This frightened her too. But tonight she was frightened with a drear, grey fear; the fear a woman has of baboons: the world seemed grey and baboon-like. And it seemed as if a doom was imminent, coming in like a slow, slow tide. Grey, slow, nauseous doom, she felt its oncoming dankness like a mildew on the walls of her room. And she could not bear it.
She had loved her room. It had delicate pinky-grey walls, and on the floor Italian rush matting that smelled sweetly of rushes, and a few thin Persian rugs on the matting, pale blues and old pink. And there was a spinet and a delicate rosewood writing table, and chairs in chintz with tulips, and a beautiful piece of toile de Jouy behind the sofa-bed. She had a delicate little fireplace of yellowed marble, and a bright fire of logs. And there were two big jars of pinky button chrysanthemums.
Tonight it was all dead. She saw her own effort after a beautiful interior like powder on the face of an old hag. Nor the fire nor the lamp could take away her nausea, nor remove her dread, as she felt the mildew of slow doom settling on the chintz chairs and the walls. And she herself, sitting alone in a soft chair by the marble hearth, was an old hag, immeasurably old. A hidden obscenity was creeping out of everything, and with it a terrible cold fear in her belly. How was it possible? Was the child inside her turning to a corpse? The thought filled her with unspeakable fear. Was she already a graveyard in her body? Why did she feel this cold, dread fear in her inside?
It came out of everything: not only out of the semi-insane Clifford, but out of the dank park and the sulphur smell of the pits, out of Tevershall beyond the trees. A grey, mildewy horror that would be the end of the world.
The mildew of corruption and immorality. There was a strange immorality in Clifford. Life was a thing he turned into a grisly phantasm. Just to suit himself, his own selfish egoism, she had now become a stainless mother, a virgin big with still another virgin birth. How horrible! A virgin birth in itself was an obscenity when she felt the warmth of the man inside her. The child was the life of the man inside her. How insulting to charge her with a virgin birth!
But so it was! Clifford had always hated sex: hated anything that was beyond his own egoistic control. And she herself had been nearly as bad. She recognised her sin with him: how they had thought, he and she, they could use sex between them and increase the ego that was in each of them. Each had wanted the triumph of the ego, she of her own, he of his own. And now he, stricken but persistent, was growing conventionally insane, his egoism was becoming lunatic. As for herself, she had half-gone over to something else, and half she resisted.
She thought again of Parkin. He too had some demon in possession of him, something that frightened her and that she must keep away from. But it was an alive demon, not an obscenity. It was a pale, deadly sort of anger which walked in his soul like a ghost. She felt the inevitability of it. She must wait, she must wait. She felt the anger pacing back and forth, back and forth in his soul, like a pale caged leopard that was determined to get out and spring in the face of the captors. Well, it would have to be so! She would have to wait.
But if the other thing, the tender, rosy thing that was between them, died! What if it died? She felt it had suffered a death tonight. She had betrayed it, and it had died.
What? What? The contact, the infinitely subtle living contact between her and him. The relationship. Duncan was right: it was the new contact that was the clue to life. She knew it now, now that it had suddenly broken off, and she felt herself like a dead limb cut off from the body of life. Till now it had flowed so warmly and surely with his child in her, she had never realised it existed. She had thought it was all just herself, her own superb health.
And now, tonight, with the world gone grey and baboon-like, and a cold, gnawing unease in her belly, she realised her mistake. There had been a holy thing, a living, flowing, intangible contact between her and the man. And tonight she, with her stupid arrogant will, and Clifford, with his baboon lips, had broken it.
Oh, how dared she trifle with it like that! It was life to her. Not the man himself, personally: but the contact she had with him. That was life to her. It was the only life-contact she had. She realised now that, broken off from this contact, she was only another grey baboon, pinky grey baboon like Clifford and like so many people.
And her heart surged against the baboon. They ought to die. They only lived in order to make everything baboon-horrible. They were as relentless as decay. They could know no change — only an increase in decay. They were that, and nothing else.
She slid to her knees and buried her head in the chair, and prayed helplessly: ‘Save me from it! Oh save me from it! Save me from seeing it all horrible! Don’t let it break between me and him. Keep him for me, keep him for me, and keep me for him! Don’t let me betray anything. Oh, don’t let me betray it. Show me what to do! What shall I do, what shall I do, not to betray? I don’t want to betray. Oh, don’t let me betray! Don’t let me betray! For the child’s sake, I mustn’t betray. I must bring it into life, not into death in life! I want it to have life. Oh, I want it to live and have life. I want it to be born into life, my child! It’s all I want for it —’
Her whole soul rose in a passion of prayer, as she kneeled with her face in the cushions of the chair. And she pressed the cushions to her breast, and gradually passed into a sort of stillness like a sleep, a peace, the coldness and the horror departing again. Her soul was coming warm again. The contact was coming back: she seemed to be going softly, warmly to sleep.
She started in a shock of fear and horror. There was a noise outside. Yes! There was a knock! Had he come upstairs? Horror of horrors, it had begun, the baboon persecution.
The knock was repeated. It needed all her strength and social drill to carry her to the door. Feeling herself turn to stone, she opened. It was Mrs Bolton.
‘Sir Clifford asked me to come up and see if you were safely in bed, and if I could bring you anything,’ the woman said in a soft, insidious, caressive voice.
‘Oh! It isn’t late, is it?’
‘About a quarter to eleven.’
‘Oh! I’m just going to bed.’
‘And won’t you have a glass of hot milk — or a cup of bovril and a sandwich? Do now! I’ll bring it you when you’re in bed. You’ll need to take all the nourishment you can.’
