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.
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. Ben 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. `I fit 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 fee 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 lied 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!
Unnimaginables, 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 am
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
gag 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
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 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 it 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 mall'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. The 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 Abиlard meant, when he said that in their
year of love he and Hиloоse 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
`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.
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. Ben 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. `I fit 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 fee 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 lied 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!
Unnimaginables, 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 am
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
gag 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
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 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 it 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 mall'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. The 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 Abиlard meant, when he said that in their
year of love he and Hиloоse 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