LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 13

Description

• Author: D·H·Lawrence

On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely morning,
  the pear-blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in the world in a wonder
  of white here and there.

  It was cruel for Clifford, while the world bloomed, to have to be helped
  from chair to bath-chair. But he had forgotten, and even seemed to have
  a certain conceit of himself in his lameness. Connie still suffered,
  having to lift his inert legs into place. Mrs Bolton did it now, or
  Field.

She waited for him at the top of the drive, at the edge of the screen
  of beeches. His chair came puffing along with a sort of valetudinarian
  slow importance. As he joined his wife he said:

`Sir Clifford on his roaming steed!'

`Snorting, at least!' she laughed.

He stopped and looked round at the facade of the long, low old brown
  house.

`Wragby doesn't wink an eyelid!' he said. `But then why should it!
  I ride upon the achievements of the mind of man, and that beats a horse.'

`I suppose it does. And the souls in Plato riding up to heaven in a
  two-horse chariot would go in a Ford car now,' she said.

`Or a Rolls-Royce: Plato was an aristocrat!'

`Quite! No more black horse to thrash and maltreat. Plato never thought
  we'd go one better than his black steed and his white steed, and have
  no steeds at all, only an engine!'

`Only an engine and gas!' said Clifford.

`I hope I can have some repairs done to the old place next year. I
  think I shall have about a thousand to spare for that: but work costs
  so much!' he added.

`Oh, good!' said Connie. `If only there aren't more strikes!'

`What would be the use of their striking again! Merely ruin the industry,
  what's left of it: and surely the owls are beginning to see it!'

`Perhaps they don't mind ruining the industry,' said Connie.

`Ah, don't talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even
  if it can't keep their pockets quite so flush,' he said, using turns
  of speech that oddly had a twang of Mrs Bolton.

`But didn't you say the other day that you were a conservative-anarchist,'
  she asked innocently.

`And did you understand what I meant?' he retorted. `All I meant is,
  people can be what they like and feel what they like and do what they
  like, strictly privately, so long as they keep the form of life intact,
  and the apparatus.'

Connie walked on in silence a few paces. Then she said, obstinately:

`It sounds like saying an egg may go as addled as it likes, so long
  as it keeps its shell on whole. But addled eggs do break of themselves.'

`I don't think people are eggs,' he said. `Not even angels' eggs, my
  dear little evangelist.'

He was in rather high feather this bright morning. The larks were trilling
  away over the park, the distant pit in the hollow was fuming silent
  steam. It was almost like old days, before the war. Connie didn't really
  want to argue. But then she did not really want to go to the wood with
  Clifford either. So she walked beside his chair in a certain obstinacy
  of spirit.

`No,' he said. `There will be no more strikes, it. The thing is properly
  managed.'

`Why not?'

`Because strikes will be made as good as impossible.'

`But will the men let you?' she asked.

`We shan't ask them. We shall do it while they aren't looking: for
  their own good, to save the industry.'

`For your own good too,' she said.

`Naturally! For the good of everybody. But for their good even more
  than mine. I can live without the pits. They can't. They'll starve if
  there are no pits. I've got other provision.'

They looked up the shallow valley at the mine, and beyond it, at the
  black-lidded houses of Tevershall crawling like some serpent up the
  hill. From the old brown church the bells were ringing: Sunday, Sunday,
  Sunday!

`But will the men let you dictate terms?' she said. `My dear, they
  will have to: if one does it gently.'

`But mightn't there be a mutual understanding?'

`Absolutely: when they realize that the industry comes before the individual.'

`But must you own the industry?' she said.

`I don't. But to the extent I do own it, yes, most decidedly. The ownership
  of property has now become a religious question: as it has been since
  Jesus and St Francis. The point is not: take all thou hast and give
  to the poor, but use all thou hast to encourage the industry and give
  work to the poor. It's the only way to feed all the mouths and clothe
  all the bodies. Giving away all we have to the poor spells starvation
  for the poor just as much as for us. And universal starvation is no
  high aim. Even general poverty is no lovely thing. Poverty is ugly.'

