wheel of adventure: in his old black hat and tweed jacket, motionless and
cautious. O Captain, my Captain, our splendid trip is done! Not yet though!
Downhill, in the wake, came Constance in her grey dress, watching the chair
jolt downwards.
They passed the narrow track to the hut. Thank heaven it was not wide
enough for the chair: hardly wide enough for one person. The chair reached
the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to disappear. And Connie heard a
low whistle behind her. She glanced sharply round: the keeper was striding
downhill towards her, his dog keeping behind him.
`Is Sir Clifford going to the cottage?' he asked, looking into her
eyes.
`No, only to the well.'
`Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I
shall wait for you at the park-gate about ten.'
He looked again direct into her eyes.
`Yes,' she faltered.
They heard the Papp! Papp! of Clifford's horn, tooting for Connie. She
`Coo-eed!' in reply. The keeper's face flickered with a little grimace, and
with his hand he softly brushed her breast upwards, from underneath. She
looked at him, frightened, and started running down the hill, calling
Coo-ee! again to Clifford. The man above watched her, then turned, grinning
faintly, back into his path.
She found Clifford slowly mounting to the spring, which was halfway up
the slope of the dark larch-wood. He was there by the time she caught him
up.
`She did that all right,' he said, referring to the chair.
Connie looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out ghostly
from the edge of the larch-wood. The people call it Robin Hood's Rhubarb.
How silent and gloomy it seemed by the well! Yet the water bubbled so
bright, wonderful! And there were bits of eye-bright and strong blue
bugle...And there, under the bank, the yellow earth was moving. A mole! It
emerged, rowing its pink hands, and waving its blind gimlet of a face, with
the tiny pink nose-tip uplifted.
`It seems to see with the end of its nose,' said Connie.
`Better than with its eyes!' he said. `Will you drink?'
`Will you?'
She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it
for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little
herself.
`So icy!' she said gasping.
`Good, isn't it! Did you wish?'
`Did you?'
`Yes, I wished. But I won't tell.'
She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft
and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the
blue.
`Clouds!' she said.
`White lambs only,' he replied.
A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out on to the
soft yellow earth.
`Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him,' said Clifford.
`Look! he's like a parson in a pulpit,' she said.
She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him.
`New-mown hay!' he said. `Doesn't it smell like the romantic ladies of
the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way after all!'
She was looking at the white clouds.
`I wonder if it will rain,' she said.
`Rain! Why! Do you want it to?'
They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously
downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right,
and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where
bluebells stood in the light.
`Now, old girl!' said Clifford, putting the chair to it.
It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair pugged slowly, in a
struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she
came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled,
jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped
`We'd better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come,' said
Connie. `He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps.'
`We'll let her breathe,' said Clifford. `Do you mind putting a scotch
under the wheel?'
Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started
his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered
like a sick thing, with curious noises.
`Let me push!' said Connie, coming up behind.
`No! Don't push!' he said angrily. `What's the good of the damned
thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!'
There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual than
before.
`You must let me push,' said she. `Or sound the horn for the keeper.'
`Wait!'
She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good.
`Sound the horn then, if you won't let me push,' she said. `Hell! Be
quiet a moment!'
She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little
motor.
`You'll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford,' she
remonstrated; `besides wasting your nervous energy.'
`If I could only get out and look at the damned thing!' he said,
exasperated. And he sounded the horn stridently. `Perhaps Mellors can see
what's wrong.'
They waited, among the mashed flowers under a sky softly curdling with
cloud. In the silence a wood-pigeon began to coo roo-hoo hoo! roo-hoo hoo!
Clifford shut her up with a blast on the horn.
The keeper appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner. He
saluted.
`Do you know anything about motors?' asked Clifford sharply.
`I am afraid I don't. Has she gone wrong?'
`Apparently!' snapped Clifford.
The man crouched solicitously by the wheel, and peered at the little
engine.
`I'm afraid I know nothing at all about these mechanical things, Sir
Clifford,' he said calmly. `If she has enough petrol and oil---'
`Just look carefully and see if you can see anything broken,' snapped
Clifford.
The man laid his gun against a tree, took oil his coat, and threw it
beside it. The brown dog sat guard. Then he sat down on his heels and peered
under the chair, poking with his finger at the greasy little engine, and
resenting the grease-marks on his clean Sunday shirt.
`Doesn't seem anything broken,' he said. And he stood up, pushing back
his hat from his forehead, rubbing his brow and apparently studying.
`Have you looked at the rods underneath?' asked Clifford. `See if they
are all right!'
The man lay flat on his stomach on the floor, his neck pressed back,
wriggling under the engine and poking with his finger. Connie thought what a
pathetic sort of thing a man was, feeble and small-looking, when he was
lying on his belly on the big earth.
`Seems all right as far as I can see,' came his muffled voice.
`I don't suppose you can do anything,' said Clifford.
`Seems as if I can't!' And he scrambled up and sat on his heels,
collier fashion. `There's certainly nothing obviously broken.'
Clifford started his engine, then put her in gear. She would not move.
`Run her a bit hard, like,' suggested the keeper.
Clifford resented the interference: but he made his engine buzz like a
blue-bottle. Then she coughed and snarled and seemed to go better.
`Sounds as if she'd come clear,' said Mellors.
But Clifford had already jerked her into gear. She gave a sick lurch
and ebbed weakly forwards.
`If I give her a push, she'll do it,' said the keeper, going behind.
`Keep off!' snapped Clifford. `She'll do it by herself.'
`But Clifford!' put in Connie from the bank, `you know it's too much
for her. Why are you so obstinate!'
Clifford was pale with anger. He jabbed at his levers. The chair gave a
sort of scurry, reeled on a few more yards, and came to her end amid a
particularly promising patch of bluebells.
`She's done!' said the keeper. `Not power enough.'
`She's been up here before,' said Clifford coldly.
`She won't do it this time,' said the keeper.
Clifford did not reply. He began doing things with his engine, running
her fast and slow as if to get some sort of tune out of her. The wood
re-echoed with weird noises. Then he put her in gear with a jerk, having
jerked off his brake.
`You'll rip her inside out,' murmured the keeper.
The chair charged in a sick lurch sideways at the ditch.
`Clifford!' cried Connie, rushing forward.
But the keeper had got the chair by the rail. Clifford, however,
putting on all his pressure, managed to steer into the riding, and with a
strange noise the chair was fighting the hill. Mellors pushed steadily
behind, and up she went, as if to retrieve herself.
`You see, she's doing it!' said Clifford, victorious, glancing over his
shoulder. There he saw the keeper's face.
`Are you pushing her?'
`She won't do it without.'
`Leave her alone. I asked you not.
`She won't do it.'
`Let her try!' snarled Clifford, with all his emphasis.
The keeper stood back: then turned to fetch his coat and gun. The chair
seemed to strange immediately. She stood inert. Clifford, seated a prisoner,
was white with vexation. He jerked at the levers with his hand, his feet
were no good. He got queer noises out of her. In savage impatience he moved
little handles and got more noises out of her. But she would not budge. No,
she would not budge. He stopped the engine and sat rigid with anger.
Constance sat on the bank arid looked at the wretched and trampled
bluebells. `Nothing quite so lovely as an English spring.' `I can do my
share of ruling.' `What we need to take up now is whips, not swords.' `The
ruling classes!'
The keeper strode up with his coat and gun, Flossie cautiously at his
heels. Clifford asked the man to do something or other to the engine.
Connie, who understood nothing at all of the technicalities of motors, and
who had had experience of breakdowns, sat patiently on the bank as if she
were a cipher. The keeper lay on his stomach again. The ruling classes and
the serving classes!
He got to his feet and said patiently:
`Try her again, then.'
He spoke in a quiet voice, almost as if to a child.
Clifford tried her, and Mellors stepped quickly behind and began to
push. She was going, the engine doing about half the work, the man the rest.
Clifford glanced round, yellow with anger.
`Will you get off there!'
The keeper dropped his hold at once, and Clifford added: `How shall I
know what she is doing!'
The man put his gun down and began to pull on his coat. He'd done.
The chair began slowly to run backwards.
`Clifford, your brake!' cried Connie.
She, Mellors, and Clifford moved at once, Connie and the keeper
jostling lightly. The chair stood. There was a moment of dead silence.
`It's obvious I'm at everybody's mercy!' said Clifford. He was yellow
with anger.
No one answered. Mellors was slinging his gun over his shoulder, his
face queer and expressionless, save for an abstracted look of patience. The
dog Flossie, standing on guard almost between her master's legs, moved
uneasily, eyeing the chair with great suspicion and dislike, and very much
perplexed between the three human beings. The tableau vivant remained set
among the squashed bluebells, nobody proffering a word.
`I expect she'll have to be pushed,' said Clifford at last, with an
affectation of sang froid.
No answer. Mellors' abstracted face looked as if he had heard nothing.
Connie glanced anxiously at him. Clifford too glanced round.
`Do you mind pushing her home, Mellors!' he said in a cool superior
tone. `I hope I have said nothing to offend you,' he added, in a tone of
dislike.