‘Why?’ asked Constance.
‘Sir Clifford told me!’ said the woman with infinite confidential softness and secrecy. ‘And I’m sure it’s the best bit of news I’ve heard since I don’t know when. Only of course we shall have to think of your ladyship now as well as of Sir Clifford. I tell him he’ll have to take second place now. But he’s very good, he’ll be only too pleased.’
Constance stood in the doorway and listened to all this in a sort of swoon. The pale face of the other woman was soft and secretly exultant, and her eyes searched Constance’s figure with peculiar eagerness.
‘Oh!’ said Constance. ‘No! I don’t want anything, thanks.’
‘Are you sure now? You’d feel better. And can you take stout? I’m a great believer in Guinness myself, for those that can take it.’
‘Yes! I rather like it.’
‘Well!’ It was an exclamation of delight. ‘Then I’ll order a couple of dozen tomorrow, and that’ll be something. You expect it in March, Sir Clifford told me?’ This last she spoke in a voice of utter secrecy and thrill.
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘That’s five months we shall have to be thinking of you. May I ask a question: has your ladyship seen a doctor?’
‘Yes! I saw Dr Theale the other day.’
‘Dr Theale! Oh, that’s good! He’s safe, anyhow. And did he say anything?’
‘He said I was perfectly all right — and he guessed it would be about the beginning of March.’
‘Oh but fancy! I’m sure I’m that pleased!’ and she gave a queer, hysterical little giggle. Then she looked at Constance with blazing eyes, full of knowing, as if she knew her secret and congratulated her in it. ‘And your lad
yship is pleased too, I should think?’
‘Yes! I’m glad!’
‘I’m sure you are. I’m sure you are! It’s a woman’s life. — And the lucky one is Sir Clifford, my word!’ She gave another knowing look from her flashing eyes.
‘Yes! I think I’ll go down to bed now. Will you see that the fire is safe? I shan’t want anything. I don’t like eating at bedtime. So don’t disturb me! Good night.’
‘Good night, my lady! I’ll see to the fire and put everything to rights here—’
Constance went down to her bedroom on the first floor, and locked her door. So! It had begun. The baboon-grimacing had begun.
Well, she must go away. Fool, fool, fool that she had been to think she could stay and let that ghoulish Clifford have the child. The child! The child! As if it had no say in the matter! Her living child, hers and Parkin’s! Fool that she had been to tell Clifford! Fool that she had been to trifle with her very life, and the whole life of the child. She might as well have tried to break the great blood-vessel that fed the child in her body, and let herself bleed to death, and the child be a clod of clay. For the child’s sake even, how could she think of that death-in-life, dooming it to Wragby!
She must go away, quietly, on the pretext of a short visit to Hilda. And then she must tell Clifford she would never come back, and ask him to divorce her. If he would not divorce her, she must find some way of saving the child from him. If she must change her name and go somewhere far away, she must do it.
It was strange, once her soul roused itself, how she hated Clifford: the deadness and fixity that had turned to obscenity in him: the morality that was so ghoulish. Never a breath of fresh life, never, never. Always that soft, putrescent tolerance, a tolerance that consisted in turning a false light on everything, to make everything, everything, even her very technical adultery, an event flattering to himself. Always subtly flattering his own vanity: like some highly bred, cunning ape, like a young-gentleman baboon! No, she hated him, and her pity for him was an evil thing, a cunning sort of selfishness of her own. Let him die! Let the tidal wave sweep him and all his sort away for ever.
Meanwhile she must go quietly, stealthily, as one would slip out of a baboon’s den. And she must not trouble Parkin. She must send him a kind word as soon as she had got away. Then she must wait for him, till he had got his divorce, and she had got her child.
She must go to Hilda. And she must get her father’s lawyer to act for her. She must get clear of Wragby for ever. She must wipe away all the slime it had put on her, all the slime of her ladyship, which she now loathed like a disease. My God, how good it would be to be merely Mrs Parkin! She would feel honest again. She had always, always felt dishonest as Lady Chatterley. She had always felt a sneak, somewhere, when they said ‘your ladyship!’ to her: though of course, also, her vanity had loved it.
But now, to get away from the whole leprous contamination of it: to be just Mrs Parkin if she could; or else take back her own maiden name: to live in an ordinary house in some suburb! What bliss! To be out in the cold air of life, not stifled in the lifelessness of Wragby.
No, she needn’t go into a workman’s dwelling! But some farm-house, or some suburban villa with nine or ten rooms — she didn’t care! Anything, to be in contact with life. And if she could possibly be in contact with the working people, well and good. It would be nonsense to try to pretend to be one of them.
She breathed deeply and clenched her fists. Ah, she felt happy! To be going, to be going for ever! To be going away from this! How she hated Wragby, the great dead-house that it was. How she hated the very conceit that was built into its walls. Generations of superiority, centuries of conceit! The very walls were rotten, the very mortar that held the stones together was crumbling in a deathly dry rot, rotted with inane, inert conceit of superiority long since evaporated. She wished she could burn the place down before she left. What a tomb! What a tomb! And she had never known it. In spite of all her free life and experiences in the artistic world, she had accepted Wragby as as good as she could get.
Till she had loved Parkin — her Op. Yes, she loved him. He was a man, if he wasn’t a gentleman. Anyhow there came a breath of fresh air with him, and a breath of fresh life. My lady’s fucker, as he called himself so savagely! How he had hated her for not taking him fully seriously in his manly fucking! Ah well! The future was still to hand!
THE END
The Complete Works of D H Lawrence are available at www.blackthornpress.com
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 27