《Lady Chatterley's Lover》　CHAPTER19
　　　　by D·H·Lawrence

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.
So do forgive me and get rid of me.



Clifford was not inwardly" title="ad.内向；独自地">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 does fall.

Clifford was like a hysterical child. He gave Mrs Bolton a terrible
shock, sitting up in bed ghastly and blank.

`Why, Sir Clifford, whatever's the matter?'

No answer! She was terrified lest he had had a stroke. She hurried
and felt his face, took his pulse.

`Is there a pain? Do try and tell me where it hurts you. Do tell me!'

No answer!

`Oh dear, oh dear! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr Carrington,
and Dr Lecky may as well run round straight away.'

She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:

`No!'

She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank, and like
the face of an idiot.

`Do you mean you'd rather I didn't fetch the doctor?'

`Yes! I don't want him,' came the sepulchral voice.

`Oh, but Sir Clifford, you're ill, and I daren't take the responsibility.
I must send for the doctor, or I shall be blamed.'

A pause: then the hollow voice said:

`I'm not ill. My wife isn't coming back.'---It was as if an image spoke.

`Not coming back? you mean her ladyship?' Mrs Bolton moved a little
nearer to the bed. `Oh, don't you believe it. You can trust her ladyship
to come back.'

The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the
counterpane.

`Read it!' said the sepulchral voice.

`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 Clifford. You can tell me what
she says, if you wish.'

`Read it!' repeated the voice.

`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
learning something about that very unpleasant disease.

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" title="ad.内向；独自地">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 shock he's like a mummy tangled
in its own bandages. Look at him!'

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 would only squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more
dislocated.

The only thing was to release his self-pity. 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 enough, for she had had something
to weep for.

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 leaned towards him.

`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 yourself an injury!'

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 dusky-blond hair and said: `There! There! There!
There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!'

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 pale-blue
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 come-down! So shameful! And it was
so upsetting as well.

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 in mockery.

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 madonna-worship. 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 perversity, of being a child when he was a man.

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 child-man under
her will and her stroke entirely.

The curious thing was that when this child-man, 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 child-man was now a real business-man; when it was a question
of affairs, he was an absolute he-man, 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, business-clever. In
business he was quite inhuman.

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 forward. She wanted too much for herself.'

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 bounds. The merest tramp was better
than he.

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
to Wragby, faithfully.

`But is it any use?' said Mrs Bolton. `Can't you let her go, and be
rid of her?'

`No! She said she was coming back, and she's got to come.'

Mrs Bolton opposed him no more. She knew what she was dealing with.

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 showed this letter to Mellors.

`He wants to begin his revenge on you,' he said, handing the letter
back.

Connie was silent. She was somewhat surprised to find that she was
afraid of Clifford. She was afraid to go near him. She was afraid of
him as if he were evil and dangerous.

`What shall I do?' she said.

`Nothing, if you don't want to do anything.'

She replied, trying to put Clifford off. He answered:

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 illegitimacy.


After a time of worry and harassment, she decided to go to Wragby. Hilda
would go with her. She wrote this to Clifford. He replied:

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 home-coming we hoped for, is
it!' she said.

`Isn't it?' said Connie.

So this woman knew! How much did the rest of the servants know or suspect?

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

`I can't stay long here,' she whispered to Hilda, terrified.

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

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

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

`Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever.'

`Mrs Bolton knows.'

He changed colour.

`Mrs Bolton is not exactly one of the servants,' he said.

`Oh, I don't mind.'

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 looked down at her hands.

`I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?' he
said at last.

`I can't help it,' she murmured.

`But if you can't, who can?'

`I suppose nobody.'

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 derangement of his personality?

`And for what do you want to go back on everything?' he insisted.

`Love!' she said. It was best to be hackneyed.

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

`One changes,' she said.

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

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

`And why should I divorce you?'

`Because I don't want to live here any more. And you really don't want
me.'

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

After a time of silence she said:

`I can't help it. I've got to go. I expect I shall have a child.'

He too was silent for a time.

`And is it for the child's sake you must go?' he asked at length.

She nodded.

`And why? Is Duncan Forbes so keen on his spawn?'

`Surely keener than you would be,' she said.

`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.'

There was a pause.

`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 cant.'

`But you see, I do.'

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

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