Lady Chatterley's Lover .....................................................................................................................................1

David Herbert Lawrence ..........................................................................................................................1

Chapter 1 ..................................................................................................................................................1

Chapter 2 ..................................................................................................................................................6

Chapter 3 ................................................................................................................................................10

Chapter 4 ................................................................................................................................................17

Chapter 5 ................................................................................................................................................24

Chapter 6 ................................................................................................................................................34

Chapter 7 ................................................................................................................................................44

Chapter 8 ................................................................................................................................................54

Chapter 9 ................................................................................................................................................64

Chapter 10 ..............................................................................................................................................71

Chapter 11 ..............................................................................................................................................98

Chapter 12 ............................................................................................................................................111

Chapter 13 ............................................................................................................................................122

Chapter 14 ............................................................................................................................................136

Chapter 15 ............................................................................................................................................151

Chapter 16 ............................................................................................................................................165

Chapter 17 ............................................................................................................................................184

Chapter 18 ............................................................................................................................................196

Chapter 19 ............................................................................................................................................210

Oxford Text Archive, Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN;

Freely available for noncommercial use provided that this header is included in its entirety with any copy

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among

the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now

no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head.

She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's

honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or

less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twentythree years old, and he was twentynine.

His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again. For two years he

remained in the doctor's hands. Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower

This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family `seat'. His

father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to

start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate

income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother

was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the

He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bathchair with a

small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the line melancholy park,

Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and

bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthylooking face, arid his paleblue,

challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was

expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful

He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the

anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so

much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of

Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, countrylooking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow

movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to

have come from her native village. It was not so at all. Her father was the once wellknown R. A., old Sir

Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather preRaphaelite days.

Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might be called an

aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in

art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist

conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.

The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least daunted by either art or ideal politics. It was

their natural atmosphere. They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan

They had been sent to Dresden at the age of fifteen, for music among other things. And they had had a good

time there. They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological

and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women. And

they tramped off to the forests with sturdy youths bearing guitars, twangtwang! They sang the Wandervogel

songs, and they were free. Free! That was the great word. Out in the open world, out in the forests of the

morning, with lusty and splendidthroated young fellows, free to do as they liked, andabove allto say

what they liked. It was the talk that mattered supremely: the impassioned interchange of talk. Love was only

Both Hilda and Constance had had their tentative loveaffairs by the time they were eighteen. The young

men with whom they talked so passionately and sang so lustily and camped under the trees in such freedom

wanted, of course, the love connexion. The girls were doubtful, but then the thing was so much talked about,

it was supposed to be so important. And the men were so humble and craving. Why couldn't a girl be

So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate

arguments. The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the lovemaking and connexion were only a

sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anticlimax. One was less in love with the boy afterwards, and a

little inclined to hate him, as if he had trespassed on one's privacy and inner freedom. For, of course, being a

girl, one's whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and

noble freedom. What else did a girl's life mean? To shake off the old and sordid connexions and subjections.

And however one might sentimentalize it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connexions

and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something

better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a

woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged

And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he

wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant

connexion. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers

about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really

giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use

this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him

finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connexion and

Both sisters had had their love experience by the time the war came, and they were hurried home. Neither

was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally very near: that is unless they were

profoundly interested, TALKING to one another. The amazing, the profound, the unbelievable thrill there

was in passionately talking to some really clever young man by the hour, resuming day after day for

months...this they had never realized till it happened! The paradisal promise: Thou shalt have men to talk

to!had never been uttered. It was fulfilled before they knew what a promise it was.

And if after the roused intimacy of these vivid and soulenlightened discussions the sex thing became more

or less inevitable, then let it. It marked the end of a chapter. It had a thrill of its own too: a queer vibrating

thrill inside the body, a final spasm of selfassertion, like the last word, exciting, and very like the row of

asterisks that can be put to show the end of a paragraph, and a break in the theme.

When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen,

L'amour avait poss� par l�, as somebody puts it. But he was a man of experience himself, and let life take its

course. As for the mot a nervous invalid in the last few months of her life, she wanted her girls to be `free',

and to `fulfil themselves'. She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her.

Heaven knows why, for she was a woman who had her own income and her own way. She blamed her

husband. But as a matter of fact, it was some old impression of authority on her own mind or soul that she

could not get rid of. It had nothing to do with Sir Malcolm, who left his nervously hostile, highspirited wife

So the girls were `free', and went back to Dresden, and their music, and the university and the young men.

They loved their respective young men, and their respective young men loved them with all the passion of

mental attraction. All the wonderful things the young men thought and expressed and wrote, they thought and

expressed and wrote for the young women. Connie's young man was musical, Hilda's was technical. But they

simply lived for their young women. In their minds and their mental excitements, that is. Somewhere else

It was obvious in them too that love had gone through them: that is, the physical experience. It is curious

what a subtle but unmistakable transmutation it makes, both in the body of men and women: the woman more

blooming, more subtly rounded, her young angularities softened, and her expression either anxious or

triumphant: the man much quieter, more inward, the very shapes of his shoulders and his buttocks less

In the actual sexthrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male power. But quickly

they recovered themselves, took the sexthrill as a sensation, and remained free. Whereas the men, in

gratitude to the woman for the sex experience, let their souls go out to her. And afterwards looked rather as if

they had lost a shilling and found sixpence. Connie's man could be a bit sulky, and Hilda's a bit jeering. But

that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you

won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except

that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.

However, came the war, Hilda and Connie were rushed home again after having been home already in May,

to their mother's funeral. Before Christmas of 1914 both their German young men were dead: whereupon the

sisters wept, and loved the young men passionately, but underneath forgot them. They didn't exist any more.

Both sisters lived in their father's, really their mother's, Kensington housemixed with the young Cambridge

group, the group that stood for `freedom' and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a

wellbred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultrasensitive sort

of manner. Hilda, however, suddenly married a man ten years older than herself, an elder member of the

same Cambridge group, a man with a fair amount of money, and a comfortable family job in the government:

he also wrote philosophical essays. She lived with him in a smallish house in Westminster, and moved in that

good sort of society of people in the government who are not tiptoppers, but who are, or would be, the real

intelligent power in the nation: people who know what they're talking about, or talk as if they did.

Connie did a mild form of warwork, and consorted with the flanneltrousers Cambridge intransigents, who

gently mocked at everything, so far. Her `friend' was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twentytwo, who

had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of coalmining. He had previously

spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at

Clifford Chatterley was more upperclass than Connie. Connie was welltodo intelligentsia, but he was

aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's

But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more `society', was in his own way more provincial

and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow `great world', that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was

shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes,

and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middleand lowerclass

humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious of his own

defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day.

Therefore the peculiar soft assurance of a girl like Constance Reid fascinated him. She was so much more

Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far

too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any

sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were

ridiculous: our own waitandsee sort especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old buffers of generals

altogether, the redfaced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of

In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous: certainly everything connected with authority,

whether it were in the army or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree. And as far as

the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father,

was intensely ridiculous, chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them into the

war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but, also, spending more money on his country than he'd got.

When Miss ChatterleyEmmacame down to London from the Midlands to do some nursing work, she

was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey and his determined patriotism. Herbert, the elder brother

and heir, laughed outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench props. But Clifford only smiled

a little uneasily. Everything was ridiculous, quite true. But when it came too close and oneself became

ridiculous too...? At least people of a different class, like Connie, were earnest about something. They

They were rather earnest about the Tommies, and the threat of conscription, and the shortage of sugar and

toffee for the children. In all these things, of course, the authorities were ridiculously at fault. But Clifford

could not take it to heart. To him the authorities were ridiculous ab ovo, not because of toffee or Tommies.

And the authorities felt ridiculous, and behaved in a rather ridiculous fashion, and it was all a mad hatter's

teaparty for a while. Till things developed over there, and Lloyd George came to save the situation over

In 1916 Herbert Chatterley was killed, so Clifford became heir. He was terrified even of this. His importance

as son of Sir Geoffrey, and child of Wragby, was so ingrained in him, he could never escape it. And yet he

knew that this too, in the eyes of the vast seething world, was ridiculous. Now he was heir and responsible for

Wragby. Was that not terrible? and also splendid and at the same time, perhaps, purely absurd?

Sir Geoffrey would have none of the absurdity. He was pale and tense, withdrawn into himself, and

obstinately determined to save his country and his own position, let it be Lloyd George or who it might. So

cut off he was, so divorced from the England that was really England, so utterly incapable, that he even

thought well of Horatio Bottomley. Sir Geoffrey stood for England and Lloyd George as his forebears had

stood for England and St George: and he never knew there was a difference. So Sir Geoffrey felled timber

And he wanted Clifford to marry and produce an heir. Clifford felt his father was a hopeless anachronism.

But wherein was he himself any further ahead, except in a wincing sense of the ridiculousness of everything,

and the paramount ridiculousness of his own position? For willynilly he took his baronetcy and Wragby

The gay excitement had gone out of the war...dead. Too much death and horror. A man needed support arid

The Chatterleys, two brothers and a sister, had lived curiously isolated, shut in with one another at Wragby,

in spite of all their connexions. A sense of isolation intensified the family tie, a sense of the weakness of their

position, a sense of defencelessness, in spite of, or because of, the title and the land. They were cut off from

those industrial Midlands in which they passed their lives. And they were cut off from their own class by the

brooding, obstinate, shutup nature of Sir Geoffrey, their father, whom they ridiculed, but whom they were

The three had said they would all live together always. But now Herbert was dead, and Sir Geoffrey wanted

Clifford to marry. Sir Geoffrey barely mentioned it: he spoke very little. But his silent, brooding insistence

But Emma said No! She was ten years older than Clifford, and she felt his marrying would be a desertion and

Clifford married Connie, nevertheless, and had his month's honeymoon with her. It was the terrible year

1917, and they were intimate as two people who stand together on a sinking ship. He had been virgin when

he married: and the sex part did not mean much to him. They were so close, he and she, apart from that. And

Connie exulted a little in this intimacy which was beyond sex, and beyond a man's `satisfaction'. Clifford

anyhow was not just keen on his `satisfaction', as so many men seemed to be. No, the intimacy was deeper,

more personal than that. And sex was merely an accident, or an adjunct, one of the curious obsolete, organic

processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not really necessary. Though Connie did want

But early in 1918 Clifford was shipped home smashed, and there was no child. And Sir Geoffrey died of

Connie and Clifford came home to Wragby in the autumn of 1920. Miss Chatterley, still disgusted at her

Wragby was a long low old house in brown stone, begun about the middle of the eighteenth century, and

added on to, till it was a warren of a place without much distinction. It stood on an eminence in a rather line

old park of oak trees, but alas, one could see in the near distance the chimney of Tevershall pit, with its

clouds of steam and smoke, and on the damp, hazy distance of the hill the raw straggle of Tevershall village,

a village which began almost at the park gates, and trailed in utter hopeless ugliness for a long and gruesome

mile: houses, rows of wretched, small, begrimed, brick houses, with black slate roofs for lids, sharp angles

Connie was accustomed to Kensington or the Scotch hills or the Sussex downs: that was her England. With

the stoicism of the young she took in the utter, soulless ugliness of the coalandiron Midlands at a glance,

and left it at what it was: unbelievable and not to be thought about. From the rather dismal rooms at Wragby

she heard the rattlerattle of the screens at the pit, the puff of the windingengine, the clinkclink of shunting

trucks, and the hoarse little whistle of the colliery locomotives. Tevershall pitbank was burning, had been

burning for years, and it would cost thousands to put it out. So it had to burn. And when the wind was that

way, which was often, the house was full of the stench of this sulphurous combustion of the earth's

excrement. But even on windless days the air always smelt of something underearth: sulphur, iron, coal, or

acid. And even on the Christmas roses the smuts settled persistently, incredible, like black manna from the

Well, there it was: fated like the rest of things! It was rather awful, but why kick? You couldn't kick it away.

It just went on. Life, like all the rest! On the low dark ceiling of cloud at night red blotches burned and

quavered, dappling and swelling and contracting, like burns that give pain. It was the furnaces. At first they

fascinated Connie with a sort of horror; she felt she was living underground. Then she got used to them. And

Clifford professed to like Wragby better than London. This country had a grim will of its own, and the people

had guts. Connie wondered what else they had: certainly neither eyes nor minds. The people were as haggard,

shapeless, and dreary as the countryside, and as unfriendly. Only there was something in their deepmouthed

slurring of the dialect, and the threshthresh of their hobnailed pitboots as they trailed home in gangs on

There had been no welcome home for the young squire, no festivities, no deputation, not even a single

flower. Only a dank ride in a motorcar up a dark, damp drive, burrowing through gloomy trees, out to the

slope of the park where grey damp sheep were feeding, to the knoll where the house spread its dark brown

facade, and the housekeeper and her husband were hovering, like unsure tenants on the face of the earth,

There was no communication between Wragby Hall and Tevershall village, none. No caps were touched, no

curtseys bobbed. The colliers merely stared; the tradesmen lifted their caps to Connie as to an acquaintance,

and nodded awkwardly to Clifford; that was all. Gulf impassable, and a quiet sort of resentment on either

side. At first Connie suffered from the steady drizzle of resentment that came from the village. Then she

hardened herself to it, and it became a sort of tonic, something to live up to. It was not that she and Clifford

were unpopular, they merely belonged to another species altogether from the colliers. Gulf impassable,

breach indescribable, such as is perhaps nonexistent south of the Trent. But in the Midlands and the industrial

North gulf impassable, across which no communication could take place. You stick to your side, I'll stick to

Yet the village sympathized with Clifford and Connie in the abstract. In the flesh it wasYou leave me

The rector was a nice man of about sixty, full of his duty, and reduced, personally, almost to a nonentity by

the silentYou leave me alone!of the village. The miners' wives were nearly all Methodists. The miners

were nothing. But even so much official uniform as the clergyman wore was enough to obscure entirely the

fact that he was a man like any other man. No, he was Mester Ashby, a sort of automatic preaching and

This stubborn, instinctiveWe think ourselves as good as you, if you are Lady Chatterley!puzzled and

baffled Connie at first extremely. The curious, suspicious, false amiability with which the miners' wives met

her overtures; the curiously offensive tinge ofOh dear me! I am somebody now, with Lady Chatterley

talking to me! But she needn't think I'm not as good as her for all that!which she always heard twanging in

the women's halffawning voices, was impossible. There was no getting past it. It was hopelessly and

Clifford left them alone, and she learnt to do the same: she just went by without looking at them, and they

stared as if she were a walking wax figure. When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty and

contemptuous; one could no longer afford to be friendly. In fact he was altogether rather supercilious and

contemptuous of anyone not in his own class. He stood his ground, without any attempt at conciliation. And

he was neither liked nor disliked by the people: he was just part of things, like the pitbank and Wragby

But Clifford was really extremely shy and selfconscious now he was lamed. He hated seeing anyone except

just the personal servants. For he had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bathchair. Nevertheless he was

just as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he wore the careful Bond Street neckties just as

before, and from the top he looked just as smart and impressive as ever. He had never been one of the modern

ladylike young men: rather bucolic even, with his ruddy face and broad shoulders. But his very quiet,

hesitating voice, and his eyes, at the same time bold and frightened, assured and uncertain, revealed his

nature. His manner was often offensively supercilious, and then again modest and selfeffacing, almost

Connie and he were attached to one another, in the aloof modern way. He was much too hurt in himself, the

great shock of his maiming, to be easy and flippant. He was a hurt thing. And as such Connie stuck to him

But she could not help feeling how little connexion he really had with people. The miners were, in a sense,

his own men; but he saw them as objects rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life, crude raw

phenomena rather than human beings along with him. He was in some way afraid of them, he could not bear

to have them look at him now he was lame. And their queer, crude life seemed as unnatural as that of

He was remotely interested; but like a man looking down a microscope, or up a telescope. He was not in

touch. He was not in actual touch with anybody, save, traditionally, with Wragby, and, through the close

bond of family defence, with Emma. Beyond this nothing really touched him. Connie felt that she herself

didn't really, not really touch him; perhaps there was nothing to get at ultimately; just a negation of human

Yet he was absolutely dependent on her, he needed her every moment. Big and strong as he was, he was

helpless. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a sort of bathchair with a motor

attachment, in which he could puff slowly round the park. But alone he was like a lost thing. He needed

Still he was ambitious. He had taken to writing stories; curious, very personal stories about people he had

known. Clever, rather spiteful, and yet, in some mysterious way, meaningless. The observation was

extraordinary and peculiar. But there was no touch, no actual contact. It was as if the whole thing took place

in a vacuum. And since the field of life is largely an artificiallylighted stage today, the stories were

Clifford was almost morbidly sensitive about these stories. He wanted everyone to think them good, of the

best, ne plus ultra. They appeared in the most modern magazines, and were praised and blamed as usual. But

to Clifford the blame was torture, like knives goading him. It was as if the whole of his being were in his

Connie helped him as much as she could. At first she was thrilled. He talked everything over with her

monotonously, insistently, persistently, and she had to respond with all her might. It was as if her whole soul

and body and sex had to rouse up and pass into theme stories of his. This thrilled her and absorbed her.

Of physical life they lived very little. She had to superintend the house. But the housekeeper had served Sir

Geoffrey for many years, arid the driedup, elderly, superlatively correct female you could hardly call her a

parlourmaid, or even a woman...who waited at table, had been in the house for forty years. Even the very

housemaids were no longer young. It was awful! What could you do with such a place, but leave it alone! All

these endless rooms that nobody used, all the Midlands routine, the mechanical cleanliness and the

mechanical order! Clifford had insisted on a new cook, an experienced woman who had served him in his

rooms in London. For the rest the place seemed run by mechanical anarchy. Everything went on in pretty

good order, strict cleanliness, and strict punctuality; even pretty strict honesty. And yet, to Connie, it was a

methodical anarchy. No warmth of feeling united it organically. The house seemed as dreary as a disused

What could she do but leave it alone? So she left it alone. Miss Chatterley came sometimes, with her

aristocratic thin face, and triumphed, finding nothing altered. She would never forgive Connie for ousting her

from her union in consciousness with her brother. It was she, Emma, who should be bringing forth the stories,

these books, with him; the Chatterley stories, something new in the world, that they, the Chatterleys, had put

there. There was no other standard. There was no organic connexion with the thought and expression that had

gone before. Only something new in the world: the Chatterley books, entirely personal.

Connie's father, where he paid a flying visit to Wragby, and in private to his daughter: As for Clifford's

writing, it's smart, but there's nothing in it. It won't last! Connie looked at the burly Scottish knight who had

done himself well all his life, and her eyes, her big, stillwondering blue eyes became vague. Nothing in it!

What did he mean by nothing in it? If the critics praised it, and Clifford's name was almost famous, and it

even brought in money...what did her father mean by saying there was nothing in Clifford's writing? What

For Connie had adopted the standard of the young: what there was in the moment was everything. And

It was in her second winter at Wragby her father said to her: `I hope, Connie, you won't let circumstances

`Unless you like it, of course!' said her father hastily. To Clifford he said the same, when the two men were

`She's getting thin...angular. It's not her style. She's not the pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she's a bonny

He wanted to say something later to Connie about the demivierge business...the halfvirgin state of her

affairs. But he could not bring himself to do it. He was at once too intimate with her and not intimate enough.

He was so very much at one with her, in his mind and hers, but bodily they were nonexistent to one another,

and neither could bear to drag in the corpus delicti. They were so intimate, and utterly out of touch.

Connie guessed, however, that her father had said something, and that something was in Clifford's mind. She

knew that he didn't mind whether she were demivierge or demimonde, so long as he didn't absolutely

know, and wasn't made to see. What the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know, doesn't exist.

Connie and Clifford had now been nearly two years at Wragby, living their vague life of absorption in

Clifford and his work. Their interests had never ceased to flow together over his work. They talked and

wrestled in the throes of composition, and felt as if something were happening, really happening, really in the

And thus far it was a life: in the void. For the rest it was nonexistence. Wragby was there, the servants...but

spectral, not really existing. Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods that joined the park, and

enjoyed the solitude and the mystery, kicking the brown leaves of autumn, and picking the primroses of

spring. But it was all a dream; or rather it was like the simulacrum of reality. The oakleaves were to her like

oakleaves seen ruffling in a mirror, she herself was a figure somebody had read about, picking primroses

that were only shadows or memories, or words. No substance to her or anything...no touch, no contact! Only

this life with Clifford, this endless spinning of webs of yarn, of the minutiae of consciousness, these stories

Sir Malcolm said there was nothing in, and they wouldn't last. Why should there be anything in them, why

should they last? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Sufficient unto the moment is the appearance of

Clifford had quite a number of friends, acquaintances really, and he invited them to Wragby. He invited all

sorts of people, critics and writers, people who would help to praise his books. And they were flattered at

being asked to Wragby, and they praised. Connie understood it all perfectly. But why not? This was one of

She was hostess to these people...mostly men. She was hostess also to Clifford's occasional aristocratic

relations. Being a soft, ruddy, countrylooking girl, inclined to freckles, with big blue eyes, and curling,

brown hair, and a soft voice, and rather strong, female loins she was considered a little oldfashioned and

`womanly'. She was not a `little pilchard sort of fish', like a boy, with a boy's flat breast and little buttocks.

So the men, especially those no longer young, were very nice to her indeed. But, knowing what torture poor

Clifford would feel at the slightest sign of flirting on her part, she gave them no encouragement at all. She

was quiet and vague, she had no contact with them and intended to have none. Clifford was extraordinarily

His relatives treated her quite kindly. She knew that the kindliness indicated a lack of fear, and that these

people had no respect for you unless you could frighten them a little. But again she had no contact. She let

them be kindly and disdainful, she let them feel they had no need to draw their steel in readiness. She had no

Time went on. Whatever happened, nothing happened, because she was so beautifully out of contact. She and

Clifford lived in their ideas and his books. She entertained...there were always people in the house. Time

Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness. Out of her disconnexion, a restlessness was taking

possession of her like madness. It twitched her limbs when she didn't want to twitch them, it jerked her spine

when she didn't want to jerk upright but preferred to rest comfortably. It thrilled inside her body, in her

womb, somewhere, till she felt she must jump into water and swim to get away from it; a mad restlessness. It

It was just restlessness. She would rush off across the park, abandon Clifford, and lie prone in the bracken. To

get away from the house...she must get away from the house and everybody. The work was her one refuge,

But it was not really a refuge, a sanctuary, because she had no connexion with it. It was only a place where

she could get away from the rest. She never really touched the spirit of the wood itself...if it had any such

Vaguely she knew herself that she was going to pieces in some way. Vaguely she knew she was out of

connexion: she had lost touch with the substantial and vital world. Only Clifford and his books, which did not

exist...which had nothing in them! Void to void. Vaguely she knew. But it was like beating her head against a

Her father warned her again: `Why don't you get yourself a beau, Connie? Do you all the good in the world.'

That winter Michaelis came for a few days. He was a young Irishman who had already made a large fortune

by his plays in America. He had been taken up quite enthusiastically for a time by smart society in London,

for he wrote smart society plays. Then gradually smart society realized that it had been made ridiculous at the

hands of a downatheel Dublin streetrat, and revulsion came. Michaelis was the last word in what was

caddish and bounderish. He was discovered to be antiEnglish, and to the class that made this discovery this

was worse than the dirtiest crime. He was cut dead, and his corpse thrown into the refuse can.

Nevertheless Michaelis had his apartment in Mayfair, and walked down Bond Street the image of a

gentleman, for you cannot get even the best tailors to cut their lowdown customers, when the customers pay.

Clifford was inviting the young man of thirty at an inauspicious moment in thyoung man's career. Yet

Clifford did not hesitate. Michaelis had the ear of a few million people, probably; and, being a hopeless

outsider, he would no doubt be grateful to be asked down to Wragby at this juncture, when the rest of the

smart world was cutting him. Being grateful, he would no doubt do Clifford `good' over there in America.

Kudos! A man gets a lot of kudos, whatever that may be, by being talked about in the right way, especially

`over there'. Clifford was a coming man; and it was remarkable what a sound publicity instinct he had. In the

end Michaelis did him most nobly in a play, and Clifford was a sort of popular hero. Till the reaction, when

Connie wondered a little over Clifford's blind, imperious instinct to become known: known, that is, to the

vast amorphous world he did not himself know, and of which he was uneasily afraid; known as a writer, as a

firstclass modern writer. Connie was aware from successful, old, hearty, bluffing Sir Malcolm, that artists

did advertise themselves, and exert themselves to put their goods over. But her father used channels

readymade, used by all the other R. A.s who sold their pictures. Whereas Clifford discovered new channels

of publicity, all kinds. He had all kinds of people at Wragby, without exactly lowering himself. But,

determined to build himself a monument of a reputation quickly, he used any handy rubble in the making.

Michaelis arrived duly, in a very neat car, with a chauffeur and a manservant. He was absolutely Bond Street!

But at right of him something in Clifford's county soul recoiled. He wasn't exactly... not exactly...in fact, he

wasn't at all, well, what his appearance intended to imply. To Clifford this was final and enough. Yet he was

very polite to the man; to the amazing success in him. The bitchgoddess, as she is called, of Success,

roamed, snarling and protective, round the halfhumble, halfdefiant Michaelis' heels, and intimidated

Clifford completely: for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitchgoddess, Success also, if only she would

Michaelis obviously wasn't an Englishman, in spite of all the tailors, hatters, barbers, booters of the very best

quarter of London. No, no, he obviously wasn't an Englishman: the wrong sort of flattish, pale face and

bearing; and the wrong sort of grievance. He had a grudge and a grievance: that was obvious to any trueborn

English gentleman, who would scorn to let such a thing appear blatant in his own demeanour. Poor Michaelis

had been much kicked, so that he had a slightly tailbetweenthelegs look even now. He had pushed his

way by sheer instinct and sheerer effrontery on to the stage and to the front of it, with his plays. He had

caught the public. And he had thought the kicking days were over. Alas, they weren't... They never would be.

For he, in a sense, asked to be kicked. He pined to be where he didn't belong...among the English upper

classes. And how they enjoyed the various kicks they got at him! And how he hated them!

Nevertheless he travelled with his manservant and his very neat car, this Dublin mongrel.

There was something about him that Connie liked. He didn't put on airs to himself, he had no illusions about

himself. He talked to Clifford sensibly, briefly, practically, about all the things Clifford wanted to know. He

didn't expand or let himself go. He knew he had been asked down to Wragby to be made use of, and like an

old, shrewd, almost indifferent business man, or bigbusiness man, he let himself be asked questions, and he

`Money!' he said. `Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a man to make money. It's

nothing you do. It's no trick you play. It's a sort of permanent accident of your own nature; once you start,

`Oh, quite! You've got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You've got to beat your way in.

`Oh, probably not! I may be a good writer or I may be a bad one, but a writer and a writer of plays is what I

`And you think it's a writer of popular plays that you've got to be?' asked Connie.

`There, exactly!' he said, turning to her in a sudden flash. `There's nothing in it! There's nothing in popularity.

There's nothing in the public, if it comes to that. There's nothing really in my plays to make them popular. It's

not that. They just are like the weather...the sort that will have to be...for the time being.'

He turned his slow, rather full eyes, that had been drowned in such fathomless disillusion, on Connie, and she

trembled a little. He seemed so old...endlessly old, built up of layers of disillusion, going down in him

generation after generation, like geological strata; and at the same time he was forlorn like a child. An

outcast, in a certain sense; but with the desperate bravery of his ratlike existence.

`At least it's wonderful what you've done at your time of life,' said Clifford contemplatively.

`I'm thirty...yes, I'm thirty!' said Michaelis, sharply and suddenly, with a curious laugh; hollow, triumphant,

`How do you mean? Do I live alone? I've got my servant. He's a Greek, so he says, and quite incompetent.

`It sounds like going to have your tonsils cut,' laughed Connie. `Will it be an effort?'

He looked at her admiringly. `Well, Lady Chatterley, somehow it will! I find... excuse me... I find I can't

`Oh, American!' He laughed a hollow laugh. `No, I've asked my man if he will find me a Turk or

Connie really wondered at this queer, melancholy specimen of extraordinary success; it was said he had an

income of fifty thousand dollars from America alone. Sometimes he was handsome: sometimes as he looked

sideways, downwards, and the light fell on him, he had the silent, enduring beauty of a carved ivory Negro

mask, with his rather full eyes, and the strong queerlyarched brows, the immobile, compressed mouth; that

momentary but revealed immobility, an immobility, a timelessness which the Buddha aims at, and which

Negroes express sometimes without ever aiming at it; something old, old, and acquiescent in the race! Aeons

of acquiescence in race destiny, instead of our individual resistance. And then a swimming through, like rats

in a dark river. Connie felt a sudden, strange leap of sympathy for him, a leap mingled with compassion, and

tinged with repulsion, amounting almost to love. The outsider! The outsider! And they called him a bounder!

Michaelis knew at once he had made an impression on her. He turned his full, hazel, slightly prominent eyes

on her in a look of pure detachment. He was estimating her, and the extent of the impression he had made.

With the English nothing could save him from being the eternal outsider, not even love. Yet women

He knew just where he was with Clifford. They were two alien dogs which would have liked to snarl at one

another, but which smiled instead, perforce. But with the woman he was not quite so sure.

Breakfast was served in the bedrooms; Clifford never appeared before lunch, and the diningroom was a

little dreary. After coffee Michaelis, restless and illsitting soul, wondered what he should do. It was a fine

November...day fine for Wragby. He looked over the melancholy park. My God! What a place!

He sent a servant to ask, could he be of any service to Lady Chatterley: he thought of driving into Sheffield.

Connie had a sittingroom on the third floor, the top floor of the central portion of the house. Clifford's

rooms were on the ground floor, of course. Michaelis was flattered by being asked up to Lady Chatterley's

own parlour. He followed blindly after the servant...he never noticed things, or had contact with Isis

surroundings. In her room he did glance vaguely round at the fine German reproductions of Renoir and

`It's very pleasant up here,' he said, with his queer smile, as if it hurt him to smile, showing his teeth. `You are

Her room was the only gay, modern one in the house, the only spot in Wragby where her personality was at

Now she and Michaelis sit on opposite sides of the fire and talked. She asked him about himself, his mother

and father, his brothers...other people were always something of a wonder to her, and when her sympathy was

awakened she was quite devoid of class feeling. Michaelis talked frankly about himself, quite frankly,

without affectation, simply revealing his bitter, indifferent, straydog's soul, then showing a gleam of

`But why are you such a lonely bird?' Connie asked him; and again he looked at her, with his full, searching,

`Some birds are that way,' he replied. Then, with a touch of familiar irony: `but, look here, what about

yourself? Aren't you by way of being a lonely bird yourself?' Connie, a little startled, thought about it for a

`Am I altogether a lonely bird?' he asked, with his queer grin of a smile, as if he had toothache; it was so wry,

and his eyes were so perfectly unchangingly melancholy, or stoical, or disillusioned or afraid.

`Why?' she said, a little breathless, as she looked at him. `You are, aren't you?'

She felt a terrible appeal coming to her from him, that made her almost lose her balance.

`Oh, you're quite right!' he said, turning his head away, and looking sideways, downwards, with that strange

immobility of an old race that is hardly here in our present day. It was that that really made Connie lose her

He looked up at her with the full glance that saw everything, registered everything. At the same time, the

infant crying in the night was crying out of his breast to her, in a way that affected her very womb.

`Oh, in that way!...May I hold your hand for a minute?' he asked suddenly, fixing his eyes on her with almost

She stared at him, dazed and transfixed, and he went over and kneeled beside her, and took her two feet close

in his two hands, and buried his face in her lap, remaining motionless. She was perfectly dim and dazed,

looking down in a sort of amazement at the rather tender nape of his neck, feeling his face pressing her

thighs. In all her burning dismay, she could not help putting her hand, with tenderness and compassion, on

Then he looked up at her with that awful appeal in his full, glowing eyes. She was utterly incapable of

resisting it. From her breast flowed the answering, immense yearning over him; she must give him anything,

He was a curious and very gentle lover, very gentle with the woman, trembling uncontrollably, and yet at the

To her it meant nothing except that she gave herself to him. And at length he ceased to quiver any more, and

lay quite still, quite still. Then, with dim, compassionate fingers, she stroked his head, that lay on her breast.

When he rose, he kissed both her hands, then both her feet, in their su�de slippers, and in silence went away

to the end of the room, where he stood with his back to her. There was silence for some minutes. Then he

`And now, I suppose you'll hate me!' he said in a quiet, inevitable way. She looked up at him quickly.

`They mostly do,' he said; then he caught himself up. `I mean...a woman is supposed to.'

`I know! I know! It should be so! You're frightfully good to me...' he cried miserably.

She wondered why he should be miserable. `Won't you sit down again?' she said. He glanced at the door.

`Sir Clifford!' he said, `won't he...won't he be...?' She paused a moment to consider. `Perhaps!' she said. And

she looked up at him. `I don't want Clifford to know not even to suspect. It would hurt him so much. But I

`Wrong! Good God, no! You're only too infinitely good to me...I can hardly bear it.'

`But we needn't let Clifford know, need we?' she pleaded. `It would hurt him so. And if he never knows,

`Me!' he said, almost fiercely; `he'll know nothing from me! You see if he does. Me give myself away! Ha!

Ha!' he laughed hollowly, cynically, at such an idea. She watched him in wonder. He said to her: `May I kiss

your hand arid go? I'll run into Sheffield I think, and lunch there, if I may, and be back to tea. May I do

anything for you? May I be sure you don't hate me?and that you won't?'he ended with a desperate note

`Ah!' he said to her fiercely, `I'd rather you said that to me than said you love me! It means such a lot

more...Till afternoon then. I've plenty to think about till then.' He kissed her hands humbly and was gone.

`Do you wonder? And do you think he employs his shining hours doing deeds of kindness?'

Connie paused. Did she? It was just possible. Yet the unscrupulousness of Michaelis had a certain fascination

for her. He went whole lengths where Clifford only crept a few timid paces. In his way he had conquered the

world, which was what Clifford wanted to do. Ways and means...? Were those of Michaelis more despicable

than those of Clifford? Was the way the poor outsider had shoved and bounced himself forward in person,

and by the back doors, any worse than Clifford's way of advertising himself into prominence? The

bitchgoddess, Success, was trailed by thousands of gasping, dogs with lolling tongues. The one that got her

first was the real dog among dogs, if you go by success! So Michaelis could keep his tail up.

The queer thing was, he didn't. He came back towards teatime with a large handful of violets and lilies, and

the same hangdog expression. Connie wondered sometimes if it were a sort of mask to disarm opposition,

His saddog sort of extinguished self persisted all the evening, though through it Clifford felt the inner

effrontery. Connie didn't feel it, perhaps because it was not directed against women; only against men, and

their presumptions and assumptions. That indestructible, inward effrontery in the meagre fellow was what

made men so down on Michaelis. His very presence was an affront to a man of society, cloak it as he might

Connie was in love with him, but she managed to sit with her embroidery and let the men talk, and not give

herself away. As for Michaelis, he was perfect; exactly the same melancholic, attentive, aloof young fellow

of the previous evening, millions of degrees remote from his hosts, but laconically playing up to them to the

required amount, and never coming forth to them for a moment. Connie felt he must have forgotten the

morning. He had not forgotten. But he knew where he was...in the same old place outside, where the born

outsiders are. He didn't take the lovemaking altogether personally. He knew it would not change him from

an ownerless dog, whom everybody begrudges its golden collar, into a comfortable society dog.

The final fact being that at the very bottom of his soul he wasan outsider, and antisocial, and he accepted the

fact inwardly, no matter how BondStreety he was on the outside. His isolation was a necessity to him; just

as the appearance of conformity and mixingin with the smart people was also a necessity.

But occasional love, as a comfort arid soothing, was also a good thing, and he was not ungrateful. On the

contrary, he was burningly, poignantly grateful for a piece of natural, spontaneous kindness: almost to tears.

Beneath his pale, immobile, disillusioned face, his child's soul was sobbing with gratitude to the woman, and

burning to come to her again; just as his outcast soul was knowing he would keep really clear of her.

He found an opportunity to say to her, as they were lighting the candles in the hall:

He was the trembling excited sort of lover, whose crisis soon came, and was finished. There was something

curiously childlike and defenceless about his naked body: as children are naked. His defences were all in his

wits and cunning, his very instincts of cunning, and when these were in abeyance he seemed doubly naked

and like a child, of unfinished, tender flesh, and somehow struggling helplessly.

He roused in the woman a wild sort of compassion and yearning, and a wild, craving physical desire. The

physical desire he did not satisfy in her; he was always come and finished so quickly, then shrinking down on

her breast, and recovering somewhat his effrontery while she lay dazed, disappointed, lost.

But then she soon learnt to hold him, to keep him there inside her when his crisis was over. And there he was

generous and curiously potent; he stayed firm inside her, giving to her, while she was active...wildly,

passionately active, coming to her own crisis. And as he felt the frenzy of her achieving her own orgasmic

satisfaction from his hard, erect passivity, he had a curious sense of pride and satisfaction.

`Ah, how good!' she whispered tremulously, and she became quite still, clinging to him. And he lay there in

He stayed that time only the three days, and to Clifford was exactly the same as on the first evening; to

He wrote to Connie with the same plaintive melancholy note as ever, sometimes witty, and touched with a

queer, sexless affection. A kind of hopeless affection he seemed to feel for her, and the essential remoteness

remained the same. He was hopeless at the very core of him, and he wanted to be hopeless. He rather hated

hope. `Une immense esp�rance a travers� la terre', he read somewhere, and his comment was:`and it's

Connie never really understood him, but, in her way, she loved him. And all the time she felt the reflection of

his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hopelessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever

So they went on for quite a time, writing, and meeting occasionally in London. She still wanted the physical,

sexual thrill she could get with him by her own activity, his little orgasm being over. And he still wanted to

And enough to give her a subtle sort of selfassurance, something blind and a little arrogant. It was an almost

She was terrifically cheerful at Wragby. And she used all her aroused cheerfulness and satisfaction to

stimulate Clifford, so that he wrote his best at this time, and was almost happy in his strange blind way. He

really reaped the fruits of the sensual satisfaction she got out of Michaelis' male passivity erect inside her. But

Yet when those days of her grand joyful cheerfulness and stimulus were gone, quite gone, and she was

depressed and irritable, how Clifford longed for them again! Perhaps if he'd known he might even have

Connie always had a foreboding of the hopelessness of her affair with Mick, as people called him. Yet other

men seemed to mean nothing to her. She was attached to Clifford. He wanted a good deal of her life and she

gave it to him. But she wanted a good deal from the life of a man, and this Clifford did not give her; could

not. There were occasional spasms of Michaelis. But, as she knew by foreboding, that would come to an end.

Mick couldn't keep anything up. It was part of his very being that he must break off any connexion, and be

loose, isolated, absolutely lone dog again. It was his major necessity, even though he always said: She turned

The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal

experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea...maybe...but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring,

and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.

Clifford was making strides into fame, and even money. People came to see him. Connie nearly always had

somebody at Wragby. But if they weren't mackerel they were herring, with an occasional catfish, or

There were a few regular men, constants; men who had been at Cambridge with Clifford. There was Tommy

Dukes, who had remained in the army, and was a BrigadierGeneral. `The army leaves me time to think, and

There was Charles May, an Irishman, who wrote scientifically about stars. There was Hammond, another

writer. All were about the same age as Clifford; the young intellectuals of the day. They all believed in the

life of the mind. What you did apart from that was your private affair, and didn't much matter. No one thinks

of inquiring of another person at what hour he retires to the privy. It isn't interesting to anyone but the person

And so with most of the matters of ordinary life...how you make your money, or whether you love your wife,

or if you have `affairs'. All these matters concern only the person concerned, and, like going to the privy,

`The whole point about the sexual problem,' said Hammond, who was a tall thin fellow with a wife and two

children, but much more closely connected with a typewriter, `is that there is no point to it. Strictly there is no

problem. We don't want to follow a man into the w.c., so why should we want to follow him into bed with a

woman? And therein liehe problem. If we took no more notice of the one thing than the other, there'd be no

problem. It's all utterly senseless and pointless; a matter of misplaced curiosity.'

`Quite, Hammond, quite! But if someone starts making love to Julia, you begin to simmer; and if he goes on,

`Why, exactly! So I should be if he began to urinate in a corner of my drawingroom. There's a place for all

Charlie May was slightly satirical, for he had flirted a very little with Julia, and Hammond had cut up very

`Of course I should mind. Sex is a private thing between me and Julia; and of course I should mind anyone

`As a matter of fact,' said the lean and freckled Tommy Dukes, who looked much more Irish than May, who

was pale and rather fat: `As a matter of fact, Hammond, you have a strong property instinct, and a strong will

to selfassertion, and you want success. Since I've been in the army definitely, I've got out of the way of the

world, and now I see how inordinately strong the craving for selfassertion and success is in men. It is

enormously overdeveloped. All our individuality has run that way. And of course men like you think you'll

get through better with a woman's backing. That's why you're so jealous. That's what sex is to you...a vital

little dynamo between you and Julia, to bring success. If you began to be unsuccessful you'd begin to flirt,

like Charlie, who isn't successful. Married people like you and Julia have labels on you, like travellers' trunks.

Julia is labelled Mrs Arnold B. Hammondjust like a trunk on the railway that belongs to somebody. And

you are labelled Arnold B. Hammond, c/o Mrs Arnold B. Hammond. Oh, you're quite right, you're quite right!

The life of the mind needs a comfortable house and decent cooking. You're quite right. It even needs

posterity. But it all hinges on the instinct for success. That is the pivot on which all things turn.'

Hammond looked rather piqued. He was rather proud of the integrity of his mind, and of his not being a

`It's quite true, you can't live without cash,' said May. `You've got to have a certain amount of it to be able to

live and get along...even to be free to think you must have a certain amount of money, or your stomach stops

you. But it seems to me you might leave the labels off sex. We're free to talk to anybody; so why shouldn't we

`Lascivious! well, why not? I can't see I do a woman any more harm by sleeping with her than by dancing

with her...or even talking to her about the weather. It's just an interchange of sensations instead of ideas, so

`Why not? What's wrong with rabbits? Are they any worse than a neurotic, revolutionary humanity, full of

`Precisely! I have my mind: I have certain calculations to make in certain astronomical matters that concern

me almost more than life or death. Sometimes indigestion interferes with me. Hunger would interfere with

`I should have thought sexual indigestion from surfeit would have interfered with you more seriously,' said

`Not it! I don't overeat myself and I don't overfuck myself. One has a choice about eating too much. But

`How do you know I can? It may not suit the process of my mind. Marriage might...and would...stultify my

mental processes. I'm not properly pivoted that way...and so must I be chained in a kennel like a monk? All

rot and funk, my boy. I must live and do my calculations. I need women sometimes. I refuse to make a

mountain of it, and I refuse anybody's moral condemnation or prohibition. I'd be ashamed to see a woman

walking around with my namelabel on her, address and railway station, like a wardrobe trunk.'

`It's an amusing idea, Charlie,' said Dukes, `that sex is just another form of talk, where you act the words

instead of saying them. I suppose it's quite true. I suppose we might exchange as many sensations and

emotions with women as we do ideas about the weather, and so on. Sex might be a sort of normal physical

conversation between a man and a woman. You don't talk to a woman unless you have ideas in common: that

is you don't talk with any interest. And in the same way, unless you had some emotion or sympathy in

`If you have the proper sort of emotion or sympathy with a woman, you ought to sleep with her,' said May.

`It's the only decent thing, to go to bed with her. Just as, when you are interested talking to someone, the Only

decent thing is to have the talk out. You don't prudishly put your tongue between your teeth and bite it. You

`No,' said Hammond. `It's wrong. You, for example, May, you squander half your force with women. You'll

never really do what you should do, with a fine mind such as yours. Too much of it goes the other way.'

`Maybe it does...and too little of you goes that way, Hammond, my boy, married or not. You can keep the

purity and integrity of your mind, but it's going damned dry. Your pure mind is going as dry as fiddlesticks,

`Go it, you two minds!' he said. `Look at me...I don't do any high and pure mental work, nothing but jot down

a few ideas. And yet I neither marry nor run after women. I think Charlie's quite right; if he wants to run after

the women, he's quite free not to run too often. But I wouldn't prohibit him from running. As for Hammond,

he's got a property instinct, so naturally the straight road and the narrow gate are right for him. You'll see he'll

be an English Man of Letters before he's done. A.B.C. from top to toe. Then there's me. I'm nothing. Just a

squib. And what about you, Clifford? Do you think sex is a dynamo to help a man on to success in the

Clifford rarely talked much at these times. He never held forth; his ideas were really not vital enough for it,

`Well!' he said, `being myself hors de combat, I don't see I've anything to say on the matter.'

`Not at all,' said Dukes; `the top of you's by no means hors de combat. You've got the life of the mind sound

`Well,' stammered Clifford, `even then I don't suppose I have much idea...I suppose

marryandhavedonewithit would pretty well stand for what I think. Though of course between a man

`Well, Charlie and I believe that sex is a sort of communication like speech. Let any woman start a sex

conversation with me, and it's natural for me to go to bed with her to finish it, all in due season. Unfortunately

no woman makes any particular start with me, so I go to bed by myself; and am none the worse for it...I hope

so, anyway, for how should I know? Anyhow I've no starry calculations to be interfered with, and no

Silence fell. The four men smoked. And Connie sat there and put another stitch in her sewing...Yes, she sat

there! She had to sit mum. She had to be quiet as a mouse, not to interfere with the immensely important

speculations of these highlymental gentlemen. But she had to be there. They didn't get on so well without

her; their ideas didn't flow so freely. Clifford was much more hedgy and nervous, he got cold feet much

quicker in Connie's absence, and the talk didn't run. Tommy Dukes came off best; he was a little inspired by

her presence. Hammond she didn't really like; he seemed so selfish in a mental way. And Charles May,

though she liked something about him, seemed a little distasteful and messy, in spite of his stars.

How many evenings had Connie sat and listened to the manifestations of these four men! these, and one or

two others. That they never seemed to get anywhere didn't trouble her deeply. She liked to hear what they had

to say, especially when Tommy was there. It was fun. Instead of men kissing you, and touching you with

their bodies, they revealed their minds to you. It was great fun! But what cold minds!

And also it was a little irritating. She had more respect for Michaelis, on whose name they all poured such

withering contempt, as a little mongrel arriviste, and uneducated bounder of the worst sort. Mongrel and

bounder or not, he jumped to his own conclusions. He didn't merely walk round them with millions of words,

Connie quite liked the life of the mind, and got a great thrill out of it. But she did think it overdid itself a

little. She loved being there, amidst the tobacco smoke of those famous evenings of the cronies, as she called

them privately to herself. She was infinitely amused, and proud too, that even their talking they could not do,

without her silent presence. She had an immense respect for thought...and these men, at least, tried to think

honestly. But somehow there was a cat, and it wouldn't jump. They all alike talked at something, though what

it was, for the life of her she couldn't say. It was something that Mick didn't clear, either.

