her an attractive  demure maiden and rather wasted on Clifford,  and
it  was a  thousand pities she stood no chance of bringing forth an  heir to
Wragby. He himself had no heir.
     Connie  wondered  what  he  would  say  if   he  knew  that  Clifford's
game-keeper had been having intercourse with her, and saying to her `tha mun
come to  th' cottage one  time.' He would detest and despise her, for he had
come almost to hate the shoving forward of the working classes. A man of her
own  class  he  would not mind, for Connie was gifted from nature with  this
appearance of demure, submissive maidenliness,  and  perhaps it was part  of
her nature. Winter  called her `dear child'  and  gave her  a rather  lovely
miniature of an eighteenth-century lady, rather against her will.
     But Connie was preoccupied with her affair with the keeper.  After all,
Mr Winter, who was really a gentleman and a man of the world, treated her as
a person  and a discriminating individual; he did not lump her together with
all the rest of his female womanhood in his `thee' and `tha'.
     She  did not go  to the  wood that  day  nor  the  next,  nor  the  day
following. She did not go so long as she felt, or imagined she felt, the man
waiting for her, wanting her. But the fourth day she was  terribly unsettled
and uneasy. She  still refused to go to the  wood  and open her  thighs once
more  to  the  man. She thought  of  all the things  she might do---drive to
Sheffield, pay visits, and the thought of all these things was repellent. At
last she decided to  take a  walk, not towards the wood, but in the opposite
direction; she would go to  Marehay, through  the little iron  gate  in  the
other side  of  the park  fence.  It was a quiet grey day of  spring, almost
warm. She  walked  on  unheeding,  absorbed in  thoughts  she was  not  even
conscious of  She was not really aware of anything outside her, till she was
startled by the loud barking  of the dog at Marehay Farm. Marehay  Farm! Its
pastures  ran up to Wragby park fence, so they were  neighbours, but it  was
some time since Connie had called.
     `Bell!'  she  said  to  the  big  white bull-terrier.  `Bell! have  you
forgotten me? Don't  you know  me?'  She was afraid  of dogs, and Bell stood
back  and bellowed, and  she wanted to pass through  the farmyard on  to the
warren path.
     Mrs Flint appeared. She  was a woman of Constance's own age, had been a
school-teacher, but  Connie  suspected her of  being rather  a false  little
thing.
     `Why,  it's  Lady Chatterley! Why!' And Mrs Flint's eyes glowed  again,
and she  flushed  like  a  young girl.  `Bell,  Bell. Why! barking  at  Lady
Chatterley! Bell! Be quiet!' She  darted forward and slashed at the dog with
a white cloth she held in her hand, then came forward to Connie.
     `She  used  to  know me,' said Connie, shaking hands.  The Flints  were
Chatterley tenants.
     `Of course she  knows your  Ladyship! She's just showing off,' said Mrs
Flint, glowing and looking up with a sort of flushed confusion, `but it's so
long since she's seen you. I do hope you are better.'
     `Yes thanks, I'm all right.'
     `We've  hardly  seen you all  winter. Will you come in and  look at the
baby?'
     `Well!' Connie hesitated. `Just for a minute.'
     Mrs Flint flew wildly in  to tidy up, and Connie came slowly after her,
hesitating in  the rather dark kitchen where  the kettle was  boiling by the
fire. Back came Mrs Flint.
     `I do hope you'll excuse me,' she said. `Will you come in here?'
     They  went  into the living-room, where a  baby was sitting on the  rag
hearth  rug, and  the table was roughly set  for  tea. A young  servant-girl
backed down the passage, shy and awkward.
     The baby was  a perky little thing  of about a year, with red hair like
its father, and cheeky pale-blue eyes. It was a girl, and not to be daunted.
It  sat among cushions and was surrounded with rag  dolls  and other toys in
modern excess.
     `Why,  what  a dear she  is!' said Connie, `and how she's grown!  A big
girl! A big girl!'
     She had given  it a shawl  when  it was born, and celluloid  ducks  for
Christmas.
     `There, Josephine!  Who's that  come to see you? Who's this, Josephine?
Lady Chatterley---you know Lady Chatterley, don't you?'
     The queer  pert  little mite gazed cheekily  at Connie. Ladyships  were
still all the same to her.
     `Come! Will you come to me?' said Connie to the baby.
     The baby didn't care one way or another,  so  Connie picked  her up and
held her  in her lap.  How warm and lovely  it was to hold a child in  one's
lap, and the soft little arms, the unconscious cheeky little legs.
     `I  was just having a rough  cup  of tea all by myself.  Luke's gone to
market, so  I can  have  it when I  like.  Would you care  for  a  cup, Lady
Chatterley? I don't suppose it's what you're used to, but if you would...'
