There was a silence.

  ‘And of course,’ he said, ‘I have to live an exemplary life for the next six or eight months. So if you go to Venice, there’s temptation removed for a week or two, at least.’

  ‘Am I temptation!’ she said, stroking his face. ‘I’m so glad I’m temptation to you! Don’t let’s think about it! You frighten me when you start thinking: you roll me out flat. Don’t let’s think about it. We can think so much when we are apart. That’s the whole point! I’ve been thinking, I must come to you for another night before I go. I must come once more to the cottage. Shall I come on Thursday night?’

  ‘Isn’t that when your sister will be there?’

  ‘Yes! But she said we would start at tea-time. So we could start at tea-time. But she could sleep somewhere else and I could sleep with you.

  ‘But then she’d have to know.’

  ‘Oh, I shall tell her. I’ve more or less told her already. I must talk it all over with Hilda. She’s a great help, so sensible.’

  He was thinking of her plan.

  ‘So you’d start off from Wragby at tea-time, as if you were going to London? Which way were you going?’

  ‘By Nottingham and Grantham.’

  ‘And then your sister would drop you somewhere and you’d walk or drive back here? Sounds very risky, to me.’

  ‘Does it? Well, then, Hilda could bring me back. She could sleep at Mansfield, and bring me back here in the evening, and fetch me again in the morning. It’s quite easy.’

  ‘And the people who see you?’

  ‘I’ll wear goggles and a veil.’

  He pondered for some time.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You please yourself as usual.’

  ‘But wouldn’t it please you?’

  ‘Oh yes! It’d please me all right,’ he said a little grimly. ‘I might as well smite while the iron’s hot.’

  ‘Do you know what I thought?’ she said suddenly. ‘It suddenly came to me. You are the “Knight of the Burning Pestle”!’

  ‘Ay! And you? Are you the Lady of the Red-Hot Mortar?’

  ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Yes! You’re Sir Pestle and I’m Lady Mortar.’

  ‘All right, then I’m knighted. John Thomas is Sir John, to your Lady Jane.’

  ‘Yes! John Thomas is knighted! I’m my-lady-maiden-hair, and you must have flowers too. Yes!’

  She threaded two pink campions in the bush of red-gold hair above his penis.

  ‘There!’ she said. ‘Charming! Charming! Sir John!’

  And she pushed a bit of forget-me-not in the dark hair of his breast.

  ‘And you won’t forget me there, will you?’ She kissed him on the breast, and made two bits of forget-me-not lodge one over each nipple, kissing him again.

  ‘Make a calendar of me!’ he said. He laughed, and the flowers shook from his breast.

  ‘Wait a bit!’ he said.

  He rose, and opened the door of the hut. Flossie, lying in the porch, got up and looked at him.

  ‘Ay, it’s me!’ he said.

  The rain had ceased. There was a wet, heavy, perfumed stillness. Evening was approaching.

  He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the riding. Connie watched his thin, white figure, and it looked to her like a ghost, an apparition moving away from her.

  When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of the hut, with a blanket round her, looking into the drenched, motionless silence.

  But he was coming back, trotting strangely, and carrying flowers. She was a little afraid of him, as if he were not quite human. And when he came near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the meaning.

  He had brought columbines and campions, and new-mown hay, and oak-tufts and honeysuckle in small bud. He fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden-hair were forget-me-nots and woodruff.

  ‘That’s you in all your glory!’ he said. ‘Lady Jane, at her wedding with John Thomas.’

  And he stuck flowers in the hair of his own body, and wound a bit of creeping-jenny round his penis, and stuck a single bell of a hyacinth in his navel. She watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And she pushed a campion flower in his moustache, where it stuck, dangling under his nose.

  ‘This is John Thomas marryin’ Lady Jane,’ he said. ‘An’ we mun let Constance an’ Oliver go their ways. Maybe — ’

  He spread out his hand with a gesture, and then he sneezed, sneezing away the flowers from his nose and his navel. He sneezed again.

  ‘Maybe what?’ she said, waiting for him to go on.

  He looked at her a little bewildered.

  ‘Eh?’ he said.

