LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 19

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• Author: D·H·Lawrence

Dear Clifford, I am afraid what you foresaw has happened. I am really
  in love with another man, and do hope you will divorce me. I am staying
  at present with Duncan its his flat. I told you he was at Venice with
  us. I'm awfully unhappy for your sake: but do try to take it quietly.
  You don't really need me any more, and I can't bear to come back to
  Wragby. I'm awfully sorry. But do try to forgive me, and divorce me
  and find someone better. I'm not really the right person for you, I
  am too impatient and selfish, I suppose. But I can't ever come back
  to live with you again. And I feel so frightfully sorry about it all,
  for your sake. But if you don't let yourself get worked up, you'll see
  you won't mind so frightfully. You didn't really care about me personally.
  So do forgive me and get rid of me.

  

  Clifford was not inwardly surprised to get this letter. Inwardly, he
  had known for a long time she was leaving him. But he had absolutely
  refused any outward admission of it. Therefore, outwardly, it came as
  the most terrible blow and shock to him, He had kept the surface of
  his confidence in her quite serene.

And that is how we are, By strength of will we cut of four inner intuitive
  knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread,
  or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.

Clifford was like a hysterical child. He gave Mrs Bolton a terrible
  shock, sitting up in bed ghastly and blank.

`Why, Sir Clifford, whatever's the matter?'

No answer! She was terrified lest he had had a stroke. She hurried
  and felt his face, took his pulse.

`Is there a pain? Do try and tell me where it hurts you. Do tell me!'

No answer!

`Oh dear, oh dear! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr Carrington,
  and Dr Lecky may as well run round straight away.'

She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:

`No!'

She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank, and like
  the face of an idiot.

`Do you mean you'd rather I didn't fetch the doctor?'

`Yes! I don't want him,' came the sepulchral voice.

`Oh, but Sir Clifford, you're ill, and I daren't take the responsibility.
  I must send for the doctor, or I shall be blamed.'

A pause: then the hollow voice said:

`I'm not ill. My wife isn't coming back.'---It was as if an image spoke.

`Not coming back? you mean her ladyship?' Mrs Bolton moved a little
  nearer to the bed. `Oh, don't you believe it. You can trust her ladyship
  to come back.'

The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the
  counterpane.

`Read it!' said the sepulchral voice.

`Why, if it's a letter from her ladyship, I'm sure her ladyship wouldn't
  want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford. You can tell me what
  she says, if you wish.'

`Read it!' repeated the voice.

`Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford,' she said. And
  she read the letter.

`Well, I am surprised at her ladyship,' she said. `She promised so
  faithfully she'd come back!'

The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless
  distraction. Mrs Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what
  she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without
  learning something about that very unpleasant disease.

She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must
  have known his wife was in love with somebody else, and was going to
  leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely
  aware of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself. If he would have
  admitted it, and prepared himself for it: or if he would have admitted
  it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that would have
  been acting like a man. But no! he knew it, and all the time tried to
  kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended
  it was the angels smiling on him. This state of falsity had now brought
  on that crisis of falsity and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form
  of insanity. `It comes', she thought to herself, hating him a little,
  `because he always thinks of himself. He's so wrapped up in his own
  immortal self, that when he does get a shock he's like a mummy tangled
  in its own bandages. Look at him!'

But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to
  pull him out. Any attempt to rouse his manhood and his pride would only
  make him worse: for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally.
  He would only squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more
  dislocated.

The only thing was to release his self-pity. Like the lady in Tennyson,
  he must weep or he must die.

So Mrs Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand
  and burst into little wild sobs. `I would never have believed it of
  her ladyship, I wouldn't!' she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old
  grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin.
  Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something
  to weep for.

Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie,
  and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run
  down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs Bolton, as soon as
  she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own
  wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him.

`Now, don't you fret, Sir Clifford!' she said, in a luxury of emotion.
  `Now, don't you fret, don't, you'll only do yourself an injury!'

His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing,
  and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm,
  and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like
  a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. `There, there!
  There, there! Don't you fret, then, don't you! Don't you fret!' she
  moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and
  held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her
  bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she
  softly stroked his dusky-blond hair and said: `There! There! There!
  There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!'

And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting
  the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale-blue
  cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last.

So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her
  heart she said to herself: `Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys!
  Is this what you've come down to!' And finally he even went to sleep,
  like a child. And she felt worn out, and went to her own room, where
  she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so
  ridiculous! It was so awful! Such a come-down! So shameful! And it was
  so upsetting as well.

After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs Bolton. He would
  hold her h, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly
  kissed him, he said! `Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!' And when she sponged
  his great blond body, he would say the same! `Do kiss me!' and she would
  lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery.

And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the
  wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish
  eyes, in a relaxation of madonna-worship. It was sheer relaxation on
  his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish
  position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into
  her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation, the exultation
  of perversity, of being a child when he was a man.

Mrs Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated
  it. Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked him. And they drew into a closer
  physical intimacy, an intimacy of perversity, when he was a child stricken
  with an apparent candour and an apparent wonderment, that looked almost
  like a religious exaltation: the perverse and literal rendering of:
  `except ye become again as a little child'.---While she was the Magna
  Mater, full of power and potency, having the great blond child-man under
  her will and her stroke entirely.

The curious thing was that when this child-man, which Clifford was
  now and which he had been becoming for years, emerged into the world,
  it was much sharper and keener than the real man he used to be. This
  perverted child-man was now a real business-man; when it was a question
  of affairs, he was an absolute he-man, sharp as a needle, and impervious
  as a bit of steel. When he was out among men, seeking his own ends,
  and `making good' his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness,
  hardness, and a straight sharp punch. It was as if his very passivity
  and prostitution to the Magna Mater gave him insight into material business
  affairs, and lent him a certain remarkable inhuman force. The wallowing
  in private emotion, the utter abasement of his manly self, seemed to
  lend him a second nature, cold, almost visionary, business-clever. In
  business he was quite inhuman.

And in this Mrs Bolton triumphed. `How he's getting on!' she would
  say to herself in pride. `And that's my doing! My word, he'd never have
  got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a
  man forward. She wanted too much for herself.'

At the same time, in some corner of her weird female soul, how she
  despised him and hated him! He was to her the fallen beast, the squirming
  monster. And while she aided and abetted him all she could, away in
  the remotest corner of her ancient healthy womanhood she despised him
  with a savage contempt that knew no bounds. The merest tramp was better
  than he.

His behaviour with regard to Connie was curious. He insisted on seeing
  her again. He insisted, moreover, on her coming to Wragby. On this point
  he was finally and absolutely fixed. Connie had promised to come back
  to Wragby, faithfully.

`But is it any use?' said Mrs Bolton. `Can't you let her go, and be
  rid of her?'

`No! She said she was coming back, and she's got to come.'

Mrs Bolton opposed him no more. She knew what she was dealing with.

I needn't tell you what effect your letter has had on me [he wrote
  to Connie to London]. Perhaps you can imagine it if you try, though
  no doubt you won't trouble to use your imagination on my behalf.

  I can only say one thing in answer: I must see you personally, here
  at Wragby, before I can do anything. You promised faithfully to come
  back to Wragby, and I hold you to the promise. I don't believe anything
  nor understand anything until I see you personally, here under normal
  circumstances. I needn't tell you that nobody here suspects anything,
  so your return would be quite normal. Then if you feel, after we have
  talked things over, that you still remain in the same mind, no doubt
  we can come to terms.

Connie showed this letter to Mellors.

  `He wants to begin his revenge on you,' he said, handing the letter
  back.

Connie was silent. She was somewhat surprised to find that she was
  afraid of Clifford. She was afraid to go near him. She was afraid of
  him as if he were evil and dangerous.

`What shall I do?' she said.

`Nothing, if you don't want to do anything.'

She replied, trying to put Clifford off. He answered:

If you don't come back to Wragby now, I shall consider that you are
  coming back one day, and act accordingly. I shall just go on the same,
  and wait for you here, if I wait for fifty years.

  She was frightened. This was bullying of an insidious sort. She had
  no doubt he meant what he said. He would not divorce her, and the child
  would be his, unless she could find some means of establishing its illegitimacy.
  

  After a time of worry and harassment, she decided to go to Wragby. Hilda
  would go with her. She wrote this to Clifford. He replied:

I shall not welcome your sister, but I shall not deity her the door.
  I have no doubt she has connived at your desertion of your duties and
  responsibilities, so do not expect me to show pleasure in seeing her.

  They went to Wragby. Clifford was away when they arrived. Mrs Bolton
  received them.

  `Oh, your Ladyship, it isn't the happy home-coming we hoped for, is
  it!' she said.

`Isn't it?' said Connie.

So this woman knew! How much did the rest of the servants know or suspect?

She entered the house, which now she hated with every fibre in her
  body. The great, rambling mass of a place seemed evil to her, just a
  menace over her. She was no longer its mistress, she was its victim.

`I can't stay long here,' she whispered to Hilda, terrified.

And she suffered going into her own bedroom, re-entering into possession
  as if nothing had happened. She hated every minute inside the Wragby
  walls.

They did not meet Clifford till they went down to dinner. He was dressed,
  and with a black tie: rather reserved, and very much the superior gentleman.
  He behaved perfectly politely during the meal and kept a polite sort
  of conversation going: but it seemed all touched with insanity.

`How much do the servants know?' asked Connie, when the woman was out
  of the room.

`Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever.'

`Mrs Bolton knows.'

He changed colour.

`Mrs Bolton is not exactly one of the servants,' he said.

`Oh, I don't mind.'

There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up
  to her room.

Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would
  begin to speak. Connie was so glad that he wasn't taking the pathetic
  line, she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat
  silent and looked down at her hands.

`I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?' he
  said at last.

`I can't help it,' she murmured.

`But if you can't, who can?'

`I suppose nobody.'

He looked at her with curious cold rage. He was used to her. She was
  as it were embedded in his will. How dared she now go back on him, and
  destroy the fabric of his daily existence? How dared she try to cause
  this derangement of his personality?

`And for what do you want to go back on everything?' he insisted.

`Love!' she said. It was best to be hackneyed.

`Love of Duncan Forbes? But you didn't think that worth having, when
  you met me. Do you mean to say you now love him better than anything
  else in life?'

`One changes,' she said.

`Possibly! Possibly you may have whims. But you still have to convince
  me of the importance of the change. I merely don't believe in your love
  of Duncan Forbes.'

`But why should you believe in it? You have only to divorce me, not
  to believe in my feelings.'

`And why should I divorce you?'

`Because I don't want to live here any more. And you really don't want
  me.'

`Pardon me! I don't change. For my part, since you are my wife, I should
  prefer that you should stay under my roof in dignity and quiet. Leaving
  aside personal feelings, and I assure you, on my part it is leaving
  aside a great deal, it is bitter as death to me to have this order of
  life broken up, here in Wragby, and the decent round of daily life smashed,
  just for some whim of yours.'

After a time of silence she said:

`I can't help it. I've got to go. I expect I shall have a child.'

He too was silent for a time.

`And is it for the child's sake you must go?' he asked at length.

She nodded.

`And why? Is Duncan Forbes so keen on his spawn?'

`Surely keener than you would be,' she said.

`But really? I want my wife, and I see no reason for letting her go.
  If she likes to bear a child under my roof, she is welcome, and the
  child is welcome: provided that the decency and order of life is preserved.
  Do you mean to tell me that Duncan Forbes has a greater hold over you?
  I don't believe it.'

There was a pause.

`But don't you see,' said Connie. `I must go away from you, and I must
  live with the man I love.'

`No, I don't see it! I don't give tuppence for your love, nor for the
  man you love. I don't believe in that sort of cant.'

`But you see, I do.'

`Do you? My dear Madam, you are too intelligent, I assure you, to believe
  in your own love for Duncan Forbes. Believe me, even now you really
  care more for me. So why should I give in to such nonsense!'

She felt he was right there. And she felt she could keep silent no
  longer.

`Because it isn't Duncan that I do love,' she said, looking up at him.

`We only said it was Duncan, to spare your feelings.'

`To spare my feelings?'

`Yes! Because who I really love, and it'll make you hate me, is Mr
  Mellors, who was our game-keeper here.'

If he could have sprung out of his chair, he would have done so. His
  face went yellow, and his eyes bulged with disaster as he glared at
  her.

Then he dropped back in the chair, gasping and looking up at the ceiling.

At length he sat up.

`Do you mean to say you re telling me the truth?' he asked, looking
  gruesome.

`Yes! You know I am.'

`And when did you begin with him?'

`In the spring.'

He was silent like some beast in a trap.

`And it was you, then, in the bedroom at the cottage?'

So he had really inwardly known all the time.

`Yes!'

He still leaned forward in his chair, gazing at her like a cornered
  beast.

`My God, you ought to be wiped off the face of the earth!'

`Why?' she ejaculated faintly.

But he seemed not to hear.

`That scum! That bumptious lout! That miserable cad! And carrying on
  with him all the time, while you were here and he was one of my servants!
  My God, my God, is there any end to the beastly lowness of women!'

He was beside himself with rage, as she knew he would be.

`And you mean to say you want to have a child to a cad like that?'

`Yes! I'm going to.'

`You're going to! You mean you're sure! How long have you been sure?'

`Since June.'

He was speechless, and the queer blank look of a child came over him
  again.

`You'd wonder,' he said at last, `that such beings were ever allowed
  to be born.'

`What beings?' she asked.

He looked at her weirdly, without an answer. It was obvious, he couldn't
  even accept the fact of the existence of Mellors, in any connexion with
  his own life. It was sheer, unspeakable, impotent hate.

`And do you mean to say you'd marry him?---and bear his foul name?'
  he asked at length.

`Yes, that's what I want.'

He was again as if dumbfounded.

`Yes!' he said at last. `That proves that what I've always thought
  about you is correct: you're not normal, you're not in your right senses.
  You're one of those half-insane, perverted women who must run after
  depravity, the nostalgie de la boue.'

Suddenly he had become almost wistfully moral, seeing himself the incarnation
  of good, and people like Mellors and Connie the incarnation of mud,
  of evil. He seemed to be growing vague, inside a nimbus.

`So don't you think you'd better divorce me and have done with it?'
  she said.

`No! You can go where you like, but I shan't divorce you,' he said
  idiotically.

`Why not?'

He was silent, in the silence of imbecile obstinacy.

`Would you even let the child be legally yours, and your heir?' she
  said.

`I care nothing about the child.'

`But if it's a boy it will be legally your son, and it will inherit
  your title, and have Wragby.'

`I care nothing about that,' he said.

`But you must! I shall prevent the child from being legally yours,
  if I can. I'd so much rather it were illegitimate, and mine: if it can't
  be Mellors'.'

`Do as you like about that.'

He was immovable.

`And won't you divorce me?' she said. `You can use Duncan as a pretext!
  There'd be no need to bring in the real name. Duncan doesn't mind.'

`I shall never divorce you,' he said, as if a nail had been driven
  in.

`But why? Because I want you to?'

`Because I follow my own inclination, and I'm not inclined to.'

It was useless. She went upstairs and told Hilda the upshot.

`Better get away tomorrow,' said Hilda, `and let him come to his senses.'

So Connie spent half the night packing her really private and personal
  effects. In the morning she had her trunks sent to the station, without
  telling Clifford. She decided to see him only to say good-bye, before
  lunch.

But she spoke to Mrs Bolton.

`I must say good-bye to you, Mrs Bolton, you know why. But I can trust
  you not to talk.'

`Oh, you can trust me, your Ladyship, though it's a sad blow for us
  here, indeed. But I hope you'll be happy with the other gentleman.'

`The other gentleman! It's Mr Mellors, and I care for him. Sir Clifford
  knobs. But don't say anything to anybody. And if one day you think Sir
  Clifford may be willing to divorce me, let me know, will you? I should
  like to be properly married to the man I care for.'

`I'm sure you would, my Lady. Oh, you can trust me. I'll be faithful
  to Sir Clifford, and I'll be faithful to you, for I can see you're both
  right in your own ways.'

`Thank you! And look! I want to give you this---may I?' So Connie left
  Wragby once more, and went on with Hilda to Scotland. Mellors went into
  the country and got work on a farm. The idea was, he should get his
  divorce, if possible, whether Connie got hers or not. And for six months
  he should work at farming, so that eventually he and Connie could have
  some small farm of their own, into which he could put his energy. For
  he would have to have some work, even hard work, to do, and he would
  have to make his own living, even if her capital started him.

So they would have to wait till spring was in, till the baby was born,
  till the early summer came round again.

The Grange Farm Old Heanor 29 September

  I got on here with a bit of contriving, because I knew Richards, the
  company engineer, in the army. It is a farm belonging to Butler and
  Smitham Colliery Company, they use it for raising hay and oats for the
  pit-ponies; not a private concern. But they've got cows and pigs and
  all the rest of it, and I get thirty shillings a week as labourer. Rowley,
  the farmer, puts me on to as many jobs as he can, so that I can learn
  as much as possible between now and next Easter. I've not heard a thing
  about Bertha. I've no idea why she didn't show up at the divorce, nor
  where she is nor what she's up to. But if I keep quiet till March I
  suppose I shall be free. And don't you bother about Sir Clifford. He'll
  want to get rid of you one of these days. If he leaves you alone, it's
  a lot.

I've got lodging in a bit of an old cottage in Engine Row very decent.
  The man is engine-driver at High Park, tall, with a beard, and very
  chapel. The woman is a birdy bit of a thing who loves anything superior.
  King's English and allow-me! all the time. But they lost their only
  son in the war, and it's sort of knocked a hole in them. There's a long
  gawky lass of a daughter training for a school-teacher, and I help her
  with her lessons sometimes, so we're quite the family. But they're very
  decent people, and only too kind to me. I expect I'm more coddled than
  you are.

I like farming all right. It's not inspiring, but then I don't ask
  to be inspired. I'm used to horses, and cows, though they are very female,
  have a soothing effect on me. When I sit with my head in her side, milking,
  I feel very solaced. They have six rather fine Herefords. Oat-harvest
  is just over and I enjoyed it, in spite of sore hands and a lot of rain.
  I don't take much notice of people, but get on with them all right.
  Most things one just ignores.

The pits are working badly; this is a colliery district like Tevershall.
  only prettier. I sometimes sit in the Wellington and talk to the men.
  They grumble a lot, but they're not going to alter anything. As everybody
  says, the Notts-Derby miners have got their hearts in the right place.
  But the rest of their anatomy must be in the wrong place, in a world
  that has no use for them. I like them, but they don't cheer me much:
  not enough of the old fighting-cock in them. They talk a lot about nationalization,
  nationalization of royalties, nationalization of the whole industry.
  But you can't nationalize coal and leave all the other industries as
  they are. They talk about putting coal to new uses, like Sir Clifford
  is trying to do. It may work here and there, but not as a general thing.
  I doubt. Whatever you make you've got to sell it. The men are very apathetic.
  They feel the whole damned thing is doomed, and I believe it is. And
  they are doomed along with it. Some of the young ones spout about a
  Soviet, but there's not much conviction in them. There's no sort of
  conviction about anything, except that it's all a muddle and a hole.
  Even under a Soviet you've still got to sell coal: and that's the difficulty.

We've got this great industrial population, and they've got to be fed,
  so the damn show has to be kept going somehow. The women talk a lot
  more than the men, nowadays, and they are a sight more cock-sure. The
  men are limp, they feel a doom somewhere, and they go about as if there
  was nothing to be done. Anyhow, nobody knows what should be done in
  spite of all the talk, the young ones get mad because they've no money
  to spend. Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they've
  got none to spend. That's our civilization and our education: bring
  up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money
  gives out. The pits are working two days, two and a half days a week,
  and there's no sign of betterment even for the winter. It means a man
  bringing up a family on twenty-five and thirty shillings. The women
  are the maddest of all. But then they're the maddest for spending, nowadays.

If you could only tell them that living and spending isn't the same
  thing! But it's no good. If only they were educated to live instead
  of earn and spend, they could manage very happily on twenty-five shillings.
  If the men wore scarlet trousers as I said, they wouldn't think so much
  of money: if they could dance and hop and skip, and sing and swagger
  and be handsome, they could do with very little cash. And amuse the
  women themselves, and be amused by the women. They ought to learn to
  be naked and handsome, and to sing in a mass and dance the old group
  dances, and carve the stools they sit on, and embroider their own emblems.
  Then they wouldn't need money. And that's the only way to solve the
  industrial problem: train the people to be able to live and live in
  handsomeness, without needing to spend. But you can't do it. They're
  all one-track minds nowadays. Whereas the mass of people oughtn't even
  to try to think, because they can't. They should be alive and frisky,
  and acknowledge the great god Pan. He's the only god for the masses,
  forever. The few can go in for higher cults if they like. But let the
  mass be forever pagan.

But the colliers aren't pagan, far from it. They're a sad lot, a deadened
  lot of men: dead to their women, dead to life. The young ones scoot
  about on motor-bikes with girls, and jazz when they get a chance, But
  they're very dead. And it needs money. Money poisons you when you've
  got it, and starves you when you haven't.

I'm sure you're sick of all this. But I don't want to harp on myself,
  and I've nothing happening to me. I don't like to think too much about
  you, in my head, that only makes a mess of us both. But, of course,
  what I live for now is for you and me to live together. I'm frightened,
  really. I feel the devil in the air, and he'll try to get us. Or not
  the devil, Mammon: which I think, after all, is only the mass-will of
  people, wanting money and hating life. Anyhow, I feel great grasping
  white hands in the air, wanting to get hold of the throat of anybody
  who tries to live, to live beyond money, and squeeze the life out. There's
  a bad time coming. There's a bad time coming, boys, there's a bad time
  coming! If things go on as they are, there's nothing lies in the future
  but death and destruction, for these industrial masses. I feel my inside
  turn to water sometimes, and there you are, going to have a child by
  me. But never mind. All the bad times that ever have been, haven't been
  able to blow the crocus out: not even the love of women. So they won't
  be able to blow out my wanting you, nor the little glow there is between
  you and me. We'll be together next year. And though I'm frightened,
  I believe in your being with me. A man has to fend and fettle for the
  best, and then trust in something beyond himself. You can't insure against
  the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in
  the power beyond it. So I believe in the little flame between us. For
  me now, it's the only thing in the world. I've got no friends, not inward
  friends. Only you. And now the little flame is all I care about in my
  life. There's the baby, but that is a side issue. It's my Pentecost,
  the forked flame between me and you. The old Pentecost isn't quite right.
  Me and God is a bit uppish, somehow. But the little forked flame between
  me and you: there you are! That's what I abide by, and will abide by,
  Cliffords and Berthas, colliery companies and governments and the money-mass
  of people all notwithstanding.

That's why I don't like to start thinking about you actually. It only
  tortures me, and does you no good. I don't want you to be away from
  me. But if I start fretting it wastes something. Patience, always patience.
  This is my fortieth winter. And I can't help all the winters that have
  been. But this winter I'll stick to my little Pentecost flame, and have
  some peace. And I won't let the breath of people blow it out. I believe
  in a higher mystery, that doesn't let even the crocus be blown out.
  And if you're in Scotland and I'm in the Midlands, and I can't put my
  arms round you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I've got something of
  you. My soul softly Naps in the little Pentecost flame with you, like
  the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers
  are fucked into being between the sun and the earth. But it's a delicate
  thing, and takes patience and the long pause.

So I love chastity now, because it is the peace that comes of fucking.
  I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love
  this chastity, which is the pause of peace of our fucking, between us
  now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes,
  when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant
  and yellow, brilliant. But not now, not yet! Now is the time to be chaste,
  it is so good to be chaste, like a river of cool water in my soul. I
  love the chastity now that it flows between us. It is like fresh water
  and rain. How can men want wearisomely to philander. What a misery to
  be like Don Juan, and impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace, and
  the little flame alight, impotent and unable to be chaste in the cool
  between-whiles, as by a river.

Well, so many words, because I can't touch you. If I could sleep with
  my arms round you, the ink could stay in the bottle. We could be chaste
  together just as we can fuck together. But we have to be separate for
  a while, and I suppose it is really the wiser way. If only one were
  sure.

Never mind, never mind, we won't get worked up. We really trust in
  the little flame, and in the unnamed god that shields it from being
  blown out. There's so much of you here with me, really, that it's a
  pity you aren't all here.

Never mind about Sir Clifford. If you don't hear anything from him,
  never mind. He can't really do anything to you. Wait, he will want to
  get rid of you at last, to cast you out. And if he doesn't, we'll manage
  to keep clear of him. But he will. In the end he will want to spew you
  out as the abominable thing.

Now I can't even leave off writing to you.

But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and
  steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says good-night to Lady
  Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart.

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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 13
16. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER: CHAPTER 16