     Connie would, though  she didn't want to be  reminded  of  what she was
used to. There was a great relaying of the table, and  the best cups brought
and the best tea-pot.
     `If only you wouldn't take any trouble,' said Connie.
     But if Mrs Flint took no  trouble, where was the fun!  So Connie played
with the child and was amused by  its little female dauntlessness, and got a
deep  voluptuous pleasure out of  its soft  young warmth. Young life! And so
fearless! So  fearless,  because so defenceless. All  the other  people,  so
narrow with fear!
     She  had a cup of tea, which was rather strong, and very good bread and
butter, and bottled damsons. Mrs  Flint flushed and glowed  and bridled with
excitement, as  if Connie  were some gallant  knight.  And  they had a  real
female chat, and both of them enjoyed it.
     `It's a poor little tea, though,' said Mrs Flint.
     `It's much nicer than at home,' said Connie truthfully.
     `Oh-h!' said Mrs Flint, not believing, of course.
     But at last Connie rose.
     `I must  go,' she said. `My husband has  no  idea where I am.  He'll be
wondering all kinds of things.'
     `He'll never think you're here,' laughed Mrs Flint excitedly. `He'll be
sending the crier round.'
     `Goodbye,  Josephine,' said Connie, kissing the baby  and ruffling  its
red, wispy hair.
     Mrs Flint insisted on opening the locked  and barred front door. Connie
emerged in the farm's little front garden, shut  in by a privet hedge. There
were two rows of auriculas by the path, very velvety and rich.
     `Lovely auriculas,' said Connie.
     `Recklesses, as Luke calls them,' laughed Mrs Flint. `Have some.'
     And eagerly she picked the velvet and primrose flowers.
     `Enough! Enough!' said Connie.
     They came to the little garden gate.
     `Which way were you going?' asked Mrs Flint.
     `By the Warren.'
     `Let me see! Oh yes, the cows  are in the gin close. But they're not up
yet. But the gate's locked, you'll have to climb.'
     `I can climb,' said Connie.
     `Perhaps I can just go down the close with you.'
     They went down the poor, rabbit-bitten pasture. Birds were whistling in
wild evening triumph in the wood. A  man was calling up the last cows, which
trailed slowly over the path-worn pasture.
     `They're late, milking,  tonight,'  said Mrs Flint severely. `They know
Luke won't be back till after dark.'
     They came to the fence, beyond which the young fir-wood bristled dense.
There was a little gate, but it was locked. In the grass on the inside stood
a bottle, empty.
     `There's the keeper's empty bottle for his milk,'  explained Mrs Flint.
`We bring it as far as here for him, and then he fetches it himself'
     `When?' said Connie.
     `Oh, any time he's  around. Often in the  morning.  Well, goodbye  Lady
Chatterley! And do come again. It was so lovely having you.'
     Connie  climbed  the  fence into  the  narrow path  between  the dense,
bristling young firs.  Mrs Flint went  running back across the pasture, in a
sun-bonnet, because she was really  a  schoolteacher. Constance didn't  like
this dense new part of the wood; it seemed gruesome and choking. She hurried
on with her head down, thinking of the  Flints' baby.  It was a  dear little
thing, but it would be a bit  bow-legged like its father. It showed already,
but perhaps it would grow out of it. How warm and fulfilling somehow to have
a baby, and how Mrs Flint had showed it off!  She had something anyhow  that
Connie hadn't got, and apparently couldn't have. Yes, Mrs Flint had flaunted
her  motherhood. And Connie had been just a bit, just a  little bit jealous.
She couldn't help it.
     She started out of  her muse, and gave  a little cry of fear. A man was
there.
     It was the keeper.  He stood in the path like Balaam's ass, barring her
way.
     `How's this?' he said in surprise.
     `How did you come?' she panted.
     `How did you? Have you been to the hut?'
     `No! No! I went to Marehay.'
     He looked at her curiously, searchingly, and she hung her head a little
guiltily.
     `And  were you going to the  hut now?'  he asked rather sternly. `No! I
mustn't. I stayed at Marehay. No one knows where I am. I'm late. I've got to
run.'
     `Giving  me  the slip, like?' he said, with a faint ironic smile.  `No!
No. Not that. Only---'
     `Why, what else?' he said. And he stepped  up  to  her and put his arms
around her. She felt the front of his body terribly near to her, and alive.
     `Oh, not now, not now,' she cried, trying to push him away.
     `Why not? It's only six o'clock. You've  got half  an hour. Nay! Nay! I
want you.'
