LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER_LAWRENCE, DAVID HERBERT (Page 17 of 17)

She entered the house, which now she hated with every fibre in her body. The great, rambling mass of a place seemed evil to her, just a menace over her. She was no longer its mistress, she was its victim.

‘I can’t stay long here,’ she whispered to Hilda, terrified.

And she suffered going into her own bedroom, re-entering into pos-session as if nothing had happened. She hated every minute inside the Wragby walls.

They did not meet Clifford till they went down to dinner. He was dressed, and with a black tie: rather reserved, and very much the superior gentleman. He behaved perfectly politely during the meal and kept a polite sort of conversation going: but it seemed all touched with insanity.

‘How much do the servants know?’ asked Connie, when the woman was out of the room.

‘Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever.’

‘Mrs. Bolton knows.’

He changed colour.

‘Mrs. Bolton is not exactly one of the servants,’ he said.

‘Oh, I don’t mind.’

‘Love of Duncan Forbes? But you didn’t think that worth having, when you met me. Do you mean to say you now love him better than anything else in life?’

‘One changes,’ she said.

‘Possibly! Possibly you may have whims. But you still have to convince me of the importance of the change. I merely don’t believe in your love of Duncan Forbes.’

‘But why should you believe in it? You have only to divorce me, not to believe in my feelings.’

‘And why should I divorce you?’

‘Because I don’t want to live here any more. And you really don’t want me.’

‘Pardon me! I don’t change. For my part, since you are my wife, I should prefer that you should stay under my roof in dignity and quiet. Leaving aside personal feelings, and I assure you, on my part it is leaving aside a great deal, it is bitter as death to me to have this order of life broken up, here in Wragby, and the decent round of daily life smashed, just for some whim of yours.’

After a time of silence she said:

‘Do you? My dear Madam, you are too intelligent, I assure you, to believe in your own love for Duncan Forbes. Believe me, even now you really care more for me. So why should I give in to such nonsense!’

She felt he was right there. And she felt she could keep silent no longer.

‘Because it isn’t Duncan that I do love,’ she said, looking up at him.

‘We only said it was Duncan, to spare your feelings.’

‘To spare my feelings?’

‘Yes! Because who I really love, and it’ll make you hate me, is Mr Mel-lors, who was our game-keeper here.’

If he could have sprung out of his chair, he would have done so. His face went yellow, and his eyes bulged with disaster as he glared at her.

Then he dropped back in the chair, gasping and looking up at the ceiling.

At length he sat up.

‘Do you mean to say you’re telling me the truth?’ he asked, looking gruesome.

‘Yes! You know I am.’

‘And when did you begin with him?’

‘In the spring.’

He was silent like some beast in a trap.

‘And it was you, then, in the bedroom at the cottage?’

So he had really inwardly known all the time.

‘Yes!’

He still leaned forward in his chair, gazing at her like a cornered beast.

‘My God, you ought to be wiped off the face of the earth!’

‘Why?’ she ejaculated faintly.

But he seemed not to hear.

‘That scum! That bumptious lout! That miserable cad! And carrying on with him all the time, while you were here and he was one of my servants! My God, my God, is there any end to the beastly lowness of women!’

He was beside himself with rage, as she knew he would be.

‘And you mean to say you want to have a child to a cad like that?’

‘And won’t you divorce me?’ she said. ‘You can use Duncan as a pre-text! There’d be no need to bring in the real name. Duncan doesn’t mind.’

‘I shall never divorce you,’ he said, as if a nail had been driven in.

‘But why? Because I want you to?’

‘Because I follow my own inclination, and I’m not inclined to.’

It was useless. She went upstairs and told Hilda the upshot.

‘Better get away tomorrow,’ said Hilda, ‘and let him come to his senses.’

So Connie spent half the night packing her really private and personal effects. In the morning she had her trunks sent to the station, without telling Clifford. She decided to see him only to say good-bye, before lunch.

