“Why?” She looked up at him, at a loss. “I said I’d come. Nobody knows.”
“They soon will, though,” he replied. “An’ what then?”
She was at a loss for an answer.
“Why should they know?” she said.
“Folks always does,” he said fatally.
Her lip quivered a little.
“Well, I can’t help it,” she faltered.
“Nay,” he said. “You can help it by not comin’—if yer want to,” he added, in a lower tone.
“But I don’t want to,” she murmured.
He looked away into the wood, and was silent.
“But what when folks finds out?” he asked at last. “Think about it! Think how lowered you’ll feel, one of your husband’s servants.”
She looked up at his averted face.
“Is it,” she stammered, “is it that you don’t want me?”
“Think!” he said. “Think what if folks finds out—Sir Clifford an’ a’—an’ everybody talkin’—”
“Well, I can go away.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere! I’ve got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can’t touch it. I can go away.”
“But ’appen you don’t want to go away.”
“Yes, yes! I don’t care what happens to me.”
“Ah, 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. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it.”
“Me!”
For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. “I don’t jeer at you,” he said.
As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark, the pupils dilating.
“Don’t you care about a’ the risk?” he asked in a husky voice. “You should care. Don’t care when it’s too late!”
There was a curious warning pleading in his voice.
“But I’ve nothing to lose,” she said fretfully. “If you knew what it is, you’d think I’d be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?”
“Ay!” he said briefly. “I am. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid o’ things.”
“What things?” she asked.
He gave a curious backward jerk of his head, indicating the other world.
“Things! Everybody! The lot of ’em.”
Then he bent down and suddenly kissed her unhappy face.
“Nay, I don’t care,” he said. “Let’s have it, an’ damn the rest. But if you was to feel sorry you’d ever done it—!”
“Don’t put me off,” she pleaded.
He put his fingers to her cheek and kissed her again suddenly.
“Let me come in then,” he said softly. “An’ take off your mackintosh.”
He hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached for the blankets.
“I brought another blanket,” he said, “so we can put one over us if we like.”
“I can’t stay long,” she said. “Dinner is half-past seven.”
He looked at her swiftly, then at his watch.
“All right,” he said.
He shut the door, and lit a tiny light in the hanging hurricane lamp.
“One time we’ll have a long time,” he said.
He put the blankets down carefully, one folded for her head. Then he sat down for a moment on the stool, and drew her to him, holding her close with one arm, feeling for her body with his free hand. She heard the catch of his intaken breath as he found her. Under her frail petticoat she was naked.
“Eh! what it is to touch thee!” he said, as his finger caressed the delicate, warm secret skin of her waist and hips. He put his face down and rubbed his cheek against her belly and against her thighs again and again. And again she wondered a little over the sort of rapture it was to him. She did not understand the beauty he found in her, through touch upon her living secret body, almost the ecstasy of beauty. For passion alone is awake to it. And when passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is incomprehensible and even a little despicable; warm, live beauty of contact, so much deeper than the beauty of vision. She felt the glide of his cheek on her thighs and belly and buttocks, and the close brushing of his moustache and his soft thick hair, and her knees began to quiver. Far down in her she felt a new stirring, a new nakedness emerging. And she was half afraid. Half she wished he would not caress her so. He was encompassing her somehow. Yet she was waiting, waiting.
And when he came into her, with an intensification of relief and consummation that was pure peace to him, still she was waking. She felt herself a little left out. And she knew, partly it was her own fault. She willed herself into this separateness. Now perhaps she was condemned to it. She lay still, feeling his motion within her, his deep-sunk intentness, the sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed, then slow-subsiding thrust. That thrust of the buttocks, surely it was a little ridiculous. If you were a woman, and apart in all the business, surely that thrusting of the man’s buttocks was supremely ridiculous. Surely the man was intensely ridiculous in this posture and this act!
But she lay still, without recoil. Even, when he had finished, she did not rouse herself to get a grip on her own satisfaction, as she had done with Michaelis; she lay still, and the tears slowly filled and ran from her eyes.
He lay still, too. But he held her close and tried to cover her poor naked legs with his legs, to keep them warm. He lay on her with a close, undoubting warmth.
“Are yer cold?” he asked, in a soft, small voice, as if she were close, so close. Whereas she was left out, distant.
“No! But I must go,” she said gently.
He sighed, held her closer, then relaxed to rest again.
He had not guessed her tears. He thought she was there with him.
“I must go,” she repeated.
He lifted himself, kneeled beside her a moment, kissed the inner side of her thighs, then drew down her skirts, buttoning his own clothes unthinking, not even turning aside, in the faint, faint light from the lantern.
“Tha mun come ter th’ cottage one time,” he said, looking down at her with a warm, sure, easy face.
But she lay there inert, and was gazing up at him thinking. Stranger! Stranger! She even resented him a little.
He put on his coat and looked for his hat, which had fallen, then he slung on his gun.
