id, `is whips,  not swords. The
masses have been ruled since time began, and till time ends, ruled they will
have  to  be.  It is  sheer  hypocrisy  and  farce  to  say  they  can  rule
themselves.'
     `But can you rule them?' she asked.
     `I?  Oh yes! Neither my mind nor my will  is crippled, and I don't rule
with my legs. I can do my share of ruling: absolutely, my share; and give me
a son, and he will be able to rule his portion after me.'
     `But he wouldn't be  your own son, of your own ruling class; or perhaps
not,' she stammered.
     `I don't care who his father may be, so long as he is a healthy man not
below  normal  intelligence.  Give me  the child  of  any healthy,  normally
intelligent man, and I will make a perfectly competent Chatterley of him. It
is not who  begets  us,  that matters, but where fate places  us.  Place any
child among the  ruling classes, and he  will grow up, to  his own extent, a
ruler.  Put kings'  and dukes' children among the  masses,  and  they'll  be
little  plebeians,  mass  products.  It  is  the  overwhelming  pressure  of
environment.'
     `Then  the  common  people  aren't  a race,  and the aristocrats aren't
blood,' she said.
     `No, my  child!  All  that  is  romantic  illusion.  Aristocracy  is  a
function, a  part of  fate. And the masses are a functioning of another part
of fate. The individual hardly matters. It is a  question  of which function
you are brought up to and adapted to. It is not the individuals that make an
aristocracy: it is the functioning of the  aristocratic whole. And it is the
functioning of the whole mass that makes the common man what he is.'
     `Then there is no common humanity between us all!'
     `Just as you like.  We all need to fill our bellies. But when  it comes
to  expressive  or  executive functioning, I  believe there is a gulf and an
absolute one, between the ruling and the serving  classes. The two functions
are opposed. And the function determines the individual.'
     Connie looked at him with dazed eyes.
     `Won't you come on?' she said.
     And  he started his chair. He had said his say. Now he  lapsed into his
peculiar and rather vacant apathy, that Connie found so trying. In the wood,
anyhow, she was determined not to argue.
     In front  of  them ran the open cleft of  the riding, between the hazel
walls and the gay  grey trees. The  chair puffed  slowly on,  slowly surging
into the forget-me-nots that rose up  in the drive  like  milk froth, beyond
the hazel shadows. Clifford steered  the middle course,  where feet  passing
had  kept  a  channel  through the flowers. But  Connie, walking behind, had
watched the wheels  jolt over the  wood-ruff  and the bugle, and squash  the
little yellow cups  of the  creeping-jenny. Now they made a wake through the
forget-me-nots.
     All  the flowers were there,  the  first bluebells in  blue pools, like
standing water.
     `You are quite right about its  being beautiful,' said Clifford. `It is
so amazingly. What is quite so lovely as an English spring!'
     Connie  thought it sounded  as  if  even the  spring  bloomed by act of
Parliament. An English  spring! Why not  an  Irish one? or Jewish? The chair
moved slowly ahead, past tufts of sturdy  bluebells that stood up like wheat
and over grey burdock leaves. When  they came to  the  open place  where the
trees had been felled, the light flooded in rather stark. And the  bluebells
made sheets of bright blue  colour, here and there, sheering off into  lilac
and purple.  And  between, the bracken was  lifting  its brown curled heads,
like legions of young snakes with a new secret  to whisper  to Eve. Clifford
kept  the chair going till he came to the brow  of the hill; Connie followed
slowly  behind.  The  oak-buds were  opening soft and brown. Everything came
tenderly out of the old hardness.  Even the  snaggy craggy oak-trees put out
the softest young leaves,  spreading  thin,  brown little  wings like  young
bat-wings in the light. Why had men never any newness in them, any freshness
to come forth with! Stale men!
     Clifford stopped the chair at the top of  the rise and looked down. The
bluebells washed blue like flood-water over the broad riding, and lit up the
downhill with a warm blueness.
     `It's  a very fine colour in itself,'  said Clifford, `but  useless for
making a painting.'
     `Quite!' said Connie, completely uninterested.
     `Shall I venture as far as the spring?' said Clifford.
     `Will the chair get up again?' she said.
     `We'll try; nothing venture, nothing win!'
     And the chair began to  advance  slowly, joltingly down  the  beautiful
broad  riding  washed over with blue  encroaching  hyacinths.  O last of all
ships, through the hyacinthian shallows! O pinnace on the  last wild waters,
sailing  in  the  last voyage  of our civilization! Whither, O weird wheeled
ship,  your  slow course steering. Quiet and complacent, Clifford sat at the
wheel of adventure:  in  his old  black hat and tweed jacket, motionless and
cautious. O Captain, my Captain, our splendid trip  is done! Not yet though!
Downhill, in the wake, came Constance in  her grey dress, watching the chair
jolt downwards.
     They passed the narrow  track to the hut. Thank heaven it  was not wide
enough for the chair: hardly wide enough for  one  person. The chair reached
the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to disappear. And Connie heard a
low whistle behind her. She glanced sharply round:  the keeper was  striding
downhill towards her, his dog keeping behind him.
     `Is Sir  Clifford going  to the cottage?' he  asked, looking  into  her
eyes.
     `No, only to the well.'
     `Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I
shall wait for you at the park-gate about ten.'
     He looked again direct into her eyes.
     `Yes,' she faltered.
     They heard the Papp! Papp! of  Clifford's horn, tooting for Connie. She
`Coo-eed!' in reply. The  keeper's face flickered with a little grimace, and
with his hand he softly  brushed  her  breast upwards,  from underneath. She
looked  at him,  frightened,  and started  running down  the  hill,  calling
Coo-ee! again to Clifford. The man above  watched her, then turned, grinning
faintly, back into his path.
     She found Clifford slowly mounting to  the spring, which was halfway up
the slope of the dark larch-wood.  He was there by  the time she caught  him
up.
     `She did that all right,' he said, referring to the chair.
     Connie looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out ghostly
from  the edge of the larch-wood. The  people call it  Robin Hood's Rhubarb.
How  silent and gloomy  it  seemed  by  the well! Yet  the water bubbled  so
bright,  wonderful!  And  there  were  bits  of  eye-bright and strong  blue
bugle...And  there, under the  bank, the yellow earth was moving. A mole! It
emerged, rowing its  pink hands, and waving its blind gimlet of a face, with
the tiny pink nose-tip uplifted.
     `It seems to see with the end of its nose,' said Connie.
     `Better than with its eyes!' he said. `Will you drink?'
     `Will you?'
     She took an enamel mug from a  twig on  a tree, and stooped to fill  it
for him.  He drank  in  sips.  Then  she stooped again,  and drank  a little
herself.
     `So icy!' she said gasping.
     `Good, isn't it! Did you wish?'
     `Did you?'
     `Yes, I wished. But I won't tell.'
     She was  aware of the rapping of a woodpecker,  then of the  wind, soft
and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the
blue.
     `Clouds!' she said.
     `White lambs only,' he replied.
     A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out on  to  the
soft yellow earth.
     `Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him,' said Clifford.
     `Look! he's like a parson in a pulpit,' she said.
     She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him.
     `New-mown hay!' he said. `Doesn't it smell like the romantic  ladies of
the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way after all!'
     She was looking at the white clouds.
     `I wonder if it will rain,' she said.
     `Rain! Why! Do you want it to?'
     They  started  on  the  return  journey,  Clifford  jolting  cautiously
downhill. They came  to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned  to the right,
and after  a hundred  yards swerved up  the foot of  the  long  slope, where
bluebells stood in the light.
     `Now, old girl!' said Clifford, putting the chair to it.
     It  was  a  steep  and  jolty  climb.  The chair pugged  slowly,  in  a
struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she
came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled,
jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped
     `We'd better sound  the  horn  and see  if the keeper will come,'  said
Connie. `He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps.'
     `We'll let her  breathe,' said Clifford. `Do you mind putting  a scotch
under the wheel?'
     Connie found a  stone, and  they waited. After a while Clifford started
his motor again, then set the  chair  in  motion. It  struggled and faltered
like a sick thing, with curious noises.
     `Let me push!' said Connie, coming up behind.
     `No! Don't  push!'  he  said  angrily. `What's  the good of the  damned
thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!'
     There was another pause, then  another start; but more ineffectual than
before.
     `You must let me push,' said she. `Or sound the horn for the keeper.'
     `Wait!'
     She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good.
     `Sound  the  horn  then, if you won't let me push,' she said. `Hell! Be
quiet a moment!'
     She  was  quiet a  moment: he made shattering efforts with  the  little
motor.
     `You'll  only   break  the   thing  down  altogether,  Clifford,'   she
remonstrated; `besides wasting your nervous energy.'
     `If  I  could only get  out  and look  at the damned thing!'  he  said,
exasperated. And he  sounded the horn stridently.  `Perhaps Mellors can  see
what's wrong.'
     They waited, among  the mashed flowers under a sky softly curdling with
cloud. In the silence a wood-pigeon began to coo roo-hoo hoo!  roo-hoo  hoo!
Clifford shut her up with a blast on the horn.
     The keeper appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner. He
saluted.
     `Do you know anything about motors?' asked Clifford sharply.
