“Oh, any time he’s around. Often in the morning. Well, good-bye, Lady Chatterley! And do come again. It was so lovely having you.”
Connie climbed the fence into the narrow path between the dense, bristling young firs. Mrs. Flint went running back across the pasture, in a sun-bonnet, because she was really a school-teacher. Constance didn’t like this dense new part of the wood; it seemed grotesque and choking. She hurried on with her head down, thinking of the Flints’ baby. It was a dear little thing, but it would be a bit bow-legged like its father. It showed already, but perhaps it would grow out of it. How warm and fulfilling somehow to have a baby, and how Mrs. Flint showed it off! She had something anyhow that Connie hadn’t got, and apparently couldn’t have. Yes, Mrs. Flint had flaunted her motherhood. And Connie had been just a bit, just a little bit jealous. She couldn’t help it.
She started out of her muse, and gave a little cry of fear. A man was there.
It was the keeper; he stood in the path like Balaam’s ass, barring her way.
“How’s this?” he said in surprise.
“How did you come?” she panted.
“How did you? Have you been to the hut?”
“No! No! I went to Marehay.”’
He looked at her curiously, searchingly, and she hung her head a little guiltily.
“And were you going to the hut now?” he asked rather sternly.
“No! I mustn’t. I stayed at Marehay. No one knows where I am. I’m late. I’ve got to run.”
“Giving me the slip, like?” he said, with a faint ironic smile.
“No! No, not that. Only—”
“Why, what else?” he said. And he stepped up to her, and put his arm around her. She felt the front of his body terribly near to her, and alive.
“Oh, not now, not now,” she cried, trying to push him away.
“Why not? It’s only six o’clock. You’ve got half-an-hour. Nay! Nay! I want you.”
He held her fast and she felt his urgency. Her old instinct was to fight for her freedom. But something else in her was strange and inert and heavy. His body was urgent against her, and she hadn’t the heart any more to fight.
He looked around.
“Come—come here! Through here,” he said, looking penetratingly into the dense fir-trees, that were young and not more than half-grown.
He looked back at her. She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving. But her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs. She was giving way. She was giving up.
He led her through the wall of prickly trees, that were difficult to come through, to a place where was a little space and a pile of dead boughs. He threw one or two dry ones down, put his coat and waistcoat over them, and she had to lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal, while he waited, standing there in his shirt-and breeches, watching her with haunted eyes. But still he was provident—he made her lie properly, properly. Yet he broke the band of her underclothes, for she did not help him, only lay inert.
He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her. Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the last. But it was over too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her own conclusion with her own activity. This was different, different. She could do nothing. She could no longer harden and grip for her own satisfaction upon him. She could only wait, wait and moan in spirit as she felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and contracting, coming to the terrible moment when he would slip out of her and be gone. Whilst all her womb was open and soft, and softly clamoring, like a sea-anemone under the tide, clamoring for him to come in again and make a fulfillment for her. She clung to him unconscious in 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 defenseless nakedness, and she was aware that his body was loosening its clasp on her. He was coming apart; but in her breast she felt she could not bear him to leave her uncovered. He must cover her now for ever.
But he drew away at last, and kissed her and covered her over, and began to cover himself. She lay looking up to the boughs of the tree, unable as yet to move. He stood and fastened up his breeches, looking round. All was dense and silent, save for the awed dog that lay with its paws against its nose. He sat down again on the brushwood and took Connie’s hand in silence.
She turned and looked at him. “We came off together that time,” he said.
She did not answer.
“It’s good when it’s like that. Most folks live their lives through and they never know it,” he said, speaking rather dreamily.
She looked into his brooding face.
“Do they?” she said. “Are you glad?”
He looked back into her eyes. “Glad,” he said. “Ay, but never mind.” He did not want her to talk. And he bent over her and kissed her, and she felt, so he must kiss her for ever.
At last she sat up.
“Don’t people often come off together?” she asked with naïve curiosity.
“A good many of them never. You can see by the raw look of them.” He spoke unwittingly, regretting he had begun.
“Have you come off like that with other women?”
He looked at her amused.
“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know.”
And she knew he would never tell her anything he didn’t want to tell her. She watched his face, and the passion for him moved in her bowels. She resisted it as far as she could, for it was the loss of herself to herself.
He put on his waistcoat and his coat, and pushed a way through to the path again.
The last level rays of the sun touched the wood. “I won’t come with you,” he said; “better not.”
She looked at him wistfully before she turned. His dog was waiting so anxiously for him to go, and he seemed to have nothing whatever to say. Nothing left.