`Nothing at all, Sir Clifford! Do you want me to push that chair?'
`If you please.'
The man stepped up to it: but this time it was without effect. The
brake was jammed. They poked and pulled, and the keeper took off his gun and
his coat once more. And now Clifford said never a word. At last the keeper
heaved the back of the chair off the ground and, with an instantaneous push
of his foot, tried to loosen the wheels. He failed, the chair sank. Clifford
was clutching the sides. The man gasped with the weight.
`Don't do it!' cried Connie to him.
`If you'll pull the wheel that way, so!' he said to her, showing her
how.
`No! You mustn't lift it! You'll strain yourself,' she said, flushed
now with anger.
But he looked into her eyes and nodded. And she had to go and take hold
of the wheel, ready. He heaved and she tugged, and the chair reeled.
`For God's sake!' cried Clifford in terror.
But it was all right, and the brake was off. The keeper put a stone
under the wheel, and went to sit on the bank, his heart beat and his face
white with the effort, semi-conscious.
Connie looked at him, and almost cried with anger. There was a pause
and a dead silence. She saw his hands trembling on his thighs.
`Have you hurt yourself?' she asked, going to him.
`No. No!' He turned away almost angrily.
There was dead silence. The back of Clifford's fair head did not move.
Even the dog stood motionless. The sky had clouded over.
At last he sighed, and blew his nose on his red handkerchief.
`That pneumonia took a lot out of me,' he said.
No one answered. Connie calculated the amount of strength it must have
taken to heave up that chair and the bulky Clifford: too much, far too much!
If it hadn't killed him!
He rose, and again picked up his coat, slinging it through the handle
of the chair.
`Are you ready, then, Sir Clifford?'
`When you are!'
He stooped and took out the scotch, then put his weight against the
chair. He was paler than Connie had ever seen him: and more absent. Clifford
was a heavy man: and the hill was steep. Connie stepped to the keeper's
side.
`I'm going to push too!' she said.
And she began to shove with a woman's turbulent energy of anger. The
chair went faster. Clifford looked round.
`Is that necessary?' he said.
`Very! Do you want to kill the man! If you'd let the motor work while
it would---'
But she did not finish. She was already panting. She slackened off a
little, for it was surprisingly hard work.
`Ay! slower!' said the man at her side, with a faint smile of his eyes.
`Are you sure you've not hurt yourself?' she said fiercely.
He shook his head. She looked at his smallish, short, alive hand,
browned by the weather. It was the hand that caressed her. She had never
even looked at it before. It seemed so still, like him, with a curious
inward stillness that made her want to clutch it, as if she could not reach
it. All her soul suddenly swept towards him: he was so silent, and out of
reach! And he felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his
right on her round white wrist, softly enfolding her wrist, with a caress.
And the flame of strength went down his back and his loins, reviving him.
And she bent suddenly and kissed his hand. Meanwhile the back of Clifford's
head was held sleek and motionless, just in front of them.
At the top of the hill they rested, and Connie was glad to let go. She
had had fugitive dreams of friendship between these two men: one her
husband, the other the father of her child. Now she saw the screaming
absurdity of her dreams. The two males were as hostile as fire and water.
They mutually exterminated one another. And she realized for the first time
what a queer subtle thing hate is. For the first time, she had consciously
and definitely hated Clifford, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be
obliterated from the face of the earth. And it was strange, how free and
full of life it made her feel, to hate him and to admit it fully to
herself.---`Now I've hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with
him,' came the thought into her mind.
On the level the keeper could push the chair alone. Clifford made a
little conversation with her, to show his complete composure: about Aunt
Eva, who was at Dieppe, and about Sir Malcolm, who had written to ask would
Connie drive with him in his small car, to Venice, or would she and Hilda go
by train.
`I'd much rather go by train,' said Connie. `I don't like long motor
drives, especially when there's dust. But I shall see what Hilda wants.'
`She will want to drive her own car, and take you with her,' he said.
`Probably!---I must help up here. You've no idea how heavy this chair
is.'
She went to the back of the chair, and plodded side by side with the
keeper, shoving up the pink path. She did not care who saw.
`Why not let me wait, and fetch Field? He is strong enough for the
job,' said Clifford.
`It's so near,' she panted.
But both she and Mellors wiped the sweat from their faces when they
came to the top. It was curious, but this bit of work together had brought
them much closer than they had been before.
`Thanks so much, Mellors,' said Clifford, when they were at the house
door. `I must get a different sort of motor, that's all. Won't you go to the
kitchen and have a meal? It must be about time.'
`Thank you, Sir Clifford. I was going to my mother for dinner today,
Sunday.'
`As you like.'
Mellors slung into his coat, looked at Connie, saluted, and was gone.
Connie, furious, went upstairs.
At lunch she could not contain her feeling.
`Why are you so abominably inconsiderate, Clifford?' she said to him.
`Of whom?'
`Of the keeper! If that is what you call ruling classes, I'm sorry for
you.'
`Why?'
`A man who's been ill, and isn't strong! My word, if I were the serving
classes, I'd let you wait for service. I'd let you whistle.'
`I quite believe it.'
`If he'd been sitting in a chair with paralysed legs, and behaved as
you behaved, what would you have done for him?'
`My dear evangelist, this confusing of persons and personalities is in
bad taste.'
`And your nasty, sterile want of common sympathy is in the worst taste
imaginable. Noblesse oblige! You and your ruling class!'
`And to what should it oblige me? To have a lot of unnecessary emotions
about my game-keeper? I refuse. I leave it all to my evangelist.'
`As if he weren't a man as much as you are, my word!'
`My game-keeper to boot, and I pay him two pounds a week and give him a
house.'
`Pay him! What do you think you pay for, with two pounds a week and a
house?'
`His services.'
`Bah! I would tell you to keep your two pounds a week and your house.'
`Probably he would like to: but can't afford the luxury!'
`You, and rule!' she said. `You don't rule, don't flatter yourself. You
have only got more than your share of the money, and make people work for
you for two pounds a week, or threaten them with starvation. Rule! What do
you give forth of rule? Why, you re dried up! You only bully with your
money, like any Jew or any Schieber!'
`You are very elegant in your speech, Lady Chatterley!'
`I assure you, you were very elegant altogether out there in the wood.
I was utterly ashamed of you. Why, my father is ten times the human being
you are: you gentleman!'
He reached and rang the bell for Mrs Bolton. But he was yellow at the
gills.
She went up to her room, furious, saying to herself: `Him and buying
people! Well, he doesn't buy me, and therefore there's no need for me to
stay with him. Dead fish of a gentleman, with his celluloid soul! And how
they take one in, with their manners and their mock wistfulness and
gentleness. They've got about as much feeling as celluloid has.'
She made her plans for the night, and determined to get Clifford off
her mind. She didn't want to hate him. She didn't want to be mixed up very
intimately with him in any sort of feeling. She wanted him not to know
anything at all about herself: and especially, not to know anything about
her feeling for the keeper. This squabble of her attitude to the servants
was an old one. He found her too familiar, she found him stupidly
insentient, tough and indiarubbery where other people were concerned.
She went downstairs calmly, with her old demure bearing, at
dinner-time. He was still yellow at the gills: in for one of his liver
bouts, when he was really very queer.---He was reading a French book.
`Have you ever read Proust?' he asked her.
`I've tried, but he bores me.'
`He's really very extraordinary.'
`Possibly! But he bores me: all that sophistication! He doesn't have
feelings, he only has streams of words about feelings. I'm tired of
self-important mentalities.'
`Would you prefer self-important animalities?'
`Perhaps! But one might possibly get something that wasn't
self-important.'
`Well, I like Proust's subtlety and his well-bred anarchy.'
`It makes you very dead, really.'
`There speaks my evangelical little wife.'
They were at it again, at it again! But she couldn't help fighting him.
He seemed to sit there like a skeleton, sending out a skeleton's cold
grizzly will against her. Almost she could feel the skeleton clutching her
and pressing her to its cage of ribs. He too was really up in arms: and she
was a little afraid of him.
She went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But
at half past nine she got up, and went outside to listen. There was no
sound. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went downstairs. Clifford and Mrs
Bolton were playing cards, gambling. They would probably go on until
midnight.
Connie returned to her room, threw her pyjamas on the tossed bed, put
on a thin tennis-dress and over that a woollen day-dress, put on rubber
tennis-shoes, and then a light coat. And she was ready. If she met anybody,
she was just going out for a few minutes. And in the morning, when she came
in again, she would just have been for a little walk in the dew, as she
fairly often did before breakfast. For the rest, the only danger was that
someone should go into her room during the night. But that was most
unlikely: not one chance in a hundred.
Betts had not locked up. He fastened up the house at ten o'clock, and
unfastened it again at seven in the morning. She slipped out silently and
unseen. There was a half-moon shining, enough to make a little light in the
world, not enough to show her up in her dark-grey coat. She walked quickly
across the park, not really in the thrill of the assignation, but with a
certain anger and rebellion burning in her heart. It was not the right sort
of heart to take to a love-meeting. But ю la guerre comme ю la guerre!
