《Lady Chatterley's Lover》　CHAPTER16
　　　　by D·H·Lawrence

Connie arrived home to an ordeal of cross-questioning. Clifford had
been out at tea-time, 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 thunder-rain as if it dare the end of the world. He got more
and more worked up.

Mrs Bolton tried to soothe him.

`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 gone now more than two hours.
When did she go out?'

`A little while before you came in.'

`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 keeping her.'

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 dinner-gong had rung.

`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.'

So, after some persuasion, Clifford allowed her to go.

And so Connie had come upon her in the drive, alone and palely loitering.

`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 agog.

She spoke nervously. She could still see on Connie's face the smoothness
and the half-dream of passion, and she could feel the irritation against
herself.

`Quite!' said Connie. And she could say no more.

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
plumper.

`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 Ladyship.'

Connie was very angry that Mrs Bolton knew her secret: for certainly
she knew it.

Suddenly Constance stood still on the path.

`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 hut. I didn't know where it
was, really.'

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.

`Oh well!' she said. `I fit is so it is so. I don't mind!'

`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, over-wrought fee and prominent eyes.

`I must say, I don't think you need send the servants after me,' she
burst out.

`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 that-bloody
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 been? What in the name of hell have you been doing?'

`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 the storm, and made myself
a little fire, and was happy.'

She spoke now easily. After all, why work him up any more!

He looked at her suspiciously.

And look at your hair!' he said; `look at yourself!'

`Yes!' she replied calmly. `I ran out in the rain with no clothes on.'

He stared at her speechless.

`You must be mad!' he said.

`Why? To like a shower bath from the rain?'

`And how did you dry yourself?'

`On an old towel and at the fire.'

He still stared at her in a dumbfounded way.

`And supposing anybody came,' he said.

`Who would come?'

`Who? Why, anybody! And Mellors. Does he come? He must come in the
evenings.'

`Yes, he came later, when it had cleared up, to feed the pheasants
with corn.'

She spoke with amazing nonchalance. Mrs Bolton, who was listening in
the next room, heard in sheer admiration. To think a woman could carry
it off so naturally!

`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 under-consciousness
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 and handsome and smooth: love smooth.

`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 upstairs to change.

That evening, Clifford wanted to be nice to her. He was reading one
of the latest scientific-religious 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 physicallywasting, on the other it is spiritually ascending."'

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.'

`Spiritually blown out, so to speak!'

`No, but seriously, without joking: do you think there is anything
in it?'

She looked at him again.

`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 bigger, if any, than one of our orange pippins. Do you think
it was?'

`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
by a ripple barely to be distinguished from nonentity."'

She listened with a glisten of amusement. All sorts of improper things
suggested themselves. But she only said:

`What silly hocus-pocus! As if his little conceitedconsciousness 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 physical failure. Priggish little impertinence!'

`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!'

Connie sat listening contemptuously.

`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,
it's idiotic!'

`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 physicallywasting and spiritually ascending.'

`Do you? Then let it ascend, so long as it leaves me safely and solidly
physically here below.'

`Do you like your physique?' he asked.

`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 woman doesn't take a supreme
pleasure in the life of the mind.'

`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 wind-machine, have only got minds tacked on
to their physical corpses.'

He looked at her in wonder.

`The life of the body,' he said, `is just the life of the animals.'

`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
in the lovely universe, the life of the human body.'

`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 very much the contrary?'

`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.

`Rather horrid to show it so plainly.'

`Then I'll hide it.'

`Oh, don't trouble! You almost communicate a thrill to me. I almost
feel that it is I who am going off.'

`Well, why don't you come?'

`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 Good-bye-to-all!---But
every parting means a meeting elsewhere. And every meeting is a new
bondage.'

`I'm not going to enter any new bondages.'

`Don't boast, while the gods are listening,' he said.

She pulled up short.

`No! I won't boast!' she said.

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 one.

Mrs Bolton helped Connie to pack.

`It will be so good for your Ladyship to have a change.'

`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 than he used to be?'

`Oh much! You do wonders with him.'

`Do I though! But men are all alike: just babies, and you have to flatter
them and wheedle them and let them think they're having their own way.
Don't you find it so, my Lady?'

`I'm afraid I haven't much experience.'

Connie paused in her occupation.

`Even your husband, did you have to manage him, and wheedle him like
a baby?' she asked, looking at the other woman.

Mrs Bolton paused too.

`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 say that. But he generally
gave in to me.'

`He was never the lord and master thing?'

`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, and then I gave in: though it cost me a good bit, sometimes.'

`And what if you had held out against 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 on a thing, and in the wrong. So I suppose it cuts both ways.'

`And that's how you are with all your patients?' asked Connie.

`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 really care again.'

These words frightened Connie.

`Do you think one can only care once?' she asked.

