`But I don't want to,' she murmured.
He looked away into the wood, and was silent.
`But what when folks finds out?' he asked at last. `Think about it!
Think how lowered you'll feel, one of your husband's servants.'
She looked up at his averted face.
`Is it,' she stammered, `is it that you don't want me?'
`Think!' he said. `Think what if folks find out Sir Clifford an'
a'---an' everybody talkin'---'
`Well, I can go away.'
`Where to?'
`Anywhere! I've got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand
pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can't touch it. I can go away.'
`But 'appen you don't want to go away.'
`Yes, yes! I don't care what happens to me.'
`Ay, you think that! But you'll care! You'll have to care, everybody
has. You've got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a game-keeper.
It's not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you'd care. You'd care.'
`I shouldn't. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I
feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even
you jeer when you say it.'
`Me!'
For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. `I
don't jeer at you,' he said.
As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark,
the pupils dilating.
`Don't you care about a' the risk?' he asked in a husky voice. `You
should care. Don't care when it's too late!'
There was a curious warning pleading in his voice.
`But I've nothing to lose,' she said fretfully. `If you knew what it
is, you'd think I'd be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?'
`Ay!' he said briefly. `I am. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid O'
things.'
`What things?' she asked.
He gave a curious backward jerk of his head, indicating the outer
world.
`Things! Everybody! The lot of 'em.'
Then he bent down and suddenly kissed her unhappy face.
`Nay, I don't care,' he said. `Let's have it, an' damn the rest. But if
you was to feel sorry you'd ever done it---!'
`Don't put me off,' she pleaded.
He put his fingers to her cheek and kissed her again suddenly.
`Let me come in then,' he said softly. `An' take off your mackintosh.'
He hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached
for the blankets.
`I brought another blanket,' he said, `so we can put one over us if you
like.'
`I can't stay long,' she said. `Dinner is half-past seven.'
He looked at her swiftly, then at his watch.
`All right,' he said.
He shut the door, and lit a tiny light in the hanging hurricane lamp.
`One time we'll have a long time,' he said.
He put the blankets down carefully, one folded for her head. Then he
sat down a moment on the stool, and drew her to him, holding her close with
one arm, feeling for her body with his free hand. She heard the catch of his
intaken breath as he found her. Under her frail petticoat she was naked.
`Eh! what it is to touch thee!' he said, as his finger caressed the
delicate, warm, secret skin of her waist and hips. He put his face down and
rubbed his cheek against her belly and against her thighs again and again.
And again she wondered a little over the sort of rapture it was to him. She
did not understand the beauty he found in her, through touch upon her living
secret body, almost the ecstasy of beauty. For passion alone is awake to it.
And when passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is
incomprehensible and even a little despicable; warm, live beauty of contact,
so much deeper than the beauty of vision. She felt the glide of his cheek on
her thighs and belly and buttocks, and the close brushing of his moustache
and his soft thick hair, and her knees began to quiver. Far down in her she
felt a new stirring, a new nakedness emerging. And she was half afraid. Half
she wished he would not caress her so. He was encompassing her somehow. Yet
she was waiting, waiting.
And when he came into her, with an intensification of relief and
consummation that was pure peace to him, still she was waiting. She felt
herself a little left out. And she knew, partly it was her own fault. She
willed herself into this separateness. Now perhaps she was condemned to it.
She lay still, feeling his motion within her, his deep-sunk intentness, the
sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed, then the slow-subsiding
thrust. That thrust of the buttocks, surely it was a little ridiculous. If
you were a woman, and a part in all the business, surely that thrusting of
the man's buttocks was supremely ridiculous. Surely the man was intensely
ridiculous in this posture and this act!
But she lay still, without recoil. Even when he had finished, she did
not rouse herself to get a grip on her own satisfaction, as she had done
with Michaelis; she lay still, and the tears slowly filled and ran from her
eyes.
He lay still, too. But he held her close and tried to cover her poor
naked legs with his legs, to keep them warm. He lay on her with a close,
undoubting warmth.
`Are yer cold?' he asked, in a soft, small voice, as if she were close,
so close. Whereas she was left out, distant.
`No! But I must go,' she said gently.
He sighed, held her closer, then relaxed to rest again.
He had not guessed her tears. He thought she was there with him.
`I must go,' she repeated.
He lifted himself kneeled beside her a moment, kissed the inner side of
her thighs, then drew down her skirts, buttoning his own clothes unthinking,
not even turning aside, in the faint, faint light from the lantern.
`Tha mun come ter th' cottage one time,' he said, looking down at her
with a warm, sure, easy face.
But she lay there inert, and was gazing up at him thinking: Stranger!
Stranger! She even resented him a little.
He put on his coat and looked for his hat, which had fallen, then he
slung on his gun.
`Come then!' he said, looking down at her with those warm, peaceful
sort of eyes.
She rose slowly. She didn't want to go. She also rather resented
staying. He helped her with her thin waterproof and saw she was tidy.
Then he opened the door. The outside was quite dark. The faithful dog
under the porch stood up with pleasure seeing him. The drizzle of rain
drifted greyly past upon the darkness. It was quite dark.
`Ah mun ta'e th' lantern,' he said. `The'll be nob'dy.'
He walked just before her in the narrow path, swinging the hurricane
lamp low, revealing the wet grass, the black shiny tree-roots like snakes,
wan flowers. For the rest, all was grey rain-mist and complete darkness.
`Tha mun come to the cottage one time,' he said, `shall ta? We might as
well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.'
It puzzled her, his queer, persistent wanting her, when there was
nothing between them, when he never really spoke to her, and in spite of
herself she resented the dialect. His `tha mun come' seemed not addressed to
her, but some common woman. She recognized the foxglove leaves of the riding
and knew, more or less, where they were.
`It's quarter past seven,' he said, `you'll do it.' He had changed his
voice, seemed to feel her distance. As they turned the last bend in the
riding towards the hazel wall and the gate, he blew out the light. `We'll
see from here,' be said, taking her gently by the arm.
But it was difficult, the earth under their feet was a mystery, but he
felt his way by tread: he was used to it. At the gate he gave her his
electric torch. `It's a bit lighter in the park,' he said; `but take it for
fear you get off th' path.'
It was true, there seemed a ghost-glimmer of greyness in the open space
of the park. He suddenly drew her to him and whipped his hand under her
dress again, feeling her warm body with his wet, chill hand.
`I could die for the touch of a woman like thee,' he said in his
throat. `If tha' would stop another minute.'
She felt the sudden force of his wanting her again.
`No, I must run,' she said, a little wildly.
`Ay,' he replied, suddenly changed, letting her go.
She turned away, and on the instant she turned back to him saying:
`Kiss me.'
He bent over her indistinguishable and kissed her on the left eye. She
held her mouth and he softly kissed it, but at once drew away. He hated
mouth kisses.
`I'll come tomorrow,' she said, drawing away; `if I can,' she added.
`Ay! not so late,' he replied out of the darkness. Already she could
not see him at all.
`Goodnight,' she said.
`Goodnight, your Ladyship,' his voice.
She stopped and looked back into the wet dark. She could just see the
bulk of him. `Why did you say that?' she said.
`Nay,' he replied. `Goodnight then, run!'
She plunged on in the dark-grey tangible night. She found the side-door
open, and slipped into her room unseen. As she closed the door the gong
sounded, but she would take her bath all the same---she must take her bath.
`But I won't be late any more,' she said to herself; `it's too annoying.'
The next day she did not go to the wood. She went instead with Clifford
to Uthwaite. He could occasionally go out now in the car, and had got a
strong young man as chauffeur, who could help him out of the car if need be.
He particularly wanted to see his godfather, Leslie Winter, who lived at
Shipley Hall, not far from Uthwaite. Winter was an elderly gentleman now,
wealthy, one of the wealthy coal-owners who had had their hey-day in King
Edward's time. King Edward had stayed more than once at Shipley, for the
shooting. It was a handsome old stucco hall, very elegantly appointed, for
Winter was a bachelor and prided himself on his style; but the place was
beset by collieries. Leslie Winter was attached to Clifford, but personally
did not entertain a great respect for him, because of the photographs in
illustrated papers and the literature. The old man was a buck of the King
Edward school, who thought life was life and the scribbling fellows were
something else. Towards Connie the Squire was always rather gallant; he
thought her an attractive demure maiden and rather wasted on Clifford, and
it was a thousand pities she stood no chance of bringing forth an heir to
Wragby. He himself had no heir.
Connie wondered what he would say if he knew that Clifford's
game-keeper had been having intercourse with her, and saying to her `tha mun
come to th' cottage one time.' He would detest and despise her, for he had
come almost to hate the shoving forward of the working classes. A man of her
own class he would not mind, for Connie was gifted from nature with this
appearance of demure, submissive maidenliness, and perhaps it was part of
her nature. Winter called her `dear child' and gave her a rather lovely
miniature of an eighteenth-century lady, rather against her will.
But Connie was preoccupied with her affair with the keeper. After all,
Mr Winter, who was really a gentleman and a man of the world, treated her as
a person and a discriminating individual; he did not lump her together with
all the rest of his female womanhood in his `thee' and `tha'.
