break loose and ignore `the creature'. He had been merely made use of.

Poor Connie was rather unhappy. She wouldn't jazz, because she simply

couldn't plaster her stomach against some `creature's' stomach. She

hated the conglomerate mass of nearly nude flesh on the Lido: there

was hardly enough water to wet them all. She disliked Sir Alexander

and Lady Cooper. She did not want Michaelis or anybody else trailing

her.

The happiest times were when she got Hilda to go with her away across

the lagoon, far across to some lonely shingle-bank, where they could

bathe quite alone, the gondola remaining on the inner side of the reef.

Then Giovanni got another gondolier to help him, because it was a long

way and he sweated terrifically in the sun. Giovanni was very nice:

affectionate, as the Italians are, and quite passionless. The Italians

are not passionate: passion has deep reserves. They are easily moved,

and often affectionate, but they rarely have any abiding passion of

any sort.

So Giovanni was already devoted to his ladies, as he had been devoted

to cargoes of ladies in the past. He was perfectly ready to prostitute

himself to them, if they wanted hint: he secretly hoped they would want

him. They would give him a handsome present, and it would come in very

handy, as he was just going to be married. He told them about his marriage,

and they were suitably interested.

He thought this trip to some lonely bank across the lagoon probably

meant business: business being l'amore, love. So he got a mate to help

him, for it was a long way; and after all, they were two ladies. Two

ladies, two mackerels! Good arithmetic! Beautiful ladies, too! He was

justly proud of them. And though it was the Signora who paid him and

gave him orders, he rather hoped it would be the young milady who would

select hint for l'amore. She would give more money too.

The mate he brought was called Daniele. He was not a regular gondolier,

so he had none of the cadger and prostitute about him. He was a sandola

man, a sandola being a big boat that brings in fruit and produce from

the islands.

Daniele was beautiful, tall and well-shapen, with a light round head

of little, close, pale-blond curls, and a good-looking man's face, a

little like a lion, and long-distance blue eyes. He was not effusive,

loquacious, and bibulous like Giovanni. He was silent and he rowed with

a strength and ease as if he were alone on the water. The ladies were

ladies, remote from him. He did not even look at them. He looked ahead.

He was a real man, a little angry when Giovanni drank too much wine

and rowed awkwardly, with effusive shoves of the great oar. He was a

man as Mellors was a man, unprostituted. Connie pitied the wife of the

easily-overflowing Giovanni. But Daniele's wife would be one of those

sweet Venetian women of the people whom one still sees, modest and flower-like

in the back of that labyrinth of a town.

Ah, how sad that man first prostitutes woman, then woman prostitutes

man. Giovanni was pining to prostitute himself, dribbling like a dog,

wanting to give himself to a woman. And for money!

Connie looked at Venice far off, low and rose-coloured upon the water.

Built of money, blossomed of money, and dead with money. The money-deadness!

Money, money, money, prostitution and deadness.

Yet Daniele was still a man capable of a man's free allegiance. He

did not wear the gondolier's blouse: only the knitted blue jersey. He

was a little wild, uncouth and proud. So he was hireling to the rather

doggy Giovanni who was hireling again to two women. So it is! When Jesus

refused the devil's money, he left the devil like a Jewish banker, master

of the whole situation.

Connie would come home from the blazing light of the lagoon in a kind

of stupor, to lind letters from home. Clifford wrote regularly. He wrote

very good letters: they might all have been printed in a book. And for

this reason Connie found them not very interesting.

She lived in the stupor of the light of the lagoon, the lapping saltiness

of the water, the space, the emptiness, the nothingness: but health,

health, complete stupor of health. It was gratifying, and she was lulled

away in it, not caring for anything. Besides, she was pregnant. She

knew now. So the stupor of sunlight and lagoon salt and sea-bathing

and lying on shingle and finding shells and drifting away, away in a

gondola, was completed by the pregnancy inside her, another fullness

of health, satisfying and stupefying.

She had been at Venice a fortnight, and she was to stay another ten

days or a fortnight. The sunshine blazed over any count of time, and

the fullness of physical health made forgetfulness complete. She was

in a sort of stupor of well-being.

From which a letter of Clifford roused her.

We too have had our mild local excitement. It appears the truant wife

of Mellors, the keeper, turned up at the cottage and found herself unwelcome.

He packed her off, and locked the door. Report has it, however, that

when he returned from the wood he found the no longer fair lady firmly

established in his bed, in puris naturalibus; or one should say, in

impuris naturalibus. She had broken a window and got in that way. Unable

to evict the somewhat man-handled Venus from his couch, he beat a retreat

and retired, it is said, to his mother's house in Tevershall. Meanwhile

the Venus of Stacks Gate is established in the cottage, which she claims

is her home, and Apollo, apparently, is domiciled in Tevershall.



I repeat this from hearsay, as Mellors has not come to me personally.