     `I am afraid I don't. Has she gone wrong?'
     `Apparently!' snapped Clifford.
     The man crouched  solicitously by the wheel, and peered  at the  little
engine.
     `I'm afraid I  know nothing  at all  about these mechanical things, Sir
Clifford,' he said calmly. `If she has enough petrol and oil---'
     `Just  look carefully and see if you can see anything  broken,' snapped
Clifford.
     The man laid his gun against a  tree, took  oil  his coat, and threw it
beside it. The brown dog sat guard. Then he sat down on his heels and peered
under the chair, poking with his finger  at the  greasy  little  engine, and
resenting the grease-marks on his clean Sunday shirt.
     `Doesn't seem  anything broken,' he said. And he stood up, pushing back
his hat from his forehead, rubbing his brow and apparently studying.
     `Have you looked at the rods underneath?' asked Clifford.  `See if they
are all right!'
     The man lay  flat on  his stomach on the floor, his  neck pressed back,
wriggling under the engine and poking with his finger. Connie thought what a
pathetic  sort of thing a man was,  feeble and small-looking,  when  he  was
lying on his belly on the big earth.
     `Seems all right as far as I can see,' came his muffled voice.
     `I don't suppose you can do anything,' said Clifford.
     `Seems  as  if  I  can't!' And he scrambled up  and sat  on his  heels,
collier fashion. `There's certainly nothing obviously broken.'
     Clifford started his engine, then put her in gear. She would not move.
     `Run her a bit hard, like,' suggested the keeper.
     Clifford resented the interference: but he made his engine buzz like  a
blue-bottle. Then she coughed and snarled and seemed to go better.
     `Sounds as if she'd come clear,' said Mellors.
     But  Clifford had already jerked her into gear. She  gave a sick  lurch
and ebbed weakly forwards.
     `If I give her a push, she'll do it,' said the keeper, going behind.
     `Keep off!' snapped Clifford. `She'll do it by herself.'
     `But  Clifford!'  put in Connie from the bank, `you know  it's too much
for her. Why are you so obstinate!'
     Clifford was pale with anger. He jabbed at his levers. The chair gave a
sort of scurry,  reeled  on a  few more yards, and  came  to her end  amid a
particularly promising patch of bluebells.
     `She's done!' said the keeper. `Not power enough.'
     `She's been up here before,' said Clifford coldly.
     `She won't do it this time,' said the keeper.
     Clifford did not reply. He began doing things with his engine,  running
her fast and slow as  if  to  get  some sort of  tune  out of her.  The wood
re-echoed with weird noises.  Then  he put her  in gear with a  jerk, having
jerked off his brake.
     `You'll rip her inside out,' murmured the keeper.
     The chair charged in a sick lurch sideways at the ditch.
     `Clifford!' cried Connie, rushing forward.
     But  the  keeper  had got  the chair  by the rail.  Clifford,  however,
putting on all his  pressure, managed to  steer into the riding, and  with a
strange  noise  the chair was fighting  the hill.  Mellors  pushed  steadily
behind, and up she went, as if to retrieve herself.
     `You see, she's doing it!' said Clifford, victorious, glancing over his
shoulder. There he saw the keeper's face.
     `Are you pushing her?'
     `She won't do it without.'
     `Leave her alone. I asked you not.
     `She won't do it.'
     `Let her try!' snarled Clifford, with all his emphasis.
     The keeper stood back: then turned to fetch his coat and gun. The chair
seemed to strange immediately. She stood inert. Clifford, seated a prisoner,
was white with vexation.  He jerked at  the levers with  his hand,  his feet
were no good. He  got queer noises out of her. In savage impatience he moved
little handles and got more noises out of her. But she would not budge.  No,
she would not budge. He stopped the engine and sat rigid with anger.
     Constance sat on the  bank  arid looked  at  the wretched and  trampled
bluebells.  `Nothing  quite so  lovely as  an English  spring.' `I can do my
share of ruling.' `What we need to take up now  is  whips, not swords.' `The
ruling classes!'
     The keeper  strode up with his coat and gun,  Flossie cautiously at his
heels. Clifford  asked the  man  to  do something or other  to  the  engine.
Connie, who understood nothing at all of  the technicalities of  motors, and
who had  had experience of breakdowns, sat patiently  on  the bank as if she
were  a cipher. The  keeper lay on his stomach again. The ruling classes and
the serving classes!
     He got to his feet and said patiently:
     `Try her again, then.'
     He spoke in a quiet voice, almost as if to a child.
     Clifford  tried her, and  Mellors stepped quickly  behind and began  to
push. She was going, the engine doing about half the work, the man the rest.
     Clifford glanced round, yellow with anger.
     `Will you get off there!'
     The keeper  dropped his hold at  once, and Clifford added: `How shall I
know what she is doing!'
     The man put his gun down and began to pull on his coat. He'd done.
     The chair began slowly to run backwards.
     `Clifford, your brake!' cried Connie.
     She,  Mellors,  and Clifford  moved  at  once,  Connie  and  the keeper
jostling lightly. The chair stood. There was a moment of dead silence.
     `It's obvious I'm at  everybody's mercy!' said Clifford.  He was yellow
with anger.
     No one answered. Mellors was slinging  his gun  over his  shoulder, his
face queer and expressionless,  save for an abstracted look of patience. The
dog  Flossie,  standing  on  guard almost  between her master's legs,  moved
uneasily, eyeing  the chair  with great suspicion and dislike, and very much
perplexed  between  the three human beings. The  tableau vivant remained set
among the squashed bluebells, nobody proffering a word.
     `I  expect she'll have to  be pushed,' said  Clifford at last, with  an
affectation of sang froid.
     No  answer. Mellors' abstracted face looked as if he had heard nothing.
Connie glanced anxiously at him. Clifford too glanced round.
     `Do you mind pushing her home,  Mellors!' he said in  a  cool  superior
tone. `I  hope I have said nothing to offend  you,' he  added, in a  tone of
dislike.
     `Nothing at all, Sir Clifford! Do you want me to push that chair?'
     `If you please.'
     The man stepped up  to it:  but this time it  was  without  effect. The
brake was jammed. They poked and pulled, and the keeper took off his gun and
his coat once more. And now Clifford said never a word. At last  the  keeper
heaved the back of the chair off the ground and, with an  instantaneous push
of his foot, tried to loosen the wheels. He failed, the chair sank. Clifford
was clutching the sides. The man gasped with the weight.
     `Don't do it!' cried Connie to him.
     `If you'll pull the wheel that  way, so!'  he said to her, showing  her
how.
     `No!  You mustn't lift it! You'll strain yourself,' she  said,  flushed
now with anger.
     But he looked into her eyes and nodded. And she had to go and take hold
of the wheel, ready. He heaved and she tugged, and the chair reeled.
     `For God's sake!' cried Clifford in terror.
     But it  was all right, and the  brake was  off. The keeper put  a stone
under the wheel, and went  to sit  on the bank,  his heart beat and his face
white with the effort, semi-conscious.
     Connie looked at him, and  almost cried with  anger. There was  a pause
and a dead silence. She saw his hands trembling on his thighs.
     `Have you hurt yourself?' she asked, going to him.
     `No. No!' He turned away almost angrily.
     There was dead  silence. The back of Clifford's fair head did not move.
Even the dog stood motionless. The sky had clouded over.
     At last he sighed, and blew his nose on his red handkerchief.
     `That pneumonia took a lot out of me,' he said.
     No one answered. Connie calculated the amount  of strength it must have
taken to heave up that chair and the bulky Clifford: too much, far too much!
If it hadn't killed him!
     He rose, and again picked up his  coat, slinging it through  the handle
of the chair.
     `Are you ready, then, Sir Clifford?'
     `When you are!'
     He  stooped and took out the  scotch, then put his  weight  against the
chair. He was paler than Connie had ever seen him: and more absent. Clifford
was a heavy man: and  the  hill  was steep. Connie stepped to  the  keeper's
side.
     `I'm going to push too!' she said.
     And she began  to  shove with a woman's turbulent energy  of anger. The
chair went faster. Clifford looked round.
     `Is that necessary?' he said.
     `Very! Do you want to kill the man! If  you'd  let the motor work while
it would---'
     But  she did not  finish. She  was already panting. She slackened off a
little, for it was surprisingly hard work.
     `Ay! slower!' said the man at her side, with a faint smile of his eyes.
     `Are you sure you've not hurt yourself?' she said fiercely.
     He  shook his head.  She  looked at his  smallish,  short,  alive hand,
browned by the  weather. It was the hand that caressed  her.  She  had never
even  looked  at it  before. It seemed  so still, like  him, with  a curious
inward stillness that made her want to clutch it, as if she could not  reach
it. All her  soul suddenly swept towards him:  he was so silent, and  out of
reach! And he felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his
right on her round white wrist,  softly enfolding  her wrist, with a caress.
And  the  flame of  strength went down his back and his loins, reviving him.
And she bent suddenly and kissed his  hand. Meanwhile the back of Clifford's
head was held sleek and motionless, just in front of them.