She did not go to the wood that day nor the next, nor the day
following. She did not go so long as she felt, or imagined she felt, the man
waiting for her, wanting her. But the fourth day she was terribly unsettled
and uneasy. She still refused to go to the wood and open her thighs once
more to the man. She thought of all the things she might do---drive to
Sheffield, pay visits, and the thought of all these things was repellent. At
last she decided to take a walk, not towards the wood, but in the opposite
direction; she would go to Marehay, through the little iron gate in the
other side of the park fence. It was a quiet grey day of spring, almost
warm. She walked on unheeding, absorbed in thoughts she was not even
conscious of She was not really aware of anything outside her, till she was
startled by the loud barking of the dog at Marehay Farm. Marehay Farm! Its
pastures ran up to Wragby park fence, so they were neighbours, but it was
some time since Connie had called.
`Bell!' she said to the big white bull-terrier. `Bell! have you
forgotten me? Don't you know me?' She was afraid of dogs, and Bell stood
back and bellowed, and she wanted to pass through the farmyard on to the
warren path.
Mrs Flint appeared. She was a woman of Constance's own age, had been a
school-teacher, but Connie suspected her of being rather a false little
thing.
`Why, it's Lady Chatterley! Why!' And Mrs Flint's eyes glowed again,
and she flushed like a young girl. `Bell, Bell. Why! barking at Lady
Chatterley! Bell! Be quiet!' She darted forward and slashed at the dog with
a white cloth she held in her hand, then came forward to Connie.
`She used to know me,' said Connie, shaking hands. The Flints were
Chatterley tenants.
`Of course she knows your Ladyship! She's just showing off,' said Mrs
Flint, glowing and looking up with a sort of flushed confusion, `but it's so
long since she's seen you. I do hope you are better.'
`Yes thanks, I'm all right.'
`We've hardly seen you all winter. Will you come in and look at the
baby?'
`Well!' Connie hesitated. `Just for a minute.'
Mrs Flint flew wildly in to tidy up, and Connie came slowly after her,
hesitating in the rather dark kitchen where the kettle was boiling by the
fire. Back came Mrs Flint.
`I do hope you'll excuse me,' she said. `Will you come in here?'
They went into the living-room, where a baby was sitting on the rag
hearth rug, and the table was roughly set for tea. A young servant-girl
backed down the passage, shy and awkward.
The baby was a perky little thing of about a year, with red hair like
its father, and cheeky pale-blue eyes. It was a girl, and not to be daunted.
It sat among cushions and was surrounded with rag dolls and other toys in
modern excess.
`Why, what a dear she is!' said Connie, `and how she's grown! A big
girl! A big girl!'
She had given it a shawl when it was born, and celluloid ducks for
Christmas.
`There, Josephine! Who's that come to see you? Who's this, Josephine?
Lady Chatterley---you know Lady Chatterley, don't you?'
The queer pert little mite gazed cheekily at Connie. Ladyships were
still all the same to her.
`Come! Will you come to me?' said Connie to the baby.
The baby didn't care one way or another, so Connie picked her up and
held her in her lap. How warm and lovely it was to hold a child in one's
lap, and the soft little arms, the unconscious cheeky little legs.
`I was just having a rough cup of tea all by myself. Luke's gone to
market, so I can have it when I like. Would you care for a cup, Lady
Chatterley? I don't suppose it's what you're used to, but if you would...'
Connie would, though she didn't want to be reminded of what she was
used to. There was a great relaying of the table, and the best cups brought
and the best tea-pot.
`If only you wouldn't take any trouble,' said Connie.
But if Mrs Flint took no trouble, where was the fun! So Connie played
with the child and was amused by its little female dauntlessness, and got a
deep voluptuous pleasure out of its soft young warmth. Young life! And so
fearless! So fearless, because so defenceless. All the other people, so
narrow with fear!
She had a cup of tea, which was rather strong, and very good bread and
butter, and bottled damsons. Mrs Flint flushed and glowed and bridled with
excitement, as if Connie were some gallant knight. And they had a real
female chat, and both of them enjoyed it.
`It's a poor little tea, though,' said Mrs Flint.
`It's much nicer than at home,' said Connie truthfully.
`Oh-h!' said Mrs Flint, not believing, of course.
But at last Connie rose.
`I must go,' she said. `My husband has no idea where I am. He'll be
wondering all kinds of things.'
`He'll never think you're here,' laughed Mrs Flint excitedly. `He'll be
sending the crier round.'
`Goodbye, Josephine,' said Connie, kissing the baby and ruffling its
red, wispy hair.
Mrs Flint insisted on opening the locked and barred front door. Connie
emerged in the farm's little front garden, shut in by a privet hedge. There
were two rows of auriculas by the path, very velvety and rich.
`Lovely auriculas,' said Connie.
`Recklesses, as Luke calls them,' laughed Mrs Flint. `Have some.'
And eagerly she picked the velvet and primrose flowers.
`Enough! Enough!' said Connie.
They came to the little garden gate.
`Which way were you going?' asked Mrs Flint.
`By the Warren.'
`Let me see! Oh yes, the cows are in the gin close. But they're not up
yet. But the gate's locked, you'll have to climb.'
`I can climb,' said Connie.
`Perhaps I can just go down the close with you.'
They went down the poor, rabbit-bitten pasture. Birds were whistling in
wild evening triumph in the wood. A man was calling up the last cows, which
trailed slowly over the path-worn pasture.
`They're late, milking, tonight,' said Mrs Flint severely. `They know
Luke won't be back till after dark.'
They came to the fence, beyond which the young fir-wood bristled dense.
There was a little gate, but it was locked. In the grass on the inside stood
a bottle, empty.
`There's the keeper's empty bottle for his milk,' explained Mrs Flint.
`We bring it as far as here for him, and then he fetches it himself'
`When?' said Connie.
`Oh, any time he's around. Often in the morning. Well, goodbye Lady
Chatterley! And do come again. It was so lovely having you.'
Connie climbed the fence into the narrow path between the dense,
bristling young firs. Mrs Flint went running back across the pasture, in a
sun-bonnet, because she was really a schoolteacher. Constance didn't like
this dense new part of the wood; it seemed gruesome and choking. She hurried
on with her head down, thinking of the Flints' baby. It was a dear little
thing, but it would be a bit bow-legged like its father. It showed already,
but perhaps it would grow out of it. How warm and fulfilling somehow to have
a baby, and how Mrs Flint had showed it off! She had something anyhow that
Connie hadn't got, and apparently couldn't have. Yes, Mrs Flint had flaunted
her motherhood. And Connie had been just a bit, just a little bit jealous.
She couldn't help it.
She started out of her muse, and gave a little cry of fear. A man was
there.
It was the keeper. He stood in the path like Balaam's ass, barring her
way.
`How's this?' he said in surprise.
`How did you come?' she panted.
`How did you? Have you been to the hut?'
`No! No! I went to Marehay.'
He looked at her curiously, searchingly, and she hung her head a little
guiltily.
`And were you going to the hut now?' he asked rather sternly. `No! I
mustn't. I stayed at Marehay. No one knows where I am. I'm late. I've got to
run.'
`Giving me the slip, like?' he said, with a faint ironic smile. `No!
No. Not that. Only---'
`Why, what else?' he said. And he stepped up to her and put his arms
around her. She felt the front of his body terribly near to her, and alive.
`Oh, not now, not now,' she cried, trying to push him away.
`Why not? It's only six o'clock. You've got half an hour. Nay! Nay! I
want you.'
He held her fast and she felt his urgency. Her old instinct was to
fight for her freedom. But something else in her was strange and inert and
heavy. His body was urgent against her, and she hadn't the heart any more to
fight.
He looked around.
`Come---come here! Through here,' he said, looking penetratingly into
the dense fir-trees, that were young and not more than half-grown.
He looked back at her. She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce,
not loving. But her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs.
She was giving way. She was giving up.
He led her through the wall of prickly trees, that were difficult to
come through, to a place where was a little space and a pile of dead boughs.
He threw one or two dry ones down, put his coat and waistcoat over them, and
she had to lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal,
while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches, watching her with
haunted eyes. But still he was provident---he made her lie properly,
properly. Yet he broke the band of her underclothes, for she did not help
him, only lay inert.
He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked
flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her,
turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless
orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her.
Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames,
soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite and
melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a
culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the
last. But it was over too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her
own conclusion with her own activity. This was different, different. She
could do nothing. She could no longer harden and grip for her own
satisfaction upon him. She could only wait, wait and moan in spirit as she
felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and contracting, coming to the terrible
moment when he would slip out of her and be gone. Whilst all her womb was
open and soft, and softly clamouring, like a sea-anemone under the tide,
clamouring for him to come in again and make a fulfilment for her. She clung
to him unconscious iii passion, and he never quite slipped from her, and she
felt the soft bud of him within her stirring, and strange rhythms flushing
up into her with a strange rhythmic growing motion, swelling and swelling
till it filled all her cleaving consciousness, and then began again the
unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools
of sensation swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and
consciousness, till she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she
lay there crying in unconscious inarticulate cries. The voice out of the
uttermost night, the life! The man heard it beneath him with a kind of awe,
as his life sprang out into her. And as it subsided, he subsided too and lay
utterly still, unknowing, while her grip on him slowly relaxed, and she lay
inert. And they lay and knew nothing, not even of each other, both lost.