I had this particular bit of local garbage from our garbage bird, our

ibis, our scavenging turkey-buzzard, Mrs Bolton. I would not have repeated

it had she not exclaimed: her Ladyship will go no more to the wood if

that woman's going to be about!

I like your picture of Sir Malcolm striding into the sea with white

hair blowing and pink flesh glowing. I envy you that sun. Here it rains.

But I don't envy Sir Malcolm his inveterate mortal carnality. However,

it suits his age. Apparently one grows more carnal and more mortal as

one grows older. Only youth has a taste of immortality---

This news affected Connie in her state of semi-stupefied ell being

with vexation amounting to exasperation. Now she ad got to be bothered

by that beast of a woman! Now she must start and fret! She had no letter

from Mellors. They had agreed not to write at all, but now she wanted

to hear from him personally. After all, he was the father of the child

that was coming. Let him write!



But how hateful! Now everything was messed up. How foul those low people

were! How nice it was here, in the sunshine and the indolence, compared

to that dismal mess of that English Midlands! After all, a clear sky

was almost the most important thing in life.

She did not mention the fact of her pregnancy, even to Hilda. She wrote

to Mrs Bolton for exact information.

Duncan Forbes, an artist friend of theirs, had arrived at the Villa

Esmeralda, coming north from Rome. Now he made a third in the gondola,

and he bathed with them across the lagoon, and was their escort: a quiet,

almost taciturn young man, very advanced in his art.

She had a letter from Mrs Bolton:

You will be pleased, I am sure, my Lady, when you see Sir Clifford.

He's looking quite blooming and working very hard, and very hopeful.

Of course he is looking forward to seeing you among us again. It is

a dull house without my Lady, and we shall all welcome her presence

among us once more.



About Mr Mellors, I don't know how much Sir Clifford told you. It seems

his wife came back all of a sudden one afternoon, and he found her sitting

on the doorstep when he came in from the wood. She said she was come

back to him and wanted to live with him again, as she was his legal

wife, and he wasn't going to divorce her. But he wouldn't have anything

to do with her, and wouldn't let her in the house, and did not go in

himself; he went back into the wood without ever opening the door.

But when he came back after dark, he found the house broken into, so

he went upstairs to see what she'd done, and he found her in bed without

a rag on her. He offered her money, but she said she was his wife and

he must take her back. I don't know what sort of a scene they had. His

mother told me about it, she's terribly upset. Well, he told her he'd

die rather than ever live with her again, so he took his things and

went straight to his mother's on Tevershall hill. He stopped the night

and went to the wood next day through the park, never going near the

cottage. It seems he never saw his wife that day. But the day after

she was at her brother Pan's at Beggarlee, swearing and carrying on,

saying she was his legal wife, and that he'd beers having women at the

cottage, because she'd found a scent-bottle in his drawer, and gold-tipped

cigarette-ends on the ash-heap, and I don't know what all. Then it seems

the postman Fred Kirk says he heard somebody talking in Mr Mellors'

bedroom early one morning, and a motor-car had been in the lane.

Mr Mellors stayed on with his mother, and went to the wood through

the park, and it seems she stayed on at the cottage. Well, there was

no end of talk. So at last Mr Mellors and Tom Phillips went to the cottage

and fetched away most of the furniture and bedding, and unscrewed the

handle of the pump, so she was forced to go. But instead of going back

to Stacks Gate she went and lodged with that Mrs Swain at Beggarlee,

because her brother Dan's wife wouldn't have her. And she kept going

to old Mrs Mellors' house, to catch him, and she began swearing he'd

got in bed with her in the cottage and she went to a lawyer to make

him pay her an allowance. She's grown heavy, and more common than ever,

and as strong as a bull. And she goes about saying the most awful things

about him, how he has women at the cottage, and how he behaved to her

when they were married, the low, beastly things he did to her, and I

don't know what all. I'm sure it's awful, the mischief a woman can do,

once she starts talking. And no matter how low she may be, there'll

be some as will believe her, and some of the dirt will stick. I'm sure

the way she makes out that Mr Mellors was one of those low, beastly

men with women, is simply shocking. And people are only too ready to

believe things against anybody, especially things like that. She declared

she'll never leave him alone while he lives. Though what I say is, if

he was so beastly to her, why is she so anxious to go back to him? But

of course she's coming near her change of life, for she's years older

than he is. And these common, violent women always go partly insane

whets the change of life comes upon them---

This was a nasty blow to Connie. Here she was, sure as life, coming

in for her share of the lowness and dirt. She felt angry with him for

not having got clear of a Bertha Coutts: nay, for ever having married

her. Perhaps he had a certain hankering after lowness. Connie remembered

the last night she had spent with him, and shivered. He had known all

that sensuality, even with a Bertha Coutts! It was really rather disgusting.

It would be well to be rid of him, clear of him altogether. He was perhaps

really common, really low.