But then Mick wasn't trying to do anything, but just get through his life, and put as much across other people

as they tried to put across him. He was really antisocial, which was what Clifford and his cronies had

against him. Clifford and his cronies were not antisocial; they were more or less bent on saving mankind, or

There was a gorgeous talk on Sunday evening, when the conversation drifted again to love.

said Tommy Dukes. `I'd like to know what the tie is...The tie that binds us just now is mental friction on one

another. And, apart from that, there's damned little tie between us. We bust apart, and say spiteful things

about one another, like all the other damned intellectuals in the world. Damned everybodies, as far as that

goes, for they all do it. Else we bust apart, and cover up the spiteful things we feel against one another by

saying false sugaries. It's a curious thing that the mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable

and fathomless spite. Always has been so! Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch round him! The sheer

spite of it all, just sheer joy in pulling somebody else to bits...Protagoras, or whoever it was! And Alcibiades,

and all the other little disciple dogs joining in the fray! I must say it makes one prefer Buddha, quietly sitting

under a botree, or Jesus, telling his disciples little Sunday stories, peacefully, and without any mental

fireworks. No, there's something wrong with the mental life, radically. It's rooted in spite and envy, envy and

`My dear Clifford, think of the way we talk each other over, all of us. I'm rather worse than anybody else,

myself. Because I infinitely prefer the spontaneous spite to the concocted sugaries; now they are poison;

when I begin saying what a fine fellow Clifford is, etc., etc., then poor Clifford is to be pitied. For God's sake,

all of you, say spiteful things about me, then I shall know I mean something to you. Don't say sugaries, or I'm

`I tell you we must...we say such spiteful things to one another, about one another, behind our backs! I'm the

`And I do think you confuse the mental life with the critical activity. I agree with you, Socrates gave the

critical activity a grand start, but he did more than that,' said Charlie May, rather magisterially. The cronies

had such a curious pomposity under their assumed modesty. It was all so ex cathedra, and it all pretended to

`That's quite true, criticism and knowledge are not the same thing,' said Hammond.

`They aren't, of course,' chimed in Berry, a brown, shy young man, who had called to see Dukes, and was

`I wasn't talking about knowledge...I was talking about the mental life,' laughed Dukes. `Real knowledge

comes out of the whole corpus of the consciousness; out of your belly and your penis as much as out of your

brain and mind. The mind can only analyse and rationalize. Set the mind and the reason to cock it over the

rest, and all they can do is to criticize, and make a deadness. I say all they can do. It is vastly important. My

God, the world needs criticizing today...criticizing to death. Therefore let's live the mental life, and glory in

our spite, and strip the rotten old show. But, mind you, it's like this: while you live your life, you are in some

way an Organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You've severed the

connexion between, the apple and the tree: the organic connexion. And if you've got nothing in your life but

the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple...you've fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical

necessity to be spiteful, just as it's a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.'

Clifford made big eyes: it was all stuff to him. Connie secretly laughed to herself.

`Well then we're all plucked apples,' said Hammond, rather acidly and petulantly.

`But what do you think of Bolshevism?' put in the brown Berry, as if everything had led up to it.

`I'm afraid Bolshevism is a large question,' said Hammond, shaking his head seriously.

`Bolshevism, it seems to me,' said Charlie, `is just a superlative hatred of the thing they call the bourgeois;

and what the bourgeois is, isn't quite defined. It is Capitalism, among other things. Feelings and emotions are

`Then the individual, especially the personal man, is bourgeois: so he must be suppressed. You must

submerge yourselves in the greater thing, the Sovietsocial thing. Even an organism is bourgeois: so the ideal

must be mechanical. The only thing that is a unit, nonorganic, composed of many different, yet equally

essential parts, is the machine. Each man a machinepart, and the driving power of the machine, hate...hate of

`Absolutely!' said Tommy. `But also, it seems to me a perfect description of the whole of the industrial ideal.

It's the factoryowner's ideal in a nutshell; except that he would deny that the driving power was hate. Hate

it is, all the same; hate of life itself. Just look at these Midlands, if it isn't plainly written up...but it's all part of

`I deny that Bolshevism is logical, it rejects the major part of the premisses,' said Hammond.

`My dear man, it allows the material premiss; so does the pure mind...exclusively.'

`Rock bottom! The bottom that has no bottom! The Bolshevists will have the finest army in the world in a

`But this thing can't go on...this hate business. There must be a reaction...' said Hammond.

`Well, we've been waiting for years...we wait longer. Hate's a growing thing like anything else. It's the

inevitable outcome of forcing ideas on to life, of forcing one's deepest instincts; our deepest feelings we force

according to certain ideas. We drive ourselves with a formula, like a machine. The logical mind pretends to

rule the roost, and the roost turns into pure hate. We're all Bolshevists, only we are hypocrites. The Russians

`But there are many other ways,' said Hammond, `than the Soviet way. The Bolshevists aren't really

`Of course not. But sometimes it's intelligent to be halfwitted: if you want to make your end. Personally, I

consider Bolshevism halfwitted; but so do I consider our social life in the west halfwitted. So I even

consider our farfamed mental life halfwitted. We're all as cold as cretins, we're all as passionless as idiots.

We're all of us Bolshevists, only we give it another name. We think we're gods...men like gods! It's just the

same as Bolshevism. One has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either

a god or a Bolshevist...for they are the same thing: they're both too good to be true.'

`You lovely lad!' said Tommy. `No, my cherub, nine times out of ten, no! Love's another of those halfwitted

performances today. Fellows with swaying waists fucking little jazz girls with small boy buttocks, like two

collar studs! Do you mean that sort of love? Or the jointproperty, makeasuccessofit,

Myhusbandmywife sort of love? No, my fine fellow, I don't believe in it at all!'

`Me? Oh, intellectually I believe in having a good heart, a chirpy penis, a lively intelligence, and the courage

Tommy Dukes roared with laughter. `You angel boy! If only I had! If only I had! No; my heart's as numb as a

potato, my penis droops and never lifts its head up, I dare rather cut him clean off than say ``shit!'' in front of

my mother or my aunt...they are real ladies, mind you; and I'm not really intelligent, I'm only a

``mentallifer''. It would be wonderful to be intelligent: then one would be alive in all the parts mentioned

and unmentionable. The penis rouses his head and says: How do you do?to any really intelligent person.

Renoir said he painted his pictures with his penis...he did too, lovely pictures! I wish I did something with

mine. God! when one can only talk! Another torture added to Hades! And Socrates started it.'

`There are nice women in the world,' said Connie, lifting her head up and speaking at last.

The men resented it...she should have pretended to hear nothing. They hated her admitting she had attended

`No, it's hopeless! I just simply can't vibrate in unison with a woman. There's no woman I can really want

when I'm faced with her, and I'm not going to start forcing myself to it...My God, no! I'll remain as I am, and

lead the mental life. It's the only honest thing I can do. I can be quite happy talking to women; but it's all

pure, hopelessly pure. Hopelessly pure! What do you say, Hildebrand, my chicken?'

On a frosty morning with a little February sun, Clifford and Connie went for a walk across the park to the

wood. That is, Clifford chuffed in his motorchair, and Connie walked beside him.

The hard air was still sulphurous, but they were both used to it. Round the near horizon went the haze,

opalescent with frost and smoke, and on the top lay the small blue sky; so that it was like being inside an

The sheep coughed in the rough, sere grass of the park, where frost lay bluish in the sockets of the tufts.

Across the park ran a path to the woodgate, a fine ribbon of pink. Clifford had had it newly gravelled with

sifted gravel from the pitbank. When the rock and refuse of the underworld had burned and given off its

sulphur, it turned bright pink, shrimpcoloured on dry days, darker, crabcoloured on wet. Now it was pale

shrimpcolour, with a bluishwhite hoar of frost. It always pleased Connie, this underfoot of sifted, bright

Clifford steered cautiously down the slope of the knoll from the hall, and Connie kept her hand on the chair.

In front lay the wood, the hazel thicket nearest, the purplish density of oaks beyond. From the wood's edge

rabbits bobbed and nibbled. Rooks suddenly rose in a black train, and went trailing off over the little sky.

Connie opened the woodgate, and Clifford puffed slowly through into the broad riding that ran up an incline

between the cleanwhipped thickets of the hazel. The wood was a remnant of the great forest where Robin

Hood hunted, and this riding was an old, old thoroughfare coming across country. But now, of course, it was

only a riding through the private wood. The road from Mansfield swerved round to the north.

In the wood everything was motionless, the old leaves on the ground keeping the frost on their underside. A

jay called harshly, many little birds fluttered. But there was no game; no pheasants. They had been killed off

during the war, and the wood had been left unprotected, till now Clifford had got his gamekeeper again.

Clifford loved the wood; he loved the old oaktrees. He felt they were his own through generations. He

wanted to protect them. He wanted this place inviolate, shut off from the world.

The chair chuffed slowly up the incline, rocking and jolting on the frozen clods. And suddenly, on the left,

came a clearing where there was nothing but a ravel of dead bracken, a thin and spindly sapling leaning here

and there, big sawn stumps, showing their tops and their grasping roots, lifeless. And patches of blackness

This was one of the places that Sir Geoffrey had cut during the war for trench timber. The whole knoll, which

rose softly on the right of the riding, was denuded and strangely forlorn. On the crown of the knoll where the

oaks had stood, now was bareness; and from there you could look out over the trees to the colliery railway,

and the new works at Stacks Gate. Connie had stood and looked, it was a breach in the pure seclusion of the

This denuded place always made Clifford curiously angry. He had been through the war, had seen what it

meant. But he didn't get really angry till he saw this bare hill. He was having it replanted. But it made him

Clifford sat with a fixed face as the chair slowly mounted. When they came to the top of the rise he stopped;

he would not risk the long and very jolty downslope. He sat looking at the greenish sweep of the riding

downwards, a clear way through the bracken and oaks. It swerved at the bottom of the hill and disappeared;

`I consider this is really the heart of England,' said Clifford to Connie, as he sat there in the dim February

`Do you?' she said, seating herself in her blue knitted dress, on a stump by the path.

`I do! this is the old England, the heart of it; and I intend to keep it intact.'

`Oh yes!' said Connie. But, as she said it she heard the eleveno'clock hooters at Stacks Gate colliery.

`I want this wood perfect...untouched. I want nobody to trespass in it,' said Clifford.

There was a certain pathos. The wood still had some of the mystery of wild, old England; but Sir Geoffrey's

cuttings during the war had given it a blow. How still the trees were, with their crinkly, innumerable twigs

against the sky, and their grey, obstinate trunks rising from the brown bracken! How safely the birds flitted

among them! And once there had been deer, and archers, and monks padding along on asses. The place

Clifford sat in the pale sun, with the light on his smooth, rather blond hair, his reddish full face inscrutable.

`I mind more, not having a son, when I come here, than any other time,' he said.

`Quite!' said Clifford. `But we've preserved it. Except for us it would go...it would be gone already, like the

`Must one?' said Connie. `If it has to be preserved, and preserved against the new England? It's sad, I know.'

`If some of the old England isn't preserved, there'll be no England at all,' said Clifford. `And we who have

`For a little while! It's all we can do. We can only do our bit. I feel every man of my family has done his bit

here, since we've had the place. One may go against convention, but one must keep up tradition.' Again there

Connie was not keen on chains, but she said nothing. She was thinking of the curious impersonality of his

`It would almost be a good thing if you had a child by another man, he said. `If we brought it up at Wragby, it

would belong to us and to the place. I don't believe very intensely in fatherhood. If we had the child to rear, it

would be our own, and it would carry on. Don't you think it's worth considering?'

Connie looked up at him at last. The child, her child, was just an `it' to him. It...it...it!

`Does it matter very much? Do these things really affect us very deeply?...You had that lover in

Germany...what is it now? Nothing almost. It seems to me that it isn't these little acts and little connexions we

make in our lives that matter so very much. They pass away, and where are they? Where...Where are the

snows of yesteryear?...It's what endures through one's life that matters; my own life matters to me, in its long

continuance and development. But what do the occasional connexions matter? And the occasional sexual

connexions especially! If people don't exaggerate them ridiculously, they pass like the mating of birds. And

so they should. What does it matter? It's the lifelong companionship that matters. It's the living together

from day to day, not the sleeping together once or twice. You and I are married, no matter what happens to

us. We have the habit of each other. And habit, to my thinking, is more vital than any occasional excitement.

The long, slow, enduring thing...that's what we live by...not the occasional spasm of any sort. Little by little,

living together, two people fall into a sort of unison, they vibrate so intricately to one another. That's the real

secret of marriage, not sex; at least not the simple function of sex. You and I are interwoven in a marriage. If

we stick to that we ought to be able to arrange this sex thing, as we arrange going to the dentist; since fate has

Connie sat and listened in a sort of wonder, and a sort of fear. She did not know if he was right or not. There

was Michaelis, whom she loved; so she said to herself. But her love was somehow only an excursion from

her marriage with Clifford; the long, slow habit of intimacy, formed through years of suffering and patience.

Perhaps the human soul needs excursions, and must not be denied them. But the point of an excursion is that

`Why, Connie, I should trust your natural instinct of decency and selection. You just wouldn't let the wrong

She thought of Michaelis! He was absolutely Clifford's idea of the wrong sort of fellow.

`But men and women may have different feelings about the wrong sort of fellow,' she said.

`No,' he replied. `You care for me. I don't believe you would ever care for a man who was purely antipathetic

`And should you expect me to tell you?' she asked, glancing up at him almost furtively.

`Not at all, I'd better not know...But you do agree with me, don't you, that the casual sex thing is nothing,

compared to the long life lived together? Don't you think one can just subordinate the sex thing to the

necessities of a long life? Just use it, since that's what we're driven to? After all, do these temporary

excitements matter? Isn't the whole problem of life the slow building up of an integral personality, through

the years? living an integrated life? There's no point in a disintegrated life. If lack of sex is going to

disintegrate you, then go out and have a loveaffair. If lack of a child is going to disintegrate you, then have a

child if you possibly can. But only do these things so that you have an integrated life, that makes a long

harmonious thing. And you and I can do that together...don't you think?...if we adapt ourselves to the

necessities, and at the same time weave the adaptation together into a piece with our steadilylived life. Don't

Connie was a little overwhelmed by his words. She knew he was right theoretically. But when she actually

touched her steadilylived life with him she...hesitated. Was it actually her destiny to go on weaving herself

Was it just that? She was to be content to weave a steady life with him, all one fabric, but perhaps brocaded

with the occasional flower of an adventure. But how could she know what she would feel next year? How

could one ever know? How could one say Yes? for years and years? The little yes, gone on a breath! Why

should one be pinned down by that butterfly word? Of course it had to flutter away and be gone, to be

`I think you're right, Clifford. And as far as I can see I agree with you. Only life may turn quite a new face on

She was watching a brown spaniel that had run out of a sidepath, and was looking towards them with lifted

nose, making a soft, fluffy bark. A man with a gun strode swiftly, softly out after the dog, facing their way as

if about to attack them; then stopped instead, saluted, and was turning downhill. It was only the new

gamekeeper, but he had frightened Connie, he seemed to emerge with such a swift menace. That was how

He was a man in dark green velveteens and gaiters...the old style, with a red face and red moustache and

The man faced lightly round, and saluted with a quick little gesture, a soldier!

`Will you turn the chair round and get it started? That makes it easier,' said Clifford.

The man at once slung his gun over his shoulder, and came forward with the same curious swift, yet soft

movements, as if keeping invisible. He was moderately tall and lean, and was silent. He did not look at

`Connie, this is the new gamekeeper, Mellors. You haven't spoken to her ladyship yet, Mellors?'

The man lifted his hat as he stood, showing his thick, almost fair hair. He stared straight into Connie's eyes,

with a perfect, fearless, impersonal look, as if he wanted to see what she was like. He made her feel shy. She

bent her head to him shyly, and he changed his hat to his left hand and made her a slight bow, like a

gentleman; but he said nothing at all. He remained for a moment still, with his hat in his hand.

She looked him in the eyes. His eyes narrowed a little, with irony, perhaps with impudence.

He gave another slight bow, turned, put his hat on, and strode to take hold of the chair. His voice on the last

words had fallen into the heavy broad drag of the dialect...perhaps also in mockery, because there had been

no trace of dialect before. He might almost be a gentleman. Anyhow, he was a curious, quick, separate

Clifford started the little engine, the man carefully turned the chair, and set it noseforwards to the incline

`No, you'd better come along in case she sticks. The engine isn't really strong enough for the uphill work.'

The man glanced round for his dog...a thoughtful glance. The spaniel looked at him and faintly moved its tail.

A little smile, mocking or teasing her, yet gentle, came into his eyes for a moment, then faded away, and his

face was expressionless. They went fairly quickly down the slope, the man with his hand on the rail of the

chair, steadying it. He looked like a free soldier rather than a servant. And something about him reminded

When they came to the hazel grove, Connie suddenly ran forward, and opened the gate into the park. As she

stood holding it, the two men looked at her in passing, Clifford critically, the other man with a curious, cool

wonder; impersonally wanting to see what she looked like. And she saw in his blue, impersonal eyes a look

of suffering and detachment, yet a certain warmth. But why was he so aloof, apart?

Clifford stopped the chair, once through the gate, and the man came quickly, courteously, to close it.

`Why did you run to open?' asked Clifford in his quiet, calm voice, that showed he was displeased. `Mellors

`I thought you would go straight ahead,' said Connie. `And leave you to run after us?' said Clifford.

Mellors took the chair again, looking perfectly unheeding, yet Connie felt he noted everything. As he pushed

the chair up the steepish rise of the knoll in the park, he breathed rather quickly, through parted lips. He was

rather frail really. Curiously full of vitality, but a little frail and quenched. Her woman's instinct sensed it.

Connie fell back, let the chair go on. The day had greyed over; the small blue sky that had poised low on its

circular rims of haze was closed in again, the lid was down, there was a raw coldness. It was going to snow.

But she was. A strange, weary yearning, a dissatisfaction had started in her. Clifford did not notice: those

were not things he was aware of. But the stranger knew. To Connie, everything in her world and life seemed

They came to the house, and around to the back, where there were no steps. Clifford managed to swing

himself over on to the low, wheeled housechair; he was very strong and agile with his arms. Then Connie

The keeper, waiting at attention to be dismissed, watched everything narrowly, missing nothing. He went

pale, with a sort of fear, when he saw Connie lifting the inert legs of the man in her arms, into the other chair,

`Thanks, then, for the help, Mellors,' said Clifford casually, as he began to wheel down the passage to the

`Good morning! it was kind of you to push the chair up that hill...I hope it wasn't heavy for you,' said Connie,

`Oh no, not heavy!' he said quickly. Then his voice dropped again into the broad sound of the vernacular:

`Blacksmith on the pitbank, I believe: overhead smith. But he was keeper here for two years before the

war...before he joined up. My father always had a good Opinion of him, so when he came back, and went to

the pit for a blacksmith's job, I just took him back here as keeper. I was really very glad to get him...its almost

impossible to find a good man round here for a gamekeeper...and it needs a man who knows the people.'

`He was. But his wife went off with...with various men...but finally with a collier at Stacks Gate, and I

Clifford looked at Connie, with his pale, slightly prominent blue eyes, in which a certain vagueness was

coming. He seemed alert in the foreground, but the background was like the Midlands atmosphere, haze,

smoky mist. And the haze seemed to be creeping forward. So when he stared at Connie in his peculiar way,

giving her his peculiar, precise information, she felt all the background of his mind filling up with mist, with

nothingness. And it frightened her. It made him seem impersonal, almost to idiocy.

And dimly she realized one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a

wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is

only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of the reassumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the

soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which Only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the

psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible aftereffects have to

So it was with Clifford. Once he was `well', once he was back at Wragby, and writing his stories, and feeling

sure of life, in spite of all, he seemed to forget, and to have recovered all his equanimity. But now, as the

years went by, slowly, slowly, Connie felt the bruise of fear and horror coming up, and spreading in him. For

a time it had been so deep as to be numb, as it were nonexistent. Now slowly it began to assert itself in a

spread of fear, almost paralysis. Mentally he still was alert. But the paralysis, the bruise of the toogreat

And as it spread in him, Connie felt it spread in her. An inward dread, an emptiness, an indifference to

everything gradually spread in her soul. When Clifford was roused, he could still talk brilliantly and, as it

were, command the future: as when, in the wood, he talked about her having a child, and giving an heir to

Wragby. But the day after, all the brilliant words seemed like dead leaves, crumpling up and turning to

powder, meaning really nothing, blown away on any gust of wind. They were not the leafy words of an

effective life, young with energy and belonging to the tree. They were the hosts of fallen leaves of a life that

So it seemed to her everywhere. The colliers at Tevershall were talking again of a strike, and it seemed to

Connie there again it was not a manifestation of energy, it was the bruise of the war that had been in

abeyance, slowly rising to the surface and creating the great ache of unrest, and stupor of discontent. The

bruise was deep, deep, deep...the bruise of the false inhuman war. It would take many years for the living

blood of the generations to dissolve the vast black clot of bruised blood, deep inside their souls and bodies.

Poor Connie! As the years drew on it was the fear of nothingness In her life that affected her. Clifford's

mental life and hers gradually began to feel like nothingness. Their marriage, their integrated life based on a

habit of intimacy, that he talked about: there were days when it all became utterly blank and nothing. It was

words, just so many words. The only reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.

There was Clifford's success: the bitchgoddess! It was true he was almost famous, and his books brought

him in a thousand pounds. His photograph appeared everywhere. There was a bust of him in one of the

galleries, and a portrait of him in two galleries. He seemed the most modern of modern voices. With his

uncanny lame instinct for publicity, he had become in four or five years one of the best known of the young

`intellectuals'. Where the intellect came in, Connie did not quite see. Clifford was really clever at that slightly

humorous analysis of people and motives which leaves everything in bits at the end. But it was rather like

puppies tearing the sofa cushions to bits; except that it was not young and playful, but curiously old, and

rather obstinately conceited. It was weird and it was nothing. This was the feeling that echoed and reechoed

at the bottom of Connie's soul: it was all flag, a wonderful display of nothingness; At the same time a display.

Michaelis had seized upon Clifford as the central figure for a play; already he had sketched in the plot, and

written the first act. For Michaelis was even better than Clifford at making a display of nothingness. It was

the last bit of passion left in these men: the passion for making a display. Sexually they were passionless,

even dead. And now it was not money that Michaelis was after. Clifford had never been primarily out for

money, though he made it where he could, for money is the seal and stamp of success. And success was what

they wanted. They wanted, both of them, to make a real display...a man's own very display of himself that

It was strange...the prostitution to the bitchgoddess. To Connie, since she was really outside of it, and since

she had grown numb to the thrill of it, it was again nothingness. Even the prostitution to the bitchgoddess

was nothingness, though the men prostituted themselves innumerable times. Nothingness even that.

Michaelis wrote to Clifford about the play. Of course she knew about it long ago. And Clifford was again

thrilled. He was going to be displayed again this time, somebody was going to display him, and to advantage.

Michaelis came: in summer, in a palecoloured suit and white suede gloves, with mauve orchids for Connie,

very lovely, and Act I was a great success. Even Connie was thrilled...thrilled to what bit of marrow she had

left. And Michaelis, thrilled by his power to thrill, was really wonderful...and quite beautiful, in Connie's

eyes. She saw in him that ancient motionlessness of a race that can't be disillusioned any more, an extreme,

perhaps, of impurity that is pure. On the far side of his supreme prostitution to the bitchgoddess he seemed

pure, pure as an African ivory mask that dreams impurity into purity, in its ivory curves and planes.

His moment of sheer thrill with the two Chatterleys, when he simply carried Connie and Clifford away, was

one of the supreme moments of Michaelis' life. He had succeeded: he had carried them away. Even Clifford

So next morning Mick was more uneasy than ever; restless, devoured, with his hands restless in his trousers

pockets. Connie had not visited him in the night...and he had not known where to find her. Coquetry!...at his

He went up to her sittingroom in the morning. She knew he would come. And his restlessness was evident.

He asked her about his play...did she think it good? He had to hear it praised: that affected him with the last

thin thrill of passion beyond any sexual orgasm. And she praised it rapturously. Yet all the while, at the

`Look here!' he said suddenly at last. `Why don't you and I make a clean thing of it? Why don't we marry?'

`Oh that!...he'll divorce you all right...Why don't you and I marry? I want to marry. I know it would be the

best thing for me...marry and lead a regular life. I lead the deuce of a life, simply tearing myself to pieces.

Look here, you and I, we're made for one another...hand and glove. Why don't we marry? Do you see any

Connie looked at him amazed: and yet she felt nothing. These men, they were all alike, they left everything

out. They just went off from the top of their heads as if they were squibs, and expected you to be carried

`Why not? but why not?' he cried. `He'll hardly know you've gone, after six months. He doesn't know that

anybody exists, except himself. Why the man has no use for you at all, as far as I can see; he's entirely

Connie felt there was truth in this. But she also felt that Mick was hardly making a display of selflessness.

`Oh, more or less, I allow. A man's got to be, to get through. But that's not the point. The point is, what sort of

a time can a man give a woman? Can he give her a damn good time, or can't he? If he can't he's no right to the

woman...' He paused and gazed at her with his full, hazel eyes, almost hypnotic. `Now I consider,' he added,

`I can give a woman the darndest good time she can ask for. I think I can guarantee myself.'

`And what sort of a good time?' asked Connie, gazing on him still with a sort of amazement, that looked like

`Every sort of a good time, damn it, every sort! Dress, jewels up to a point, any nightclub you like, know

anybody you want to know, live the pace...travel and be somebody wherever you go...Darn it, every sort of

He spoke it almost in a brilliancy of triumph, and Connie looked at him as if dazzled, and really feeling

nothing at all. Hardly even the surface of her mind was tickled at the glowing prospects he offered her.

Hardly even her most outside self responded, that at any other time would have been thrilled. She just got no

feeling from it, she couldn't `go off'. She just sat and stared and looked dazzled, and felt nothing, only

Mick sat on tenterhooks, leaning forward in his chair, glaring at her almost hysterically: and whether he was

more anxious out of vanity for her to say Yes! or whether he was more panicstricken for fear she should say

`I should have to think about it,' she said. `I couldn't say now. It may seem to you Clifford doesn't count, but

`Oh damn it all! If a fellow's going to trade on his disabilities, I might begin to say how lonely I am, and

always have been, and all the rest of the myeyeBettyMartin sobstuff! Damn it all, if a fellow's got

He turned aside, working his hands furiously in his trousers pockets. That evening he said to her:

`You're coming round to my room tonight, aren't you? I don't darn know where your room is.'

He was a more excited lover that night, with his strange, small boy's frail nakedness. Connie found it

impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his. And he roused a certain craving passion in

her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness; she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and

heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and

When at last he drew away from her, he said, in a bitter, almost sneering little voice:

`You couldn't go off at the same time as a man, could you? You'd have to bring yourself off! You'd have to

This little speech, at the moment, was one of the shocks of her life. Because that passive sort of giving

`You know what I mean. You keep on for hours after I've gone off...and I have to hang on with my teeth till

She was stunned by this unexpected piece of brutality, at the moment when she was glowing with a sort of

pleasure beyond words, and a sort of love for him. Because, after all, like so many modern men, he was

He laughed grimly: `I want it!' he said. `That's good! I want to hang on with my teeth clenched, while you go

He avoided the question. `All the darned women are like that,' he said. `Either they don't go off at all, as if

they were dead in there...or else they wait till a chap's really done, and then they start in to bring themselves

off, and a chap's got to hang on. I never had a woman yet who went off just at the same moment as I did.'

Connie only half heard this piece of novel, masculine information. She was only stunned by his feeling

`Oh, all right! I'm quite willing. But I'm darned if hanging on waiting for a woman to go off is much of a

This speech was one of the crucial blows of Connie's life. It killed something in her. She had not been so very

keen on Michaelis; till he started it, she did not want him. It was as if she never positively wanted him. But

once he had started her, it seemed only natural for her to come to her own crisis with him. Almost she had

Perhaps instinctively he knew it, and that was why he had to bring down the whole show with a smash; the

house of cards. Her whole sexual feeling for him, or for any man, collapsed that night. Her life fell apart from

And she went through the days drearily. There was nothing now but this empty treadmill of what Clifford

called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same

Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living. All the many busy

`Why don't men and women really like one another nowadays?' Connie asked Tommy Dukes, who was more

`Oh, but they do! I don't think since the human species was invented, there has ever been a time when men

and women have liked one another as much as they do today. Genuine liking! Take myself. I really like

`And what more could I do if you were a man, than talk perfectly sincerely to you?'

`A woman wants you to like her and talk to her, and at the same time love her and desire her; and it seems to

`No doubt water ought not to be so wet as it is; it overdoes it in wetness. But there it is! I like women and talk

to them, and therefore I don't love them and desire them. The two things don't happen at the same time in me.'

`All right. The fact that things ought to be something else than what they are, is not my department.

Connie considered this. `It isn't true,' she said. `Men can love women and talk to them. I don't see how they

`Well,' he said, `I don't know. What's the use of my generalizing? I only know my own case. I like women,

but I don't desire them. I like talking to them; but talking to them, though it makes me intimate in one

direction, sets me poles apart from them as far as kissing is concerned. So there you are! But don't take me as

a general example, probably I'm just a special case: one of the men who like women, but don't love women,

and even hate them if they force me into a pretence of love, or an entangled appearance.

`Why should it? Not a bit! I look at Charlie May, and the rest of the men who have affairs...No, I don't envy

them a bit! If fate sent me a woman I wanted, well and good. Since I don't know any woman I want, and

` Why, in God's name? I like Clifford, but what would you say if I went and kissed him?'

`Where does it lie, as far as we're concerned? We're all intelligent human beings, and the male and female

business is in abeyance. Just in abeyance. How would you like me to start acting up like a continental male at

`Well then! I tell you, if I'm really a male thing at all, I never run across the female of my species. And I don't

miss her, I just like women. Who's going to force me into loving or pretending to love them, working up the

`Yes, I feel something is wrong between men and women. A woman has no glamour for a man any more.'

`Then let's leave it all alone, and just be decent and simple, like proper human beings with one another. Be

Connie knew he was right, really. Yet it left her feeling so forlorn, so forlorn and stray. Like a chip on a

It was her youth which rebelled. These men seemed so old and cold. Everything seemed old and cold. And

Michaelis let one down so; he was no good. The men didn't want one; they just didn't really want a woman,

And the bounders who pretended they did, and started working the sex game, they were worse than ever.

It was just dismal, and one had to put up with it. It was quite true, men had no real glamour for a woman: if

you could fool yourself into thinking they had, even as she had fooled herself over Michaelis, that was the

best you could do. Meanwhile you just lived on and there was nothing to it. She understood perfectly well

why people had cocktail parties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were ready to drop. You had to take it

out some way or other, your youth, or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! You felt as old as

Methuselah, and yet the thing fizzed somehow, and didn't let you be comfortable. A mean sort of life! And no

prospect! She almost wished she had gone off with Mick, and made her life one long cocktail party, and jazz

On one of her bad days she went out alone to walk in the wood, ponderously, heeding nothing, not even

noticing where she was. The report of a gun not far off startled and angered her.

Then, as she went, she heard voices, and recoiled. People! She didn't want people. But her quick ear caught

another sound, and she roused; it was a child sobbing. At once she attended; someone was illtreating a child.

She strode swinging down the wet drive, her sullen resentment uppermost. She felt just prepared to make a

Turning the corner, she saw two figures in the drive beyond her: the keeper, and a little girl in a purple coat

`Ah, shut it up, tha false little bitch!' came the man's angry voice, and the child sobbed louder.

Constance strode nearer, with blazing eyes. The man turned and looked at her, saluting coolly, but he was

`What's the matter? Why is she crying?' demanded Constance, peremptory but a little breathless.

A faint smile like a sneer came on the man's face. `Nay, yo mun ax 'er,' he replied callously, in broad

Connie felt as if he had hit her in the face, and she changed colour. Then she gathered her defiance, and

He gave a queer little bow, lifting his hat. `You did, your Ladyship,' he said; then, with a return to the

vernacular: `but I canna tell yer.' And he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance.

Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, blackhaired thing of nine or ten. `What is it, dear? Tell me why you're

crying!' she said, with the conventionalized sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, selfconscious. Still more

`There, there, don't you cry! Tell me what they've done to you!'...an intense tenderness of tone. At the same

time she felt in the pocket of her knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.

`Don't you cry then!' she said, bending in front of the child. `See what I've got for you!'

Sobs, snuffles, a fist taken from a blubbered face, and a black shrewd eye cast for a second on the sixpence.

Then more sobs, but subduing. `There, tell me what's the matter, tell me!' said Connie, putting the coin into

After a silence the shy fist, clenching on sixpence, pointed into the bramble brake.

Connie looked, and there, sure enough, was a big black cat, stretched out grimly, with a bit of blood on it.

She glanced at him angrily. `No wonder the child cried,' she said, `if you shot it when she was there. No

He looked into Connie's eyes, laconic, contemptuous, not hiding his feelings. And again Connie flushed; she

`What is your name?' she said playfully to the child. `Won't you tell me your name?'

`Connie Mellors! Well, that's a nice name! And did you come out with your Daddy, and he shot a pussy? But

The child looked at her, with bold, dark eyes of scrutiny, sizing her up, and her condolence.

`Come then, shall I take you? Shall I take you to your Gran? Then your Daddy can do what he has to do.' She

Again he looked into her eyes, with that calm, searching detached glance. A man very much alone, and on his

Connie disliked her; the spoilt, false little female. Nevertheless she wiped her face and took her hand. The

It was nearly a mile to the cottage, and Connie senior was well red by Connie junior by the time the

gamekeeper's picturesque little home was in sight. The child was already as full to the brim with tricks as a

At the cottage the door stood open, and there was a rattling heard inside. Connie lingered, the child slipped

The grandmother had been blackleading the stove, it was Saturday morning. She came to the door in her

sacking apron, a blackleadbrush in her hand, and a black smudge on her nose. She was a little, rather dry

`Why, whatever?' she said, hastily wiping her arm across her face as she saw Connie standing outside.

`He was there,' said Connie, `but he'd shot a poaching cat, and the child was upset.'

`Oh, you'd no right t'ave bothered, Lady Chatterley, I'm sure! I'm sure it was very good of you, but you

shouldn't 'ave bothered. Why, did ever you see!'and the old woman turned to the child: `Fancy Lady

`Why, I'm sure 'twas very kind of you, I must say! So she was crying! I knew there'd be something afore they

got far. She's frightened of 'im, that's wheer it is. Seems 'e's almost a stranger to 'er, fair a stranger, and I don't

`An' sixpence an' all! Oh, your Ladyship, you shouldn't, you shouldn't. Why, isn't Lady Chatterley good to

She pronounced the name, as all the people did: Chat'ley.Isn't Lady Chat'ley good to you!'Connie

couldn't help looking at the old woman's nose, and the latter again vaguely wiped her face with the back of

Connie was moving away `Well, thank you ever so much, Lady Chat'ley, I'm sure. Say thank you to Lady

`There's a dear!' laughed Connie, and she moved away, saying `Good morning', heartily relieved to get away

Curious, she thought, that that thin, proud man should have that little, sharp woman for a mother!

And the old woman, as soon as Connie had gone, rushed to the bit of mirror in the scullery, and looked at her

face. Seeing it, she stamped her foot with impatience. `Of course she had to catch me in my coarse apron, and

Connie went slowly home to Wragby. `Home!'...it was a warm word to use for that great, weary warren. But

then it was a word that had had its day. It was somehow cancelled. All the great words, it seemed to Connie,

were cancelled for her generation: love, joy, happiness, home, mother, father, husband, all these great,

dynamic words were half dead now, and dying from day to day. Home was a place you lived in, love was a

thing you didn't fool yourself about, joy was a word you applied to a good Charleston, happiness was a term

of hypocrisy used to bluff other people, a father was an individual who enjoyed his own existence, a husband

was a man you lived with and kept going in spirits. As for sex, the last of the great words, it was just a

cocktail term for an excitement that bucked you up for a while, then left you more raggy than ever. Frayed! It

was as if the very material you were made of was cheap stuff, and was fraying out to nothing.

All that really remained was a stubborn stoicism: and in that there was a certain pleasure. In the very

experience of the nothingness of life, phase after phase, �tape after �tape, there was a certain grisly

satisfaction. So that's that! Always this was the last utterance: home, love, marriage, Michaelis: So that's that!

Money? Perhaps one couldn't say the same there. Money one always wanted. Money, Success, the

bitchgoddess, as Tommy Dukes persisted in calling it, after Henry James, that was a permanent necessity.

You couldn't spend your last sou, and say finally: So that's that! No, if you lived even another ten minutes,

you wanted a few more sous for something or other. Just to keep the business mechanically going, you

needed money. You had to have it. Money you have to have. You needn't really have anything else. So that's

Since, of course, it's not your own fault you are alive. Once you are alive, money is a necessity, and the only

absolute necessity. All the rest you can get along without, at a pinch. But not money. Emphatically, that's

She thought of Michaelis, and the money she might have had with him; and even that she didn't want. She

preferred the lesser amount which she helped Clifford to make by his writing. That she actually helped to

make.`Clifford and I together, we make twelve hundred a year out of writing'; so she put it to herself.

Make money! Make it! Out of nowhere. Wring it out of the thin air! The last feat to be humanly proud of!

So she plodded home to Clifford, to join forces with him again, to make another story out of nothingness: and

a story meant money. Clifford seemed to care very much whether his stories were considered firstclass

literature or not. Strictly, she didn't care. Nothing in it! said her father. Twelve hundred pounds last year! was

If you were young, you just set your teeth, and bit on and held on, till the money began to flow from the

invisible; it was a question of power. It was a question of will; a subtle, subtle, powerful emanation of will

out of yourself brought back to you the mysterious nothingness of money a word on a bit of paper. It was a

sort of magic, certainly it was triumph. The bitchgoddess! Well, if one had to prostitute oneself, let it be to a

bitchgoddess! One could always despise her even while one prostituted oneself to her, which was good.

Clifford, of course, had still many childish taboos and fetishes. He wanted to be thought `really good', which

was all cockahoopy nonsense. What was really good was what actually caught on. It was no good being

really good and getting left with it. It seemed as if most of the `really good' men just missed the bus. After all

you only lived one life, and if you missed the bus, you were just left on the pavement, along with the rest of

Connie was contemplating a winter in London with Clifford, next winter. He and she had caught the bus all

The worst of it was, Clifford tended to become vague, absent, and to fall into fits of vacant depression. It was

the wound to his psyche coming out. But it made Connie want to scream. Oh God, if the mechanism of the

consciousness itself was going to go wrong, then what was one to do? Hang it all, one did one's bit! Was one

Sometimes she wept bitterly, but even as she wept she was saying to herself: Silly fool, wetting hankies! As

Since Michaelis, she had made up her mind she wanted nothing. That seemed the simplest solution of the

otherwise insoluble. She wanted nothing more than what she'd got; only she wanted to get ahead with what

she'd got: Clifford, the stories, Wragby, the LadyChatterley business, money and fame, such as it was...she

wanted to go ahead with it all. Love, sex, all that sort of stuff, just waterices! Lick it up and forget it. If you

don't hang on to it in your mind, it's nothing. Sex especially...nothing! Make up your mind to it, and you've

solved the problem. Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to

But a child, a baby! That was still one of the sensations. She would venture very gingerly on that experiment.

There was the man to consider, and it was curious, there wasn't a man in the world whose children you

wanted. Mick's children! Repulsive thought! As lief have a child to a rabbit! Tommy Dukes? he was very

nice, but somehow you couldn't associate him with a baby, another generation. He ended in himself. And out

of all the rest of Clifford's pretty wide acquaintance, there was not a man who did not rouse her contempt,

when she thought of having a child by him. There were several who would have been quite possible as lover,

even Mick. But to let them breed a child on you! Ugh! Humiliation and abomination.

Nevertheless, Connie had the child at the back of her mind. Wait! wait! She would sift the generations of men

through her sieve, and see if she couldn't find one who would do.`Go ye into the streets and by ways of

Jerusalem, and see if you can find a man.' It had been impossible to find a man in the Jerusalem of the

prophet, though there were thousands of male humans. But a man! C'est une autre chose!

She had an idea that he would have to be a foreigner: not an Englishman, still less an Irishman. A real

But wait! wait! Next winter she would get Clifford to London; the following winter she would get him abroad

to the South of France, Italy. Wait! She was in no hurry about the child. That was her own private affair, and

the one point on which, in her own queer, female way, she was serious to the bottom of her soul. She was not

going to risk any chance comer, not she! One might take a lover almost at any moment, but a man who

should beget a child on one...wait! wait! it's a very different matter.`Go ye into the streets and byways of

Jerusalem...' It was not a question of love; it was a question of a man. Why, one might even rather hate him,

personally. Yet if he was the man, what would one's personal hate matter? This business concerned another

It had rained as usual, and the paths were too sodden for Clifford's chair, but Connie would go out. She went

out alone every day now, mostly in the wood, where she was really alone. She saw nobody there.

This day, however, Clifford wanted to send a message to the keeper, and as the boy was laid up with

influenza, somebody always seemed to have influenza at Wragby, Connie said she would call at the cottage.

The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were slowly dying. Grey and clammy and silent, even from the

shuffling of the collieries, for the pits were working short time, and today they were stopped altogether. The

In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell from the bare boughs, with a hollow

little crash. For the rest, among the old trees was depth within depth of grey, hopeless inertia, silence,

Connie walked dimly on. From the old wood came an ancient melancholy, somehow soothing to her, better

than the harsh insentience of the outer world. She liked the inwardness of the remnant of forest, the

unspeaking reticence of the old trees. They seemed a very power of silence, and yet a vital presence. They,

too, were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and giving off a potency of silence. Perhaps they were only

waiting for the end; to be cut down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all things. But

perhaps their strong and aristocratic silence, the silence of strong trees, meant something else.

As she came out of the wood on the north side, the keeper's cottage, a rather dark, brown stone cottage, with

gables and a handsome chimney, looked uninhabited, it was so silent and alone. But a thread of smoke rose

from the chimney, and the little railedin garden in the front of the house was dug and kept very tidy. The

Now she was here she felt a little shy of the man, with his curious farseeing eyes. She did not like bringing

him orders, and felt like going away again. She knocked softly, no one came. She knocked again, but still not

loudly. There was no answer. She peeped through the window, and saw the dark little room, with its almost

She stood and listened, and it seemed to her she heard sounds from the back of the cottage. Having failed to

So she went round the side of the house. At the back of the cottage the land rose steeply, so the back yard was

sunken, and enclosed by a low stone wall. She turned the corner of the house and stopped. In the little yard

two paces beyond her, the man was washing himself, utterly unaware. He was naked to the hips, his

velveteen breeches slipping down over his slender loins. And his white slim back was curved over a big bowl

of soapy water, in which he ducked his head, shaking his head with a queer, quick little motion, lifting his

slender white arms, and pressing the soapy water from his ears, quick, subtle as a weasel playing with water,

and utterly alone. Connie backed away round the corner of the house, and hurried away to the wood. In spite

of herself, she had had a shock. After all, merely a man washing himself, commonplace enough, Heaven

Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her in the middle of the body. She saw the

clumsy breeches slipping down over the pure, delicate, white loins, the bones showing a little, and the sense

of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed her. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that

lives alone, and inwardly alone. And beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty,

not even the body of beauty, but a lambency, the warm, white flame of a single life, revealing itself in

Connie had received the shock of vision in her womb, and she knew it; it lay inside her. But with her mind

she was inclined to ridicule. A man washing himself in a back yard! No doubt with evilsmelling yellow

soap! She was rather annoyed; why should she be made to stumble on these vulgar privacies?

So she walked away from herself, but after a while she sat down on a stump. She was too confused to think.

But in the coil of her confusion, she was determined to deliver her message to the fellow. She would not he

balked. She must give him time to dress himself, but not time to go out. He was probably preparing to go out

So she sauntered slowly back, listening. As she came near, the cottage looked just the same. A dog barked,

She heard the man coming lightly downstairs. He opened the door quickly, and startled her. He looked

His manner was so perfectly easy and good, she stepped over the threshold into the rather dreary little room.

`I only called with a message from Sir Clifford,' she said in her soft, rather breathless voice.

The man was looking at her with those blue, allseeing eyes of his, which made her turn her face aside a

little. He thought her comely, almost beautiful, in her shyness, and he took command of the situation himself

`Would you care to sit down?' he asked, presuming she would not. The door stood open.

`No thanks! Sir Clifford wondered if you would and she delivered her message, looking unconsciously into

his eyes again. And now his eyes looked warm and kind, particularly to a woman, wonderfully warm, and

Taking an order, his whole self had changed, glazed over with a sort of hardness and distance. Connie

hesitated, she ought to go. But she looked round the clean, tidy, rather dreary little sittingroom with

And his plain, rather worn face took on an indefinable look of derision. It was a face that changed all the

`No,' he said, seeing Connie stand at a loss, `my mother comes and cleans up for me on Saturdays; I do the

Again Connie looked at him. His eyes were smiling again, a little mockingly, but warm and blue, and

somehow kind. She wondered at him. He was in trousers and flannel shirt and a grey tie, his hair soft and

damp, his face rather pale and wornlooking. When the eyes ceased to laugh they looked as if they had

suffered a great deal, still without losing their warmth. But a pallor of isolation came over him, she was not

She wanted to say so many things, and she said nothing. Only she looked up at him again, and remarked:

`Only combing my hair, if you don't mind. I'm sorry I hadn't a coat on, but then I had no idea who was

He went in front of her down the garden path to hold the gate. In his shirt, without the clumsy velveteen coat,

she saw again how slender he was, thin, stooping a little. Yet, as she passed him, there was something young

and bright in his fair hair, and his quick eyes. He would be a man about thirtyseven or eight.

She plodded on into the wood, knowing he was looking after her; he upset her so much, in spite of herself.

And he, as he went indoors, was thinking: `She's nice, she's real! She's nicer than she knows.'

She wondered very much about him; he seemed so unlike a gamekeeper, so unlike a workingman anyhow;

although he had something in common with the local people. But also something very uncommon.

`The gamekeeper, Mellors, is a curious kind of person,' she said to Clifford; `he might almost be a

`I think he's quite a nice fellow, but I know very little about him. He only came out of the army last year, less

than a year ago. From India, I rather think. He may have picked up certain tricks out there, perhaps he was an

officer's servant, and improved on his position. Some of the men were like that. But it does them no good,

Connie gazed at Clifford contemplatively. She saw in him the peculiar tight rebuff against anyone of the

lower classes who might be really climbing up, which she knew was characteristic of his breed.