Till at last he began to rouse and become aware of his defenceless
nakedness, and she was aware that his body was loosening its clasp on her.
He was coming apart; but in her breast she felt she could not bear him to
leave her uncovered. He must cover her now for ever.
But he drew away at last, and kissed her and covered her over, and
began to cover himself She lay looking up to the boughs of the tree, unable
as yet to move. He stood and fastened up his breeches, looking round. All
was dense and silent, save for the awed dog that lay with its paws against
its nose. He sat down again on the brushwood and took Connie's hand in
silence.
She turned and looked at him. `We came off together that time,' he
said.
She did not answer.
`It's good when it's like that. Most folks live their lives through and
they never know it,' he said, speaking rather dreamily.
She looked into his brooding face.
`Do they?' she said. `Are you glad?'
He looked back into her eyes. `Glad,' he said, `Ay, but never mind.' He
did not want her to talk. And he bent over her and kissed her, and she felt,
so he must kiss her for ever.
At last she sat up.
`Don't people often come off together?' she asked with naive curiosity.
`A good many of them never. You can see by the raw look of them.' He
spoke unwittingly, regretting he had begun.
`Have you come off like that with other women?'
He looked at her amused.
`I don't know,' he said, `I don't know.'
And she knew he would never tell her anything he didn't want to tell
her. She watched his face, and the passion for him moved in her bowels. She
resisted it as far as she could, for it was the loss of herself to herself.
He put on his waistcoat and his coat, and pushed a way through to the
path again.
The last level rays of the sun touched the wood. `I won't come with
you,' he said; `better not.'
She looked at him wistfully before she turned. His dog was waiting so
anxiously for him to go, and he seemed to have nothing whatever to say.
Nothing left.
Connie went slowly home, realizing the depth of the other thing in her.
Another self was alive in her, burning molten and soft in her womb and
bowels, and with this self she adored him. She adored him till her knees
were weak as she walked. In her womb and bowels she was flowing and alive
now and vulnerable, and helpless in adoration of him as the most naive
woman. It feels like a child, she said to herself it feels like a child in
me. And so it did, as if her womb, that had always been shut, had opened and
filled with new life, almost a burden, yet lovely.
`If I had a child!' she thought to herself; `if I had him inside me as
a child!'---and her limbs turned molten at the thought, and she realized the
immense difference between having a child to oneself and having a child to a
man whom one's bowels yearned towards. The former seemed in a sense
ordinary: but to have a child to a man whom one adored in one's bowels and
one's womb, it made her feel she was very different from her old self and as
if she was sinking deep, deep to the centre of all womanhood and the sleep
of creation.
It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning
adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she
feared it still, lest if she adored him too much, then she would lose
herself become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a
savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she
would not at once fight against it. She knew she could fight it. She had a
devil of self-will in her breast that could have fought the full soft
heaving adoration of her womb and crushed it. She could even now do it, or
she thought so, and she could then take up her passion with her own will.
Ah yes, to be passionate like a Bacchante, like a Bacchanal fleeing
through the woods, to call on Iacchos, the bright phallos that had no
independent personality behind it, but was pure god-servant to the woman!
The man, the individual, let him not dare intrude. He was but a
temple-servant, the bearer and keeper of the bright phallos, her own.
So, in the flux of new awakening, the old hard passion flamed in her
for a time, and the man dwindled to a contemptible object, the mere
phallos-bearer, to be torn to pieces when his service was performed. She
felt the force of the Bacchae in her limbs and her body, the woman gleaming
and rapid, beating down the male; but while she felt this, her heart was
heavy. She did not want it, it was known and barren, birthless; the
adoration was her treasure.
It was so fathomless, so soft, so deep and so unknown. No, no, she
would give up her hard bright female power; she was weary of it, stiffened
with it; she would sink in the new bath of life, in the depths of her womb
and her bowels that sang the voiceless song of adoration. It was early yet
to begin to fear the man.
`I walked over by Marehay, and I had tea with Mrs Flint,' she said to
Clifford. `I wanted to see the baby. It's so adorable, with hair like red
cobwebs. Such a dear! Mr Flint had gone to market, so she and I and the baby
had tea together. Did you wonder where I was?'
`Well, I wondered, but I guessed you had dropped in somewhere to tea,'
said Clifford jealously. With a sort of second sight he sensed something new
in her, something to him quite incomprehensible, hut he ascribed it to the
baby. He thought that all that ailed Connie was that she did not have a
baby, automatically bring one forth, so to speak.
`I saw you go across the park to the iron gate, my Lady,' said Mrs
Bolton; `so I thought perhaps you'd called at the Rectory.'
`I nearly did, then I turned towards Marehay instead.'
The eyes of the two women met: Mrs Bolton's grey and bright and
searching; Connie's blue and veiled and strangely beautiful. Mrs Bolton was
almost sure she had a lover, yet how could it be, and who could it be? Where
was there a man?
`Oh, it's so good for you, if you go out and see a bit of company
sometimes,' said Mrs Bolton. `I was saying to Sir Clifford, it would do her
ladyship a world of good if she'd go out among people more.'
`Yes, I'm glad I went, and such a quaint dear cheeky baby, Clifford,'
said Connie. `It's got hair just like spider-webs, and bright orange, and
the oddest, cheekiest, pale-blue china eyes. Of course it's a girl, or it
wouldn't be so bold, bolder than any little Sir Francis Drake.'
`You're right, my Lady---a regular little Flint. They were always a
forward sandy-headed family,' said Mrs Bolton.
`Wouldn't you like to see it, Clifford? I've asked them to tea for you
to see it.'
`Who?' he asked, looking at Connie in great uneasiness. `Mrs Flint and
the baby, next Monday.'
`You can have them to tea up in your room,' he said.
`Why, don't you want to see the baby?' she cried.
`Oh, I'll see it, but I don't want to sit through a tea-time with
them.'
`Oh,' cried Connie, looking at him with wide veiled eyes.
She did not really see him, he was somebody else.
`You can have a nice cosy tea up in your room, my Lady, and Mrs Flint
will be more comfortable than if Sir Clifford was there,' said Mrs Bolton.
She was sure Connie had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But
who was he? Who was he? Perhaps Mrs Flint would provide a clue.
Connie would not take her bath this evening. The sense of his flesh
touching her, his very stickiness upon her, was dear to her, and in a sense
holy.
Clifford was very uneasy. He would not let her go after dinner, and she
had wanted so much to be alone. She looked at him, but was curiously
submissive.
`Shall we play a game, or shall I read to you, or what shall it be?' he
asked uneasily.
`You read to me,' said Connie.
`What shall I read---verse or prose? Or drama?'
`Read Racine,' she said.
It had been one of his stunts in the past, to read Racine in the real
French grand manner, but he was rusty now, and a little self-conscious; he
really preferred the loudspeaker. But Connie was sewing, sewing a little
frock silk of primrose silk, cut out of one of her dresses, for Mrs Flint's
baby. Between coming home and dinner she had cut it out, and she sat in the
soft quiescent rapture of herself sewing, while the noise of the reading
went on.
Inside herself she could feel the humming of passion, like the
after-humming of deep bells.
Clifford said something to her about the Racine. She caught the sense
after the words had gone.
`Yes! Yes!' she said, looking up at him. `It is splendid.'
Again he was frightened at the deep blue blaze of her eyes, and of her
soft stillness, sitting there. She had never been so utterly soft and still.
She fascinated him helplessly, as if some perfume about her intoxicated him.
So he went on helplessly with his reading, and the throaty sound of the
French was like the wind in the chimneys to her. Of the Racine she heard not
one syllable.
She was gone in her own soft rapture, like a forest soughing with the
dim, glad moan of spring, moving into bud. She could feel in the same world
with her the man, the nameless man, moving on beautiful feet, beautiful in
the phallic mystery. And in herself in all her veins, she felt him and his
child. His child was in all her veins, like a twilight.
`For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor feet, nor golden Treasure of
hair...'
She was like a forest, like the dark interlacing of the oakwood,
humming inaudibly with myriad unfolding buds. Meanwhile the birds of desire
were asleep in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body.
But Clifford's voice went on, clapping and gurgling with unusual
sounds. How extraordinary it was! How extraordinary he was, bent there over
the book, queer and rapacious and civilized, with broad shoulders and no
real legs! What a strange creature, with the sharp, cold inflexible will of
some bird, and no warmth, no warmth at all! One of those creatures of the
afterwards, that have no soul, but an extra-alert will, cold will. She
shuddered a little, afraid of him. But then, the soft warm flame of life was
stronger than he, and the real things were hidden from him.
The reading finished. She was startled. She looked up, and was more
startled still to see Clifford watching her with pale, uncanny eyes, like
hate.
`Thank you so much! You do read Racine beautifully!' she said softly.
`Almost as beautifully as you listen to him,' he said cruelly. `What
are you making?' he asked.
`I'm making a child's dress, for Mrs Flint's baby.'
He turned away. A child! A child! That was all her obsession.
`After all,' he said in a declamatory voice, `one gets all one wants
out of Racine. Emotions that are ordered and given shape are more important
than disorderly emotions.