     At the top of the hill they rested, and Connie was glad  to let go. She
had  had  fugitive dreams of  friendship between  these  two  men:  one  her
husband, the  other the  father  of her child.  Now  she saw  the  screaming
absurdity of her dreams.  The  two males were  as hostile as fire and water.
They mutually exterminated one another. And  she realized for the first time
what a  queer subtle thing hate is. For the first time, she had  consciously
and definitely  hated  Clifford,  with vivid hate: as  if  he  ought  to  be
obliterated from  the face of  the earth. And it  was strange, how free  and
full of  life it  made  her  feel, to hate him  and  to admit  it  fully  to
herself.---`Now I've hated him, I  shall never be  able to go on living with
him,' came the thought into her mind.
     On  the level the keeper could  push  the chair  alone. Clifford made a
little conversation  with her,  to show his  complete composure: about  Aunt
Eva, who was at Dieppe,  and about Sir Malcolm, who had written to ask would
Connie drive with him in his small car, to Venice, or would she and Hilda go
by train.
     `I'd much rather go by  train,' said  Connie. `I don't like long  motor
drives, especially when there's dust. But I shall see what Hilda wants.'
     `She will want to drive her own car, and take you with her,' he said.
     `Probably!---I  must help up here. You've  no idea how heavy this chair
is.'
     She  went to the back of the chair, and  plodded side by side  with the
keeper, shoving up the pink path. She did not care who saw.
     `Why not let me  wait,  and  fetch Field?  He is strong  enough for the
job,' said Clifford.
     `It's so near,' she panted.
     But both she  and Mellors  wiped the sweat from  their faces when  they
came to the top. It was curious,  but this bit of work together  had brought
them much closer than they had been before.
     `Thanks so much, Mellors,' said Clifford, when they were  at  the house
door. `I must get a different sort of motor, that's all. Won't you go to the
kitchen and have a meal? It must be about time.'
     `Thank you, Sir  Clifford.  I was  going to my mother for dinner today,
Sunday.'
     `As you like.'
     Mellors slung into his coat, looked at Connie, saluted, and  was  gone.
Connie, furious, went upstairs.
     At lunch she could not contain her feeling.
     `Why are you so abominably inconsiderate, Clifford?' she said to him.
     `Of whom?'
     `Of the keeper! If that is what you call ruling classes, I'm  sorry for
you.'
     `Why?'
     `A man who's been ill, and isn't strong! My word, if I were the serving
classes, I'd let you wait for service. I'd let you whistle.'
     `I quite believe it.'
     `If he'd been  sitting in  a chair with paralysed legs, and  behaved as
you behaved, what would you have done for him?'
     `My dear evangelist, this confusing of persons and personalities  is in
bad taste.'
     `And your  nasty, sterile want of common sympathy is in the worst taste
imaginable. Noblesse oblige! You and your ruling class!'
     `And to what should it oblige me? To have a lot of unnecessary emotions
about my game-keeper? I refuse. I leave it all to my evangelist.'
     `As if he weren't a man as much as you are, my word!'
     `My game-keeper to boot, and I pay him two pounds a week and give him a
house.'
     `Pay  him!  What do you think you pay for, with two pounds a week and a
house?'
     `His services.'
     `Bah! I would tell you to keep your two pounds a week and your house.'
     `Probably he would like to: but can't afford the luxury!'
     `You, and rule!' she said. `You don't rule, don't flatter yourself. You
have only got more than your share of  the money,  and make people work  for
you for two pounds  a week, or threaten them with  starvation. Rule! What do
you  give  forth of rule?  Why, you re  dried up!  You only bully with  your
money, like any Jew or any Schieber!'
     `You are very elegant in your speech, Lady Chatterley!'
     `I assure you, you were very  elegant altogether out there in the wood.
I was  utterly ashamed of  you. Why,  my father is ten times the human being
you are: you gentleman!'
     He reached and rang the bell for Mrs Bolton. But he  was yellow  at the
gills.
     She went up to her room,  furious, saying  to herself: `Him and  buying
people! Well, he doesn't buy me, and therefore there's  no  need for  me  to
stay with him.  Dead fish  of a gentleman, with his  celluloid soul! And how
they  take one  in,  with  their  manners and  their  mock  wistfulness  and
gentleness. They've got about as much feeling as celluloid has.'
     She  made her  plans for the night, and determined  to get Clifford off
her mind. She  didn't want to hate him. She didn't want to  be mixed up very
intimately  with  him  in any sort of feeling.  She wanted him  not  to know
anything at  all about herself: and especially, not  to  know anything about
her feeling for the  keeper.  This squabble of her attitude to  the servants
was  an  old  one.  He  found  her  too familiar,  she  found  him  stupidly
insentient, tough and indiarubbery where other people were concerned.
     She  went   downstairs  calmly,  with   her  old  demure   bearing,  at
dinner-time.  He  was still yellow at the  gills: in  for one of  his  liver
bouts, when he was really very queer.---He was reading a French book.
     `Have you ever read Proust?' he asked her.
     `I've tried, but he bores me.'
     `He's really very extraordinary.'
     `Possibly! But  he  bores me: all that  sophistication! He doesn't have
feelings,  he  only  has streams  of  words  about  feelings. I'm  tired  of
self-important mentalities.'
     `Would you prefer self-important animalities?'
     `Perhaps!   But  one   might  possibly  get   something   that   wasn't
self-important.'
     `Well, I like Proust's subtlety and his well-bred anarchy.'
     `It makes you very dead, really.'
     `There speaks my evangelical little wife.'
     They were at it again, at it again! But she couldn't help fighting him.
He  seemed to  sit there  like  a  skeleton,  sending out a skeleton's  cold
grizzly will  against her. Almost she could feel  the skeleton clutching her
and pressing her to its cage of ribs. He too was really  up in arms: and she
was a little afraid of him.
     She went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But
at  half  past  nine she got up, and went  outside to listen.  There  was no
sound. She slipped on a dressing-gown and  went downstairs. Clifford and Mrs
Bolton  were  playing  cards,  gambling.  They  would probably go  on  until
midnight.
     Connie returned to her room,  threw her  pyjamas on the tossed bed, put
on  a thin tennis-dress and over  that  a woollen  day-dress, put on  rubber
tennis-shoes, and then a light coat. And she  was ready. If she met anybody,
she was just going out for  a few minutes. And in the morning, when she came
in  again,  she would  just have been for a little walk in  the  dew, as she
fairly often  did before breakfast. For the  rest, the only danger was  that
someone  should  go  into  her  room  during  the night. But  that  was most
unlikely: not one chance in a hundred.
     Betts  had  not locked up. He fastened up the house at ten o'clock, and
unfastened it again  at seven in the morning. She  slipped  out silently and
unseen. There was a half-moon shining, enough to make a little light in  the
world,  not enough to show  her up in her dark-grey coat. She walked quickly
across the park, not really in the  thrill of  the  assignation, but  with a
certain anger  and rebellion burning in her heart. It was not the right sort
of heart to take to a love-meeting. But À la guerre comme À la guerre!


        Chapter 14

     When she got near  the  park-gate, she heard the click of the latch. He
was there, then, in the darkness of the wood, and had seen her!
     `You are good and early,' he said out of the  dark. `Was everything all
right?'
     `Perfectly easy.'
     He shut  the gate quietly  after  her,  and made a spot of light on the
dark  ground, showing the pallid flowers still standing  there  open  in the
night. They went on apart, in silence.
     `Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself this morning with  that  chair?'
she asked.
     `No, no!'
     `When you had that pneumonia, what did it do to you?'
     `Oh  nothing!  it  left  my heart not  so strong  and the lungs  not so
elastic. But it always does that.'
     `And you ought not to make violent physical efforts?'
     `Not often.'
     She plodded on in an angry silence.
     `Did you hate Clifford?' she said at last.
     `Hate him, no! I've met too many like him to upset myself hating him. I
know beforehand I don't care for his sort, and I let it go at that.'
     `What is his sort?'
     `Nay, you  know better than I do. The sort of  youngish gentleman a bit
like a lady, and no balls.'
     `What balls?'
     `Balls! A man's balls!'
     She pondered this.
     `But is it a question of that?' she said, a little annoyed.
     `You say a  man's  got no brain,  when he's a fool:  and no heart, when
he's mean; and no stomach when he's a funker. And when he's got none of that
spunky wild bit of a man in him, you say he's got no balls. When he's a sort
of tame.'
     She pondered this.
     `And is Clifford tame?' she asked.
     `Tame, and nasty  with  it:  like  most such fellows, when  you come up
against 'em.'
     `And do you think you're not tame?'
     `Maybe not quite!'
     At length she saw in the distance a yellow light.
     She stood still.
     `There is a light!' she said.
     `I always leave a light in the house,' he said.
     She went on again at his side,  but not touching him, wondering why she
was going with him at all.
     He unlocked, and they went in, he bolting the  door behind them.  As if
it were a prison, she thought! The kettle was singing by the red fire, there
were cups on the table.
     She  sat  in the wooden  arm-chair  by the fire. It was warm after  the
chill outside.
     `I'll take off my shoes, they are wet,' she said.
     She sat with her stockinged feet on the bright steel fender. He went to
the  pantry,  bringing food: bread and  butter and pressed tongue.  She  was
warm: she took off her coat. He hung it on the door.