Connie went slowly home, realizing the depth of the other thing in her. Another self was alive in her, burning molten and soft in her womb and bowels, and with this self she adored him. She adored him till her knees were weak as she walked. In her womb and bowels she was flowing and alive now and vulnerable, and helpless in adoration of him as the most naïve woman.—It feels like a child, she said to herself; it feels like a child in me.—And so it did, as if her womb, that had always been shut, had opened and filled with new life, almost a burden, yet lovely.
“If I had a child!” she thought to herself; “if I had him inside me as a child!”—and her limbs turned molten at the thought, and she realized the immense difference between having a child to oneself, and having a child to a man whom one’s bowels yearned towards. The former seemed in a sense ordinary: but to have a child to a man whom one adored in one’s bowels and one’s womb, it made her feel she was very different from her old self, and as if she was sinking deep, deep to the center of all womanhood and the sleep of creation.
/> It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she feared it still, lest if she adored him too much, then she would lose herself, become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she would not at once fight against it. She knew she could fight it. She had a devil of self-will in her breast that could have fought the full soft heaving adoration of her womb and crushed it. She could even now do it, or she thought so, and she could then take up her passion with her own will.
Ah! yes, to be passionate like a Bacchante, like a Bacchanal fleeing through the woods, to call on Iacchos, the bright phallus that had no independent personality behind it, but was pure god-servant to the woman! The man, the individual, let him not dare intrude. He was but a temple-servant, the bearer and keeper of the bright phallus, her own.
So, in the flux of a new awakening, the old hard passion flamed in her for a time, and the man dwindled to a contemptible object, the mere phallus-bearer, to be torn to pieces when his service was performed. She felt the force of the Bacchae in her limbs and her body, the woman gleaming and rapid, beating down the male; but while she felt this, her heart was heavy. She did not want it, it was known and barren, birthless; the adoration was her treasure. It was so fathomless, so soft, so deep and so unknown. No, no, she would give up her hard bright female power; she was weary of it, stiffened with it; she would sink in the new bath of life, in the depths of her womb and her bowels that sang the voiceless song of adoration. It was early yet to begin to fear the man.
“I walked over by Marehay, and I had tea with Mrs. Flint,” she said to Clifford. “I wanted to see the baby. It’s so adorable, with hair like red cobwebs. Such a dear! Mr. Flint had gone to market, so she and I and the baby had tea together. Did you wonder where I was?”
“Well, I wondered, but I guessed you had dropped in somewhere to tea,” said Clifford jealously. With a sort of second sight he sensed something new in her, something to him quite incomprehensible, but he ascribed it to the baby. He thought that all that ailed Connie was that she did not have a baby; automatically bring one forth, so to speak.
“I saw you go across the park to the iron gate, my Lady,” said Mrs. Bolton; “so I thought perhaps you’d called at the Rectory.”
“I nearly did, then I turned towards Marehay instead.”
The eyes of the two women met: Mrs. Bolton’s grey and bright and searching; Connie’s blue and veiled and strangely beautiful. Mrs. Bolton was almost sure she had a lover, yet how could it be, and who could it be? Where was there a man?
“Oh, it’s so good for you, if you go out and see a bit of company sometimes,” said Mrs. Bolton. “I was saying to Sir Clifford, it would do her ladyship a world of good if she’d go out among people more.”
“Yes, I’m glad I went, and such a quaint dear cheeky baby, Clifford,” said Connie. “It’s got hair just like spider-webs, and bright orange, and the oddest, cheekiest, pale-blue china eyes. Of course, it’s a girl, or it wouldn’t be so bold, bolder than any little Sir Francis Drake.”
“You’re right, my Lady—a regular little Flint. They were always a forward, sandy-headed family,” said Mrs. Bolton.
“Wouldn’t you like to see it, Clifford? I’ve asked them to tea for you to see it.”
“Who?” he asked, looking at Connie in great uneasiness.
“Mrs. Flint and the baby, next Monday.”
“You can have them to tea in your room,” he said.
“Why, don’t you want to see the baby?” she cried.
“Oh, I’ll see it, but I don’t want to sit through a teatime with them.”
“Oh,” said Connie, looking at him with wide veiled eyes.
She did not really see him, he was somebody else.
“You can have a nice cozy tea up in your room, my Lady, and Mrs. Flint will be more comfortable than if Sir Clifford was there,” said Mrs. Bolton.
She was sure Connie had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But who was he? Who was he? Perhaps Mrs. Flint would provide a clue.
Clifford was very uneasy. He would not let her go after dinner, and she had wanted so much to be alone. She looked at him, but was curiously submissive.
“Shall we play a game, or shall I read to you, or what shall it be?” he asked uneasily.
“You read to me,” said Connie.
“What shall I read—verse or prose? Or drama?”
“Read Racine,” she said.