When she got near the park-gate, she heard the click of the latch. He
was there, then, in the darkness of the wood, and had seen her!
`You are good and early,' he said out of the dark. `Was everything all
right?'
`Perfectly easy.'
He shut the gate quietly after her, and made a spot of light on the
dark ground, showing the pallid flowers still standing there open in the
night. They went on apart, in silence.
`Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself this morning with that chair?'
she asked.
`No, no!'
`When you had that pneumonia, what did it do to you?'
`Oh nothing! it left my heart not so strong and the lungs not so
elastic. But it always does that.'
`And you ought not to make violent physical efforts?'
`Not often.'
She plodded on in an angry silence.
`Did you hate Clifford?' she said at last.
`Hate him, no! I've met too many like him to upset myself hating him. I
know beforehand I don't care for his sort, and I let it go at that.'
`What is his sort?'
`Nay, you know better than I do. The sort of youngish gentleman a bit
like a lady, and no balls.'
`What balls?'
`Balls! A man's balls!'
She pondered this.
`But is it a question of that?' she said, a little annoyed.
`You say a man's got no brain, when he's a fool: and no heart, when
he's mean; and no stomach when he's a funker. And when he's got none of that
spunky wild bit of a man in him, you say he's got no balls. When he's a sort
of tame.'
She pondered this.
`And is Clifford tame?' she asked.
`Tame, and nasty with it: like most such fellows, when you come up
against 'em.'
`And do you think you're not tame?'
`Maybe not quite!'
At length she saw in the distance a yellow light.
She stood still.
`There is a light!' she said.
`I always leave a light in the house,' he said.
She went on again at his side, but not touching him, wondering why she
was going with him at all.
He unlocked, and they went in, he bolting the door behind them. As if
it were a prison, she thought! The kettle was singing by the red fire, there
were cups on the table.
She sat in the wooden arm-chair by the fire. It was warm after the
chill outside.
`I'll take off my shoes, they are wet,' she said.
She sat with her stockinged feet on the bright steel fender. He went to
the pantry, bringing food: bread and butter and pressed tongue. She was
warm: she took off her coat. He hung it on the door.
`Shall you have cocoa or tea or coffee to drink?' he asked.
`I don't think I want anything,' she said, looking at the table. `But
you eat.'
`Nay, I don't care about it. I'll just feed the dog.'
He tramped with a quiet inevitability over the brick floor, putting
food for the dog in a brown bowl. The spaniel looked up at him anxiously.
`Ay, this is thy supper, tha nedna look as if tha wouldna get it!' he
said.
He set the bowl on the stairfoot mat, and sat himself on a chair by the
wall, to take off his leggings and boots. The dog instead of eating, came to
him again, and sat looking up at him, troubled.
He slowly unbuckled his leggings. The dog edged a little nearer.
`What's amiss wi' thee then? Art upset because there's somebody else
here? Tha'rt a female, tha art! Go an' eat thy supper.'
He put his hand on her head, and the bitch leaned her head sideways
against him. He slowly, softly pulled the long silky ear.
`There!' he said. `There! Go an' eat thy supper! Go!'
He tilted his chair towards the pot on the mat, and the dog meekly
went, and fell to eating.
`Do you like dogs?' Connie asked him.
`No, not really. They're too tame and clinging.'
He had taken off his leggings and was unlacing his heavy boots. Connie
had turned from the fire. How bare the little room was! Yet over his head on
the wall hung a hideous enlarged photograph of a young married couple,
apparently him and a bold-faced young woman, no doubt his wife.
`Is that you?' Connie asked him.
He twisted and looked at the enlargement above his head.
`Ay! Taken just afore we was married, when I was twenty-one.' He looked
at it impassively.
`Do you like it?' Connie asked him.
`Like it? No! I never liked the thing. But she fixed it all up to have
it done, like.'
He returned to pulling off his boots.
`If you don't like it, why do you keep it hanging there? Perhaps your
wife would like to have it,' she said.
He looked up at her with a sudden grin.
`She carted off iverything as was worth taking from th' 'ouse,' he
said. `But she left that!'
`Then why do you keep it? for sentimental reasons?'
`Nay, I niver look at it. I hardly knowed it wor theer. It's bin theer
sin' we come to this place.'
`Why don't you burn it?' she said.
He twisted round again and looked at the enlarged photograph. It was
framed in a brown-and-gilt frame, hideous. It showed a clean-shaven, alert,
very young-looking man in a rather high collar, and a somewhat plump, bold
young woman with hair fluffed out and crimped, and wearing a dark satin
blouse.
`It wouldn't be a bad idea, would it?' he said.
He had pulled off his boots, and put on a pair of slippers. He stood up
on the chair, and lifted down the photograph. It left a big pale place on
the greenish wall-paper.
`No use dusting it now,' he said, setting the thing against the wall.
He went to the scullery, and returned with hammer and pincers. Sitting
where he had sat before, he started to tear off the back-paper from the big
frame, and to pull out the sprigs that held the backboard in position,
working with the immediate quiet absorption that was characteristic of him.
He soon had the nails out: then he pulled out the backboards, then the
enlargement itself, in its solid white mount. He looked at the photograph
with amusement.
`Shows me for what I was, a young curate, and her for what she was, a
bully,' he said. `The prig and the bully!'
`Let me look!' said Connie.
He did look indeed very clean-shaven and very clean altogether, one of
the clean young men of twenty years ago. But even in the photograph his eyes
were alert and dauntless. And the woman was not altogether a bully, though
her jowl was heavy. There was a touch of appeal in her.
`One never should keep these things,' said Connie. `That one shouldn't!
One should never have them made!'
He broke the cardboard photograph and mount over his knee, and when it
was small enough, put it on the fire.
`It'll spoil the fire though,' he said.
The glass and the backboard he carefully took upstairs.
The frame he knocked asunder with a few blows of the hammer, making the
stucco fly. Then he took the pieces into the scullery.
`We'll burn that tomorrow,' he said. `There's too much plaster-moulding
on it.'
Having cleared away, he sat down.
`Did you love your wife?' she asked him.
`Love?' he said. `Did you love Sir Clifford?'
But she was not going to be put off.
`But you cared for her?' she insisted.
`Cared?' He grinned.
`Perhaps you care for her now,' she said.
`Me!' His eyes widened. `Ah no, I can't think of her,' he said quietly.
`Why?'
But he shook his head.
`Then why don't you get a divorce? She'll come back to you one day,'
said Connie.
He looked up at her sharply.
`She wouldn't come within a mile of me. She hates me a lot worse than I
hate her.'
`You'll see she'll come back to you.'
`That she never will. That's done! It would make me sick to see her.'
`You will see her. And you're not even legally separated, are you?'
`No.'
`Ah well, then she'll come back, and you'll have to take her in.'
He gazed at Connie fixedly. Then he gave the queer toss of his head.
`You might be right. I was a fool ever to come back here. But I felt
stranded and had to go somewhere. A man's a poor bit of a wastrel blown
about. But you're right. I'll get a divorce and get clear. I hate those
things like death, officials and courts and judges. But I've got to get
through with it. I'll get a divorce.'
And she saw his jaw set. Inwardly she exulted. `I think I will have a
cup of tea now,' she said. He rose to make it. But his face was set. As they
sat at table she asked him:
`Why did you marry her? She was commoner than yourself. Mrs Bolton told
me about her. She could never understand why you married her.'
He looked at her fixedly.
`I'll tell you,' he said. `The first girl I had, I began with when I
was sixteen. She was a school-master's daughter over at Ollerton, pretty,
beautiful really. I was supposed to be a clever sort of young fellow from
Sheffield Grammar School, with a bit of French and German, very much up
aloft. She was the romantic sort that hated commonness. She egged me on to
poetry and reading: in a way, she made a man of me. I read and I thought
like a house on fire, for her. And I was a clerk in Butterley offices, thin,
white-faced fellow fuming with all the things I read. And about everything I
talked to her: but everything. We talked ourselves into Persepolis and
Timbuctoo. We were the most literary-cultured couple in ten counties. I held
forth with rapture to her, positively with rapture. I simply went up in
smoke. And she adored me. The serpent in the grass was sex. She somehow
didn't have any; at least, not where it's supposed to be. I got thinner and
crazier. Then I said we'd got to be lovers. I talked her into it, as usual.
So she let me. I was excited, and she never wanted it. She just didn't want
it. She adored me, she loved me to talk to her and kiss her: in that way she
had a passion for me. But the other, she just didn't want. And there are
lots of women like her. And it was just the other that I did want. So there
we split. I was cruel, and left her. Then I took on with another girl, a
teacher, who had made a scandal by carrying on with a married man and
driving him nearly out of his mind. She was a soft, white-skinned, soft sort
of a woman, older than me, and played the fiddle. And she was a demon. She
loved everything about love, except the sex. Clinging, caressing, creeping
into you in every way: but if you forced her to the sex itself, she just
ground her teeth and sent out hate. I forced her to it, and she could simply
numb me with hate because of it. So I was balked again. I loathed all that.
I wanted a woman who wanted me, and wanted it.