She watched him with wide, vague, veiled eyes. `Yes, I'm sure they
are,' she said.
`The modern world has only vulgarized emotion by letting it loose. What
we need is classic control.'
`Yes,' she said slowly, thinking of him listening with vacant face to
the emotional idiocy of the radio. `People pretend to have emotions, and
they really feel nothing. I suppose that is being romantic.'
`Exactly!' he said.
As a matter of fact, he was tired. This evening had tired him. He would
rather have been with his technical books, or his pit-manager, or
listening-in to the radio.
Mrs Bolton came in with two glasses of malted milk: for Clifford, to
make him sleep, and for Connie, to fatten her again. It was a regular
night-cap she had introduced.
Connie was glad to go, when she had drunk her glass, and thankful she
needn't help Clifford to bed. She took his glass and put it on the tray,
then took the tray, to leave it outside.
`Goodnight Clifford! Do sleep well! The Racine gets into one like a
dream. Goodnight!'
She had drifted to the door. She was going without kissing him
goodnight. He watched her with sharp, cold eyes. So! She did not even kiss
him goodnight, after he had spent an evening reading to her. Such depths of
callousness in her! Even if the kiss was but a formality, it was on such
formalities that life depends. She was a Bolshevik, really. Her instincts
were Bolshevistic! He gazed coldly and angrily at the door whence she had
gone. Anger!
And again the dread of the night came on him. He was a network of
nerves, anden he was not braced up to work, and so full of energy: or when
he was not listening-in, and so utterly neuter: then he was haunted by
anxiety and a sense of dangerous impending void. He was afraid. And Connie
could keep the fear off him, if she would. But it was obvious she wouldn't,
she wouldn't. She was callous, cold and callous to all that he did for her.
He gave up his life for her, and she was callous to him. She only wanted her
own way. `The lady loves her will.'
Now it was a baby she was obsessed by. Just so that it should be her
own, all her own, and not his!
Clifford was so healthy, considering. He looked so well and ruddy in
the face, his shoulders were broad and strong, his chest deep, he had put on
flesh. And yet, at the same time, he was afraid of death. A terrible hollow
seemed to menace him somewhere, somehow, a void, and into this void his
energy would collapse. Energyless, he felt at times he was dead, really
dead.
So his rather prominent pale eyes had a queer look, furtive, and yet a
little cruel, so cold: and at the same time, almost impudent. It was a very
odd look, this look of impudence: as if he were triumphing over life in
spite of life. `Who knoweth the mysteries of the will---for it can triumph
even against the angels---'
But his dread was the nights when he could not sleep. Then it was awful
indeed, when annihilation pressed in on him on every side. Then it was
ghastly, to exist without having any life: lifeless, in the night, to exist.
But now he could ring for Mrs Bolton. And she would always come. That
was a great comfort. She would come in her dressing gown, with her hair in a
plait down her back, curiously girlish and dim, though the brown plait was
streaked with grey. And she would make him coffee or camomile tea, and she
would play chess or piquet with him. She had a woman's queer faculty of
playing even chess well enough, when she was three parts asleep, well enough
to make her worth beating. So, in the silent intimacy of the night, they
sat, or she sat and he lay on the bed, with the reading-lamp shedding its
solitary light on them, she almost gone in sleep, he almost gone in a sort
of fear, and they played, played together---then they had a cup of coffee
and a biscuit together, hardly speaking, in the silence of night, but being
a reassurance to one another.
And this night she was wondering who Lady Chatterley's lover was. And
she was thinking of her own Ted, so long dead, yet for her never quite dead.
And when she thought of him, the old, old grudge against the world rose up,
but especially against the masters, that they had killed him. They had not
really killed him. Yet, to her, emotionally, they had. And somewhere deep in
herself because of it, she was a nihilist, and really anarchic.
In her half-sleep, thoughts of her Ted and thoughts of Lady
Chatterley's unknown lover commingled, and then she felt she shared with the
other woman a great grudge against Sir Clifford and all he stood for. At the
same time she was playing piquet with him, and they were gambling sixpences.
And it was a source of satisfaction to be playing piquet with a baronet, and
even losing sixpences to him.
When they played cards, they always gambled. It made him forget
himself. And he usually won. Tonight too he was winning. So he would not go
to sleep till the first dawn appeared. Luckily it began to appear at half
past four or thereabouts.
Connie was in bed, and fast asleep all this time. But the keeper, too,
could not rest. He had closed the coops and made his round of the wood, then
gone home and eaten supper. But he did not go to bed. Instead he sat by the
fire and thought.
He thought of his boyhood in Tevershall, and of his five or six years
of married life. He thought of his wife, and always bitterly. She had seemed
so brutal. But he had not seen her now since 1915, in the spring when he
joined up. Yet there she was, not three miles away, and more brutal than
ever. He hoped never to see her again while he lived.
He thought of his life abroad, as a soldier. India, Egypt, then India
again: the blind, thoughtless life with the horses: the colonel who had
loved him and whom he had loved: the several years that he had been an
officer, a lieutenant with a very fair chance of being a captain. Then the
death of the colonel from pneumonia, and his own narrow escape from death:
his damaged health: his deep restlessness: his leaving the army and coming
back to England to be a working man again.
He was temporizing with life. He had thought he would be safe, at least
for a time, in this wood. There was no shooting as yet: he had to rear the
pheasants. He would have no guns to serve. He would be alone, and apart from
life, which was all he wanted. He had to have some sort of a background. And
this was his native place. There was even his mother, though she had never
meant very much to him. And he could go on in life, existing from day to
day, without connexion and without hope. For he did not know what to do with
himself.
He did not know what to do with himself. Since he had been an officer
for some years, and had mixed among the other officers and civil servants,
with their wives and families, he had lost all ambition to `get on'. There
was a toughness, a curious rubbernecked toughness and unlivingness about the
middle and upper classes, as he had known them, which just left him feeling
cold and different from them.
So, he had come back to his own class. To find there, what he had
forgotten during his absence of years, a pettiness and a vulgarity of manner
extremely distasteful. He admitted now at last, how important manner was. He
admitted, also, how important it was even to pretend not to care about the
halfpence and the small things of life. But among the common people there
was no pretence. A penny more or less on the bacon was worse than a change
in the Gospel. He could not stand it.
And again, there was the wage-squabble. Having lived among the owning
classes, he knew the utter futility of expecting any solution of the
wage-squabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was not
to care, not to care about the wages.
Yet, if you were poor and wretched you had to care. Anyhow, it was
becoming the only thing they did care about. The care about money was like a
great cancer, eating away the individuals of all classes. He refused to care
about money.
And what then? What did life offer apart from the care of money?
Nothing.
Yet he could live alone, in the wan satisfaction of being alone, and
raise pheasants to be shot ultimately by fat men after breakfast. It was
futility, futility to the nth power.
But why care, why bother? And he had not cared nor bothered till now,
when this woman had come into his life. He was nearly ten years older than
she. And he was a thousand years older in experience, starting from the
bottom. The connexion between them was growing closer. He could see the day
when it would clinch up and they would have to make a life together. `For
the bonds of love are ill to loose!'
And what then? What then? Must he start again, with nothing to start
on? Must he entangle this woman? Must he have the horrible broil with her
lame husband? And also some sort of horrible broil with his own brutal wife,
who hated him? Misery! Lots of misery! And he was no longer young and merely
buoyant. Neither was he the insouciant sort. Every bitterness and every
ugliness would hurt him: and the woman!
But even if they got clear of Sir Clifford and of his own wife, even if
they got clear, what were they going to do? What was he, himself going to
do? What was he going to do with his life? For he must do something. He
couldn't be a mere hanger-on, on her money and his own very small pension.
It was the insoluble. He could only think of going to America, to try a
new air. He disbelieved in the dollar utterly. But perhaps, perhaps there
was something else.
He could not rest nor even go to bed. After sitting in a stupor of
bitter thoughts until midnight, he got suddenly from his chair and reached
for his coat and gun.
`Come on, lass,' he said to the dog. `We're best outside.'
It was a starry night, but moonless. He went on a slow, scrupulous,
soft-stepping and stealthy round. The only thing he had to contend with was
the colliers setting snares for rabbits, particularly the Stacks Gate
colliers, on the Marehay side. But it was breeding season, and even colliers
respected it a little. Nevertheless the stealthy beating of the round in
search of poachers soothed his nerves and took his mind off his thoughts.
But when he had done his slow, cautious beating of his bounds---it was
nearly a five-mile walk---he was tired. He went to the top of the knoll and
looked out. There was no sound save the noise, the faint shuffling noise
from Stacks Gate colliery, that never ceased working: and there were hardly
any lights, save the brilliant electric rows at the works. The world lay
darkly and fumily sleeping. It was half past two. But even in its sleep it
was an uneasy, cruel world, stirring with the noise of a train or some great
lorry on the road, and flashing with some rosy lightning flash from the
furnaces. It was a world of iron and coal, the cruelty of iron and the smoke
of coal, and the endless, endless greed that drove it all. Only greed, greed
stirring in its sleep.
It was cold, and he was coughing. A fine cold draught blew over the
knoll. He thought of the woman. Now he would have given all he had or ever
He looked away into the wood, and was silent.