She had a revulsion against the whole affair, and almost envied the

Guthrie girls their gawky inexperience and crude maidenliness. And she

now dreaded the thought that anybody would know about herself and the

keeper. How unspeakably humiliating! She was weary, afraid, and felt

a craving for utter respectability, even for the vulgar and deadening

respectability of the Guthrie girls. If Clifford knew about her affair,

how unspeakably humiliating! She was afraid, terrified of society and

its unclean bite. She almost wished she could get rid of the child again,

and be quite clear. In short, she fell into a state of funk.

As for the scent-bottle, that was her own folly. She had not been able

to refrain from perfuming his one or two handkerchiefs and his shirts

in the drawer, just out of childishness, and she had left a little bottle

of Coty's Wood-violet perfume, half empty, among his things. She wanted

him to remember her in the perfume. As for the cigarette-ends, they

were Hilda's.

She could not help confiding a little in Duncan Forbes. She didn't

say she had been the keeper's lover, she only said she liked him, and

told Forbes the history of the man.

`Oh,' said Forbes, `you'll see, they'll never rest till they've pulled

the man down and done him its. If he has refused to creep up into the

middle classes, when he had a chance; and if he's a man who stands up

for his own sex, then they'll do him in. It's the one thing they won't

let you be, straight and open in your sex. You can be as dirty as you

like. In fact the more dirt you do on sex the better they like it. But

if you believe in your own sex, and won't have it done dirt to: they'll

down you. It's the one insane taboo left: sex as a natural and vital

thing. They won't have it, and they'll kill you before they'll let you

have it. You'll see, they'll hound that man down. And what's he done,

after all? If he's made love to his wife all ends on, hasn't he a right

to? She ought to be proud of it. But you see, even a low bitch like

that turns on him, and uses the hyena instinct of the mob against sex,

to pull him down. You have a snivel and feel sinful or awful about your

sex, before you're allowed to have any. Oh, they'll hound the poor devil

down.'

Connie had a revulsion in the opposite direction now. What had he done,

after all? what had he done to herself, Connie, but give her an exquisite

pleasure and a sense of freedom and life? He had released her warm,

natural sexual flow. And for that they would hound him down.

No no, it should not be. She saw the image of him, naked white with

tanned face and hands, looking down and addressing his erect penis as

if it were another being, the odd grin flickering on his face. And she

heard his voice again: Tha's got the nicest woman's arse of anybody!

And she felt his hand warmly and softly closing over her tail again,

over her secret places, like a benediction. And the warmth ran through

her womb, and the little flames flickered in her knees, and she said:

Oh, no! I mustn't go back on it! I must not go back on him. I must stick

to him and to what I had of him, through everything. I had no warm,

flamy life till he gave it me. And I won't go back on it.

She did a rash thing. She sent a letter to Ivy Bolton, enclosing a

note to the keeper, and asking Mrs Bolton to give it him. And she wrote

to him:

I am very much distressed to hear of all the trouble your wife is making

for you, but don't mind it, it is only a sort of hysteria. It will all

blow over as suddenly as it came. But I'm awfully sorry about it, and

I do hope you are not minding very much. After all, it isn't worth it.

She is only a hysterical woman who wants to hurt you. I shall be home

in ten days' time, and I do hope everything will be all right.



A few days later came a letter from Clifford. He was evidently upset.





I am delighted to hear you are prepared to leave Venice on the sixteenth.

But if you are enjoying it, don't hurry home. We miss you, Wragby misses

you. But it is essential that you should get your full amount of sunshine,

sunshine and pyjamas, as the advertisements of the Lido say. So please

do stay on a little longer, if it is cheering you up and preparing you

for our sufficiently awful winter. Even today, it rains.



I am assiduously, admirably looked after by Mrs Bolton. She is a queer

specimen. The more I live, the more I realize what strange creatures

human beings are. Some of them might Just as well have a hundred legs,

like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. The human consistency and

dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-men seem actually

nonexistent. One doubts if they exist to any startling degree even is

oneself.

The scandal of the keeper continues and gets bigger like a snowball.

Mrs Bolton keeps me informed. She reminds me of a fish which, though

dumb, seems to be breathing silent gossip through its gills, while ever

it lives. All goes through the sieve of her gills, and nothing surprises

her. It is as if the events of other people's lives were the necessary

oxygen of her own.

She is preoccupied with tie Mellors scandal, and if I will let her

begin, she takes me down to the depths. Her great indignation, which

even then is like the indignation of an actress playing a role, is against

the wife of Mellors, whom she persists in calling Bertha Courts. I have

been to the depths of the muddy lies of the Bertha Couttses of this

world, and when, released from the current of gossip, I slowly rise

to the surface again, I look at the daylight its wonder that it ever

should be.

It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us

the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all

our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine

fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the

soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live,

far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air. I am convinced

that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women