But she spoke to Mrs. Bolton.

‘I must say good-bye to you, Mrs. Bolton, you know why. But I can trust you not to talk.’

I got on here with a bit of contriving, because I knew Richards, the company engineer, in the army. It is a farm belonging to Butler and Smitham Colliery Company, they use it for raising hay and oats for the pit-ponies; not a private concern. But they’ve got cows and pigs and all the rest of it, and I get thirty shillings a week as labourer. Rowley, the farmer, puts me on to as many jobs as he can, so that I can learn as much as possible between now and next Easter. I’ve not heard a thing about Bertha. I’ve no idea why she didn’t show up at the divorce, nor where she is nor what she’s up to. But if I keep quiet till March I suppose I shall be free. And don’t you bother about Sir Clifford. He’ll want to get rid of you one of these days. If he leaves you alone, it’s a lot.

I’ve got lodging in a bit of an old cottage in Engine Row very decent. The man is engine-driver at High Park, tall, with a beard, and very chapel. The woman is a birdy bit of a thing who loves anything superior. King’s English and allow-me! all the time. But they lost their only son in the war, and it’s sort of knocked a hole in them. There’s a long gawky lass of a daughter training for a school-teacher, and I help her with her lessons sometimes, so we’re quite the family. But they’re very decent people, and only too kind to me. I expect I’m more coddled than you are.

I like farming all right. It’s not inspiring, but then I don’t ask to be inspired. I’m used to horses, and cows, though they are very female, have a soothing effect on me. When I sit with my head in her side, milking, I feel very solaced. They have six rather fine Herefords. Oat-harvest is just over and I enjoyed it, in spite of sore hands and a lot of rain. I don’t take much notice of people, but get on with them all right. Most things one just ignores.

If you could only tell them that living and spending isn’t the same thing! But it’s no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily on twenty-five shillings. If the men wore scarlet trousers as I said, they wouldn’t think so much of money: if they could dance and hop and skip, and sing and swagger and be handsome, they could do with very little cash. And amuse the women themselves, and be amused by the women. They ought to learn to be naked and handsome, and to sing in a mass and dance the old group dances, and carve the stools they sit on, and embroider their own emblems. Then they wouldn’t need money. And that’s the only way to solve the industrial problem: train the people to be able to live and live in handsomeness, without needing to spend. But you can’t do it. They’re all one-track minds nowadays. Whereas the mass of people oughtn’t even to try to think, because they can’t. They should be alive and frisky, and acknowledge the great god Pan. He’s the only god for the masses, forever. The few can go in for higher cults if they like. But let the mass be forever pagan.

But the colliers aren’t pagan, far from it. They’re a sad lot, a deadened lot of men: dead to their women, dead to life. The young ones scoot about on motor-bikes with girls, and jazz when they get a chance, But they’re very dead. And it needs money. Money poisons you when you’ve got it, and starves you when you haven’t.

That’s why I don’t like to start thinking about you actually. It only tor-tures me, and does you no good. I don’t want you to be away from me. But if I start fretting it wastes something. Patience, always patience. This is my fortieth winter. And I can’t help all the winters that have been. But this winter I’ll stick to my little Pentecost flame, and have some peace. And I won’t let the breath of people blow it out. I believe in a higher mystery, that doesn’t let even the crocus be blown out. And if you’re in Scotland and I’m in the Midlands, and I can’t put my arms round you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I’ve got something of you. My soul softly flaps in the little Pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being between the sun and the earth. But it’s a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause.

So I love chastity now, because it is the peace that comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause of peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow, brilliant. But not now, not yet! Now is the time to be chaste, it is so good to be chaste, like a river of cool water in my soul. I love the chastity now that it flows between us. It is like fresh water and rain. How can men want wearisomely to philander. What a misery to be like Don Juan, and impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace, and the little flame alight, impotent and unable to be chaste in the cool between-whiles, as by a river.