《Lady Chatterley's Lover》　CHAPTER10
　　　　by D·H·Lawrence

Connie was a good deal alone now, fewer people came to Wragby. Clifford
no longer wanted them. He had turned against even the cronies. He was
queer. He preferred the radio, which he had installed at some expense,
with a good deal of success at last. He could sometimes get Madrid or
Frankfurt, even there in the uneasy Midlands.

And he would sit alone for hours listening to the loudspeaker bellowing
forth. It amazed and stunned Connie. But there he would sit, with a
blank entranced expression on his face, like a person losing his mind,
and listen, or seem to listen, to the unspeakable thing.

Was he really listening? Or was it a sort of soporific he took, whilst
something else worked on underneath in him? Connie did now know. She
fled up to her room, or out of doors to the wood. A kind of terror filled
her sometimes, a terror of the incipient insanity of the whole civilized
species.

But now that Clifford was drifting off to this other weirdness of industrial
activity, becoming almost a creature, with a hard, efficient shell of
an exterior and a pulpy interior, one of the amazing crabs and lobsters
of the modern, industrial and financial world, invertebrates of the
crustacean order, with shells of steel, like machines, and inner bodies
of soft pulp, Connie herself was really completely stranded.

She was not even free, for Clifford must have her there. He seemed
to have a nervous terror that she should leave him. The curious pulpy
part of him, the emotional and humanly-individual part, depended on
her with terror, like a child, almost like an idiot. She must be there,
there at Wragby, a Lady Chatterley, his wife. Otherwise he would be
lost like an idiot on a moor.

This amazing dependence Connie realized with a sort of horror. She
heard him with his pit managers, with the members of his Board, with
young scientists, and she was amazed at his shrewdinsight into things,
his power, his uncanny material power over what is called practical
men. He had become a practical man himself and an amazingly astute and
powerful one, a master. Connie attributed it to Mrs Bolton's influence
upon him, just at the crisis in his life.

But this astute and practical man was almost an idiot when left alone
to his own emotional life. He worshipped Connie. She was his wife, a
higher being, and he worshipped her with a queer, craven idolatry, like
a savage, a worship based on enormous fear, and even hate of the power
of the idol, the dread idol. All he wanted was for Connie to swear,
to swear not to leave him, not to give him away.

`Clifford,' she said to him---but this was after she had the key to
the hut---`Would you really like me to have a child one day?'

He looked at her with a furtive apprehension in his rather prominent
pale eyes.

`I shouldn't mind, if it made no difference between us,' he said.

`No difference to what?' she asked.

`To you and me; to our love for one another. If it's going to affect
that, then I'm all against it. Why, I might even one day have a child
of my own!'

She looked at him in amazement.

`I mean, it might come back to me one of these days.'

She still stared in amazement, and he was uncomfortable.

`So you would not like it if I had a child?' she said.

`I tell you,' he replied quickly, like a cornered dog, `I am quite
willing, provided it doesn't touch your love for me. If it would touch
that, I am dead against it.'

Connie could only be silent in cold fear and contempt. Such talk was
really the gabbling of an idiot. He no longer knew what he was talking
about.

`Oh, it wouldn't make any difference to my feeling for you,' she said,
with a certain sarcasm.

`There!' he said. `That is the point! In that case I don't mind in
the least. I mean it would be awfully nice to have a child running about
the house, and feel one was building up a future for it. I should have
something to strive for then, and I should know it was your child, shouldn't
I, dear? And it would seem just the same as my own. Because it is you
who count in these matters. You know that, don't you, dear? I don't
enter, I am a cypher. You are the great I-am! as far as life goes. You
know that, don't you? I mean, as far as I am concerned. I mean, but
for you I am absolutely nothing. I live for your sake and your future.
I am nothing to myself'

Connie heard it all with deepening dismay and repulsion. It was one
of the ghastly half-truths that poison human existence. What man in
his senses would say such things to a woman! But men aren't in their
senses. What man with a spark of honour would put this ghastly burden
of life-responsibility upon a woman, and leave her there, in the void?

Moreover, in half an hour's time, Connie heard Clifford talking to
Mrs Bolton, in a hot, impulsive voice, revealing himself in a sort of
passionless passion to the woman, as if she were half mistress, half
foster-mother to him. And Mrs Bolton was carefully dressing him in evening
clothes, for there were important business guests in the house.