It had been one of his stunts in the past, to read Racine in the real French grand manner, but he was rusty now, and a little self-conscious; he really preferred the loud-speaker. But Connie was sewing, sewing a little silk frock of primrose silk, cut out of one of her dresses, for Mrs. Flint’s baby. Between coming home and dinner she had cut it out, and she sat in the soft quiescent rapture of herself, sewing, while the noise of the reading went on.
Inside herself she could feel the humming of passion, like the after-humming of deep bells.
Clifford said something to her about the Racine. She caught the sense after the words had gone.
“Yes! Yes!” she said, looking up at him. “It is splendid.”
Again he was frightened at the deep blue haze of her eyes, and of her soft stillness, sitting there. She had never been so utterly soft and still. She fascinated him helplessly, as if some perfume about her intoxicated him. So he went on helplessly with his reading, and the throaty sound of the French was like the wind in the chimneys to her. Of the Racine she heard not one syllable.
She was gone in her own soft rapture, like a forest soughing with the dim, glad moan of spring, moving into bud. She could feel in the same world with her the man, the nameless man, moving on beautiful feet, beautiful in the phallic mystery. And in herself, in all her veins, she felt him and his child. His child was in all her veins, like a twilight.
“For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor feet, nor golden Treasure of hair…”
She was like a forest, like the dark interlacing of the oak-wood, humming inaudibly with myriad unfolding buds. Meanwhile the birds of desire were asleep in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body.
But Clifford’s voice went on, clapping and gurgling with unusual sounds. How extraordinary it was! How extraordinary he was, bent there over the book, queer and rapacious and civilized, with broad shoulders and no real legs! What a strange creature, with the sharp, cold, inflexible will of some bird, and no warmth, no warmth at all! One of those creatures of the afterwards, that have no soul, but an extra-alert will, cold will. She shuddered a little, afraid of him. But then, the soft warm flame of life was stronger than he, and the real things were hidden from him.
The reading finished. She was startled. She looked up, and was more startled still to see Clifford watching her with pale, uncanny eyes, like hate.
“Thank you so much! You do read Racine beautifully!” she said softly.
“Almost as beautifully as you listen to him,” he said cruelly.
“What are you making?” he asked.
“I’m making a child’s dress, for Mrs. Flint’s baby.”
He turned away. A child! A child! That was all her obsession.
“After all,” he said, in a declamatory voice, “one gets all one wants Out of Racine. Emotions that are ordered and given shape are more important than disorderly emotions.”
She watched him with wide, vague, veiled eyes.
“Yes, I’m sure they are,” she said.
“The modern world has only vulgarized emotion by letting it loose. What we need is classic control.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, thinking of him listening with vacant face to the emotional idiocy of the radio. “People pretend to have emotions, and they really feel nothing. I suppose that is being romantic.”
“Exactly!” he said.
As a matter of fact, he was tired. This evening had tired him. He would rather have been with hi
s technical books, or his pit-manager, or listening-in to the radio.
Mrs. Bolton came in with two glasses of malted milk: for Clifford, to make him sleep, and for Connie, to fatten her again. It was a regular night-cap she had introduced.
Connie was glad to go, when she had drunk her glass, and thankful she needn’t help Clifford to bed. She took his glass and put it on the tray, then took the tray, to leave it outside.
“Good night, Clifford! Do sleep well! The Racine gets into one like a dream. Good night!”
She had drifted to the door. She was going without kissing him good night. He watched her with sharp, cold eyes. So! She did not even kiss him good night, after he had spent an evening reading to her. Such depths of callousness in her! Even if the kiss was but a formality, it was on such formalities that life depends. She was a bolshevik, really. Her instincts were bolshevistic. He gazed coldly and angrily at the door whence she had gone. Anger!
And again the dread of the night came on him. He was a network of nerves, and when he was not braced up to work, and so full of energy: or when he was not listening-in, and so utterly neuter: then he was haunted by anxiety and a sense of dangerous impending void. He was afraid. And Connie could keep the fear off him, if she would. But it was obvious she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t. She was callous, cold and callous to all that he did for her. He gave up his life for her, and she was callous to him. She only wanted her own way. “The lady loves her will.”
Now it was a baby she was obsessed by. Just so that it should be her own, all her own, and not his!
Clifford was so healthy, considering. He looked so well and ruddy in the face, his shoulders were broad and strong, his chest deep, he had put on flesh. And yet, at the same time, he was afraid of death. A terrible hollow seemed to menace him somewhere, somehow, a void, and into this void his energy would collapse. Energyless, he felt at times he was dead, really dead.
So his rather prominent pale eyes had a queer look, furtive, and yet a little cruel, so cold: and at the same time, almost impudent. It was a very odd look, this look of impudence: as if he were triumphing over life in spite of life. “Who knoweth the mysteries of the will—for it can triumph even against the angels—”