`But what when folks finds out?' he asked at last. `Think about it!
Think how lowered you'll feel, one of your husband's servants.'
She looked up at his averted face.
`Is it,' she stammered, `is it that you don't want me?'
`Think!' he said. `Think what if folks find out Sir Clifford an'
a'---an' everybody talkin'---'
`Well, I can go away.'
`Where to?'
`Anywhere! I've got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand
pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can't touch it. I can go away.'
`But 'appen you don't want to go away.'
`Yes, yes! I don't care what happens to me.'
`Ay, you think that! But you'll care! You'll have to care, everybody
has. You've got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a game-keeper.
It's not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you'd care. You'd care.'
`I shouldn't. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I
feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even
you jeer when you say it.'
`Me!'
For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. `I
don't jeer at you,' he said.
As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark,
the pupils dilating.
`Don't you care about a' the risk?' he asked in a husky voice. `You
should care. Don't care when it's too late!'
There was a curious warning pleading in his voice.
`But I've nothing to lose,' she said fretfully. `If you knew what it
is, you'd think I'd be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?'
`Ay!' he said briefly. `I am. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid O'
things.'
`What things?' she asked.
He gave a curious backward jerk of his head, indicating the outer
world.
`Things! Everybody! The lot of 'em.'
Then he bent down and suddenly kissed her unhappy face.
`Nay, I don't care,' he said. `Let's have it, an' damn the rest. But if
you was to feel sorry you'd ever done it---!'
`Don't put me off,' she pleaded.
He put his fingers to her cheek and kissed her again suddenly.
`Let me come in then,' he said softly. `An' take off your mackintosh.'
He hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached
for the blankets.
`I brought another blanket,' he said, `so we can put one over us if you
like.'
`I can't stay long,' she said. `Dinner is half-past seven.'
He looked at her swiftly, then at his watch.
`All right,' he said.
He shut the door, and lit a tiny light in the hanging hurricane lamp.
`One time we'll have a long time,' he said.
He put the blankets down carefully, one folded for her head. Then he
sat down a moment on the stool, and drew her to him, holding her close with
one arm, feeling for her body with his free hand. She heard the catch of his
intaken breath as he found her. Under her frail petticoat she was naked.
`Eh! what it is to touch thee!' he said, as his finger caressed the
delicate, warm, secret skin of her waist and hips. He put his face down and
rubbed his cheek against her belly and against her thighs again and again.
And again she wondered a little over the sort of rapture it was to him. She
did not understand the beauty he found in her, through touch upon her living
secret body, almost the ecstasy of beauty. For passion alone is awake to it.
And when passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is
incomprehensible and even a little despicable; warm, live beauty of contact,
so much deeper than the beauty of vision. She felt the glide of his cheek on
her thighs and belly and buttocks, and the close brushing of his moustache
and his soft thick hair, and her knees began to quiver. Far down in her she
felt a new stirring, a new nakedness emerging. And she was half afraid. Half
she wished he would not caress her so. He was encompassing her somehow. Yet
she was waiting, waiting.
And when he came into her, with an intensification of relief and
consummation that was pure peace to him, still she was waiting. She felt
herself a little left out. And she knew, partly it was her own fault. She
willed herself into this separateness. Now perhaps she was condemned to it.
She lay still, feeling his motion within her, his deep-sunk intentness, the
sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed, then the slow-subsiding
thrust. That thrust of the buttocks, surely it was a little ridiculous. If
you were a woman, and a part in all the business, surely that thrusting of
the man's buttocks was supremely ridiculous. Surely the man was intensely
ridiculous in this posture and this act!
But she lay still, without recoil. Even when he had finished, she did
not rouse herself to get a grip on her own satisfaction, as she had done
with Michaelis; she lay still, and the tears slowly filled and ran from her
eyes.
He lay still, too. But he held her close and tried to cover her poor
naked legs with his legs, to keep them warm. He lay on her with a close,
undoubting warmth.
`Are yer cold?' he asked, in a soft, small voice, as if she were close,
so close. Whereas she was left out, distant.
`No! But I must go,' she said gently.
He sighed, held her closer, then relaxed to rest again.
He had not guessed her tears. He thought she was there with him.
`I must go,' she repeated.
He lifted himself kneeled beside her a moment, kissed the inner side of
her thighs, then drew down her skirts, buttoning his own clothes unthinking,
not even turning aside, in the faint, faint light from the lantern.
`Tha mun come ter th' cottage one time,' he said, looking down at her
with a warm, sure, easy face.
But she lay there inert, and was gazing up at him thinking: Stranger!
Stranger! She even resented him a little.
He put on his coat and looked for his hat, which had fallen, then he
slung on his gun.
`Come then!' he said, looking down at her with those warm, peaceful
sort of eyes.
She rose slowly. She didn't want to go. She also rather resented
staying. He helped her with her thin waterproof and saw she was tidy.
Then he opened the door. The outside was quite dark. The faithful dog
under the porch stood up with pleasure seeing him. The drizzle of rain
drifted greyly past upon the darkness. It was quite dark.
`Ah mun ta'e th' lantern,' he said. `The'll be nob'dy.'
He walked just before her in the narrow path, swinging the hurricane
lamp low, revealing the wet grass, the black shiny tree-roots like snakes,
wan flowers. For the rest, all was grey rain-mist and complete darkness.
`Tha mun come to the cottage one time,' he said, `shall ta? We might as
well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.'
It puzzled her, his queer, persistent wanting her, when there was
nothing between them, when he never really spoke to her, and in spite of
herself she resented the dialect. His `tha mun come' seemed not addressed to
her, but some common woman. She recognized the foxglove leaves of the riding
and knew, more or less, where they were.
`It's quarter past seven,' he said, `you'll do it.' He had changed his
voice, seemed to feel her distance. As they turned the last bend in the
riding towards the hazel wall and the gate, he blew out the light. `We'll
see from here,' be said, taking her gently by the arm.
But it was difficult, the earth under their feet was a mystery, but he
felt his way by tread: he was used to it. At the gate he gave her his
electric torch. `It's a bit lighter in the park,' he said; `but take it for
fear you get off th' path.'
It was true, there seemed a ghost-glimmer of greyness in the open space
of the park. He suddenly drew her to him and whipped his hand under her
dress again, feeling her warm body with his wet, chill hand.
`I could die for the touch of a woman like thee,' he said in his
throat. `If tha' would stop another minute.'
She felt the sudden force of his wanting her again.
`No, I must run,' she said, a little wildly.
`Ay,' he replied, suddenly changed, letting her go.
She turned away, and on the instant she turned back to him saying:
`Kiss me.'
He bent over her indistinguishable and kissed her on the left eye. She
held her mouth and he softly kissed it, but at once drew away. He hated
mouth kisses.
`I'll come tomorrow,' she said, drawing away; `if I can,' she added.
`Ay! not so late,' he replied out of the darkness. Already she could
not see him at all.
`Goodnight,' she said.
`Goodnight, your Ladyship,' his voice.
She stopped and looked back into the wet dark. She could just see the
bulk of him. `Why did you say that?' she said.
`Nay,' he replied. `Goodnight then, run!'
She plunged on in the dark-grey tangible night. She found the side-door
open, and slipped into her room unseen. As she closed the door the gong
sounded, but she would take her bath all the same---she must take her bath.
`But I won't be late any more,' she said to herself; `it's too annoying.'
The next day she did not go to the wood. She went instead with Clifford
to Uthwaite. He could occasionally go out now in the car, and had got a
strong young man as chauffeur, who could help him out of the car if need be.
He particularly wanted to see his godfather, Leslie Winter, who lived at
Shipley Hall, not far from Uthwaite. Winter was an elderly gentleman now,
wealthy, one of the wealthy coal-owners who had had their hey-day in King
Edward's time. King Edward had stayed more than once at Shipley, for the
shooting. It was a handsome old stucco hall, very elegantly appointed, for
Winter was a bachelor and prided himself on his style; but the place was
beset by collieries. Leslie Winter was attached to Clifford, but personally
did not entertain a great respect for him, because of the photographs in
illustrated papers and the literature. The old man was a buck of the King
Edward school, who thought life was life and the scribbling fellows were
something else. Towards Connie the Squire was always rather gallant; he
thought her an attractive demure maiden and rather wasted on Clifford, and
it was a thousand pities she stood no chance of bringing forth an heir to
Wragby. He himself had no heir.
Connie wondered what he would say if he knew that Clifford's
game-keeper had been having intercourse with her, and saying to her `tha mun
come to th' cottage one time.' He would detest and despise her, for he had
come almost to hate the shoving forward of the working classes. A man of her
own class he would not mind, for Connie was gifted from nature with this
appearance of demure, submissive maidenliness, and perhaps it was part of
her nature. Winter called her `dear child' and gave her a rather lovely
miniature of an eighteenth-century lady, rather against her will.
But Connie was preoccupied with her affair with the keeper. After all,
Mr Winter, who was really a gentleman and a man of the world, treated her as
a person and a discriminating individual; he did not lump her together with
all the rest of his female womanhood in his `thee' and `tha'.