`Then came Bertha Coutts. They'd lived next door to us when I was a
little lad, so I knew 'em all right. And they were common. Well, Bertha went
away to some place or other in Birmingham; she said, as a lady's companion;
everybody else said, as a waitress or something in a hotel. Anyhow just when
I was more than fed up with that other girl, when I was twenty-one, back
comes Bertha, with airs and graces and smart clothes and a sort of bloom on
her: a sort of sensual bloom that you'd see sometimes on a woman, or on a
trolly. Well, I was in a state of murder. I chucked up my job at Butterley
because I thought I was a weed, clerking there: and I got on as overhead
blacksmith at Tevershall: shoeing horses mostly. It had been my dad's job,
and I'd always been with him. It was a job I liked: handling horses: and it
came natural to me. So I stopped talking "fine", as they call it, talking
proper English, and went back to talking broad. I still read books, at home:
but I blacksmithed and had a pony-trap of my own, and was My Lord Duckfoot.
My dad left me three hundred pounds when he died. So I took on with Bertha,
and I was glad she was common. I wanted her to be common. I wanted to be
common myself. Well, I married her, and she wasn't bad. Those other "pure"
women had nearly taken all the balls out of me, but she was all right that
way. She wanted me, and made no bones about it. And I was as pleased as
punch. That was what I wanted: a woman who wanted me to fuck her. So I
fucked her like a good un. And I think she despised me a bit, for being so
pleased about it, and bringin' her her breakfast in bed sometimes. She sort
of let things go, didn't get me a proper dinner when I came home from work,
and if I said anything, flew out at me. And I flew back, hammer and tongs.
She flung a cup at me and I took her by the scruff of the neck and squeezed
the life out of her. That sort of thing! But she treated me with insolence.
And she got so's she'd never have me when I wanted her: never. Always put me
off, brutal as you like. And then when she'd put me right off, and I didn't
want her, she'd come all lovey-dovey, and get me. And I always went. But
when I had her, she'd never come off when I did. Never! She'd just wait. If
I kept back for half an hour, she'd keep back longer. And when I'd come and
really finished, then she'd start on her own account, and I had to stop
inside her till she brought herself off, wriggling and shouting, she'd
clutch clutch with herself down there, an' then she'd come off, fair in
ecstasy. And then she'd say: That was lovely! Gradually I got sick of it:
and she got worse. She sort of got harder and harder to bring off, and she'd
sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God,
you think a woman's soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you the old
rampers have beaks between their legs, and they tear at you with it till
you're sick. Self! Self! Self! all self! tearing and shouting! They talk
about men's selfishness, but I doubt if it can ever touch a woman's blind
beakishness, once she's gone that way. Like an old trull! And she couldn't
help it. I told her about it, I told her how I hated it. And she'd even try.
She'd try to lie still and let me work the business. She'd try. But it was
no good. She got no feeling off it, from my working. She had to work the
thing herself, grind her own coffee. And it came back on her like a raving
necessity, she had to let herself go, and tear, tear, tear, as if she had no
sensation in her except in the top of her beak, the very outside top tip,
that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores used to be, so men used to say.
It was a low kind of self-will in her, a raving sort of self-will: like in a
woman who drinks. Well in the end I couldn't stand it. We slept apart. She
herself had started it, in her bouts when she wanted to be clear of me, when
she said I bossed her. She had started having a room for herself. But the
time came when I wouldn't have her coming to my room. I wouldn't.
`I hated it. And she hated me. My God, how she hated me before that
child was born! I often think she conceived it out of hate. Anyhow, after
the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I joined up.
And I didn't come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate.
He broke off, pale in the face.
`And what is the man at Stacks Gate like?' asked Connie.
`A big baby sort of fellow, very low-mouthed. She bullies him, and they
both drink.'
`My word, if she came back!'
`My God, yes! I should just go, disappear again.'
There was a silence. The pasteboard in the fire had turned to grey ash.
`So when you did get a woman who wanted you,' said Connie, `you got a
bit too much of a good thing.'
`Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I'd rather have her than the never-never
ones: the white love of my youth, and that other poison-smelling lily, and
the rest.'
`What about the rest?' said Connie.
`The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women
are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put
up with it, as part of the bargain. The more old-fashioned sort just lie
there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don't mind afterwards: then
they like you. But the actual thing itself is nothing to them, a bit
distasteful. Add most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of
women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate
and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up. Then there's the
ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off,
every kind except the natural one. They always make you go off when you're
not in the only place you should be, when you go off.---Then there's the
hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off,
like my wife. They want to be the active party.---Then there's the sort
that's just dead inside: but dead: and they know it. Then there's the sort
that puts you out before you really "come", and go on writhing their loins
till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the
Lesbian sort. It's astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or
unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian.'
`And do you mind?' asked Connie.
`I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I
fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her.'
`And what do you do?'
`Just go away as fast as I can.'
`But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?'
`I do! Because I've suffered more from them. In the abstract, I've no
idea. When I get with a Lesbian woman, whether she knows she's one or not, I
see red. No, no! But I wanted to have nothing to do with any woman any more.
I wanted to keep to myself: keep my privacy and my decency.'
He looked pale, and his brows were sombre.
`And were you sorry when I came along?' she asked.
`I was sorry and I was glad.'
`And what are you now?'
`I'm sorry, from the outside: all the complications and the ugliness
and recrimination that's bound to come, sooner or later. That's when my
blood sinks, and I'm low. But when my blood comes up, I'm glad. I'm even
triumphant. I was really getting bitter. I thought there was no real sex
left: never a woman who'd really "come" naturally with a man: except black
women, and somehow, well, we're white men: and they're a bit like mud.'
`And now, are you glad of me?' she asked.
`Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can't forget the rest, I want
to get under the table and die.'
`Why under the table?'
`Why?' he laughed. `Hide, I suppose. Baby!'
`You do seem to have had awful experiences of women,' she said.
`You see, I couldn't fool myself. That's where most men manage. They
take an attitude, and accept a lie. I could never fool myself. I knew what I
wanted with a woman, and I could never say I'd got it when I hadn't.'
`But have you got it now?'
`Looks as if I might have.'
`Then why are you so pale and gloomy?'
`Bellyful of remembering: and perhaps afraid of myself.'
She sat in silence. It was growing late.
`And do you think it's important, a man and a woman?' she asked him.
`For me it is. For me it's the core of my life: if I have a right
relation with a woman.'
`And if you didn't get it?'
`Then I'd have to do without.'
Again she pondered, before she asked:
`And do you think you've always been right with women?'
`God, no! I let my wife get to what she was: my fault a good deal. I
spoilt her. And I'm very mistrustful. You'll have to expect it. It takes a
lot to make me trust anybody, inwardly. So perhaps I'm a fraud too. I
mistrust. And tenderness is not to be mistaken.'
She looked at him.
`You don't mistrust with your body, when your blood comes up,' she
said. `You don't mistrust then, do you?'
`No, alas! That's how I've got into all the trouble. And that's why my
mind mistrusts so thoroughly.'
`Let your mind mistrust. What does it matter!'
The dog sighed with discomfort on the mat. The ash-clogged fire sank.
`We are a couple of battered warriors,' said Connie.
`Are you battered too?' he laughed. `And here we are returning to the
fray!'
`Yes! I feel really frightened.'
`Ay!'
He got up, and put her shoes to dry, and wiped his own and set them
near the fire. In the morning he would grease them. He poked the ash of
pasteboard as much as possible out of the fire. `Even burnt, it's filthy,'
he said. Then he brought sticks and put them on the hob for the morning.
Then he went out awhile with the dog.
When he came back, Connie said:
`I want to go out too, for a minute.'
She went alone into the darkness. There were stars overhead. She could
smell flowers on the night air. And she could feel her wet shoes getting
wetter again. But she felt like going away, right away from him and
everybody.
It was chilly. She shuddered, and returned to the house. He was sitting
in front of the low fire.
`Ugh! Cold!' she shuddered.
He put the sticks on the fire, and fetched more, till they had a good
crackling chimneyful of blaze. The rippling running yellow flame made them
both happy, warmed their faces and their souls.
`Never mind!' she said, taking his hand as he sat silent and remote.
`One does one's best.'
`Ay!' He sighed, with a twist of a smile.
She slipped over to him, and into his arms, as he sat there before the
fire.
`Forget then!' she whispered. `Forget!'
He held her close, in the running warmth of the fire. The flame itself
was like a forgetting. And her soft, warm, ripe weight! Slowly his blood
turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.
`And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly,
only perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps it wasn't all their fault,' she said.
`I know it. Do you think I don't know what a broken-backed snake that's
been trodden on I was myself!'
She clung to him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again.
Yet some perversity had made her.
`But you're not now,' she said. `You're not that now: a broken-backed
snake that's been trodden on.'
`I don't know what I am. There's black days ahead.'
`No!' she protested, clinging to him. `Why? Why?'
`There's black days coming for us all and for everybody,' he repeated
with a prophetic gloom.
`No! You're not to say it!'
He was silent. But she could feel the black void of despair inside him.