`But the disparity?'

`That is fate. Why is the star Jupiter bigger than the star Neptune?
  You can't start altering the make-up of things!'

`But when this envy and jealousy and discontent has once started,'
  she began.

`Do, your best to stop it. Somebody's got to be boss of the show.'

`But who is boss of the show?' she asked.

`The men who own and run the industries.'

There was a long silence.

`It seems to me they're a bad boss,' she said.

`Then you suggest what they should do.'

`They don't take their boss-ship seriously enough,' she said.

`They take it far more seriously than you take your ladyship,' he said.

`That's thrust upon me. I don't really want it,' she blurted out. He
  stopped the chair and looked at her.

`Who's shirking their responsibility now!' he said. `Who is trying
  to get away now from the responsibility of their own boss-ship, as you
  call it?'

`But I don't want any boss-ship,' she protested.

`Ah! But that is funk. You've got it: fated to it. And you should live
  up to it. Who has given the colliers all they have that's worth having:
  all their political liberty, and their education, such as it is, their
  sanitation, their health-conditions, their books, their music, everything.
  Who has given it them? Have colliers given it to colliers? No! All the
  Wragbys and Shipleys in England have given their part, and must go on
  giving. There's your responsibility.'

Connie listened, and flushed very red.

`I'd like to give something,' she said. `But I'm not allowed. Everything
  is to be sold and paid for now; and all the things you mention now,
  Wragby and Shipley sells them to the people, at a good prof it. Everything
  is sold. You don't give one heart-beat of real sympathy. And besides,
  who has taken away from the people their natural life and manhood, and
  given them this industrial horror? Who has done that?'

`And what must I do?' he asked, green. `Ask them to come and pillage
  me?'

`Why is Tevershall so ugly, so hideous? Why are their lives so hopeless?'

`They built their own Tevershall, that's part of their display of freedom.
  They built themselves their pretty Tevershall, and they live their own
  pretty lives. I can't live their lives for them. Every beetle must live
  its own life.'

`But you make them work for you. They live the life of your coal-mine.'

`Not at all. Every beetle finds its own food. Not one man is forced
  to work for me.

`Their lives are industrialized and hopeless, and so are ours,' she
  cried.

`I don't think they are. That's just a romantic figure of speech, a
  relic of the swooning and die-away romanticism. You don't look at all
  a hopeless figure standing there, Connie my dear.'

Which was true. For her dark-blue eyes were flashing, her colour was
  hot in her cheeks, she looked full of a rebellious passion far from
  the dejection of hopelessness. She noticed, ill the tussocky places
  of the grass, cottony young cowslips standing up still bleared in their
  down. And she wondered with rage, why it was she felt Clifford was so
  wrong, yet she couldn't say it to him, she could not say exactly where
  he was wrong.

`No wonder the men hate you,' she said.

`They don't!' he replied. `And don't fall into errors: in your sense
  of the word, they are not men. They are animals you don't understand,
  and never could. Don't thrust your illusions on other people. The masses
  were always the same, and will always be the same. Nero's slaves were
  extremely little different from our colliers or the Ford motor-car workmen.
  I mean Nero's mine slaves and his field slaves. It is the masses: they
  are the unchangeable. An individual may emerge from the masses. But
  the emergence doesn't alter the mass. The masses are unalterable. It
  is one of the most momentous facts of social science. Panem et circenses!
  Only today education is one of the bad substitutes for a circus. What
  is wrong today is that we've made a profound hash of the circuses part
  of the programme, and poisoned our masses with a little education.'

When Clifford became really roused in his feelings about the common
  people, Connie was frightened. There was something devastatingly true
  in what he said. But it was a truth that killed.

Seeing her pale and silent, Clifford started the chair again, and no
  more was said till he halted again at the wood gate, which she opened.

`And what we need to take up now,' he said, `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!

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 10
3. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 17
4. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 14
5. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 6
6. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 1
7. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 11
8. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 2
9. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 9
10. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 3
11. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 8
12. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 7
13. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 5
14. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 4
15. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 16
16. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 19