She did not go to the wood that day nor the next, nor the day
following. She did not go so long as she felt, or imagined she felt, the man
waiting for her, wanting her. But the fourth day she was terribly unsettled
and uneasy. She still refused to go to the wood and open her thighs once
more to the man. She thought of all the things she might do---drive to
Sheffield, pay visits, and the thought of all these things was repellent. At
last she decided to take a walk, not towards the wood, but in the opposite
direction; she would go to Marehay, through the little iron gate in the
other side of the park fence. It was a quiet grey day of spring, almost
warm. She walked on unheeding, absorbed in thoughts she was not even
conscious of She was not really aware of anything outside her, till she was
startled by the loud barking of the dog at Marehay Farm. Marehay Farm! Its
pastures ran up to Wragby park fence, so they were neighbours, but it was
some time since Connie had called.
`Bell!' she said to the big white bull-terrier. `Bell! have you
forgotten me? Don't you know me?' She was afraid of dogs, and Bell stood
back and bellowed, and she wanted to pass through the farmyard on to the
warren path.
Mrs Flint appeared. She was a woman of Constance's own age, had been a
school-teacher, but Connie suspected her of being rather a false little
thing.
`Why, it's Lady Chatterley! Why!' And Mrs Flint's eyes glowed again,
and she flushed like a young girl. `Bell, Bell. Why! barking at Lady
Chatterley! Bell! Be quiet!' She darted forward and slashed at the dog with
a white cloth she held in her hand, then came forward to Connie.
`She used to know me,' said Connie, shaking hands. The Flints were
Chatterley tenants.
`Of course she knows your Ladyship! She's just showing off,' said Mrs
Flint, glowing and looking up with a sort of flushed confusion, `but it's so
long since she's seen you. I do hope you are better.'
`Yes thanks, I'm all right.'
`We've hardly seen you all winter. Will you come in and look at the
baby?'
`Well!' Connie hesitated. `Just for a minute.'
Mrs Flint flew wildly in to tidy up, and Connie came slowly after her,
hesitating in the rather dark kitchen where the kettle was boiling by the
fire. Back came Mrs Flint.
`I do hope you'll excuse me,' she said. `Will you come in here?'
They went into the living-room, where a baby was sitting on the rag
hearth rug, and the table was roughly set for tea. A young servant-girl
backed down the passage, shy and awkward.
The baby was a perky little thing of about a year, with red hair like
its father, and cheeky pale-blue eyes. It was a girl, and not to be daunted.
It sat among cushions and was surrounded with rag dolls and other toys in
modern excess.
`Why, what a dear she is!' said Connie, `and how she's grown! A big
girl! A big girl!'
She had given it a shawl when it was born, and celluloid ducks for
Christmas.
`There, Josephine! Who's that come to see you? Who's this, Josephine?
Lady Chatterley---you know Lady Chatterley, don't you?'
The queer pert little mite gazed cheekily at Connie. Ladyships were
still all the same to her.
`Come! Will you come to me?' said Connie to the baby.
The baby didn't care one way or another, so Connie picked her up and
held her in her lap. How warm and lovely it was to hold a child in one's
lap, and the soft little arms, the unconscious cheeky little legs.
`I was just having a rough cup of tea all by myself. Luke's gone to
market, so I can have it when I like. Would you care for a cup, Lady
Chatterley? I don't suppose it's what you're used to, but if you would...'
Connie would, though she didn't want to be reminded of what she was
used to. There was a great relaying of the table, and the best cups brought
and the best tea-pot.
`If only you wouldn't take any trouble,' said Connie.
But if Mrs Flint took no trouble, where was the fun! So Connie played
with the child and was amused by its little female dauntlessness, and got a
deep voluptuous pleasure out of its soft young warmth. Young life! And so
fearless! So fearless, because so defenceless. All the other people, so
narrow with fear!
She had a cup of tea, which was rather strong, and very good bread and
butter, and bottled damsons. Mrs Flint flushed and glowed and bridled with
excitement, as if Connie were some gallant knight. And they had a real
female chat, and both of them enjoyed it.
`It's a poor little tea, though,' said Mrs Flint.
`It's much nicer than at home,' said Connie truthfully.
`Oh-h!' said Mrs Flint, not believing, of course.
But at last Connie rose.
`I must go,' she said. `My husband has no idea where I am. He'll be
wondering all kinds of things.'
`He'll never think you're here,' laughed Mrs Flint excitedly. `He'll be
sending the crier round.'
`Goodbye, Josephine,' said Connie, kissing the baby and ruffling its
red, wispy hair.
Mrs Flint insisted on opening the locked and barred front door. Connie
emerged in the farm's little front garden, shut in by a privet hedge. There
were two rows of auriculas by the path, very velvety and rich.
`Lovely auriculas,' said Connie.
`Recklesses, as Luke calls them,' laughed Mrs Flint. `Have some.'
And eagerly she picked the velvet and primrose flowers.
`Enough! Enough!' said Connie.
They came to the little garden gate.
`Which way were you going?' asked Mrs Flint.
`By the Warren.'
`Let me see! Oh yes, the cows are in the gin close. But they're not up
yet. But the gate's locked, you'll have to climb.'
`I can climb,' said Connie.
`Perhaps I can just go down the close with you.'
They went down the poor, rabbit-bitten pasture. Birds were whistling in
wild evening triumph in the wood. A man was calling up the last cows, which
trailed slowly over the path-worn pasture.
`They're late, milking, tonight,' said Mrs Flint severely. `They know
Luke won't be back till after dark.'
They came to the fence, beyond which the young fir-wood bristled dense.
There was a little gate, but it was locked. In the grass on the inside stood
a bottle, empty.
`There's the keeper's empty bottle for his milk,' explained Mrs Flint.
`We bring it as far as here for him, and then he fetches it himself'
`When?' said Connie.
`Oh, any time he's around. Often in the morning. Well, goodbye Lady
Chatterley! And do come again. It was so lovely having you.'
Connie climbed the fence into the narrow path between the dense,
bristling young firs. Mrs Flint went running back across the pasture, in a
sun-bonnet, because she was really a schoolteacher. Constance didn't like
this dense new part of the wood; it seemed gruesome and choking. She hurried
on with her head down, thinking of the Flints' baby. It was a dear little
thing, but it would be a bit bow-legged like its father. It showed already,
but perhaps it would grow out of it. How warm and fulfilling somehow to have
a baby, and how Mrs Flint had showed it off! She had something anyhow that
Connie hadn't got, and apparently couldn't have. Yes, Mrs Flint had flaunted
her motherhood. And Connie had been just a bit, just a little bit jealous.
She couldn't help it.
She started out of her muse, and gave a little cry of fear. A man was
there.
It was the keeper. He stood in the path like Balaam's ass, barring her
way.
`How's this?' he said in surprise.
`How did you come?' she panted.
`How did you? Have you been to the hut?'
`No! No! I went to Marehay.'
He looked at her curiously, searchingly, and she hung her head a little
guiltily.
`And were you going to the hut now?' he asked rather sternly. `No! I
mustn't. I stayed at Marehay. No one knows where I am. I'm late. I've got to
run.'
`Giving me the slip, like?' he said, with a faint ironic smile. `No!
No. Not that. Only---'
`Why, what else?' he said. And he stepped up to her and put his arms
around her. She felt the front of his body terribly near to her, and alive.
`Oh, not now, not now,' she cried, trying to push him away.
`Why not? It's only six o'clock. You've got half an hour. Nay! Nay! I
want you.'
He held her fast and she felt his urgency. Her old instinct was to
fight for her freedom. But something else in her was strange and inert and
heavy. His body was urgent against her, and she hadn't the heart any more to
fight.
He looked around.
`Come---come here! Through here,' he said, looking penetratingly into
the dense fir-trees, that were young and not more than half-grown.
He looked back at her. She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce,
not loving. But her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs.
She was giving way. She was giving up.
He led her through the wall of prickly trees, that were difficult to
come through, to a place where was a little space and a pile of dead boughs.
He threw one or two dry ones down, put his coat and waistcoat over them, and
she had to lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal,
while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches, watching her with
haunted eyes. But still he was provident---he made her lie properly,
properly. Yet he broke the band of her underclothes, for she did not help
him, only lay inert.
He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked
flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her,
turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless
orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her.
Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames,
soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite and
melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a
culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the
last. But it was over too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her
own conclusion with her own activity. This was different, different. She
could do nothing. She could no longer harden and grip for her own
satisfaction upon him. She could only wait, wait and moan in spirit as she
felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and contracting, coming to the terrible
moment when he would slip out of her and be gone. Whilst all her womb was
open and soft, and softly clamouring, like a sea-anemone under the tide,
clamouring for him to come in again and make a fulfilment for her. She clung
to him unconscious iii passion, and he never quite slipped from her, and she
felt the soft bud of him within her stirring, and strange rhythms flushing
up into her with a strange rhythmic growing motion, swelling and swelling
till it filled all her cleaving consciousness, and then began again the
unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools
of sensation swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and
consciousness, till she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she
lay there crying in unconscious inarticulate cries. The voice out of the
uttermost night, the life! The man heard it beneath him with a kind of awe,
as his life sprang out into her. And as it subsided, he subsided too and lay
utterly still, unknowing, while her grip on him slowly relaxed, and she lay
inert. And they lay and knew nothing, not even of each other, both lost.