That was the death of all desire, the death of all love: this despair that
was like the dark cave inside the men, in which their spirit was lost.
cautious. O Captain, my Captain, our splendid trip is done! Not yet though!
Downhill, in the wake, came Constance in her grey dress, watching the chair
jolt downwards.
They passed the narrow track to the hut. Thank heaven it was not wide
enough for the chair: hardly wide enough for one person. The chair reached
the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to disappear. And Connie heard a
low whistle behind her. She glanced sharply round: the keeper was striding
downhill towards her, his dog keeping behind him.
`Is Sir Clifford going to the cottage?' he asked, looking into her
eyes.
`No, only to the well.'
`Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I
shall wait for you at the park-gate about ten.'
He looked again direct into her eyes.
`Yes,' she faltered.
They heard the Papp! Papp! of Clifford's horn, tooting for Connie. She
`Coo-eed!' in reply. The keeper's face flickered with a little grimace, and
with his hand he softly brushed her breast upwards, from underneath. She
looked at him, frightened, and started running down the hill, calling
Coo-ee! again to Clifford. The man above watched her, then turned, grinning
faintly, back into his path.
She found Clifford slowly mounting to the spring, which was halfway up
the slope of the dark larch-wood. He was there by the time she caught him
up.
`She did that all right,' he said, referring to the chair.
Connie looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out ghostly
from the edge of the larch-wood. The people call it Robin Hood's Rhubarb.
How silent and gloomy it seemed by the well! Yet the water bubbled so
bright, wonderful! And there were bits of eye-bright and strong blue
bugle...And there, under the bank, the yellow earth was moving. A mole! It
emerged, rowing its pink hands, and waving its blind gimlet of a face, with
the tiny pink nose-tip uplifted.
`It seems to see with the end of its nose,' said Connie.
`Better than with its eyes!' he said. `Will you drink?'
`Will you?'
She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it
for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little
herself.
`So icy!' she said gasping.
`Good, isn't it! Did you wish?'
`Did you?'
`Yes, I wished. But I won't tell.'
She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft
and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the
blue.
`Clouds!' she said.
`White lambs only,' he replied.
A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out on to the
soft yellow earth.
`Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him,' said Clifford.
`Look! he's like a parson in a pulpit,' she said.
She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him.
`New-mown hay!' he said. `Doesn't it smell like the romantic ladies of
the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way after all!'
She was looking at the white clouds.
`I wonder if it will rain,' she said.
`Rain! Why! Do you want it to?'
They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously
downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right,
and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where
bluebells stood in the light.
`Now, old girl!' said Clifford, putting the chair to it.
It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair pugged slowly, in a
struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she
came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled,
jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped
`We'd better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come,' said
Connie. `He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps.'
`We'll let her breathe,' said Clifford. `Do you mind putting a scotch
under the wheel?'
Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started
his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered
like a sick thing, with curious noises.
`Let me push!' said Connie, coming up behind.
`No! Don't push!' he said angrily. `What's the good of the damned
thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!'
There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual than
before.
`You must let me push,' said she. `Or sound the horn for the keeper.'
`Wait!'
She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good.
`Sound the horn then, if you won't let me push,' she said. `Hell! Be
quiet a moment!'
She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little
motor.
`You'll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford,' she
remonstrated; `besides wasting your nervous energy.'
`If I could only get out and look at the damned thing!' he said,
exasperated. And he sounded the horn stridently. `Perhaps Mellors can see
what's wrong.'
They waited, among the mashed flowers under a sky softly curdling with
cloud. In the silence a wood-pigeon began to coo roo-hoo hoo! roo-hoo hoo!
Clifford shut her up with a blast on the horn.
The keeper appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner. He
saluted.
`Do you know anything about motors?' asked Clifford sharply.
`I am afraid I don't. Has she gone wrong?'
`Apparently!' snapped Clifford.
The man crouched solicitously by the wheel, and peered at the little
engine.
`I'm afraid I know nothing at all about these mechanical things, Sir
Clifford,' he said calmly. `If she has enough petrol and oil---'
`Just look carefully and see if you can see anything broken,' snapped
Clifford.
The man laid his gun against a tree, took oil his coat, and threw it
beside it. The brown dog sat guard. Then he sat down on his heels and peered
under the chair, poking with his finger at the greasy little engine, and
resenting the grease-marks on his clean Sunday shirt.
`Doesn't seem anything broken,' he said. And he stood up, pushing back
his hat from his forehead, rubbing his brow and apparently studying.
`Have you looked at the rods underneath?' asked Clifford. `See if they
are all right!'
The man lay flat on his stomach on the floor, his neck pressed back,
wriggling under the engine and poking with his finger. Connie thought what a
pathetic sort of thing a man was, feeble and small-looking, when he was
lying on his belly on the big earth.
`Seems all right as far as I can see,' came his muffled voice.
`I don't suppose you can do anything,' said Clifford.
`Seems as if I can't!' And he scrambled up and sat on his heels,
collier fashion. `There's certainly nothing obviously broken.'
Clifford started his engine, then put her in gear. She would not move.
`Run her a bit hard, like,' suggested the keeper.
Clifford resented the interference: but he made his engine buzz like a
blue-bottle. Then she coughed and snarled and seemed to go better.
`Sounds as if she'd come clear,' said Mellors.
But Clifford had already jerked her into gear. She gave a sick lurch
and ebbed weakly forwards.
`If I give her a push, she'll do it,' said the keeper, going behind.
`Keep off!' snapped Clifford. `She'll do it by herself.'
`But Clifford!' put in Connie from the bank, `you know it's too much
for her. Why are you so obstinate!'
Clifford was pale with anger. He jabbed at his levers. The chair gave a
sort of scurry, reeled on a few more yards, and came to her end amid a
particularly promising patch of bluebells.
`She's done!' said the keeper. `Not power enough.'
`She's been up here before,' said Clifford coldly.
`She won't do it this time,' said the keeper.
Clifford did not reply. He began doing things with his engine, running
her fast and slow as if to get some sort of tune out of her. The wood
re-echoed with weird noises. Then he put her in gear with a jerk, having
jerked off his brake.
`You'll rip her inside out,' murmured the keeper.
The chair charged in a sick lurch sideways at the ditch.
`Clifford!' cried Connie, rushing forward.
But the keeper had got the chair by the rail. Clifford, however,
putting on all his pressure, managed to steer into the riding, and with a
strange noise the chair was fighting the hill. Mellors pushed steadily
behind, and up she went, as if to retrieve herself.
`You see, she's doing it!' said Clifford, victorious, glancing over his
shoulder. There he saw the keeper's face.
`Are you pushing her?'
`She won't do it without.'
`Leave her alone. I asked you not.
`She won't do it.'
`Let her try!' snarled Clifford, with all his emphasis.
The keeper stood back: then turned to fetch his coat and gun. The chair
seemed to strange immediately. She stood inert. Clifford, seated a prisoner,
was white with vexation. He jerked at the levers with his hand, his feet
were no good. He got queer noises out of her. In savage impatience he moved
little handles and got more noises out of her. But she would not budge. No,
she would not budge. He stopped the engine and sat rigid with anger.
Constance sat on the bank arid looked at the wretched and trampled
bluebells. `Nothing quite so lovely as an English spring.' `I can do my
share of ruling.' `What we need to take up now is whips, not swords.' `The
ruling classes!'
The keeper strode up with his coat and gun, Flossie cautiously at his
heels. Clifford asked the man to do something or other to the engine.
Connie, who understood nothing at all of the technicalities of motors, and
who had had experience of breakdowns, sat patiently on the bank as if she
were a cipher. The keeper lay on his stomach again. The ruling classes and
the serving classes!
He got to his feet and said patiently:
`Try her again, then.'
He spoke in a quiet voice, almost as if to a child.
Clifford tried her, and Mellors stepped quickly behind and began to
push. She was going, the engine doing about half the work, the man the rest.
Clifford glanced round, yellow with anger.
`Will you get off there!'
The keeper dropped his hold at once, and Clifford added: `How shall I
know what she is doing!'
The man put his gun down and began to pull on his coat. He'd done.
The chair began slowly to run backwards.
`Clifford, your brake!' cried Connie.
She, Mellors, and Clifford moved at once, Connie and the keeper
jostling lightly. The chair stood. There was a moment of dead silence.
`It's obvious I'm at everybody's mercy!' said Clifford. He was yellow
with anger.
No one answered. Mellors was slinging his gun over his shoulder, his
face queer and expressionless, save for an abstracted look of patience. The
dog Flossie, standing on guard almost between her master's legs, moved
uneasily, eyeing the chair with great suspicion and dislike, and very much
perplexed between the three human beings. The tableau vivant remained set
among the squashed bluebells, nobody proffering a word.
`I expect she'll have to be pushed,' said Clifford at last, with an
affectation of sang froid.
No answer. Mellors' abstracted face looked as if he had heard nothing.
Connie glanced anxiously at him. Clifford too glanced round.
`Do you mind pushing her home, Mellors!' he said in a cool superior
tone. `I hope I have said nothing to offend you,' he added, in a tone of
dislike.
`Nothing at all, Sir Clifford! Do you want me to push that chair?'