     `Shall you have cocoa or tea or coffee to drink?' he asked.
     `I don't think I want  anything,' she said, looking at the  table. `But
you eat.'
     `Nay, I don't care about it. I'll just feed the dog.'
     He tramped with a quiet  inevitability  over the brick  floor,  putting
food for the dog in a brown bowl. The spaniel looked up at him anxiously.
     `Ay, this is  thy supper, tha nedna  look as if tha wouldna get it!' he
said.
     He set the bowl on the stairfoot mat, and sat himself on a chair by the
wall, to take off his leggings and boots. The dog instead of eating, came to
him again, and sat looking up at him, troubled.
     He slowly unbuckled his leggings. The dog edged a little nearer.
     `What's  amiss wi'  thee then? Art upset because  there's somebody else
here? Tha'rt a female, tha art! Go an' eat thy supper.'
     He put  his hand on her head, and  the  bitch  leaned her head sideways
against him. He slowly, softly pulled the long silky ear.
     `There!' he said. `There! Go an' eat thy supper! Go!'
     He tilted  his chair  towards the pot  on the mat, and the  dog  meekly
went, and fell to eating.
     `Do you like dogs?' Connie asked him.
     `No, not really. They're too tame and clinging.'
     He had taken off his  leggings and was unlacing his heavy boots. Connie
had turned from the fire. How bare the little room was! Yet over his head on
the  wall  hung a  hideous  enlarged  photograph  of a young married couple,
apparently him and a bold-faced young woman, no doubt his wife.
     `Is that you?' Connie asked him.
     He twisted and looked at the enlargement above his head.
     `Ay! Taken just afore we was married, when I was twenty-one.' He looked
at it impassively.
     `Do you like it?' Connie asked him.
     `Like it? No! I  never liked the thing. But she fixed it all up to have
it done, like.'
     He returned to pulling off his boots.
     `If you don't like it, why  do you  keep it hanging there? Perhaps your
wife would like to have it,' she said.
     He looked up at her with a sudden grin.
     `She  carted  off iverything  as  was worth taking from th' 'ouse,'  he
said. `But she left that!'
     `Then why do you keep it? for sentimental reasons?'
     `Nay, I niver look at it. I hardly knowed it wor theer.  It's bin theer
sin' we come to this place.'
     `Why don't you burn it?' she said.
     He twisted  round again and  looked at the enlarged  photograph. It was
framed in a  brown-and-gilt frame, hideous. It showed a clean-shaven, alert,
very young-looking man  in  a rather high collar, and a somewhat plump, bold
young  woman  with hair fluffed out and crimped,  and  wearing  a dark satin
blouse.
     `It wouldn't be a bad idea, would it?' he said.
     He had pulled off his boots, and put on a pair of slippers. He stood up
on the chair, and lifted down  the photograph. It left  a big  pale place on
the greenish wall-paper.
     `No use dusting it now,' he said, setting the thing against the wall.
     He went to the scullery,  and returned with hammer and pincers. Sitting
where he had sat before, he started to tear off the back-paper from  the big
frame,  and to pull  out the  sprigs  that held  the backboard in  position,
working with the immediate quiet absorption that was characteristic of him.
     He soon had the nails out: then he pulled out the backboards,  then the
enlargement itself, in  its solid white mount.  He looked at the  photograph
with amusement.
     `Shows  me for  what I was, a young curate, and her for what she was, a
bully,' he said. `The prig and the bully!'
     `Let me look!' said Connie.
     He did look indeed very clean-shaven and  very clean altogether, one of
the clean young men of twenty years ago. But even in the photograph his eyes
were alert and dauntless. And the  woman  was not altogether a bully, though
her jowl was heavy. There was a touch of appeal in her.
     `One never should keep these things,' said Connie. `That one shouldn't!
One should never have them made!'
     He broke the  cardboard photograph and mount over his knee, and when it
was small enough, put it on the fire.
     `It'll spoil the fire though,' he said.
     The glass and the backboard he carefully took upstairs.
     The frame he knocked asunder with a few blows of the hammer, making the
stucco fly. Then he took the pieces into the scullery.
     `We'll burn that tomorrow,' he said. `There's too much plaster-moulding
on it.'
     Having cleared away, he sat down.
     `Did you love your wife?' she asked him.
     `Love?' he said. `Did you love Sir Clifford?'
     But she was not going to be put off.
     `But you cared for her?' she insisted.
     `Cared?' He grinned.
     `Perhaps you care for her now,' she said.
     `Me!' His eyes widened. `Ah no, I can't think of her,' he said quietly.
     `Why?'
     But he shook his head.
     `Then why don't you  get  a divorce? She'll come  back to you one day,'
said Connie.
     He looked up at her sharply.
     `She wouldn't come within a mile of me. She hates me a lot worse than I
hate her.'
     `You'll see she'll come back to you.'
     `That she never will. That's done! It would make me sick to see her.'
     `You will see her. And you're not even legally separated, are you?'
     `No.'
     `Ah well, then she'll come back, and you'll have to take her in.'
     He gazed at Connie fixedly. Then he gave the queer toss of his head.
     `You might be right. I was  a fool ever to  come back here.  But I felt
stranded and  had  to  go somewhere. A man's  a  poor bit of a wastrel blown
about.  But  you're  right. I'll get a divorce  and get clear. I hate  those
things like death, officials and courts  and  judges. But  I've got  to  get
through with it. I'll get a divorce.'
     And  she saw his jaw set. Inwardly she exulted. `I think  I will have a
cup of tea now,' she said. He rose to make it. But his face was set. As they
sat at table she asked him:
     `Why did you marry her? She was commoner than yourself. Mrs Bolton told
me about her. She could never understand why you married her.'
     He looked at her fixedly.
     `I'll tell  you,' he said. `The  first girl I had, I began with  when I
was  sixteen. She was  a  school-master's daughter over at Ollerton, pretty,
beautiful  really. I  was supposed to be a clever sort of  young fellow from
Sheffield Grammar  School,  with a bit  of  French and  German, very much up
aloft. She was the romantic sort that hated commonness. She  egged me on  to
poetry and reading: in a  way,  she  made a man of me. I read  and I thought
like a house on fire, for her. And I was a clerk in Butterley offices, thin,
white-faced fellow fuming with all the things I read. And about everything I
talked  to her:  but  everything.  We talked  ourselves into  Persepolis and
Timbuctoo. We were the most literary-cultured couple in ten counties. I held
forth with  rapture to her, positively  with  rapture. I  simply went  up in
smoke. And  she adored  me.  The serpent  in the grass was sex. She  somehow
didn't have any; at least, not where it's supposed to be. I got  thinner and
crazier. Then I said we'd got to be  lovers. I talked her into it, as usual.
So  she let me. I was excited, and she never wanted it. She just didn't want
it. She adored me, she loved me to talk to her and kiss her: in that way she
had  a  passion  for me. But the other, she just didn't  want. And there are
lots of women like her. And it  was just the other that I did want. So there
we split. I was cruel, and  left  her. Then  I took  on with another girl, a
teacher, who  had made a  scandal  by  carrying  on  with a  married man and
driving him nearly out of his mind. She was a soft, white-skinned, soft sort
of a woman, older than me, and  played  the fiddle. And she was a demon. She
loved  everything  about love, except the sex. Clinging, caressing, creeping
into you in every  way: but if you forced her  to  the sex itself,  she just
ground her teeth and sent out hate. I forced her to it, and she could simply
numb me with hate because of it. So I was balked again.  I loathed all that.
I wanted a woman who wanted me, and wanted it.
     `Then  came  Bertha  Coutts. They'd lived next door to  us when I was a
little lad, so I knew 'em all right. And they were common. Well, Bertha went
away to some place or other in Birmingham; she said,  as a lady's companion;
everybody else said, as a waitress or something in a hotel. Anyhow just when
I was more than fed  up with that other  girl, when  I  was twenty-one, back
comes Bertha, with airs and graces and smart clothes and a sort  of bloom on
her: a  sort of sensual bloom that  you'd see sometimes  on a woman, or on a
trolly. Well, I was in a state of murder.  I chucked up my job at  Butterley
because I  thought I was  a weed, clerking  there: and I  got on as overhead
blacksmith at Tevershall: shoeing horses mostly.  It had been my  dad's job,
and  I'd always been with him. It was a job I liked: handling horses: and it
came  natural to  me. So I stopped talking "fine", as they  call it, talking
proper English, and went back to talking broad. I still read books, at home:
but I  blacksmithed and had a pony-trap of my own, and was My Lord Duckfoot.
My dad left me three  hundred pounds when he died. So I took on with Bertha,
and I  was glad  she  was common. I wanted her to be common. I  wanted to be
common myself. Well, I married her, and  she wasn't  bad. Those other "pure"
women had nearly taken all the balls out of me, but she  was  all right that
way. She wanted  me, and  made no  bones about it.  And I was  as pleased as
punch. That was what I  wanted: a woman  who  wanted  me to fuck  her. So  I
fucked her like a good un. And I  think she despised me a bit,  for being so
pleased about it, and bringin' her  her breakfast in bed sometimes. She sort
of let things go, didn't get me a proper dinner when I came home  from work,
and if I said anything, flew out at me. And I flew back, hammer  and  tongs.