“Come then!” he said, looking down at her with those warm, peaceful sort of eyes.
She rose slowly. She didn’t want to go. She also rather resented staying. He helped her with her thin waterproof, and saw she was tidy.
Then he opened the door. The outside was quite dark. The faithful dog under the porch stood up with pleasure seeing him. The drizzle of rain drifted greyly past upon the darkness. It was quite dark.
“Ah mun ta’e th’ lantern,” he said. “The’ll be nob’dy.”
He walked just before her in the narrow path, swinging the hurricane lamp low, revealing the wet grass, the black shiny tree roots like snakes, wan flowers. For the rest, all was grey rain-mist and complete darkness.
“Tha mun come to the cottage one time,” he said, “shall ta? We might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.”
It puzzled her, his queer, persistent wanting her, when there was nothing between them, when he never really spoke to her, and in spite of herself she resented the dialect. His “tha mun come” seemed not addressed to her, but some common woman. She recognized the fox-glove leaves of the riding and knew, more or less, where they were.
“It’s quarter past seven,” he said, “you’ll do it.” He had changed his voice, seemed to feel her distance. As they turned the last bend in the riding towards the hazel wall and the gate, he blew o
ut the light. “We’ll see from here,” he said, taking her gently by the arm.
But it was difficult, the earth under their feet was a mystery, but he felt his way by tread: he was used to it. At the gate he gave her his electric torch. “It’s a bit lighter in the park,” he said; “but take it for fear you get off th’ path.”
It was true, there seemed a ghost-glimmer of greyness in the open space of the park. He suddenly drew her to him and whipped his hand under her dress again, feeling her warm body with his wet, chill hand.
“I could die for the touch of a woman like thee,” he said in his throat. “If tha would stop another minute.”
She felt the sudden force of his wanting her again.
“No, I must run,” she said, a little wildly.
“Ay,” he replied, suddenly changed, letting her go.
She turned away, and on the instant she turned back to him saying: “Kiss me.”
He bent over her indistinguishable and kissed her on the left eye. She held her mouth and he softly kissed it, but at once drew away. He hated mouth kisses.
“I’ll come tomorrow,” she said, drawing away; “if I can,” she added.
“Ay! not so late,” he replied out of the darkness. Already she could not see him at all. “Good night,” she said.
“Good night, your Ladyship,” his voice.
She stopped and looked back into the wet dark. She could just see the bulk of him. “Why did you say that?” she said.
“Nay,” he replied. “Good night then, run!”
She plunged on in the dark-grey tangible night. She found the side door open, and slipped into her room unseen. As she closed the door the gong sounded, but she would take her bath all the same—she must take her bath. “But I won’t be late any more,” she said to herself; “it’s too annoying.”
The next day she did not go to the wood. She went instead with Clifford to Uthwaite. He could occasionally go out now in the car, and had got a strong young man as chauffeur, who could help him out of the car if need be. He particularly wanted to see his godfather, Leslie Winter, who lived at Shipley Hall, not far from Uthwaite. Winter was an elderly gentleman now, wealthy, one of the wealthy coal-owners who had had their hey-day in King Edward’s time. King Edward had stayed more than once at Shipley, for the shooting. It was a handsome old stucco hall, very elegantly appointed, for Winter was a bachelor and prided himself on his style; but the place was beset by collieries. Leslie Winter was attached to Clifford, but personally did not entertain a great respect for him, because of the photographs in illustrated papers and the literature. The old man was a buck of the King Edward school, who thought life and the scribbling fellows were something else. Towards Connie the Squire was always rather gallant; he thought her an attractive demure maiden and rather wasted on Clifford, and it was a thousand pities she stood no chance of bringing forth an heir to Wragby. He himself had no heir.
Connie wondered what he would say if he knew that Clifford’s 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 eighteenth-century lady, rather against her will.
But Connie was preoccupied with her affair with the keeper. After all Mr. Winter, who was really a gentleman and a man of the world, treated her as a person and a discriminating individual; he did not lump her together with all the rest of his female womanhood in his “thee” and “tha.”
She did not go to the wood that day nor the next, nor the day following. She did not go so long as she felt, or imagined she felt, the man waiting for her, wanting her. But the fourth day she was terribly unsettled and uneasy. She still refused to go to the wood and open her thighs once more to the man. She thought of all the things she might do—drive to Sheffield, pay visits, and the thought of all these things was repellent. At last she decided to take a walk, not towards the wood, but in the opposite direction; she would go to Marehay, through the little iron gate in the other side of the park fence. It was a quiet grey day of spring, almost warm. She walked on unheeding, absorbed in thoughts she was not even conscious of. She was not really aware of anything outside her, till she was startled by the loud barking of the dog at Marehay Farm. Marehay Farm! Its pastures ran up to Wragby park fence, so they were neighbors, but it was some time since Connie had called.
“Bell!” she said to the big white bull-terrier. “Bell! have you forgotten me? Don’t you know me?”—She was afraid of dogs, and Bell stood back and bellowed, and she wanted to pass through the farmyard on to the warren path.