     He held  her  fast and she felt  his urgency. Her old instinct  was  to
fight  for her freedom. But something else in  her was strange and inert and
heavy. His body was urgent against her, and she hadn't the heart any more to
fight.
     He looked around.
     `Come---come here! Through here,'  he said,  looking penetratingly into
the dense fir-trees, that were young and not more than half-grown.
     He looked  back at her. She saw his eyes, tense  and brilliant, fierce,
not loving. But  her will had left her.  A strange weight was  on her limbs.
She was giving way. She was giving up.
     He led her through the wall  of prickly trees,  that were  difficult to
come through, to a place where was a little space and a pile of dead boughs.
He threw one or two dry ones down, put his coat and waistcoat over them, and
she  had to  lie down there  under the boughs of the tree, like  an  animal,
while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches, watching her with
haunted  eyes.  But  still  he was  provident---he  made her  lie  properly,
properly. Yet  he broke  the  band of her underclothes, for she did not help
him, only lay inert.
     He  too  had bared  the front part  of his body and she felt  his naked
flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her,
turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless
orgasm,  there  awoke  in  her  new  strange  thrills  rippling  inside her.
Rippling,  rippling,  rippling, like  a flapping overlapping of soft flames,
soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance,  exquisite, exquisite and
melting her  all  molten inside.  It was like bells rippling up  and up to a
culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the
last. But it was over  too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her
own conclusion  with her  own  activity. This was different,  different. She
could  do  nothing.  She  could  no  longer  harden  and  grip  for  her own
satisfaction  upon him. She could only wait,  wait and moan in spirit as she
felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and  contracting,  coming to the  terrible
moment when he would  slip out  of her and be gone. Whilst all her  womb was
open and  soft, and softly clamouring, like  a  sea-anemone under  the tide,
clamouring for him to come in again and make a fulfilment for her. She clung
to him unconscious iii passion, and he never quite slipped from her, and she
felt the  soft bud of  him within her stirring, and strange rhythms flushing
up into her with  a  strange rhythmic growing motion,  swelling and swelling
till it  filled  all  her cleaving consciousness,  and  then began again the
unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools
of  sensation  swirling  deeper  and  deeper  through  all  her  tissue  and
consciousness, till she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she
lay  there crying  in unconscious inarticulate cries. The voice  out  of the
uttermost night, the life! The man heard it beneath him with a kind of  awe,
as his life sprang out into her. And as it subsided, he subsided too and lay
utterly still, unknowing, while her grip on him slowly relaxed,  and she lay
inert. And they  lay  and knew nothing,  not even of each  other, both lost.
Till at  last  he  began  to  rouse  and  become aware  of  his  defenceless
nakedness, and she was aware that his  body was loosening its  clasp on her.
He was coming apart;  but in her breast she felt  she could not bear  him to
leave her uncovered. He must cover her now for ever.
     But he drew away  at  last, and kissed  her and  covered her over,  and
began to cover himself She lay looking  up to the boughs of the tree, unable
as yet to move. He stood and fastened  up  his breeches,  looking round. All
was dense and silent,  save for the awed dog that lay with its paws  against
its  nose. He sat  down again on the  brushwood and  took Connie's  hand  in
silence.
     She  turned  and looked at  him. `We  came off together that  time,' he
said.
     She did not answer.
     `It's good when it's like that. Most folks live their lives through and
they never know it,' he said, speaking rather dreamily.
     She looked into his brooding face.
     `Do they?' she said. `Are you glad?'
     He looked back into her eyes. `Glad,' he said, `Ay, but never mind.' He
did not want her to talk. And he bent over her and kissed her, and she felt,
so he must kiss her for ever.
     At last she sat up.
     `Don't people often come off together?' she asked with naive curiosity.
     `A good many of them  never.  You can see  by the raw look of them.' He
spoke unwittingly, regretting he had begun.
     `Have you come off like that with other women?'
     He looked at her amused.
     `I don't know,' he said, `I don't know.'
     And she knew he would never tell  her anything  he didn't want to  tell
her. She  watched his face, and the passion for him moved in her bowels. She
resisted it as far as she could, for it was the loss of herself to herself.
     He put on his waistcoat and his  coat, and pushed  a way through to the
path again.
     The last  level  rays of  the sun touched the wood.  `I won't come with
you,' he said; `better not.'
     She looked  at him wistfully  before she turned. His dog was waiting so
anxiously  for him  to go,  and he  seemed to have  nothing whatever to say.
Nothing left.
     Connie went slowly home, realizing the depth of the other thing in her.