She flung a cup at me and I took her by the scruff of the neck and  squeezed
the  life out of her. That sort of thing! But she treated me with insolence.
And she got so's she'd never have me when I wanted her: never. Always put me
off, brutal as you like. And then  when she'd put me right off, and I didn't
want her,  she'd come all lovey-dovey, and get  me. And I always  went.  But
when I had her, she'd never come off when I did. Never! She'd  just wait. If
I kept back for half an hour,  she'd keep back longer. And when I'd come and
really  finished,  then she'd start on her own account,  and I had  to  stop
inside her  till she  brought  herself  off, wriggling  and  shouting, she'd
clutch clutch  with  herself  down there, an' then she'd come off,  fair  in
ecstasy. And then  she'd say: That  was lovely! Gradually  I got sick of it:
and she got worse. She sort of got harder and harder to bring off, and she'd
sort of tear at  me down there, as if it was a beak  tearing at me.  By God,
you think a woman's soft down  there, like  a fig. But  I tell you  the  old
rampers have  beaks between their  legs, and they tear at you  with it  till
you're  sick.  Self! Self!  Self! all self!  tearing and shouting! They talk
about  men's selfishness,  but I  doubt if it can ever touch a woman's blind
beakishness,  once she's gone that way. Like an  old trull! And she couldn't
help it. I told her about it, I told her how I hated it. And she'd even try.
She'd try to lie still and let me work the business. She'd  try.  But it was
no  good. She got no feeling  off it, from my working. She  had to work  the
thing herself, grind her own  coffee.  And it came back on her like a raving
necessity, she had to let herself go, and tear, tear, tear, as if she had no
sensation in her except in the  top of her beak, the very  outside  top tip,
that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores  used to be, so men used to say.
It was a low kind of self-will in her, a raving sort of self-will: like in a
woman who drinks.  Well  in the end I couldn't stand it. We slept apart. She
herself had started it, in her bouts when she wanted to be clear of me, when
she  said  I bossed her. She had  started having a room for herself. But the
time came when I wouldn't have her coming to my room. I wouldn't.
     `I hated it.  And  she hated me. My God,  how she hated me before  that
child  was born! I often think  she conceived it out of hate.  Anyhow, after
the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I joined up.
And I didn't come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate.
     He broke off, pale in the face.
     `And what is the man at Stacks Gate like?' asked Connie.
     `A big baby sort of fellow, very low-mouthed. She bullies him, and they
both drink.'
     `My word, if she came back!'
     `My God, yes! I should just go, disappear again.'
     There was a silence. The pasteboard in the fire had turned to grey ash.
     `So when you did get a  woman who  wanted you,' said Connie, `you got a
bit too much of a good thing.'
     `Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I'd rather have her than  the  never-never
ones: the  white love of my youth, and that other poison-smelling lily,  and
the rest.'
     `What about the rest?' said Connie.
     `The rest?  There is no rest.  Only to my experience the mass of  women
are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put
up with  it, as part of the bargain.  The  more old-fashioned sort  just lie
there like nothing and let you  go ahead. They don't  mind afterwards:  then
they  like  you.  But the  actual thing  itself  is  nothing to them,  a bit
distasteful. Add most men  like it that way. I  hate it. But the sly sort of
women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate
and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up. Then there's the
ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off,
every  kind  except the natural one. They always make you go off when you're
not in the  only place  you  should  be, when you go off.---Then there's the
hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off,
like  my  wife. They want to  be the active party.---Then there's  the  sort
that's just dead  inside: but dead:  and they know it. Then there's the sort
that puts you  out before you really  "come", and go on writhing their loins
till they  bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly  the
Lesbian sort.  It's  astonishing  how  Lesbian  women  are,  consciously  or
unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian.'
     `And do you mind?' asked Connie.
     `I  could  kill  them. When I'm with a woman  who's  really Lesbian,  I
fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her.'
     `And what do you do?'
     `Just go away as fast as I can.'
     `But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?'
     `I do! Because I've suffered more  from them. In the  abstract, I've no
idea. When I get with a Lesbian woman, whether she knows she's one or not, I
see red. No, no! But I wanted to have nothing to do with any woman any more.
I wanted to keep to myself: keep my privacy and my decency.'
     He looked pale, and his brows were sombre.
     `And were you sorry when I came along?' she asked.
     `I was sorry and I was glad.'
     `And what are you now?'
     `I'm  sorry, from the outside:  all the  complications and the ugliness
and recrimination that's bound  to  come,  sooner  or  later. That's when my
blood sinks, and I'm low. But  when my  blood comes  up, I'm glad.  I'm even
triumphant. I was really  getting  bitter. I  thought there  was no real sex
left:  never a woman who'd really "come" naturally with a man:  except black
women, and somehow, well, we're white men: and they're a bit like mud.'
     `And now, are you glad of me?' she asked.
     `Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can't  forget the rest, I want
to get under the table and die.'
     `Why under the table?'
     `Why?' he laughed. `Hide, I suppose. Baby!'
     `You do seem to have had awful experiences of women,' she said.
     `You see,  I couldn't  fool myself. That's where most  men manage. They
take an attitude, and accept a lie. I could never fool myself. I knew what I
wanted with a woman, and I could never say I'd got it when I hadn't.'
     `But have you got it now?'
     `Looks as if I might have.'
     `Then why are you so pale and gloomy?'
     `Bellyful of remembering: and perhaps afraid of myself.'
     She sat in silence. It was growing late.
     `And do you think it's important, a man and a woman?' she asked him.
     `For me it is.  For  me it's  the  core of my life:  if I  have a right
relation with a woman.'
     `And if you didn't get it?'
     `Then I'd have to do without.'
     Again she pondered, before she asked:
     `And do you think you've always been right with women?'
     `God,  no! I let my wife get to what she  was: my fault a  good deal. I
spoilt her. And I'm very mistrustful.  You'll have to expect  it. It takes a
lot  to make me  trust  anybody,  inwardly. So perhaps  I'm  a  fraud too. I
mistrust. And tenderness is not to be mistaken.'
     She looked at him.
     `You don't  mistrust  with  your  body, when your  blood comes up,' she
said. `You don't mistrust then, do you?'
     `No, alas! That's how I've got into all the trouble. And  that's why my
mind mistrusts so thoroughly.'
     `Let your mind mistrust. What does it matter!'
     The dog sighed with discomfort on the mat. The ash-clogged fire sank.
     `We are a couple of battered warriors,' said Connie.
     `Are  you battered too?' he laughed. `And here we  are returning to the
fray!'
     `Yes! I feel really frightened.'
     `Ay!'
     He got up, and  put her shoes  to dry, and wiped  his own and  set them
near the  fire.  In the morning  he would  grease them. He poked the  ash of
pasteboard as much as possible  out of the fire. `Even burnt, it's  filthy,'
he said. Then he brought sticks  and put  them  on the hob for the  morning.
Then he went out awhile with the dog.
     When he came back, Connie said:
     `I want to go out too, for a minute.'
     She went alone into the darkness. There were  stars overhead. She could
smell flowers on  the night air. And she could  feel  her  wet shoes getting
wetter again. But  she  felt  like  going away,  right  away  from  him  and
everybody.
     It was chilly. She shuddered, and returned to the house. He was sitting
in front of the low fire.
     `Ugh! Cold!' she shuddered.
     He put the sticks on the fire, and  fetched more, till they had a  good
crackling chimneyful  of blaze. The rippling running yellow flame made  them
both happy, warmed their faces and their souls.
     `Never mind!'  she said, taking his  hand as he sat silent  and remote.
`One does one's best.'
     `Ay!' He sighed, with a twist of a smile.
     She slipped over to him,  and into his arms, as he sat there before the
fire.
     `Forget then!' she whispered. `Forget!'
     He held her close, in the running warmth of the  fire. The flame itself
was like a  forgetting.  And her soft, warm, ripe  weight!  Slowly his blood
turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.
     `And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly,
only perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps it wasn't all their fault,' she said.
     `I know it. Do you think I don't know what a broken-backed snake that's
been trodden on I was myself!'
     She clung to  him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again.
Yet some perversity had made her.
     `But you're not now,'  she  said. `You're not that now: a broken-backed
snake that's been trodden on.'
     `I don't know what I am. There's black days ahead.'
     `No!' she protested, clinging to him. `Why? Why?'
     `There's black days coming for us  all and for everybody,' he  repeated
with a prophetic gloom.
     `No! You're not to say it!'
     He was silent. But she could feel the black void of despair inside him.
That was the death of all desire, the death of all love:  this despair  that
was like the dark cave inside the men, in which their spirit was lost.
     `And you talk so  coldly about sex,'  she said. `You talk as if you had
only wanted your own pleasure and satisfaction.'
     She was protesting nervously against him.
     `Nay!' he  said.  `I wanted  to have my  pleasure and satisfaction of a
woman,  and  I never  got  it: because I  could never get  my  pleasure  and
satisfaction of her unless she got hers of me at the same time. And it never
happened. It takes two.'
     `But you never believed in your women. You don't even believe really in
me,' she said.
     `I don't know what believing in a woman means.'