He looked at her curiously, uneasily, halfsuspiciously. And she felt he wasn't telling her the real truth; he

wasn't telling himself the real truth, that was it. He disliked any suggestion of a really exceptional human

Connie felt again the tightness, niggardliness of the men of her generation. They were so tight, so scared of

When Connie went up to her bedroom she did what she had not done for a long time: took off all her clothes,

and looked at herself naked in the huge mirror. She did not know what she was looking for, or at, very

And she thought, as she had thought so often, what a frail, easily hurt, rather pathetic thing a human body is,

She had been supposed to have rather a good figure, but now she was out of fashion: a little too female, not

enough like an adolescent boy. She was not very tall, a bit Scottish and short; but she had a certain fluent,

downslipping grace that might have been beauty. Her skin was faintly tawny, her limbs had a certain

stillness, her body should have had a full, downslipping richness; but it lacked something.

Instead of ripening its firm, downrunning curves, her body was flattening and going a little harsh. It was as

Disappointed of its real womanhood, it had not succeeded in becoming boyish, and unsubstantial, and

Her breasts were rather small, and dropping pearshaped. But they were unripe, a little bitter, without

meaning hanging there. And her belly had lost the fresh, round gleam it had had when she was young, in the

days of her German boy, who really loved her physically. Then it was young and expectant, with a real look

of its own. Now it was going slack, and a little flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her thighs, too, they

used to look so quick and glimpsy in their female roundness, somehow they too were going flat, slack,

Her body was going meaningless, going dull and opaque, so much insignificant substance. It made her feel

immensely depressed and hopeless. What hope was there? She was old, old at twentyseven, with no gleam

and sparkle in the flesh. Old through neglect and denial, yes, denial. Fashionable women kept their bodies

bright like delicate porcelain, by external attention. There was nothing inside the porcelain; but she was not

even as bright as that. The mental life! Suddenly she hated it with a rushing fury, the swindle!

She looked in the other mirror's reflection at her back, her waist, her loins. She was getting thinner, but to her

it was not becoming. The crumple of her waist at the back, as she bent back to look, was a little weary; and it

used to be so gaylooking. And the longish slope of her haunches and her buttocks had lost its gleam and its

sense of richness. Gone! Only the German boy had loved it, and he was ten years dead, very nearly. How

time went by! Ten years dead, and she was only twentyseven. The healthy boy with his fresh, clumsy

sensuality that she had then been so scornful of! Where would she find it now? It was gone out of men. They

had their pathetic, twoseconds spasms like Michaelis; but no healthy human sensuality, that warms the

Still she thought the most beautiful part of her was the longsloping fall of the haunches from the socket of

the back, and the slumberous, round stillness of the buttocks. Like hillocks of sand, the Arabs say, soft and

downwardslipping with a long slope. Here the life still lingered hoping. But here too she was thinner, and

But the front of her body made her miserable. It was already beginning to slacken, with a slack sort of

thinness, almost withered, going old before it had ever really lived. She thought of the child she might

She slipped into her nightdress, and went to bed, where she sobbed bitterly. And in her bitterness burned a

cold indignation against Clifford, and his writings and his talk: against all the men of his sort who defrauded

But in the morning, all the same, she was up at seven, and going downstairs to Clifford. She had to help him

in all the intimate things, for he had no man, and refused a womanservant. The housekeeper's husband, who

had known him as a boy, helped him, and did any heavy lifting; but Connie did the personal things, and she

did them willingly. It was a demand on her, but she had wanted to do what she could.

So she hardly ever went away from Wragby, and never for more than a day or two; when Mrs Betts, the

housekeeper, attended to Clifford. He, as was inevitable in the course of time, took all the service for granted.

And yet, deep inside herself, a sense of injustice, of being defrauded, had begun to burn in Connie. The

physical sense of injustice is a dangerous feeling, once it is awakened. It must have outlet, or it eats away the

one in whom it is aroused. Poor Clifford, he was not to blame. His was the greater misfortune. It was all part

And yet was he not in a way to blame? This lack of warmth, this lack of the simple, warm, physical contact,

was he not to blame for that? He was never really warm, nor even kind, only thoughtful, considerate, in a

wellbred, cold sort of way! But never warm as a man can be warm to a woman, as even Connie's father

could be warm to her, with the warmth of a man who did himself well, and intended to, but who still could

But Clifford was not like that. His whole race was not like that. They were all inwardly hard and separate,

and warmth to them was just bad taste. You had to get on without it, and hold your own; which was all very

well if you were of the same class and race. Then you could keep yourself cold and be very estimable, and

hold your own, and enjoy the satisfaction of holding it. But if you were of another class and another race it

wouldn't do; there was no fun merely holding your own, and feeling you belonged to the ruling class. What

was the point, when even the smartest aristocrats had really nothing positive of their own to hold, and their

rule was really a farce, not rule at all? What was the point? It was all cold nonsense.

A sense of rebellion smouldered in Connie. What was the good of it all? What was the good of her sacrifice,

her devoting her life to Clifford? What was she serving, after all? A cold spirit of vanity, that had no warm

human contacts, and that was as corrupt as any lowborn Jew, in craving for prostitution to the

bitchgoddess, Success. Even Clifford's cool and contactless assurance that he belonged to the ruling class

didn't prevent his tongue lolling out of his mouth, as he panted after the bitchgoddess. After all, Michaelis

was really more dignified in the matter, and far, far more successful. Really, if you looked closely at Clifford,

As between the two men, Michaelis really had far more use for her than Clifford had. He had even more need

of her. Any good nurse can attend to crippled legs! And as for the heroic effort, Michaelis was a heroic rat,

There were people staying in the house, among them Clifford's Aunt Eva, Lady Bennerley. She was a thin

woman of sixty, with a red nose, a widow, and still something of a grande dame. She belonged to one of the

best families, and had the character to carry it off. Connie liked her, she was so perfectly simple and [rank, as

far as she intended to be frank, and superficially kind. Inside herself she was a pastmistress in holding her

own, and holding other people a little lower. She was not at all a snob: far too sure of herself. She was perfect

at the social sport of coolly holding her own, and making other people defer to her.

She was kind to Connie, and tried to worm into her woman's soul with the sharp gimlet of her wellborn

`You're quite wonderful, in my opinion,' she said to Connie. `You've done wonders for Clifford. I never saw

any budding genius myself, and there he is, all the rage.' Aunt Eva was quite complacently proud of Clifford's

success. Another feather in the family cap! She didn't care a straw about his books, but why should she?

`It must be! Can't be anybody else's. And it seems to me you don't get enough out of it.'

`Look at the way you are shut up here. I said to Clifford: If that child rebels one day you'll have yourself to

`Look here, my dear child'and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand on Connie's arm. `A woman has to live

her life, or live to repent not having lived it. Believe me!' And she took another sip of brandy, which maybe

`Not in my idea! Clifford should bring you to London, and let you go about. His sort of friends are all right

for him, but what are they for you? If I were you I should think it wasn't good enough. You'll let your youth

But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being steered into the smart world by Lady Bennerley. She

didn't feel really smart, it wasn't interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness under it all; like

the soil of Labrador, which his gay little flowers on its surface, and a foot down is frozen.

Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow, and Jack Strangeways with his wife

Olive. The talk was much more desultory than when only the cronies were there, and everybody was a bit

bored, for the weather was bad, and there was only billiards, and the pianola to dance to.

Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in bottles, and women would be

`Jolly good thing too!' she said. `Then a woman can live her own life.' Strangeways wanted children, and she

`I hope I am; naturally,' she said. `Anyhow the future's going to have more sense, and a woman needn't be

`I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the physical disabilities,' said Clifford. `All the

lovebusiness for example, it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed babies in bottles.'

`I suppose,' said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, `if the lovebusiness went, something else would take its

place. Morphia, perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everybody.'

`The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a cheerful weekend!' said Jack. `Sounds all

`So long as you can forget your body you are happy,' said Lady Bennerley. `And the moment you begin to be

aware of your body, you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to forget our bodies,

`Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether,' said Winterslow. `It's quite time man began to improve on his

`It won't happen,' said Dukes. `Our old show will come flop; our civilization is going to fall. It's going down

the bottomless pit, down the chasm. And believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be the phallus!'

`Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunized women, and babies in bottles, and

Dukes says the phallus is the bridge to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?' said Clifford.

`Oh, don't bother! let's get on with today,' said Olive. `Only hurry up with the breeding bottle, and let us poor

`There might even be real men, in the next phase,' said Tommy. `Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and

wholesome nice women! Wouldn't that be a change, an enormous change from us? We're not men, and the

women aren't women. We're only cerebrating makeshifts, mechanical and intellectual experiments. There

may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of our little lot of cleverjacks, all at the

intelligenceage of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles.'

`But it'll come, in time, when we've shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then we'll

Something echoed inside Connie: `Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body!' She didn't

Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by

Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual rattle of

Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued plodding on, but exasperation and irritation

had got hold of her lower body, she couldn't escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious painfulness,

yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about

herself Even Tommy Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right. Only she began to be

afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as

false teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall church, and which she saw with such grim

painfulness from the park. The bristling of the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with

a grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be buried there, added to the ghastly host

She needed help, and she knew it: so she wrote a little cri du coeur to her sister, Hilda. `I'm not well lately,

Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She came in March, alone, driving

herself in a nimble twoseater. Up the drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of

grass, where the two great wild beechtrees stood, on the flat in front of the house.

Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and kissed her sister.

`Nothing!' said Connie, rather shamefacedly; but she knew how she had suffered in contrast to Hilda. Both

sisters had the same rather golden, glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally strong, warm physique.

But now Connie was thin and earthylooking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that stuck out of her jumper.

`But you're ill, child!' said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless voice that both sisters had alike. Hilda was

The light of battle glowed in Hilda's face; she was a woman, soft and still as she seemed, of the old amazon

`This wretched place!' she said softly, looking at poor, old, lumbering Wragby with real hate. She looked soft

She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her. His wife's

family did not have his sort of manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but once

He sat square and wellgroomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale,

and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but wellbred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he

waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn't care what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if he'd

`Connie's looking awfully unwell,' she said in her soft voice, fixing him with her beautiful, glowering grey

eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did Connie; but he well knew the tone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.

`Do you think it necessary?' he asked, with his suavest English stiffness, for the two things often go together.

Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her forte, nor Connie's; so she glowered, and

`I'll take her to a doctor,' said Hilda at length. `Can you suggest a good one round here?'

`I suppose I may as well stay the night,' said Hilda, pulling off her gloves, `and I'll drive her to town

Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and at evening the whites of his eyes were a little yellow too. He

`You must have a nurse or somebody, to look after you personally. You should really have a manservant,'

said Hilda as they sat, with apparent calmness, at coffee after dinner. She spoke in her soft, seemingly gentle

`I'm sure! It's necessary. Either that, or Father and I must take Connie away for some months. This can't go

`Haven't you looked at the child!' asked Hilda, gazing at him full stare. He looked rather like a huge, boiled

Clifford had been long enough in the hands of nurses; he hated them, because they left him no real privacy.

And a manservant!...he couldn't stand a man hanging round him. Almost better any woman. But why not

The two sisters drove off in the morning, Connie looking rather like an Easter lamb, rather small beside

Hilda, who held the wheel. Sir Malcolm was away, but the Kensington house was open.

The doctor examined Connie carefully, and asked her all about her life. `I see your photograph, and Sir

Clifford's, in the illustrated papers sometimes. Almost notorieties, aren't you? That's how the quiet little girls

grow up, though you're only a quiet little girl even now, in spite of the illustrated papers. No, no! There's

nothing organically wrong, but it won't do! It won't do! Tell Sir Clifford he's got to bring you to town, or take

you abroad, and amuse you. You've got to be amused, got to! Your vitality is much too low; no reserves, no

reserves. The nerves of the heart a bit queer already: oh, yes! Nothing but nerves; I'd put you right in a month

at Cannes or Biarritz. But it mustn't go on, mustn't, I tell you, or I won't be answerable for consequences.

You're spending your life without renewing it. You've got to be amused, properly, healthily amused. You're

spending your vitality without making any. Can't go on, you know. Depression! Avoid depression!'

Michaelis heard they were in town, and came running with roses. `Why, whatever's wrong?' he cried. `You're

a shadow of yourself. Why, I never saw such a change! Why ever didn't you let me know? Come to Nice with

me! Come down to Sicily! Go on, come to Sicily with me. It's lovely there just now. You want sun! You want

life! Why, you're wasting away! Come away with me! Come to Africa! Oh, hang Sir Clifford! Chuck him,

and come along with me. I'll marry you the minute he divorces you. Come along and try a life! God's love!

That place Wragby would kill anybody. Beastly place! Foul place! Kill anybody! Come away with me into

But Connie's heart simply stood still at the thought of abandoning Clifford there and then. She couldn't do it.

Michaelis was disgusted. Hilda didn't like Michaelis, but she almost preferred him to Clifford. Back went the

Hilda talked to Clifford, who still had yellow eyeballs when they got back. He, too, in his way, was

overwrought; but he had to listen to all Hilda said, to all the doctor had said, not what Michaelis had said, of

`Here is the address of a good manservant, who was with an invalid patient of the doctor's till he died last

`But I'm not an invalid, and I will not have a manservant,' said Clifford, poor devil.

`And here are the addresses of two women; I saw one of them, she would do very well; a woman of about

`Very well, Clifford. If we don't settle something by tomorrow, I shall telegraph to Father, and we shall take

`She doesn't want to, but she knows she must. Mother died of cancer, brought on by fretting. We're not

So next day Clifford suggested Mrs Bolton, Tevershall parish nurse. Apparently Mrs Betts had thought of

her. Mrs Bolton was just retiring from her parish duties to take up private nursing jobs. Clifford had a queer

dread of delivering himself into the hands of a stranger, but this Mrs Bolton had once nursed him through

The two sisters at once called on Mrs Bolton, in a newish house in a row, quite select for Tevershall. They

found a rather goodlooking woman of fortyodd, in a nurse's uniform, with a white collar and apron, just

Mrs Bolton was most attentive and polite, seemed quite nice, spoke with a bit of a broad slur, but in heavily

correct English, and from having bossed the sick colliers for a good many years, had a very good opinion of

herself, and a fair amount of assurance. In short, in her tiny way, one of the governing class in the village,

`Yes, Lady Chatterley's not looking at all well! Why, she used to be that bonny, didn't she now? But she's

been failing all winter! Oh, it's hard, it is. Poor Sir Clifford! Eh, that war, it's a lot to answer for.'

And Mrs Bolton would come to Wragby at once, if Dr Shardlow would let her off. She had another

fortnight's parish nursing to do, by rights, but they might get a substitute, you know.

Hilda posted off to Dr Shardlow, and on the following Sunday Mrs Bolton drove up in Leiver's cab to

Wragby with two trunks. Hilda had talks with her; Mrs Bolton was ready at any moment to talk. And she

seemed so young! The way the passion would flush in her rather pale cheek. She was fortyseven.

Her husband, Ted Bolton, had been killed in the pit, twentytwo years ago, twentytwo years last Christmas,

just at Christmas time, leaving her with two children, one a baby in arms. Oh, the baby was married now,

Edith, to a young man in Boots Cash Chemists in Sheffield. The other one was a schoolteacher in

Chesterfield; she came home weekends, when she wasn't asked out somewhere. Young folks enjoyed

Ted Bolton was twentyeight when lie was killed in an explosion down th' pit. The butty in front shouted to

them all to lie down quick, there were four of them. And they all lay down in time, only Ted, and it killed

him. Then at the inquiry, on the masters' side they said Ted had been frightened, and trying to run away, and

not obeying orders, so it was like his fault really. So the compensation was only three hundred pounds, and

they made out as if it was more of a gift than legal compensation, because it was really the man's own fault.

And they wouldn't let her have the money down; she wanted to have a little shop. But they said she'd no

doubt squander it, perhaps in drink! So she had to draw it thirty shillings a week. Yes, she had to go every

Monday morning down to the offices, and stand there a couple of hours waiting her turn; yes, for almost four

years she went every Monday. And what could she do with two little children on her hands? But Ted's mother

was very good to her. When the baby could toddle she'd keep both the children for the day, while she, Ivy

Bolton, went to Sheffield, and attended classes in ambulance, and then the fourth year she even took a

nursing course and got qualified. She was determined to be independent and keep her children. So she was

assistant at Uthwaite hospital, just a little place, for a while. But when the Company, the Tevershall Colliery

Company, really Sir Geoffrey, saw that she could get on by herself, they were very good to her, gave her the

parish nursing, and stood by her, she would say that for them. And she'd done it ever since, till now it was

getting a bit much for her; she needed something a bit lighter, there was such a lot of traipsing around if you

`Yes, the Company's been very good to me, I always say it. But I should never forget what they said about

Ted, for he was as steady and fearless a chap as ever set foot on the cage, and it was as good as branding him

It was a queer mixture of feelings the woman showed as she talked. She liked the colliers, whom she had

nursed for so long; but she felt very superior to them. She felt almost upper class; and at the same time a

resentment against the ruling class smouldered in her. The masters! In a dispute between masters and men,

she was always for the men. But when there was no question of contest, she was pining to be superior, to be

one of the upper class. The upper classes fascinated her, appealing to her peculiar English passion for

superiority. She was thrilled to come to Wragby; thrilled to talk to Lady Chatterley, my word, different from

the common colliers' wives! She said so in so many words. Yet one could see a grudge against the

`Why, yes, of course, it would wear Lady Chatterley out! It's a mercy she had a sister to come and help her.

Men don't think, high and lowalike, they take what a woman does for them for granted. Oh, I've told the

colliers off about it many a time. But it's very hard for Sir Clifford, you know, crippled like that. They were

always a haughty family, standoffish in a way, as they've a right to be. But then to be brought down like that!

And it's very hard on Lady Chatterley, perhaps harder on her. What she misses! I only had Ted three years,

but my word, while I had him I had a husband I could never forget. He was one in a thousand, and jolly as the

day. Who'd ever have thought he'd get killed? I don't believe it to this day somehow, I've never believed it,

though I washed him with my own hands. But he was never dead for me, he never was. I never took it in.'

This was a new voice in Wragby, very new for Connie to hear; it roused a new ear in her.

For the first week or so, Mrs Bolton, however, was very quiet at Wragby, her assured, bossy manner left her,

and she was nervous. With Clifford she was shy, almost frightened, and silent. He liked that, and soon

recovered his selfpossession, letting her do things for him without even noticing her.

`She's a useful nonentity!' he said. Connie opened her eyes in wonder, but she did not contradict him. So

And he soon became rather superb, somewhat lordly with the nurse. She had rather expected it, and he played

up without knowing. So susceptible we are to what is expected of us! The colliers had been so like children,

talking to her, and telling her what hurt them, while she bandaged them, or nursed them. They had always

made her feel so grand, almost superhuman in her administrations. Now Clifford made her feel small, and

like a servant, and she accepted it without a word, adjusting herself to the upper classes.

She came very mute, with her long, handsome face, and downcast eyes, to administer to him. And she said

She went softly, and in half an hour she came softly again. She was bullied, but she didn't mind. She was

experiencing the upper classes. She neither resented nor disliked Clifford; he was just part of a phenomenon,

the phenomenon of the highclass folks, so far unknown to her, but now to be known. She felt more at home

with Lady Chatterley, and after all it's the mistress of the house matters most.

Mrs Bolton helped Clifford to bed at night, and slept across the passage from his room, and came if he rang

for her in the night. She also helped him in the morning, and soon valeted him completely, even shaving him,

in her soft, tentative woman's way. She was very good and competent, and she soon knew how to have him in

her power. He wasn't so very different from the colliers after all, when you lathered his chin, and softly

rubbed the bristles. The standoffishness and the lack of frankness didn't bother her; she was having a new

Clifford, however, inside himself, never quite forgave Connie for giving up her personal care of him to a

strange hired woman. It killed, he said to himself, the real flower of the intimacy between him and her. But

Connie didn't mind that. The fine flower of their intimacy was to her rather like an orchid, a bulb stuck

parasitic on her tree of life, and producing, to her eyes, a rather shabby flower.

Now she had more time to herself she could softly play the piano, up in her room, and sing: `Touch not the

nettle, for the bonds of love are ill to loose.' She had not realized till lately how ill to loose they were, these

bonds of love. But thank Heaven she had loosened them! She was so glad to be alone, not always to have to

talk to him. When he was alone he tappedtappedtapped on a typewriter, to infinity. But when he was not

`working', and she was there, he talked, always talked; infinite small analysis of people and motives, and

results, characters and personalities, till now she had had enough. For years she had loved it, until she had

It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness in him and her had grown

together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, she

was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with

patience and impatience to get clear. But the bonds of such love are more ill to loose even than most bonds;

But he still wanted the old intimate evenings of talk with Connie: talk or reading aloud. But now she could

arrange that Mrs Bolton should come at ten to disturb them. At ten o'clock Connie could go upstairs and be

Mrs Bolton ate with Mrs Betts in the housekeeper's room, since they were all agreeable. And it was curious

how much closer the servants' quarters seemed to have come; right up to the doors of Clifford's study, when

before they were so remote. For Mrs Betts would sometimes sit in Mrs Bolton's room, and Connie heard their

lowered voices, and felt somehow the strong, other vibration of the working people almost invading the

sittingroom, when she and Clifford were alone. So changed was Wragby merely by Mrs Bolton's coming.

And Connie felt herself released, in another world, she felt she breathed differently. But still she was afraid of

how many of her roots, perhaps mortal ones, were tangled with Clifford's. Yet still, she breathed freer, a new

Mrs Bolton also kept a cherishing eye on Connie, feeling she must extend to her her female and professional

protection. She was always urging her ladyship to walk out, to drive to Uthwaite, to be in the air. For Connie

had got into the habit of sitting still by the fire, pretending to read; or to sew feebly, and hardly going out at

It was a blowy day soon after Hilda had gone, that Mrs Bolton said: `Now why don't you go for a walk

through the wood, and look at the daffs behind the keeper's cottage? They're the prettiest sight you'd see in a

day's march. And you could put some in your room; wild daffs are always so cheerfullooking, aren't they?'

Connie took it in good part, even daffs for daffodils. Wild daffodils! After all, one could not stew in one's

own juice. The spring came back...`Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n

And the keeper, his thin, white body, like a lonely pistil of an invisible flower! She had forgotten him in her

unspeakable depression. But now something roused...`Pale beyond porch and portal'...the thing to do was to

She was stronger, she could walk better, and iii the wood the wind would not be so tiring as it was across the

bark, flatten against her. She wanted to forget, to forget the world, and all the dreadful, carrionbodied

people. `Ye must be born again! I believe in the resurrection of the body! Except a grain of wheat fall into the

earth and die, it shall by no means bring forth. When the crocus cometh forth I too will emerge and see the

Little gusts of sunshine blew, strangely bright, and lit up the celandines at the wood's edge, under the

hazelrods, they spangled out bright and yellow. And the wood was still, stiller, but yet gusty with crossing

sun. The first windflowers were out, and all the wood seemed pale with the pallor of endless little anemones,

sprinkling the shaken floor. `The world has grown pale with thy breath.' But it was the breath of Persephone,

this time; she was out of hell on a cold morning. Cold breaths of wind came, and overhead there was an anger

of entangled wind caught among the twigs. It, too, was caught and trying to tear itself free, the wind, like

Absalom. How cold the anemones looked, bobbing their naked white shoulders over crinoline skirts of green.

But they stood it. A few first bleached little primroses too, by the path, and yellow buds unfolding

The roaring and swaying was overhead, only cold currents came down below. Connie was strangely excited

in the wood, and the colour flew in her cheeks, and burned blue in her eyes. She walked ploddingly, picking a

few primroses and the first violets, that smelled sweet and cold, sweet and cold. And she drifted on without

Till she came to the clearing, at the end of the wood, and saw the greenstained stone cottage, looking almost

rosy, like the flesh underneath a mushroom, its stone warmed in a burst of sun. And there was a sparkle of

yellow jasmine by the door; the closed door. But no sound; no smoke from the chimney; no dog barking.

She went quietly round to the back, where the bank rose up; she had an excuse, to see the daffodils.

And they were there, the shortstemmed flowers, rustling and fluttering and shivering, so bright and alive,

They shook their bright, sunny little rags in bouts of distress. But perhaps they liked it really; perhaps they

Constance sat down with her back to a young pinetree, that wayed against her with curious life, elastic, and

powerful, rising up. The erect, alive thing, with its top in the sun! And she watched the daffodils turn golden,

in a burst of sun that was warm on her hands and lap. Even she caught the faint, tarry scent of the flowers.

And then, being so still and alone, she seemed to bet into the current of her own proper destiny. She had been

fastened by a rope, and jagging and snarring like a boat at its moorings; now she was loose and adrift.

The sunshine gave way to chill; the daffodils were in shadow, dipping silently. So they would dip through the

She rose, a little stiff, took a few daffodils, and went down. She hated breaking the flowers, but she wanted

just one or two to go with her. She would have to go back to Wragby and its walls, and now she hated it,

especially its thick walls. Walls! Always walls! Yet one needed them in this wind.

`Right across the wood! Look, aren't the little daffodils adorable? To think they should come out of the earth!'

`But modelled in the earth,' she retorted, with a prompt contradiction, that surprised her a little.

The next afternoon she went to the wood again. She followed the broad riding that swerved round and up

through the larches to a spring called John's Well. It was cold on this hillside, and not a flower in the darkness

of larches. But the icy little spring softly pressed upwards from its tiny wellbed of pure, reddishwhite

pebbles. How icy and clear it was! Brilliant! The new keeper had no doubt put in fresh pebbles. She heard the

faint tinkle of water, as the tiny overflow trickled over and downhill. Even above the hissing boom of the

larchwood, that spread its bristling, leafless, wolfish darkness on the downslope, she heard the tinkle as of

This place was a little sinister, cold, damp. Yet the well must have been a drinkingplace for hundreds of

She rose and went slowly towards home. As she went she heard a faint tapping away on the right, and stood

She walked on, listening. And then she noticed a narrow track between young firtrees, a track that seemed

to lead nowhere. But she felt it had been used. She turned down it adventurously, between the thick young

firs, which gave way soon to the old oak wood. She followed the track, and the hammering grew nearer, in

the silence of the windy wood, for trees make a silence even in their noise of wind.

She saw a secret little clearing, and a secret little hot made of rustic poles. And she had never been here

before! She realized it was the quiet place where the growing pheasants were reared; the keeper in his

shirtsleeves was kneeling, hammering. The dog trotted forward with a short, sharp bark, and the keeper

He straightened himself and saluted, watching her in silence, as she came forward with weakening limbs. He

resented the intrusion; he cherished his solitude as his only and last freedom in life.

`I wondered what the hammering was,' she said, feeling weak and breathless, and a little afraid of him, as he

`Ah'm gettin' th' coops ready for th' young bods,' he said, in broad vernacular.

She did not know what to say, and she felt weak. `I should like to sit down a bit,' she said.

`Come and sit 'ere i' th' 'ut,' he said, going in front of her to the hut, pushing aside some timber and stuff, and

`Am Ah t' light yer a little fire?' he asked, with the curious na�vet� of the dialect.

But he looked at her hands; they were rather blue. So he quickly took some larch twigs to the little brick

fireplace in the corner, and in a moment the yellow flame was running up the chimney. He made a place by

She obeyed him. He had that curious kind of protective authority she obeyed at once. So she sat and warmed

her hands at the blaze, and dropped logs on the fire, whilst outside he was hammering again. She did not

really want to sit, poked in a corner by the fire; she would rather have watched from the door, but she was

The hut was quite cosy, panelled with unvarnished deal, having a little rustic table and stool beside her chair,

and a carpenter's bench, then a big box, tools, new boards, nails; and many things hung from pegs: axe,

hatchet, traps, things in sacks, his coat. It had no window, the light came in through the open door. It was a

She listened to the tapping of the man's hammer; it was not so happy. He was oppressed. Here was a trespass

on his privacy, and a dangerous one! A woman! He had reached the point where all he wanted on earth was

to be alone. And yet he was powerless to preserve his privacy; he was a hired man, and these people were his

Especially he did not want to come into contact with a woman again. He feared it; for he had a big wound

from old contacts. He felt if he could not be alone, and if he could not be left alone, he would die. His recoil

away from the outer world was complete; his last refuge was this wood; to hide himself there!

Connie grew warm by the fire, which she had made too big: then she grew hot. She went and sat on the stool

in the doorway, watching the man at work. He seemed not to notice her, but he knew. Yet he worked on, as if

absorbedly, and his brown dog sat on her tail near him, and surveyed the untrustworthy world.

Slender, quiet and quick, the man finished the coop he was making, turned it over, tried the sliding door, then

set it aside. Then he rose, went for an old coop, and took it to the chopping log where he was working.

Crouching, he tried the bars; some broke in his hands; he began to draw the nails. Then he turned the coop

over and deliberated, and he gave absolutely no sign of awareness of the woman's presence.

So Connie watched him fixedly. And the same solitary aloneness she had seen in him naked, she now saw in

him clothed: solitary, and intent, like an animal that works alone, but also brooding, like a soul that recoils

away, away from all human contact. Silently, patiently, he was recoiling away from her even now. It was the

stillness, and the timeless sort of patience, in a man impatient and passionate, that touched Connie's womb.

She saw it in his bent head, the quick quiet hands, the crouching of his slender, sensitive loins; something

patient and withdrawn. She felt his experience had been deeper and wider than her own; much deeper and

wider, and perhaps more deadly. And this relieved her of herself; she felt almost irresponsible.

So she sat in the doorway of the hut in a dream, utterly unaware of time and of particular circumstances. She

was so drifted away that he glanced up at her quickly, and saw the utterly still, waiting look on her face. To

him it was a look of waiting. And a little thin tongue of fire suddenly flickered in his loins, at the root of his

back, and he groaned in spirit. He dreaded with a repulsion almost of death, any further close human contact.

He wished above all things she would go away, and leave him to his own privacy. He dreaded her will, her

female will, and her modern female insistency. And above all he dreaded her cool, upperclass impudence of

having her own way. For after all he was only a hired man. He hated her presence there.

Connie came to herself with sudden uneasiness. She rose. The afternoon was turning to evening, yet she

could not go away. She went over to the man, who stood up at attention, his worn face stiff and blank, his

`Do you think I could have a key too, so that I could sit here sometimes? Are there two keys?'

He had lapsed into the vernacular. Connie hesitated; he was putting up an opposition. Was it his hut, after all?

`Couldn't we get another key?' she asked in her soft voice, that underneath had the ring of a woman

`Another!' he said, glancing at her with a flash of anger, touched with derision.

`Yes!' she said, `he might have another. Otherwise we could have one made from the one you have. It would

Their eyes met. His had a cold, ugly look of dislike and contempt, and indifference to what would happen.

But her heart sank, she saw how utterly he disliked her, when she went against him. And she saw him in a

`Afternoon, my Lady!' He saluted and turned abruptly away. She had wakened the sleeping dogs of old

voracious anger in him, anger against the selfwilled female. And he was powerless, powerless. He knew it!

And she was angry against the selfwilled male. A servant too! She walked sullenly home.

`Oh, I don't think it's hardly my place. I don't think Sir Clifford would like it at all, my Lady.'

She went indoors to Clifford's study, where the old brass kettle was simmering on the tray.

`Am I late, Clifford?' she said, putting down the few flowers and taking up the teacaddy, as she stood before

the tray in her hat and scarf. `I'm sorry! Why didn't you let Mrs Bolton make the tea?'

`I didn't think of it,' he said ironically. `I don't quite see her presiding at the teatable.'

`Walked and sat in a sheltered place. Do you know there are still berries on the big hollytree?'

She took off her scarf, but not her hat, and sat down to make tea. The toast would certainly be leathery. She

put the teacosy over the teapot, and rose to get a little glass for her violets. The poor flowers hung over,

`They'll revive again!' she said, putting them before him in their glass for him to smell.

`I don't see a bit of connexion with the actual violets,' she said. `The Elizabethans are rather upholstered.'

`Do you think there is a second key to that little hut not far from John's Well, where the pheasants are reared?'

`I happened to find it todayand I'd never seen it before. I think it's a darling place. I could sit there

`Yes! That's how I found it: his hammering. He didn't seem to like my intruding at all. In fact he was almost

`There may be one in Father's study. Betts knows them all, they're all there. I'll get him to look.'

`Oh, nothing, really! But I don't think he wanted me to have the freedom of the castle, quite.'

`Still, I don't see why he should mind. It's not his home, after all! It's not his private abode. I don't see why I

`Oh, decidedly! He thinks he's something exceptional. You know he had a wife he didn't get on with, so he

joined up in 1915 and was sent to India, I believe. Anyhow he was blacksmith to the cavalry in Egypt for a

time; always was connected with horses, a clever fellow that way. Then some Indian colonel took a fancy to

him, and he was made a lieutenant. Yes, they gave him a commission. I believe he went back to India with

his colonel, and up to the northwest frontier. He was ill; he was a pension. He didn't come out of the army

till last year, I believe, and then, naturally, it isn't easy for a man like that to get back to his own level. He's

bound to flounder. But he does his duty all right, as far as I'm concerned. Only I'm not having any of the

`He doesn't...except by fits and starts. He can speak perfectly well, for him. I suppose he has an idea if he's

`Oh, I've no patience with these romances. They're the ruin of all order. It's a thousand pities they ever

Connie was inclined to agree. What was the good of discontented people who fitted in nowhere?

In the spell of fine weather Clifford, too, decided to go to the wood. The wind was cold, but not so tiresome,

`It's amazing,' said Connie, `how different one feels when there's a really fresh fine day. Usually one feels the

`I do. The steam of so much boredom, and discontent and anger out of all the people, just kills the vitality in

`Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere lowers the vitality of the people?' he said.

The chair puffed on. In the hazel copse catkins were hanging pale gold, and in sunny places the

woodanemones were wide open, as if exclaiming with the joy of life, just as good as in past days, when

people could exclaim along with them. They had a faint scent of appleblossom. Connie gathered a few for

`Thou still unravished bride of quietness,' he quoted. `It seems to fit flowers so much better than Greek vases.'

`Ravished is such a horrid word!' she said. `It's only people who ravish things.'

She was angry with him, turning everything into words. Violets were Juno's eyelids, and windflowers were

on ravished brides. How she hated words, always coming between her and life: they did the ravishing, if

anything did: readymade words and phrases, sucking all the lifesap out of living things.

The walk with Clifford was not quite a success. Between him and Connie there was a tension that each

pretended not to notice, but there it was. Suddenly, with all the force of her female instinct, she was shoving

him off. She wanted to be clear of him, and especially of his consciousness, his words, his obsession with

The weather came rainy again. But after a day or two she went out in the rain, and she went to the wood. And

once there, she went towards the hut. It was raining, but not so cold, and the wood felt so silent and remote,

She came to the clearing. No one there! The hut was locked. But she sat on the log doorstep, under the rustic

porch, and snuggled into her own warmth. So she sat, looking at the rain, listening to the many noiseless

noises of it, and to the strange soughings of wind in upper branches, when there seemed to be no wind. Old

oaktrees stood around, grey, powerful trunks, rainblackened, round and vital, throwing off reckless limbs.

The ground was fairly free of undergrowth, the anemones sprinkled, there was a bush or two, elder, or

guelderrose, and a purplish tangle of bramble: the old russet of bracken almost vanished under green

anemone ruffs. Perhaps this was one of the unravished places. Unravished! The whole world was ravished.

Some things can't be ravished. You can't ravish a tin of sardines. And so many women are like that; and men.

The rain was abating. It was hardly making darkness among the oaks any more. Connie wanted to go; yet she

sat on. But she was getting cold; yet the overwhelming inertia of her inner resentment kept her there as if

Ravished! How ravished one could be without ever being touched. Ravished by dead words become obscene,

A wet brown dog came running and did not bark, lifting a wet feather of a tail. The man followed in a wet

black oilskin jacket, like a chauffeur, and face flushed a little. She felt him recoil in his quick walk, when he

saw her. She stood up in the handbreadth of dryness under the rustic porch. He saluted without speaking,

`No, but it doesn't matter. I can sit perfectly dry under this porch. Good afternoon!' She hated the excess of

He watched her closely, as she was moving away. Then he hitched up his jacket, and put his hand in his

`'Appen yer'd better 'ave this key, an' Ah min fend for t' bods some other road.'

`I mean as 'appen Ah can find anuther pleece as'll du for rearin' th' pheasants. If yer want ter be 'ere, yo'll non

`So if yer want t' key, yer'd better tacit. Or 'appen Ah'd better gi'e 't yer termorrer, an' clear all t' stuff aht fust.

`I didn't want your key,' she said. `I don't want you to clear anything out at all. I don't in the least want to turn

you out of your hut, thank you! I only wanted to be able to sit here sometimes, like today. But I can sit

`Why,' he began, in the broad slow dialect. `Your Ladyship's as welcome as Christmas ter th' hut an' th' key

an' iverythink as is. On'y this time O' th' year ther's bods ter set, an' Ah've got ter be potterin' abaht a good bit,

seein' after 'em, an' a'. Winter time Ah ned 'ardly come nigh th' pleece. But what wi' spring, an' Sir Clifford

wantin' ter start th' pheasants...An' your Ladyship'd non want me tinkerin' around an' about when she was 'ere,

`T'nuisance on me!' he said briefly, but significantly. She flushed. `Very well!' she said finally. `I won't

trouble you. But I don't think I should have minded at all sitting and seeing you look after the birds. I should

have liked it. But since you think it interferes with you, I won't disturb you, don't be afraid. You are Sir

`Nay, your Ladyship. It's your Ladyship's own 'ut. It's as your Ladyship likes an' pleases, every time. Yer can

`On'y as 'appen yo'd like the place ter yersen, when yer did come, an' not me messin' abaht.'

`But why?' she said, angry. `Aren't you a civilized human being? Do you think I ought to be afraid of you?

Why should I take any notice of you and your being here or not? Why is it important?'

`And I consider you are insolent,' said Connie, with her colour up, panting a little.

`Nay, nay!' he said quickly. `Dunna yer say that! Nay, nay! I niver meant nuthink. Ah on'y thought as if yo'

come 'ere, Ah s'd ave ter clear out, an' it'd mean a lot of work, settin' up somewheres else. But if your

Ladyship isn't going ter take no notice O' me, then...it's Sir Clifford's 'ut, an' everythink is as your Ladyship

likes, everythink is as your Ladyship likes an' pleases, barrin' yer take no notice O' me, doin' th' bits of jobs as

Connie went away completely bewildered. She was not sure whether she had been insulted and mortally of

fended, or not. Perhaps the man really only meant what he said; that he thought she would expect him to keep

away. As if she would dream of it! And as if he could possibly be so important, he and his stupid presence.

Connie was surprised at her own feeling of aversion from Clifford. What is more, she felt she had always

really disliked him. Not hate: there was no passion in it. But a profound physical dislike. Almost, it seemed to

her, she had married him because she disliked him, in a secret, physical sort of way. But of course, she had

married him really because in a mental way he attracted her and excited her. He had seemed, in some way,

Now the mental excitement had worn itself out and collapsed, and she was aware only of the physical

aversion. It rose up in her from her depths: and she realized how it had been eating her life away.

She felt weak and utterly forlorn. She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world

there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilized society is insane. Money and

socalled love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his

disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love. Look at Michaelis! His life and activity were just

And Clifford the same. All that talk! All that writing! All that wild struggling to push himself forwards! It

Connie felt washedout with fear. But at least, Clifford was shifting his grip from her on to Mrs Bolton. He

did not know it. Like many insane people, his insanity might be measured by the things he was not aware of

Mrs Bolton was admirable in many ways. But she had that queer sort of bossiness, endless assertion of her

own will, which is one of the signs of insanity in modern woman. She thought she was utterly subservient

and living for others. Clifford fascinated her because he always, or so of ten, frustrated her will, as if by a

finer instinct. He had a finer, subtler will of selfassertion than herself. This was his charm for her.

`It's a lovely day, today!' Mrs Bolton would say in her caressive, persuasive voice. `I should think you'd enjoy

`Yes? Will you give me that bookthere, that yellow one. And I think I'll have those hyacinths taken out.'

`Why they're so beautiful!' She pronounced it with the `y' sound: beyutiful! `And the scent is simply

`Do you think so!' she exclaimed in surprise, just a little offended, but impressed. And she carried the

`Shall I shave you this morning, or would you rather do it yourself?' Always the same soft, caressive,

`Very good, Sir Clifford!' she replied, so soft and submissive, withdrawing quietly. But every rebuff stored up

She was very deft, with a soft, lingering touch, a little slow. At first he had resented the infinitely soft touch

of her lingers on his face. But now he liked it, with a growing voluptuousness. He let her shave him nearly

every day: her face near his, her eyes so very concentrated, watching that she did it right. And gradually her

fingertips knew his cheeks and lips, his jaw and chin and throat perfectly. He was wellfed and wellliking,

She was handsome too, pale, her face rather long and absolutely still, her eyes bright, but revealing nothing.

Gradually, with infinite softness, almost with love, she was getting him by the throat, and he was yielding to

She now did almost everything for him, and he felt more at home with her, less ashamed of accepting her

menial offices, than with Connie. She liked handling him. She loved having his body in her charge,

absolutely, to the last menial offices. She said to Connie one day: `All men are babies, when you come to the

bottom of them. Why, I've handled some of the toughest customers as ever went down Tevershall pit. But let

anything ail them so that you have to do for them, and they're babies, just big babies. Oh, there's not much

At first Mrs Bolton had thought there really was something different in a gentleman, a real gentleman, like

Sir Clifford. So Clifford had got a good start of her. But gradually, as she came to the bottom of him, to use

her own term, she found he was like the rest, a baby grown to man's proportions: but a baby with a queer

temper and a fine manner and power in its control, and all sorts of odd knowledge that she had never dreamed

`For God's sake, don't sink so horribly into the hands of that woman!' But she found she didn't care for him

It was still their habit to spend the evening together, till ten o'clock. Then they would talk, or read together, or

go over his manuscript. But the thrill had gone out of it. She was bored by his manuscripts. But she still

For Connie had suggested to Mrs Bolton that she should learn to use a typewriter. And Mrs Bolton, always

ready, had begun at once, and practised assiduously. So now Clifford would sometimes dictate a letter to her,

and she would take it down rather slowly, but correctly. And he was very patient, spelling for her the difficult

words, or the occasional phrases in French. She was so thrilled, it was almost a pleasure to instruct her.

Now Connie would sometimes plead a headache as an excuse for going up to her room after dinner.

`Oh, I shall be perfectly all right. You go to your own room and rest, darling.'

But no sooner had she gone, than he rang for Mrs Bolton, and asked her to take a hand at piquet or bezique,

or even chess. He had taught her all these games. And Connie found it curiously objectionable to see Mrs

Bolton, flushed and tremulous like a little girl, touching her queen or her knight with uncertain fingers, then

drawing away again. And Clifford, faintly smiling with a halfteasing superiority, saying to her:

She looked up at him with bright, startled eyes, then murmured shyly, obediently:

Yes, he was educating her. And he enjoyed it, it gave him a sense of power. And she was thrilled. She was

coming bit by bit into possession of all that the gentry knew, all that made them upper class: apart from the

money. That thrilled her. And at the same time, she was making him want to have her there with him. It was a

To Connie, Clifford seemed to be coming out in his true colours: a little vulgar, a little common, and

uninspired; rather fat. Ivy Bolton's tricks and humble bossiness were also only too transparent. But Connie

did wonder at the genuine thrill which the woman got out of Clifford. To say she was in love with him would

be putting it wrongly. She was thrilled by her contact with a man of the upper class, this titled gentleman, this

author who could write books and poems, and whose photograph appeared in the illustrated newspapers. She

was thrilled to a weird passion. And his `educating' her roused in her a passion of excitement and response

much deeper than any love affair could have done. In truth, the very fact that there could be no love affair left

her free to thrill to her very marrow with this other passion, the peculiar passion of knowing, knowing as he

There was no mistake that the woman was in some way in love with him: whatever force we give to the word

love. She looked so handsome and so young, and her grey eyes were sometimes marvellous. At the same

time, there was a lurking soft satisfaction about her, even of triumph, and private satisfaction. Ugh, that

But no wonder Clifford was caught by the woman! She absolutely adored him, in her persistent fashion, and

put herself absolutely at his service, for him to use as he liked. No wonder he was flattered!

Connie heard long conversations going on between the two. Or rather, it bas mostly Mrs Bolton talking. She

had unloosed to him the stream of gossip about Tevershall village. It was more than gossip. It was Mrs

Gaskell and George Eliot and Miss Mitford all rolled in one, with a great deal more, that these women left

out.' Once started, Mrs Bolton was better than any book, about the lives of the people. She knew them all so

intimately, and had such a peculiar, flamey zest in all their affairs, it was wonderful, if just a trifle humiliating

to listen to her. At first she had not ventured to `talk Tevershall', as she called it, to Clifford. But once started,

it went on. Clifford was listening for `material', and he found it in plenty. Connie realized that his socalled

genius was just this: a perspicuous talent for personal gossip, clever and apparently detached. Mrs Bolton, of

course, was very warm when she `talked Tevershall'. Carried away, in fact. And it was marvellous, the things

Connie was fascinated, listening to her. But afterwards always a little ashamed. She ought not to listen with

this queer rabid curiosity. After all, one may hear the most private affairs of other people, but only in a spirit

of respect for the struggling, battered thing which any human soul is, and in a spirit of fine, discriminative

sympathy. For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really

determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead

into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from

things gone dead. Therefore, the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is in

the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow,

But the novel, like gossip, can also excite spurious sympathies and recoils, mechanical and deadening to the

psyche. The novel can glorify the most corrupt feelings, so long as they are conventionally `pure'. Then the

novel, like gossip, becomes at last vicious, and, like gossip, all the more vicious because it is always

ostensibly on the side of the angels. Mrs Bolton's gossip was always on the side of the angels. `And he was

such a bad fellow, and she was such a nice woman.' Whereas, as Connie could see even from Mrs Bolton's

gossip, the woman had been merely a mealymouthed sort, and the man angrily honest. But angry honesty

made a `bad man' of him, and mealymouthedness made a `nice woman' of her, in the vicious, conventional

For this reason, the gossip was humiliating. And for the same reason, most novels, especially popular ones,

Nevertheless, one got a new vision of Tevershall village from Mrs Bolton's talk. A terrible, seething welter of

ugly life it seemed: not at all the flat drabness it looked from outside. Clifford of course knew by sight most

of the people mentioned, Connie knew only one or two. But it sounded really more like a Central African

`I suppose you heard as Miss Allsopp was married last week! Would you ever! Miss Allsopp, old James'

daughter, the bootandshoe Allsopp. You know they built a house up at Pye Croft. The old man died last

year from a fall; eightythree, he was, an' nimble as a lad. An' then he slipped on Bestwood Hill, on a slide as

the lads 'ad made last winter, an' broke his thigh, and that finished him, poor old man, it did seem a shame.