Another self was  alive  in  her, burning  molten  and soft in  her womb and
bowels, and  with this self  she  adored  him. She adored him till her knees
were weak as she walked.  In her womb and  bowels she  was flowing and alive
now  and vulnerable,  and  helpless  in adoration of  him as  the most naive
woman. It feels  like a child, she said to herself it feels like a child  in
me. And so it did, as if her womb, that had always been shut, had opened and
filled with new life, almost a burden, yet lovely.
     `If I had  a child!' she thought to herself; `if I had him inside me as
a child!'---and her limbs turned molten at the thought, and she realized the
immense difference between having a child to oneself and having a child to a
man whom  one's  bowels  yearned  towards.  The  former  seemed  in a  sense
ordinary: but to have a child to  a man whom  one adored in one's bowels and
one's womb, it made her feel she was very different from her old self and as
if she was sinking deep, deep to the centre  of  all womanhood and the sleep
of creation.
     It  was  not the  passion that  was new  to her,  it was  the  yearning
adoration. She knew she had always  feared it, for it left her helpless; she
feared  it still,  lest  if she adored him  too  much, then  she  would lose
herself become effaced,  and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a
savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she
would not at  once fight against it. She knew she  could fight it. She had a
devil  of self-will  in her  breast that  could  have  fought the full  soft
heaving adoration of her womb and crushed it. She could even  now do it,  or
she thought so, and she could then take up her passion with her own will.
     Ah yes, to  be passionate like a  Bacchante, like  a Bacchanal  fleeing
through  the woods, to call  on  Iacchos,  the  bright  phallos that had  no
independent  personality  behind it, but was pure god-servant to  the woman!
The  man,  the  individual,  let  him  not  dare  intrude.   He  was  but  a
temple-servant, the bearer and keeper of the bright phallos, her own.
     So,  in the flux of new awakening, the  old hard passion flamed in  her
for  a  time,  and  the  man dwindled  to  a  contemptible object,  the mere
phallos-bearer, to be torn  to pieces  when his service  was performed.  She
felt the force of  the Bacchae in her limbs and her body, the woman gleaming
and  rapid,  beating down the male;  but  while she felt this, her heart was
heavy.  She  did not  want  it,  it  was known  and barren,  birthless;  the
adoration was her treasure.
     It  was so  fathomless, so soft, so  deep and so unknown.  No, no,  she
would give up her hard  bright female  power; she was weary of it, stiffened
with it; she would  sink in the new bath of life, in the  depths of her womb
and  her bowels that sang  the voiceless song of adoration. It was early yet
to begin to fear the man.
     `I walked over by Marehay, and  I  had tea with Mrs Flint,' she said to
Clifford. `I wanted to see the  baby. It's  so  adorable, with hair like red
cobwebs. Such a dear! Mr Flint had gone to market, so she and I and the baby
had tea together. Did you wonder where I was?'
     `Well, I wondered,  but I guessed you had dropped in somewhere to tea,'
said Clifford jealously. With a sort of second sight he sensed something new
in her, something to  him quite incomprehensible, hut  he ascribed it to the
baby.  He thought that  all that ailed  Connie  was that  she did not have a
baby, automatically bring one forth, so to speak.
     `I saw you  go  across the park to the iron  gate,  my Lady,' said  Mrs
Bolton; `so I thought perhaps you'd called at the Rectory.'
     `I nearly did, then I turned towards Marehay instead.'
     The  eyes of  the  two  women  met:  Mrs  Bolton's  grey and bright and
searching; Connie's blue and veiled and strangely  beautiful. Mrs Bolton was
almost sure she had a lover, yet how could it be, and who could it be? Where
was there a man?
     `Oh,  it's  so  good  for you, if you  go out and  see a bit of company
sometimes,' said Mrs Bolton. `I was saying to Sir Clifford,  it would do her
ladyship a world of good if she'd go out among people more.'
     `Yes, I'm glad  I went, and such a quaint dear cheeky  baby, Clifford,'
said  Connie. `It's got hair just like spider-webs, and  bright  orange, and
the  oddest, cheekiest,  pale-blue china eyes.  Of course it's a girl, or it
wouldn't be so bold, bolder than any little Sir Francis Drake.'
     `You're right, my  Lady---a regular little Flint.  They were  always  a
forward sandy-headed family,' said Mrs Bolton.
     `Wouldn't you like  to see it, Clifford? I've asked them to tea for you
to see it.'
     `Who?' he asked, looking at Connie in great uneasiness. `Mrs Flint  and
the baby, next Monday.'
     `You can have them to tea up in your room,' he said.
     `Why, don't you want to see the baby?' she cried.
     `Oh,  I'll see  it,  but I  don't  want to sit  through a tea-time with
them.'
     `Oh,' cried Connie, looking at him with wide veiled eyes.
     She did not really see him, he was somebody else.