Till at last he began to rouse and become aware of his defenceless
nakedness, and she was aware that his body was loosening its clasp on her.
He was coming apart; but in her breast she felt she could not bear him to
leave her uncovered. He must cover her now for ever.
But he drew away at last, and kissed her and covered her over, and
began to cover himself She lay looking up to the boughs of the tree, unable
as yet to move. He stood and fastened up his breeches, looking round. All
was dense and silent, save for the awed dog that lay with its paws against
its nose. He sat down again on the brushwood and took Connie's hand in
silence.
She turned and looked at him. `We came off together that time,' he
said.
She did not answer.
`It's good when it's like that. Most folks live their lives through and
they never know it,' he said, speaking rather dreamily.
She looked into his brooding face.
`Do they?' she said. `Are you glad?'
He looked back into her eyes. `Glad,' he said, `Ay, but never mind.' He
did not want her to talk. And he bent over her and kissed her, and she felt,
so he must kiss her for ever.
At last she sat up.
`Don't people often come off together?' she asked with naive curiosity.
`A good many of them never. You can see by the raw look of them.' He
spoke unwittingly, regretting he had begun.
`Have you come off like that with other women?'
He looked at her amused.
`I don't know,' he said, `I don't know.'
And she knew he would never tell her anything he didn't want to tell
her. She watched his face, and the passion for him moved in her bowels. She
resisted it as far as she could, for it was the loss of herself to herself.
He put on his waistcoat and his coat, and pushed a way through to the
path again.
The last level rays of the sun touched the wood. `I won't come with
you,' he said; `better not.'
She looked at him wistfully before she turned. His dog was waiting so
anxiously for him to go, and he seemed to have nothing whatever to say.
Nothing left.
Connie went slowly home, realizing the depth of the other thing in her.
Another self was alive in her, burning molten and soft in her womb and
bowels, and with this self she adored him. She adored him till her knees
were weak as she walked. In her womb and bowels she was flowing and alive
now and vulnerable, and helpless in adoration of him as the most naive
woman. It feels like a child, she said to herself it feels like a child in
me. And so it did, as if her womb, that had always been shut, had opened and
filled with new life, almost a burden, yet lovely.
`If I had a child!' she thought to herself; `if I had him inside me as
a child!'---and her limbs turned molten at the thought, and she realized the
immense difference between having a child to oneself and having a child to a
man whom one's bowels yearned towards. The former seemed in a sense
ordinary: but to have a child to a man whom one adored in one's bowels and
one's womb, it made her feel she was very different from her old self and as
if she was sinking deep, deep to the centre of all womanhood and the sleep
of creation.
It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning
adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she
feared it still, lest if she adored him too much, then she would lose
herself become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a
savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she
would not at once fight against it. She knew she could fight it. She had a
devil of self-will in her breast that could have fought the full soft
heaving adoration of her womb and crushed it. She could even now do it, or
she thought so, and she could then take up her passion with her own will.
Ah yes, to be passionate like a Bacchante, like a Bacchanal fleeing
through the woods, to call on Iacchos, the bright phallos that had no
independent personality behind it, but was pure god-servant to the woman!
The man, the individual, let him not dare intrude. He was but a
temple-servant, the bearer and keeper of the bright phallos, her own.
So, in the flux of new awakening, the old hard passion flamed in her
for a time, and the man dwindled to a contemptible object, the mere
phallos-bearer, to be torn to pieces when his service was performed. She
felt the force of the Bacchae in her limbs and her body, the woman gleaming
and rapid, beating down the male; but while she felt this, her heart was
heavy. She did not want it, it was known and barren, birthless; the
adoration was her treasure.
It was so fathomless, so soft, so deep and so unknown. No, no, she
would give up her hard bright female power; she was weary of it, stiffened
with it; she would sink in the new bath of life, in the depths of her womb
and her bowels that sang the voiceless song of adoration. It was early yet
to begin to fear the man.
`I walked over by Marehay, and I had tea with Mrs Flint,' she said to
Clifford. `I wanted to see the baby. It's so adorable, with hair like red
cobwebs. Such a dear! Mr Flint had gone to market, so she and I and the baby
had tea together. Did you wonder where I was?'
`Well, I wondered, but I guessed you had dropped in somewhere to tea,'
said Clifford jealously. With a sort of second sight he sensed something new
in her, something to him quite incomprehensible, hut he ascribed it to the
baby. He thought that all that ailed Connie was that she did not have a
baby, automatically bring one forth, so to speak.
`I saw you go across the park to the iron gate, my Lady,' said Mrs
Bolton; `so I thought perhaps you'd called at the Rectory.'
`I nearly did, then I turned towards Marehay instead.'
The eyes of the two women met: Mrs Bolton's grey and bright and
searching; Connie's blue and veiled and strangely beautiful. Mrs Bolton was
almost sure she had a lover, yet how could it be, and who could it be? Where
was there a man?
`Oh, it's so good for you, if you go out and see a bit of company
sometimes,' said Mrs Bolton. `I was saying to Sir Clifford, it would do her
ladyship a world of good if she'd go out among people more.'
`Yes, I'm glad I went, and such a quaint dear cheeky baby, Clifford,'
said Connie. `It's got hair just like spider-webs, and bright orange, and
the oddest, cheekiest, pale-blue china eyes. Of course it's a girl, or it
wouldn't be so bold, bolder than any little Sir Francis Drake.'
`You're right, my Lady---a regular little Flint. They were always a
forward sandy-headed family,' said Mrs Bolton.
`Wouldn't you like to see it, Clifford? I've asked them to tea for you
to see it.'
`Who?' he asked, looking at Connie in great uneasiness. `Mrs Flint and
the baby, next Monday.'
`You can have them to tea up in your room,' he said.
`Why, don't you want to see the baby?' she cried.
`Oh, I'll see it, but I don't want to sit through a tea-time with
them.'
`Oh,' cried Connie, looking at him with wide veiled eyes.
She did not really see him, he was somebody else.
`You can have a nice cosy tea up in your room, my Lady, and Mrs Flint
will be more comfortable than if Sir Clifford was there,' said Mrs Bolton.
She was sure Connie had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But
who was he? Who was he? Perhaps Mrs Flint would provide a clue.
Connie would not take her bath this evening. The sense of his flesh
touching her, his very stickiness upon her, was dear to her, and in a sense
holy.
Clifford was very uneasy. He would not let her go after dinner, and she
had wanted so much to be alone. She looked at him, but was curiously
submissive.
`Shall we play a game, or shall I read to you, or what shall it be?' he
asked uneasily.
`You read to me,' said Connie.
`What shall I read---verse or prose? Or drama?'
`Read Racine,' she said.
It had been one of his stunts in the past, to read Racine in the real
French grand manner, but he was rusty now, and a little self-conscious; he
really preferred the loudspeaker. But Connie was sewing, sewing a little
frock silk of primrose silk, cut out of one of her dresses, for Mrs Flint's
baby. Between coming home and dinner she had cut it out, and she sat in the
soft quiescent rapture of herself sewing, while the noise of the reading
went on.
Inside herself she could feel the humming of passion, like the
after-humming of deep bells.
Clifford said something to her about the Racine. She caught the sense
after the words had gone.
`Yes! Yes!' she said, looking up at him. `It is splendid.'
Again he was frightened at the deep blue blaze of her eyes, and of her
soft stillness, sitting there. She had never been so utterly soft and still.
She fascinated him helplessly, as if some perfume about her intoxicated him.
So he went on helplessly with his reading, and the throaty sound of the
French was like the wind in the chimneys to her. Of the Racine she heard not
one syllable.
She was gone in her own soft rapture, like a forest soughing with the
dim, glad moan of spring, moving into bud. She could feel in the same world
with her the man, the nameless man, moving on beautiful feet, beautiful in
the phallic mystery. And in herself in all her veins, she felt him and his
child. His child was in all her veins, like a twilight.
`For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor feet, nor golden Treasure of
hair...'
She was like a forest, like the dark interlacing of the oakwood,
humming inaudibly with myriad unfolding buds. Meanwhile the birds of desire
were asleep in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body.
But Clifford's voice went on, clapping and gurgling with unusual
sounds. How extraordinary it was! How extraordinary he was, bent there over
the book, queer and rapacious and civilized, with broad shoulders and no
real legs! What a strange creature, with the sharp, cold inflexible will of
some bird, and no warmth, no warmth at all! One of those creatures of the
afterwards, that have no soul, but an extra-alert will, cold will. She
shuddered a little, afraid of him. But then, the soft warm flame of life was
stronger than he, and the real things were hidden from him.
The reading finished. She was startled. She looked up, and was more
startled still to see Clifford watching her with pale, uncanny eyes, like
hate.
`Thank you so much! You do read Racine beautifully!' she said softly.
`Almost as beautifully as you listen to him,' he said cruelly. `What
are you making?' he asked.
`I'm making a child's dress, for Mrs Flint's baby.'
He turned away. A child! A child! That was all her obsession.
`After all,' he said in a declamatory voice, `one gets all one wants
out of Racine. Emotions that are ordered and given shape are more important
than disorderly emotions.
