《Lady Chatterley's Lover》　CHAPTER15
　　　　by D·H·Lawrence

There was a letter from Hilda on the breakfast-tray. `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.'

So! She was being pushed round on the chess-board again.

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 alive there must be more industry, like a madness.

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 inspirations were the inspirations of insanity.

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 inside him like a kind of dream.

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 twenty-three shillings to Sir Clifford
last night.'

`And did he take the money from you?' asked Connie aghast.

`Why of course, my Lady! Debt of honour!'

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 was really
going deader.

She told him at length she was leaving on the seventeenth.

`Seventeenth!' he said. `And when will you be back?'

`By the twentieth of July at the latest.'

`Yes! the twentieth of July.'

Strangely and blankly he looked at her, with the vagueness of a child,
but with the queer blank cunning of an old man.

`You won't let me down, now, will you?' he said.

`How?'

`While you're away, I mean, you're sure to come back?'

`I'm as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come back.'

`Yes! Well! Twentieth of July!'

He looked at her so strangely.

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 himself should be ripe.

She sat and talked to the keeper of her going abroad.

`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 we?'

She was quite thrilled by her plan.

`You've never been to the Colonies, have you?' he asked her.

`No! Have you?'

`I've been in India, and South Africa, and Egypt.'

`Why shouldn't we go to South Africa?'

`We might!' he said slowly.

`Or don't you want to?' she asked.

`I don't care. I don't much care what I do.'

`Doesn't it make you happy? Why not? We shan't be poor. I have about
six hundred a year, I wrote and asked. It's not much, but it's enough,
isn't it?'

`It's riches to me.'

`Oh, how lovely it will be!'

`But I ought to get divorced, and so ought you, unless we're going
to have complications.'

There was plenty to think about.

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?'

`Happy? All right. I liked my Colonel.'

`Did you love him?'

`Yes! I loved him.'

`And did he love you?'

`Yes! In a way, he loved me.'

`Tell me about him.'

`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 him run my life. And I never regret it.'

`And did you mind very much when he died?'

`I was as near death myself. But when I came to, I knew another part
of me was finished. But then I had always known it would finish in death.
All things do, as far as that goes.'

She sat and ruminated. The thunder crashed outside. It was like being
in a little ark in the Flood.

`You seem to have such a lot behind you,' she said.

`Do I? It seems to me I've died once or twice already. Yet here I am,
pegging on, and in for more trouble.'

She was thinking hard, yet listening to the storm.

`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
boot-laces aren't correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right.
That's what finishes me up. Kow-tow, kow-tow, arse-licking 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---'

Connie laughed. The rain was rushing down.

`He hated them!'

`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 half-balled and narrow-gutted. It's the fate of mankind, to go that
way.'

`The common people too, the working people?'

`All the lot. Their spunk is gone dead. Motor-cars 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 machine-fucking!---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, listening to the storm over the
wood. It made him feel so alone.

`But won't it ever come to an end?' she said.

`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.'

`You mean kill one another?'

`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 further away.

`How nice!' she said.

`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" title="ad.狂暴地，疯狂地">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 ta-tah! 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 savage wild pit-ponies stamp on Tevershall pit-bank! te
deum laudamus!'

Connie laughed, but not very happily.

`Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshevists,' she said.
`You ought to be pleased that they hurry on towards the end.'

`So I am. I don't stop 'em. Because I couldn't if I would.'

`Then why are you so bitter?'

`I'm not! If my cock gives its last crow, I don't mind.'

`But if you have a child?' she said.

He dropped his head.

`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 her hand on his.

`I'm pleased for you to be pleased,' he said. `But for me it seems
a ghastlytreachery 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 wants, we want but little.
Let's not live for money---'

She softly rubbed her cheek on his belly, and gathered his balls in
her hand. The penis stirred softly, with strange life, but did not rise
up. The rain beat bruisingly outside.

`Let's live for summat else. Let's not live ter make money, neither
for us-selves nor for anybody else. Now we're forced to. We're forced
to make a bit for us-selves, 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 world
is overcrowded.

`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 yourselves!'

There fell a complete silence. Connie was half listening, and threading
in the hair at the root of his belly a few forget-me-nots 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 love-hair, is like a
little brush of bright red-gold mistletoe. It's the loveliest of all!'

He looked down and saw the milky bits of forget-me-nots in the hair
on his groin.

`Ay! That's where to put forget-me-nots, in the man-hair, or the maiden-hair.
But don't you care about the future?'

She looked up at him.

`Oh, I do, terribly!' she said.

`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 labour-insects,
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 had plunged him back
into this mood. And she triumphed a little.

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 ivory-coloured 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 belly-forward through
the rain, then stooping again so that only the full loins and buttocks
were offered in a kind of homage towards him, repeating a wild obeisance.

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 rounded buttocks twinkling:
a wonderful cowering female nakedness in flight.

She was nearly at the wide riding when he came up and flung his naked
arm round her soft, naked-wet 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,
he took her, short and sharp and finished, like an animal.

He got up in an instant, wiping the rain from his eyes.

`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
forget-me-nots and campion and bluebells, running a few steps and watching
him fleeing away from her.

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. Wide-eyed and breathless,
with a small wet head and full, trickling, na?ve haunches, she looked
another creature.

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 wet hair.

`We're drying ourselves together on the same towel, we shall quarrel!'
he said.

She looked up for a moment, her hair all odds and ends.

`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 busily rubbed his.

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 skin. But now the sheet was all wet.

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 down-slope to the heavy roundness of her buttocks! And in
between, folded in the secret warmth, the secret entrances!

He stroked her tail with his hand, long and subtly taking in the curves
and the globe-fullness.

`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 button-arsed lasses as should be lads, are ter!
Tha's got a real soft sloping bottom on thee, as a man loves in 'is
guts. It's a bottom as could hold the world up, it is!'

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.