     `You can have  a nice cosy tea up in your room, my Lady,  and Mrs Flint
will be more comfortable than if Sir Clifford was there,' said Mrs Bolton.
     She was sure Connie had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But
who was he? Who was he? Perhaps Mrs Flint would provide a clue.
     Connie would  not  take her bath this evening. The sense  of his  flesh
touching her, his very stickiness upon her, was dear to  her, and in a sense
holy.
     Clifford was very uneasy. He would not let her go after dinner, and she
had  wanted  so much to  be  alone. She  looked  at  him, but  was curiously
submissive.
     `Shall we play a game, or shall I read to you, or what shall it be?' he
asked uneasily.
     `You read to me,' said Connie.
     `What shall I read---verse or prose? Or drama?'
     `Read Racine,' she said.
     It had been one of his  stunts in the past, to  read Racine in the real
French grand manner, but he  was rusty  now, and a little self-conscious; he
really  preferred  the  loudspeaker. But Connie  was sewing, sewing a little
frock silk of primrose silk, cut out of one of her dresses, for Mrs  Flint's
baby. Between coming home and dinner she had cut it out,  and she sat in the
soft quiescent  rapture of  herself sewing, while the  noise  of the reading
went on.
     Inside  herself  she  could  feel the  humming  of  passion,  like  the
after-humming of deep bells.
     Clifford said something to her about the Racine. She  caught  the sense
after the words had gone.
     `Yes! Yes!' she said, looking up at him. `It is splendid.'
     Again he was frightened at the deep blue blaze of  her eyes, and of her
soft stillness, sitting there. She had never been so utterly soft and still.
She fascinated him helplessly, as if some perfume about her intoxicated him.
So  he went  on  helplessly with his  reading, and the throaty sound of  the
French was like the wind in the chimneys to her. Of the Racine she heard not
one syllable.
     She  was gone in her own soft rapture, like a forest soughing  with the
dim, glad moan of  spring, moving into bud. She could feel in the same world
with her the man, the nameless man, moving on beautiful  feet, beautiful  in
the phallic mystery.  And in herself in all  her veins, she felt him and his
child. His child was in all her veins, like a twilight.
     `For  hands she hath none, nor eyes,  nor  feet, nor golden Treasure of
hair...'
     She was like  a  forest,  like  the  dark  interlacing of the  oakwood,
humming inaudibly with myriad unfolding buds.  Meanwhile the birds of desire
were asleep in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body.
     But  Clifford's  voice went  on,  clapping  and  gurgling with  unusual
sounds. How  extraordinary it was! How extraordinary he was, bent there over
the book,  queer  and rapacious and civilized, with broad shoulders  and  no
real legs! What a strange creature, with the sharp, cold inflexible  will of
some bird,  and no warmth, no  warmth at all! One of those  creatures of the
afterwards,  that  have no soul, but  an extra-alert  will,  cold  will. She
shuddered a little, afraid of him. But then, the soft warm flame of life was
stronger than he, and the real things were hidden from him.
     The reading  finished. She  was startled.  She looked up, and was  more
startled still  to see Clifford  watching her with pale, uncanny eyes,  like
hate.
     `Thank you so much! You do read Racine beautifully!' she said softly.
     `Almost  as beautifully as you  listen  to him,' he said cruelly. `What
are you making?' he asked.
     `I'm making a child's dress, for Mrs Flint's baby.'
     He turned away. A child! A child! That was all her obsession.
     `After all,'  he said in a  declamatory voice, `one gets all one  wants
out of Racine. Emotions that are ordered and given shape  are more important
than disorderly emotions.
     She watched  him  with  wide, vague,  veiled eyes. `Yes, I'm sure  they
are,' she said.
     `The modern world has only vulgarized emotion by letting it loose. What
we need is classic control.'
     `Yes,' she said slowly,  thinking of him listening with vacant  face to
the  emotional idiocy of  the radio. `People  pretend to have emotions,  and
they really feel nothing. I suppose that is being romantic.'
     `Exactly!' he said.
     As a matter of fact, he was tired. This evening had tired him. He would
rather  have  been  with  his  technical  books,  or  his  pit-manager,   or
listening-in to the radio.
     Mrs Bolton came in with two glasses  of malted  milk: for Clifford,  to
make him  sleep, and for  Connie,  to  fatten her  again.  It was  a regular
night-cap she had introduced.
     Connie  was  glad to go, when she had drunk her glass, and thankful she
needn't  help Clifford to bed. She took  his glass and  put it on  the tray,
then took the tray, to leave it outside.
     `Goodnight Clifford!  Do sleep well!  The  Racine gets into one like  a
dream. Goodnight!'