Well, he left all his money to Tattie: didn't leave the boys a penny. An' Tattie, I know, is five yearsyes,

she's fiftythree last autumn. And you know they were such Chapel people, my word! She taught Sunday

school for thirty years, till her father died. And then she started carrying on with a fellow from Kinbrook, I

don't know if you know him, an oldish fellow with a red nose, rather dandified, Willcock, as works in

Harrison's woodyard. Well he's sixtyfive, if he's a day, yet you'd have thought they were a pair of young

turtledoves, to see them, arm in arm, and kissing at the gate: yes, an' she sitting on his knee right in the bay

window on Pye Croft Road, for anybody to see. And he's got sons over forty: only lost his wife two years

ago. If old James Allsopp hasn't risen from his grave, it's because there is no rising: for he kept her that strict!

Now they're married and gone to live down at Kinbrook, and they say she goes round in a dressinggown

from morning to night, a veritable sight. I'm sure it's awful, the way the old ones go on! Why they're a lot

worse than the young, and a sight more disgusting. I lay it down to the pictures, myself. But you can't keep

them away. I was always saying: go to a good instructive film, but do for goodness sake keep away from

these melodramas and love films. Anyhow keep the children away! But there you are, grownups are worse

than the children: and the old ones beat the band. Talk about morality! Nobody cares a thing. Folks does as

they like, and much better off they are for it, I must say. But they're having to draw their horns in nowadays,

now th' pits are working so bad, and they haven't got the money. And the grumbling they do, it's awful,

especially the women. The men are so good and patient! What can they do, poor chaps! But the women, oh,

they do carry on! They go and show off, giving contributions for a wedding present for Princess Mary, and

then when they see all the grand things that's been given, they simply rave: who's she, any better than

anybody else! Why doesn't Swan & Edgar give me one fur coat, instead of giving her six. I wish I'd kept my

ten shillings! What's she going to give me, I should like to know? Here I can't get a new spring coat, my dad's

working that bad, and she gets vanloads. It's time as poor folks had some money to spend, rich ones 'as 'ad it

long enough. I want a new spring coat, I do, an' wheer am I going to get it? I say to them, be thankful you're

well fed and well clothed, without all the new finery you want! And they fly back at me: ``Why isn't Princess

Mary thankful to go about in her old rags, then, an' have nothing! Folks like her get vanloads, an' I can't

have a new spring coat. It's a damned shame. Princess! Bloomin' rot about Princess! It's munney as matters,

an' cos she's got lots, they give her more! Nobody's givin' me any, an' I've as much right as anybody else.

Don't talk to me about education. It's munney as matters. I want a new spring coat, I do, an' I shan't get it, cos

there's no munney...'' That's all they care about, clothes. They think nothing of giving seven or eight guineas

for a winter coatcolliers' daughters, mind youand two guineas for a child's summer hat. And then they

go to the Primitive Chapel in their twoguinea hat, girls as would have been proud of a threeandsixpenny

one in my day. I heard that at the Primitive Methodist anniversary this year, when they have a builtup

platform for the Sunday School children, like a grandstand going almost up to th' ceiling, I heard Miss

Thompson, who has the first class of girls in the Sunday School, say there'd be over a thousand pounds in

new Sunday clothes sitting on that platform! And times are what they are! But you can't stop them. They're

mad for clothes. And boys the same. The lads spend every penny on themselves, clothes, smoking, drinking

in the Miners' Welfare, jaunting off to Sheffield two or three times a week. Why, it's another world. And they

fear nothing, and they respect nothing, the young don't. The older men are that patient and good, really, they

let the women take everything. And this is what it leads to. The women are positive demons. But the lads

aren't like their dads. They're sacrificing nothing, they aren't: they're all for self. If you tell them they ought to

be putting a bit by, for a home, they say: That'll keep, that will, I'm goin' t' enjoy myself while I can. Owt

else'll keep! Oh, they're rough an' selfish, if you like. Everything falls on the older men, an' it's a bad outlook

Clifford began to get a new idea of his own village. The place had always frightened him, but he had thought

`Oh!' said Mrs Bolton, `you hear a few loudmouthed ones. But they're mostly women who've got into debt.

The men take no notice. I don't believe you'll ever turn our Tevershall men into reds. They're too decent for

that. But the young ones blether sometimes. Not that they care for it really. They only want a bit of money in

their pocket, to spend at the Welfare, or go gadding to Sheffield. That's all they care. When they've got no

`Oh no! Not if trade was good, there wouldn't be. But if things were bad for a long spell, the young ones

might go funny. I tell you, they're a selfish, spoilt lot. But I don't see how they'd ever do anything. They aren't

ever serious about anything, except showing off on motorbikes and dancing at the Palaisdedanse in

Sheffield. You can't make them serious. The serious ones dress up in evening clothes and go off to the Pally

to show off before a lot of girls and dance these new Charlestons and what not. I'm sure sometimes the bus'll

be full of young fellows in evening suits, collier lads, off to the Pally: let alone those that have gone with

their girls in motors or on motorbikes. They don't give a serious thought to a thingsave Doncaster races,

and the Derby: for they all of them bet on every race. And football! But even football's not what it was, not

by a long chalk. It's too much like hard work, they say. No, they'd rather be off on motorbikes to Sheffield

`Oh, hang aroundand have tea in some fine teaplace like the Mikadoand go to the Pally or the pictures

or the Empire, with some girl. The girls are as free as the lads. They do just what they like.'

`They seem to get it, somehow. And they begin talking nasty then. But I don't see how you're going to get

bolshevism, when all the lads want is just money to enjoy themselves, and the girls the same, with fine

clothes: and they don't care about another thing. They haven't the brains to be socialists. They haven't enough

Connie thought, how extremely like all the rest of the classes the lower classes sounded. Just the same thing

over again, Tevershall or Mayfair or Kensington. There was only one class nowadays: moneyboys. The

moneyboy and the moneygirl, the only difference was how much you'd got, and how much you wanted.

Under Mrs Bolton's influence, Clifford began to take a new interest in the mines. He began to feel he

belonged. A new sort of selfassertion came into him. After all, he was the real boss in Tevershall, he was

really the pits. It was a new sense of power, something he had till now shrunk from with dread.

Tevershall pits were running thin. There were only two collieries: Tevershall itself, and New London.

Tevershall had once been a famous mine, and had made famous money. But its best days were over. New

London was never very rich, and in ordinary times just got along decently. But now times were bad, and it

`There's a lot of Tevershall men left and gone to Stacks Gate and Whiteover,' said Mrs Bolton. `You've not

seen the new works at Stacks Gate, opened after the war, have you, Sir Clifford? Oh, you must go one day,

they're something quite new: great big chemical works at the pithead, doesn't look a bit like a colliery. They

say they get more money out of the chemical byproducts than out of the coalI forget what it is. And the

grand new houses for the men, fair mansions! of course it's brought a lot of riffraff from all over the

country. But a lot of Tevershall men got on there, and doin' well, a lot better than our own men. They say

Tevershall's done, finished: only a question of a few more years, and it'll have to shut down. And New

London'll go first. My word, won't it be funny when there's no Tevershall pit working. It's bad enough during

a strike, but my word, if it closes for good, it'll be like the end of the world. Even when I was a girl it was the

best pit in the country, and a man counted himself lucky if he could on here. Oh, there's been some money

made in Tevershall. And now the men say it's a sinking ship, and it's time they all got out. Doesn't it sound

awful! But of course there's a lot as'll never go till they have to. They don't like these new fangled mines,

such a depth, and all machinery to work them. Some of them simply dreads those iron men, as they call them,

those machines for hewing the coal, where men always did it before. And they say it's wasteful as well. But

what goes in waste is saved in wages, and a lot more. It seems soon there'll be no use for men on the face of

the earth, it'll be all machines. But they say that's what folks said when they had to give up the old stocking

frames. I can remember one or two. But my word, the more machines, the more people, that's what it looks

like! They say you can't get the same chemicals out of Tevershall coal as you can out of Stacks Gate, and

that's funny, they're not three miles apart. But they say so. But everybody says it's a shame something can't be

started, to keep the men going a bit better, and employ the girls. All the girls traipsing off to Sheffield every

day! My word, it would be something to talk about if Tevershall Collieries took a new lease of life, after

everybody saying they're finished, and a sinking ship, and the men ought to leave them like rats leave a

sinking ship. But folks talk so much, of course there was a boom during the war. When Sir Geoffrey made a

trust of himself and got the money safe for ever, somehow. So they say! But they say even the masters and

the owners don't get much out of it now. You can hardly believe it, can you! Why I always thought the pits

would go on for ever and ever. Who'd have thought, when I was a girl! But New England's shut down, so is

Colwick Wood: yes, it's fair haunting to go through that coppy and see Colwick Wood standing there

deserted among the trees, and bushes growing up all over the pithead, and the lines red rusty. It's like death

itself, a dead colliery. Why, whatever should we do if Tevershall shut down? It doesn't bear thinking of.

Always that throng it's been, except at strikes, and even then the fanwheels didn't stand, except when they

fetched the ponies up. I'm sure it's a funny world, you don't know where you are from year to year, you really

It was Mrs Bolton's talk that really put a new fight into Clifford. His income, as she pointed out to him, was

secure, from his father's trust, even though it was not large. The pits did not really concern him. It was the

other world he wanted to capture, the world of literature and fame; the popular world, not the working world.

Now he realized the distinction between popular success and working success: the populace of pleasure and

the populace of work. He, as a private individual, had been catering with his stories for the populace of

pleasure. And he had caught on. But beneath the populace of pleasure lay the populace of work, grim, grimy,

and rather terrible. They too had to have their providers. And it was a much grimmer business, providing for

the populace of work, than for the populace of pleasure. While he was doing his stories, and `getting on' in

He realized now that the bitchgoddess of Success had two main appetites: one for flattery, adulation,

stroking and tickling such as writers and artists gave her; but the other a grimmer appetite for meat and bones.

And the meat and bones for the bitchgoddess were provided by the men who made money in industry.

Yes, there were two great groups of dogs wrangling for the bitchgoddess: the group of the flatterers, those

who offered her amusement, stories, films, plays: and the other, much less showy, much more savage breed,

those who gave her meat, the real substance of money. The wellgroomed showy dogs of amusement

wrangled and snarled among themselves for the favours of the bitchgoddess. But it was nothing to the silent

But under Mrs Bolton's influence, Clifford was tempted to enter this other fight, to capture the bitchgoddess

In one way, Mrs Bolton made a man of him, as Connie never did. Connie kept him apart, and made him

sensitive and conscious of himself and his own states. Mrs Bolton made hint aware only of outside things.

He even roused himself to go to the mines once more: and when he was there, he went down in a tub, and in a

tub he was hauled out into the workings. Things he had learned before the war, and seemed utterly to have

forgotten, now came back to him. He sat there, crippled, in a tub, with the underground manager showing him

He began to read again his technical works on the coalmining industry, he studied the government reports,

and he read with care the latest things on mining and the chemistry of coal and of shale which were written in

German. Of course the most valuable discoveries were kept secret as far as possible. But once you started a

sort of research in the field of coalmining, a study of methods and means, a study of byproducts and the

chemical possibilities of coal, it was astounding the ingenuity and the almost uncanny cleverness of the

modern technical mind, as if really the devil himself had lent fiend's wits to the technical scientists of

industry. It was far more interesting than art, than literature, poor emotional halfwitted stuff, was this

technical science of industry. In this field, men were like gods, or demons, inspired to discoveries, and

fighting to carry them out. In this activity, men were beyond atty mental age calculable. But Clifford knew

that when it did come to the emotional and human life, these selfmade men were of a mental age of about

But let that be. Let man slide down to general idiocy in the emotional and `human' mind, Clifford did not

care. Let all that go hang. He was interested in the technicalities of modern coalmining, and in pulling

He went down to the pit day after day, he studied, he put the general manager, and the overhead manager, and

the underground manager, and the engineers through a mill they had never dreamed of. Power! He felt a new

sense of power flowing through him: power over all these men, over the hundreds and hundreds of colliers.

And he seemed verily to be reborn. Now life came into him! He had been gradually dying, with Connie, in

the isolated private life of the artist and the conscious being. Now let all that go. Let it sleep. He simply felt

life rush into him out of the coal, out of the pit. The very stale air of the colliery was better than oxygen to

him. It gave him a sense of power, power. He was doing something: and he was going to do something. He

was going to win, to win: not as he had won with his stories, mere publicity, amid a whole sapping of energy

At first he thought the solution lay in electricity: convert the coal into electric power. Then a new idea came.

The Germans invented a new locomotive engine with a self feeder, that did not need a fireman. And it was to

be fed with a new fuel, that burnt in small quantities at a great heat, under peculiar conditions.

The idea of a new concentrated fuel that burnt with a hard slowness at a fierce heat was what first attracted

Clifford. There must be some sort of external stimulus of the burning of such fuel, not merely air supply. He

began to experiment, and got a clever young fellow, who had proved brilliant in chemistry, to help him.

And he felt triumphant. He had at last got out of himself. He had fulfilled his lifelong secret yearning to get

out of himself. Art had not done it for him. Art had only made it worse. But now, now he had done it.

He was not aware how much Mrs Bolton was behind him. He did not know how much he depended on her.

But for all that, it was evident that when he was with her his voice dropped to an easy rhythm of intimacy,

With Connie, he was a little stiff. He felt he owed her everything, and he showed her the utmost respect and

consideration, so long as she gave him mere outward respect. But it was obvious he had a secret dread of her.

The new Achilles in hint had a heel, and in this heel the woman, the woman like Connie, his wife, could lame

him fatally. He went in a certain halfsubservient dread of her, and was extremely nice to her. But his voice

was a little tense when he spoke to her, and he began to be silent whenever she was present.

Only when he was alone with Mrs Bolton did he really feel a lord and a master, and his voice ran on with her

almost as easily and garrulously as her own could run. And he let her shave him or sponge all his body as if

Connie was a good deal alone now, fewer people came to Wragby. Clifford no longer wanted them. He had

turned against even the cronies. He was queer. He preferred the radio, which he had installed at some

expense, with a good deal of success at last. He could sometimes get Madrid or Frankfurt, even there in the

And he would sit alone for hours listening to the loudspeaker bellowing forth. It amazed and stunned Connie.

But there he would sit, with a blank entranced expression on his face, like a person losing his mind, and

Was he really listening? Or was it a sort of soporific he took, whilst something else worked on underneath in

him? Connie did now know. She fled up to her room, or out of doors to the wood. A kind of terror filled her

But now that Clifford was drifting off to this other weirdness of industrial activity, becoming almost a

creature, with a hard, efficient shell of an exterior and a pulpy interior, one of the amazing crabs and lobsters

of the modern, industrial and financial world, invertebrates of the crustacean order, with shells of steel, like

machines, and inner bodies of soft pulp, Connie herself was really completely stranded.

She was not even free, for Clifford must have her there. He seemed to have a nervous terror that she should

leave him. The curious pulpy part of him, the emotional and humanlyindividual part, depended on her with

terror, like a child, almost like an idiot. She must be there, there at Wragby, a Lady Chatterley, his wife.

This amazing dependence Connie realized with a sort of horror. She heard him with his pit managers, with

the members of his Board, with young scientists, and she was amazed at his shrewd insight into things, his

power, his uncanny material power over what is called practical men. He had become a practical man himself

and an amazingly astute and powerful one, a master. Connie attributed it to Mrs Bolton's influence upon him,

But this astute and practical man was almost an idiot when left alone to his own emotional life. He

worshipped Connie. She was his wife, a higher being, and he worshipped her with a queer, craven idolatry,

like a savage, a worship based on enormous fear, and even hate of the power of the idol, the dread idol. All he

wanted was for Connie to swear, to swear not to leave him, not to give him away.

`Clifford,' she said to himbut this was after she had the key to the hut`Would you really like me to have

`To you and me; to our love for one another. If it's going to affect that, then I'm all against it. Why, I might

`I tell you,' he replied quickly, like a cornered dog, `I am quite willing, provided it doesn't touch your love for

Connie could only be silent in cold fear and contempt. Such talk was really the gabbling of an idiot. He no

`Oh, it wouldn't make any difference to my feeling for you,' she said, with a certain sarcasm.

`There!' he said. `That is the point! In that case I don't mind in the least. I mean it would be awfully nice to

have a child running about the house, and feel one was building up a future for it. I should have something to

strive for then, and I should know it was your child, shouldn't I, dear? And it would seem just the same as my

own. Because it is you who count in these matters. You know that, don't you, dear? I don't enter, I am a

cypher. You are the great Iam! as far as life goes. You know that, don't you? I mean, as far as I am

concerned. I mean, but for you I am absolutely nothing. I live for your sake and your future. I am nothing to

Connie heard it all with deepening dismay and repulsion. It was one of the ghastly halftruths that poison

human existence. What man in his senses would say such things to a woman! But men aren't in their senses.

What man with a spark of honour would put this ghastly burden of liferesponsibility upon a woman, and

Moreover, in half an hour's time, Connie heard Clifford talking to Mrs Bolton, in a hot, impulsive voice,

revealing himself in a sort of passionless passion to the woman, as if she were half mistress, half

fostermother to him. And Mrs Bolton was carefully dressing him in evening clothes, for there were

Connie really sometimes felt she would die at this time. She felt she was being crushed to death by weird lies,

and by the amazing cruelty of idiocy. Clifford's strange business efficiency in a way overawed her, and his

declaration of private worship put her into a panic. There was nothing between them. She never even touched

him nowadays, and he never touched her. He never even took her hand and held it kindly. No, and because

they were so utterly out of touch, he tortured her with his declaration of idolatry. It was the cruelty of utter

She fled as much as possible to the wood. One afternoon, as she sat brooding, watching the water bubbling

`The hut's not very tidy, if you don't mind,' he said. `I cleared it what I could.'

`Oh, it wasn't any trouble. I am setting the hens in about a week. But they won't be scared of you. I s'll have

to see to them morning and night, but I shan't bother you any more than I can help.'

`But you wouldn't bother me,' she pleaded. `I'd rather not go to the hut at all, if I am going to be in the way.'

He looked at her with his keen blue eyes. He seemed kindly, but distant. But at least he was sane, and

She went fairly often to the hut, in the morning or in the afternoon, but he was never there. No doubt he

He had made the hut tidy, put the little table and chair near the fireplace, left a little pile of kindling and small

logs, and put the tools and traps away as far as possible, effacing himself. Outside, by the clearing, he had

built a low little roof of boughs and straw, a shelter for the birds, and under it stood the live coops. And, one

day when she came, she found two brown hens sitting alert and fierce in the coops, sitting on pheasants' eggs,

and fluffed out so proud and deep in all the heat of the pondering female blood. This almost broke Connie's

heart. She, herself was so forlorn and unused, not a female at all, just a mere thing of terrors.

Then all the live coops were occupied by hens, three brown and a grey and a black. All alike, they clustered

themselves down on the eggs in the soft nestling ponderosity of the female urge, the female nature, fluffing

out their feathers. And with brilliant eyes they watched Connie, as she crouched before them, and they gave

short sharp clucks of anger and alarm, but chiefly of female anger at being approached.

Connie found corn in the cornbin in the hut. She offered it to the hens in her hand. They would not eat it.

Only one hen pecked at her hand with a fierce little jab, so Connie was frightened. But she was pining to give

them something, the brooding mothers who neither fed themselves nor drank. She brought water in a little tin,

Now she came every day to the hens, they were the only things in the world that warmed her heart. Clifford's

protestations made her go cold from head to foot. Mrs Bolton's voice made her go cold, and the sound of the

business men who came. An occasional letter from Michaelis affected her with the same sense of chill. She

Yet it was spring, and the bluebells were coming in the wood, and the leafbuds on the hazels were opening

like the spatter of green rain. How terrible it was that it should be spring, and everything coldhearted,

coldhearted. Only the hens, fluffed so wonderfully on the eggs, were warm with their hot, brooding female

Then, one day, a lovely sunny day with great tufts of primroses under the hazels, and many violets dotting the

paths, she came in the afternoon to the coops and there was one tiny, tiny perky chicken tinily prancing round

in front of a coop, and the mother hen clucking in terror. The slim little chick was greyish brown with dark

markings, and it was the most alive little spark of a creature in seven kingdoms at that moment. Connie

crouched to watch in a sort of ecstasy. Life, life! pure, sparky, fearless new life! New life! So tiny and so

utterly without fear! Even when it scampered a little, scrambling into the coop again, and disappeared under

the hen's feathers in answer to the mother hen's wild alarmcries, it was not really frightened, it took it as a

game, the game of living. For in a moment a tiny sharp head was poking through the goldbrown feathers of

Connie was fascinated. And at the same time, never had she felt so acutely the agony of her own female

She had only one desire now, to go to the clearing in the wood. The rest was a kind of painful dream. But

sometimes she was kept all day at Wragby, by her duties as hostess. And then she felt as if she too were

One evening, guests or no guests, she escaped after tea. It was late, and she fled across the park like one who

fears to be called back. The sun was setting rosy as she entered the wood, but she pressed on among the

She arrived at the clearing flushed and semiconscious. The keeper was there, in his shirtsleeves, just

closing up the coops for the night, so the little occupants would be safe. But still one little trio was pattering

about on tiny feet, alert drab mites, under the straw shelter, refusing to be called in by the anxious mother.

`I had to come and see the chickens!' she said, panting, glancing shyly at the keeper, almost unaware of him.

Connie crouched in front of the last coop. The three chicks had run in. But still their cheeky heads came

poking sharply through the yellow feathers, then withdrawing, then only one beady little head eyeing forth

`I'd love to touch them,' she said, putting her lingers gingerly through the bars of the coop. But the

motherhen pecked at her hand fiercely, and Connie drew back startled and frightened.

`How she pecks at me! She hates me!' she said in a wondering voice. `But I wouldn't hurt them!'

The man standing above her laughed, and crouched down beside her, knees apart, and put his hand with quiet

confidence slowly into the coop. The old hen pecked at him, but not so savagely. And slowly, softly, with

sure gentle lingers, he felt among the old bird's feathers and drew out a faintlypeeping chick in his closed

`There!' he said, holding out his hand to her. She took the little drab thing between her hands, and there it

stood, on its impossible little stalks of legs, its atom of balancing life trembling through its almost weightless

feet into Connie's hands. But it lifted its handsome, cleanshaped little head boldly, and looked sharply

The keeper, squatting beside her, was also watching with an amused face the bold little bird in her hands.

And he stood up, and stood away, moving to the other coop. For suddenly he was aware of the old flame

shooting and leaping up in his loins, that he had hoped was quiescent for ever. He fought against it, turning

He turned again to look at her. She was kneeling and holding her two hands slowly forward, blindly, so that

the chicken should run in to the motherhen again. And there was something so mute and forlorn in her,

Without knowing, he came quickly towards her and crouched beside her again, taking the chick from her

hands, because she was afraid of the hen, and putting it back in the coop. At the back of his loins the lire

He glanced apprehensively at her. Her face was averted, and she was crying blindly, in all the anguish of her

generation's forlornness. His heart melted suddenly, like a drop of fire, and he put out his hand and laid his

But then she put her hands over her face and felt that really her heart was broken and nothing mattered any

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and softly, gently, it began to travel down the curve of her back, blindly,

with a blind stroking motion, to the curve of her crouching loins. And there his hand softly, softly, stroked the

And closing his hand softly on her upper arm, he drew her up and led her slowly to the hut, not letting go of

her till she was inside. Then he cleared aside the chair and table, and took a brown, soldier's blanket from the

tool chest, spreading it slowly. She glanced at his face, as she stood motionless.

His face was pale and without expression, like that of a man submitting to fate.

`You lie there,' he said softly, and he shut the door, so that it was dark, quite dark.

With a queer obedience, she lay down on the blanket. Then she felt the soft, groping, helplessly desirous hand

touching her body, feeling for her face. The hand stroked her face softly, softly, with infinite soothing and

She lay quite still, in a sort of sleep, in a sort of dream. Then she quivered as she felt his hand groping softly,

yet with queer thwarted clumsiness, among her `clothing. Yet the hand knew, too, how to unclothe her where

it wanted. He drew down the thin silk sheath, slowly, carefully, right down and over her feet. Then with a

quiver of exquisite pleasure he touched the warm soft body, and touched her navel for a moment in a kiss.

And he had to come in to her at once, to enter the peace on earth of her soft, quiescent body. It was the

She lay still, in a kind of sleep, always in a kind of sleep. The activity, the orgasm was his, all his; she could

strive for herself no more. Even the tightness of his arms round her, even the intense movement of his body,

and the springing of his seed in her, was a kind of sleep, from which she did not begin to rouse till he had

Then she wondered, just dimly wondered, why? Why was this necessary? Why had it lifted a great cloud

Her tormented modernwoman's brain still had no rest. Was it real? And she knew, if she gave herself to the

man, it was real. But if she kept herself for herself it was nothing. She was old; millions of years old, she felt.

And at last, she could bear the burden of herself no more. She was to be had for the taking. To be had for the

The man lay in a mysterious stillness. What was he feeling? What was he thinking? She did not know. He

was a strange man to her, she did not know him. She must only wait, for she did not dare to break his

mysterious stillness. He lay there with his arms round her, his body on hers, his wet body touching hers, so

close. And completely unknown. Yet not unpeaceful. His very stillness was peaceful.

She knew that, when at last he roused and drew away from her. It was like an abandonment. He drew her

dress in the darkness down over her knees and stood a few moments, apparently adjusting his own clothing.

She saw a very brilliant little moon shining above the afterglow over the oaks. Quickly she got up and

All the lower wood was in shadow, almost darkness. Yet the sky overhead was crystal. But it shed hardly any

light. He came through the lower shadow towards her, his face lifted like a pale blotch.

He arranged things his own way. He locked the door of the hut and came after her.

`For that! No!' he said. Then after a while he added: `But there's the rest of things.'

`It's always so. For you as well as for me. There's always complications.' He walked on steadily in the dark.

`In a way!' he replied, looking up at the sky. `I thought I'd done with it all. Now I've begun again.'

`It's life,' he said. `There's no keeping clear. And if you do keep clear you might almost as well die. So if I've

She did not quite see it that way, but still `It's just love,' she said cheerfully.

They went on through the darkening wood in silence, till they were almost at the gate.

`Nay, nay,' he replied. And suddenly he held her fast against his breast again, with the old connecting

`Yes, for me too,' she answered, a little untruthfully, for she had not been conscious of much.

`If only there weren't so many other people in the world,' he said lugubriously.

`No!' And she held out her hand, as if to shake hands. But he took it in both his.

He stood back and watched her going into the dark, against the pallor of the horizon. Almost with bitterness

he watched her go. She had connected him up again, when he had wanted to be alone. She had cost him that

He turned into the dark of the wood. All was still, the moon had set. But he was aware of the noises of the

night, the engines at Stacks Gate, the traffic on the main road. Slowly he climbed the denuded knoll. And

from the top he could see the country, bright rows of lights at Stacks Gate, smaller lights at Tevershall pit, the

yellow lights of Tevershall and lights everywhere, here and there, on the dark country, with the distant blush

of furnaces, faint and rosy, since the night was clear, the rosiness of the outpouring of whitehot metal.

Sharp, wicked electric lights at Stacks Gate! An undefinable quick of evil in them! And all the unease, the

evershifting dread of the industrial night in the Midlands. He could hear the windingengines at Stacks Gate

He went down again into the darkness and seclusion of the wood. But he knew that the seclusion of the wood

was illusory. The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man

could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits. And now he had taken the woman,

and brought on himself a new cycle of pain and doom. For he knew by experience what it meant.

It was not woman's fault, nor even love's fault, nor the fault of sex. The fault lay there, out there, in those evil

electric lights and diabolical rattlings of engines. There, in the world of the mechanical greedy, greedy

mechanism and mechanized greed, sparkling with lights and gushing hot metal and roaring with traffic, there

lay the vast evil thing, ready to destroy whatever did not conform. Soon it would destroy the wood, and the

bluebells would spring no more. All vulnerable things must perish under the rolling and running of iron.

He thought with infinite tenderness of the woman. Poor forlorn thing, she was nicer than she knew, and oh!

so much too nice for the tough lot she was in contact with. Poor thing, she too had some of the vulnerability

of the wild hyacinths, she wasn't all tough rubbergoods and platinum, like the modern girl. And they would

do her in! As sure as life, they would do her in, as they do in all naturally tender life. Tender! Somewhere she

was tender, tender with a tenderness of the growing hyacinths, something that has gone out of the celluloid

women of today. But he would protect her with his heart for a little while. For a little while, before the

insentient iron world and the Mammon of mechanized greed did them both in, her as well as him.

He went home with his gun and his dog, to the dark cottage, lit the lamp, started the fire, and ate his supper of

bread and cheese, young onions and beer. He was alone, in a silence he loved. His room was clean and tidy,

but rather stark. Yet the fire was bright, the hearth white, the petroleum lamp hung bright over the table, with

its white oilcloth. He tried to read a book about India, but tonight he could not read. He sat by the fire in his

shirtsleeves, not smoking, but with a mug of beer in reach. And he thought about Connie.

To tell the truth, he was sorry for what had happened, perhaps most for her sake. He had a sense of

foreboding. No sense of wrong or sin; he was troubled by no conscience in that respect. He knew that

conscience was chiefly tear of society, or fear of oneself. He was not afraid of himself. But he was quite

consciously afraid of society, which he knew by instinct to be a malevolent, partlyinsane beast.

The woman! If she could be there with him, arid there were nobody else in the world! The desire rose again,

his penis began to stir like a live bird. At the same time an oppression, a dread of exposing himself and her to

that outside Thing that sparkled viciously in the electric lights, weighed down his shoulders. She, poor young

thing, was just a young female creature to him; but a young female creature whom he had gone into and

Stretching with the curious yawn of desire, for he had been alone and apart from man or woman for four

years, he rose and took his coat again, and his gun, lowered the lamp and went out into the starry night, with

the dog. Driven by desire and by dread of the malevolent Thing outside, he made his round in the wood,

slowly, softly. He loved the darkness arid folded himself into it. It fitted the turgidity of his desire which, in

spite of all, was like a riches; the stirring restlessness of his penis, the stirring fire in his loins! Oh, if only

there were other men to be with, to fight that sparkling electric Thing outside there, to preserve the tenderness

of life, the tenderness of women, and the natural riches of desire. If only there were men to fight side by side

with! But the men were all outside there, glorying in the Thing, triumphing or being trodden down in the rush

Constance, for her part, had hurried across the park, home, almost without thinking. As yet she had no

She was annoyed to find the doors fastened, however, so that she had to ring. Mrs Bolton opened.

`Why there you are, your Ladyship! I was beginning to wonder if you'd gone lost!' she said a little roguishly.

`Sir Clifford hasn't asked for you, though; he's got Mr Linley in with him, talking over something. It looks as

`Shall I put dinner back a quarter of an hour? That would give you time to dress in comfort.'

Mr Linley was the general manager of the collieries, an elderly man from the north, with not quite enough

punch to suit Clifford; not up to postwar conditions, nor postwar colliers either, with their `ca' canny'

creed. But Connie liked Mr Linley, though she was glad to be spared the toadying of his wife.

Linley stayed to dinner, and Connie was the hostess men liked so much, so modest, yet so attentive and

aware, with big, wide blue eyes arid a soft repose that sufficiently hid what she was really thinking. Connie

had played this woman so much, it was almost second nature to her; but still, decidedly second. Yet it was

She waited patiently till she could go upstairs and think her own thoughts. She was always waiting, it seemed

Once in her room, however, she felt still vague and confused. She didn't know what to think. What sort of a

man was he, really? Did he really like her? Not much, she felt. Yet he was kind. There was something, a sort

of warm naive kindness, curious and sudden, that almost opened her womb to him. But she felt he might be

kind like that to any woman. Though even so, it was curiously soothing, comforting. And he was a passionate

man, wholesome and passionate. But perhaps he wasn't quite individual enough; he might be the same with

any woman as he had been with her. It really wasn't personal. She was only really a female to him.

But perhaps that was better. And after all, he was kind to the female in her, which no man had ever been.

Men were very kind to the personshe was, but rather cruel to the female, despising her or ignoring her

altogether. Men were awfully kind to Constance Reid or to Lady Chatterley; but not to her womb they

weren't kind. And he took no notice of Constance or of Lady Chatterley; he just softly stroked her loins or her

She went to the wood next day. It was a grey, still afternoon, with the darkgreen dogsmercury spreading

under the hazel copse, and all the trees making a silent effort to open their buds. Today she could almost feel

it in her own body, the huge heave of the sap in the massive trees, upwards, up, up to the buda, there to push

into little flamey oakleaves, bronze as blood. It was like a ride running turgid upward, and spreading on the

She came to the clearing, but he was not there. She had only half expected him. The pheasant chicks were

running lightly abroad, light as insects, from the coops where the fellow hens clucked anxiously. Connie sat

and watched them, and waited. She only waited. Even the chicks she hardly saw. She waited.

The time passed with dreamlike slowness, and he did not come. She had only half expected him. He never

came in the afternoon. She must go home to tea. But she had to force herself to leave.

She poured tea in silence, absorbed in a sort of obstinacy. She did want to see the keeper today, to see if it

`No! Only rather tiredwith the spring. Will you have Mrs Bolton to play something with you?'

She heard the curious satisfaction in his voice. She went upstairs to her bedroom. There she heard the

loudspeaker begin to bellow, in an idiotically velveteengenteel sort of voice, something about a series of

streetcries, the very cream of genteel affectation imitating old criers. She pulled on her old violet coloured

The drizzle of rain was like a veil over the world, mysterious, hushed, not cold. She got very warm as she

The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and halfopen

buds, half unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed

There was still no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone under the motherhens, only one or two

last adventurous ones still dibbed about in the dryness under the straw roof shelter. And they were doubtful of

So! He still had not been. He was staying away on purpose. Or perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps she

But she was born to wait. She opened the hut with her key. It was all tidy, the corn put in the bin, the blankets

folded on the shelf, the straw neat in a corner; a new bundle of straw. The hurricane lamp hung on a nail. The

She sat down on a stool in the doorway. How still everything was! The fine rain blew very softly, filmily, but

the wind made no noise. Nothing made any sound. The trees stood like powerful beings, dim, twilit, silent

But suddenly he came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket like a chauffeur, shining with wet.

He glanced quickly at the hut, halfsaluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in

silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night.

At last he came slowly towards her. She still sat on her stool. He stood before her under the porch.

`Nay,' he said. `You can help it by not comin'if yer want to,' he added, in a lower tone.

`But what when folks finds out?' he asked at last. `Think about it! Think how lowered you'll feel, one of your

`Think!' he said. `Think what if folks find out Sir Clifford an' a'an' everybody talkin''

`Anywhere! I've got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know

`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 gamekeeper. 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.

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!'

`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

`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!'

He hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached for the blankets.

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

`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

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 deepsunk intentness, the sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed, then the slowsubsiding

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

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

`Are yer cold?' he asked, in a soft, small voice, as if she were close, so close. Whereas she was left out,

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

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.

He walked just before her in the narrow path, swinging the hurricane lamp low, revealing the wet grass, the

black shiny treeroots like snakes, wan flowers. For the rest, all was grey rainmist 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

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

`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

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'

It was true, there seemed a ghostglimmer 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.'

He bent over her indistinguishable and kissed her on the left eye. She held her mouth and he softly kissed it,

`Ay! not so late,' he replied out of the darkness. Already she could not see him at all.

She stopped and looked back into the wet dark. She could just see the bulk of him. `Why did you say that?'

She plunged on in the darkgrey tangible night. She found the sidedoor open, and slipped into her room

unseen. As she closed the door the gong sounded, but she would take her bath all the sameshe 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 coalowners who had had their

heyday 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

Connie wondered what he would say if he knew that Clifford's gamekeeper 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

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

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 dodrive 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

`Bell!' she said to the big white bullterrier. `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

Mrs Flint appeared. She was a woman of Constance's own age, had been a schoolteacher, but Connie

`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

`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.'

Mrs Flint flew wildly in to tidy up, and Connie came slowly after her, hesitating in the rather dark kitchen

They went into the livingroom, where a baby was sitting on the rag hearth rug, and the table was roughly set

The baby was a perky little thing of about a year, with red hair like its father, and cheeky paleblue eyes. It

was a girl, and not to be daunted. It sat among cushions and was surrounded with rag dolls and other toys in

`Why, what a dear she is!' said Connie, `and how she's grown! A big girl! A big girl!'

`There, Josephine! Who's that come to see you? Who's this, Josephine? Lady Chatterleyyou know Lady

The queer pert little mite gazed cheekily at Connie. Ladyships were still all the same to her.

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

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

`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.

`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

They went down the poor, rabbitbitten pasture. Birds were whistling in wild evening triumph in the wood. A

man was calling up the last cows, which trailed slowly over the pathworn 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 firwood bristled dense. There was a little gate, but it was

`There's the keeper's empty bottle for his milk,' explained Mrs Flint. `We bring it as far as here for him, and

`Oh, any time he's around. Often in the morning. Well, goodbye Lady Chatterley! And do come again. It was

Connie climbed the fence into the narrow path between the dense, bristling young firs. Mrs Flint went

running back across the pasture, in a sunbonnet, 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 bowlegged 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.

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

`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

`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

`Comecome here! Through here,' he said, looking penetratingly into the dense firtrees, that were young

He looked back at her. She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving. But her will had left her. A

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 providenthe 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 seaanemone 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

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

`It's good when it's like that. Most folks live their lives through and they never know it,' he said, speaking

He looked back into her eyes. `Glad,' he said, `Ay, but never mind.' He did not want her to talk. And he bent

`A good many of them never. You can see by the raw look of them.' He spoke unwittingly, regretting he had

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

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

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,

`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

selfwill 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 godservant to the woman! The

man, the individual, let him not dare intrude. He was but a templeservant, the bearer and keeper of the

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 phallosbearer, 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

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

`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

`I saw you go across the park to the iron gate, my Lady,' said Mrs Bolton; `so I thought perhaps you'd called

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?

`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

spiderwebs, and bright orange, and the oddest, cheekiest, paleblue china eyes. Of course it's a girl, or it

`You're right, my Ladya regular little Flint. They were always a forward sandyheaded family,' said Mrs

`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 a nice cosy tea up in your room, my Lady, and Mrs Flint will be more comfortable than if Sir

She was sure Connie had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But who was he? Who was he? Perhaps

Connie would not take her bath this evening. The sense of his flesh touching her, his very stickiness upon her,

Clifford was very uneasy. He would not let her go after dinner, and she had wanted so much to be alone. She

`Shall we play a game, or shall I read to you, or what shall it be?' he asked uneasily.

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 selfconscious; 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

Inside herself she could feel the humming of passion, like the afterhumming of deep bells.

Clifford said something to her about the Racine. She caught the sense after the words had gone.

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

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

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 extraalert 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

The reading finished. She was startled. She looked up, and was more startled still to see Clifford watching her

`Almost as beautifully as you listen to him,' he said cruelly. `What are you making?' he asked.

`After all,' he said in a declamatory voice, `one gets all one wants out of Racine. Emotions that are ordered

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.'

As a matter of fact, he was tired. This evening had tired him. He would rather have been with his technical

Mrs Bolton came in with two glasses of malted milk: for Clifford, to make him sleep, and for Connie, to

Connie was glad to go, when she had drunk her glass, and thankful she needn't help Clifford to bed. She took

`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

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 listeningin, 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

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.

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 willfor 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 readinglamp shedding its solitary light on them, she almost gone in

sleep, he almost gone in a sort of fear, and they played, played togetherthen 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

In her halfsleep, 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

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

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

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

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

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

And again, there was the wagesquabble. Having lived among the owning classes, he knew the utter futility

of expecting any solution of the wagesquabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was

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

Yet he could live alone, in the wan satisfaction of being alone, and raise pheasants to be shot ultimately by fat

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

It was the insoluble. He could only think of going to America, to try a new air. He disbelieved in the dollar

He could not rest nor even go to bed. After sitting in a stupor of bitter thoughts until midnight, he got

It was a starry night, but moonless. He went on a slow, scrupulous, softstepping 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 boundsit was nearly a fivemile walkhe 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 might have to hold her warm in his arms, both of them wrapped in one

blanket, and sleep. All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to

be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his

He went to the hut, and wrapped himself in the blanket and lay on the floor to sleep. But he could not, he was

cold. And besides, he felt cruelly his own unfinished nature. He felt his own unfinished condition of

aloneness cruelly. He wanted her, to touch her, to hold her fast against him in one moment of completeness

He got up again and went out, towards the park gates this time: then slowly along the path towards the house.

It was nearly four o'clock, still clear and cold, but no sign of dawn. He was used to the dark, he could see

Slowly, slowly the great house drew him, as a magnet. He wanted to be near her. It was not desire, not that. It

was the cruel sense of unfinished aloneness, that needed a silent woman folded in his arms. Perhaps he could

find her. Perhaps he could even call her out to him: or find some way in to her. For the need was imperious.

He slowly, silently climbed the incline to the hall. Then he came round the great trees at the top of the knoll,

on to the drive, which made a grand sweep round a lozenge of grass in front of the entrance. He could already

see the two magnificent beeches which stood in this big level lozenge in front of the house, detaching

There was the house, low and long and obscure, with one light burning downstairs, in Sir Clifford's room. But

which room she was in, the woman who held the other end of the frail thread which drew him so mercilessly,

He went a little nearer, gun in hand, and stood motionless on the drive, watching the house. Perhaps even

now he could find her, come at her in some way. The house was not impregnable: he was as clever as

He stood motionless, waiting, while the dawn faintly and imperceptibly paled behind him. He saw the light in

the house go out. But he did not see Mrs Bolton come to the window and draw back the old curtain of

darkblue silk, and stand herself in the dark room, looking out on the halfdark of the approaching day,

looking for the longedfor dawn, waiting, waiting for Clifford to be really reassured that it was daybreak. For

She stood blind with sleep at the window, waiting. And as she stood, she started, and almost cried out. For

there was a man out there on the drive, a black figure in the twilight. She woke up greyly, and watched, but

The daylight began to rustle into the world, and the dark figure seemed to go smaller and more defined. She

made out the gun and gaiters and baggy jacketit would be Oliver Mellors, the keeper. `Yes, for there was

And what did the man want? Did he want to rouse the house? What was he standing there for, transfixed,

looking up at the house like a lovesick male dog outside the house where the bitch is?

Goodness! The knowledge went through Mrs Bolton like a shot. He was Lady Chatterley's lover! He! He!

To think of it! Why, she, Ivy Bolton, had once been a tiny bit in love with him herself. When he was a lad of

sixteen and she a woman of twentysix. It was when she was studying, and he had helped her a lot with the

anatomy and things she had had to learn. He'd been a clever boy, had a scholarship for Sheffield Grammar

School, and learned French and things: and then after all had become an overhead blacksmith shoeing horses,

because he was fond of horses, he said: but really because he was frightened to go out and face the world,

But he'd been a nice lad, a nice lad, had helped her a lot, so clever at making things clear to you. He was quite

as clever as Sir Clifford: and always one for the women. More with women than men, they said.

Till he'd gone and married that Bertha Coutts, as if to spite himself. Some people do marry to spite

themselves, because they're disappointed of something. And no wonder it had been a failure.For years he

was gone, all the time of the war: and a lieutenant and all: quite the gentleman, really quite the

gentleman!Then to come back to Tevershall and go as a gamekeeper! Really, some people can't take their

chances when they've got them! And talking broad Derbyshire again like the worst, when she, Ivy Bolton,

Well, well! So her ladyship had fallen for him! Well her ladyship wasn't the first: there was something about

him. But fancy! A Tevershall lad born and bred, and she her ladyship in Wragby Hall! My word, that was a

But he, the keeper, as the day grew, had realized: it's no good! It's no good trying to get rid of your own

aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But

you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the

times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.

With a sudden snap the bleeding desire that had drawn him after her broke. He had broken it, because it must

be so. There must be a coming together on both sides. And if she wasn't coming to him, he wouldn't track her

He turned slowly, ponderingly, accepting again the isolation. He knew it was better so. She must come to

`Well, well!' she said. `He's the one man I never thought of; and the one man I might have thought of. He was

nice to me when he was a lad, after I lost Ted. Well, well! Whatever would he say if he knew!'

And she glanced triumphantly at the already sleeping Clifford, as she stepped softly from the room.

Connie was sorting out one of the Wragby lumber rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and

the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffery's father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffery's mother had liked

cinquecento furniture. Sir Geoffery himself had liked old carved oak chests, vestry chests. So it went on

through the generations. Clifford collected very modern pictures, at very moderate prices.

So in the lumber room there were bad Sir Edwin Landseers and pathetic William Henry Hunt birds' nests: and

other Academy stuff, enough to frighten the daughter of an R.A. She determined to look through it one day,

Wrapped up carefully to preserve it from damage and dryrot was the old family cradle, of rosewood. She

had to unwrap it, to look at it. It had a certain charm: she looked at it a longtime.

`It's thousand pities it won't be called for,' sighed Mrs Bolton, who was helping. `Though cradles like that are

`It might be called for. I might have a child,' said Connie casually, as if saying she might have a new hat.

`No! I mean as things are. It's only muscular paralysis with Sir Cliffordit doesn't affect him,' said Connie,

Clifford had put the idea into her head. He had said: `Of course I may have a child yet. I'm not really

mutilated at all. The potency may easily come back, even if the muscles of the hips and legs are paralysed.

He really felt, when he had his periods of energy and worked so hard at the question of the mines, as if his

sexual potency were returning. Connie had looked at him in terror. But she was quite quickwitted enough to

use his suggestion for her own preservation. For she would have a child if she could: but not his.

Mrs Bolton was for a moment breathless, flabbergasted. Then she didn't believe it: she saw in it a ruse. Yet

`Well, my Lady, I only hope and pray you may. It would be lovely for you: and for everybody. My word, a

And she chose three R. A. pictures of sixty years ago, to send to the Duchess of Shortlands for that lady's next

charitable bazaar. She was called `the bazaar duchess', and she always asked all the county to send things for

her to sell. She would be delighted with three framed R. A.s. She might even call, on the strength of them.

But oh my dear! Mrs Bolton was thinking to herself. Is it Oliver Mellors' child you're preparing us for? Oh

my dear, that would be a Tevershall baby in the Wragby cradle, my word! Wouldn't shame it, neither!