`Or never. Most women never care, never begin to. They don't know what
it means. Nor men either. But when I see a woman as cares, my heart
stands still for her.'

`And do you think men easily take offence?'

`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 go-by, 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 two-seater
car, with her suit-case 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 going to bring up `properly', whatever that may mean.

Connie was only allowed a suit-case, 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 train. He had just come down from Scotland.

So, like a demure arcadian field-marshal, Hilda arranged the material
part of the journey. She and Connie sat in the upstairs room, chatting.

`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.

`Where, near here?' she asked softly.

`Well, you know I love somebody, don't you?'

`I gathered there was something.'

`Well he lives near here, and I want to spend this last night with
him must! I've promised.'

Connie became insistent.

Hilda bent her Minerva-like head in silence. Then she looked up.

`Do you want to tell me who he is?' she said.

`He's our game-keeper,' 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, rich-coloured 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
unmanageable.

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.

`You'll regret it,' she said,

`I shan't,' cried Connie, flushed red. `He's quite the exception. I
really love him. He's lovely as a lover.'

Hilda still pondered.

`You'll get over him quite soon,' she said, `and live to be ashamed
of yourself because of him.'

`I shan't! I hope I'm going to have a child of his.'

`Connie!' said Hilda, hard as a hammer-stroke, and pale with anger.

`I shall if I possibly can. I should be fearfully proud if I had a
child by him.'

It was no use talking to her. Hilda pondered.

`And doesn't Clifford suspect?' she said.

`Oh no! Why should he?'

`I've no doubt you've given him plenty of occasion for suspicion,'
said Hilda.

`Not it all.'

`And tonight's business seems quite gratuitous folly. Where does the
man live?'

`In the cottage at the other end of the wood.'

`Is he a bachelor?'

`No! His wife left him.'

`How old?'

`I don't know. Older than me.'

Hilda became more angry at every reply, angry as her mother used to
be, in a kind of paroxysm. But still she hid it.

`I would give up tonight's escapade if I were you,' she advised calmly.

`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 lane-end after dark, and to fetch her from
the lane-end 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.

Connie flung an emerald-green shawl over her window-sill.

On the strength of her anger, Hilda warmed toward Clifford.

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 less to put up with than many women if she did but know it.

And Clifford decided that Hilda, after all, was a decidedly intelligent
woman, and would make a man a first-rate 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 panting a little.

`Good-bye, Connie girl! Come back to me safely.'

`Good-bye, Clifford! Yes, I shan't be long.' Connie was almost tender.

`Good-bye, Hilda! You will keep an eye on her, won't you?'

`I'll even keep two!' said Hilda. `She shan't go very far astray.'

`It's a promise!'

`Good-bye, Mrs Bolton! I know you'll look after Sir Clifford nobly.'

`I'll do what I can, your Ladyship.'

`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 house-chair. 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, which was in a cutting
below them. Then they crossed the cutting on a bridge.

`That's the lane to the cottage!' said Connie.

Hilda glanced at it impatiently.

`It's a frightful pity we can't go straight off!' she said. We could
have been in Pall Mall by nine o'clock.'

`I'm sorry for your sake,' said Connie, from behind her goggles.

They were soon at Mansfield, that once-romantic, now utterly disheartening
colliery town. Hilda stopped at the hotel named in the motor-car 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.

`He! He! What name do you call him by? You only say he,' said Hilda.

`I've never called him by any name: nor he me: which is curious, when
you come to think of it. Unless we say Lady Jane and John Thomas. But
his name is Oliver Mellors.'

`And how would you like to be Mrs Oliver Mellors, instead of Lady Chatterley?'

`I'd love it.'

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 relent a little.

`But you'll be through with him in awhile,' she said, `and then you'll
be ashamed of having been connected with him. One can't mix up with
the working people.'

`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 slipped a few things into a little
silk bag, and combed her hair once more.

`After all, Hilda,' she said, `love can be wonderful: when you feel
you live, and are in the very middle of creation.' It was almost like
bragging on her part.

`I suppose every mosquito feels the same,' said Hilda. `Do you think
it does? How nice for it!'

The evening was wonderfully clear and long-lingering, even in the small
town. It would be half-light all night. With a face like a mask, from
resentment, Hilda started her car again, and the two sped back on their
traces, taking the other road, through Bolsover.

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 head-lights on, by the time they passed Crosshill, and
the small lit-up train that chuffed past in the cutting made it seem
like real night. Hilda had calculated the turn into the lane at the
bridge-end. She slowed up rather suddenly and swerved off the road,
the lights glaring white into the grassy, overgrown lane. Connie looked
out. She saw a shadowy figure, and she opened the door.

`Here we are!' she said softly.

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 wych-elm tree, crushing the grass and bracken. Then all the
lights went out. Connie stepped down. The man stood under the trees.

`Did you wait long?' Connie asked.

`Not so very,' he replied.