     `That's it, you see!'
     She still was curled on his lap. But his spirit was grey and absent, he
was not there for her. And everything she said drove him further.
     `But what do you believe in?' she insisted.
     `I don't know.'
     `Nothing, like all the men I've ever known,' she said.
     They were both silent. Then he roused himself and said:
     `Yes,  I  do believe in  something. I  believe in being  warmhearted. I
believe especially  in being  warm-hearted in love,  in  fucking with a warm
heart. I believe if  men could fuck  with warm hearts, and the women take it
warm-heartedly, everything would  come all right. It's all this cold-hearted
fucking that is death and idiocy.'
     `But you don't fuck me cold-heartedly,' she protested.
     `I don't want to fuck you at all.  My heart's as  cold as cold potatoes
just now.'
     `Oh!'  she said, kissing him mockingly. `Let's have them  sautÉes.'  He
laughed, and sat erect.
     `It's  a fact!' he  said.  `Anything for a bit of warm-heartedness. But
the  women  don't like it.  Even you don't  really like it. You  like  good,
sharp, piercing  cold-hearted  fucking,  and then pretending it's all sugar.
Where's your tenderness for me? You're as  suspicious of me as a cat is of a
dog. I tell  you it  takes two even to be tender and warm-hearted.  You love
fucking  all  right:  but  you want  it to  be  called  something grand  and
mysterious,  just  to   flatter   your   own   self-importance.   Your   own
self-importance  is more to you,  fifty  times more, than  any man, or being
together with a man.'
     `But that's what I'd say of you. Your own self-importance is everything
to you.'
     `Ay! Very well then!' he  said, moving as if he wanted to  rise. `Let's
keep apart then. I'd rather die than do any more cold-hearted fucking.'
     She slid away from him, and he stood up.
     `And do you think I want it?' she said.
     `I  hope you  don't,' he replied. `But  anyhow, you go to bed  an' I'll
sleep down here.'
     She  looked  at him. He  was  pale,  his brows were sullen,  he  was as
distant in recoil as the cold pole. Men were all alike.
     `I can't go home till morning,' she said.
     `No! Go to bed. It's a quarter to one.'
     `I certainly won't,' she said.
     He went across and picked up his boots.
     `Then I'll go out!' he said.
     He began to put on his boots. She stared at him.
     `Wait!' she faltered. `Wait! What's come between us?'
     He  was bent  over, lacing  his boot,  and did  not  reply. The moments
passed. A dimness came over her,  like a swoon. All her  consciousness died,
and she stood there  wide-eyed,  looking at  him from  the  unknown, knowing
nothing any more.
     He looked up,  because of the silence, and  saw her wide-eyed and lost.
And as if a wind tossed him he got  up and hobbled over to her, one shoe off
and one shoe on, and took her in his  arms, pressing her  against  his body,
which somehow felt hurt right  through. And there he held her, and there she
remained.
     Till his hands reached blindly down and felt for  her, and  felt  under
the clothing to where she was smooth and warm.
     `Ma lass!' he murmured. `Ma little lass! Dunna let's light! Dunna let's
niver light! I love thee  an' th' touch on thee. Dunna argue wi'  me! Dunna!
Dunna! Dunna! Let's be together.'
     She lifted her face and looked at him.
     `Don't be upset,' she  said steadily. `It's no good being upset. Do you
really want to be together with me?'
     She  looked with wide, steady eyes into his face.  He stopped, and went
suddenly still,  turning his face aside. All his body  went perfectly still,
but did not withdraw.
     Then he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, with his odd, faintly
mocking grin, saying: `Ay-ay! Let's be together on oath.'
     `But  really?' she said, her eyes filling with tears. `Ay really! Heart
an' belly an' cock.'
     He still smiled  faintly down at her, with  the flicker of irony in his
eyes, and a touch of bitterness.
     She was silently weeping, and he lay with her and  went into her  there
on the hearthrug, and so they gained a measure  of equanimity. And then they
went quickly to bed, for it was growing chill, and they had tired each other
out. And she nestled up  to him, feeling small  and enfolded, and  they both
went to sleep at once, fast in one  sleep. And so they lay and  never moved,
till the sun rose over the wood and day was beginning.
     Then he woke up and  looked at the light. The  curtains were drawn.  He
listened to the loud wild calling of blackbirds and thrushes in the wood. It
would be a brilliant  morning, about half past five, his hour for rising. He
had slept so fast! It was such  a new day! The woman was still curled asleep
and tender. His hand moved on her, and she  opened her blue  wondering eyes,
smiling unconsciously into his face.
     `Are you awake?' she said to him.
     He was looking into her eyes.  He smiled, and kissed her. And  suddenly
she roused and sat up.
     `Fancy that I am here!' she said.
     She  looked  round the whitewashed  little  bedroom  with  its  sloping
ceiling and gable window where the white curtains were closed.  The room was
bare save for a little yellow-painted chest of drawers, and a chair: and the
smallish white bed in which she lay with him.
     `Fancy that we  are here!' she said, looking down at  him. He was lying
watching  her,  stroking her  breasts  with  his  fingers,  under  the  thin
nightdress. When he was warm and smoothed out, he looked young and handsome.
His eyes could look so warm. And she was fresh and young like a flower.
     `I  want to take  this  off!' she  said,  gathering  the  thin  batiste
nightdress  and pulling it over her head. She  sat there with bare shoulders
and  longish breasts  faintly  golden.  He  loved to  make her breasts swing
softly, like bells.
     `You must take off your pyjamas too,' she said.
     `Eh, nay!'
     `Yes! Yes!' she commanded.
     And  he  took  off  his old cotton  pyjama-jacket,  and pushed down the
trousers. Save for  his hands and wrists and face and neck  he  was white as
milk, with fine slender muscular flesh. To Connie he was suddenly piercingly
beautiful again, as when she had seen him that afternoon washing himself.
     Gold of sunshine  touched  the closed white curtain. She felt it wanted
to come in.
     `Oh, do let's draw the curtains!  The  birds are singing so! Do let the
sun in,' she said.
     He slipped out of bed with his back to  her, naked  and white and thin,
and went to the  window, stooping a little, drawing the curtains and looking
out for a moment. The back was white and fine, the small buttocks  beautiful
with an  exquisite,  delicate manliness,  the  back of  the neck  ruddy  and
delicate and yet strong.
     There was an inward, not an outward strength in the delicate fine body.
     `But  you are beautiful!' she said. `So pure  and fine! Come!' She held
her arms out.
     He was ashamed to turn to her, because of his aroused nakedness.
     He caught his shirt off the floor, and held it to him, coming to her.
     `No!' she  said still  holding  out  her beautiful slim  arms  from her
dropping breasts. `Let me see you!'
     He  dropped the shirt and  stood  still looking  towards  her.  The sun
through the low window sent in a beam that lit up his thighs and slim  belly
and  the erect phallos rising darkish and hot-looking from the  little cloud
of vivid gold-red hair. She was startled and afraid.
     `How strange!' she said slowly.  `How strange he  stands there! So big!
and so dark and cock-sure! Is he like that?'
     The man looked down the  front of his slender white body, and  laughed.
Between the slim breasts the hair was dark, almost black. But at the root of
the  belly, where the phallos rose thick and arching, it was gold-red, vivid
in a little cloud.
     `So  proud!' she murmured, uneasy.  `And so lordly!  Now I know why men
are  so overbearing! But he's  lovely,  really.  Like another  being!  A bit
terrifying! But lovely really! And he comes to  me!---' She caught her lower
lip between her teeth, in fear and excitement.
     The man  looked  down  in silence  at the tense phallos,  that  did not
change.---`Ay!' he said at last, in a little voice. `Ay ma lad! tha're theer
right enough. Yi, tha mun rear thy head! Theer on thy own, eh?  an' ta'es no
count O' nob'dy! Tha ma'es  nowt  O'  me, John  Thomas. Art boss?  of me? Eh
well, tha're more cocky than me, an'  tha says less. John  Thomas! Dost want
her? Dost want my lady Jane? Tha's dipped me in again, tha hast. Ay, an' tha
comes up smilin'.---Ax 'er then! Ax lady Jane! Say: Lift up your heads, O ye
gates, that  the king of glory may  come  in. Ay, th' cheek on  thee!  Cunt,
that's  what  tha're after. Tell lady Jane tha wants cunt.  John Thomas, an'
th' cunt O' lady Jane!---'
     `Oh, don't tease  him,' said Connie, crawling on her  knees on  the bed
towards him and putting her arms round  his white slender loins, and drawing
him  to her so that  her hanging, swinging  breasts touched the tip  of  the
stirring, erect phallos, and  caught  the drop of moisture. She held the man
fast.
     `Lie down!' he said. `Lie down! Let me come!' He was in a hurry now.
     And  afterwards,  when  they had  been quite  still,  the  woman had to
uncover the man again, to look at the mystery of the phallos.
     `And now  he's tiny,  and  soft like a little bud  of  life!' she said,
taking the soft small penis in her hand. `Isn't he somehow lovely! so on his
own, so  strange! And  so innocent! And  he comes so far  into  me! You must
never insult  him, you know. He's mine  too. He's not only yours. He's mine!