Among other monstrosities in this lumber room was a largish blackjapanned box, excellently and ingeniously

made some sixty or seventy years ago, and fitted with every imaginable object. On top was a concentrated

toilet set: brushes, bottles, mirrors, combs, boxes, even three beautiful little razors in safety sheaths,

shavingbowl and all. Underneath came a sort of escritoire outfit: blotters, pens, inkbottles, paper,

envelopes, memorandum books: and then a perfect sewingoutfit, with three different sized scissors,

thimbles, needles, silks and cottons, darning egg, all of the very best quality and perfectly finished. Then

there was a little medicine store, with bottles labelled Laudanum, Tincture of Myrrh, Ess. Cloves and so on:

but empty. Everything was perfectly new, and the whole thing, when shut up, was as big as a small, but fat

weekend bag. And inside, it fitted together like a puzzle. The bottles could not possibly have spilled: there

The thing was wonderfully made and contrived, excellent craftsmanship of the Victorian order. But somehow

it was monstrous. Some Chatterley must even have felt it, for the thing had never been used. It had a peculiar

`Look what beautiful brushes, so expensive, even the shaving brushes, three perfect ones! No! and those

`Of course! It will only lie here till Doomsday. If you won't have it, I'll send it to the Duchess as well as the

And Mrs Bolton sailed down with the huge and very black box in her arms, flushing bright pink in her

Mr Betts drove her in the trap to her house in the village, with the box. And she had to have a few friends in,

to show it: the schoolmistress, the chemist's wife, Mrs Weedon the undercashier's wife. They thought it

But Mrs Bolton was convinced, if it did come, it would be Sir Clifford's child. So there!

`And may we really hope for an heir to Wragby? Ah, that would be the hand of God in mercy, indeed!'

`Well! We may hope,' said Clifford, with a faint irony, and at the same time, a certain conviction. He had

Then one afternoon came Leslie Winter, Squire Winter, as everybody called him: lean, immaculate, and

seventy: and every inch a gentleman, as Mrs Bolton said to Mrs Betts. Every millimetre indeed! And with his

oldfashioned, rather hawhaw! manner of speaking, he seemed more out of date than bag wigs. Time, in her

They discussed the collieries. Clifford's idea was, that his coal, even the poor sort, could be made into hard

concentrated fuel that would burn at great heat if fed with certain damp, acidulated air at a fairly strong

pressure. It had long been observed that in a particularly strong, wet wind the pitbank burned very vivid,

gave off hardly any fumes, and left a fine powder of ash, instead of the slow pink gravel.

`But where will you find the proper engines for burning your fuel?' asked Winter.

`I'll make them myself. And I'll use my fuel myself. And I'll sell electric power. I'm certain I could do it.'

`If you can do it, then splendid, splendid, my dear boy. Haw! Splendid! If I can be of any help, I shall be

delighted. I'm afraid I am a little out of date, and my collieries are like me. But who knows, when I'm gone,

there may be men like you. Splendid! It will employ all the men again, and you won't have to sell your coal,

or fail to sell it. A splendid idea, and I hope it will be a success. If I had sons of my own, no doubt they would

have uptodate ideas for Shipley: no doubt! By the way, dear boy, is there any foundation to the rumour

`Well, my dear boy, Marshall from Fillingwood asked me, that's all I can say about a rumour. Of course I

`Well, Sir,' said Clifford uneasily, but with strange bright eyes. `There is a hope. There is a hope.'

`My dear boy, my dear lad, can you believe what it means to me, to hear that! And to hear you are working in

the hopes of a son: and that you may again employ every man at Tevershall. Ah, my boy! to keep up the level

`Connie,' said Clifford, `did you know there was a rumour that you are going to supply Wragby with a son

`I had a letter from Father this morning,' She said. `He wants to know if I am aware he has accepted Sir

Alexander Cooper's Invitation for me for July and August, to the Villa Esmeralda in Venice.'

`I won't travel abroad,' said Clifford promptly. She took her flowers to the window.

`Well,' said Clifford slowly, and a little gloomily. `I suppose I could stand it for three weeks: if I were

`I should want to come back,' she said, with a quiet simplicity, heavy with conviction. She was thinking of

Clifford felt her conviction, and somehow he believed her, he believed it was for him. He felt immensely

`I should like to see Venice again,' she said, `and to bathe from one of the shingle islands across the lagoon.

But you know I loathe the Lido! And I don't fancy I shall like Sir Alexander Cooper and Lady Cooper. But if

Hilda is there, and we have a gondola of our own: yes, it will be rather lovely. I do wish you'd come.'

`But why not? I see other men carried in litterchairs, who have been wounded in the war. Besides, we'd

She went away gloomily. Next year! What would next year bring? She herself did not really want to go to

Venice: not now, now there was the other man. But she was going as a sort of discipline: and also because, if

It was already May, and in June they were supposed to start. Always these arrangements! Always one's life

arranged for one! Wheels that worked one and drove one, and over which one had no real control!

It was May, but cold and wet again. A cold wet May, good for corn and hay! Much the corn and hay matter

nowadays! Connie had to go into Uthwaite, which was their little town, where the Chatterleys were still

In spite of May and a new greenness, the country was dismal. It was rather chilly, and there was smoke on the

rain, and a certain sense of exhaust vapour in the air. One just had to live from one's resistance. No wonder

The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the

black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coaldust, the pavements wet and black. It

was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the

utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and

beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling. The stacks of soap in the grocers'

shops, the rhubarb and lemons in the greengrocers! the awful hats in the milliners! all went by ugly, ugly,

ugly, followed by the plasterandgilt horror of the cinema with its wet picture announcements, `A Woman's

Love!', and the new big Primitive chapel, primitive enough in its stark brick and big panes of greenish and

raspberry glass in the windows. The Wesleyan chapel, higher up, was of blackened brick and stood behind

iron railings and blackened shrubs. The Congregational chapel, which thought itself superior, was built of

rusticated sandstone and had a steeple, but not a very high one. Just beyond were the new school buildings,

expensivink brick, and gravelled playground inside iron railings, all very imposing, and fixing the suggestion

of a chapel and a prison. Standard Five girls were having a singing lesson, just finishing the lamedohla

exercises and beginning a `sweet children's song'. Anything more unlike song, spontaneous song, would be

impossible to imagine: a strange bawling yell that followed the outlines of a tune. It was not like savages:

savages have subtle rhythms. It was not like animals: animals mean something when they yell. It was like

nothing on earth, and it was called singing. Connie sat and listened with her heart in her boots, as Field was

filling petrol. What could possibly become of such a people, a people in whom the living intuitive faculty was

A coalcart was coming downhill, clanking in the rain. Field started upwards, past the big but wearylooking

drapers and clothing shops, the postoffice, into the little marketplace of forlorn space, where Sam Black

was peering out of the door of the Sun, that called itself an inn, not a pub, and where the commercial

The church was away to the left among black trees. The car slid on downhill, past the Miners' Arms. It had

already passed the Wellington, the Nelson, the Three Tuns, and the Sun, now it passed the Miners' Arms,

then the Mechanics' Hall, then the new and almost gaudy Miners' Welfare and so, past a few new `villas', out

into the blackened road between dark hedges and dark green fields, towards Stacks Gate.

Tevershall! That was Tevershall! Merrie England! Shakespeare's England! No, but the England of today, as

Connie had realized since she had come to live in it. It was producing a new race of mankind, overconscious

in the money and social and political side, on the spontaneous, intuitive side dead, but dead. Halfcorpses, all

of them: but with a terrible insistent consciousness in the other half. There was something uncanny and

underground about it all. It was an underworld. And quite incalculable. How shall we understand the

reactions in halfcorpses? When Connie saw the great lorries full of steelworkers from Sheffield, weird,

distorted smallish beings like men, off for an excursion to Matlock, her bowels fainted and she thought: Ah

God, what has man done to man? What have the leaders of men been doing to their fellow men? They have

reduced them to less than humanness; and now there can be no fellowship any more! It is just a nightmare.

She felt again in a wave of terror the grey, gritty hopelessness of it all. With such creatures for the industrial

masses, and the upper classes as she knew them, there was no hope, no hope any more. Yet she was wanting

Yet Mellors had come out of all this!Yes, but he was as apart from it all as she was. Even in him there was

no fellowship left. It was dead. The fellowship was dead. There was only apartness and hopelessness, as far

as all this was concerned. And this was England, the vast bulk of England: as Connie knew, since she had

The car was rising towards Stacks Gate. The rain was holding off, and in the air came a queer pellucid gleam

of May. The country rolled away in long undulations, south towards the Peak, east towards Mansfield and

As she rose on to the high country, she could see on her left, on a height above the rolling land, the shadowy,

powerful bulk of Warsop Castle, dark grey, with below it the reddish plastering of miners' dwellings, newish,

and below those the plumes of dark smoke and white steam from the great colliery which put so many

thousand pounds per annum into the pockets of the Duke and the other shareholders. The powerful old castle

was a ruin, yet it hung its bulk on the low skyline, over the black plumes and the white that waved on the

A turn, and they ran on the high level to Stacks Gate. Stacks Gate, as seen from the highroad, was just a huge

and gorgeous new hotel, the Coningsby Arms, standing red and white and gilt in barbarous isolation off the

road. But if you looked, you saw on the left rows of handsome `modern' dwellings, set down like a game of

dominoes, with spaces and gardens, a queer game of dominoes that some weird `masters' were playing on the

surprised earth. And beyond these blocks of dwellings, at the back, rose all the astonishing and frightening

overhead erections of a really modern mine, chemical works and long galleries, enormous, and of shapes not

before known to man. The headstock and pitbank of the mine itself were insignificant among the huge new

installations. And in front of this, the game of dominoes stood forever in a sort of surprise, waiting to be

This was Stacks Gate, new on the face of the earth, since the war. But as a matter of fact, though even Connie

did not know it, downhill half a mile below the `hotel' was old Stacks Gate, with a little old colliery and

blackish old brick dwellings, and a chapel or two and a shop or two and a little pub or two.

But that didn't count any more. The vast plumes of smoke and vapour rose from the new works up above, and

this was now Stacks Gate: no chapels, no pubs, even no shops. Only the great works', which are the modern

Olympia with temples to all the gods; then the model dwellings: then the hotel. The hotel in actuality was

Even since Connie's arrival at Wragby this new place had arisen on the face of the earth, and the model

dwellings had filled with riffraff drifting in from anywhere, to poach Clifford's rabbits among other

The car ran on along the uplands, seeing the rolling county spread out. The county! It had once been a proud

and lordly county. In front, looming again and hanging on the brow of the skyline, was the huge and

splendid bulk of Chadwick Hall, more window than wall, one of the most famous Elizabethan houses. Noble

it stood alone above a great park, but out of date, passed over. It was still kept up, but as a show place. `Look

That was the past. The present lay below. God alone knows where the future lies. The car was already

turning, between little old blackened miners' cottages, to descend to Uthwaite. And Uthwaite, on a damp day,

was sending up a whole array of smoke plumes and steam, to whatever gods there be. Uthwaite down in the

valley, with all the steel threads of the railways to Sheffield drawn through it, and the coalmines and the

steelworks sending up smoke and glare from long tubes, and the pathetic little corkscrew spire of the

church, that is going to tumble down, still pricking the fumes, always affected Connie strangely. It was an old

markettown, centre of the dales. One of the chief inns was the Chatterley Arms. There, in Uthwaite, Wragby

was known as Wragby, as if it were a whole place, not just a house, as it was to outsiders: Wragby Hall, near

The miners' cottages, blackened, stood flush on the pavement, with that intimacy and smallness of colliers'

dwellings over a hundred years old. They lined all the way. The road had become a street, and as you sank,

you forgot instantly the open, rolling country where the castles and big houses still dominated, but like

ghosts. Now you were just above the tangle of naked railwaylines, and foundries and other `works' rose

about you, so big you were only aware of walls. And iron clanked with a huge reverberating clank, and huge

Yet again, once you had got right down and into the twisted and crooked heart of the town, behind the

church, you were in the world of two centuries ago, in the crooked streets where the Chatterley Arms stood,

and the old pharmacy, streets which used to lead Out to the wild open world of the castles and stately

But at the corner a policeman held up his hand as three lorries loaded with iron rolled past, shaking the poor

So it was. Upon the old crooked burgess streets hordes of oldish blackened miners' dwellings crowded, lining

the roads out. And immediately after these came the newer, pinker rows of rather larger houses, plastering the

valley: the homes of more modern workmen. And beyond that again, in the wide rolling regions of the

castles, smoke waved against steam, and patch after patch of raw reddish brick showed the newer mining

settlements, sometimes in the hollows, sometimes gruesomely ugly along the skyline of the slopes. And

between, in between, were the tattered remnants of the old coaching and cottage England, even the England

of Robin Hood, where the miners prowled with the dismalness of suppressed sporting instincts, when they

England, my England! But which is my England? The stately homes of England make good photographs, and

create the illusion of a connexion with the Elizabethans. The handsome old halls are there, from the days of

Good Queen Anne and Tom Jones. But smuts fall and blacken on the drab stucco, that has long ceased to be

golden. And one by one, like the stately homes, they were abandoned. Now they are being pulled down. As

for the cottages of Englandthere they aregreat plasterings of brick dwellings on the hopeless

`Now they are pulling down the stately homes, the Georgian halls are going. Fritchley, a perfect old Georgian

mansion, was even now, as Connie passed in the car, being demolished. It was in perfect repair: till the war

the Weatherleys had lived in style there. But now it was too big, too expensive, and the country had become

too uncongenial. The gentry were departing to pleasanter places, where they could spend their money without

This is history. One England blots out another. The mines had made the halls wealthy. Now they were

blotting them out, as they had already blotted out the cottages. The industrial England blots out the

agricultural England. One meaning blots out another. The new England blots out the old England. And the

Connie, belonging to the leisured classes, had clung to the remnants of the old England. It had taken her years

to realize that it was really blotted out by this terrifying new and gruesome England, and that the blotting out

would go on till it was complete. Fritchley was gone, Eastwood was gone, Shipley was going: Squire

Connie called for a moment at Shipley. The park gates, at the back, opened just near the level crossing of the

colliery railway; the Shipley colliery itself stood just beyond the trees. The gates stood open, because through

The car passed the ornamental ponds, in which the colliers threw their newspapers, and took the private drive

to the house. It stood above, aside, a very pleasant stucco building from the middle of the eighteenth century.

It had a beautiful alley of yew trees, that had approached an older house, and the hall stood serenely spread

out, winking its Georgian panes as if cheerfully. Behind, there were really beautiful gardens.

Connie liked the interior much better than Wragby. It was much lighter, more alive, shapen and elegant. The

rooms were panelled with creamy painted panelling, the ceilings were touched with gilt, and everything was

kept in exquisite order, all the appointments were perfect, regardless of expense. Even the corridors managed

But Leslie Winter was alone. He had adored his house. But his park was bordered by three of his own

collieries. He had been a generous man in his ideas. He had almost welcomed the colliers in his park. Had the

miners not made him rich! So, when he saw the gangs of unshapely men lounging by his ornamental

watersnot in the private part of the park, no, he drew the line therehe would say: `the miners are perhaps

But that was in the goldenmonetarilylatter half of Queen Victoria's reign. Miners were then `good

Winter had made this speech, half apologetic, to his guest, the then Prince of Wales. And the Prince had

`You are quite right. If there were coal under Sandringham, I would open a mine on the lawns, and think it

firstrate landscape gardening. Oh, I am quite willing to exchange roedeer for colliers, at the price. Your

But then, the Prince had perhaps an exaggerated idea of the beauty of money, and the blessings of

However, the Prince had been a King, and the King had died, and now there was another King, whose chief

And the good working men were somehow hemming Shipley in. New mining villages crowded on the park,

and the squire felt somehow that the population was alien. He used to feel, in a goodnatured but quite grand

way, lord of his own domain and of his own colliers. Now, by a subtle pervasion of the new spirit, he had

somehow been pushed out. It was he who did not belong any more. There was no mistaking it. The mines, the

industry, had a will of its own, and this will was against the gentlemanowner. All the colliers took part in

the will, and it was hard to live up against it. It either shoved you out of the place, or out of life altogether.

Squire Winter, a soldier, had stood it out. But he no longer cared to walk in the park after dinner. He almost

hid, indoors. Once he had walked, bareheaded, and in his patentleather shoes and purple silk socks, with

Connie down to the gate, talking to her in his wellbred rather hawhaw fashion. But when it came to

passing the little gangs of colliers who stood and stared without either salute or anything else, Connie felt

how the lean, wellbred old man winced, winced as an elegant antelope stag in a cage winces from the vulgar

stare. The colliers were not personally hostile: not at all. But their spirit was cold, and shoving him out. And,

deep down, there was a profound grudge. They `worked for him'. And in their ugliness, they resented his

elegant, wellgroomed, wellbred existence. `Who's he!' It was the difference they resented.

And somewhere, in his secret English heart, being a good deal of a soldier, he believed they were right to

resent the difference. He felt himself a little in the wrong, for having all the advantages. Nevertheless he

Except by death. Which came on him soon after Connie's call, suddenly. And he remembered Clifford

The heirs at once gave out the order for the demolishing of Shipley. It cost too much to keep up. No one

would live there. So it was broken up. The avenue of yews was cut down. The park was denuded of its

timber, and divided into lots. It was near enough to Uthwaite. In the strange, bald desert of this

stillonemore noman'sland, new little streets of semidetacheds were run up, very desirable! The Shipley

Within a year of Connie's last call, it had happened. There stood Shipley Hall Estate, an array of redbrick

semidetached `villas' in new streets. No one would have dreamed that the stucco hall had stood there twelve

But this is a later stage of King Edward's landscape gardening, the sort that has an ornamental coalmine on

One England blots out another. The England of the Squire Winters and the Wragby Halls was gone, dead.

What would come after? Connie could not imagine. She could only see the new brick streets spreading into

the fields, the new erections rising at the collieries, the new girls in their silk stockings, the new collier lads

lounging into the Pally or the Welfare. The younger generation were utterly unconscious of the old England.

There was a gap in the continuity of consciousness, almost American: but industrial really. What next?

Connie always felt there was no next. She wanted to hide her head in the sand: or, at least, in the bosom of a

The world was so complicated and weird and gruesome! The common people were so many, and really so

terrible. So she bought as she was going home, and saw the colliers trailing from the pits, greyblack,

distorted, one shoulder higher than the other, slurring their heavy ironshod boots. Underground grey faces,

whites of eyes rolling, necks cringing from the pit roof, shoulders Out of shape. Men! Men! Alas, in some

ways patient and good men. In other ways, nonexistent. Something that men should have was bred and

killed out of them. Yet they were men. They begot children. One might bear a child to them. Terrible, terrible

thought! They were good and kindly. But they were only half, Only the grey half of a human being. As yet,

they were `good'. But even that was the goodness of their halfness. Supposing the dead in them ever rose up!

But no, it was too terrible to think of. Connie was absolutely afraid of the industrial masses. They seemed so

weird to her. A life with utterly no beauty in it, no intuition, always `in the pit'.

Yet Mellors had come from such a father. Not quite. Forty years had made a difference, an appalling

difference in manhood. The iron and the coal had eaten deep into the bodies and souls of the men.

Incarnate ugliness, and yet alive! What would become of them all? Perhaps with the passing of the coal they

would disappear again, off the face of the earth. They had appeared out of nowhere in their thousands, when

the coal had called for them. Perhaps they were only weird fauna of the coalseams. Creatures of another

reality, they were elementals, serving the elements of coal, as the metalworkers were elementals, serving the

element of iron. Men not men, but animas of coal and iron and clay. Fauna of the elements, carbon, iron,

silicon: elementals. They had perhaps some of the weird, inhuman beauty of minerals, the lustre of coal, the

weight and blueness and resistance of iron, the transparency of glass. Elemental creatures, weird and

distorted, of the mineral world! They belonged to the coal, the iron, the clay, as fish belong to the sea and

Connie was glad to be home, to bury her head in the sand. She was glad even to babble to Clifford. For her

fear of the mining and iron Midlands affected her with a queer feeling that went all over her, like influenza.

`Oh yes, but I daren't disappoint Miss Bentley.' Miss Bentley was a shallow old maid with a rather large nose

and romantic disposition who served tea with a careful intensity worthy of a sacrament.

`Of course!. May I ask your Ladyship how Sir Clifford is!I believe she ranks you even higher than

`Yes! And she looked as rapt as if I had said the heavens had opened to you. I said if she ever came to

`Why yes, Clifford. You can't be so adored without making some slight return. Saint George of Cappadocia

`Oh, she blushed! and looked quite beautiful for a moment, poor thing! Why don't men marry the women

`Oh!' Connie imitated the breathless Miss Bentley, `your Ladyship, if ever I should dare to presume!'

`Dare to presume! how absurd! But I hope to God she won't turn up. And how was her tea?'

`Oh, Lipton's and very strong. But Clifford, do you realize you are the Roman de la rose of Miss Bentley and

`They treasure up every one of your pictures in the illustrated papers, and probably pray for you every night.

`But Clifford, you make eternity sound like a lid or a long, long chain that trailed after one, no matter how far

`What I mean,' he said, `is that if you go to Venice, you won't go in the hopes of some love affair that you can

`A love affair in Venice au grand s�rieux? No. I assure you! No, I'd never take a love affair in Venice more

Coming downstairs in the morning, she found the keeper's dog Flossie sitting in the corridor outside

And she quietly opened Clifford's door. Clifford was sitting up in bed, with the bedtable and typewriter

pushed aside, and the keeper was standing at attention at the foot of the bed. Flossie ran in. With a faint

gesture of head and eyes, Mellors ordered her to the door again, and she slunk out.

`Oh, good morning, Clifford!' Connie said. `I didn't know you were busy.' Then she looked at the keeper,

saying good morning to him. He murmured his reply, looking at her as if vaguely. But she felt a whiff of

She slipped out of the room again, and up to the blue boudoir on the first floor. She sat in the window, and

saw him go down the drive, with his curious, silent motion, effaced. He had a natural sort of quiet distinction,

an aloof pride, and also a certain look of frailty. A hireling! One of Clifford's hirelings! `The fault, dear

It was a sunny day, and Connie was working in the garden, and Mrs Bolton was helping her. For some

reason, the two women had drawn together, in one of the unaccountable flows and ebbs of sympathy that

exist between people. They were pegging down carnations, and putting in small plants for the summer. It was

work they both liked. Connie especially felt a delight in putting the soft roots of young plants into a soft black

puddle, and cradling them down. On this spring morning she felt a quiver in her womb too, as if the sunshine

`It is many years since you lost your husband?' she said to Mrs Bolton as she took up another little plant and

`Twentythree!' said Mrs Bolton, as she carefully separated the young columbines into single plants.

Connie's heart gave a lurch, at the terrible finality of it. `Brought him home!'

It was a woman's question to a woman. Mrs Bolton put aside a strand of hair from her face, with the back of

`I don't know, my Lady! He sort of wouldn't give in to things: he wouldn't really go with the rest. And then he

hated ducking his head for anything on earth. A sort of obstinacy, that gets itself killed. You see he didn't

really care. I lay it down to the pit. He ought never to have been down pit. But his dad made him go down, as

`Oh no! Never! He never said he hated anything. He just made a funny face. He was one of those who

wouldn't take care: like some of the first lads as went off so blithe to the war and got killed right away. He

wasn't really wezzlebrained. But he wouldn't care. I used to say to him: ``You care for nought nor nobody!''

But he did! The way he sat when my first baby was born, motionless, and the sort of fatal eyes he looked at

me with, when it was over! I had a bad time, but I had to comfort him. ``It's all right, lad, it's all right!'' I said

to him. And he gave me a look, and that funny sort of smile. He never said anything. But I don't believe he

had any right pleasure with me at nights after; he'd never really let himself go. I used to say to him: Oh, let

thysen go, lad!I'd talk broad to him sometimes. And he said nothing. But he wouldn't let himself go, or he

couldn't. He didn't want me to have any more children. I always blamed his mother, for letting him in th'

room. He'd no right t'ave been there. Men makes so much more of things than they should, once they start

`Yes, he sort of couldn't take it for natural, all that pain. And it spoilt his pleasure in his bit of married love. I

said to him: If I don't care, why should you? It's my lookout!But all he'd ever say was: It's not right!'

`That's it! When you come to know men, that's how they are: too sensitive in the wrong place. And I believe,

unbeknown to himself he hated the pit, just hated it. He looked so quiet when he was dead, as if he'd got free.

He was such a nicelooking lad. It just broke my heart to see him, so still and pure looking, as if he'd

She wept a few bitter tears, and Connie wept more. It was a warm spring day, with a perfume of earth and of

yellow flowers, many things rising to bud, and the garden still with the very sap of sunshine.

`Oh, my Lady! I never realized at first. I could only say: Oh my lad, what did you want to leave me

`Oh no, my Lady! That was only my silly cry. And I kept expecting him back. Especially at nights. I kept

waking up thinking: Why he's not in bed with me!It was as if my feelings wouldn't believe he'd gone. I just

felt he'd have to come back and lie against me, so I could feel him with me. That was all I wanted, to feel him

there with me, warm. And it took me a thousand shocks before I knew he wouldn't come back, it took me

`That's it, my Lady, the touch of him! I've never got over it to this day, and never shall. And if there's a

Connie glanced at the handsome, brooding face in fear. Another passionate one out of Tevershall! The touch

`It's terrible, once you've got a man into your blood!' she said. `Oh, my Lady! And that's what makes you feel

so bitter. You feel folks wanted him killed. You feel the pit fair wanted to kill him. Oh, I felt, if it hadn't been

for the pit, an' them as runs the pit, there'd have been no leaving me. But they all want to separate a woman

`That's right, my Lady! There's a lot of hardhearted folks in the world. And every morning when he got up

and went to th' pit, I felt it was wrong, wrong. But what else could he do? What can a man do?'

`But can a touch last so long?' Connie asked suddenly. `That you could feel him so long?'

`Oh my Lady, what else is there to last? Children grows away from you. But the man, well! But even

that they'd like to kill in you, the very thought of the touch of him. Even your own children! Ah well! We

might have drifted apart, who knows. But the feeling's something different. It's 'appen better never to care.

But there, when I look at women who's never really been warmed through by a man, well, they seem to me

poor doolowls after all, no matter how they may dress up and gad. No, I'll abide by my own. I've not much

Connie went to the wood directly after lunch. It was really a lovely day, the first dandelions making suns, the

first daisies so white. The hazel thicket was a lacework, of halfopen leaves, and the last dusty

perpendicular of the catkins. Yellow celandines now were in crowds, flat open, pressed back in urgency, and

the yellow glitter of themselves. It was the yellow, the powerful yellow of early summer. And primroses were

broad, and full of pale abandon, thickclustered primroses no longer shy. The lush, dark green of hyacinths

was a sea, with buds rising like pale corn, while in the riding the forgetmenots were fluffing up, and

columbines were unfolding their inkpurple ruches, and there were bits of blue bird's eggshell under a bush.

The keeper was not at the hut. Everything was serene, brown chickens running lustily. Connie walked on

The cottage stood in the sun, off the wood's edge. In the little garden the double daffodils rose in tufts, near

the wideopen door, and red double daisies made a border to the path. There was the bark of a dog, and

The wideopen door! so he was at home. And the sunlight falling on the redbrick floor! As she went up the

path, she saw him through the window, sitting at the table in his shirtsleeves, eating. The dog wuffed softly,

He rose, and came to the door, wiping his mouth with a red handkerchief still chewing.

The sun shone into the bare room, which still smelled of a mutton chop, done in a dutch oven before the fire,

because the dutch oven still stood on the fender, with the black potatosaucepan on a piece of paper, beside it

on the white hearth. The fire was red, rather low, the bar dropped, the kettle singing.

On the table was his plate, with potatoes and the remains of the chop; also bread in a basket, salt, and a blue

`Shall y'ave something?' he asked her. `Shall y'ave a cup of tea? t' kettle's on t' boil'he half rose again from

`If you'll let me make it myself,' she said, rising. He seemed sad, and she felt she was bothering him.

`Well, teapot's in there'he pointed to a little, drab corner cupboard; 'an' cups. An' tea's on t' mantel ower

She got the black teapot, and the tin of tea from the mantelshelf. She rinsed the teapot with hot water, and

She went to the door and threw the drop of water down the path. How lovely it was here, so still, so really

woodland. The oaks were putting out ochre yellow leaves: in the garden the red daisies were like red plush

buttons. She glanced at the big, hollow sandstone slab of the threshold, now crossed by so few feet.

`But it's lovely here,' she said. `Such a beautiful stillness, everything alive and still.'

He was eating again, rather slowly and unwillingly, and she could feel he was discouraged. She made the tea

in silence, and set the teapot on the hob, as she knew the people did. He pushed his plate aside and went to

the back place; she heard a latch click, then he came back with cheese on a plate, and butter.

She set the two cups on the table; there were only two. `Will you have a cup of tea?' she said.

`If you like. Sugar's in th' cupboard, an' there's a little cream jug. Milk's in a jug in th' pantry.'

`Shall I take your plate away?' she asked him. He looked up at her with a faint ironical smile.

`Why...if you like,' he said, slowly eating bread and cheese. She went to the back, into the penthouse

scullery, where the pump was. On the left was a door, no doubt the pantry door. She unlatched it, and almost

smiled at the place he called a pantry; a long narrow whitewashed slip of a cupboard. But it managed to

contain a little barrel of beer, as well as a few dishes and bits of food. She took a little milk from the yellow

`No milk,' he said; then he seemed to hear a noise, and looked keenly through the doorway.

He reached over, and pulled open the table drawer. Connie sat at the table in the sunshine of the doorway.

`Flossie!' he said to the dog, who was lying on a little mat at the stair foot. `Go an' hark, hark!'

He lifted his finger, and his `hark!' was very vivid. The dog trotted out to reconnoitre.

`Sad! no, bored! I had to go getting summonses for two poachers I caught, and, oh well, I don't like people.'

He spoke cold, good English, and there was anger in his voice. `Do you hate being a gamekeeper?' she

`Being a gamekeeper, no! So long as I'm left alone. But when I have to go messing around at the

policestation, and various other places, and waiting for a lot of fools to attend to me...oh well, I get mad...'

`Me? I suppose I could, if you mean manage to exist on my pension. I could! But I've got to work, or I should

die. That is, I've got to have something that keeps me occupied. And I'm not in a good enough temper to work

for myself. It's got to be a sort of job for somebody else, or I should throw it up in a month, out of bad

`But why are you in a bad temper?' she asked. `Do you mean you are always in a bad temper?'

`Bile!' he said. `Don't you know what that is?' She was silent, and disappointed. He was taking no notice of

`You won't forget me when I'm gone, will you?' she asked. Again he lifted his eyes and looked full at her.

She wanted to say: `When then?' but she didn't. Instead, she said in a mute kind of voice: `I told Clifford I

`Oh, he wouldn't mind. He'd be glad, really, so long as it seemed to be his.' She dared not look up at him.

`No, he'd hardly swallow me as a substitute breeder. Then where are you supposed to be getting the child?'

There was silence. He sat staring out the window, with a faint grin, half mockery, half bitterness, on his face.

`You've not taken any precautions against having a child then?' he asked her suddenly. `Because I haven't.'

He looked at her, then again with the peculiar subtle grin out of the window. There was a tense silence.

`Well,' he said at last. `It's as your Ladyship likes. If you get the baby, Sir Clifford's welcome to it. I shan't

have lost anything. On the contrary, I've had a very nice experience, very nice indeed!'and he stretched in a

halfsuppressed sort of yawn. `If you've made use of me,' he said, `it's not the first time I've been made use

of; and I don't suppose it's ever been as pleasant as this time; though of course one can't feel tremendously

dignified about it.'He stretched again, curiously, his muscles quivering, and his jaw oddly set.

`Did you?' he replied, and he laughed. `Well, then, we're quits, because I liked yours.'

`Would you like to go upstairs now?' he asked her, in a strangled sort of voice.

`No, not here. Not now!' she said heavily, though if he had used any power over her, she would have gone,

He turned his face away again, and seemed to forget her. `I want to touch you like you touch me,' she said.

He looked at her, and smiled again. `Now?' he said. `No! No! Not here! At the hut. Would you mind?'

`Oh, me!' Then he changed his tone. `Yes,' he said. `You know without asking.' Which was true.

She wanted him to touch her, to say something to her, but he said nothing, only waited politely.

`I haven't thanked your Ladyship for doing me the honours of my teapot,' he said.

She went down the path, and he stood in the doorway, faintly grinning. Flossie came running with her tail

lifted. And Connie had to plod dumbly across into the wood, knowing he was standing there watching her,

She walked home very much downcast and annoyed. She didn't at all like his saying he had been made use of

because, in a sense, it was true. But he oughtn't to have said it. Therefore, again, she was divided between two

She passed a very uneasy and irritated teatime, and at once went up to her room. But when she was there it

was no good; she could neither sit nor stand. She would have to do something about it. She would have to go

She slipped out of the side door, and took her way direct and a little sullen. When she came to the clearing

she was terribly uneasy. But there he was again, in his shirtsleeves, stooping, letting the hens out of the

coops, among the chicks that were now growing a little gawky, but were much more trim than henchickens.

`Ay, I see it!' he said, straightening his back, and looking at her with a faint amusement.

`Yes, they've sat themselves to skin and bone,' he said. `An' now they're not all that anxious to come out an'

The poor motherhens; such blind devotion! even to eggs not their own! Connie looked at them in

And she went with him to the hut. It was quite dark when he had shut the door, so he made a small light in

He spread the blankets, putting one at the side for a coverlet. She took off her hat, and shook her hair. He sat

`Lie down then!' he said, when he stood in his shirt. She obeyed in silence, and he lay beside her, and pulled

And he lifted her dress right back, till he came even to her breasts. He kissed them softly, taking the nipples

`Eh, but tha'rt nice, tha'rt nice!' he said, suddenly rubbing his face with a snuggling movement against her

And she put her arms round him under his shirt, but she was afraid, afraid of his thin, smooth, naked body,

And when he said, with a sort of little sigh: `Eh, tha'rt nice!' something in her quivered, and something in her

spirit stiffened in resistance: stiffened from the terribly physical intimacy, and from the peculiar haste of his

possession. And this time the sharp ecstasy of her own passion did not overcome her; she lay with her ends

inert on his striving body, and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and

the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little

evacuating crisis seemed farcical. Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting

of the poor, insignificant, moist little penis. This was the divine love! After all, the moderns were right when

they felt contempt for the performance; for it was a performance. It was quite true, as some poets said, that

the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humour, creating him a reasonable being, yet

forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous

performance. Even a Maupassant found it a humiliating anticlimax. Men despised the intercourse act, and

Cold and derisive her queer female mind stood apart, and though she lay perfectly still, her impulse was to

heave her loins, and throw the man out, escape his ugly grip, and the butting overriding of his absurd

haunches. His body was a foolish, impudent, imperfect thing, a little disgusting in its unfinished clumsiness.

For surely a complete evolution would eliminate this performance, this `function'.

And yet when he had finished, soon over, and lay very very still, receding into silence, and a strange

motionless distance, far, farther than the horizon of her awareness, her heart began to weep. She could feel

him ebbing away, ebbing away, leaving her there like a stone on a shore. He was withdrawing, his spirit was

And in real grief, tormented by her own double consciousness and reaction, she began to weep. He took no

notice, or did not even know. The storm of weeping swelled and shook her, and shook him.

`Ay!' he said. `It was no good that time. You wasn't there.'So he knew! Her sobs became violent.

`Canna ter? Well, dunna fret! There's no law says as tha's got to. Ta'e it for what it is.'

He still lay with his hand on her breast. But she had drawn both her hands from him.

`Nay, nay!' he said. `Ta'e the thick wi' th' thin. This wor a bit o' thin for once.'

She wept bitterly, sobbing. `But I want to love you, and I can't. It only seems horrid.'

`It isna horrid,' he said, `even if tha thinks it is. An' tha canna ma'e it horrid. Dunna fret thysen about lovin'

me. Tha'lt niver force thysen to `t. There's sure to be a bad nut in a basketful. Tha mun ta'e th' rough wi' th'

He took his hand away from her breast, not touching her. And now she was untouched she took an almost

perverse satisfaction in it. She hated the dialect: the thee and the tha and the thysen. He could get up if he

liked, and stand there, above her, buttoning down those absurd corduroy breeches, straight in front of her.

After all, Michaelis had had the decency to turn away. This man was so assured in himself he didn't know

Yet, as he was drawing away, to rise silently and leave her, she clung to him in terror.

`Don't! Don't go! Don't leave me! Don't be cross with me! Hold me! Hold me fast!' she whispered in blind

frenzy, not even knowing what she said, and clinging to him with uncanny force. It was from herself she

wanted to be saved, from her own inward anger and resistance. Yet how powerful was that inward resistance

He took her in his arms again and drew her to him, and suddenly she became small in his arms, small and

nestling. It was gone, the resistance was gone, and she began to melt in a marvellous peace. And as she

melted small and wonderful in his arms, she became infinitely desirable to him, all his bloodvessels seemed

to scald with intense yet tender desire, for her, for her softness, for the penetrating beauty of her in his arms,

passing into his blood. And softly, with that marvellous swoonlike caress of his hand in pure soft desire,

softly he stroked the silky slope of her loins, down, down between her soft warm buttocks, coming nearer and

nearer to the very quick of her. And she felt him like a flame of desire, yet tender, and she felt herself melting

in the flame. She let herself go. She felt his penis risen against her with silent amazing force and assertion and

she let herself go to him She yielded with a quiver that was like death, she went all open to him. And oh, if he

were not tender to her now, how cruel, for she was all open to him and helpless!

She quivered again at the potent inexorable entry inside her, so strange and terrible. It might come with the

thrust of a sword in her softlyopened body, and that would be death. She clung in a sudden anguish of

terror. But it came with a strange slow thrust of peace, the dark thrust of peace and a ponderous, primordial

tenderness, such as made the world in the beginning. And her terror subsided in her breast, her breast dared to

be gone in peace, she held nothing. She dared to let go everything, all herself and be gone in the flood.

And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so

that slowly her whole darkness was in motion, and she was Ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass. Oh, and far

down inside her the deeps parted and rolled asunder, in long, fairtravelling billows, and ever, at the quick of

her, the depths parted and rolled asunder, from the centre of soft plunging, as the plunger went deeper and

deeper, touching lower, and she was deeper and deeper and deeper disclosed, the heavier the billows of her

rolled away to some shore, uncovering her, and closer and closer plunged the palpable unknown, and further

and further rolled the waves of herself away from herself leaving her, till suddenly, in a soft, shuddering

convulsion, the quick of all her plasm was touched, she knew herself touched, the consummation was upon

Ah, too lovely, too lovely! In the ebbing she realized all the loveliness. Now all her body clung with tender

love to the unknown man, and blindly to the wilting penis, as it so tenderly, frailly, unknowingly withdrew,

after the fierce thrust of its potency. As it drew out and left her body, the secret, sensitive thing, she gave an

unconscious cry of pure loss, and she tried to put it back. It had been so perfect! And she loved it so!

And only now she became aware of the small, budlike reticence and tenderness of the penis, and a little cry

of wonder and poignancy escaped her again, her woman's heart crying out over the tender frailty of that

`It was so lovely!' she moaned. `It was so lovely!' But he said nothing, only softly kissed her, lying still above

A man! The strange potency of manhood upon her! Her hands strayed over him, still a little afraid. Afraid of

that strange, hostile, slightly repulsive thing that he had been to her, a man. And now she touched him, and it

was the sons of god with the daughters of men. How beautiful he felt, how pure in tissue! How lovely, how

lovely, strong, and yet pure and delicate, such stillness of the sensitive body! Such utter stillness of potency

and delicate flesh. How beautiful! How beautiful! Her hands came timorously down his back, to the soft,

smallish globes of the buttocks. Beauty! What beauty! a sudden little flame of new awareness went through

her. How was it possible, this beauty here, where she had previously only been repelled? The unspeakable

beauty to the touch of the warm, living buttocks! The life within life, the sheer warm, potent loveliness. And

the strange weight of the balls between his legs! What a mystery! What a strange heavy weight of mystery,

that could lie soft and heavy in one's hand! The roots, root of all that is lovely, the primeval root of all full

She clung to him, with a hiss of wonder that was almost awe, terror. He held her close, but he said nothing.

He would never say anything. She crept nearer to him, nearer, only to be near to the sensual wonder of him.

And out of his utter, incomprehensible stillness, she felt again the slow momentous, surging rise of the

And this time his being within her was all soft and iridescent, purely soft and iridescent, such as no

consciousness could seize. Her whole self quivered unconscious and alive, like plasm. She could not know

what it was. She could not remember what it had been. Only that it had been more lovely than anything ever

could be. Only that. And afterwards she was utterly still, utterly unknowing, she was not aware for how long.

And he was still with her, in an unfathomable silence along with her. And of this, they would never speak.

When awareness of the outside began to come back, she clung to his breast, murmuring `My love! My love!'

But his silence was fathomless. His hands held her like flowers, so still aid strange. `Where are you?' she

But she did not know what he meant, she did not know where he was. In his silence he seemed lost to her.

`Ay! Ay! 'asn't ter felt it?' he said dimly, but softly and surely. And she clung close to him, closer. He was so

`You do love me!' she whispered, assertive. And his hands stroked her softly, as if she were a flower, without

the quiver of desire, but with delicate nearness. And still there haunted her a restless necessity to get a grip on

`Ay!' he said, abstractedly. And she felt her questions driving him away from her.

`It'll be nearly dark,' he said. And she heard the pressure of circumstances in his voice. She kissed him, with a

He rose, and turned up the lantern, then began to pull on his clothes, quickly disappearing inside them. Then

he stood there, above her, fastening his breeches and looking down at her with dark, wideeyes, his face a

little flushed and his hair ruffled, curiously warm and still and beautiful in the dim light of the lantern, so

beautiful, she would never tell him how beautiful. It made her want to cling fast to him, to hold him, for there

was a warm, halfsleepy remoteness in his beauty that made her want to cry out and clutch him, to have him.

She would never have him. So she lay on the blanket with curved, soft naked haunches, and he had no idea

what she was thinking, but to him too she was beautiful, the soft, marvellous thing he could go into, beyond

`It heals it all up, that I can go into thee. I love thee that tha opened to me. I love thee that I came into thee

He bent down and kissed her soft flank, rubbed his cheek against it, then covered it up.

`Tha loved me just now, wider than iver tha thout tha would. But who knows what'll 'appen, once tha starts

`No, don't say those things!And you don't really think that I wanted to make use of you, do you?'

`Now anybody can 'ave any childt i' th' world,' he said, as he sat down fastening on his leggings.

She lay still. He softly opened the door. The sky was dark blue, with crystalline, turquoise rim. He went out,

to shut up the hens, speaking softly to his dog. And she lay and wondered at the wonder of life, and of being.

When he came back she was still lying there, glowing like a gipsy. He sat on the stool by her.

`Tha mun come one naight ter th' cottage, afore tha goos; sholl ter?' he asked, lifting his eyebrows as he

On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely morning, the pearblossom and plum had

It was cruel for Clifford, while the world bloomed, to have to be helped from chair to bathchair. But he had

forgotten, and even seemed to have a certain conceit of himself in his lameness. Connie still suffered, having

She waited for him at the top of the drive, at the edge of the screen of beeches. His chair came puffing along

`Wragby doesn't wink an eyelid!' he said. `But then why should it! I ride upon the achievements of the mind

`I suppose it does. And the souls in Plato riding up to heaven in a twohorse chariot would go in a Ford car

`Quite! No more black horse to thrash and maltreat. Plato never thought we'd go one better than his black

`I hope I can have some repairs done to the old place next year. I think I shall have about a thousand to spare

`What would be the use of their striking again! Merely ruin the industry, what's left of it: and surely the owls

`Ah, don't talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even if it can't keep their pockets quite so flush,'

`But didn't you say the other day that you were a conservativeanarchist,' she asked innocently.

`And did you understand what I meant?' he retorted. `All I meant is, people can be what they like and feel

what they like and do what they like, strictly privately, so long as they keep the form of life intact, and the

`It sounds like saying an egg may go as addled as it likes, so long as it keeps its shell on whole. But addled

`I don't think people are eggs,' he said. `Not even angels' eggs, my dear little evangelist.'

He was in rather high feather this bright morning. The larks were trilling away over the park, the distant pit in

the hollow was fuming silent steam. It was almost like old days, before the war. Connie didn't really want to

argue. But then she did not really want to go to the wood with Clifford either. So she walked beside his chair

`No,' he said. `There will be no more strikes, it. The thing is properly managed.'

`We shan't ask them. We shall do it while they aren't looking: for their own good, to save the industry.'

`Naturally! For the good of everybody. But for their good even more than mine. I can live without the pits.

They looked up the shallow valley at the mine, and beyond it, at the blacklidded houses of Tevershall

crawling like some serpent up the hill. >From the old brown church the bells were ringing: Sunday, Sunday,

`But will the men let you dictate terms?' she said. `My dear, they will have to: if one does it gently.'

`I don't. But to the extent I do own it, yes, most decidedly. The ownership of property has now become a

religious question: as it has been since Jesus and St Francis. The point is not: take all thou hast and give to the

poor, but use all thou hast to encourage the industry and give work to the poor. It's the only way to feed all

the mouths and clothe all the bodies. Giving away all we have to the poor spells starvation for the poor just as

much as for us. And universal starvation is no high aim. Even general poverty is no lovely thing. Poverty is

`That is fate. Why is the star Jupiter bigger than the star Neptune? You can't start altering the makeup of

`That's thrust upon me. I don't really want it,' she blurted out. He stopped the chair and looked at her.

`Who's shirking their responsibility now!' he said. `Who is trying to get away now from the responsibility of

`Ah! But that is funk. You've got it: fated to it. And you should live up to it. Who has given the colliers all

they have that's worth having: all their political liberty, and their education, such as it is, their sanitation, their

healthconditions, their books, their music, everything. Who has given it them? Have colliers given it to

colliers? No! All the Wragbys and Shipleys in England have given their part, and must go on giving. There's

`I'd like to give something,' she said. `But I'm not allowed. Everything is to be sold and paid for now; and all

the things you mention now, Wragby and Shipley sells them to the people, at a good prof it. Everything is

sold. You don't give one heartbeat of real sympathy. And besides, who has taken away from the people their

natural life and manhood, and given them this industrial horror? Who has done that?'

`They built their own Tevershall, that's part of their display of freedom. They built themselves their pretty

Tevershall, and they live their own pretty lives. I can't live their lives for them. Every beetle must live its own

`Not at all. Every beetle finds its own food. Not one man is forced to work for me.

`I don't think they are. That's just a romantic figure of speech, a relic of the swooning and dieaway

romanticism. You don't look at all a hopeless figure standing there, Connie my dear.'

Which was true. For her darkblue eyes were flashing, her colour was hot in her cheeks, she looked full of a

rebellious passion far from the dejection of hopelessness. She noticed, ill the tussocky places of the grass,

cottony young cowslips standing up still bleared in their down. And she wondered with rage, why it was she

felt Clifford was so wrong, yet she couldn't say it to him, she could not say exactly where he was wrong.