     She had  drifted  to the  door.  She  was  going  without  kissing  him
goodnight.  He watched her with sharp, cold  eyes. So! She did not even kiss
him goodnight, after he had spent an evening  reading to her. Such depths of
callousness in  her! Even if the kiss  was but a  formality, it  was on such
formalities that life  depends. She  was a Bolshevik, really. Her  instincts
were Bolshevistic!  He gazed  coldly and angrily at the door  whence she had
gone. Anger!
     And again the  dread  of the  night came  on him.  He was a  network of
nerves,  anden he was not braced up  to work, and so full of energy: or when
he  was  not  listening-in,  and so utterly  neuter:  then he was haunted by
anxiety and a  sense of dangerous impending void. He was  afraid. And Connie
could keep the fear off him, if she would.  But it was obvious she wouldn't,
she wouldn't. She was  callous, cold and callous to all that he did for her.
He gave up his life for her, and she was callous to him. She only wanted her
own way. `The lady loves her will.'
     Now  it was  a baby she was obsessed by. Just so that it should be  her
own, all her own, and not his!
     Clifford was so healthy, considering. He looked  so well  and ruddy  in
the face, his shoulders were broad and strong, his chest deep, he had put on
flesh. And yet, at the same time,  he was afraid of death. A terrible hollow
seemed to menace him somewhere,  somehow,  a  void, and into  this void  his
energy would  collapse. Energyless, he felt at times  he  was  dead,  really
dead.
     So his rather prominent pale eyes had  a queer look, furtive, and yet a
little cruel, so cold: and at  the same time, almost impudent. It was a very
odd look,  this  look  of impudence:  as if he were  triumphing over life in
spite of life. `Who  knoweth the mysteries of  the will---for it can triumph
even against the angels---'
     But his dread was the nights when he could not sleep. Then it was awful
indeed,  when annihilation  pressed in  on him  on every side.  Then it  was
ghastly, to exist without having any life: lifeless, in the night, to exist.
     But now he could ring for Mrs Bolton. And  she would always come.  That
was a great comfort. She would come in her dressing gown, with her hair in a
plait down her back, curiously girlish and  dim, though the brown  plait was
streaked with grey. And she would make  him coffee or camomile tea,  and she
would play chess  or  piquet with him. She  had a  woman's  queer faculty of
playing even chess well enough, when she was three parts asleep, well enough
to make her worth beating.  So, in  the silent  intimacy of  the night, they
sat, or she sat and he lay on the  bed, with  the reading-lamp shedding  its
solitary light on  them, she almost gone in sleep, he almost gone in a  sort
of fear, and they  played, played together---then they  had a  cup of coffee
and a biscuit  together, hardly speaking, in the silence of night, but being
a reassurance to one another.
     And this night she  was wondering who Lady Chatterley's  lover was. And
she was thinking of her own Ted, so long dead, yet for her never quite dead.
And when she thought of him, the old, old grudge against the world  rose up,
but especially against the masters, that  they had killed him. They had  not
really killed him. Yet, to her, emotionally, they had. And somewhere deep in
herself because of it, she was a nihilist, and really anarchic.
     In   her  half-sleep,  thoughts  of   her  Ted  and  thoughts  of  Lady
Chatterley's unknown lover commingled, and then she felt she shared with the
other woman a great grudge against Sir Clifford and all he stood for. At the
same time she was playing piquet with him, and they were gambling sixpences.
And it was a source of satisfaction to be playing piquet with a baronet, and
even losing sixpences to him.
     When  they  played  cards, they  always  gambled.  It  made  him forget
himself. And  he usually won. Tonight too he was winning. So he would not go
to sleep till the first dawn  appeared. Luckily it began  to appear  at half
past four or thereabouts.
     Connie was in bed, and fast asleep all this time.  But the keeper, too,
could not rest. He had closed the coops and made his round of the wood, then
gone home and eaten supper. But he did not go to bed. Instead he sat by  the
fire and thought.
     He thought of his boyhood in  Tevershall, and of his five or six  years
of married life. He thought of his wife, and always bitterly. She had seemed
so brutal. But  he had not seen  her now since  1915, in the spring  when he
joined  up. Yet there she was,  not three miles away, and more  brutal  than
ever. He hoped never to see her again while he lived.
     He thought of his life abroad, as  a soldier. India, Egypt, then  India
again:  the blind, thoughtless  life  with the  horses: the colonel who  had
loved him and  whom  he had loved:  the several  years that he had  been  an
officer, a lieutenant with  a very fair chance of  being a captain. Then the
death of the colonel  from pneumonia,  and his own narrow escape from death:
his damaged  health: his deep restlessness: his leaving the  army and coming
back to England to be a working man again.