  ‘Maybe what? Go on with what you were going to say,’ she insisted.

  ‘Ay, what was I going to say?’

  He had forgotten. And it was one of the disappointments of her life, that he never finished.

  A yellow ray of sun shone over the trees.

  ‘Sun!’ he said. ‘And time you went. Time, my Lady, time! What’s that as flies without wings, your Ladyship? Time! Time!’

  He reached for his shirt.

  ‘Say goodnight! to John Thomas,’ he said, looking down at his penis. ‘He’s safe in the arms of creeping Jenny! Not much burning pestle about him just now.’

  And he put his flannel shirt over his head.

  ‘A man’s most dangerous moment,’ he said, when his head had emerged, ‘is when he’s getting into his shirt. Then he puts his head in a bag. That’s why I prefer those American shirts, that you put on like a jacket.’ She still stood watching him. He stepped into his short drawers, and buttoned them round the waist.

  ‘Look at Jane!’ he said. ‘In all her blossoms! Who’ll put blossoms on you next year, Jinny? Me, or somebody else? “Good-bye, my bluebell, farewell to you!” I hate that song, it’s early war days.’ He then sat down, and was pulling on his stockings. She still stood unmoving. He laid his hand on the slope of her buttocks. ‘Pretty little Lady Jane!’ he said. ‘Perhaps in Venice you’ll find a man who’ll put jasmine in your maiden-hair, and a pomegranate flower in your navel. Poor little lady Jane!’

  ‘Don’t say those things!’ she said. ‘You only say them to hurt me.’

  He dropped his head. Then he said, in dialect:

  ‘Ay, maybe I do, maybe I do! Well then, I’ll say nowt, an’ ha’ done wi’t. But tha mun dress thysen, all’ go back to thy stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand. Time’s up! Time’s up for Sir John, an’ for little Lady Jane! Put thy shimmy on, Lady Chatterley! Tha might be anybody, standin’ there be-out even a shimmy, an’ a few rags o’ flowers. There then, there then, I’ll undress thee, tha bob-tailed young throstle.’ And he took the leaves from her hair, kissing her damp hair, and the flowers from her breasts, and kissed her breasts, and kissed her navel, and kissed her maiden-hair, where he left the flowers threaded. ‘They mun stop while they will,’ he said. ‘So! There tha’rt bare again, nowt but a bare-arsed lass an’ a bit of a Lady Jane! Now put thy shimmy on, for tha mun go, or else Lady Chatterley’s goin’ to be late for dinner, an’ where ‘ave yer been to my pretty maid!’

  She never knew how to answer him when he was in this condition of the vernacular. So she dressed herself and prepared to go a little ignominiously home to Wragby. Or so she felt it: a little ignominiously home.

  He would accompany her to the broad riding. His young pheasants were all right under the shelter.

  When he and she came out on to the riding, there was Mrs Bolton faltering palely towards them.

  ‘Oh, my Lady, we wondered if anything had happened!’

  ‘No! Nothing has happened.’

  Mrs Bolton looked into the man’s face, that was smooth and new-looking with love. She met his half-laughing, half-mocking eyes. He always laughed at mischance. But he looked at her kindly.

  ‘Evening, Mrs Bolton! Your Ladyship will be all right now, so I can leave you. Good-night to your Ladyship! Good-night, Mrs Bolton!’

  He saluted and turned away.

  CHAPTER 16

  Connie arrived home to an ordeal of cross-questioning. Clifford had been out at tea-time, had come in just before the storm, and where was her ladyship? Nobody knew, only Mrs Bolton suggested she had gone for a walk into the wood. Into the wood, in such a storm! Clifford for once let himself get into a state of nervous frenzy. He started at every flash of lightning, and blenched at every roll of thunder. He looked at the icy thunder-rain as if it dare the end of the world. He got more and more worked up.

  Mrs Bolton tried to soothe him.

  ‘She’ll be sheltering in the hut, till it’s over. Don’t worry, her Ladyship is all right.’

  ‘I don’t like her being in the wood in a storm like this! I don’t like her being in the wood at all! She’s been gone now more than two hours. When did she go out?’