`If you please.'
The man stepped up to it: but this time it was without effect. The
brake was jammed. They poked and pulled, and the keeper took off his gun and
his coat once more. And now Clifford said never a word. At last the keeper
heaved the back of the chair off the ground and, with an instantaneous push
of his foot, tried to loosen the wheels. He failed, the chair sank. Clifford
was clutching the sides. The man gasped with the weight.
`Don't do it!' cried Connie to him.
`If you'll pull the wheel that way, so!' he said to her, showing her
how.
`No! You mustn't lift it! You'll strain yourself,' she said, flushed
now with anger.
But he looked into her eyes and nodded. And she had to go and take hold
of the wheel, ready. He heaved and she tugged, and the chair reeled.
`For God's sake!' cried Clifford in terror.
But it was all right, and the brake was off. The keeper put a stone
under the wheel, and went to sit on the bank, his heart beat and his face
white with the effort, semi-conscious.
Connie looked at him, and almost cried with anger. There was a pause
and a dead silence. She saw his hands trembling on his thighs.
`Have you hurt yourself?' she asked, going to him.
`No. No!' He turned away almost angrily.
There was dead silence. The back of Clifford's fair head did not move.
Even the dog stood motionless. The sky had clouded over.
At last he sighed, and blew his nose on his red handkerchief.
`That pneumonia took a lot out of me,' he said.
No one answered. Connie calculated the amount of strength it must have
taken to heave up that chair and the bulky Clifford: too much, far too much!
If it hadn't killed him!
He rose, and again picked up his coat, slinging it through the handle
of the chair.
`Are you ready, then, Sir Clifford?'
`When you are!'
He stooped and took out the scotch, then put his weight against the
chair. He was paler than Connie had ever seen him: and more absent. Clifford
was a heavy man: and the hill was steep. Connie stepped to the keeper's
side.
`I'm going to push too!' she said.
And she began to shove with a woman's turbulent energy of anger. The
chair went faster. Clifford looked round.
`Is that necessary?' he said.
`Very! Do you want to kill the man! If you'd let the motor work while
it would---'
But she did not finish. She was already panting. She slackened off a
little, for it was surprisingly hard work.
`Ay! slower!' said the man at her side, with a faint smile of his eyes.
`Are you sure you've not hurt yourself?' she said fiercely.
He shook his head. She looked at his smallish, short, alive hand,
browned by the weather. It was the hand that caressed her. She had never
even looked at it before. It seemed so still, like him, with a curious
inward stillness that made her want to clutch it, as if she could not reach
it. All her soul suddenly swept towards him: he was so silent, and out of
reach! And he felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his
right on her round white wrist, softly enfolding her wrist, with a caress.
And the flame of strength went down his back and his loins, reviving him.
And she bent suddenly and kissed his hand. Meanwhile the back of Clifford's
head was held sleek and motionless, just in front of them.
At the top of the hill they rested, and Connie was glad to let go. She
had had fugitive dreams of friendship between these two men: one her
husband, the other the father of her child. Now she saw the screaming
absurdity of her dreams. The two males were as hostile as fire and water.
They mutually exterminated one another. And she realized for the first time
what a queer subtle thing hate is. For the first time, she had consciously
and definitely hated Clifford, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be
obliterated from the face of the earth. And it was strange, how free and
full of life it made her feel, to hate him and to admit it fully to
herself.---`Now I've hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with
him,' came the thought into her mind.
On the level the keeper could push the chair alone. Clifford made a
little conversation with her, to show his complete composure: about Aunt
Eva, who was at Dieppe, and about Sir Malcolm, who had written to ask would
Connie drive with him in his small car, to Venice, or would she and Hilda go
by train.
`I'd much rather go by train,' said Connie. `I don't like long motor
drives, especially when there's dust. But I shall see what Hilda wants.'
`She will want to drive her own car, and take you with her,' he said.
`Probably!---I must help up here. You've no idea how heavy this chair
is.'
She went to the back of the chair, and plodded side by side with the
keeper, shoving up the pink path. She did not care who saw.
`Why not let me wait, and fetch Field? He is strong enough for the
job,' said Clifford.
`It's so near,' she panted.
But both she and Mellors wiped the sweat from their faces when they
came to the top. It was curious, but this bit of work together had brought
them much closer than they had been before.
`Thanks so much, Mellors,' said Clifford, when they were at the house
door. `I must get a different sort of motor, that's all. Won't you go to the
kitchen and have a meal? It must be about time.'
`Thank you, Sir Clifford. I was going to my mother for dinner today,
Sunday.'
`As you like.'
Mellors slung into his coat, looked at Connie, saluted, and was gone.
Connie, furious, went upstairs.
At lunch she could not contain her feeling.
`Why are you so abominably inconsiderate, Clifford?' she said to him.
`Of whom?'
`Of the keeper! If that is what you call ruling classes, I'm sorry for
you.'
`Why?'
`A man who's been ill, and isn't strong! My word, if I were the serving
classes, I'd let you wait for service. I'd let you whistle.'
`I quite believe it.'
`If he'd been sitting in a chair with paralysed legs, and behaved as
you behaved, what would you have done for him?'
`My dear evangelist, this confusing of persons and personalities is in
bad taste.'
`And your nasty, sterile want of common sympathy is in the worst taste
imaginable. Noblesse oblige! You and your ruling class!'
`And to what should it oblige me? To have a lot of unnecessary emotions
about my game-keeper? I refuse. I leave it all to my evangelist.'
`As if he weren't a man as much as you are, my word!'
`My game-keeper to boot, and I pay him two pounds a week and give him a
house.'
`Pay him! What do you think you pay for, with two pounds a week and a
house?'
`His services.'
`Bah! I would tell you to keep your two pounds a week and your house.'
`Probably he would like to: but can't afford the luxury!'
`You, and rule!' she said. `You don't rule, don't flatter yourself. You
have only got more than your share of the money, and make people work for
you for two pounds a week, or threaten them with starvation. Rule! What do
you give forth of rule? Why, you re dried up! You only bully with your
money, like any Jew or any Schieber!'
`You are very elegant in your speech, Lady Chatterley!'
`I assure you, you were very elegant altogether out there in the wood.
I was utterly ashamed of you. Why, my father is ten times the human being
you are: you gentleman!'
He reached and rang the bell for Mrs Bolton. But he was yellow at the
gills.
She went up to her room, furious, saying to herself: `Him and buying
people! Well, he doesn't buy me, and therefore there's no need for me to
stay with him. Dead fish of a gentleman, with his celluloid soul! And how
they take one in, with their manners and their mock wistfulness and
gentleness. They've got about as much feeling as celluloid has.'
She made her plans for the night, and determined to get Clifford off
her mind. She didn't want to hate him. She didn't want to be mixed up very
intimately with him in any sort of feeling. She wanted him not to know
anything at all about herself: and especially, not to know anything about
her feeling for the keeper. This squabble of her attitude to the servants
was an old one. He found her too familiar, she found him stupidly
insentient, tough and indiarubbery where other people were concerned.
She went downstairs calmly, with her old demure bearing, at
dinner-time. He was still yellow at the gills: in for one of his liver
bouts, when he was really very queer.---He was reading a French book.
`Have you ever read Proust?' he asked her.
`I've tried, but he bores me.'
`He's really very extraordinary.'
`Possibly! But he bores me: all that sophistication! He doesn't have
feelings, he only has streams of words about feelings. I'm tired of
self-important mentalities.'
`Would you prefer self-important animalities?'
`Perhaps! But one might possibly get something that wasn't
self-important.'
`Well, I like Proust's subtlety and his well-bred anarchy.'
`It makes you very dead, really.'
`There speaks my evangelical little wife.'
They were at it again, at it again! But she couldn't help fighting him.
He seemed to sit there like a skeleton, sending out a skeleton's cold
grizzly will against her. Almost she could feel the skeleton clutching her
and pressing her to its cage of ribs. He too was really up in arms: and she
was a little afraid of him.
She went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But
at half past nine she got up, and went outside to listen. There was no
sound. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went downstairs. Clifford and Mrs
Bolton were playing cards, gambling. They would probably go on until
midnight.
Connie returned to her room, threw her pyjamas on the tossed bed, put
on a thin tennis-dress and over that a woollen day-dress, put on rubber
tennis-shoes, and then a light coat. And she was ready. If she met anybody,
she was just going out for a few minutes. And in the morning, when she came
in again, she would just have been for a little walk in the dew, as she
fairly often did before breakfast. For the rest, the only danger was that
someone should go into her room during the night. But that was most
unlikely: not one chance in a hundred.
Betts had not locked up. He fastened up the house at ten o'clock, and
unfastened it again at seven in the morning. She slipped out silently and
unseen. There was a half-moon shining, enough to make a little light in the
world, not enough to show her up in her dark-grey coat. She walked quickly
across the park, not really in the thrill of the assignation, but with a
certain anger and rebellion burning in her heart. It was not the right sort
of heart to take to a love-meeting. But ю la guerre comme ю la guerre!
When she got near the park-gate, she heard the click of the latch. He
was there, then, in the darkness of the wood, and had seen her!