`They don't!' he replied. `And don't fall into errors: in your sense of the word, they are not men. They are

animals you don't understand, and never could. Don't thrust your illusions on other people. The masses were

always the same, and will always be the same. Nero's slaves were extremely little different from our colliers

or the Ford motorcar workmen. I mean Nero's mine slaves and his field slaves. It is the masses: they are the

unchangeable. An individual may emerge from the masses. But the emergence doesn't alter the mass. The

masses are unalterable. It is one of the most momentous facts of social science. Panem et circenses! Only

today education is one of the bad substitutes for a circus. What is wrong today is that we've made a profound

hash of the circuses part of the programme, and poisoned our masses with a little education.'

When Clifford became really roused in his feelings about the common people, Connie was frightened. There

was something devastatingly true in what he said. But it was a truth that killed.

Seeing her pale and silent, Clifford started the chair again, and no more was said till he halted again at the

`And what we need to take up now,' he said, `is whips, not swords. The masses have been ruled since time

began, and till time ends, ruled they will have to be. It is sheer hypocrisy and farce to say they can rule

`I? Oh yes! Neither my mind nor my will is crippled, and I don't rule with my legs. I can do my share of

ruling: absolutely, my share; and give me a son, and he will be able to rule his portion after me.'

`But he wouldn't be your own son, of your own ruling class; or perhaps not,' she stammered.

`I don't care who his father may be, so long as he is a healthy man not below normal intelligence. Give me the

child of any healthy, normally intelligent man, and I will make a perfectly competent Chatterley of him. It is

not who begets us, that matters, but where fate places us. Place any child among the ruling classes, and he

will grow up, to his own extent, a ruler. Put kings' and dukes' children among the masses, and they'll be little

`Then the common people aren't a race, and the aristocrats aren't blood,' she said.

`No, my child! All that is romantic illusion. Aristocracy is a function, a part of fate. And the masses are a

functioning of another part of fate. The individual hardly matters. It is a question of which function you are

brought up to and adapted to. It is not the individuals that make an aristocracy: it is the functioning of the

aristocratic whole. And it is the functioning of the whole mass that makes the common man what he is.'

`Just as you like. We all need to fill our bellies. But when it comes to expressive or executive functioning, I

believe there is a gulf and an absolute one, between the ruling and the serving classes. The two functions are

And he started his chair. He had said his say. Now he lapsed into his peculiar and rather vacant apathy, that

In front of them ran the open cleft of the riding, between the hazel walls and the gay grey trees. The chair

puffed slowly on, slowly surging into the forgetmenots that rose up in the drive like milk froth, beyond the

hazel shadows. Clifford steered the middle course, where feet passing had kept a channel through the flowers.

But Connie, walking behind, had watched the wheels jolt over the woodruff and the bugle, and squash the

little yellow cups of the creepingjenny. Now they made a wake through the forgetmenots.

All the flowers were there, the first bluebells in blue pools, like standing water.

`You are quite right about its being beautiful,' said Clifford. `It is so amazingly. What is quite so lovely as an

Connie thought it sounded as if even the spring bloomed by act of Parliament. An English spring! Why not an

Irish one? or Jewish? The chair moved slowly ahead, past tufts of sturdy bluebells that stood up like wheat

and over grey burdock leaves. When they came to the open place where the trees had been felled, the light

flooded in rather stark. And the bluebells made sheets of bright blue colour, here and there, sheering off into

lilac and purple. And between, the bracken was lifting its brown curled heads, like legions of young snakes

with a new secret to whisper to Eve. Clifford kept the chair going till he came to the brow of the hill; Connie

followed slowly behind. The oakbuds were opening soft and brown. Everything came tenderly out of the old

hardness. Even the snaggy craggy oaktrees put out the softest young leaves, spreading thin, brown little

wings like young batwings in the light. Why had men never any newness in them, any freshness to come

Clifford stopped the chair at the top of the rise and looked down. The bluebells washed blue like floodwater

`It's a very fine colour in itself,' said Clifford, `but useless for making a painting.'

And the chair began to advance slowly, joltingly down the beautiful broad riding washed over with blue

encroaching hyacinths. O last of all ships, through the hyacinthian shallows! O pinnace on the last wild

waters, sailing in the last voyage of our civilization! Whither, O weird wheeled ship, your slow course

steering. Quiet and complacent, Clifford sat at the wheel of adventure: in his old black hat and tweed jacket,

motionless and cautious. O Captain, my Captain, our splendid trip is done! Not yet though! Downhill, in the

They passed the narrow track to the hut. Thank heaven it was not wide enough for the chair: hardly wide

enough for one person. The chair reached the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to disappear. And

Connie heard a low whistle behind her. She glanced sharply round: the keeper was striding downhill towards

`Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I shall wait for you at the parkgate

They heard the Papp! Papp! of Clifford's horn, tooting for Connie. She `Cooeed!' in reply. The keeper's face

flickered with a little grimace, and with his hand he softly brushed her breast upwards, from underneath. She

looked at him, frightened, and started running down the hill, calling Cooee! again to Clifford. The man

She found Clifford slowly mounting to the spring, which was halfway up the slope of the dark larchwood.

Connie looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out ghostly from the edge of the larchwood.

The people call it Robin Hood's Rhubarb. How silent and gloomy it seemed by the well! Yet the water

bubbled so bright, wonderful! And there were bits of eyebright and strong blue bugle...And there, under the

bank, the yellow earth was moving. A mole! It emerged, rowing its pink hands, and waving its blind gimlet

She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it for him. He drank in sips. Then she

She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft and eerie through the larches. She

A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out on to the soft yellow earth.

`Newmown hay!' he said. `Doesn't it smell like the romantic ladies of the last century, who had their heads

They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the

hollow, turned to the right, and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where bluebells

It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair pugged slowly, in a struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her

way up unevenly, till she came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled, jerked

`We'd better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come,' said Connie. `He could push her a bit. For that

`We'll let her breathe,' said Clifford. `Do you mind putting a scotch under the wheel?'

Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started his motor again, then set the chair in

`No! Don't push!' he said angrily. `What's the good of the damned thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone

`Sound the horn then, if you won't let me push,' she said. `Hell! Be quiet a moment!'

`You'll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford,' she remonstrated; `besides wasting your nervous

`If I could only get out and look at the damned thing!' he said, exasperated. And he sounded the horn

They waited, among the mashed flowers under a sky softly curdling with cloud. In the silence a woodpigeon

began to coo roohoo hoo! roohoo hoo! Clifford shut her up with a blast on the horn.

The keeper appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner. He saluted.

`I'm afraid I know nothing at all about these mechanical things, Sir Clifford,' he said calmly. `If she has

The man laid his gun against a tree, took oil his coat, and threw it beside it. The brown dog sat guard. Then he

sat down on his heels and peered under the chair, poking with his finger at the greasy little engine, and

`Doesn't seem anything broken,' he said. And he stood up, pushing back his hat from his forehead, rubbing

`Have you looked at the rods underneath?' asked Clifford. `See if they are all right!'

The man lay flat on his stomach on the floor, his neck pressed back, wriggling under the engine and poking

with his finger. Connie thought what a pathetic sort of thing a man was, feeble and smalllooking, when he

`Seems as if I can't!' And he scrambled up and sat on his heels, collier fashion. `There's certainly nothing

Clifford resented the interference: but he made his engine buzz like a bluebottle. Then she coughed and

But Clifford had already jerked her into gear. She gave a sick lurch and ebbed weakly forwards.

`But Clifford!' put in Connie from the bank, `you know it's too much for her. Why are you so obstinate!'

Clifford was pale with anger. He jabbed at his levers. The chair gave a sort of scurry, reeled on a few more

Clifford did not reply. He began doing things with his engine, running her fast and slow as if to get some sort

of tune out of her. The wood reechoed with weird noises. Then he put her in gear with a jerk, having jerked

But the keeper had got the chair by the rail. Clifford, however, putting on all his pressure, managed to steer

into the riding, and with a strange noise the chair was fighting the hill. Mellors pushed steadily behind, and

`You see, she's doing it!' said Clifford, victorious, glancing over his shoulder. There he saw the keeper's face.

The keeper stood back: then turned to fetch his coat and gun. The chair seemed to strange immediately. She

stood inert. Clifford, seated a prisoner, was white with vexation. He jerked at the levers with his hand, his feet

were no good. He got queer noises out of her. In savage impatience he moved little handles and got more

noises out of her. But she would not budge. No, she would not budge. He stopped the engine and sat rigid

Constance sat on the bank arid looked at the wretched and trampled bluebells. `Nothing quite so lovely as an

English spring.' `I can do my share of ruling.' `What we need to take up now is whips, not swords.' `The

The keeper strode up with his coat and gun, Flossie cautiously at his heels. Clifford asked the man to do

something or other to the engine. Connie, who understood nothing at all of the technicalities of motors, and

who had had experience of breakdowns, sat patiently on the bank as if she were a cipher. The keeper lay on

Clifford tried her, and Mellors stepped quickly behind and began to push. She was going, the engine doing

The keeper dropped his hold at once, and Clifford added: `How shall I know what she is doing!'

She, Mellors, and Clifford moved at once, Connie and the keeper jostling lightly. The chair stood. There was

`It's obvious I'm at everybody's mercy!' said Clifford. He was yellow with anger.

No one answered. Mellors was slinging his gun over his shoulder, his face queer and expressionless, save for

an abstracted look of patience. The dog Flossie, standing on guard almost between her master's legs, moved

uneasily, eyeing the chair with great suspicion and dislike, and very much perplexed between the three

human beings. The tableau vivant remained set among the squashed bluebells, nobody proffering a word.

`I expect she'll have to be pushed,' said Clifford at last, with an affectation of sang froid.

No answer. Mellors' abstracted face looked as if he had heard nothing. Connie glanced anxiously at him.

`Do you mind pushing her home, Mellors!' he said in a cool superior tone. `I hope I have said nothing to

The man stepped up to it: but this time it was without effect. The brake was jammed. They poked and pulled,

and the keeper took off his gun and his coat once more. And now Clifford said never a word. At last the

keeper heaved the back of the chair off the ground and, with an instantaneous push of his foot, tried to loosen

the wheels. He failed, the chair sank. Clifford was clutching the sides. The man gasped with the weight.

`No! You mustn't lift it! You'll strain yourself,' she said, flushed now with anger.

But he looked into her eyes and nodded. And she had to go and take hold of the wheel, ready. He heaved and

But it was all right, and the brake was off. The keeper put a stone under the wheel, and went to sit on the

Connie looked at him, and almost cried with anger. There was a pause and a dead silence. She saw his hands

There was dead silence. The back of Clifford's fair head did not move. Even the dog stood motionless. The

No one answered. Connie calculated the amount of strength it must have taken to heave up that chair and the

He rose, and again picked up his coat, slinging it through the handle of the chair.

He stooped and took out the scotch, then put his weight against the chair. He was paler than Connie had ever

seen him: and more absent. Clifford was a heavy man: and the hill was steep. Connie stepped to the keeper's

And she began to shove with a woman's turbulent energy of anger. The chair went faster. Clifford looked

But she did not finish. She was already panting. She slackened off a little, for it was surprisingly hard work.

He shook his head. She looked at his smallish, short, alive hand, browned by the weather. It was the hand that

caressed her. She had never even looked at it before. It seemed so still, like him, with a curious inward

stillness that made her want to clutch it, as if she could not reach it. All her soul suddenly swept towards him:

he was so silent, and out of reach! And he felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his right

on her round white wrist, softly enfolding her wrist, with a caress. And the flame of strength went down his

back and his loins, reviving him. And she bent suddenly and kissed his hand. Meanwhile the back of

At the top of the hill they rested, and Connie was glad to let go. She had had fugitive dreams of friendship

between these two men: one her husband, the other the father of her child. Now she saw the screaming

absurdity of her dreams. The two males were as hostile as fire and water. They mutually exterminated one

another. And she realized for the first time what a queer subtle thing hate is. For the first time, she had

consciously and definitely hated Clifford, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be obliterated from the face of the

earth. And it was strange, how free and full of life it made her feel, to hate him and to admit it fully to

herself.`Now I've hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with him,' came the thought into her

On the level the keeper could push the chair alone. Clifford made a little conversation with her, to show his

complete composure: about Aunt Eva, who was at Dieppe, and about Sir Malcolm, who had written to ask

would Connie drive with him in his small car, to Venice, or would she and Hilda go by train.

`I'd much rather go by train,' said Connie. `I don't like long motor drives, especially when there's dust. But I

She went to the back of the chair, and plodded side by side with the keeper, shoving up the pink path. She did

`Why not let me wait, and fetch Field? He is strong enough for the job,' said Clifford.

But both she and Mellors wiped the sweat from their faces when they came to the top. It was curious, but this

`Thanks so much, Mellors,' said Clifford, when they were at the house door. `I must get a different sort of

motor, that's all. Won't you go to the kitchen and have a meal? It must be about time.'

Mellors slung into his coat, looked at Connie, saluted, and was gone. Connie, furious, went upstairs.

`A man who's been ill, and isn't strong! My word, if I were the serving classes, I'd let you wait for service. I'd

`If he'd been sitting in a chair with paralysed legs, and behaved as you behaved, what would you have done

`My dear evangelist, this confusing of persons and personalities is in bad taste.'

`And your nasty, sterile want of common sympathy is in the worst taste imaginable. Noblesse oblige! You

`And to what should it oblige me? To have a lot of unnecessary emotions about my gamekeeper? I refuse. I

`You, and rule!' she said. `You don't rule, don't flatter yourself. You have only got more than your share of

the money, and make people work for you for two pounds a week, or threaten them with starvation. Rule!

What do you give forth of rule? Why, you re dried up! You only bully with your money, like any Jew or any

`I assure you, you were very elegant altogether out there in the wood. I was utterly ashamed of you. Why, my

She went up to her room, furious, saying to herself: `Him and buying people! Well, he doesn't buy me, and

therefore there's no need for me to stay with him. Dead fish of a gentleman, with his celluloid soul! And how

they take one in, with their manners and their mock wistfulness and gentleness. They've got about as much

She made her plans for the night, and determined to get Clifford off her mind. She didn't want to hate him.

She didn't want to be mixed up very intimately with him in any sort of feeling. She wanted him not to know

anything at all about herself: and especially, not to know anything about her feeling for the keeper. This

squabble of her attitude to the servants was an old one. He found her too familiar, she found him stupidly

She went downstairs calmly, with her old demure bearing, at dinnertime. He was still yellow at the gills: in

for one of his liver bouts, when he was really very queer.He was reading a French book.

`Possibly! But he bores me: all that sophistication! He doesn't have feelings, he only has streams of words

They were at it again, at it again! But she couldn't help fighting him. He seemed to sit there like a skeleton,

sending out a skeleton's cold grizzly will against her. Almost she could feel the skeleton clutching her and

pressing her to its cage of ribs. He too was really up in arms: and she was a little afraid of him.

She went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But at half past nine she got up, and went

outside to listen. There was no sound. She slipped on a dressinggown and went downstairs. Clifford and

Mrs Bolton were playing cards, gambling. They would probably go on until midnight.

Connie returned to her room, threw her pyjamas on the tossed bed, put on a thin tennisdress and over that a

woollen daydress, put on rubber tennisshoes, and then a light coat. And she was ready. If she met anybody,

she was just going out for a few minutes. And in the morning, when she came in again, she would just have

been for a little walk in the dew, as she fairly often did before breakfast. For the rest, the only danger was that

someone should go into her room during the night. But that was most unlikely: not one chance in a hundred.

Betts had not locked up. He fastened up the house at ten o'clock, and unfastened it again at seven in the

morning. She slipped out silently and unseen. There was a halfmoon shining, enough to make a little light in

the world, not enough to show her up in her darkgrey coat. She walked quickly across the park, not really in

the thrill of the assignation, but with a certain anger and rebellion burning in her heart. It was not the right

When she got near the parkgate, she heard the click of the latch. He was there, then, in the darkness of the

He shut the gate quietly after her, and made a spot of light on the dark ground, showing the pallid flowers still

`Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself this morning with that chair?' she asked.

`Oh nothing! it left my heart not so strong and the lungs not so elastic. But it always does that.'

`Hate him, no! I've met too many like him to upset myself hating him. I know beforehand I don't care for his

`Nay, you know better than I do. The sort of youngish gentleman a bit like a lady, and no balls.'

`You say a man's got no brain, when he's a fool: and no heart, when he's mean; and no stomach when he's a

funker. And when he's got none of that spunky wild bit of a man in him, you say he's got no balls. When he's

`Tame, and nasty with it: like most such fellows, when you come up against 'em.'

She went on again at his side, but not touching him, wondering why she was going with him at all.

He unlocked, and they went in, he bolting the door behind them. As if it were a prison, she thought! The

She sat in the wooden armchair by the fire. It was warm after the chill outside.

She sat with her stockinged feet on the bright steel fender. He went to the pantry, bringing food: bread and

butter and pressed tongue. She was warm: she took off her coat. He hung it on the door.

He tramped with a quiet inevitability over the brick floor, putting food for the dog in a brown bowl. The

He set the bowl on the stairfoot mat, and sat himself on a chair by the wall, to take off his leggings and boots.

The dog instead of eating, came to him again, and sat looking up at him, troubled.

`What's amiss wi' thee then? Art upset because there's somebody else here? Tha'rt a female, tha art! Go an' eat

He put his hand on her head, and the bitch leaned her head sideways against him. He slowly, softly pulled the

He tilted his chair towards the pot on the mat, and the dog meekly went, and fell to eating.

He had taken off his leggings and was unlacing his heavy boots. Connie had turned from the fire. How bare

the little room was! Yet over his head on the wall hung a hideous enlarged photograph of a young married

`Ay! Taken just afore we was married, when I was twentyone.' He looked at it impassively.

`Like it? No! I never liked the thing. But she fixed it all up to have it done, like.'

`If you don't like it, why do you keep it hanging there? Perhaps your wife would like to have it,' she said.

`She carted off iverything as was worth taking from th' 'ouse,' he said. `But she left that!'

`Nay, I niver look at it. I hardly knowed it wor theer. It's bin theer sin' we come to this place.'

He twisted round again and looked at the enlarged photograph. It was framed in a brownandgilt frame,

hideous. It showed a cleanshaven, alert, very younglooking man in a rather high collar, and a somewhat

plump, bold young woman with hair fluffed out and crimped, and wearing a dark satin blouse.

He had pulled off his boots, and put on a pair of slippers. He stood up on the chair, and lifted down the

He went to the scullery, and returned with hammer and pincers. Sitting where he had sat before, he started to

tear off the backpaper from the big frame, and to pull out the sprigs that held the backboard in position,

He soon had the nails out: then he pulled out the backboards, then the enlargement itself, in its solid white

`Shows me for what I was, a young curate, and her for what she was, a bully,' he said. `The prig and the

He did look indeed very cleanshaven and very clean altogether, one of the clean young men of twenty years

ago. But even in the photograph his eyes were alert and dauntless. And the woman was not altogether a bully,

`One never should keep these things,' said Connie. `That one shouldn't! One should never have them made!'

He broke the cardboard photograph and mount over his knee, and when it was small enough, put it on the

The frame he knocked asunder with a few blows of the hammer, making the stucco fly. Then he took the

`Then why don't you get a divorce? She'll come back to you one day,' said Connie.

`She wouldn't come within a mile of me. She hates me a lot worse than I hate her.'

`You might be right. I was a fool ever to come back here. But I felt stranded and had to go somewhere. A

man's a poor bit of a wastrel blown about. But you're right. I'll get a divorce and get clear. I hate those things

like death, officials and courts and judges. But I've got to get through with it. I'll get a divorce.'

And she saw his jaw set. Inwardly she exulted. `I think I will have a cup of tea now,' she said. He rose to

`Why did you marry her? She was commoner than yourself. Mrs Bolton told me about her. She could never

`I'll tell you,' he said. `The first girl I had, I began with when I was sixteen. She was a schoolmaster's

daughter over at Ollerton, pretty, beautiful really. I was supposed to be a clever sort of young fellow from

Sheffield Grammar School, with a bit of French and German, very much up aloft. She was the romantic sort

that hated commonness. She egged me on to poetry and reading: in a way, she made a man of me. I read and I

thought like a house on fire, for her. And I was a clerk in Butterley offices, thin, whitefaced fellow fuming

with all the things I read. And about everything I talked to her: but everything. We talked ourselves into

Persepolis and Timbuctoo. We were the most literarycultured couple in ten counties. I held forth with

rapture to her, positively with rapture. I simply went up in smoke. And she adored me. The serpent in the

grass was sex. She somehow didn't have any; at least, not where it's supposed to be. I got thinner and crazier.

Then I said we'd got to be lovers. I talked her into it, as usual. So she let me. I was excited, and she never

wanted it. She just didn't want it. She adored me, she loved me to talk to her and kiss her: in that way she had

a passion for me. But the other, she just didn't want. And there are lots of women like her. And it was just the

other that I did want. So there we split. I was cruel, and left her. Then I took on with another girl, a teacher,

who had made a scandal by carrying on with a married man and driving him nearly out of his mind. She was

a soft, whiteskinned, soft sort of a woman, older than me, and played the fiddle. And she was a demon. She

loved everything about love, except the sex. Clinging, caressing, creeping into you in every way: but if you

forced her to the sex itself, she just ground her teeth and sent out hate. I forced her to it, and she could simply

numb me with hate because of it. So I was balked again. I loathed all that. I wanted a woman who wanted me,

`Then came Bertha Coutts. They'd lived next door to us when I was a little lad, so I knew 'em all right. And

they were common. Well, Bertha went away to some place or other in Birmingham; she said, as a lady's

companion; everybody else said, as a waitress or something in a hotel. Anyhow just when I was more than

fed up with that other girl, when I was twentyone, back comes Bertha, with airs and graces and smart

clothes and a sort of bloom on her: a sort of sensual bloom that you'd see sometimes on a woman, or on a

trolly. Well, I was in a state of murder. I chucked up my job at Butterley because I thought I was a weed,

clerking there: and I got on as overhead blacksmith at Tevershall: shoeing horses mostly. It had been my

dad's job, and I'd always been with him. It was a job I liked: handling horses: and it came natural to me. So I

stopped talking ``fine'', as they call it, talking proper English, and went back to talking broad. I still read

books, at home: but I blacksmithed and had a ponytrap of my own, and was My Lord Duckfoot. My dad left

me three hundred pounds when he died. So I took on with Bertha, and I was glad she was common. I wanted

her to be common. I wanted to be common myself. Well, I married her, and she wasn't bad. Those other

``pure'' women had nearly taken all the balls out of me, but she was all right that way. She wanted me, and

made no bones about it. And I was as pleased as punch. That was what I wanted: a woman who wanted me to

fuck her. So I fucked her like a good un. And I think she despised me a bit, for being so pleased about it, and

bringin' her her breakfast in bed sometimes. She sort of let things go, didn't get me a proper dinner when I

came home from work, and if I said anything, flew out at me. And I flew back, hammer and tongs. She flung

a cup at me and I took her by the scruff of the neck and squeezed the life out of her. That sort of thing! But

she treated me with insolence. And she got so's she'd never have me when I wanted her: never. Always put

me off, brutal as you like. And then when she'd put me right off, and I didn't want her, she'd come all

loveydovey, and get me. And I always went. But when I had her, she'd never come off when I did. Never!

She'd just wait. If I kept back for half an hour, she'd keep back longer. And when I'd come and really

finished, then she'd start on her own account, and I had to stop inside her till she brought herself off,

wriggling and shouting, she'd clutch clutch with herself down there, an' then she'd come off, fair in ecstasy.

And then she'd say: That was lovely! Gradually I got sick of it: and she got worse. She sort of got harder and

harder to bring off, and she'd sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God, you

think a woman's soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you the old rampers have beaks between their legs, and

they tear at you with it till you're sick. Self! Self! Self! all self! tearing and shouting! They talk about men's

selfishness, but I doubt if it can ever touch a woman's blind beakishness, once she's gone that way. Like an

old trull! And she couldn't help it. I told her about it, I told her how I hated it. And she'd even try. She'd try to

lie still and let me work the business. She'd try. But it was no good. She got no feeling off it, from my

working. She had to work the thing herself, grind her own coffee. And it came back on her like a raving

necessity, she had to let herself go, and tear, tear, tear, as if she had no sensation in her except in the top of

her beak, the very outside top tip, that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores used to be, so men used to say.

It was a low kind of selfwill in her, a raving sort of selfwill: like in a woman who drinks. Well in the end I

couldn't stand it. We slept apart. She herself had started it, in her bouts when she wanted to be clear of me,

when she said I bossed her. She had started having a room for herself. But the time came when I wouldn't

`I hated it. And she hated me. My God, how she hated me before that child was born! I often think she

conceived it out of hate. Anyhow, after the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I

joined up. And I didn't come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate.

`A big baby sort of fellow, very lowmouthed. She bullies him, and they both drink.'

`So when you did get a woman who wanted you,' said Connie, `you got a bit too much of a good thing.'

`Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I'd rather have her than the nevernever ones: the white love of my youth, and

`The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women are like this: most of them want a man,

but don't want the sex, but they put up with it, as part of the bargain. The more oldfashioned sort just lie

there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don't mind afterwards: then they like you. But the actual thing

itself is nothing to them, a bit distasteful. Add most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of women

who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy.

They make it up. Then there's the ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off,

every kind except the natural one. They always make you go off when you're notin the only place you should

be, when you go off.Then there's the hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves

off, like my wife. They want to be the active party.Then there's the sort that's just dead inside: but dead:

and they know it. Then there's the sort that puts you out before you really ``come'', and go on writhing their

loins till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the Lesbian sort. It's astonishing

how Lesbian women are, consciously or unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian.'

`I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill

` I do! Because I've suffered more from them. In the abstract, I've no idea. When I get with a Lesbian woman,

whether she knows she's one or not, I see red. No, no! But I wanted to have nothing to do with any woman

`I'm sorry, from the outside: all the complications and the ugliness and recrimination that's bound to come,

sooner or later. That's when my blood sinks, and I'm low. But when my blood comes up, I'm glad. I'm even

triumphant. I was really getting bitter. I thought there was no real sex left: never a woman who'd really

``come'' naturally with a man: except black women, and somehow, well, we're white men: and they're a bit

`Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can't forget the rest, I want to get under the table and die.'

`You see, I couldn't fool myself. That's where most men manage. They take an attitude, and accept a lie. I

could never fool myself. I knew what I wanted with a woman, and I could never say I'd got it when I hadn't.'

`For me it is. For me it's the core of my life: if I have a right relation with a woman.'

`God, no! I let my wife get to what she was: my fault a good deal. I spoilt her. And I'm very mistrustful.

You'll have to expect it. It takes a lot to make me trust anybody, inwardly. So perhaps I'm a fraud too. I

`You don't mistrust with your body, when your blood comes up,' she said. `You don't mistrust then, do you?'

`No, alas! That's how I've got into all the trouble. And that's why my mind mistrusts so thoroughly.'

He got up, and put her shoes to dry, and wiped his own and set them near the fire. In the morning he would

grease them. He poked the ash of pasteboard as much as possible out of the fire. `Even burnt, it's filthy,' he

said. Then he brought sticks and put them on the hob for the morning. Then he went out awhile with the dog.

She went alone into the darkness. There were stars overhead. She could smell flowers on the night air. And

she could feel her wet shoes getting wetter again. But she felt like going away, right away from him and

It was chilly. She shuddered, and returned to the house. He was sitting in front of the low fire.

He put the sticks on the fire, and fetched more, till they had a good crackling chimneyful of blaze. The

rippling running yellow flame made them both happy, warmed their faces and their souls.

`Never mind!' she said, taking his hand as he sat silent and remote. `One does one's best.'

He held her close, in the running warmth of the fire. The flame itself was like a forgetting. And her soft,

warm, ripe weight! Slowly his blood turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.

`And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly, only perhaps they couldn't.

`I know it. Do you think I don't know what a brokenbacked snake that's been trodden on I was myself!'

She clung to him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again. Yet some perversity had made her.

`But you're not now,' she said. `You're not that now: a brokenbacked snake that's been trodden on.'

`There's black days coming for us all and for everybody,' he repeated with a prophetic gloom.

He was silent. But she could feel the black void of despair inside him. That was the death of all desire, the

death of all love: this despair that was like the dark cave inside the men, in which their spirit was lost.

`And you talk so coldly about sex,' she said. `You talk as if you had only wanted your own pleasure and

`Nay!' he said. `I wanted to have my pleasure and satisfaction of a woman, and I never got it: because I could

never get my pleasure and satisfaction of her unless she got hers of me at the same time. And it never

`But you never believed in your women. You don't even believe really in me,' she said.

She still was curled on his lap. But his spirit was grey and absent, he was not there for her. And everything

`Yes, I do believe in something. I believe in being warmhearted. I believe especially in being warmhearted

in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it

warmheartedly, everything would come all right. It's all this coldhearted fucking that is death and idiocy.'

`I don't want to fuck you at all. My heart's as cold as cold potatoes just now.'

`Oh!' she said, kissing him mockingly. `Let's have them saut�es.' He laughed, and sat erect.

`It's a fact!' he said. `Anything for a bit of warmheartedness. But the women don't like it. Even you don't

really like it. You like good, sharp, piercing coldhearted fucking, and then pretending it's all sugar. Where's

your tenderness for me? You're as suspicious of me as a cat is of a dog. I tell you it takes two even to be

tender and warmhearted. You love fucking all right: but you want it to be called something grand and

mysterious, just to flatter your own selfimportance. Your own selfimportance is more to you, fifty times

`Ay! Very well then!' he said, moving as if he wanted to rise. `Let's keep apart then. I'd rather die than do any

`I hope you don't,' he replied. `But anyhow, you go to bed an' I'll sleep down here.'

She looked at him. He was pale, his brows were sullen, he was as distant in recoil as the cold pole. Men were

He was bent over, lacing his boot, and did not reply. The moments passed. A dimness came over her, like a

swoon. All her consciousness died, and she stood there wideeyed, looking at him from the unknown,

He looked up, because of the silence, and saw her wideeyed and lost. And as if a wind tossed him he got up

and hobbled over to her, one shoe off and one shoe on, and took her in his arms, pressing her against his

body, which somehow felt hurt right through. And there he held her, and there she remained.

Till his hands reached blindly down and felt for her, and felt under the clothing to where she was smooth and

`Ma lass!' he murmured. `Ma little lass! Dunna let's light! Dunna let's niver light! I love thee an' th' touch on

`Don't be upset,' she said steadily. `It's no good being upset. Do you really want to be together with me?'

She looked with wide, steady eyes into his face. He stopped, and went suddenly still, turning his face aside.

Then he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, with his odd, faintly mocking grin, saying: `Ayay! Let's be

`But really?' she said, her eyes filling with tears. `Ay really! Heart an' belly an' cock.'

He still smiled faintly down at her, with the flicker of irony in his eyes, and a touch of bitterness.

She was silently weeping, and he lay with her and went into her there on the hearthrug, and so they gained a

measure of equanimity. And then they went quickly to bed, for it was growing chill, and they had tired each

other out. And she nestled up to him, feeling small and enfolded, and they both went to sleep at once, fast in

one sleep. And so they lay and never moved, till the sun rose over the wood and day was beginning.

Then he woke up and looked at the light. The curtains were drawn. He listened to the loud wild calling of

blackbirds and thrushes in the wood. It would be a brilliant morning, about half past five, his hour for rising.

He had slept so fast! It was such a new day! The woman was still curled asleep and tender. His hand moved

on her, and she opened her blue wondering eyes, smiling unconsciously into his face.

He was looking into her eyes. He smiled, and kissed her. And suddenly she roused and sat up.

She looked round the whitewashed little bedroom with its sloping ceiling and gable window where the white

curtains were closed. The room was bare save for a little yellowpainted chest of drawers, and a chair: and

`Fancy that we are here!' she said, looking down at him. He was lying watching her, stroking her breasts with

his fingers, under the thin nightdress. When he was warm and smoothed out, he looked young and handsome.

`I want to take this off!' she said, gathering the thin batiste nightdress and pulling it over her head. She sat

there with bare shoulders and longish breasts faintly golden. He loved to make her breasts swing softly, like

And he took off his old cotton pyjamajacket, and pushed down the trousers. Save for his hands and wrists

and face and neck he was white as milk, with fine slender muscular flesh. To Connie he was suddenly

piercingly beautiful again, as when she had seen him that afternoon washing himself.

Gold of sunshine touched the closed white curtain. She felt it wanted to come in.

`Oh, do let's draw the curtains! The birds are singing so! Do let the sun in,' she said.

He slipped out of bed with his back to her, naked and white and thin, and went to the window, stooping a

little, drawing the curtains and looking out for a moment. The back was white and fine, the small buttocks

beautiful with an exquisite, delicate manliness, the back of the neck ruddy and delicate and yet strong.

`But you are beautiful!' she said. `So pure and fine! Come!' She held her arms out.

`No!' she said still holding out her beautiful slim arms from her dropping breasts. `Let me see you!'

He dropped the shirt and stood still looking towards her. The sun through the low window sent in a beam that

lit up his thighs and slim belly and the erect phallos rising darkish and hotlooking from the little cloud of

`How strange!' she said slowly. `How strange he stands there! So big! and so dark and cocksure! Is he like

The man looked down the front of his slender white body, and laughed. Between the slim breasts the hair was

dark, almost black. But at the root of the belly, where the phallos rose thick and arching, it was goldred,

`So proud!' she murmured, uneasy. `And so lordly! Now I know why men are so overbearing! But he's

lovely, really. Like another being! A bit terrifying! But lovely really! And he comes to me!' She caught her

The man looked down in silence at the tense phallos, that did not change.`Ay!' he said at last, in a little

voice. `Ay ma lad! tha're theer right enough. Yi, tha mun rear thy head! Theer on thy own, eh? an' ta'es no

count O' nob'dy! Tha ma'es nowt O' me, John Thomas. Art boss? of me? Eh well, tha're more cocky than me,

an' tha says less. John Thomas! Dost want her? Dost want my lady Jane? Tha's dipped me in again, tha hast.

Ay, an' tha comes up smilin'.Ax 'er then! Ax lady Jane! Say: Lift up your heads, O ye gates, that the king

of glory may come in. Ay, th' cheek on thee! Cunt, that's what tha're after. Tell lady Jane tha wants cunt. John

`Oh, don't tease him,' said Connie, crawling on her knees on the bed towards him and putting her arms round

his white slender loins, and drawing him to her so that her hanging, swinging breasts touched the tip of the

stirring, erect phallos, and caught the drop of moisture. She held the man fast.

And afterwards, when they had been quite still, the woman had to uncover the man again, to look at the

`And now he's tiny, and soft like a little bud of life!' she said, taking the soft small penis in her hand. `Isn't he

somehow lovely! so on his own, so strange! And so innocent! And he comes so far into me! You must

never insult him, you know. He's mine too. He's not only yours. He's mine! And so lovely and innocent!' And

`Of course!' she said. `Even when he's soft and little I feel my heart simply tied to him. And how lovely your

`John Thomas! John Thomas!' and she quickly kissed the soft penis, that was beginning to stir again.

`Ay!' said the man, stretching his body almost painfully. `He's got his root in my soul, has that gentleman!

An' sometimes I don' know what ter do wi' him. Ay, he's got a will of his own, an' it's hard to suit him. Yet I

`No wonder men have always been afraid of him!' she said. `He's rather terrible.'

The quiver was going through the man's body, as the stream of consciousness again changed its direction,

turning downwards. And he was helpless, as the penis in slow soft undulations filled and surged and rose up,

and grew hard, standing there hard and overweening, in its curious towering fashion. The woman too

And she quivered, and her own mind melted out. Sharp soft waves of unspeakable pleasure washed over her

as he entered her, and started the curious molten thrilling that spread and spread till she was carried away

He heard the distant hooters of Stacks Gate for seven o'clock. It was Monday morning. He shivered a little,

and with his face between her breasts pressed her soft breasts up over his ears, to deafen him.

She had not even heard the hooters. She lay perfectly still, her soul washed transparent.

He sat up and looked blankly out of the window. `You do love me, don't you?' she asked calmly. He looked

Then with the same eyes darkened with another flame of consciousness, almost like sleep, he looked at her.

`Dunna ax me nowt now,' he said. `Let me be. I like thee. I luv thee when tha lies theer. A woman's a lovely

thing when 'er's deep ter fuck, and cunt's good. Ah luv thee, thy legs, an' th' shape on thee, an' th' womanness

on thee. Ah luv th' womanness on thee. Ah luv thee wi' my bas an' wi' my heart. But dunna ax me nowt.

Dunna ma'e me say nowt. Let me stop as I am while I can. Tha can ax me iverything after. Now let me be, let

And softly, he laid his hand over her mound of Venus, on the soft brown maidenhair, and himselfsat still

and naked on the bed, his face motionless in physical abstraction, almost like the face of Buddha. Motionless,

and in the invisible flame of another consciousness, he sat with his hand on her, and waited for the turn.

After a while, he reached for his shirt and put it on, dressed himself swiftly in silence, looked at her once as

she still lay naked and faintly golden like a Gloire de Dijon rose on the bed, and was gone. She heard him

And still she lay musing, musing. It was very hard to go: to go out of his arms. He called from the foot of the

stairs: `Half past seven!' She sighed, and got out of bed. The bare little room! Nothing in it at all but the small

chest of drawers and the smallish bed. But the board floor was scrubbed clean. And in the corner by the

window gable was a shelf with some books, and some from a circulating library. She looked. There were

books about Bolshevist Russia, books of travel, a volume about the atom and the electron, another about the

composition of the earth's core, and the causes of earthquakes: then a few novels: then three books on India.

The sun fell on her naked limbs through the gable window. Outside she saw the dog Flossie roaming round.

The hazelbrake was misted with green, and darkgreen dogsmercury under. It was a clear clean morning

with birds flying and triumphantly singing. If only she could stay! If only there weren't the other ghastly

She came downstairs, down the steep, narrow wooden stairs. Still she would be content with this little house,

He was washed and fresh, and the fire was burning. `Will you eat anything?' he said.

She followed him into the scullery, and combed her hair before the handbreadth of mirror by the back door.

She stood in the little front garden, looking at the dewy flowers, the grey bed of pinks in bud already.

`I would like to have all the rest of the world disappear,' she said, `and live with you here.'

They went almost in silence through the lovely dewy wood. But they were together in a world of their own.

There was a letter from Hilda on the breakfasttray. `Father is going to London this week, and I shall call for

you on Thursday week, June 17th. You must be ready so that we can go at once. I don't want to waste time at

Wragby, it's an awful place. I shall probably stay the night at Retford with the Colemans, so I should be with

you for lunch, Thursday. Then we could start at teatime, and sleep perhaps in Grantham. It is no use our

spending an evening with Clifford. If he hates your going, it would be no pleasure to him.'

Clifford hated her going, but it was only because he didn't feel safe in her absence. Her presence, for some

reason, made him feel safe, and free to do the things he was occupied with. He was a great deal at the pits,

and wrestling in spirit with the almost hopeless problems of getting out his coal in the most economical

fashion and then selling it when he'd got it out. He knew he ought to find some way of using it, or converting

it, so that he needn't sell it, or needn't have the chagrin of failing to sell it. But if he made electric power,

could he sell that or use it? And to convert into oil was as yet too costly and too elaborate. To keep industry

It was a madness, and it required a madman to succeed in it. Well, he was a little mad. Connie thought so. His

very intensity and acumen in the affairs of the pits seemed like a manifestation of madness to her, his very

He talked to her of all his serious schemes, and she listened in a kind of wonder, and let him talk. Then the

flow ceased, and he turned on the loudspeaker, and became a blank, while apparently his schemes coiled on

And every night now he played pontoon, that game of the Tommies, with Mrs Bolton, gambling with

sixpences. And again, in the gambling he was gone in a kind of unconsciousness, or blank intoxication, or

intoxication of blankness, whatever it was. Connie could not bear to see him. But when she had gone to bed,

he and Mrs Bolton would gamble on till two and three in the morning, safely, and with strange lust. Mrs

Bolton was caught in the lust as much as Clifford: the more so, as she nearly always lost.

She told Connie one day: `I lost twentythree shillings to Sir Clifford last night.'

Connie expostulated roundly, and was angry with both of them. The upshot was, Sir Clifford raised Mrs

Bolton's wages a hundred a year, and she could gamble on that. Meanwhile, it seemed to Connie, Clifford

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

Yet he really wanted her to go. That was so curious. He wanted her to go, positively, to have her little

adventures and perhaps come home pregnant, and all that. At the same time, he was afraid of her going.

She was quivering, watching her real opportunity for leaving him altogether, waiting till the time, herself

`And then when I come back,' she said, `I can tell Clifford I must leave him. And you and I can go away.

They never need even know it is you. We can go to another country, shall we? To Africa or Australia. Shall

`Doesn't it make you happy? Why not? We shan't be poor. I have about six hundred a year, I wrote and asked.

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

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

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

`What is there to tell? He had risen from the ranks. He loved the army. And he had never married. He was

twenty years older than me. He was a very intelligent man: and alone in the army, as such a man is: a

passionate man in his way: and a very clever officer. I lived under his spell while I was with him. I sort of let

`I was as near death myself. But when I came to, I knew another part of me was finished. But then I had

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

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

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

`No! They were a mingy lot.' He laughed suddenly. `The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes

have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give

them a stoppage. They're the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves,

frightened even if their bootlaces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That's what

finishes me up. Kowtow, kowtow, arselicking till their tongues are tough: yet they're always in the right.

Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each'

`No,' said he. `He didn't bother. He just disliked them. There's a difference. Because, as he said, the Tommies

are getting just as priggish and halfballed and narrowgutted. It's the fate of mankind, to go that way.'

`All the lot. Their spunk is gone dead. Motorcars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them.

I tell you, every generation breeds a more rabbity generation, with india rubber tubing for guts and tin legs

and tin faces. Tin people! It's all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping

the mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old

human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They're all alike. The world

is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt

but machinefucking!It's all alike. Pay 'em money to cut off the world's cock. Pay money, money, money

to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave 'em all little twiddling machines.'

He sat there in the hut, his face pulled to mocking irony. Yet even then, he had one ear set backwards,

`Ay, it will. It'll achieve its own salvation. When the last real man is killed, and they're all tame: white, black,

yellow, all colours of tame ones: then they'll all be insane. Because the root of sanity is in the balls. Then

they'll all be insane, and they'll make their grand ~auto da fe. You know auto da fe means act of faith? Ay,

well, they'll make their own grand little act of faith. They'll offer one another up.'

`I do, duckie! If we go on at our present rate then in a hundred years' time there won't be ten thousand people

in this island: there may not be ten. They'll have lovingly wiped each other out. The thunder was rolling

`Quite nice! To contemplate the extermination of the human species and the long pause that follows before

some other species crops up, it calms you more than anything else. And if we go on in this way, with

everybody, intellectuals, artists, government, industrialists and workers all frantically killing off the last

human feeling, the last bit of their intuition, the last healthy instinct; if it goes on in algebraical progression,

as it is going on: then tatah! to the human species! Goodbye! darling! the serpent swallows itself and leaves

a void, considerably messed up, but not hopeless. Very nice! When savage wild dogs bark in Wragby, and

`Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshevists,' she said. `You ought to be pleased that they hurry

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

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

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

`Ah no!' she said, shocked. `Then you can't ever really want me! You can't want me, if you feel that!'

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

`It's not quite true!' she whispered. `It's not quite true! There's another truth.' She felt he was bitter now partly

because she was leaving him, deliberately going away to Venice. And this half pleased her.

She pulled open his clothing and uncovered his belly, and kissed his navel. Then she laid her cheek on his

belly and pressed her arm round his warm, silent loins. They were alone in the flood.

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

`Why!' he said at last: and she felt the curious quiver of changing consciousness and relaxation going through

his body. `Why I've thought sometimes if one but tried, here among th' colliers even! They're workin' bad

now, an' not earnin' much. If a man could say to 'em: Dunna think o' nowt but th' money. When it comes ter

She softly rubbed her cheek on his belly, and gathered his balls in her hand. The penis stirred softly, with

`Let's live for summat else. Let's not live ter make money, neither for usselves nor for anybody else. Now

we're forced to. We're forced to make a bit for usselves, an' a fair lot for th' bosses. Let's stop it! Bit by bit,

let's stop it. We needn't rant an' rave. Bit by bit, let's drop the whole industrial life an' go back. The least little

bit o' money'll do. For everybody, me an' you, bosses an' masters, even th' king. The least little bit o' money'll

really do. Just make up your mind to it, an' you've got out o' th' mess.' He paused, then went on:

`An' I'd tell 'em: Look! Look at Joe! He moves lovely! Look how he moves, alive and aware. He's beautiful!

An' look at Jonah! He's clumsy, he's ugly, because he's niver willin' to rouse himself I'd tell 'em: Look! look

at yourselves! one shoulder higher than t'other, legs twisted, feet all lumps! What have yer done ter yerselves,

wi' the blasted work? Spoilt yerselves. No need to work that much. Take yer clothes off an' look at

yourselves. Yer ought ter be alive an' beautiful, an' yer ugly an' half dead. So I'd tell 'em. An' I'd get my men

to wear different clothes: appen close red trousers, bright red, an' little short white jackets. Why, if men had

red, fine legs, that alone would change them in a month. They'd begin to be men again, to be men! An' the

women could dress as they liked. Because if once the men walked with legs close bright scarlet, and buttocks

nice and showing scarlet under a little white jacket: then the women 'ud begin to be women. It's because th'

men aren't men, that th' women have to be.An' in time pull down Tevershall and build a few beautiful

buildings, that would hold us all. An' clean the country up again. An' not have many children, because the

`But I wouldn't preach to the men: only strip 'em an' say: Look at yourselves! That's workin' for

money!Hark at yourselves! That's working for money. You've been working for money! Look at

Tevershall! It's horrible. That's because it was built while you was working for money. Look at your girls!

They don't care about you, you don't care about them. It's because you've spent your time working an' caring

for money. You can't talk nor move nor live, you can't properly be with a woman. You're not alive. Look at

There fell a complete silence. Connie was half listening, and threading in the hair at the root of his belly a few

forgetmenots that she had gathered on the way to the hut. Outside, the world had gone still, and a little icy.

`You've got four kinds of hair,' she said to him. `On your chest it's nearly black, and your hair isn't dark on

your head: but your moustache is hard and dark red, and your hair here, your lovehair, is like a little brush

`Ay! That's where to put forgetmenots, in the manhair, or the maidenhair. But don't you care about the

`Because when I feel the human world is doomed, has doomed itself by its own mingy beastliness, then I feel

the Colonies aren't far enough. The moon wouldn't be far enough, because even there you could look back

and see the earth, dirty, beastly, unsavoury among all the stars: made foul by men. Then I feel I've swallowed

gall, and it's eating my inside out, and nowhere's far enough away to get away. But when I get a turn, I forget

it all again. Though it's a shame, what's been done to people these last hundred years: men turned into nothing

but labourinsects, and all their manhood taken away, and all their real life. I'd wipe the machines off the face

of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake. But since I can't, an' nobody

can, I'd better hold my peace, an' try an' live my own life: if I've got one to live, which I rather doubt.'