     He was temporizing with life. He had thought he would be safe, at least
for a  time, in this wood. There was no shooting as yet: he had  to rear the
pheasants. He would have no guns to serve. He would be alone, and apart from
life, which was all he wanted. He had to have some sort of a background. And
this was  his native place. There was even  his mother, though she had never
meant  very much to him. And he could  go on in life,  existing from day  to
day, without connexion and without hope. For he did not know what to do with
himself.
     He did not know what to do  with himself. Since he had been  an officer
for some  years, and had  mixed among the other officers and civil servants,
with their wives and families, he  had lost  all ambition to `get on'. There
was a toughness, a curious rubbernecked toughness and unlivingness about the
middle and  upper classes, as he had known them, which just left him feeling
cold and different from them.
     So,  he  had come  back  to his own class.  To find  there, what he had
forgotten during his absence of years, a pettiness and a vulgarity of manner
extremely distasteful. He admitted now at last, how important manner was. He
admitted, also, how important it was  even to  pretend not to care about the
halfpence  and the  small things of life. But among the  common people there
was no  pretence. A penny more or less on the bacon was  worse than a change
in the Gospel. He could not stand it.
     And again, there  was the wage-squabble. Having lived among  the owning
classes,  he  knew the  utter  futility  of expecting  any  solution of  the
wage-squabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was not
to care, not to care about the wages.
     Yet, if  you were poor and wretched you  had to  care. Anyhow,  it  was
becoming the only thing they did care about. The care about money was like a
great cancer, eating away the individuals of all classes. He refused to care
about money.
     And  what  then? What did  life offer apart  from the  care  of  money?
Nothing.
     Yet he  could live  alone, in the wan satisfaction  of being alone, and
raise pheasants to  be shot ultimately  by fat  men after  breakfast. It was
futility, futility to the nth power.
     But why  care, why  bother? And he had not cared nor bothered till now,
when this woman had come into  his  life. He was nearly ten years older than
she. And he  was a thousand years older in  experience,  starting  from  the
bottom. The  connexion between them was growing closer. He could see the day
when it would clinch up and they would  have to make  a life together.  `For
the bonds of love are ill to loose!'
     And what then? What then? Must he start  again,  with nothing  to start
on? Must  he entangle  this woman? Must he have the horrible  broil with her
lame husband? And also some sort of horrible broil with his own brutal wife,
who hated him? Misery! Lots of misery! And he was no longer young and merely
buoyant. Neither  was he the  insouciant  sort.  Every  bitterness and every
ugliness would hurt him: and the woman!
     But even if they got clear of Sir Clifford and of his own wife, even if
they got clear, what were they going  to do? What was he,  himself  going to
do?  What was  he going to  do with his  life?  For he must do something. He
couldn't be a mere hanger-on, on her money and his own very small pension.
     It was the insoluble. He could only think of going to America, to try a
new air. He disbelieved in the dollar utterly. But  perhaps,  perhaps  there
was something else.
     He could not rest  nor even go  to bed. After  sitting in  a stupor  of
bitter thoughts until midnight, he got  suddenly from his chair and  reached
for his coat and gun.
     `Come on, lass,' he said to the dog. `We're best outside.'
     It  was a starry night, but  moonless.  He went on a  slow, scrupulous,
soft-stepping and stealthy round. The only thing  he had to contend with was
the  colliers  setting  snares for  rabbits,  particularly  the Stacks  Gate
colliers, on the Marehay side. But it was breeding season, and even colliers
respected it  a little. Nevertheless the stealthy  beating  of the round  in
search of poachers soothed his nerves and took his mind off his thoughts.
     But  when he had done his slow, cautious beating of his bounds---it was
nearly a five-mile walk---he was  tired. He went to the top of the knoll and
looked out.  There was no  sound  save the noise, the faint shuffling  noise
from Stacks Gate  colliery, that never ceased working: and there were hardly
any  lights, save the  brilliant electric rows at the works. The  world  lay
darkly and fumily sleeping. It was half past  two. But even in its  sleep it
was an uneasy, cruel world, stirring with the noise of a train or some great
lorry  on the road, and flashing with  some  rosy  lightning flash  from the
furnaces. It was a world of iron and coal, the cruelty of iron and the smoke
of coal, and the endless, endless greed that drove it all. Only greed, greed
stirring in its sleep.
     It was cold, and he was coughing. A  fine cold  draught  blew over  the
knoll. He thought of the woman. Now he  would have given all  he had or ever
might  have  to hold her warm in his  arms,  both  of  them  wrapped  in one
blanket, and  sleep. All hopes of eternity and  all gain  from the  past  he
would have  given  to have her there, to  be wrapped  warm with  him  in one
blanket, and  sleep, only sleep. It  seemed the sleep with  the woman in his
arms was the only necessity.
