is! So she thought, as she
watched him in silence.

'Draw the curtain, will you?'

The sun was shining already on the tender green leaves of morning, and
the wood stood bluey-fresh, in the nearness. She sat up in bed, looking
dreamily out through the dormer window, her naked arms pushing her
naked breasts together. He was dressing himself. She was half-dreaming
of life, a life together with him: just a life.

He was going, fleeing from her dangerous, crouching nakedness.

'Have I lost my nightie altogether?' she said.

He pushed his hand down in the bed, and pulled out the bit of flimsy
silk.

'I knowed I felt silk at my ankles,' he said.

But the night-dress was slit almost in two.

'Never mind!' she said. 'It belongs here, really. I'll leave it.'

'Ay, leave it, I can put it between my legs at night, for company.
There's no name nor mark on it, is there?'

She slipped on the torn thing, and sat dreamily looking out of the
window. The window was open, the air of morning drifted in, and the
sound of birds. Birds flew continuously past. Then she saw Flossie
roaming out. It was morning.

Downstairs she heard him making the fire, pumping water, going out at
the back door. By and by came the smell of bacon, and at length he came
upstairs with a huge black tray that would only just go through the
door. He set the tray on the bed, and poured out the tea. Connie
squatted in her torn nightdress, and fell on her food hungrily. He sat
on the one chair, with his plate on his knees.

'How good it is!' she said. 'How nice to have breakfast together.'

He ate in silence, his mind on the time that was quickly passing. That
made her remember.

'Oh, how I wish I could stay here with you, and Wragby were a million
miles away! It's Wragby I'm going away from really. You know that,
don't you?'

'Ay!'

'And you promise we will live together and have a life together, you
and me! You promise me, don't you?'

'Ay! When we can.'

'Yes! And we WILL! we WILL, won't we?' she leaned over, making the tea
spill, catching his wrist.

'Ay!' he said, tidying up the tea.

'We can't possibly NOT live together now, can we?' she said
appealingly.

He looked up at her with his flickering grin.

'No!' he said. 'Only you've got to start in twenty-five minutes.'

'Have I?' she cried. Suddenly he held up a warning finger, and rose to
his feet.

Flossie had given a short bark, then three loud sharp yaps of warning.

Silent, he put his plate on the tray and went downstairs. Constance
heard him go down the garden path. A bicycle bell tinkled outside
there.

'Morning, Mr Mellors! Registered letter!'

'Oh ay! Got a pencil?'

'Here y'are!'

There was a pause.

'Canada!' said the stranger's voice.

'Ay! That's a mate o' mine out there in British Columbia. Dunno what
he's got to register.'

''Appen sent y'a fortune, like.'

'More like wants summat.'

Pause.

'Well! Lovely day again!'

'Ay!'

'Morning!'

'Morning!'

After a time he came upstairs again, looking a little angry.

'Postman,' he said.

'Very early!' she replied.

'Rural round; he's mostly here by seven, when he does come.

'Did your mate send you a fortune?'

'No! Only some photographs and papers about a place out there in
British Columbia.'

'Would you go there?'

'I thought perhaps we might.'

'Oh yes! I believe it's lovely!'

But he was put out by the postman's coming.

'Them damn bikes, they're on you afore you know where you are. I hope
he twigged nothing.'

'After all, what could he twig!'

'You must get up now, and get ready. I'm just goin' ter look round
outside.'

She saw him go reconnoitring into the lane, with dog and gun. She went
downstairs and washed, and was ready by the time he came back, with the
few things in the little silk bag.

He locked up, and they set off, but through the wood, not down the
lane. He was being wary.

'Don't you think one lives for times like last night?' she said to him.

'Ay! But there's the rest o'times to think on,' he replied, rather
short.

They plodded on down the overgrown path, he in front, in silence.

'And we WILL live together and make a life together, won't we?' she
pleaded.

'Ay!' he replied, striding on without looking round. 'When t' time
comes! Just now you're off to Venice or somewhere.'

She followed him dumbly, with sinking heart. Oh, now she was WAE to go!

At last he stopped.

'I'll just strike across here,' he said, pointing to the right.

But she flung her arms round his neck, and clung to him.

'But you'll keep the tenderness for me, won't you?' she whispered. 'I
loved last night. But you'll keep the tenderness for me, won't you?'

He kissed her and held her close for a moment. Then he sighed, and
kissed her again.

'I must go an' look if th' car's there.'

He strode over the low brambles and bracken, leaving a trail through
the fern. For a minute or two he was gone. Then he came striding back.

'Car's not there yet,' he said. 'But there's the baker's cart on t'
road.'

He seemed anxious and troubled.

'Hark!'

They heard a car softly hoot as it came nearer. It slowed up on the
bridge.

She plunged with utter mournfulness in his track through the fern, and
came to a huge holly hedge. He was just behind her.

'Here! Go through there!' he said, pointing to a gap. 'I shan't come
out.

She looked at him in despair. But he kissed her and made her go. She
crept in sheer misery through the holly and through the wooden fence,
stumbled down the little ditch and up into the lane, where Hilda was
just getting out of the car in vexation.

'Why you're there!' said Hilda. 'Where's HE?'

'He's not coming.'

Connie's face was running with tears as she got into the car with her
little bag. Hilda snatched up the motoring helmet with the disfiguring
goggles.

'Put it on!' she said. And Connie pulled on the disguise, then the long
motoring coat, and she sat down, a goggling inhuman, unrecognizable
creature. Hilda started the car with a businesslike motion. They heaved
out of the lane, and were away down the road. Connie had looked round,
but there was no sight of him. Away! Away! She sat in bitter tears. The
parting had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly. It was like death.

'Thank goodness you'll be away from him for some time!' said Hilda,
turning to avoid Crosshill village.