`You are good and early,' he said out of the dark. `Was everything all
right?'
`Perfectly easy.'
He shut the gate quietly after her, and made a spot of light on the
dark ground, showing the pallid flowers still standing there open in the
night. They went on apart, in silence.
`Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself this morning with that chair?'
she asked.
`No, no!'
`When you had that pneumonia, what did it do to you?'
`Oh nothing! it left my heart not so strong and the lungs not so
elastic. But it always does that.'
`And you ought not to make violent physical efforts?'
`Not often.'
She plodded on in an angry silence.
`Did you hate Clifford?' she said at last.
`Hate him, no! I've met too many like him to upset myself hating him. I
know beforehand I don't care for his sort, and I let it go at that.'
`What is his sort?'
`Nay, you know better than I do. The sort of youngish gentleman a bit
like a lady, and no balls.'
`What balls?'
`Balls! A man's balls!'
She pondered this.
`But is it a question of that?' she said, a little annoyed.
`You say a man's got no brain, when he's a fool: and no heart, when
he's mean; and no stomach when he's a funker. And when he's got none of that
spunky wild bit of a man in him, you say he's got no balls. When he's a sort
of tame.'
She pondered this.
`And is Clifford tame?' she asked.
`Tame, and nasty with it: like most such fellows, when you come up
against 'em.'
`And do you think you're not tame?'
`Maybe not quite!'
At length she saw in the distance a yellow light.
She stood still.
`There is a light!' she said.
`I always leave a light in the house,' he said.
She went on again at his side, but not touching him, wondering why she
was going with him at all.
He unlocked, and they went in, he bolting the door behind them. As if
it were a prison, she thought! The kettle was singing by the red fire, there
were cups on the table.
She sat in the wooden arm-chair by the fire. It was warm after the
chill outside.
`I'll take off my shoes, they are wet,' she said.
She sat with her stockinged feet on the bright steel fender. He went to
the pantry, bringing food: bread and butter and pressed tongue. She was
warm: she took off her coat. He hung it on the door.
`Shall you have cocoa or tea or coffee to drink?' he asked.
`I don't think I want anything,' she said, looking at the table. `But
you eat.'
`Nay, I don't care about it. I'll just feed the dog.'
He tramped with a quiet inevitability over the brick floor, putting
food for the dog in a brown bowl. The spaniel looked up at him anxiously.
`Ay, this is thy supper, tha nedna look as if tha wouldna get it!' he
said.
He set the bowl on the stairfoot mat, and sat himself on a chair by the
wall, to take off his leggings and boots. The dog instead of eating, came to
him again, and sat looking up at him, troubled.
He slowly unbuckled his leggings. The dog edged a little nearer.
`What's amiss wi' thee then? Art upset because there's somebody else
here? Tha'rt a female, tha art! Go an' eat thy supper.'
He put his hand on her head, and the bitch leaned her head sideways
against him. He slowly, softly pulled the long silky ear.
`There!' he said. `There! Go an' eat thy supper! Go!'
He tilted his chair towards the pot on the mat, and the dog meekly
went, and fell to eating.
`Do you like dogs?' Connie asked him.
`No, not really. They're too tame and clinging.'
He had taken off his leggings and was unlacing his heavy boots. Connie
had turned from the fire. How bare the little room was! Yet over his head on
the wall hung a hideous enlarged photograph of a young married couple,
apparently him and a bold-faced young woman, no doubt his wife.
`Is that you?' Connie asked him.
He twisted and looked at the enlargement above his head.
`Ay! Taken just afore we was married, when I was twenty-one.' He looked
at it impassively.
`Do you like it?' Connie asked him.
`Like it? No! I never liked the thing. But she fixed it all up to have
it done, like.'
He returned to pulling off his boots.
`If you don't like it, why do you keep it hanging there? Perhaps your
wife would like to have it,' she said.
He looked up at her with a sudden grin.
`She carted off iverything as was worth taking from th' 'ouse,' he
said. `But she left that!'
`Then why do you keep it? for sentimental reasons?'
`Nay, I niver look at it. I hardly knowed it wor theer. It's bin theer
sin' we come to this place.'
`Why don't you burn it?' she said.
He twisted round again and looked at the enlarged photograph. It was
framed in a brown-and-gilt frame, hideous. It showed a clean-shaven, alert,
very young-looking man in a rather high collar, and a somewhat plump, bold
young woman with hair fluffed out and crimped, and wearing a dark satin
blouse.
`It wouldn't be a bad idea, would it?' he said.
He had pulled off his boots, and put on a pair of slippers. He stood up
on the chair, and lifted down the photograph. It left a big pale place on
the greenish wall-paper.
`No use dusting it now,' he said, setting the thing against the wall.
He went to the scullery, and returned with hammer and pincers. Sitting
where he had sat before, he started to tear off the back-paper from the big
frame, and to pull out the sprigs that held the backboard in position,
working with the immediate quiet absorption that was characteristic of him.
He soon had the nails out: then he pulled out the backboards, then the
enlargement itself, in its solid white mount. He looked at the photograph
with amusement.
`Shows me for what I was, a young curate, and her for what she was, a
bully,' he said. `The prig and the bully!'
`Let me look!' said Connie.
He did look indeed very clean-shaven and very clean altogether, one of
the clean young men of twenty years ago. But even in the photograph his eyes
were alert and dauntless. And the woman was not altogether a bully, though
her jowl was heavy. There was a touch of appeal in her.
`One never should keep these things,' said Connie. `That one shouldn't!
One should never have them made!'
He broke the cardboard photograph and mount over his knee, and when it
was small enough, put it on the fire.
`It'll spoil the fire though,' he said.
The glass and the backboard he carefully took upstairs.
The frame he knocked asunder with a few blows of the hammer, making the
stucco fly. Then he took the pieces into the scullery.
`We'll burn that tomorrow,' he said. `There's too much plaster-moulding
on it.'
Having cleared away, he sat down.
`Did you love your wife?' she asked him.
`Love?' he said. `Did you love Sir Clifford?'
But she was not going to be put off.
`But you cared for her?' she insisted.
`Cared?' He grinned.
`Perhaps you care for her now,' she said.
`Me!' His eyes widened. `Ah no, I can't think of her,' he said quietly.
`Why?'
But he shook his head.
`Then why don't you get a divorce? She'll come back to you one day,'
said Connie.
He looked up at her sharply.
`She wouldn't come within a mile of me. She hates me a lot worse than I
hate her.'
`You'll see she'll come back to you.'
`That she never will. That's done! It would make me sick to see her.'
`You will see her. And you're not even legally separated, are you?'
`No.'
`Ah well, then she'll come back, and you'll have to take her in.'
He gazed at Connie fixedly. Then he gave the queer toss of his head.
`You might be right. I was a fool ever to come back here. But I felt
stranded and had to go somewhere. A man's a poor bit of a wastrel blown
about. But you're right. I'll get a divorce and get clear. I hate those
things like death, officials and courts and judges. But I've got to get
through with it. I'll get a divorce.'
And she saw his jaw set. Inwardly she exulted. `I think I will have a
cup of tea now,' she said. He rose to make it. But his face was set. As they
sat at table she asked him:
`Why did you marry her? She was commoner than yourself. Mrs Bolton told
me about her. She could never understand why you married her.'
He looked at her fixedly.
`I'll tell you,' he said. `The first girl I had, I began with when I
was sixteen. She was a school-master's daughter over at Ollerton, pretty,
beautiful really. I was supposed to be a clever sort of young fellow from
Sheffield Grammar School, with a bit of French and German, very much up
aloft. She was the romantic sort that hated commonness. She egged me on to
poetry and reading: in a way, she made a man of me. I read and I thought
like a house on fire, for her. And I was a clerk in Butterley offices, thin,
white-faced fellow fuming with all the things I read. And about everything I
talked to her: but everything. We talked ourselves into Persepolis and
Timbuctoo. We were the most literary-cultured couple in ten counties. I held
forth with rapture to her, positively with rapture. I simply went up in
smoke. And she adored me. The serpent in the grass was sex. She somehow
didn't have any; at least, not where it's supposed to be. I got thinner and
crazier. Then I said we'd got to be lovers. I talked her into it, as usual.
So she let me. I was excited, and she never wanted it. She just didn't want
it. She adored me, she loved me to talk to her and kiss her: in that way she
had a passion for me. But the other, she just didn't want. And there are
lots of women like her. And it was just the other that I did want. So there
we split. I was cruel, and left her. Then I took on with another girl, a
teacher, who had made a scandal by carrying on with a married man and
driving him nearly out of his mind. She was a soft, white-skinned, soft sort
of a woman, older than me, and played the fiddle. And she was a demon. She
loved everything about love, except the sex. Clinging, caressing, creeping
into you in every way: but if you forced her to the sex itself, she just
ground her teeth and sent out hate. I forced her to it, and she could simply
numb me with hate because of it. So I was balked again. I loathed all that.
I wanted a woman who wanted me, and wanted it.