Mrs. Flint appeared. She was a woman of Constance’s own age, had been a school-teacher, but Connie suspected her of being rather a false little thing.
“Why, it’s Lady Chatterley! Why!” And Mrs. Flint’s eyes glowed again, and she flushed like a young girl. “Bell, Bell. Why! barking at Lady Chatterley! Bell! Be quiet!” She darted forward and slashed at the dog with a white cloth she held in her hand, then came forward to Connie.
“She used to know me,” said Connie, shaking hands. The Flints were Chatterley tenants.
“Of course she knows your ladyship! She’s just showing off,” said Mrs. Flint, glowing and looking up with a sort of flushed confusion, “but it’s so long since she’s seen you. I do hope you are better.”
“Yes, thanks, I’m all right.”
“We’ve hardly seen you all winter. Will you come in and look at the baby?”
“Well!” Connie hesitated. “Just for a minute.”
Mrs. Flint flew wildly in to tidy up, and Connie came slowly after her, hesitating in the rather dark kitchen where the kettle was boiling by the fire. Back came Mrs. Flint.
“I do hope you’ll excuse me,” she said. “Will you come in here.”
They went into the living-room, where a baby was sitting on the rag hearthrug, and the table was roughly set for tea. A young servant-girl backed down the passage, shy and awkward.
The baby was a perky little thing of about a year, with red hair like its father, and cheeky pale-blue eyes. It was a girl, and not to be daunted. It sat among cushions and was surrounded with rag dolls and other toys in modern excess.
“Why, what a dear she is!” said Connie, “and how she’s grown! A big girl! A big girl.”
She had given it a shawl when it was born, and celluloid ducks for Christmas.
“There, Josephine! Who’s that come to see you? Who’s this, Josephine? Lady Chatterley—you know Lady Chatterley, don’t you?”
The queer pert little mite gazed cheekily at Connie. Ladyships were still all the same to her.
“Come! Will you come to me?” said Connie to the baby.
The baby didn’t care one way or another, so Connie picked her up and held her in her lap. How warm and lovely it was to hold a child in one’s lap, and the soft little arms, the unconscious cheeky little legs.
“I was just having a rough cup of tea all by myself. Luke’s gone to market, so I can have it when I like. Would you care for a cup, Lady Chatterley? I don’t suppose it’s what you’re used to, but if you would…”
Connie would, though she didn’t want to be reminded of what she was used to. There was a great relaying of the table and the best cups brought and the best tea-pot.
“If only you wouldn’t take any trouble,” said Connie.
But if Mrs. Flint took no trouble, where was the fun! So Connie played with the child and was amused by its little female dauntlessness, and got a deep voluptuous pleasure out of its soft young warmth. Young life. And so fearless! So fearless, because so defenseless. All the older people, so narrow with fear.
She had a cup of tea, which was rather strong, and very good bread and butter, and bottled damsons. Mrs. Flint
flushed and glowed and bridled with excitement, as if Connie were some gallant knight. And they had a real female chat, and both of them enjoyed it.
“It’s a poor little tea, though,” said Mrs. Flint.
“It’s much nicer than at home,” said Connie truthfully.
“Oh-h!” said Mrs. Flint, not believing, of course.
But at last Connie rose.
“I must go,” she said. “My husband has no idea where I am. He’ll be wondering all kinds of things.”
“He’ll never think you’re here,” laughed Mrs. Flint excitedly. “He’ll be sending the crier round.”
“Good-bye, Josephine,” said Connie, kissing the baby and ruffling its red, wispy hair.
Mrs. Flint insisted on opening the locked and barred front door. Connie emerged in the farm’s little front garden, shut in by a privet hedge. There were two rows of auriculas by the path, very velvety and rich.
“Lovely auriculas,” said Connie.
“Recklesses, as Luke calls them,” laughed Mrs. Flint. “Have some.”
And eagerly she picked the velvet and primrose flowers.
“Enough! Enough!” said Connie.
They came to the little garden gate.
“Which way were you going?” asked Mrs. Flint.
“By the warren.”
“Let me see! Oh, yes, the cows are in the gin close. But they’re not up yet. But the gate’s locked, you’ll have to climb.”
“I can climb,” said Connie.
“Perhaps I can just go down the close with you.”
They went down the poor, rabbit-bitten pasture. Birds were whistling in wild evening triumph in the wood. A man was calling up the last cows, which trailed slowly over the path-worn pasture.
“They’re late, milking, tonight,” said Mrs. Flint severely. “They know Luke won’t be back till after dark.”
They came to the fence, beyond which the young fir-wood bristled dense. There was a little gate, but it was locked. In the grass on the inside stood a bottle, empty.
“There’s the keeper’s empty bottle for his milk,” explained Mrs. Flint. “We bring it as far as here for him, and then he fetches it himself.”
“When?” said Connie.