Connie really sometimes felt she would die at this time. She felt she
was being crushed to death by weird lies, and by the amazing cruelty
of idiocy. Clifford's strange business efficiency in a way over-awed
her, and his declaration of private worship put her into a panic. There
was nothing between them. She never even touched him nowadays, and he
never touched her. He never even took her hand and held it kindly. No,
and because they were so utterly out of touch, he tortured her with
his declaration of idolatry. It was the cruelty of utter impotence.
And she felt her reason would give way, or she would die.

She fled as much as possible to the wood. One afternoon, as she sat
brooding, watching the water bubbling coldly in John's Well, the keeper
had strode up to her.

`I got you a key made, my Lady!' he said, saluting, and he offered
her the key.

`Thank you so much!' she said, startled.

`The hut's not very tidy, if you don't mind,' he said. `I cleared it
what I could.'

`But I didn't want you to trouble!' she said.

`Oh, it wasn't any trouble. I am setting the hens in about a week.
But they won't be scared of you. I s'll have to see to them morning
and night, but I shan't bother you any more than I can help.'

`But you wouldn't bother me,' she pleaded. `I'd rather not go to the
hut at all, if I am going to be in the way.'

He looked at her with his keen blue eyes. He seemed kindly, but distant.
But at least he was sane, and wholesome, if even he looked thin and
ill. A cough troubled him.

`You have a cough,' she said.

`Nothing---a cold! The last pneumonia left me with a cough, but it's
nothing.'

He kept distant from her, and would not come any nearer.

She went fairly often to the hut, in the morning or in the afternoon,
but he was never there. No doubt he avoided her on purpose. He wanted
to keep his own privacy.

He had made the hut tidy, put the little table and chair near the fireplace,
left a little pile of kindling and small logs, and put the tools and
traps away as far as possible, effacing himself. Outside, by the clearing,
he had built a low little roof of boughs and straw, a shelter for the
birds, and under it stood the live coops. And, one day when she came,
she found two brown hens sitting alert and fierce in the coops, sitting
on pheasants' eggs, and fluffed out so proud and deep in all the heat
of the pondering female blood. This almost broke Connie's heart. She,
herself was so forlorn and unused, not a female at all, just a mere
thing of terrors.

Then all the live coops were occupied by hens, three brown and a grey
and a black. All alike, they clustered themselves down on the eggs in
the soft nestling ponderosity of the female urge, the female nature,
fluffing out their feathers. And with brilliant eyes they watched Connie,
as she crouched before them, and they gave short sharp clucks of anger
and alarm, but chiefly of female anger at being approached.

Connie found corn in the corn-bin in the hut. She offered it to the
hens in her hand. They would not eat it. Only one hen pecked at her
hand with a fierce little jab, so Connie was frightened. But she was
pining to give them something, the brooding mothers who neither fed
themselves nor drank. She brought water in a little tin, and was delighted
when one of the hens drank.

Now she came every day to the hens, they were the only things in the
world that warmed her heart. Clifford's protestations made her go cold
from head to foot. Mrs Bolton's voice made her go cold, and the sound
of the business men who came. An occasional letter from Michaelis affected
her with the same sense of chill. She felt she would surely die if it
lasted much longer.

Yet it was spring, and the bluebells were coming in the wood, and the
leaf-buds on the hazels were opening like the spatter of green rain.
How terrible it was that it should be spring, and everything cold-hearted,
cold-hearted. Only the hens, fluffed so wonderfully on the eggs, were
warm with their hot, brooding female bodies! Connie felt herself living
on the brink of fainting all the time.

Then, one day, a lovely sunny day with great tufts of primroses under
the hazels, and many violets dotting the paths, she came in the afternoon
to the coops and there was one tiny, tiny perky chicken tinily prancing
round in front of a coop, and the mother hen clucking in terror. The
slim little chick was greyish brown with dark markings, and it was the
most alive little spark of a creature in seven kingdoms at that moment.
Connie crouched to watch in a sort of ecstasy. Life, life! pure, sparky,
fearless new life! New life! So tiny and so utterly without fear! Even
when it scampered a little, scrambling into the coop again, and disappeared
under the hen's feathers in answer to the mother hen's wild alarm-cries,
it was not really frightened, it took it as a game, the game of living.
For in a moment a tiny sharp head was poking through the gold-brown
feathers of the hen, and eyeing the Cosmos.