She watched him with wide, vague, veiled eyes. `Yes, I'm sure they
are,' she said.
`The modern world has only vulgarized emotion by letting it loose. What
we need is classic control.'
`Yes,' she said slowly, thinking of him listening with vacant face to
the emotional idiocy of the radio. `People pretend to have emotions, and
they really feel nothing. I suppose that is being romantic.'
`Exactly!' he said.
As a matter of fact, he was tired. This evening had tired him. He would
rather have been with his technical books, or his pit-manager, or
listening-in to the radio.
Mrs Bolton came in with two glasses of malted milk: for Clifford, to
make him sleep, and for Connie, to fatten her again. It was a regular
night-cap she had introduced.
Connie was glad to go, when she had drunk her glass, and thankful she
needn't help Clifford to bed. She took his glass and put it on the tray,
then took the tray, to leave it outside.
`Goodnight Clifford! Do sleep well! The Racine gets into one like a
dream. Goodnight!'
She had drifted to the door. She was going without kissing him
goodnight. He watched her with sharp, cold eyes. So! She did not even kiss
him goodnight, after he had spent an evening reading to her. Such depths of
callousness in her! Even if the kiss was but a formality, it was on such
formalities that life depends. She was a Bolshevik, really. Her instincts
were Bolshevistic! He gazed coldly and angrily at the door whence she had
gone. Anger!
And again the dread of the night came on him. He was a network of
nerves, anden he was not braced up to work, and so full of energy: or when
he was not listening-in, and so utterly neuter: then he was haunted by
anxiety and a sense of dangerous impending void. He was afraid. And Connie
could keep the fear off him, if she would. But it was obvious she wouldn't,
she wouldn't. She was callous, cold and callous to all that he did for her.
He gave up his life for her, and she was callous to him. She only wanted her
own way. `The lady loves her will.'
Now it was a baby she was obsessed by. Just so that it should be her
own, all her own, and not his!
Clifford was so healthy, considering. He looked so well and ruddy in
the face, his shoulders were broad and strong, his chest deep, he had put on
flesh. And yet, at the same time, he was afraid of death. A terrible hollow
seemed to menace him somewhere, somehow, a void, and into this void his
energy would collapse. Energyless, he felt at times he was dead, really
dead.
So his rather prominent pale eyes had a queer look, furtive, and yet a
little cruel, so cold: and at the same time, almost impudent. It was a very
odd look, this look of impudence: as if he were triumphing over life in
spite of life. `Who knoweth the mysteries of the will---for it can triumph
even against the angels---'
But his dread was the nights when he could not sleep. Then it was awful
indeed, when annihilation pressed in on him on every side. Then it was
ghastly, to exist without having any life: lifeless, in the night, to exist.
But now he could ring for Mrs Bolton. And she would always come. That
was a great comfort. She would come in her dressing gown, with her hair in a
plait down her back, curiously girlish and dim, though the brown plait was
streaked with grey. And she would make him coffee or camomile tea, and she
would play chess or piquet with him. She had a woman's queer faculty of
playing even chess well enough, when she was three parts asleep, well enough
to make her worth beating. So, in the silent intimacy of the night, they
sat, or she sat and he lay on the bed, with the reading-lamp shedding its
solitary light on them, she almost gone in sleep, he almost gone in a sort
of fear, and they played, played together---then they had a cup of coffee
and a biscuit together, hardly speaking, in the silence of night, but being
a reassurance to one another.
And this night she was wondering who Lady Chatterley's lover was. And
she was thinking of her own Ted, so long dead, yet for her never quite dead.
And when she thought of him, the old, old grudge against the world rose up,
but especially against the masters, that they had killed him. They had not
really killed him. Yet, to her, emotionally, they had. And somewhere deep in
herself because of it, she was a nihilist, and really anarchic.
In her half-sleep, thoughts of her Ted and thoughts of Lady
Chatterley's unknown lover commingled, and then she felt she shared with the
other woman a great grudge against Sir Clifford and all he stood for. At the
same time she was playing piquet with him, and they were gambling sixpences.
And it was a source of satisfaction to be playing piquet with a baronet, and
even losing sixpences to him.
When they played cards, they always gambled. It made him forget
himself. And he usually won. Tonight too he was winning. So he would not go
to sleep till the first dawn appeared. Luckily it began to appear at half
past four or thereabouts.
Connie was in bed, and fast asleep all this time. But the keeper, too,
could not rest. He had closed the coops and made his round of the wood, then
gone home and eaten supper. But he did not go to bed. Instead he sat by the
fire and thought.
He thought of his boyhood in Tevershall, and of his five or six years
of married life. He thought of his wife, and always bitterly. She had seemed
so brutal. But he had not seen her now since 1915, in the spring when he
joined up. Yet there she was, not three miles away, and more brutal than
ever. He hoped never to see her again while he lived.
He thought of his life abroad, as a soldier. India, Egypt, then India
again: the blind, thoughtless life with the horses: the colonel who had
loved him and whom he had loved: the several years that he had been an
officer, a lieutenant with a very fair chance of being a captain. Then the
death of the colonel from pneumonia, and his own narrow escape from death:
his damaged health: his deep restlessness: his leaving the army and coming
back to England to be a working man again.
He was temporizing with life. He had thought he would be safe, at least
for a time, in this wood. There was no shooting as yet: he had to rear the
pheasants. He would have no guns to serve. He would be alone, and apart from
life, which was all he wanted. He had to have some sort of a background. And
this was his native place. There was even his mother, though she had never
meant very much to him. And he could go on in life, existing from day to
day, without connexion and without hope. For he did not know what to do with
himself.
He did not know what to do with himself. Since he had been an officer
for some years, and had mixed among the other officers and civil servants,
with their wives and families, he had lost all ambition to `get on'. There
was a toughness, a curious rubbernecked toughness and unlivingness about the
middle and upper classes, as he had known them, which just left him feeling
cold and different from them.
So, he had come back to his own class. To find there, what he had
forgotten during his absence of years, a pettiness and a vulgarity of manner
extremely distasteful. He admitted now at last, how important manner was. He
admitted, also, how important it was even to pretend not to care about the
halfpence and the small things of life. But among the common people there
was no pretence. A penny more or less on the bacon was worse than a change
in the Gospel. He could not stand it.
And again, there was the wage-squabble. Having lived among the owning
classes, he knew the utter futility of expecting any solution of the
wage-squabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was not
to care, not to care about the wages.
Yet, if you were poor and wretched you had to care. Anyhow, it was
becoming the only thing they did care about. The care about money was like a
great cancer, eating away the individuals of all classes. He refused to care
about money.
And what then? What did life offer apart from the care of money?
Nothing.
Yet he could live alone, in the wan satisfaction of being alone, and
raise pheasants to be shot ultimately by fat men after breakfast. It was
futility, futility to the nth power.
But why care, why bother? And he had not cared nor bothered till now,
when this woman had come into his life. He was nearly ten years older than
she. And he was a thousand years older in experience, starting from the
bottom. The connexion between them was growing closer. He could see the day
when it would clinch up and they would have to make a life together. `For
the bonds of love are ill to loose!'
And what then? What then? Must he start again, with nothing to start
on? Must he entangle this woman? Must he have the horrible broil with her
lame husband? And also some sort of horrible broil with his own brutal wife,
who hated him? Misery! Lots of misery! And he was no longer young and merely
buoyant. Neither was he the insouciant sort. Every bitterness and every
ugliness would hurt him: and the woman!
But even if they got clear of Sir Clifford and of his own wife, even if
they got clear, what were they going to do? What was he, himself going to
do? What was he going to do with his life? For he must do something. He
couldn't be a mere hanger-on, on her money and his own very small pension.
It was the insoluble. He could only think of going to America, to try a
new air. He disbelieved in the dollar utterly. But perhaps, perhaps there
was something else.
He could not rest nor even go to bed. After sitting in a stupor of
bitter thoughts until midnight, he got suddenly from his chair and reached
for his coat and gun.
`Come on, lass,' he said to the dog. `We're best outside.'
It was a starry night, but moonless. He went on a slow, scrupulous,
soft-stepping and stealthy round. The only thing he had to contend with was
the colliers setting snares for rabbits, particularly the Stacks Gate
colliers, on the Marehay side. But it was breeding season, and even colliers
respected it a little. Nevertheless the stealthy beating of the round in
search of poachers soothed his nerves and took his mind off his thoughts.
But when he had done his slow, cautious beating of his bounds---it was
nearly a five-mile walk---he was tired. He went to the top of the knoll and
looked out. There was no sound save the noise, the faint shuffling noise
from Stacks Gate colliery, that never ceased working: and there were hardly
any lights, save the brilliant electric rows at the works. The world lay
darkly and fumily sleeping. It was half past two. But even in its sleep it
was an uneasy, cruel world, stirring with the noise of a train or some great
lorry on the road, and flashing with some rosy lightning flash from the
furnaces. It was a world of iron and coal, the cruelty of iron and the smoke
of coal, and the endless, endless greed that drove it all. Only greed, greed
stirring in its sleep.
It was cold, and he was coughing. A fine cold draught blew over the
knoll. He thought of the woman. Now he would have given all he had or ever