  ‘A little while before you came in.’

  ‘I didn’t see her in the park. God knows where she is and what has happened to her.’

  ‘Oh, nothing’s happened to her. You’ll see, she’ll be home directly after the rain stops. It’s just the rain that’s keeping her.’

  But her ladyship did not come home directly the rain stopped. In fact time went by, the sun came out for his last yellow glimpse, and there still was no sign of her. The sun was set, it was growing dark, and the first dinner-gong had rung.

  ‘It’s no good!’ said Clifford in a frenzy. ‘I’m going to send out Field and Betts to find her.’

  ‘Oh don’t do that!’ cried Mrs Bolton. ‘They’ll think there’s a suicide or something. Oh don’t start a lot of talk going. Let me slip over to the hut and see if she’s not there. I’ll find her all right.’

  So, after some persuasion, Clifford allowed her to go.

  And so Connie had come upon her in the drive, alone and palely loitering.

  ‘You mustn’t mind me coming to look for you, my Lady! But Sir Clifford worked himself up into such a state. He made sure you were struck by lightning, or killed by a falling tree. And he was determined to send Field and Betts to the wood to find the body. So I thought I’d better come, rather than set all the servants agog.

  She spoke nervously. She could still see on Connie’s face the smoothness and the half-dream of passion, and she could feel the irritation against herself.

  ‘Quite!’ said Connie. And she could say no more.

  The two women plodded on through the wet world, in silence, while great drops splashed like explosions in the wood. When they came to the park, Connie strode ahead, and Mrs Bolton panted a little. She was getting plumper.

  ‘How foolish of Clifford to make a fuss!’ said Connie at length, angrily, really speaking to herself.

  ‘Oh, you know what men are! They like working themselves up. But he’ll be all right as soon as he sees your Ladyship.’

  Connie was very angry that Mrs Bolton knew her secret: for certainly she knew it.

  Suddenly Constance stood still on the path.

  ‘It’s monstrous that I should have to be followed!’ she said, her eyes flashing.

  ‘Oh! your Ladyship, don’t say that! He’d certainly have sent the two men, and they’d have come straight to the hut. I didn’t know where it was, really.’

  Connie flushed darker with rage, at the suggestion. Yet, while her passion was on her, she could not lie. She could not even pretend there was nothing between herself and the keeper. She looked at the other woman, who stood so sly, with her head dropped: yet somehow, in her femaleness, an ally.

  ‘Oh well!’ she said. ‘If it is so it is so. I don’t mind!’

  ‘Why, you’re all right, my Lady! You’ve only been sheltering in the hut. It’s absolutely nothing.’

  They went on to the house. Connie marched in to Clifford’s room, furious with him, furious with his pale, over-wrought face and prominent eyes.

  ‘I must say, I don’t think you need send the servants after me,’ she burst out.

  ‘My God!’ he exploded. ‘Where have you been, woman, You’ve been gone hours, hours, and in a storm like this! What the hell do you go to that bloody wood for? What have you been up to? It’s hours even since the rain stopped, hours! Do you know what time it is? You’re enough to drive anybody mad. Where have you been? What in the name of hell have you been doing?’

  ‘And what if I don’t choose to tell you?’ She pulled her hat from her head and shook her hair.

  He looked at her with his eyes bulging, and yellow coming into the whites. It was very bad for him to get into these rages: Mrs Bolton had a weary time with him, for days after. Connie felt a sudden qualm.

  But really!’ she said, milder. ‘Anyone would think I’d been I don’t know where! I just sat in the hut during all the storm, and made myself a little fire, and was happy.’

  She spoke now easily. After all, why work him up any more!

  He looked at her suspiciously.

  And look at your hair!’ he said; ‘look at yourself!’

  ‘Yes!’ she replied calmly. ‘I ran out in the rain with no clothes on.’

  He stared at her speechless.

  ‘You must be mad!’ he said.

  ‘Why? To like a shower bath from the rain?’

  ‘And how did you dry yourself?’

  ‘On an old towel and at the fire.’

  He still stared at her in a dumbfounded way.