Connie was fascinated. And at the same time, never had she felt so
acutely the agony of her own female forlornness. It was becoming unbearable.

She had only one desire now, to go to the clearing in the wood. The
rest was a kind of painful dream. But sometimes she was kept all day
at Wragby, by her duties as hostess. And then she felt as if she too
were going blank, just blank and insane.

One evening, guests or no guests, she escaped after tea. It was late,
and she fled across the park like one who fears to be called back. The
sun was setting rosy as she entered the wood, but she pressed on among
the flowers. The light would last long overhead.

She arrived at the clearing flushed and semi-conscious. The keeper
was there, in his shirt-sleeves, just closing up the coops for the night,
so the little occupants would be safe. But still one little trio was
pattering about on tiny feet, alert drab mites, under the straw shelter,
refusing to be called in by the anxious mother.

`I had to come and see the chickens!' she said, panting, glancing shyly
at the keeper, almost unaware of him. `Are there any more?'

`Thurty-six so far!' he said. `Not bad!'

He too took a curious pleasure in watching the young things come out.

Connie crouched in front of the last coop. The three chicks had run
in. But still their cheeky heads came poking sharply through the yellow
feathers, then withdrawing, then only one beady little head eyeing forth
from the vast mother-body.

`I'd love to touch them,' she said, putting her lingers gingerly through
the bars of the coop. But the mother-hen pecked at her hand fiercely,
and Connie drew back startled and frightened.

`How she pecks at me! She hates me!' she said in a wondering voice.
`But I wouldn't hurt them!'

The man standing above her laughed, and crouched down beside her, knees
apart, and put his hand with quiet confidence slowly into the coop.
The old hen pecked at him, but not so savagely. And slowly, softly,
with sure gentle lingers, he felt among the old bird's feathers and
drew out a faintly-peeping chick in his closed hand.

`There!' he said, holding out his hand to her. She took the little
drab thing between her hands, and there it stood, on its impossible
little stalks of legs, its atom of balancing life trembling through
its almost weightless feet into Connie's hands. But it lifted its handsome,
clean-shaped little head boldly, and looked sharply round, and gave
a little `peep'. `So adorable! So cheeky!' she said softly.

The keeper, squatting beside her, was also watching with an amused
face the bold little bird in her hands. Suddenly he saw a tear fall
on to her wrist.

And he stood up, and stood away, moving to the other coop. For suddenly
he was aware of the old flame shooting and leaping up in his loins,
that he had hoped was quiescent for ever. He fought against it, turning
his back to her. But it leapt, and leapt downwards, circling in his
knees.

He turned again to look at her. She was kneeling and holding her two
hands slowly forward, blindly, so that the chicken should run in to
the mother-hen again. And there was something so mute and forlorn in
her, compassion flamed in his bowels for her.

Without knowing, he came quickly towards her and crouched beside her
again, taking the chick from her hands, because she was afraid of the
hen, and putting it back in the coop. At the back of his loins the lire
suddenly darted stronger.

He glanced apprehensively at her. Her face was averted, and she was
crying blindly, in all the anguish of her generation's forlornness.
His heart melted suddenly, like a drop of fire, and he put out his hand
and laid his lingers on her knee.

`You shouldn't cry,' he said softly.

But then she put her hands over her face and felt that really her heart
was broken and nothing mattered any more.

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and softly, gently, it began to travel
down the curve of her back, blindly, with a blind stroking motion, to
the curve of her crouching loins. And there his hand softly, softly,
stroked the curve of her flank, in the blind instinctivecaress.

She had found her scrap of handkerchief and was blindlytrying to dry
her face.

`Shall you come to the hut?' he said, in a quiet, neutral voice.

And closing his hand softly on her upper arm, he drew her up and led
her slowly to the hut, not letting go of her till she was inside. Then
he cleared aside the chair and table, and took a brown, soldier's blanket
from the tool chest, spreading it slowly. She glanced at his face, as
she stood motionless.

His face was pale and without expression, like that of a man submitting
to fate.