The thunder had ceased outside, but the rain which had abated, suddenly came striking down, with a last

blench of lightning and mutter of departing storm. Connie was uneasy. He had talked so long now, and he

was really talking to himself not to her. Despair seemed to come down on him completely, and she was

feeling happy, she hated despair. She knew her leaving him, which he had only just realized inside himself

She opened the door and looked at the straight heavy rain, like a steel curtain, and had a sudden desire to rush

out into it, to rush away. She got up, and began swiftly pulling off her stockings, then her dress and

underclothing, and he held his breath. Her pointed keen animal breasts tipped and stirred as she moved. She

was ivorycoloured in the greenish light. She slipped on her rubber shoes again and ran out with a wild little

laugh, holding up her breasts to the heavy rain and spreading her arms, and running blurred in the rain with

the eurhythmic dance movements she had learned so long ago in Dresden. It was a strange pallid figure lifting

and falling, bending so the rain beat and glistened on the full haunches, swaying up again and coming

bellyforward through the rain, then stooping again so that only the full loins and buttocks were offered in a

He laughed wryly, and threw off his clothes. It was too much. He jumped out, naked and white, with a little

shiver, into the hard slanting rain. Flossie sprang before him with a frantic little bark. Connie, her hair all wet

and sticking to her head, turned her hot face and saw him. Her blue eyes blazed with excitement as she turned

and ran fast, with a strange charging movement, out of the clearing and down the path, the wet boughs

whipping her. She ran, and he saw nothing but the round wet head, the wet back leaning forward in flight, the

She was nearly at the wide riding when he came up and flung his naked arm round her soft, nakedwet

middle. She gave a shriek and straightened herself and the heap of her soft, chill flesh came up against his

body. He pressed it all up against him, madly, the heap of soft, chilled female flesh that became quickly warm

as flame, in contact. The rain streamed on them till they smoked. He gathered her lovely, heavy posteriors

one in each hand and pressed them in towards him in a frenzy, quivering motionless in the rain. Then

suddenly he tipped her up and fell with her on the path, in the roaring silence of the rain, and short and sharp,

`Come in,' he said, and they started running back to the hut. He ran straight and swift: he didn't like the rain.

But she came slower, gathering forgetmenots and campion and bluebells, running a few steps and

When she came with her flowers, panting to the hut, he had already started a fire, and the twigs were

crackling. Her sharp breasts rose and fell, her hair was plastered down with rain, her face was flushed ruddy

and her body glistened and trickled. Wideeyed and breathless, with a small wet head and full, trickling,

He took the old sheet and rubbed her down, she standing like a child. Then he rubbed himself having shut the

door of the hut. The fire was blazing up. She ducked her head in the other end of the sheet, and rubbed her

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

Still panting with their exertions, each wrapped in an army blanket, but the front of the body open to the fire,

they sat on a log side by side before the blaze, to get quiet. Connie hated the feel of the blanket against her

She dropped her blanket and kneeled on the clay hearth, holding her head to the fire, and shaking her hair to

dry it. He watched the beautiful curving drop of her haunches. That fascinated him today. How it sloped with

a rich downslope to the heavy roundness of her buttocks! And in between, folded in the secret warmth, the

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

`Tha's got such a nice tail on thee,' he said, in the throaty caressive dialect. `Tha's got the nicest arse of

anybody. It's the nicest, nicest woman's arse as is! An' ivery bit of it is woman, woman sure as nuts. Tha'rt not

one o' them buttonarsed lasses as should be lads, are ter! Tha's got a real soft sloping bottom on thee, as a

All the while he spoke he exquisitely stroked the rounded tail, till it seemed as if a slippery sort of fire came

from it into his hands. And his fingertips touched the two secret openings to her body, time after time, with

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

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

`Tha'rt real, tha art! Tha'art real, even a bit of a bitch. Here tha shits an' here tha pisses: an' I lay my hand on

'em both an' like thee for it. I like thee for it. Tha's got a proper, woman's arse, proud of itself. It's none

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

`I like it,' he said. `I like it! An' if I only lived ten minutes, an' stroked thy arse an' got to know it, I should

reckon I'd lived onelife, see ter! Industrial system or not! Here's one o' my lifetimes.'

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

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

She sat on his thighs, her head against his breast, and her ivorygleaming legs loosely apart, the fire glowing

unequally upon them. Sitting with his head dropped, he looked at the folds of her body in the fireglow, and

at the fleece of soft brown hair that hung down to a point between her open thighs. He reached to the table

behind, and took up her bunch of flowers, still so wet that drops of rain fell on to her.

With quiet fingers he threaded a few forgetmenot flowers in the fine brown fleece of the mound of Venus.

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

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

There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire. The flame glowed on his silent,

`Only I thought it would be a good way to begin a break with Clifford. I do want a child. And it would give

`I do! I don't want them handling me with their unpleasant cold minds, not while I'm still at Wragby. They

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

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

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

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

`I don't make it difficult,' he said. `I only want to find out just what you are after. But you don't really know

yourself. You want to take time: get away and look at it. I don't blame you. I think you're wise. You may

prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don't blame you. I've no Wragbys to offer. In fact, you know what you'll

get out of me. No, no, I think you're right! I really do! And I'm not keen on coming to live on you, being kept

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

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

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

`He said I ought to have done it before; that may be a difficulty. But since I was in the army, he thinks it will

`Yes! she is served with a notice: so is the man she lives with, the corespondent.'

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

`And of course,' he said, `I have to live an exemplary life for the next six or eight months. So if you go to

`Am I temptation!' she said, stroking his face. `I'm so glad I'm temptation to you! Don't let's think about it!

You frighten me when you start thinking: you roll me out flat. Don't let's think about it. We can think so

much when we are apart. That's the whole point! I've been thinking, I must come to you for another night

before I go. I must come once more to the cottage. Shall I come on Thursday night?'

`Yes! But she said we would start at teatime. So we could start at teatime. But she could sleep somewhere

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

`So you'd start off from Wragby at teatime, as if you were going to London? Which way were you going?'

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

`Does it? Well, then, Hilda could bring me back. She could sleep at Mansfield, and bring me back here in the

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

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

`Yes! John Thomas is knighted! I'm myladymaidenhair, and you must have flowers too. Yes!'

`And you won't forget me there, will you?' She kissed him on the breast, and made two bits of forgetmenot

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

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

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

He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the riding. Connie watched his thin, white

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

But he was coming back, trotting strangely, and carrying flowers. She was a little afraid of him, as if he were

not quite human. And when he came near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the

He had brought columbines and campions, and newmown hay, and oaktufts and honeysuckle in small bud.

He fastened fluffy young oaksprays round her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her

navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maidenhair were forgetmenots and woodruff.

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

And he stuck flowers in the hair of his own body, and wound a bit of creepingjenny round his penis, and

stuck a single bell of a hyacinth in his navel. She watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And she

pushed a campion flower in his moustache, where it stuck, dangling under his nose.

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

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

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

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

`Say goodnight! to John Thomas,' he said, looking down at his penis. `He's safe in the arms of creeping

`A man's most dangerous moment,' he said, when his head had emerged, `is when he's getting into his shirt.

Then he puts his head in a bag. That's why I prefer those American shirts, that you put on like a jacket.' She

still stood watching him. He stepped into his short drawers, and buttoned them round the waist.

`Look at Jane!' he said. `In all her blossoms! Who'll put blossoms on you next year, Jinny? Me, or somebody

else? ``Goodbye, my bluebell, farewell to you!'' I hate that song, it's early war days.' He then sat down, and

was pulling on his stockings. She still stood unmoving. He laid his hand on the slope of her buttocks. `Pretty

little Lady Jane!' he said. `Perhaps in Venice you'll find a man who'll put jasmine in your maidenhair, and a

`Ay, maybe I do, maybe I do! Well then, I'll say nowt, an' ha' done wi't. But tha mun dress thysen, all' go

back to thy stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand. Time's up! Time's up for Sir John, an' for

little Lady Jane! Put thy shimmy on, Lady Chatterley! Tha might be anybody, standin' there beout even a

shimmy, an' a few rags o' flowers. There then, there then, I'll undress thee, tha bobtailed young throstle.'

And he took the leaves from her hair, kissing her damp hair, and the flowers from her breasts, and kissed her

breasts, and kissed her navel, and kissed her maidenhair, where he left the flowers threaded. `They mun stop

while they will,' he said. `So! There tha'rt bare again, nowt but a barearsed lass an' a bit of a Lady Jane!

Now put thy shimmy on, for tha mun go, or else Lady Chatterley's goin' to be late for dinner, an' where 'ave

She never knew how to answer him when he was in this condition of the vernacular. So she dressed herself

and prepared to go a little ignominiously home to Wragby. Or so she felt it: a little ignominiously home.

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

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

Mrs Bolton looked into the man's face, that was smooth and newlooking with love. She met his

halflaughing, halfmocking eyes. He always laughed at mischance. But he looked at her kindly.

`Evening, Mrs Bolton! Your Ladyship will be all right now, so I can leave you. Goodnight to your

Connie arrived home to an ordeal of crossquestioning. Clifford had been out at teatime, had come in just

before the storm, and where was her ladyship? Nobody knew, only Mrs Bolton suggested she had gone for a

walk into the wood. Into the wood, in such a storm! Clifford for once let himself get into a state of nervous

frenzy. He started at every flash of lightning, and blenched at every roll of thunder. He looked at the icy

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

`I don't like her being in the wood in a storm like this! I don't like her being in the wood at all! She's been

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

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

But her ladyship did not come home directly the rain stopped. In fact time went by, the sun came out for his

last yellow glimpse, and there still was no sign of her. The sun was set, it was growing dark, and the first

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

`Oh don't do that!' cried Mrs Bolton. `They'll think there's a suicide or something. Oh don't start a lot of talk

going. Let me slip over to the hut and see if she's not there. I'll find her all right.'

`You mustn't mind me coming to look for you, my Lady! But Sir Clifford worked himself up into such a

state. He made sure you were struck by lightning, or killed by a falling tree. And he was determined to send

Field and Betts to the wood to find the body. So I thought I'd better come, rather than set all the servants

She spoke nervously. She could still see on Connie's face the smoothness and the halfdream of passion, and

The two women plodded on through the wet world, in silence, while great drops splashed like explosions in

the wood. Ben they came to the park, Connie strode ahead, and Mrs Bolton panted a little. She was getting

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

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

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

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

`Oh! your Ladyship, don't say that! He'd certainly have sent the two men, and they'd have come straight to the

Connie flushed darker with rage, at the suggestion. Yet, while her passion was on her, she could not lie. She

could not even pretend there was nothing between herself and the keeper. She looked at the other woman,

who stood so sly, with her head dropped: yet somehow, in her femaleness, an ally.

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

They went on to the house. Connie marched in to Clifford's room, furious with him, furious with his pale,

`My God!' he exploded. `Where have you been, woman, You've been gone hours, hours, and in a storm like

this! What the hell do you go to thatbloody wood for? What have you been up to? It's hours even since the

rain stopped, hours! Do you know what time it is? You're enough to drive anybody mad. Where have you

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

He lied at her with his eyes bulging, and yellow coming into the whites. It was very bad for him to get into

these rages: Mrs Bolton had a weary time with him, for days after. Connie felt a sudden qualm.

But really!' she said, milder. `Anyone would think I'd been I don't know where! I just sat in the hut during all

She spoke with amazing nonchalance. Mrs Bolton, who was listening in the next room, heard in sheer

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

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

Clifford still stared at her transfixed. What he thought in his underconsciousness he would never know. And

he was too much taken aback to form one clear thought in his upper consciousness. He just simply accepted

what she said, in a sort of blank. And he admired her. He could not help admiring her. She looked so flushed

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

`Oh, I haven't got a cold,' she replied. She was thinking to herself of the other man's words: Tha's got the

nicest woman's arse of anybody! She wished, she dearly wished she could tell Clifford that this had been said

her, during the famous thunderstorm. However! She bore herself rather like an offended queen, and went

That evening, Clifford wanted to be nice to her. He was reading one of the latest scientificreligious books:

he had a streak of a spurious sort of religion in him, and was egocentrically concerned with the future of his

own ego. It was like his habit to make conversation to Connie about some book, since the conversation

between them had to be made, almost chemically. They had almost chemically to concoct it in their heads.

`What do you think of this, by the way?' he said, reaching for his book. `You'd have no need to cool your

ardent body by running out in the rain, if only we have a few more aeons of evolution behind us. Ah, here it

is!``The universe shows us two aspects: on one side it is physically wasting, on the other it is spiritually

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

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

`Ah!' he said. `Take the man for what he means. Ascending is the opposite of his wasting, I presume.'

`Physically wasting?' she said. `I see you getting fatter, and I'm sot wasting myself. Do you think the sun is

smaller than he used to be? He's not to me. And I suppose the apple Adam offered Eve wasn't really much

`Well, hear how he goes on: ``It is thus slowly passing, with a slowness inconceivable in our measures of

time, to new creative conditions, amid which the physical world, as we at present know it, will he represented

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

`What silly hocuspocus! As if his little conceited consciousness could know what was happening as slowly

as all that! It only means he's a physical failure on the earth, so he wants to make the whole universe a

`Oh, but listen! Don't interrupt the great man's solemn words!``The present type of order in the world has

risen from an unimaginable part, and will find its grave in an unimaginable future. There remains the

inexhaustive realm of abstract forms, and creativity with its shifting character ever determined afresh by its

own creatures, and God, upon whose wisdom all forms of order depend.''There, that's how he winds up!'

`He's spiritually blown out,' she said. `What a lot of stuff! Unnimaginables, and types of order in graves, and

realms of abstract forms, and creativity with a shifty character, and God mixed up with forms of order! Why,

`I must say, it is a little vaguely conglomerate, a mixture of gases, so to speak,' said Clifford. `Still, I think

there is something in the idea that the universe is physically wasting and spiritually ascending.'

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

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

`But that is really rather extraordinary, because there's no denying it's an encumbrance. But then I suppose a

`Supreme pleasure?' she said, looking up at him. `Is that sort of idiocy the supreme pleasure of the life of the

mind? No thank you! Give me the body. I believe the life of the body is a greater reality than the life of the

mind: when the body is really wakened to life. But so many people, like your famous windmachine, have

`And that's better than the life of professional corpses. But it's not true! the human body is only just coming to

real life. With the Greeks it gave a lovely flicker, then Plato and Aristotle killed it, and Jesus finished it off.

But now the body is coming really to life, it is really rising from the tomb. And It will be a lovely, lovely life

`My dear, you speak as if you were ushering it all in! True, you am going away on a holiday: but don't please

be quite so indecently elated about it. Believe me, whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and

alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.'

`Why should I believe you, Clifford, when I feel that whatever God there is has at last wakened up in my

guts, as you call them, and is rippling so happily there, like dawn. Why should I believe you, when I feel so

`Oh, exactly! And what has caused this extraordinary change in you? running out stark naked in the rain, and

playing Bacchante? desire for sensation, or the anticipation of going to Venice?'

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

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

`We've gone over all that. And as a matter of fact, I suppose your greatest thrill comes from being able to say

a temporary farewell to all this. Nothing so thrilling, for the moment, as Goodbyetoall!But every

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

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

And the day came round for Hilda to arrive. Connie had arranged with Mellors that if everything promised

well for their night together, she would hang a green shawl out of the window. If there were frustration, a red

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

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

`Do I though! But men are all alike: just babies, and you have to flatter them and wheedle them and let them

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

`Well!' she said. `I had to do a good bit of coaxing, with him too. But he always knew what I was after, I must

`No! At least there'd be a look in his eyes sometimes, and then I knew I'd got to give in. But usually he gave

in to me. No, he was never lord and master. But neither was I. I knew when I could go no further with him,

`Oh, I don't know, I never did. Even when he was in the wrong, if he was fixed, I gave in. You see, I never

wanted to break what was between us. And if you really set your will against a man, that finishes it. If you

care for a man, you have to give in to him once he's really determined; whether you're in the right or not, you

have to give in. Else you break something. But I must say, Ted 'ud give in to me sometimes, when I was set

`Oh, That's different. I don't care at all, in the same way. I know what's good for them, or I try to, and then I

just contrive to manage them for their own good. It's not like anybody as you're really fond of. It's quite

different. Once you've been really fond of a man, you can be affectionate to almost any man, if he needs you

at all. But it's not the same thing. You don't really care. I doubt, once you've really cared, if you can ever

`Or never. Most women never care, never begin to. They don't know what it means. Nor men either. But

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

Connie pondered this. She began again to have some misgiving about her gag away. After all, was she not

giving her man the goby, if only for a short time? And he knew it. That's why he was so queer and sarcastic.

Still! the human existence is a good deal controlled by the machine of external circumstance. She was in the

power of this machine. She couldn't extricate herself all in five minutes. She didn't even want to.

Hilda arrived in good time on Thursday morning, in a nimble twoseater car, with her suitcase strapped

firmly behind. She looked as demure and maidenly as ever, but she had the same will of her own. She had the

very hell of a will of her own, as her husband had found out. But the husband was now divorcing her.

Yes, she even made it easy for him to do that, though she had no lover. For the time being, she was `off' men.

She was very well content to be quite her own mistress: and mistress of her two children, whom she was

Connie was only allowed a suitcase, also. But she had sent on a trunk to her father, who was going by train.

No use taking a car to Venice. And Italy much too hot to motor in, in July. He was going comfortably by

So, like a demure arcadian fieldmarshal, Hilda arranged the material part of the journey. She and Connie sat

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

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

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

`He's our gamekeeper,' faltered Connie, and she flushed vividly, like a shamed child.

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

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

Hilda, like a ruddy, richcoloured Athena, bowed her head and pondered She was really violently angry. But

she dared not show it, because Connie, taking after her father, would straight away become obstreperous and

It was true, Hilda did not like Clifford: his cool assurance that he was somebody! She thought he made use of

Connie shamefully and impudently. She had hoped her sister would leave him. But, being solid Scotch

middle class, she loathed any `lowering' of oneself or the family. She looked up at last.

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

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

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

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

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

Hilda heard her father over again, and she gave way, out of mere diplomacy. And she consented to drive to

Mansfield, both of them, to dinner, to bring Connie back to the laneend after dark, and to fetch her from the

laneend the next morning, herself sleeping in Mansfield, only half an hour away, good going.

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

After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the better: so much the less to quarrel about!

Hilda wanted no more of that sex business, where men became nasty, selfish little horrors. Connie really had

And Clifford decided that Hilda, after all, was a decidedly intelligent woman, and would make a man a

firstrate helpmate, if he were going in for politics for example. Yes, she had none of Connie's silliness,

Connie was more a child: you had to make excuses for her, because she was not altogether dependable.

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

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

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

Everybody waved. The car went off Connie looked back and saw Clifford, sitting at the top of the steps in his

housechair. After all, he was her husband: Wragby was her home: circumstance had done it.

Mrs Chambers held the gate and wished her ladyship a happy holiday. The car slipped out of the dark spinney

that masked the park, on to the highroad where the colliers were trailing home. Hilda turned to the Crosshill

Road, that was not a main road, but ran to Mansfield. Connie put on goggles. They ran beside the railway,

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

They were soon at Mansfield, that onceromantic, now utterly disheartening colliery town. Hilda stopped at

the hotel named in the motorcar book, and took a room. The whole thing was utterly uninteresting, and she

was almost too angry to talk. However, Connie had to tell her something of the man's history.

`I've never called him by any name: nor he me: which is curious, when you come to think of it. Unless we say

There was nothing to be done with Connie. And anyhow, if the man had been a lieutenant in the army in

India for four or five years, he must be more or less presentable. Apparently he had character. Hilda began to

`But you'll be through with him in awhile,' she said, `and then you'll be ashamed of having been connected

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

`I may be on their side in a political crisis, but being on their side makes me know how impossible it is to mix

one's life with theirs. Not out of snobbery, but just because the whole rhythm is different.'

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

The nondescript evening in the hotel dragged out, and at last they had a nondescript dinner. Then Connie

`After all, Hilda,' she said, `love can be wonderful: when you feel you live, and are in the very middle of

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

The evening was wonderfully clear and longlingering, even in the small town. It would be halflight all

night. With a face like a mask, from resentment, Hilda started her car again, and the two sped back on their

Connie wore her goggles and disguising cap, and she sat in silence. Because of Hilda's Opposition, she was

fiercely on the sidle of the man, she would stand by him through thick and thin.

They had their headlights on, by the time they passed Crosshill, and the small litup train that chuffed past

in the cutting made it seem like real night. Hilda had calculated the turn into the lane at the bridgeend. She

slowed up rather suddenly and swerved off the road, the lights glaring white into the grassy, overgrown lane.

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

`Nothing on the bridge?' she asked shortly. `You're all right,' said the mall's voice. She backed on to the

bridge, reversed, let the car run forwards a few yards along the road, then backed into the lane, under a

wychelm tree, crushing the grass and bracken. Then all the lights went out. Connie stepped down. The man

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

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

She backed slowly round the curve, out of sight of the road, locked the car, and got down. It was night, but

luminous dark. The hedges rose high and wild, by the unused lane, and very dark seeming. There was a fresh

sweet scent on the air. The keeper went ahead, then came Connie, then Hilda, and in silence. He lit up the

difficult places with a flashlight torch, and they went on again, while an owl softly hooted over the oaks,

and Flossie padded silently around. Nobody could speak. There was nothing to say.

At length Connie saw the yellow light of the house, and her heart beat fast. She was a little frightened. They

He unlocked the door and preceded them into the warm but bare little room. The fire burned low and red in

the grate. The table was set with two plates and two glasses on a proper white tablecloth for Once. Hilda

shook her hair and looked round the bare, cheerless room. Then she summoned her courage and looked at the

He was moderately tall, and thin, and she thought him goodlooking. He kept a quiet distance of his own,

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

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

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

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

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

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

`As for cigarettes,' he said, `I've got none, but 'appen you've got your own. I dunna smoke, mysen. Shall y' eat

summat?' He turned direct to Connie. `Shall t'eat a smite o' summat, if I bring it thee? Tha can usually do wi'

a bite.' He spoke the vernacular with a curious calm assurance, as if he were the landlord of the Inn.

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

`Ay, 'appen so! An' up i' Tevershall yo'd sound affected.' He looked again at her, with a queer calculating

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

And he took off his coat, and hung it on the peg, then sat down to table in his shirtsleeves: a shirt of thin,

`'Elp yerselves!' he said. `'Elp yerselves! Dunna wait f'r axin'!' He cut the bread, then sat motionless. Hilda

felt, as Connie once used to, his power of silence and distance. She saw his smallish, sensitive, loose hand on

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

`Would it?' he said in the normal English. `Would it? Would anything that was said between you and me be

quite natural, unless you said you wished me to hell before your sister ever saw me again: and unless I said

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

Hilda was frankly baffled and furiously annoyed. After all, he might show that he realized he was being

honoured. Instead of which, with his playacting and lordly airs, he seemed to think it was he who was

conferring the honour. Just impudence! Poor misguided Connie, in the man's clutches!

The three ate in silence. Hilda looked to see what his tablemanners were like. She could not help realizing

that he was instinctively much more delicate and wellbred than herself. She had a certain Scottish

clumsiness. And moreover, he had all the quiet selfcontained assurance of the English, no loose edges. It

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

`Naturally I don't want to. But someone has to think about things. You've got to have some sort of continuity

`Eh, continuity!' he said. `An' what by that? What continuity ave yer got i' your life? I thought you was gettin'

divorced. What continuity's that? Continuity o' yer own stubbornness. I can see that much. An' what good's it

goin' to do yer? You'll be sick o' yer continuity afore yer a fat sight older. A stubborn woman an er own

selfwill: ay, they make a fast continuity, they do. Thank heaven, it isn't me as `as got th' 'andlin' of yer!'

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

`Not a' that far, I assure you. I've got my own sort o' continuity, back your life! Good as yours, any day. An' if

your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after. She's been in my

bed afore: which you 'aven't, thank the Lord, with your continuity.' There was a dead pause, before he added:

`Eh, I don't wear me breeches arseforrards. An' if I get a windfall, I thank my stars. A man gets a lot of

enjoyment out o' that lass theer, which is more than anybody gets out o' th' likes o' you. Which is a pity, for

you might appen a' bin a good apple, 'stead of a handsome crab. Women like you needs proper graftin'.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That amused her. She still kept hold of his arm, and they went quickly down the lane, in silence. She was so

glad to be with him, just now. She shivered, knowing that Hilda might have snatched her away. He was

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

He didn't answer, went round doing the evening chores, with a quiet, inevitable sort of motion. He was

outwardly angry, but not with her. So Connie felt. And his anger gave him a peculiar handsomeness, an

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

He jerked his head swiftly to indicate the candle burning on the table. She took it obediently, and he watched

It was a night of sensual passion, in which she was a little startled and almost unwilling: yet pierced again

with piercing thrills of sensuality, different, sharper, more terrible than the thrills of tenderness, but, at the

moment, more desirable. Though a little frightened, she let him have his way, and the reckless, shameless

sensuality shook her to her foundations, stripped her to the very last, and made a different woman of her. It

was not really love. It was not voluptuousness. It was sensuality sharp and searing as fire, burning the soul to

Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places. It cost her an effort to let him

have his way and his will of her. She had to be a passive, consenting thing, like a slave, a physical slave. Yet

the passion licked round her, consuming, and when the sensual flame of it pressed through her bowels and

She had often wondered what Ab�lard meant, when he said that in their year of love he and H�lo�se had

passed through all the stages and refinements of passion. The same thing, a thousand years ago: ten thousand

years ago! The same on the Greek vases, everywhere! The refinements of passion, the extravagances of

sensuality! And necessary, forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt out the heaviest ore of the

In the short summer night she learnt so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame.

Instead of which, the shame died. Shame, which is fear: the deep Organic shame, the old, old physical fear

which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased away by the sensual fire, at last it was

roused up and routed by the phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle of herself.

She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her

sensual self, naked and unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That

was life! That was how oneself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared

And what a reckless devil the man was! really like a devil! One had to be strong to bear him. But it took some

getting at, the core of the physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame. The phallos alone

And how, in fear, she had hated it. But how she had really wanted it! She knew now. At the bottom of her

soul, fundamentally, she had needed this phallic hunting Out, she had secretly wanted it, and she had believed

that she would never get it. Now suddenly there it was, and a man was sharing her last and final nakedness,

What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one

supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality. To find a man who dared do it,

without shame or sin or final misgiving! If he had been ashamed afterwards, and made one feel ashamed,

how awful! What a pity most men are so doggy, a bit shameful, like Clifford! Like Michaelis even! Both

sensually a bit doggy and humiliating. The supreme pleasure of the mind! And what is that to a woman?

What is it, really, to the man either! He becomes merely messy and doggy, even in his mind. It needs sheer

sensuality even to purify and quicken the mind. Sheer fiery sensuality, not messiness.

Ah, God, how rare a thing a man is! They are all dogs that trot and sniff and copulate. To have found a man

who was not afraid and not ashamed! She looked at him now, sleeping so like a wild animal asleep, gone,

Till his rousing waked her completely. He was sitting up in bed, looking down at her. She saw her own

nakedness in his eyes, immediate knowledge of her. And the fluid, male knowledge of herself seemed to flow

to her from his eyes and wrap her voluptuously. Oh, how voluptuous and lovely it was to have limbs and

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

Flossie whimpered gently below. He got up and threw off his pyjamas, and rubbed himself with a towel.

When the human being is full of courage and full of life, how beautiful it is! So she thought, as she watched

The sun was shining already on the tender green leaves of morning, and the wood stood blueyfresh, in the

nearness. She sat up in bed, looking dreamily out through the dormer window, her naked arms pushing her

naked breasts together. He was dressing himself. She was halfdreaming of life, a life together with him: just

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

She slipped on the torn thing, and sat dreamily looking out of the window. The window was Open, the air of

morning drifted in, and the sound of birds. Birds flew continuously past. Then she saw Flossie roaming out. It

Downstairs she heard him making the fire, pumping water, going out at the back door. By and by came the

smell of bacon, and at length he came upstairs with a huge black tray that would only just go through the

door. He set the tray on the bed, and poured out the tea. Connie squatted in her torn nightdress, and fell on her

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

`Oh, how I wish I could stay here with you, and Wragby were a million miles away! It's Wragby I'm going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She saw him go reconnoitring into the lane, with dog and gun. She went downstairs and washed, and was

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

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

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

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

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

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

She looked at him in despair. But he kissed her and made her go. She crept in sheer misery through the holly

and through the wooden fence, stumbled down the little ditch and up into the lane, where Hilda was just

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

`Put it on!' she said. And Connie pulled on the disguise, then the long motoring coat, and she sat down, a

goggling inhuman, unrecognizable creature. Hilda started the car with a businesslike motion. They heaved

out of the lane, and were away down the road. Connie had looked round, but there was no sight of him.

Away! Away! She sat in bitter tears. The parting had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly. It was like death.

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

`You see, Hilda,' said Connie after lunch, when they were nearing London, `you have never known either real

tenderness or real sensuality: and if you do know them, with the same person, it makes a great difference.'

`For mercy's sake don't brag about your experiences!' said Hilda. `I've never met the man yet who was

capable of intimacy with a woman, giving himself up to her. That was what I wanted. I'm not keen on their

selfsatisfied tenderness, and their sensuality. I'm not content to be any man's little petsywetsy, nor his chair

� plaisir either. I wanted a complete intimacy, and I didn't get it. That's enough for me.

Connie pondered this. Complete intimacy! She supposed that meant revealing everything concerning yourself

to the other person, and his revealing everything concerning himself. But that was a bore. And all that weary

`I think you're too conscious of yourself all the time, with everybody,' she said to her sister.

Hilda drove in silence for some time after this piece of unheard of insolence from that chit Connie.

`At least I'm not a slave to somebody else's idea of me: and the somebody else a servant of my husband's,' she

She had always let herself be dominated by her elder sister. Now, though somewhere inside herself she was

weeping, she was free of the dominion of other women. Ah! that in itself was a relief, like being given

another life: to be free of the strange dominion and obsession of other women. How awful they were, women!

She was glad to be with her father, whose favourite she had always been. She and Hilda stayed in a little hotel

off Pall Mall, and Sir Malcolm was in his club. But he took his daughters out in the evening, and they liked

He was still handsome and robust, though just a little afraid of the new world that had sprung up around him.

He had got a second wife in Scotland, younger than himself and richer. But he had as many holidays away

Connie sat next to him at the opera. He was moderately stout, and had stout thighs, but they were still strong

and wellknit, the thighs of a healthy man who had taken his pleasure in life. His goodhumoured

selfishness, his dogged sort of independence, his unrepenting sensuality, it seemed to Connie she could see

them all in his wellknit straight thighs. Just a man! And now becoming an old man, which is sad. Because in

his strong, thick male legs there was none of the alert sensitiveness and power of tenderness which is the very

Connie woke up to the existence of legs. They became more important to her than faces, which are no longer

very real. How few people had live, alert legs! She looked at the men in the stalls. Great puddingy thighs in

black puddingcloth, or lean wooden sticks in black funeral stuff, or wellshaped young legs without any

meaning whatever, either sensuality or tenderness or sensitiveness, just mere leggy ordinariness that pranced

around. Not even any sensuality like her father's. They were all daunted, daunted out of existence.

But the women were not daunted. The awful millposts of most females! really shocking, really enough to

justify murder! Or the poor thin pegs! or the trim neat things in silk stockings, without the slightest look of

But she was not happy in London. The people seemed so spectral and blank. They had no alive happiness, no

matter how brisk and goodlooking they were. It was all barren. And Connie had a woman's blind craving for

In Paris at any rate she felt a bit of sensuality still. But what a weary, tired, wornout sensuality. Wornout

for lack of tenderness. Oh! Paris was sad. One of the saddest towns: weary of its nowmechanical sensuality,

weary of the tension of money, money, money, weary even of resentment and conceit, just weary to death,

and still not sufficiently Americanized or Londonized to hide the weariness under a mechanical jigjigjig!

Ah, these manly hemen, these fl�neurs, the oglers, these eaters of good dinners! How weary they were!

weary, wornout for lack of a little tenderness, given and taken. The efficient, sometimes charming women

knew a thing or two about the sensual realities: they had that pull over their jigging English sisters. But they

knew even less of tenderness. Dry, with the endless dry tension of will, they too were wearing out. The

human world was just getting worn out. Perhaps it would turn fiercely destructive. A sort of anarchy! Clifford

and his conservative anarchy! Perhaps it wouldn't be conservative much longer. Perhaps it would develop

Connie found herself shrinking and afraid of the world. Sometimes she was happy for a little while in the

Boulevards or in the Bois or the Luxembourg Gardens. But already Paris was full of Americans and English,

strange Americans in the oddest uniforms, and the usual dreary English that are so hopeless abroad.

She was glad to drive on. It was suddenly hot weather, so Hilda was going through Switzerland and over the

Brenner, then through the Dolomites down to Venice. Hilda loved all the managing and the driving and being

And the trip was really quite nice. Only Connie kept saying to herself: Why don't I really care! Why am I

never really thrilled? How awful, that I don't really care about the landscape any more! But I don't. It's rather

awful. I'm like Saint Bernard, who could sail down the lake of Lucerne without ever noticing that there were

even mountain and green water. I just don't care for landscape any more. Why should one stare at it? Why

No, she found nothing vital in France or Switzerland or the Tyrol or Italy. She just was carted through it all.

And it was all less real than Wragby. Less real than the awful Wragby! She felt she didn't care if she never

As for people! people were all alike, with very little difference. They all wanted to get money out of you: or,

if they were travellers, they wanted to get enjoyment, perforce, like squeezing blood out of a stone. Poor

mountains! poor landscape! it all had to be squeezed and squeezed and squeezed again, to provide a thrill, to

provide enjoyment. What did people mean, with their simply determined enjoying of themselves?

No! said Connie to herself I'd rather be at Wragby, where I can go about and be still, and not stare at anything

or do any performing of any sort. This tourist performance of enjoying oneself is too hopelessly humiliating:

She wanted to go back to Wragby, even to Clifford, even to poor crippled Clifford. He wasn't such a fool as

But in her inner consciousness she was keeping touch with the other man. She mustn't let her connexion with

him go: oh, she mustn't let it go, or she was lost, lost utterly in this world of riffraffy expensive people and

joyhogs. Oh, the joyhogs! Oh `enjoying oneself'! Another modern form of sickness.

They left the car in Mestre, in a garage, and took the regular steamer over to Venice. It was a lovely summer

afternoon, the shallow lagoon rippled, the full sunshine made Venice, turning its back to them across the

At the station quay they changed to a gondola, giving the man the address. He was a regular gondolier in a

`Yes! The Villa Esmeralda! Yes! I know it! I have been the gondolier for a gentleman there. But a fair

He seemed a rather childish, impetuous fellow. He rowed with a certain exaggerated impetuosity, through the

dark sidecanals with the horrible, slimy green walls, the canals that go through the poorer quarters, where

the washing hangs high up on ropes, and there is a slight, or strong, odour of sewage.

But at last he came to one of the open canals with pavement on either side, and looping bridges, that run

straight, at rightangles to the Grand Canal. The two women sat under the little awning, the man was perched

`Are the signorine staying long at the Villa Esmeralda?' he asked, rowing easy, and `wiping his perspiring

`Some twenty days: we are both married ladies,' said Hilda, in her curious hushed voice, that made her Italian

`Ah! Twenty days!' said the man. There was a pause. After which he asked: `Do the signore want a gondolier

for the twenty days or so that they will stay at the Villa Esmeralda? Or by the day, or by the week?'

Connie and Hilda considered. In Venice, it is always preferable to have one's own gondola, as it is preferable

`There is a motorlaunch, also a gondola. But' The but meant: they won't be your property.

`Well,' said Hilda, `come tomorrow morning, and we will arrange it. What is your name?'

His name was Giovanni, and he wanted to know at what time he should come, and then for whom should he

say he was waiting. Hilda had no card. Connie gave him one of hers. He glanced at it swiftly, with his hot,

He nodded, repeating: `Milady Costanza!' and putting the card carefully away in his blouse.

The Villa Esmeralda was quite a long way out, on the edge of the lagoon looking towards Chioggia. It was

not a very old house, and pleasant, with the terraces looking seawards, and below, quite a big garden with

Their host was a heavy, rather coarse Scotchman who had made a good fortune in Italy before the war, and

had been knighted for his ultrapatriotism during the war. His wife was a thin, pale, sharp kind of person with

no fortune of her own, and the misfortune of having to regulate her husband's rather sordid amorous exploits.

He was terribly tiresome with the servants. But having had a slight stroke during the winter, he was now more

The house was pretty full. Besides Sir Malcolm and his two daughters, there were seven more people, a

Scotch couple, again with two daughters; a young Italian Contessa, a widow; a young Georgian prince, and a

youngish English clergyman who had had pneumonia and was being chaplain to Sir Alexander for his

health's sake. The prince was penniless, goodlooking, would make an excellent chauffeur, with the

necessary impudence, and basta! The Contessa was a quiet little puss with a game on somewhere. The

clergyman was a raw simple fellow from a Bucks vicarage: luckily he had left his wife and two children at

home. And the Guthries, the family of four, were good solid Edinburgh middle class, enjoying everything in

Connie and Hilda ruled out the prince at once. The Guthries were more or less their own sort, substantial, hut

boring: and the girls wanted husbands. The chaplain was not a had fellow, but too deferential. Sir Alexander,

after his slight stroke, had a terrible heaviness his joviality, but he was still thrilled at the presence of so many

handsome young women. Lady Cooper was a quiet, catty person who had a thin time of it, poor thing, and

who watched every other woman with a cold watchfulness that had become her second nature, and who said

cold, nasty little things which showed what an utterly low opinion she had of all human nature. She was also

quite venomously overbearing with the servants, Connie found: but in a quiet way. And she skilfully behaved

so that Sir Alexander should think that he was lord and monarch of the whole caboosh, with his stout,

wouldbegenial paunch, and his utterly boring jokes, his humourosity, as Hilda called it.

Sir Malcolm was painting. Yes, he still would do a Venetian lagoonscape, now and then, in contrast to his

Scottish landscapes. So in the morning he was rowed off with a huge canvas, to his `site'. A little later, Lady

Cooper would he rowed off into the heart of the city, with sketchingblock and colours. She was an

inveterate watercolour painter, and the house was full of rosecoloured palaces, dark canals, swaying bridges,

medieval facades, and so on. A little later the Guthries, the prince, the countess, Sir Alexander, and

sometimes Mr Lind, the chaplain, would go off to the Lido, where they would bathe; coming home to a late

The houseparty, as a houseparty, was distinctly boring. But this did not trouble the sisters. They were out

all the time. Their father took them to the exhibition, miles and miles of weary paintings. He took them to all

the cronies of his in the Villa Lucchese, he sat with them on warm evenings in the piazza, having got a table

at Florian's: he took them to the theatre, to the Goldoni plays. There were illuminated waterf�tes, there were

dances. This was a holidayplace of all holidayplaces. The Lido, with its acres of sunpinked or pyjamaed

bodies, was like a strand with an endless heap of seals come up for mating. Too many people in the piazza,

too many limbs and trunks of humanity on the Lido, too many gondolas, too many motorlaunches, too many

steamers, too many pigeons, too many ices, too many cocktails, too many menservants wanting tips, too

many languages rattling, too much, too much sun, too much smell of Venice, too many cargoes of

strawberries, too many silk shawls, too many huge, rawbeef slices of watermelon on stalls: too much

Connie and Hilda went around in their sunny frocks. There were dozens of people they knew, dozens of

people knew them. Michaelis turned up like a bad penny. `Hullo! Where you staying? Come and have an

icecream or something! Come with me somewhere in my gondola.' Even Michaelis almost sunburned:

It was pleasant in a way. It was almost enjoyment. But anyhow, with all the cocktails, all the lying in

warmish water and sunbathing on hot sand in hot sun, jazzing with your stomach up against some fellow in

the warm nights, cooling off with ices, it was a complete narcotic. And that was what they all wanted, a drug:

the slow water, a drug; the sun, a drug; jazz, a drug; cigarettes, cocktails, ices, vermouth. To be drugged!

Hilda half liked being drugged. She liked looking at all the women, speculating about them. The women were

absorbingly interested in the women. How does she look! what man has she captured? what fun is she getting

out of it?The men were like great dogs in white flannel trousers, waiting to be patted, waiting to wallow,

Hilda liked jazz, because she could plaster her stomach against the stomach of some socalled man, and let

him control her movement from the visceral centre, here and there across the floor, and then she could break

loose and ignore `the creature'. He had been merely made use of. Poor Connie was rather unhappy. She

wouldn't jazz, because she simply couldn't plaster her stomach against some `creature's' stomach. She hated

the conglomerate mass of nearly nude flesh on the Lido: there was hardly enough water to wet them all. She

disliked Sir Alexander and Lady Cooper. She did not want Michaelis or anybody else trailing her.

The happiest times were when she got Hilda to go with her away across the lagoon, far across to some lonely

shinglebank, where they could bathe quite alone, the gondola remaining on the inner side of the reef.

Then Giovanni got another gondolier to help him, because it was a long way and he sweated terrifically in the

sun. Giovanni was very nice: affectionate, as the Italians are, and quite passionless. The Italians are not

passionate: passion has deep reserves. They are easily moved, and often affectionate, but they rarely have any

So Giovanni was already devoted to his ladies, as he had been devoted to cargoes of ladies in the past. He

was perfectly ready to prostitute himself to them, if they wanted hint: he secretly hoped they would want him.

They would give him a handsome present, and it would come in very handy, as he was just going to be

He thought this trip to some lonely bank across the lagoon probably meant business: business being l'amore,

love. So he got a mate to help him, for it was a long way; and after all, they were two ladies. Two ladies, two

mackerels! Good arithmetic! Beautiful ladies, too! He was justly proud of them. And though it was the

Signora who paid him and gave him orders, he rather hoped it would be the young milady who would select

The mate he brought was called Daniele. He was not a regular gondolier, so he had none of the cadger and

prostitute about him. He was a sandola man, a sandola being a big boat that brings in fruit and produce from

Daniele was beautiful, tall and wellshapen, with a light round head of little, close, paleblond curls, and a

goodlooking man's face, a little like a lion, and longdistance blue eyes. He was not effusive, loquacious,

and bibulous like Giovanni. He was silent and he rowed with a strength and ease as if he were alone on the

water. The ladies were ladies, remote from him. He did not even look at them. He looked ahead.

He was a real man, a little angry when Giovanni drank too much wine and rowed awkwardly, with effusive

shoves of the great oar. He was a man as Mellors was a man, unprostituted. Connie pitied the wife of the

easilyoverflowing Giovanni. But Daniele's wife would be one of those sweet Venetian women of the people

whom one still sees, modest and flowerlike in the back of that labyrinth of a town.

Ah, how sad that man first prostitutes woman, then woman prostitutes man. Giovanni was pining to prostitute

himself, dribbling like a dog, wanting to give himself to a woman. And for money!

Connie looked at Venice far off, low and rosecoloured upon the water. Built of money, blossomed of

money, and dead with money. The moneydeadness! Money, money, money, prostitution and deadness.

Yet Daniele was still a man capable of a man's free allegiance. He did not wear the gondolier's blouse: only

the knitted blue jersey. He was a little wild, uncouth and proud. So he was hireling to the rather doggy

Giovanni who was hireling again to two women. So it is! When Jesus refused the devil's money, he left the

Connie would come home from the blazing light of the lagoon in a kind of stupor, to lind letters from home.

Clifford wrote regularly. He wrote very good letters: they might all have been printed in a book. And for this

She lived in the stupor of the light of the lagoon, the lapping saltiness of the water, the space, the emptiness,

the nothingness: but health, health, complete stupor of health. It was gratifying, and she was lulled away in it,

not caring for anything. Besides, she was pregnant. She knew now. So the stupor of sunlight and lagoon salt

and seabathing and lying on shingle and finding shells and drifting away, away in a gondola, was completed

by the pregnancy inside her, another fullness of health, satisfying and stupefying.

She had been at Venice a fortnight, and she was to stay another ten days or a fortnight. The sunshine blazed

over any count of time, and the fullness of physical health made forgetfulness complete. She was in a sort of

We too have had our mild local excitement. It appears the truant wife of Mellors, the keeper, turned up at the

cottage and found herself unwelcome. He packed her off, and locked the door. Report has it, however, that

when he returned from the wood he found the no longer fair lady firmly established in his bed, in puris

naturalibus; or one should say, in impuris naturalibus. She had broken a window and got in that way. Unable

to evict the somewhat manhandled Venus from his couch, he beat a retreat and retired, it is said, to his

mother's house in Tevershall. Meanwhile the Venus of Stacks Gate is established in the cottage, which she

I repeat this from hearsay, as Mellors has not come to me personally. I had this particular bit of local garbage

from our garbage bird, our ibis, our scavenging turkeybuzzard, Mrs Bolton. I would not have repeated it had

she not exclaimed: her Ladyship will go no more to the wood if thatwoman's going to be about!

I like your picture of Sir Malcolm striding into the sea with white hair blowing and pink flesh glowing. I envy

you that sun. Here it rains. But I don't envy Sir Malcolm his inveterate mortal carnality. However, it suits his

age. Apparently one grows more carnal and more mortal as one grows older. Only youth has a taste of

This news affected Connie in her state of semistupefied ell being with vexation amounting to exasperation.

Now she ad got to be bothered by that beast of a woman! Now she must start and fret! She had no letter from

Mellors. They had agreed not to write at all, but now she wanted to hear from him personally. After all, he

But how hateful! Now everything was messed up. How foul those low people were! How nice it was here, in

the sunshine and the indolence, compared to that dismal mess of that English Midlands! After all, a clear sky

She did not mention the fact of her pregnancy, even to Hilda. She wrote to Mrs Bolton for exact information.

Duncan Forbes, an artist friend of theirs, had arrived at the Villa Esmeralda, coming north from Rome. Now

he made a third in the gondola, and he bathed with them across the lagoon, and was their escort: a quiet,

You will be pleased, I am sure, my Lady, when you see Sir Clifford. He's looking quite blooming and

working very hard, and very hopeful. Of course he is looking forward to seeing you among us again. It is a

dull house without my Lady, and we shall all welcome her presence among us once more.

