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 þ la guerre comme þ 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, bru