`Then came Bertha Coutts. They'd lived next door to us when I was a
little lad, so I knew 'em all right. And they were common. Well, Bertha went
away to some place or other in Birmingham; she said, as a lady's companion;
everybody else said, as a waitress or something in a hotel. Anyhow just when
I was more than fed up with that other girl, when I was twenty-one, back
comes Bertha, with airs and graces and smart clothes and a sort of bloom on
her: a sort of sensual bloom that you'd see sometimes on a woman, or on a
trolly. Well, I was in a state of murder. I chucked up my job at Butterley
because I thought I was a weed, clerking there: and I got on as overhead
blacksmith at Tevershall: shoeing horses mostly. It had been my dad's job,
and I'd always been with him. It was a job I liked: handling horses: and it
came natural to me. So I stopped talking "fine", as they call it, talking
proper English, and went back to talking broad. I still read books, at home:
but I blacksmithed and had a pony-trap of my own, and was My Lord Duckfoot.
My dad left me three hundred pounds when he died. So I took on with Bertha,
and I was glad she was common. I wanted her to be common. I wanted to be
common myself. Well, I married her, and she wasn't bad. Those other "pure"
women had nearly taken all the balls out of me, but she was all right that
way. She wanted me, and made no bones about it. And I was as pleased as
punch. That was what I wanted: a woman who wanted me to fuck her. So I
fucked her like a good un. And I think she despised me a bit, for being so
pleased about it, and bringin' her her breakfast in bed sometimes. She sort
of let things go, didn't get me a proper dinner when I came home from work,
and if I said anything, flew out at me. And I flew back, hammer and tongs.
She flung a cup at me and I took her by the scruff of the neck and squeezed
the life out of her. That sort of thing! But she treated me with insolence.
And she got so's she'd never have me when I wanted her: never. Always put me
off, brutal as you like. And then when she'd put me right off, and I didn't
want her, she'd come all lovey-dovey, and get me. And I always went. But
when I had her, she'd never come off when I did. Never! She'd just wait. If
I kept back for half an hour, she'd keep back longer. And when I'd come and
really finished, then she'd start on her own account, and I had to stop
inside her till she brought herself off, wriggling and shouting, she'd
clutch clutch with herself down there, an' then she'd come off, fair in
ecstasy. And then she'd say: That was lovely! Gradually I got sick of it:
and she got worse. She sort of got harder and harder to bring off, and she'd
sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God,
you think a woman's soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you the old
rampers have beaks between their legs, and they tear at you with it till
you're sick. Self! Self! Self! all self! tearing and shouting! They talk
about men's selfishness, but I doubt if it can ever touch a woman's blind
beakishness, once she's gone that way. Like an old trull! And she couldn't
help it. I told her about it, I told her how I hated it. And she'd even try.
She'd try to lie still and let me work the business. She'd try. But it was
no good. She got no feeling off it, from my working. She had to work the
thing herself, grind her own coffee. And it came back on her like a raving
necessity, she had to let herself go, and tear, tear, tear, as if she had no
sensation in her except in the top of her beak, the very outside top tip,
that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores used to be, so men used to say.
It was a low kind of self-will in her, a raving sort of self-will: like in a
woman who drinks. Well in the end I couldn't stand it. We slept apart. She
herself had started it, in her bouts when she wanted to be clear of me, when
she said I bossed her. She had started having a room for herself. But the
time came when I wouldn't have her coming to my room. I wouldn't.
`I hated it. And she hated me. My God, how she hated me before that
child was born! I often think she conceived it out of hate. Anyhow, after
the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I joined up.
And I didn't come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate.
He broke off, pale in the face.
`And what is the man at Stacks Gate like?' asked Connie.
`A big baby sort of fellow, very low-mouthed. She bullies him, and they
both drink.'
`My word, if she came back!'
`My God, yes! I should just go, disappear again.'
There was a silence. The pasteboard in the fire had turned to grey ash.
`So when you did get a woman who wanted you,' said Connie, `you got a
bit too much of a good thing.'
`Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I'd rather have her than the never-never
ones: the white love of my youth, and that other poison-smelling lily, and
the rest.'
`What about the rest?' said Connie.
`The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women
are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put
up with it, as part of the bargain. The more old-fashioned sort just lie
there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don't mind afterwards: then
they like you. But the actual thing itself is nothing to them, a bit
distasteful. Add most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of
women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate
and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up. Then there's the
ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off,
every kind except the natural one. They always make you go off when you're
not in the only place you should be, when you go off.---Then there's the
hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off,
like my wife. They want to be the active party.---Then there's the sort
that's just dead inside: but dead: and they know it. Then there's the sort
that puts you out before you really "come", and go on writhing their loins
till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the
Lesbian sort. It's astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or
unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian.'
`And do you mind?' asked Connie.
`I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I
fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her.'
`And what do you do?'
`Just go away as fast as I can.'
`But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?'
`I do! Because I've suffered more from them. In the abstract, I've no
idea. When I get with a Lesbian woman, whether she knows she's one or not, I
see red. No, no! But I wanted to have nothing to do with any woman any more.
I wanted to keep to myself: keep my privacy and my decency.'
He looked pale, and his brows were sombre.
`And were you sorry when I came along?' she asked.
`I was sorry and I was glad.'
`And what are you now?'
`I'm sorry, from the outside: all the complications and the ugliness
and recrimination that's bound to come, sooner or later. That's when my
blood sinks, and I'm low. But when my blood comes up, I'm glad. I'm even
triumphant. I was really getting bitter. I thought there was no real sex
left: never a woman who'd really "come" naturally with a man: except black
women, and somehow, well, we're white men: and they're a bit like mud.'
`And now, are you glad of me?' she asked.
`Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can't forget the rest, I want
to get under the table and die.'
`Why under the table?'
`Why?' he laughed. `Hide, I suppose. Baby!'
`You do seem to have had awful experiences of women,' she said.
`You see, I couldn't fool myself. That's where most men manage. They
take an attitude, and accept a lie. I could never fool myself. I knew what I
wanted with a woman, and I could never say I'd got it when I hadn't.'
`But have you got it now?'
`Looks as if I might have.'
`Then why are you so pale and gloomy?'
`Bellyful of remembering: and perhaps afraid of myself.'
She sat in silence. It was growing late.
`And do you think it's important, a man and a woman?' she asked him.
`For me it is. For me it's the core of my life: if I have a right
relation with a woman.'
`And if you didn't get it?'
`Then I'd have to do without.'
Again she pondered, before she asked:
`And do you think you've always been right with women?'
`God, no! I let my wife get to what she was: my fault a good deal. I
spoilt her. And I'm very mistrustful. You'll have to expect it. It takes a
lot to make me trust anybody, inwardly. So perhaps I'm a fraud too. I
mistrust. And tenderness is not to be mistaken.'
She looked at him.
`You don't mistrust with your body, when your blood comes up,' she
said. `You don't mistrust then, do you?'
`No, alas! That's how I've got into all the trouble. And that's why my
mind mistrusts so thoroughly.'
`Let your mind mistrust. What does it matter!'
The dog sighed with discomfort on the mat. The ash-clogged fire sank.
`We are a couple of battered warriors,' said Connie.
`Are you battered too?' he laughed. `And here we are returning to the
fray!'
`Yes! I feel really frightened.'
`Ay!'
He got up, and put her shoes to dry, and wiped his own and set them
near the fire. In the morning he would grease them. He poked the ash of
pasteboard as much as possible out of the fire. `Even burnt, it's filthy,'
he said. Then he brought sticks and put them on the hob for the morning.
Then he went out awhile with the dog.
When he came back, Connie said:
`I want to go out too, for a minute.'
She went alone into the darkness. There were stars overhead. She could
smell flowers on the night air. And she could feel her wet shoes getting
wetter again. But she felt like going away, right away from him and
everybody.
It was chilly. She shuddered, and returned to the house. He was sitting
in front of the low fire.
`Ugh! Cold!' she shuddered.
He put the sticks on the fire, and fetched more, till they had a good
crackling chimneyful of blaze. The rippling running yellow flame made them
both happy, warmed their faces and their souls.
`Never mind!' she said, taking his hand as he sat silent and remote.
`One does one's best.'
`Ay!' He sighed, with a twist of a smile.
She slipped over to him, and into his arms, as he sat there before the
fire.
`Forget then!' she whispered. `Forget!'
He held her close, in the running warmth of the fire. The flame itself
was like a forgetting. And her soft, warm, ripe weight! Slowly his blood
turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.
`And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly,
only perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps it wasn't all their fault,' she said.
`I know it. Do you think I don't know what a broken-backed snake that's
been trodden on I was myself!'
She clung to him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again.
Yet some perversity had made her.
`But you're not now,' she said. `You're not that now: a broken-backed
snake that's been trodden on.'
`I don't know what I am. There's black days ahead.'
`No!' she protested, clinging to him. `Why? Why?'
`There's black days coming for us all and for everybody,' he repeated
with a prophetic gloom.
`No! You're not to say it!'
He was silent. But she could feel the black void of despair inside him.
That was the death of all desire, the death of all love: this despair that
was like the dark cave inside the men, in which their spirit was lost.