Page 205 - lady-chatterlys-lover

So his rather prominent pale eyes had a queer look, fur-
tive, and yet a little cruel, so cold: and at the same time,
almost impudent. It was a very odd look, this look of im-
pudence: as if he were triumphing over life in spite of life.
‘Who knoweth the mysteries of the will—for it can triumph
even against the angels—’
But his dread was the nights when he could not sleep.
Then it was awful indeed, when annihilation pressed in on
him on every side. Then it was ghastly, to exist without hav-
ing any life: lifeless, in the night, to exist.
But now he could ring for Mrs Bolton. And she would al-
ways come. That was a great comfort. She would come in her
dressing gown, with her hair in a plait down her back, curi-
ously girlish and dim, though the brown plait was streaked
with grey. And she would make him coffee or camomile
tea, and she would play chess or piquet with him. She had
a woman’s queer faculty of playing even chess well enough,
when she was three parts asleep, well enough to make her
worth beating. So, in the silent intimacy of the night, they
sat, or she sat and he lay on the bed, with the reading-lamp
shedding its solitary light on them, she almost gone in sleep,
he almost gone in a sort of fear, and they played, played to-
gether—then they had a cup of coffee and a biscuit together,
hardly speaking, in the silence of night, but being a reassur-
ance to one another.
And this night she was wondering who Lady Chatterley’s
lover was. And she was thinking of her own Ted, so long
dead, yet for her never quite dead. And when she thought of
him, the old, old grudge against the world rose up, but es-

0 Lady Chatterly’s Lover