About Mr Mellors, I don't know how much Sir Clifford told you. It seems his wife came back all of a sudden

one afternoon, and he found her sitting on the doorstep when he came in from the wood. She said she was

come back to him and wanted to live with him again, as she was his legal wife, and he wasn't going to

divorce her. But he wouldn't have anything to do with her, and wouldn't let her in the house, and did not go in

But when he came back after dark, he found the house broken into, so he went upstairs to see what she'd

done, and he found her in bed without a rag on her. He offered her money, but she said she was his wife and

he must take her back. I don't know what sort of a scene they had. His mother told me about it, she's terribly

upset. Well, he told her he'd die rather than ever live with her again, so he took his things and went straight to

his mother's on Tevershall hill. He stopped the night and went to the wood next day through the park, never

going near the cottage. It seems he never saw his wife that day. But the day after she was at her brother Pan's

at Beggarlee, swearing and carrying on, saying she was his legal wife, and that he'd beers having women at

the cottage, because she'd found a scentbottle in his drawer, and goldtipped cigaretteends on the

ashheap, and I don't know what all. Then it seems the postman Fred Kirk says he heard somebody talking in

Mr Mellors stayed on with his mother, and went to the wood through the park, and it seems she stayed on at

the cottage. Well, there was no end of talk. So at last Mr Mellors and Tom Phillips went to the cottage and

fetched away most of the furniture and bedding, and unscrewed the handle of the pump, so she was forced to

go. But instead of going back to Stacks Gate she went and lodged with that Mrs Swain at Beggarlee, because

her brother Dan's wife wouldn't have her. And she kept going to old Mrs Mellors' house, to catch him, and

she began swearing he'd got in bed with her in the cottage and she went to a lawyer to make him pay her an

allowance. She's grown heavy, and more common than ever, and as strong as a bull. And she goes about

saying the most awful things about him, how he has women at the cottage, and how he behaved to her when

they were married, the low, beastly things he did to her, and I don't know what all. I'm sure it's awful, the

mischief a woman can do, once she starts talking. And no matter how low she may be, there'll be some as will

believe her, and some of the dirt will stick. I'm sure the way she makes out that Mr Mellors was one of those

low, beastly men with women, is simply shocking. And people are only too ready to believe things against

anybody, especially things like that. She declared she'll never leave him alone while he lives. Though what I

say is, if he was so beastly to her, why is she so anxious to go back to him? But of course she's coming near

her change of life, for she's years older than he is. And these common, violent women always go partly insane

This was a nasty blow to Connie. Here she was, sure as life, coming in for her share of the lowness and dirt.

She felt angry with him for not having got clear of a Bertha Coutts: nay, for ever having married her. Perhaps

he had a certain hankering after lowness. Connie remembered the last night she had spent with him, and

shivered. He had known all that sensuality, even with a Bertha Coutts! It was really rather disgusting. It

would be well to be rid of him, clear of him altogether. He was perhaps really common, really low.

She had a revulsion against the whole affair, and almost envied the Guthrie girls their gawky inexperience

and crude maidenliness. And she now dreaded the thought that anybody would know about herself and the

keeper. How unspeakably humiliating! She was weary, afraid, and felt a craving for utter respectability, even

for the vulgar and deadening respectability of the Guthrie girls. If Clifford knew about her affair, how

unspeakably humiliating! She was afraid, terrified of society and its unclean bite. She almost wished she

could get rid of the child again, and be quite clear. In short, she fell into a state of funk.

As for the scentbottle, that was her own folly. She had not been able to refrain from perfuming his one or

two handkerchiefs and his shirts in the drawer, just out of childishness, and she had left a little bottle of

Coty's Woodviolet perfume, half empty, among his things. She wanted him to remember her in the perfume.

She could not help confiding a little in Duncan Forbes. She didn't say she had been the keeper's lover, she

`Oh,' said Forbes, `you'll see, they'll never rest till they've pulled the man down and done him its. If he has

refused to creep up into the middle classes, when he had a chance; and if he's a man who stands up for his

own sex, then they'll do him in. It's the one thing they won't let you be, straight and open in your sex. You can

be as dirty as you like. In fact the more dirt you do on sex the better they like it. But if you believe in your

own sex, and won't have it done dirt to: they'll down you. It's the one insane taboo left: sex as a natural and

vital thing. They won't have it, and they'll kill you before they'll let you have it. You'll see, they'll hound that

man down. And what's he done, after all? If he's made love to his wife all ends on, hasn't he a right to? She

ought to be proud of it. But you see, even a low bitch like that turns on him, and uses the hyena instinct of the

mob against sex, to pull him down. You have a snivel and feel sinful or awful about your sex, before you're

Connie had a revulsion in the opposite direction now. What had he done, after all? what had he done to

herself, Connie, but give her an exquisite pleasure and a sense of freedom and life? He had released her

No no, it should not be. She saw the image of him, naked white with tanned face and hands, looking down

and addressing his erect penis as if it were another being, the odd grin flickering on his face. And she heard

his voice again: Tha's got the nicest woman's arse of anybody! And she felt his hand warmly and softly

closing over her tail again, over her secret places, like a benediction. And the warmth ran through her womb,

and the little flames flickered in her knees, and she said: Oh, no! I mustn't go back on it! I must not go back

on him. I must stick to him and to what I had of him, through everything. I had no warm, flamy life till he

She did a rash thing. She sent a letter to Ivy Bolton, enclosing a note to the keeper, and asking Mrs Bolton to

I am very much distressed to hear of all the trouble your wife is making for you, but don't mind it, it is only a

sort of hysteria. It will all blow over as suddenly as it came. But I'm awfully sorry about it, and I do hope you

are not minding very much. After all, it isn't worth it. She is only a hysterical woman who wants to hurt you. I

I am delighted to hear you are prepared to leave Venice on the sixteenth. But if you are enjoying it, don't

hurry home. We miss you, Wragby misses you. But it is essential that you should get your full amount of

sunshine, sunshine and pyjamas, as the advertisements of the Lido say. So please do stay on a little longer, if

it is cheering you up and preparing you for our sufficiently awful winter. Even today, it rains.

I am assiduously, admirably looked after by Mrs Bolton. She is a queer specimen. The more I live, the more I

realize what strange creatures human beings are. Some of them might Just as well have a hundred legs, like a

centipede, or six, like a lobster. The human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's

fellowmen seem actually nonexistent. One doubts if they exist to any startling degree even is oneself.

The scandal of the keeper continues and gets bigger like a snowball. Mrs Bolton keeps me informed. She

reminds me of a fish which, though dumb, seems to be breathing silent gossip through its gills, while ever it

lives. All goes through the sieve of her gills, and nothing surprises her. It is as if the events of other people's

She is preoccupied with tie Mellors scandal, and if I will let her begin, she takes me down to the depths. Her

great indignation, which even then is like the indignation of an actress playing a role, is against the wife of

Mellors, whom she persists in calling Bertha Courts. I have been to the depths of the muddy lies of the Bertha

Couttses of this world, and when, released from the current of gossip, I slowly rise to the surface again, I look

It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the

bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scalyclad submarine fauna,

feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless

fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air. I am convinced that the

air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish.

But sometimes the soul does come up, shoots like a kittiwake into the light, with ecstasy, after having preyed

on the submarine depths. It is our mortal destiny, I suppose, to prey upon the ghastly subaqueous life of our

fellowmen, in the submarine jungle of mankind. But our immortal destiny is to escape, once we have

swallowed our swimmy catch, up again into the bright ether, bursting out from the surface of Old Ocean into

When I hear Mrs Bolton talk, I feel myself plunging down, down, to the depths where the fish of human

secrets wriggle and swim. Carnal appetite makes one seize a beakful of prey: then up, up again, out of the

dense into the ethereal, from the wet into the dry. To you I can tell the whole process. But with Mrs Bolton I

only feel the downward plunge, down, horribly, among the seaweeds and the pallid monsters of the very

I am afraid we are going to lose our gamekeeper. The scandal of the truant wife, instead of dying down, has

reverberated to greater and greater dimensions. He is accused of all unspeakable things and curiously enough,

the woman has managed to get the bulk of the colliers' wives behind her, gruesome fish, and the village is

I hear this Bertha Coutts besieges Mellors in his mother's house, having ransacked the cottage and the hut.

She seized one day upon her own daughter, as that chip of the female block was returning from school; but

the little one, instead of kissing the loving mother's hand, bit it firmly, and so received from the other hand a

smack in the face which sent her reeling into the gutter: whence she was rescued by an indignant and

The woman has blown off an amazing quantity of poisongas. She has aired in detail all those incidents of

her conjugal life which are usually buried down in the deepest grave of matrimonial silence, between married

couples. Having chosen to exhume them, after ten years of burial, she has a weird array. I hear these details

from Linley and the doctor: the latter being amused. Of course there is really nothing in it. Humanity has

always had a strange avidity for unusual sexual postures, and if a man likes to use his wife, as Benvenuto

Cellini says, `in the Italian way', well that is a matter of taste. But I had hardly expected our gamekeeper to

be up to so many tricks. No doubt Bertha Coutts herself first put him up to them. In any case, it is a matter of

However, everybody listens: as I do myself. A dozen years ago, common decency would have hushed the

thing. But common decency no longer exists, and the colliers' wives are all up in arms and unabashed in

voice. One would think every child in Tevershall, for the last fifty years, had been an immaculate conception,

and every one of our nonconformist females was a shining Joan of Arc. That our estimable gamekeeper

should have about him a touch of Rabelais seems to make him more monstrous and shocking than a murderer

like Crippen. Yet these people in Tevershall are a loose lot, if one is to believe all accounts.

The trouble is, however, the execrable Bertha Coutts has not confined herself to her own experiences and

sufferings. She has discovered, at the top of her voice, that her husband has been `keeping' women down at

the cottage, and has made a few random shots at naming the women. This has brought a few decent names

trailing through the mud, and the thing has gone quite considerably too far. An injunction has been taken out

I have had to interview Mellors about the business, as it was impossible to keep the woman away from the

wood. He goes about as usual, with his MilleroftheDee air, I care for nobody, no not I, if nobody care for

me! Nevertheless, I shrewdly suspect he feels like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail: though he makes a very

good show of pretending the tin can isn't there. But I heard that in the village the women call away their

children if he is passing, as if he were the Marquis de Sade in person. He goes on with a certain impudence,

but I am afraid the tin can is firmly tied to his tail, and that inwardly he repeats, like Don Rodrigo in the

I asked him if he thought he would be able to attend to his duty in the wood, and he said he did not think he

had neglected it. I told him it was a nuisance to have the woman trespassing: to which he replied that he had

no power to arrest her. Then I hinted at the scandal and its unpleasant course. `Ay,' he said. `folks should do

their own fuckin', then they wouldn't want to listen to a lot of clatfart about another man's.'

He said it with some bitterness, and no doubt it contains the real germ of truth. The mode of putting it,

however, is neither delicate nor respectful. I hinted as much, and then I heard the tin can rattle again. `It's not

for a man the shape you're in, Sir Clifford, to twit me for havin' a cod atween my legs.'

These things, said indiscriminately to all and sundry, of course do not help him at all, and the rector, and

I asked him fit was true that he entertained ladies down at the cottage, and all he said was: `Why, what's that

to you, Sir Clifford?' I told him I intended to have decency observed on my estate, to which he replied: `Then

you mun button the mouths o' a' th' women.'When I pressed him about his manner of life at the cottage, he

said: `Surely you might ma'e a scandal out o' me an' my bitch Flossie. You've missed summat there.' As a

I asked him fit would be easy for him to find another job. He said: `If you're hintin' that you'd like to shunt

me out of this job, it'd be easy as wink.' So he made no trouble at all about leaving at the end of next week,

and apparently is willing to initiate a young fellow, Joe Chambers, into as many mysteries of the craft as

possible. I told him I would give him a month's wages extra, when he left. He said he'd rather I kept my

money, as I'd no occasion to ease my conscience. I asked him what he meant, and he said: `You don't owe me

nothing extra, Sir Clifford, so don't pay me nothing extra. If you think you see my shirt hanging out, just tell

Well, there is the end of it for the time being. The woman has gone away: we don't know where to: but she is

liable to arrest if she shows her face in Tevershall. And I heard she is mortally afraid of gaol, because she

merits it so well. Mellors will depart on Saturday week, and the place will soon become normal again.

Meanwhile, my dear Connie, if you would enjoy to stay in Venice or in Switzerland till the beginning of

August, I should be glad to think you were out of all this buzz of nastiness, which will have died quite away

So you see, we arc deepsea monsters, and when the lobster walks on mud, he stirs it up for everybody. We

The irritation, and the lack of any sympathy in any direction, of Clifford's letter, had a bad effect on Connie.

The cat is out of the bag, along with various other pussies. You have heard that my wife Bertha came back to

my unloving arms, and took up her abode in the cottage: where, to speak disrespectfully, she smelled a rat, in

the shape of a little bottle of Coty. Other evidence she did not find, at least for some days, when she began to

howl about the burnt photograph. She noticed the glass and the backboard in the square bedroom.

Unfortunately, on the backboard somebody had scribbled little sketches, and the initials, several times

repeated: C. S. R. This, however, afforded no clue until she broke into the hut, and found one of your books,

an autobiography of the actress Judith, with your name, Constance Stewart Reid, on the front page. After this,

for some days she went round loudly saying that my paramour was no less a person than Lady Chatterley

herself. The news came at last to the rector, Mr Burroughs, and to Sir Clifford. They then proceeded to take

legal steps against my liege lady, who for her part disappeared, having always had a mortal fear of the police.

Sir Clifford asked to see me, so I went to him. He talked around things and seemed annoyed with me. Then

he asked if I knew that even her ladyship's name had been mentioned. I said I never listened to scandal, and

was surprised to hear this bit from Sir Clifford himself. He said, of course it was a great insult, and I told him

there was Queen Mary on a calendar in the scullery, no doubt because Her Majesty formed part of my harem.

But he didn't appreciate the sarcasm. He as good as told me I was a disreputable character also walked about

with my breeches' buttons undone, and I as good as told him he'd nothing to unbutton anyhow, so he gave me

the sack, and I leave on Saturday week, and the place thereof shall know me no more.

I shall go to London, and my old landlady, Mrs Inger, 17 Coburg Square, will either give me a room or will

Be sure your sins will find you out, especially if you're married and her name's Bertha

There was not a word about herself, or to her. Connie resented this. He might have said some few words of

consolation or reassurance. But she knew he was leaving her free, free to go back to Wragby and to Clifford.

She resented that too. He need riot be so falsely chivalrous. She wished he had said to Clifford: `Yes, she is

my lover and my mistress and I am proud of it!' But his courage wouldn't carry him so far.

So her name was coupled with his in Tevershall! It was a mess. But that would soon die down.

She was angry, with the complicated and confused anger that made her inert. She did not know what to do

nor what to say, so she said and did nothing. She went on at Venice just the same, rowing out in the gondola

with Duncan Forbes, bathing, letting the days slip by. Duncan, who had been rather depressingly in love with

her ten years ago, was in love with her again. But she said to him: `I only want one thing of men, and that is,

So Duncan left her alone: really quite pleased to be able to. All the same, he offered her a soft stream of a

`Have you ever thought,' he said to her one day, `how very little people are connected with one another. Look

at Daniele! He is handsome as a son of the sun. But see how alone he looks in his handsomeness. Yet I bet he

Duncan did so. Daniele said he was married, and had two children, both male, aged seven and nine. But he

`Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe,' said

Connie. `The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass, like Giovanni.' `And,' she thought to

She had to make up her mind what to do. She would leave Venice on the Saturday that he was leaving

Wragby: in six days' time. This would bring her to London on the Monday following, and she would then see

him. She wrote to him to the London address, asking him to send her a letter to Hartland's hotel, and to call

Inside herself she was curiously and complicatedly angry, and all her responses were numb. She refused to

confide even in Hilda, and Hilda, offended by her steady silence, had become rather intimate with a Dutch

woman. Connie hated these rather stifling intimacies between women, intimacy into which Hilda always

Sir Malcolm decided to travel with Connie, and Duncan could come on with Hilda. The old artist always did

himself well: he took berths on the Orient Express, in spite of Connie's dislike of trains de luxe, the

atmosphere of vulgar depravity there is aboard them nowadays. However, it would make the journey to Paris

Sir Malcolm was always uneasy going back to his wife. It was habit carried over from the first wife. But there

would be a houseparty for the grouse, and he wanted to be well ahead. Connie, sunburnt and handsome, sat

`A little dull for you, going back to Wragby,' said her father, noticing her glumness.

`I'm not sure I shall go back to Wragby,' she said, with startling abruptness, looking into his eyes with her big

blue eyes. His big blue eyes took on the frightened look of a man whose social conscience is not quite clear.

He was bothered by his own little problems, and sincerely hoped he was getting none of hers to shoulder.

It was the first time she had uttered the words to any living soul, and it seemed to mark a cleavage in her life.

`I suppose Clifford would take it,' said Connie. `He told me, after last time you talked to him, he wouldn't

`Only sensible thing he could say, under the circumstances. Then I suppose it'll be all right.'

`In what way?' said Connie, looking into her father's eyes. They were big blue eyes rather like her own, but

with a certain uneasiness in them, a look sometimes of an uneasy little boy, sometimes a look of sullen

`You can present Clifford with an heir to all the Chatterleys, and put another baronet in Wragby.'

`Why not? Feeling entangled with the other man? Well! If you want the truth from me, my child, it's this. The

world goes on. Wragby stands and will go on standing. The world is more or less a fixed thing and,

externally, we have to adapt ourselves to it. Privately, in my private opinion, we can please ourselves.

Emotions change. You may like one man this year and another next. But Wragby still stands. Stick by

Wragby as far as Wragby sticks by you. Then please yourself. But you'll get very little out of making a break.

You can make a break if you wish. You have an independent income, the only thing that never lets you down.

But you won't get much out of it. Put a little baronet in Wragby. It's an amusing thing to do.'

`I hope you had a real man at last,' he said to her after a while, sensually alert.

`No, by God!' he mused. `There aren't! Well, my dear, to look at you, he was a lucky man. Surely he wouldn't

Sir Malcolm was pleased. Connie was his favourite daughter, he had always liked the female in her. Not so

much of her mother in her as in Hilda. And he had always disliked Clifford. So he was pleased, and very

He drove with her to Hartland's hotel, and saw her installed: then went round to his club. She had refused his

I won't come round to your hotel, but I'll wait for you outside the Golden Cock in Adam Street at seven.

There he stood, tall and slender, and so different, in a formal suit of thin dark cloth. He had a natural

distinction, but he had not the cuttopattern look of her class. Yet, she saw at once, he could go anywhere.

He had a native breeding which was really much nicer than the cuttopattern class thing.

She looked in his face anxiously. It was thin, and the cheekbones showed. But his eyes smiled at her, and she

felt at home with him. There it was: suddenly, the tension of keeping up her appearances fell from her.

Something flowed out of him physically, that made her feel inwardly at ease and happy, at home. With a

woman's now alert instinct for happiness, she registered it at once. `I'm happy when he's there!' Not all the

`Was it horrid for you?' she asked as she sat opposite him at table. He was too thin; she saw it now. His hand

lay as she knew it, with the curious loose forgottenness of a sleeping animal. She wanted so much to take it

`Did you feel like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail? Clifford said you felt like that.'

He looked at her. It was cruel of her at that moment: for his pride had suffered bitterly.

`I should say not. He put it off without thinking about it. But naturally it made him want to see the last of me.'

The expression died utterly out of his face, out of his whole body. He looked at her with darkened eyes,

whose look she could not understand at all: like some darkflamed spirit looking at her.

`Say you're glad!' she pleaded, groping for his hand. And she saw a certain exultance spring up in him. But it

`But you needn't be troubled by any responsibility. Clifford would have it as his own, he'd be glad.'

He looked at her, pale and very remote. The ugly little grin flickered on his face.

In spite of himself, little flames ran over his belly as he heard her say it, and he dropped his head. Then he

`In one way, I know it.' He was silent for a time, thinking. Then he resumed: `They used to say I had too

much of the woman in me. But it's not that. I'm not a woman not because I don't want to shoot birds, neither

because I don't want to make money, or get on. I could have got on in the army, easily, but I didn't like the

army. Though I could manage the men all right: they liked me and they had a bit of a holy fear of me when I

got mad. No, it was stupid, deadhanded higher authority that made the army dead: absolutely fooldead. I

like men, and men like me. But I can't stand the twaddling bossy impudence of the people who run this

world. That's why I can't get on. I hate the impudence of money, and I hate the impudence of class. So in the

`But why offer anything? It's not a bargain. It's just that we love one another,' she said.

`Nay, nay! It's more than that. Living is moving and moving on. My life won't go down the proper gutters, it

just won't. So I'm a bit of a waste ticket by myself. And I've no business to take a woman into my life, unless

my life does something and gets somewhere, inwardly at least, to keep us both fresh. A man must offer a

woman some meaning in his life, if it's going to be an isolated life, and if she's a genuine woman. I can't be

`The money is yours, the position is yours, the decisions will lie with you. I'm not just my Lady's fucker, after

`You may well ask. It no doubt is invisible. Yet I'm something to myself at least. I can see the point of my

`I tell you, it's invisible. I don't believe in the world, not in money, nor in advancement, nor in the future of

our civilization. If there's got to be a future for humanity, there'll have to be a very big change from what now

`God knows! I can feel something inside me, all mixed up with a lot of rage. But what it really amounts to, I

`Shall I tell you?' she said, looking into his face. `Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't have,

`It's the courage of your own tenderness, that's what it is: like when you put your hand on my tail and say I've

`Ay!' he said. `You're right. It's that really. It's that all the way through. I knew it with the men. I had to be in

touch with them, physically, and not go back on it. I had to be bodily aware of them and a bit tender to them,

even if I put em through hell. It's a question of awareness, as Buddha said. But even he fought shy of the

bodily awareness, and that natural physical tenderness, which is the best, even between men; in a proper

manly way. Makes 'em really manly, not so monkeyish. Ay! it's tenderness, really; it's cuntawareness. Sex is

really only touch, the closest of all touch. And it's touch we're afraid of. We're only halfconscious, and half

alive. We've got to come alive and aware. Especially the English have got to get into touch with one another,

`But can't you trust it between you and me?' she asked, gazing anxiously at him.

She saw his face all softening down, losing its armour. `Maybe!' he said. They were both silent.

`I want you to hold me in your arms,' she said. `I want you to tell me you are glad we are having a child.'

But she saw the forgetfulness of the world coming over him again, his face taking the soft, pure look of

They walked by the remoter streets to Coburg Square, where he had a room at the top of the house, an attic

room where he cooked for himself on a gas ring. It was small, but decent and tidy.

She took off her things, and made him do the same. She was lovely in the soft first flush of her pregnancy.

`No!' she said. `Love me! Love me, and say you'll keep me. Say you'll keep me! Say you'll never let me go, to

She crept close against him, clinging fast to his thin, strong naked body, the only home she had ever known.

`I've a dread of puttin' children i' th' world,' he said. `I've such a dread o' th' future for 'em.'

`But you've put it into me. Be tender to it, and that will be its future already. Kiss it!'

He quivered, because it was true. `Be tender to it, and that will be its future.'At that moment he felt a sheer

love for the woman. He kissed her belly and her mound of Venus, to kiss close to the womb and the foetus

`Oh, you love me! You love me!' she said, in a little cry like one of her blind, inarticulate love cries. And he

went in to her softly, feeling the stream of tenderness flowing in release from his bowels to hers, the bowels

And he realized as he went into her that this was the thing he had to do, to e into tender touch, without losing

his pride or his dignity or his integrity as a man. After all, if she had money and means, and he had none, he

should be too proud and honourable to hold back his tenderness from her on that account. `I stand for the

touch of bodily awareness between human beings,' he said to himself, `and the touch of tenderness. And she

is my mate. And it is a battle against the money, and the machine, and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of

the world. And she will stand behind me there. Thank God I've got a woman! Thank God I've got a woman

who is with me, and tender and aware of me. Thank God she's not a bully, nor a fool. Thank God she's a

tender, aware woman.' And as his seed sprang in her, his soul sprang towards her too, in the creative act that

She was quite determined now that there should be no parting between him and her. But the ways and means

`Yes! You must let me. Because once you liked her. And once you were as intimate with her as you are with

me. So you have to tell me. Isn't it rather terrible, when you've been intimate with her, to hate her so? Why is

`I don't know. She sort of kept her will ready against me, always, always: her ghastly female will: her

freedom! A woman's ghastly freedom that ends in the most beastly bullying! Oh, she always kept her

`No, no! If she's not free of me, it's because she's got that mad rage, she must try to bully me.'

`No! Well, in specks she did. She was drawn to me. And I think even that she hated. She loved me in

moments. But she always took it back, and started bullying. Her deepest desire was to bully me, and there

`How could I? I began to. I began to love her. But somehow, she always ripped me up. No, don't let's talk of

it. It was a doom, that was. And she was a doomed woman. This last time, I'd have shot her like I shoot a

stoat, if I'd but been allowed: a raving, doomed thing in the shape of a woman! If only I could have shot her,

and ended the whole misery! It ought to be allowed. When a woman gets absolutely possessed by her own

will, her own will set against everything, then it's fearful, and she should be shot at last.'

`Ay!the same! But I must get free of her, or she'll be at me again. I wanted to tell you. I must get a divorce

if I possibly can. So we must be careful. We mustn't really be seen together, you and I. I never, never could

`Not for six months or so. But I think my divorce will go through in September; then till March.'

`Tender to them? Yea, even then the tenderest thing you could do for them, perhaps, would be to give them

death. They can't live! They only frustrate life. Their souls are awful inside them. Death ought to be sweet to

`I would though! and with less qualms than I shoot a weasel. It anyhow has a prettiness and a loneliness. But

Connie had now plenty to think of. It was evident he wanted absolutely to be free of Bertha Coutts. And she

felt he was right. The last attack had been too grim.This meant her living alone, till spring. Perhaps she

could get divorced from Clifford. But how? If Mellors were named, then there was an end to his divorce.

How loathsome! Couldn't one go right away, to the far ends of the earth, and be free from it all?

One could not. The far ends of the world are not five minutes from Charing Cross, nowadays. While the

wireless is active, there are no far ends of the earth. Kings of Dahomey and Lamas of Tibet listen in to

Patience! Patience! The world is a vast and ghastly intricacy of mechanism, and one has to be very wary, not

`You see, Father, he was Clifford's gamekeeper: but he was an officer in the army in India. Only he is like

Sir Malcolm, however, had no sympathy with the unsatisfactory mysticism of the famous C. E. Florence. He

saw too much advertisement behind all the humility. It looked just like the sort of conceit the knight most

`Looks to me like a golddigger,' he said. `And you're a pretty easy goldmine, apparently.'

`No, Father, it's not like that. You'd know if you saw him. He's a man. Clifford always detested him for not

What Sir Malcolm could not bear was the scandal of his daughter's having an intrigue with a gamekeeper.

`I care nothing about the fellow. He's evidently been able to get round you all right. But, by God, think of all

`I know,' said Connie. `Talk is beastly: especially if you live in society. And he wants so much to get his own

divorce. I thought we might perhaps say it was another man's child, and not mention Mellors' name at all.'

`He might, might he? Well, he's a funny man if he does. Why, you've never even had an affair with him, have

`No! But he doesn't really want it. He only loves me to be near him, but not to touch him.'

`He would like me most of all to be a model for him to paint from. Only I never wanted to.'

`Contriving, conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes a man think he's lived too long.'

`Come, Father, if you haven't done a good deal of contriving and conniving in your time, you may talk.'

Hilda arrived, also furious when she heard of the new developments. And she also simply could not stand the

thought of a public scandal about her sister and a gamekeeper. Too, too humiliating!

`Why should we not just disappear, separately, to British Columbia, and have no scandal?' said Connie.

But that was no good. The scandal would come out just the same. And if Connie was going with the man,

she'd better be able to marry him. This was Hilda's opinion. Sir Malcolm wasn't sure. The affair might still

Poor Sir Malcolm! he was by no means keen on it. And poor Mellors, he was still less keen. Yet the meeting

took place: a lunch in a private room at the club, the two men alone, looking one another up and down.

Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whisky, Mellors also drank. And they talked all the while about India, on

This lasted during the meal. Only when coffee was served, and the waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar

`Honour, by God!' Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. `Honour! How

`I'll bet it was! Haha! My daughter, chip of the old block, what! I never went back on a good bit of fucking,

myself. Though her mother, oh, holy saints!' He rolled his eyes to heaven. `But you warmed her up, oh, you

warmed her up, I can see that. Haha! My blood in her! You set fire to her haystack all right. Hahaha! I

was jolly glad of it, I can tell you. She needed it. Oh, she's a nice girl, she's a nice girl, and I knew she'd be

good going, if only some damned man would set her stack on fire! Hahaha! A gamekeeper, eh, my boy!

Bloody good poacher, if you ask me. Haha! But now, look here, speaking seriously, what are we going to do

Speaking seriously, they didn't get very far. Mellors, though a little tipsy, was much the soberer of the two.

`So you're a gamekeeper! Oh, you're quite right! That sort of game is worth a man's while, eh, what? The

test of a woman is when you pinch her bottom. You can tell just by the feel of her bottom if she's going to

`As much as that! Well, you've another good twenty years, by the look of you. Oh, gamekeeper or not,

you're a good cock. I can see that with one eye shut. Not like that blasted Clifford! A lilylivered hound with

never a fuck in him, never had. I like you, my boy, I'll bet you've a good cod on you; oh, you're a bantam, I

can see that. You're a fighter. Gamekeeper! Haha, by crikey, I wouldn't trust my game to you! But look

here, seriously, what are we going to do about it? The world's full of blasted old women.'

Seriously, they didn't do anything about it, except establish the old freemasonry of male sensuality between

`And look here, my boy, if ever I can do anything for you, you can rely on me. Gamekeeper! Christ, but it's

rich! I like it! Oh, I like it! Shows the girl's got spunk. What? After all, you know, she has her own income,

moderate, moderate, but above starvation. And I'll leave her what I've got. By God, I will. She deserves it for

showing spunk, in a world of old women. I've been struggling to get myself clear of the skirts of old women

for seventy years, and haven't managed it yet. But you're the man, I can see that.'

`I'm glad you think so. They usually tell me, in a sideways fashion, that I'm the monkey.'

`Oh, they would! My dear fellow, what could you be but a monkey, to all the old women?'

They parted most genially, and Mellors laughed inwardly all the time for the rest of the day.

`I think you might have avoided putting children into the world until you were both free to marry and have

`I think the Lord had nothing to do with it. Of course, Connie has enough money to keep you both, but the

`But then you don't have to bear more than a small corner of it, do you?' said he.

`I think,' said Hilda, `it will be best if she names quite another man as corespondent and you stay out of it

He gazed at her in wonder. Connie had not dared mention the Duncan scheme to him.

`We have a friend who would probably agree to be named as corespondent, so that your name need not

`Some men are chivalrous and don't only count what they get out of a woman,' said Hilda.

`Duncan Forbes!' he said at once, for Connie had talked to him. `And how would you shift the blame on to

`They could stay together in some hotel, or she could even stay in his apartment.'

`What else do you suggest?' said Hilda. `If your name appears, you will get no divorce from your wife, who

`The world is what it is. If you want to live together without being persecuted, you will have to marry. To

`We will see if Duncan will consent to figure as corespondent: then we must get Clifford to divorce Connie:

and you must go on with your divorce, and you must both keep apart till you are free.'

`Hope I can plunge in the dagger a few more times yet,' he said, grinning. Then he was silent, and angry.

`Well!' he said at last. `I agree to anything. The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do

Duncan, when approached, also insisted on seeing the delinquent gamekeeper, so there was a dinner, this

time in his flat: the four of them. Duncan was a rather short, broad, darkskinned, taciturn Hamlet of a fellow

with straight black hair and a weird Celtic conceit of himself. His art was all tubes and valves and spirals and

strange colours, ultramodern, yet with a certain power, even a certain purity of form and tone: only Mellors

thought it cruel and repellent. He did not venture to say so, for Duncan was almost insane on the point of his

They were looking at the pictures in the studio, and Duncan kept his smallish brown eyes on the other man.

He wanted to hear what the gamekeeper would say. He knew already Connie's and Hilda's opinions.

`It is like a pure bit of murder,' said Mellors at last; a speech Duncan by no means expected from a

A wave of pure hate came out of the artist. He heard the note of dislike in the other man's voice, and the note

of contempt. And he himself loathed the mention of bowels of compassion. Sickly sentiment!

Mellors stood rather tall and thin, wornlooking, gazing with flickering detachment that was something like

`Do you think so? I think all these tubes and corrugated vibrations are stupid enough for anything, and pretty

sentimental. They show a lot of selfpity and an awful lot of nervous selfopinion, seems to me.'

In another wave of hate the artist's face looked yellow. But with a sort of silent hauteur he turned the pictures

`I don't at all mind posing as the father of Connie's child. But only on the condition that she'll come and pose

as a model for me. I've wanted her for years, and she's always refused.' He uttered it with the dark finality of

`Quite! I only do it on that condition.' The artist tried to put the utmost contempt of the other person into his

`Better have me as a model at the same time,' said Mellors. `Better do us in a group, Vulcan and Venus under

`Thank you,' said the artist. `I don't think Vulcan has a figure that interests me.'

It was a dismal party, in which the artist henceforth steadily ignored the presence of the other man, and talked

only briefly, as if the words were wrung out of the depths of his gloomy portentousness, to the women.

`You didn't like him, but he's better than that, really. He's really kind,' Connie explained as they left.

`Oh, I don't really mind any more. He won't touch me. And I don't mind anything, if it paves the way to a life

`I don't care. He'll only be painting his own feelings for me, and I don't mind if he does that. I wouldn't have

him touch me, not for anything. But if he thinks he can do anything with his owlish arty staring, let him stare.

He can make as many empty tubes and corrugations out of me as he likes. It's his funeral. He hated you for

what you said: that his tubified art is sentimental and selfimportant. But of course it's true.'

Dear Clifford, I am afraid what you foresaw has happened. I am really in love with another man, and do hope

you will divorce me. I am staying at present with Duncan its his flat. I told you he was at Venice with us. I'm

awfully unhappy for your sake: but do try to take it quietly. You don't really need me any more, and I can't

bear to come back to Wragby. I'm awfully sorry. But do try to forgive me, and divorce me and find someone

better. I'm not really the right person for you, I am too impatient and selfish, I suppose. But I can't ever come

back to live with you again. And I feel so frightfully sorry about it all, for your sake. But if you don't let

yourself get worked up, you'll see you won't mind so frightfully. You didn't really care about me personally.

Clifford was not inwardly surprised to get this letter. Inwardly, he had known for a long time she was leaving

him. But he had absolutely refused any outward admission of it. Therefore, outwardly, it came as the most

terrible blow and shock to him, He had kept the surface of his confidence in her quite serene.

And that is how we are, By strength of will we cut of four inner intuitive knowledge from admitted

consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it

Clifford was like a hysterical child. He gave Mrs Bolton a terrible shock, sitting up in bed ghastly and blank.

No answer! She was terrified lest he had had a stroke. She hurried and felt his face, took his pulse.

`Oh dear, oh dear! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr Carrington, and Dr Lecky may as well run round

She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank, and like the face of an idiot.

`Oh, but Sir Clifford, you're ill, and I daren't take the responsibility. I must send for the doctor, or I shall be

`Not coming back? you mean her ladyship?' Mrs Bolton moved a little nearer to the bed. `Oh, don't you

The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the counterpane.

`Why, if it's a letter from her ladyship, I'm sure her ladyship wouldn't want me to read her letter to you, Sir

`Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford,' she said. And she read the letter.

`Well, I am surprised at her ladyship,' she said. `She promised so faithfully she'd come back!'

The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs Bolton looked at

it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without

She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must have known his wife was in love with

somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware

of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself. If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it: or if he

would have admitted it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that would have been acting like a

man. But no! he knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail,

and pretended it was the angels smiling on him. This state of falsity had now brought on that crisis of falsity

and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity. `It comes', she thought to herself, hating him a little,

`because he always thinks of himself. He's so wrapped up in his own immortal self, that when he does get a

But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to pull him out. Any attempt to rouse his

manhood and his pride would only make him worse: for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally. He

The only thing was to release his selfpity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die.

So Mrs Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. `I

would never have believed it of her ladyship, I wouldn't!' she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief

and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine

Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears

filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs Bolton, as soon as she

saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and

`Now, don't you fret, Sir Clifford!' she said, in a luxury of emotion. `Now, don't you fret, don't, you'll only do

His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face.

She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a

convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. `There, there! There, there! Don't you fret, then, don't

you! Don't you fret!' she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms

round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge

shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his duskyblond hair and said: `There! There! There! There then! There

And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and

the bosom of her paleblue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last.

So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: `Oh, Sir

Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you've come down to!' And finally he even went to

sleep, like a child. And she felt worn out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once,

with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! Such a comedown! So shameful! And it

After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs Bolton. He would hold her h, and rest his head on her breast,

and when she once lightly kissed him, he said! `Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!' And when she sponged his

great blond body, he would say the same! `Do kiss me!' and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half

And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze

on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonnaworship. It was sheer relaxation on his part,

letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he

would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation, the exultation of

Mrs Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated it. Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked

him. And they drew into a closer physical intimacy, an intimacy of perversity, when he was a child stricken

with an apparent candour and an apparent wonderment, that looked almost like a religious exaltation: the

perverse and literal rendering of: `except ye become again as a little child'.While she was the Magna

Mater, full of power and potency, having the great blond childman under her will and her stroke entirely.

The curious thing was that when this childman, which Clifford was now and which he had been becoming

for years, emerged into the world, it was much sharper and keener than the real man he used to be. This

perverted childman was now a real businessman; when it was a question of affairs, he was an absolute

heman, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel. When he was out among men, seeking his own

ends, and `making good' his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness, hardness, and a

straight sharp punch. It was as if his very passivity and prostitution to the Magna Mater gave him insight into

material business affairs, and lent him a certain remarkable inhuman force. The wallowing in private

emotion, the utter abasement of his manly self, seemed to lend him a second nature, cold, almost visionary,

And in this Mrs Bolton triumphed. `How he's getting on!' she would say to herself in pride. `And that's my

doing! My word, he'd never have got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a man

At the same time, in some corner of her weird female soul, how she despised him and hated him! He was to

her the fallen beast, the squirming monster. And while she aided and abetted him all she could, away in the

remotest corner of her ancient healthy womanhood she despised him with a savage contempt that knew no

His behaviour with regard to Connie was curious. He insisted on seeing her again. He insisted, moreover, on

her coming to Wragby. On this point he was finally and absolutely fixed. Connie had promised to come back

`But is it any use?' said Mrs Bolton. `Can't you let her go, and be rid of her?'

I needn't tell you what effect your letter has had on me [he wrote to Connie to London]. Perhaps you can

imagine it if you try, though no doubt you won't trouble to use your imagination on my behalf.

I can only say one thing in answer: I must see you personally, here at Wragby, before I can do anything. You

promised faithfully to come back to Wragby, and I hold you to the promise. I don't believe anything nor

understand anything until I see you personally, here under normal circumstances. I needn't tell you that

nobody here suspects anything, so your return would be quite normal. Then if you feel, after we have talked

things over, that you still remain in the same mind, no doubt we can come to terms.

Connie was silent. She was somewhat surprised to find that she was afraid of Clifford. She was afraid to go

If you don't come back to Wragby now, I shall consider that you are coming back one day, and act

accordingly. I shall just go on the same, and wait for you here, if I wait for fifty years.

She was frightened. This was bullying of an insidious sort. She had no doubt he meant what he said. He

would not divorce her, and the child would be his, unless she could find some means of establishing its

After a time of worry and harassment, she decided to go to Wragby. Hilda would go with her. She wrote this

I shall not welcome your sister, but I shall not deity her the door. I have no doubt she has connived at your

desertion of your duties and responsibilities, so do not expect me to show pleasure in seeing her.

They went to Wragby. Clifford was away when they arrived. Mrs Bolton received them.

`Oh, your Ladyship, it isn't the happy homecoming we hoped for, is it!' she said.

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.

And she suffered going into her own bedroom, reentering into possession as if nothing had happened. She

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

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

There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up to her room.

Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would begin to speak. Connie was so glad that

he wasn't taking the pathetic line, she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat silent and

`I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?' he said at last.

He looked at her with curious cold rage. He was used to her. She was as it were embedded in his will. How

dared she now go back on him, and destroy the fabric of his daily existence? How dared she try to cause this

`Love of Duncan Forbes? But you didn't think that worth having, when you met me. Do you mean to say you

`Possibly! Possibly you may have whims. But you still have to convince me of the importance of the change.

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

`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

`But really? I want my wife, and I see no reason for letting her go. If she likes to bear a child under my roof,

she is welcome, and the child is welcome: provided that the decency and order of life is preserved. Do you

mean to tell me that Duncan Forbes has a greater hold over you? I don't believe it.'

`But don't you see,' said Connie. `I must go away from you, and I must live with the man I love.'

`No, I don't see it! I don't give tuppence for your love, nor for the man you love. I don't believe in that sort of

`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!'

`Yes! Because who I really love, and it'll make you hate me, is Mr Mellors, who was our gamekeeper here.'

If he could have sprung out of his chair, he would have done so. His face went yellow, and his eyes bulged

`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!'

`You'd wonder,' he said at last, `that such beings were ever allowed to be born.'

He looked at her weirdly, without an answer. It was obvious, he couldn't even accept the fact of the existence

of Mellors, in any connexion with his own life. It was sheer, unspeakable, impotent hate.

`And do you mean to say you'd marry him?and bear his foul name?' he asked at length.

`Yes!' he said at last. `That proves that what I've always thought about you is correct: you're not normal,

you're not in your right senses. You're one of those halfinsane, perverted women who must run after

Suddenly he had become almost wistfully moral, seeing himself the incarnation of good, and people like

Mellors and Connie the incarnation of mud, of evil. He seemed to be growing vague, inside a nimbus.

`But if it's a boy it will be legally your son, and it will inherit your title, and have Wragby.'

`But you must! I shall prevent the child from being legally yours, if I can. I'd so much rather it were

`And won't you divorce me?' she said. `You can use Duncan as a pretext! There'd be no need to bring in the

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 goodbye, before lunch.

`I must say goodbye to you, Mrs Bolton, you know why. But I can trust you not to talk.'

`Oh, you can trust me, your Ladyship, though it's a sad blow for us here, indeed. But I hope you'll be happy

`The other gentleman! It's Mr Mellors, and I care for him. Sir Clifford knobs. But don't say anything to

anybody. And if one day you think Sir Clifford may be willing to divorce me, let me know, will you? I

`I'm sure you would, my Lady. Oh, you can trust me. I'll be faithful to Sir Clifford, and I'll be faithful to you,

`Thank you! And look! I want to give you thismay I?' So Connie left Wragby once more, and went on with

Hilda to Scotland. Mellors went into the country and got work on a farm. The idea was, he should get his

divorce, if possible, whether Connie got hers or not. And for six months he should work at farming, so that

eventually he and Connie could have some small farm of their own, into which he could put his energy. For

he would have to have some work, even hard work, to do, and he would have to make his own living, even if

So they would have to wait till spring was in, till the baby was born, till the early summer came round again.

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

pitponies; 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,

I've got lodging in a bit of an old cottage in Engine Row very decent. The man is enginedriver 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 allowme! 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 schoolteacher, 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

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. Oatharvest 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

The pits are working badly; this is a colliery district like Tevershall. only prettier. I sometimes sit in the

Wellington and talk to the men. They grumble a lot, but they're not going to alter anything. As everybody

says, the NottsDerby miners have got their hearts in the right place. But the rest of their anatomy must be in

the wrong place, in a world that has no use for them. I like them, but they don't cheer me much: not enough of

the old fightingcock in them. They talk a lot about nationalization, nationalization of royalties,

nationalization of the whole industry. But you can't nationalize coal and leave all the other industries as they

are. They talk about putting coal to new uses, like Sir Clifford is trying to do. It may work here and there, but

not as a general thing. I doubt. Whatever you make you've got to sell it. The men are very apathetic. They

feel the whole damned thing is doomed, and I believe it is. And they are doomed along with it. Some of the

young ones spout about a Soviet, but there's not much conviction in them. There's no sort of conviction about

anything, except that it's all a muddle and a hole. Even under a Soviet you've still got to sell coal: and that's

We've got this great industrial population, and they've got to be fed, so the damn show has to be kept going

somehow. The women talk a lot more than the men, nowadays, and they are a sight more cocksure. The

men are limp, they feel a doom somewhere, and they go about as if there was nothing to be done. Anyhow,

nobody knows what should be done in spite of all the talk, the young ones get mad because they've no money

to spend. Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they've got none to spend. That's our

civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the

money gives out. The pits are working two days, two and a half days a week, and there's no sign of

betterment even for the winter. It means a man bringing up a family on twentyfive and thirty shillings. The

women are the maddest of all. But then they're the maddest for spending, nowadays.

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 twentyfive 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 onetrack

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

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 motorbikes 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.

I'm sure you're sick of all this. But I don't want to harp on myself, and I've nothing happening to me. I don't

like to think too much about you, in my head, that only makes a mess of us both. But, of course, what I live

for now is for you and me to live together. I'm frightened, really. I feel the devil in the air, and he'll try to get

us. Or not the devil, Mammon: which I think, after all, is only the masswill of people, wanting money and

hating life. Anyhow, I feel great grasping white hands in the air, wanting to get hold of the throat of anybody

who tries to live, to live beyond money, and squeeze the life out. There's a bad time coming. There's a bad

time coming, boys, there's a bad time coming! If things go on as they are, there's nothing lies in the future but

death and destruction, for these industrial masses. I feel my inside turn to water sometimes, and there you are,

going to have a child by me. But never mind. All the bad times that ever have been, haven't been able to blow

the crocus out: not even the love of women. So they won't be able to blow out my wanting you, nor the little

glow there is between you and me. We'll be together next year. And though I'm frightened, I believe in your

being with me. A man has to fend and fettle for the best, and then trust in something beyond himself. You

can't insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it. So

I believe in the little flame between us. For me now, it's the only thing in the world. I've got no friends, not

inward friends. Only you. And now the little flame is all I care about in my life. There's the baby, but that is a

side issue. It's my Pentecost, the forked flame between me and you. The old Pentecost isn't quite right. Me

and God is a bit uppish, somehow. But the little forked flame between me and you: there you are! That's what

I abide by, and will abide by, Cliffords and Berthas, colliery companies and governments and the

That's why I don't like to start thinking about you actually. It only tortures 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

Naps 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

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

Well, so many words, because I can't touch you. If I could sleep with my arms round you, the ink could stay

in the bottle. We could be chaste together just as we can fuck together. But we have to be separate for a

Never mind, never mind, we won't get worked up. We really trust in the little flame, and in the unnamed god

that shields it from being blown out. There's so much of you here with me, really, that it's a pity you aren't all

Never mind about Sir Clifford. If you don't hear anything from him, never mind. He can't really do anything

to you. Wait, he will want to get rid of you at last, to cast you out. And if he doesn't, we'll manage to keep

clear of him. But he will. In the end he will want to spew you out as the abominable thing.

But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John

Thomas says goodnight to Lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart.