The First Lady Chatterley's Lover

by D. H. Lawrence

  Afterwards, he was gloomy and did not speak a word. He avoided her. Even when she was leaving, and she softly said: ‘Good night!’ and looked to meet his eyes, he would not look at her. And that was the only word spoken between them.

  But the next day she came again. He was not there. He appeared as late as possible, to shut up the coops. Darkness was coming on, the chicks were all hidden under the hens, asleep, the wood was falling into silence. Like a ghost he came, very late, through the drizzling rain. And like a ghost he saw her sitting waiting in the porch of the hut. And he shuddered with desire. But he quietly closed up the coops and gave no sign even that he had seen her.

  She still waited. Perhaps he would go away without seeing her; pretending never to see her!

  But no! He hung a long while round the coops, the darkness gathered. Then at last he came slowly towards her.

  ‘You’re late!’ she breathed softly.

  ‘Ay! Ah meant ter be!’

  She paused.

  ‘Didn’t you want me to be here?’ she almost whispered.

  He looked at her, and the flashing dilation of his eyes belied his set face. He was in the torment of passion, almost brutal now. She went home alone in the dark, feeling a little bruised.

  But the next day she went again in the evening. And he was there. He came up to her and looked at her almost maliciously.

  ‘Don’t you feel you’ve lowered yourself with the likes of me?’ he asked brutally.

  She gazed, hurt and wondering, into his eyes. And at once his eyes did that strange thing she had never seen in any other person, darkened and dilated and seemed to give off quivering lights, very lovely. And she put her hand up and touched his face.

  ‘Not when I touch you,’ she said. ‘When I touch you, you are only lovely to me. — But one never knows what a man will think afterwards.’

  ‘D’yer like ter touch me, though?’ he asked, in a soft, doubtful voice.

  ‘You’re lovely to touch! You’re lovely to touch!’ she moaned.

  ‘Ter thee am I? Like thee ter me?’ he said, in the full slow tones of the dialect, with such a soft, warm flooding of truth. He had forgotten her difference for the moment.

  She began to cry, and wept uncontrollably. He seemed stupefied with dismay.

  ‘Never mind!’ she whispered shakily as the tears ran into her mouth. ‘It’s happiness, really.’

  And that time, for the first time in her life, passion came to life in her. Suddenly, in the deeps of her body wonderful rippling thrills broke out where before there had been nothingness; and rousing strange, like peals of bells ringing of themselves in her body, more and more rapturously, the new clamour filled her up, and she heard and did not hear her own short wild cries as the rolling of the magnificent thrills grew more and more tremendous, then suddenly started to ebb away in a richness like the after-humming of great bells.

  And then she lay lapped in a new womb, a new throbbing of life all round her. And she loved the man, loved him with all the depths of her body and her body’s splendid soul. While he with a wet mouth softly, strayingly, unconsciously kissed her. And suddenly she clung to his body again in the last surge of gratitude that lifted her as on a wave to him.

  She wanted never again to leave him, never, never.

  And when she did leave him to go home it was not really going from him. His warmth remained upon her and stayed in her. And he went in the wonderful semi-consciousness, or super-consciousness of passion, across the wood, and she was with him as the air of night was with him.

  She was home in time for dinner. She did not notice Clifford watching her. Her face was soft and glowing, and her blue eyes were open like the night. But for him they were not open.

  After dinner she asked him to read to her, and he chose Racine. She heard his voice going on and on, speaking the French in the grand manner. And when he made comments to her, or asked her opinion, she looked up at him with those glowing eyes and said:

  ‘Yes! It’s very splendid, just the sound of it.’ He, thrilled in his turn, read on. And Constance drooped over her sewing, hearing the throaty sound of the French as if it were the wind in the chimneys. She did not hear one syllable of the actual Racine.

  She was filled, herself, with an unspeakable pleasure, a pleasure which has no contact with speech. She felt herself filled with new blood, as if the blood of the man had swept into her veins like a strong, fresh, rousing wind, changing her whole self. All her self felt alive, and in motion, like the woods in spring. She could not but feel that a new breath had swept into her body from the man, and that she was like a forest soughing with a new, soft wind, soughing and moving unspoken into bud. All her body felt like the dark interlacing of the boughs of an oak wood, softly humming in a wind, and humming inaudibly with the myriad, myriad unfolding of buds. Meanwhile the birds had their heads laid on their shoulders and slept with delight in the vast interlaced intricacy of the forest of her body.

  From the man, from the body of the man, the pure wind had swept in on her. ‘Because I was willing,’ she said in a muse. And like the calling of the last bird awake, in the infinite soughing and the vibrating hum of her body, the call repeated itself: ‘Because I was willing!’

  She thought for a moment of the man. Where was he? But her mind could not roam. The best part of him was most utterably within her, identified with her. She did not need anything more. To be alone, rocked in the breeze that had swept into her from him, that was what she wanted. Not to have to bear any further touch, any less essential contact.

  And meanwhile the voice of the other man, Sir Clifford, went on and on, clapping and gurgling with strange sound. Not for one second did she really hear what he said. But it sounded to her like the uncouth cries and howls of barbarous, disconnected savages dancing round a fire somewhere outside of the wood. Clifford was a smeared and painted savage howling in an utterly unintelligible gibberish somewhere on the outskirts of her consciousness. She, deep within the sacred and sensitive wood, was filled with the pure communication of the other man, a communication delicate as the inspiration of the gods.

  When the reading was ended she looked at Clifford, and his peculiar naked face, with the rapacious eyes of the men of our civilisation, made her shudder. It was the face of a most dangerous beast, domesticated but utterly crude, inwardly insensitive.

  And with the swift instinct of self-preservation, the deepest of all the automatic instincts, she smiled to this cultured gentleman, to her softly throbbing blood a dangerous domesticated savage, and said to him:

  ‘Thank you so much, dear! You do read Racine beautifully.’

  ‘There’s something in it, you know,’ he said. ‘The feeling may be a bit stereotyped, but then I begin to think all our feelings are, really. They run very much to pattern. Only we’ve tried to put new curves and flourishes in them, like the art nouveau, mostly in very bad taste. I can’t help feeling that Hamlet is in bad taste. Orestes or Phèdre are much deeper down to the bedrock of the same sort of feelings, without so much contortion.’

  ‘Yes!’ she said slowly. ‘I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure that’s true.’

  She didn’t know whether she meant anything, or whether he meant anything. Only her instinct was not to thwart him or to frighten him, but to reassure him in himself. He was another kind of creature, domesticated and dangerous.

  So she helped him as usual and kissed him goodnight, as if he had been some strange idol which she must propitiate. ‘Mein Abgott!’ she said to herself, as she saw herself quietly kissing. ‘My idol! My once-god! Mein Abgott!’ she murmured to herself as he held her gently in his arms before she retired.

  And there were tigers in her heart, creatures of the old jungle of the soul, ready to spring at his face. But she soothed them down. She would not be angry with him. He was the god that had fallen and become an idol. She could still make offerings to the idol in respect of its old godhead. She could be gentle to him and even grateful to him to the end. He was an image of her o
ld household gods, her teraphim.

  So she went upstairs. The nurse slept downstairs in the next room to his. Mrs Bolton had insisted on this. For he was often awake in the night, and it soothed him for someone to come in and speak to him.

  He was curious: so thoughtful of everything, so thoughtful for everybody, he was finally limited entirely to himself. No breath entered him from any other living being or creature or thing. He was as it were cut off from the breathing contact of the living universe. He loved a beautiful landscape, a beautiful flower. Most of all he loved art, pictures, books. Because here his mind and critical appreciation could play freely. He could get real aesthetic pleasure from books and pictures, something that thrilled his nerves and gave him a feeling of pride, of conquest, of overweening. But it only carried him further away from any deep bodily interchange and left him, as it were, high and dry, as a man who has already died to everything except nervous appreciation or irritation.

  It was as if he had already lost his body and was nothing but a network of nerves. Except that since he had been so fatally wounded, and his life had been so nearly destroyed, he had a secret, crude will to live. The will to live was the deepest thing in him, and all he cherished now were those things that would keep him alive, actually physically alive.

  For this reason his health was important to him beyond anything else: and his food mattered to him because it would keep him alive. He watched like a lynx to see he was well nourished, and ate rather too much. He pulled himself round the garden in his chair that worked by a lever, never relenting in taking sufficient exercise to keep him fit. He knew that Constance sheltered him and kept his life flowing. He could depend on her. And so he clung to her with his will and was wary not to overtax her.

  He was indeed remarkably well, a new sort of man. The upper part of his body seemed to broaden and fill out, became almost massive, hulking. And his once long pale face also filled out and broadened, became ruddy and full of a new will, the will to live. The features were still sensitive and critical, the light-blue English eyes were bright and over-intelligent. But there was in it all something secret and assertive, the peculiar assertion of the will to live, the right to exist, in the crippled man, that betrayed him and gave him a hard, almost impudent expression.

  He was remarkably healthy, considering. The only thing that troubled him was that he could not sleep much, he was awake a great deal during the night. And this filled him with a nervous terror of his own extinction.

  Then he would waken Mrs Bolton, and she would bring him food, or make him weak coffee, or play a game of cards or draughts or even chess with him. He taught her chess, and she was proud learning it, being a quick, intelligent woman. She wanted to be able to do all the things the gentry did, so that there was no more mystery in them for her. Then she would be through with them.

  So Clifford had a new interest, teaching the elderly woman to play chess with him, even for his own wicked amusement teaching her French. She learned slowly, but surely.

  This left Constance much more free. Mrs Bolton was glad to be good to Sir Clifford and to take from him what teaching he could give her in the acquirements of the gentlefolks. But she would never discuss the miners with him. He had developed into a keen business man. A large shareholder in the neighbouring collieries, his interest was in the pits. And he thought and schemed and studied and had long conversations with the colliery manager and the mining engineer and with the members of the company. And a great deal of his will power and intelligence went to the running of these two collieries from which he drew most of his income. He made sacrifices in his income and capital to have the pits modernised in their working. And now the bread that he had cast upon the waters was beginning to return to him. He watched the colliery returns with an interest and an intensity that never slackened, as if he would force the pits to pay and to pay well.

  All of which Ivy Bolton knew. But in these matters she was entirely dumb. She attended Sir Clifford faithfully and gave him some of her life. But she never forgot that she was in the enemy camp. And she was quite ruthless in her attempts to release Constance from the grip of her husband, quite calm, quite cool, quite unscrupulous. She almost willed that the young woman should find a lover in another man.

  Therefore, womanlike, she watched Constance’s face and almost by instinct knew that something was in the wind. This evening particularly she had wondered, seeing Constance come home with that fresh new face, so lovely! The widow’s heart yearned with the old passion of love, which had been cut off so cruelly in her. She yearned now even to know of it, to be sure.

  She wondered where Constance could go for love. There was nowhere, no one possible. She went so often to the wood at evening. There was the gamekeeper, Parkin. Impossible! A disagreeable cruel fellow. No woman would think of him.

  And yet! Woman-like, she knew he was a man by nature passionate. She knew by the mere turn of his nose and that fierce, wicked little pupil to his eye. That he had turned hateful, she also knew. But womanlike, she was aware that passionate men can be most hateful and most loveable.

  Still, she thought he was impossible.

  Sir Clifford slept badly that night. Parkin, on the other hand, after coming back to the hut where she had been, and sitting there in silence, his hands folded between his knees, gazing out into the night at the stars that seemed slippery between the boughs of the oaks and seemed, somehow, like the body of the woman; after gazing a long time motionless and thoughtless into the night, as if all the night were woman to him: at last lay down on the straw in the hut, and wrapped in a soldier’s blanket, slept immovable.

  It was still dark night when he awoke. He looked up at the stars. It would be four o’clock. He sighed for the woman: straightened his corduroy clothing: and with his prowling quietness, fully awake, went softly out into the wood, taking his gun.

  He walked softly, stealthily, fully awake, eyes dilated on the darkness. But still the night was all woman to him. He made his silent, alert round of the wood in the moonless night that was heavy and chill.

  And then at last, as the first pale uneasiness appeared in the east, he hesitated. He should go home to the cottage now and knock up a fire, and eat. But the other limitless yearning was on him, and he turned and slowly walked across the wood again, slowly into the park, while the dawn and grey clouds rose up together to make a grey day.

  The world lay grey in the motionless dawn as he crossed the park slowly. He was going towards the house. It stood on a knoll of the park, quite naked to the park, in front. All gardens were behind. Only the drive swept round in a loop to the steps between a few big old trees. But across the drive was only the rough grass of the park.

  Mrs Bolton had been praying for dawn. Sir Clifford had been so long awake. With the coming of day he would go to sleep again. She drew the curtains of his bedroom and turned off the light. Then she went across, through the partition doors, to the windows of his study, which opened on the front. If she let in all the daylight, and he was sure it was day, he would sleep. And she would snatch a few hours before the nine o’clock breakfast.

  As she silently drew back the curtains, she saw a man standing motionless in the middle of the drive, a little way from the house, gazing at the house. In the greyness of dawn, of the clouded daylight, she could see it was the gamekeeper, with his gun in his hand. There was nothing remarkable about his being there on the watch.

  But, motionless as he was, she watched him. And there was something in the stillness, almost boyishness, of his figure in the big-skirted coat that betrayed a man a little dazed with love. It was also slightly ridiculous, like a love-sick dog standing eternally outside the house of his inamorata.

  She smiled a little to herself, grimly, and said to herself, ‘I should never have thought it! Fancy!’ And she gave a little clicking of mock distress with her tongue against her palate in consideration of Sir Clifford’s young wife, Lady Chatterley, carrying on with her husband’s gamekeeper. ‘You’d have thought she’d have
looked a bit higher.’

  Nevertheless, Mrs Bolton triumphed. Why she triumphed, she did not know, but she triumphed. Furthermore, she was determined to be really in the secret. And further than that, she was determined that nobody else should be in the secret. She would keep Constance safe. She would never, never let anything get round to Sir Clifford, not if she could help it. A gamekeeper! Not very different, as far as that goes, from her own dead man who was forever young, only twenty-eight. Well, my lady wasn’t so very different from Ivy Bolton when all was said and done! And she hoped that Parkin fellow would be decent. That was the chief danger! If that Parkin fellow would be decent. — Anyhow he seemed to be a good lover!

  The nurse glanced through to the other room, at the great shoulder of Sir Clifford hulked to sleep under the bedclothes. ‘You shall never know, if I can help it,’ she said. And she went silently to her own room.

  And when in the village the women pitied Lady Chatterley as a nun-wife, Nurse Bolton replied, ‘Oh, don’t you make any mistake. I made that judgment myself and had to take it back. Sir Clifford’s all of a man, I can tell you: though you’d never believe it. You never would. But they hope for a child! Oh yes! And I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  She enjoyed saying this. She felt another triumph.

  The day was showery. Constance still had a desire to be alone. She busied herself all the morning in the house and in the afternoon was driven to the small town in the motor car Clifford had bought. The country was looking its most dismal in the rain, the spring not yet burst through. The car ploughed uphill through Tevershall village, a long, dark-red straggle of small dwellings with glistening black slate roofs like lids: and poky shops with stacks of soap, or turnips and pink rhubarb, or huddled drapery; and Wesleyan Chapel, then Methodist Chapel, then Congregational Chapel, then Christadelphians or whatever they were: but all alike dreary and ugly to a degree. And at the top of the hill the old church and old stone cottages of the previous agricultural village, before the mining had started.