And so lovely and innocent!' And she held the penis soft in her hand.
     He laughed.
     `Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in kindred love,' he said.
     `Of course!' she said. `Even  when he's soft and little I feel my heart
simply  tied  to  him.  And  how lovely  your hair  is  here!  quite,  quite
different!'
     `That's John Thomas's hair, not mine!' he said.
     `John Thomas! John Thomas!' and she quickly kissed the soft penis, that
was beginning to stir again.
     `Ay!' said the man, stretching his body almost painfully. `He's got his
root in my soul, has  that gentleman! An' sometimes I don' know  what ter do
wi' him. Ay, he's got a will of  his own, an'  it's hard  to suit him. Yet I
wouldn't have him killed.'
     `No wonder men have always been  afraid of him!' she said. `He's rather
terrible.'
     The  quiver was  going  through  the  man's  body,  as  the  stream  of
consciousness again  changed  its  direction, turning downwards. And  he was
helpless, as the penis  in slow  soft undulations filled and surged and rose
up,  and  grew hard,  standing there hard and  overweening,  in  its curious
towering fashion. The woman too trembled a little as she watched.
     `There! Take him then! He's thine,' said the man.
     And she quivered,  and  her own mind melted  out. Sharp soft  waves  of
unspeakable  pleasure  washed over  her as he entered  her, and started  the
curious molten thrilling that spread and  spread  till she was carried  away
with the last, blind flush of extremity.
     He  heard the distant hooters of Stacks Gate for  seven o'clock. It was
Monday morning. He shivered a  little, and with his face between her breasts
pressed her soft breasts up over his ears, to deafen him.
     She  had  not even heard the hooters. She lay perfectly still, her soul
washed transparent.
     `You must get up, mustn't you?' he muttered.
     `What time?' came her colourless voice.
     `Seven-o'clock blowers a bit sin'.'
     `I suppose I must.'
     She was resenting as she always did, the compulsion from outside.
     He sat up and looked  blankly out of the window. `You do love me, don't
you?' she asked calmly. He looked down at her.
     `Tha  knows what  tha  knows. What  dost  ax for!'  he  said,  a little
fretfully.
     `I want you to keep me, not to let me go,' she said.
     His eyes seemed full of a warm, soft darkness that could not think.
     `When? Now?'
     `Now in your heart. Then  I want  to come  and  live with you,  always,
soon.'
     He sat naked on the bed, with his head dropped, unable to think.
     `Don't you want it?' she asked.
     `Ay!' he said.
     Then with the same  eyes darkened with another flame of  consciousness,
almost like sleep, he looked at her.
     `Dunna  ax  me nowt now,' he said. `Let me be.  I like thee. I luv thee
when tha lies theer. A  woman's a lovely thing when 'er's deep ter fuck, and
cunt's good. Ah luv thee, thy legs, an' th' shape on thee, an' th' womanness
on thee.  Ah  luv th' womanness on  thee. Ah luv thee wi' my bas an'  wi' my
heart. But  dunna ax  me nowt. Dunna ma'e me  say nowt. Let  me stop as I am
while I can. Tha can ax me iverything after. Now let me be, let me be!'
     And softly, he laid his hand over her mound of Venus, on the soft brown
maiden-hair, and himself-sat still and naked on the bed, his face motionless
in physical abstraction, almost like the face of Buddha. Motionless, and  in
the  invisible flame of another  consciousness, he sat with his hand on her,
and waited for the turn.
     After a while, he reached for his shirt and put it on,  dressed himself
swiftly in  silence, looked  at her  once as she still lay naked and faintly
golden like a Gloire de Dijon rose on the  bed, and was gone. She  heard him
downstairs opening the door.
     And still she lay musing, musing. It was  very hard to go: to go out of
his arms.  He  called  from the foot of  the stairs:  `Half past seven!' She
sighed, and got out of bed. The bare little room! Nothing  in it  at all but
the  small  chest of drawers and the smallish bed. But  the board  floor was
scrubbed clean. And in the corner by the window gable was  a shelf with some
books,  and  some from a circulating library.  She looked. There  were books
about Bolshevist Russia, books of  travel, a  volume about the atom  and the
electron, another about the composition of the earth's core, and the  causes
of earthquakes: then a  few  novels: then three books on India. So! He was a
reader after all.
     The sun fell on her naked  limbs through the gable  window. Outside she
saw the dog  Flossie roaming round. The hazel-brake  was misted  with green,
and  dark-green dogs-mercury  under. It was a clear clean morning with birds
flying  and  triumphantly  singing.  If only she  could stay!  If only there
weren't the other ghastly world of smoke and iron! If only he would make her
a world.
     She  came downstairs,  down the steep,  narrow wooden stairs. Still she
would be content with this little house, if only it were  in  a world of its
own.
     He  was  washed and fresh,  and  the  fire was burning.  `Will  you eat
anything?' he said.
     `No! Only lend me a comb.'
     She followed him  into the scullery, and  combed  her hair  before  the
handbreadth of mirror by the back door. Then she was ready to go.
     She stood in the little  front garden, looking at the dewy flowers, the
grey bed of pinks in bud already.
     `I  would like to have all the rest of the world disappear,'  she said,
`and live with you here.'
     `It won't disappear,' he said.
     They went almost in silence through the lovely dewy wood. But they were
together in a world of their own.
     It was bitter to her to go on to Wragby.
     `I want soon to come  and live with  you altogether,' she  said as  she
left him.
     He smiled, unanswering.
     She got home quietly and unremarked, and went up to her room.

        Chapter 15

     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 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
ghastly treachery 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, naÏve 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.  And his
finger-tips touched  the  two secret openings to  her body, time after time,
with a soft little brush of fire.
     `An' if tha shits an' if tha pisses, I'm glad.  I don't want a woman as
couldna shit nor piss.'
     Connie could not help  a  sudden  snort of astonished laughter, but  he
went on unmoved.
     `Tha'rt real,  tha art! Tha'art  real, even a bit of a bitch. Here  tha
shits  an' here tha pisses:  an' I lay my hand on 'em both an' like thee for
it. I like thee for it.  Tha's  got a proper, woman's arse, proud of itself.
It's none ashamed of itself this isna.'
     He laid his hand close and firm  over her secret places, in a  kind  of
close greeting.
     `I  like it,' he said. `I like it! An' if I only lived ten minutes, an'
stroked thy arse an' got to know it, I should reckon I'd lived one life, see
ter! Industrial system or not! Here's one o' my lifetimes.'
     She turned round and  climbed into his lap, clinging to him. `Kiss me!'
she whispered.
     And she knew the thought of  their separation was  latent in both their
minds, and at last she was sad.
     She  sat  on  his  thighs,  her  head  against   his  breast,  and  her
ivory-gleaming legs loosely  apart, the fire  glowing unequally  upon  them.
Sitting with his head dropped, he  looked at the folds  of her  body in  the
fire-glow,  and at the fleece of soft  brown hair that hung down  to a point
between  her open thighs. He  reached  to the table behind, and took up  her
bunch of flowers, still so wet that drops of rain fell on to her.
     `Flowers stops  out of doors  all weathers,'  he  said. `They  have  no
houses.'
     `Not even a hut!' she murmured.
     With quiet fingers he  threaded a few forget-me-not flowers in the fine
brown fleece of the mound of Venus.
     `There!' he said. `There's forget-me-nots in the right place!'
     She looked  down at  the  milky  odd  little  flowers  among the  brown
maiden-hair at the lower tip of her body.
     `Doesn't it look pretty!' she said.
     `Pretty as life,' he replied.
     And he stuck a pink campion-bud among the hair.
     `There!  That's  me  where  you won't  forget me! That's  Moses  in the
bull-rushes.'
     `You  don't  mind, do  you, that I'm going  away?' she asked wistfully,
looking up into his face.
     But his face  was inscrutable, under the heavy  brows. He kept it quite
blank.
     `You do as you wish,' he said.
     And he spoke in good English.
     `But I won't go if you don't wish it,' she said, clinging to him.
     There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire.
The flame  glowed on his silent,  abstracted  face. She waited, but he  said
nothing.
     `Only I thought  it would be a good way to begin a break with Clifford.
I do want a child. And it would give me a chance to, to---,' she resumed.
     `To let them think a few lies,' he said.
     `Yes, that among other things. Do you want them to think the truth?'
     `I don't care what they think.'
     `I do! I don't want them  handling me with their unpleasant cold minds,
not  while I'm  still at Wragby.  They can  think  what  they like  when I'm
finally gone.'
     He was silent.
     `But Sir Clifford expects you to come back to him?'
     `Oh, I must come back,' she said: and there was silence.
     `And would you have a child in Wragby?' he asked.
     She closed her arm round his neck.
     `If you wouldn't take me away, I should have to,' she said.
     `Take you where to?'
     `Anywhere! away! But right away from Wragby.'
     `When?'
     `Why, when I come back.'
     `But what's the good  of coming back,  doing the thing twice, if you're
once gone?' he said.
     `Oh,  I  must  come back.  I've promised! I've  promised so faithfully.
Besides, I come back to you, really.'
     `To your husband's game-keeper?'
     `I don't see that that matters,' she said.