     He went  to the hut, and wrapped himself in  the blanket and lay on the
floor to sleep. But he  could not, he was cold. And besides, he felt cruelly
his own unfinished nature. He felt his own unfinished condition of aloneness
cruelly. He wanted  her, to touch her, to hold her fast  against  him in one
moment of completeness and sleep.
     He got up again and went out, towards  the park gates  this  time: then
slowly along the path towards the  house. It  was nearly four o'clock, still
clear and cold, but no sign of dawn. He was used  to the dark,  he could see
well.
     Slowly, slowly the great house drew him,  as a  magnet. He wanted to be
near her. It was not desire, not that. It  was the cruel sense of unfinished
aloneness, that needed  a silent woman folded in his arms.  Perhaps he could
find her. Perhaps  he could even call her out to him: or find some way in to
her. For the need was imperious.
     He slowly, silently climbed the incline to the hall. Then he came round
the great trees at the top of the knoll, on to the drive, which made a grand
sweep  round a lozenge of grass in front of the  entrance.  He could already
see the  two magnificent beeches  which stood in  this big level lozenge  in
front of the house, detaching themselves darkly in the dark air.
     There was  the house,  low and long and obscure, with one light burning
downstairs, in Sir Clifford's room. But which room she was in, the woman who
held the other end of  the frail  thread which drew him so mercilessly, that
he did not know.
     He  went  a little nearer,  gun in hand, and  stood  motionless  on the
drive, watching the  house. Perhaps even now he  could find her, come at her
in  some  way. The house was not  impregnable: he was as clever  as burglars
are. Why not come to her?
     He stood motionless, waiting, while  the dawn faintly and imperceptibly
paled  behind him. He saw the light in the  house go out. But he did not see
Mrs Bolton come to  the window and draw back  the  old curtain  of dark-blue
silk, and stand  herself in the dark room, looking out on  the  half-dark of
the approaching day, looking for the longed-for  dawn, waiting, waiting  for
Clifford to be really reassured that it was daybreak.  For when  he was sure
of daybreak, he would sleep almost at once.
     She stood  blind with sleep  at the window, waiting.  And as she stood,
she started,  and almost cried out. For there  was  a man  out there  on the
drive, a black figure in the twilight.  She woke up greyly, and watched, but
without making a sound to disturb Sir Clifford.
     The daylight began to rustle into the world, and the dark figure seemed
to go  smaller and more defined. She made out the gun and gaiters and  baggy
jacket---it would be Oliver Mellors, the keeper. `Yes, for there was the dog
nosing around like a shadow, and waiting for him'!
     And what did the man want? Did  he want to rouse the house? What was he
standing there for, transfixed,  looking  up  at the house like  a love-sick
male dog outside the house where the bitch is?
     Goodness! The knowledge  went through Mrs Bolton like  a  shot.  He was
Lady Chatterley's lover! He! He!
     To think of it! Why, she, Ivy Bolton, had once been a  tiny bit in love
with  him herself.  When  he  was  a  lad  of  sixteen  and  she a  woman of
twenty-six. It was  when  she was studying, and he had helped her a lot with
the  anatomy  and things she had had to learn. He'd been a clever boy, had a
scholarship for Sheffield Grammar School, and learned French and things: and
then after all had become  an overhead blacksmith shoeing horses, because he
was fond of horses, he said: but really because he was  frightened to go out
and face the world, only he'd never admit it.
     But he'd been a  nice lad, a nice lad, had  helped her a lot, so clever
at making things clear to you. He was quite as  clever as  Sir Clifford: and
always one for the women. More with women than men, they said.
     Till he'd gone and married that Bertha Coutts,  as if to spite himself.
Some  people do  marry to spite themselves, because they're disappointed  of
something. And no wonder it had been a failure.---For years he was gone, all
the time of  the war: and a lieutenant  and all: quite the gentleman, really
quite  the  gentleman!---Then  to  come  back  to Tevershall  and  go  as  a
game-keeper! Really, some people  can't take  their chances when they've got
them! And  talking  broad Derbyshire  again like the  worst,  when she,  Ivy
Bolton, knew he spoke like any gentleman, really.
     Well,  well! So  her  ladyship had fallen for  him! Well  her  ladyship
wasn't the first: there was something about him. But fancy! A Tevershall lad
born and bred, and she her ladyship in Wragby Hall! My word, that was a slap
back at the high-and-mighty Chatterleys!
     But he,  the keeper, as the day grew,  had realized: it's no good! It's
no good trying