  ‘And supposing anybody came,’ he said.

  ‘Who would come?’

  ‘Who? Why, anybody! And Mellors. Does he come? He must come in the evenings.’

  ‘Yes, he came later, when it had cleared up, to feed the pheasants with corn.’

  She spoke with amazing nonchalance. Mrs Bolton, who was listening in the next room, heard in sheer admiration. To think a woman could carry it off so naturally!

  ‘And suppose he’d come while you were running about in the rain with nothing on, like a maniac?’

  ‘I suppose he’d have had the fright of his life, and cleared out as fast as he could.’

  Clifford still stared at her transfixed. What he thought in his under-consciousness he would never know. And he was too much taken aback to form one clear thought in his upper consciousness. He just simply accepted what she said, in a sort of blank. And he admired her. He could not help admiring her. She looked so flushed and handsome and smooth: love smooth.

  ‘At least,’ he said, subsiding, ‘you’ll be lucky if you’ve got off without a severe cold.’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t got a cold,’ she replied. She was thinking to herself of the other man’s words: Tha’s got the nicest woman’s arse of anybody! She wished, she dearly wished she could tell Clifford that this had been said her, during the famous thunderstorm. However! She bore herself rather like an offended queen, and went upstairs to change.

  That evening, Clifford wanted to be nice to her. He was reading one of the latest scientific-religious books: he had a streak of a spurious sort of religion in him, and was egocentrically concerned with the future of his own ego. It was like his habit to make conversation to Connie about some book, since the conversation between them had to be made, almost chemically. They had almost chemically to concoct it in their heads.

  ‘What do you think of this, by the way?’ he said, reaching for his book. ‘You’d have no need to cool your ardent body by running out in the rain, if only we have a few more aeons of evolution behind us. Ah, here it is! — ”The universe shows us two aspects: on one side it is physically wasting, on the other it is spiritually ascending.”‘

  Connie listened, expecting more. But Clifford was waiting. She looked at him in surprise.

  ‘And if it spiritually ascends,’ she said, ‘what does it leave down below, in the place where its tail used to be?’

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Take the man for what he means. ascending is the opposite of his wasting, I presume.’

  ‘Spiritually blown out, so to speak!’

  ‘No, but seriously, without joking: do you think there is anything in it?’

  She looked at him again.

  ‘Physically wasting?’ she said. ‘I see you getting fatter, and I’m not wasting myself. Do you think the sun is smaller than he used to be? He’s not to me. And I suppose the apple Adam offered Eve wasn’t really much bigger, if any, than one of our orange pippins. Do you think it was?’

  ‘Well, hear how he goes on: “It is thus slowly passing, with a slowness inconceivable in our measures of time, to new creative conditions, amid which the physical world, as we at present know it, will be represented by a ripple barely to be distinguished from nonentity.”‘

  She listened with a glisten of amusement. All sorts of improper things suggested themselves. But she only said:

  ‘What silly hocus-pocus! As if his little conceited consciousness could know what was happening as slowly as all that! It only means he’s a physical failure on the earth, so he wants to make the whole universe a physical failure. Priggish little impertinence!’

  ‘Oh, but listen! Don’t interrupt the great man’s solemn words! — ”The present type of order in the world has risen from an unimaginable part, and will find its grave in an unimaginable future. There remains the inexhaustive realm of abstract forms, and creativity with its shifting character ever determined afresh by its own creatures, and God, upon whose wisdom all forms of order depend.” — There, that’s how he winds up!’

  Connie sat listening contemptuously.

  ‘He’s spiritually blown out,’ she said. ‘What a lot of stuff! Unimaginables, and types of order in graves, and realms of abstract forms, and creativity with a shifty character, and God mixed up with forms of order! Why, it’s idiotic!’

  ‘I must say, it is a little vaguely conglomerate, a mixture of gases, so to speak,’ said Clifford. ‘Still, I think there is something in the idea that the universe is physically wasting and spiritually ascending.’

  ‘Do you? Then let it ascend, so long as it leaves me safely and solidly physically here below.’

  ‘Do you like your physique?’ he asked.