`You lie there,' he said softly, and he shut the door, so that it was
dark, quite dark.

With a queer obedience, she lay down on the blanket. Then she felt
the soft, groping, helplesslydesirous hand touching her body, feeling
for her face. The hand stroked her face softly, softly, with infinite
soothing and assurance, and at last there was the soft touch of a kiss
on her cheek.

She lay quite still, in a sort of sleep, in a sort of dream. Then she
quivered as she felt his hand groping softly, yet with queer thwarted
clumsiness, among her `clothing. Yet the hand knew, too, how to unclothe
her where it wanted. He drew down the thin silk sheath, slowly, carefully,
right down and over her feet. Then with a quiver of exquisite pleasure
he touched the warm soft body, and touched her navel for a moment in
a kiss. And he had to come in to her at once, to enter the peace on
earth of her soft, quiescent body. It was the moment of pure peace for
him, the entry into the body of the woman.

She lay still, in a kind of sleep, always in a kind of sleep. The activity,
the orgasm was his, all his; she could strive for herself no more. Even
the tightness of his arms round her, even the intense movement of his
body, and the springing of his seed in her, was a kind of sleep, from
which she did not begin to rouse till he had finished and lay softly
panting against her breast.

Then she wondered, just dimly wondered, why? Why was this necessary?
Why had it lifted a great cloud from her and given her peace? Was it
real? Was it real?

Her tormented modern-woman's brain still had no rest. Was it real?
And she knew, if she gave herself to the man, it was real. But if she
kept herself for herself it was nothing. She was old; millions of years
old, she felt. And at last, she could bear the burden of herself no
more. She was to be had for the taking. To be had for the taking.

The man lay in a mysterious stillness. What was he feeling? What was
he thinking? She did not know. He was a strange man to her, she did
not know him. She must only wait, for she did not dare to break his
mysterious stillness. He lay there with his arms round her, his body
on hers, his wet body touching hers, so close. And completely unknown.
Yet not unpeaceful. His very stillness was peaceful.

She knew that, when at last he roused and drew away from her. It was
like an abandonment. He drew her dress in the darkness down over her
knees and stood a few moments, apparently adjusting his own clothing.
Then he quietly opened the door and went out.

She saw a very brilliant little moon shining above the afterglow over
the oaks. Quickly she got up and arranged herself she was tidy. Then
she went to the door of the hut.

All the lower wood was in shadow, almost darkness. Yet the sky overhead
was crystal. But it shed hardly any light. He came through the lower
shadow towards her, his face lifted like a pale blotch.

`Shall we go then?' he said.

`Where?'

`I'll go with you to the gate.'

He arranged things his own way. He locked the door of the hut and came
after her.

`You aren't sorry, are you?' he asked, as he went at her side.

`No! No! Are you?' she said.

`For that! No!' he said. Then after a while he added: `But there's
the rest of things.'

`What rest of things?' she said.

`Sir Clifford. Other folks. All the complications.'

`Why complications?' she said, disappointed.

`It's always so. For you as well as for me. There's always complications.'
He walked on steadily in the dark.

`And are you sorry?' she said.

`In a way!' he replied, looking up at the sky. `I thought I'd done
with it all. Now I've begun again.'

`Begun what?'

`Life.'

`Life!' she re-echoed, with a queer thrill.

`It's life,' he said. `There's no keeping clear. And if you do keep
clear you might almost as well die. So if I've got to be broken open
again, I have.'

She did not quite see it that way, but still `It's just love,' she
said cheerfully.

`Whatever that may be,' he replied.

They went on through the darkening wood in silence, till they were
almost at the gate.

`But you don't hate me, do you?' she said wistfully.

`Nay, nay,' he replied. And suddenly he held her fast against his breast
again, with the old connecting passion. `Nay, for me it was good, it
was good. Was it for you?'

`Yes, for me too,' she answered, a little untruthfully, for she had
not been conscious of much.

He kissed her softly, softly, with the kisses of warmth.

`If only there weren't so many other people in the world,' he said
lugubriously.

She laughed. They were at the gate to the park. He opened it for her.

`I won't come any further,' he said.

`No!' And she held out her hand, as if to shake hands. But he took
it in both his.

`Shall I come again?' she asked wistfully.

`Yes! Yes!'