     `No?' He mused a while. `And when would you think of  going away again,
then; finally? When exactly?'
     `Oh, I  don't know. I'd come  back  from Venice.  And then we'd prepare
everything.'
     `How prepare?'
     `Oh, I'd tell Clifford. I'd have to tell him.'
     `Would you!'
     He remained silent. She put her arms round his neck.
     `Don't make it difficult for me,' she pleaded.
     `Make what difficult?'
     `For me to go to Venice and arrange things.'
     A little smile, half a grin, flickered on his face.
     `I don't make it  difficult,' he said.  `I  only want  to find out just
what you  are after. But you  don't really know yourself. You want  to  take
time:  get away and look  at it. I don't blame you. I think you're wise. You
may prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don't blame you. I've no Wragbys to
offer. In fact, you  know what you'll get out  of me. No, no, I think you're
right! I really do! And I'm not keen on coming to live on you, being kept by
you. There's that too.'
     She felt somehow as if he were giving her tit for tat.
     `But you want me, don't you?' she asked.
     `Do you want me?'
     `You know I do. That's evident.'
     `Quite! And when do you want me?'
     `You know we can arrange it all when I come back. Now I'm out of breath
with you. I must get calm and clear.'
     `Quite! Get calm and clear!'
     She was a little offended.
     `But you trust me, don't you?' she said.
     `Oh, absolutely!'
     She heard the mockery in his tone.
     `Tell me then,' she said flatly; `do you think it would be  better if I
don't go to Venice?'
     `I'm sure it's better if you do go to  Venice,' he replied in the cool,
slightly mocking voice.
     `You know it's next Thursday?' she said.
     `Yes!'
     She now began to muse. At last she said:
     `And we shall know better where we are when I come back, shan't we?'
     `Oh surely!'
     The curious gulf of silence between them!
     `I've  been  to  the  lawyer  about  my  divorce,' he  said,  a  little
constrainedly.
     She gave a slight shudder.
     `Have you!' she said. `And what did he say?'
     `He said I ought to have done it before;  that may be a difficulty. But
since I was in the  army, he thinks it will go through all right. If only it
doesn't bring her down on my head!'
     `Will she have to know?'
     `Yes! she is served with  a notice:  so is the  man she lives with, the
co-respondent.'
     `Isn't  it hateful, all the  performances! I  suppose I'd  have  to  go
through it with Clifford.'
     There was a silence.
     `And of course,' he said, `I have  to live  an  exemplary  life for the
next six or eight months. So if you go to Venice, there's temptation removed
for a week or two, at least.'
     `Am  I temptation!'  she  said,  stroking  his face. `I'm  so glad  I'm
temptation to  you!  Don't  let's  think about it!  You frighten me when you
start thinking: you  roll me out flat.  Don't let's  think about  it. We can
think so much when we are apart. That's the whole point! I've been thinking,
I must come to you for another night before I go.  I must come  once more to
the cottage. Shall I come on Thursday night?'
     `Isn't that when your sister will be there?'
     `Yes! But  she said we  would start at tea-time. So we  could start  at
tea-time. But she could sleep somewhere else and I could sleep with you.
     `But then she'd have to know.'
     `Oh, I shall tell her. I've  more or less told her already. I must talk
it all over with Hilda. She's a great help, so sensible.'
     He was thinking of her plan.
     `So  you'd start off  from Wragby at tea-time,  as if you were going to
London? Which way were you going?'
     `By Nottingham and Grantham.'
     `And then  your sister would drop you somewhere and you'd walk or drive
back here? Sounds very risky, to me.'
     `Does it?  Well, then, Hilda could  bring me  back. She could sleep  at
Mansfield, and bring me back here in the evening, and fetch me again  in the
morning. It's quite easy.'
     `And the people who see you?'
     `I'll wear goggles and a veil.'
     He pondered for some time.
     `Well,' he said. `You please yourself as usual.'
     `But wouldn't it please you?'
     `Oh yes! It'd please me all right,' he said a little  grimly.  `I might
as well smite while the iron's hot.'
     `Do  you know what I thought?' she said suddenly. `It suddenly came  to
me. You are the "Knight of the Burning Pestle"!'
     `Ay! And you? Are you the Lady of the Red-Hot Mortar?'
     `Yes!' she said. `Yes! You're Sir Pestle and I'm Lady Mortar.'
     `All right,  then I'm knighted.  John Thomas is Sir John, to  your Lady
Jane.'
     `Yes! John  Thomas  is knighted! I'm  my-lady-maiden-hair, and you must
have flowers too. Yes!'
     She threaded two  pink campions  in the bush of red-gold hair above his
penis.
     `There!' she said. `Charming! Charming! Sir John!'
     And she pushed a bit of forget-me-not in the dark hair of his breast.
     `And  you won't  forget me there,  will  you?' She  kissed  him on  the
breast,  and  made  two bits  of forget-me-not lodge  one over each  nipple,
kissing him again.
     `Make a  calendar of me!' he said.  He  laughed, and  the flowers shook
from his breast.
     `Wait a bit!' he said.
     He  rose, and opened the door of the  hut. Flossie, lying in the porch,
got up and looked at him.
     `Ay, it's me!' he said.
     The  rain had  ceased.  There was  a  wet, heavy,  perfumed  stillness.
Evening was approaching.
     He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the
riding. Connie watched  his thin, white  figure, and it looked to her like a
ghost, an apparition moving away from her.
     When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of
the hut, with  a  blanket  round her,  looking into the drenched, motionless
silence.
     But  he was coming back, trotting  strangely, and carrying flowers. She
was a little afraid of him, as  if he were not quite human. And when he came
near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the meaning.
     He had brought columbines and campions, and new-mown hay, and oak-tufts
and honeysuckle in  small bud. He fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round her
breasts,  sticking in tufts  of bluebells  and campion:  and in her navel he
poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden-hair were forget-me-nots and
woodruff.
     `That's  you in all  your glory!' he said. `Lady Jane,  at her  wedding
with John Thomas.'
     And he  stuck  flowers in the hair of his own body, and  wound a bit of
creeping-jenny round his penis, and stuck a single bell of a hyacinth in his
navel. She  watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And she pushed a
campion flower in his moustache, where it stuck, dangling under his nose.
     `This is  John Thomas marryin'  Lady Jane,'  he said. `An'  we  mun let
Constance an' Oliver go their ways. Maybe---'
     He spread out his  hand  with  a gesture, and then he sneezed, sneezing
away the flowers from his nose and his navel. He sneezed again.
     `Maybe what?' she said, waiting for him to go on.
     He looked at her a little bewildered.
     `Eh?' he said.
     `Maybe what? Go on with what you were going to say,' she insisted.
     `Ay, what was I going to say?'
     He had forgotten. And it  was  one  of the disappointments of her life,
that he never finished.
     A yellow ray of sun shone over the trees.
     `Sun!' he said. `And time you went. Time, my Lady, time! What's that as
flies without wings, your Ladyship? Time! Time!'
     He reached for his shirt.
     `Say goodnight! to  John Thomas,' he said, looking  down at  his penis.
`He's safe in the arms of creeping Jenny! Not much burning pestle about  him
just now.'
     And he put his flannel shirt over his head.
     `A  man's most dangerous moment,' he said, when his  head had  emerged,
`is when he's getting into his shirt. Then he puts his head in a bag. That's
why  I  prefer those American  shirts, that you put on  like  a jacket.' She
still stood watching him.  He stepped  into his short  drawers, and buttoned
them round the waist.
     `Look at Jane!' he said. `In all her blossoms! Who'll  put blossoms  on
you next year, Jinny? Me, or somebody else? "Good-bye, my bluebell, farewell
to you!" I hate that  song, it's early war days.'  He then sat down, and was
pulling on his stockings. She still  stood unmoving. He laid his hand on the
slope  of her buttocks.  `Pretty little  Lady  Jane!' he  said.  `Perhaps in
Venice you'll find a man  who'll  put jasmine  in your  maiden-hair,  and  a
pomegranate flower in your navel. Poor little lady Jane!'
     `Don't say those things!' she said. `You only say them to hurt me.'
     He dropped his head. Then he said, in dialect:
     `Ay, maybe I do, maybe I do!  Well  then, I'll  say nowt, an'  ha' done
wi't.  But  tha mun  dress thysen, all' go  back  to  thy stately  homes  of
England, how beautiful  they stand. Time's up!  Time's  up for Sir John, an'
for  little Lady Jane!  Put thy  shimmy on, Lady  Chatterley! Tha  might  be
anybody,  standin' there be-out even a shimmy, an'  a few  rags  o' flowers.
There then, there then,  I'll undress thee, tha  bob-tailed young throstle.'
And he took the leaves from her hair, kissing her damp hair, and the flowers
from her breasts,  and kissed her  breasts, and kissed her navel, and kissed
her  maiden-hair, where he left  the flowers threaded. `They  mun stop while
they will,' he said.  `So!  There  tha'rt bare again,  nowt but a bare-arsed
lass an' a bit of a Lady  Jane!  Now put  thy shimmy on, for  tha mun go, or
else Lady Chatterley's goin' to be late for dinner,  an' where 'ave yer been
to my pretty maid!'
     She