Page 217 - lady-chatterlys-lover

But oh my dear! Mrs Bolton was thinking to herself. Is
it Oliver Mellors’ child you’re preparing us for? Oh my dear,
that WOULD be a Tevershall baby in the Wragby cradle,
my word! Wouldn’t shame it, neither!
Among other monstrosities in this lumber room was
a largish blackjapanned box, excellently and ingeniously
made some sixty or seventy years ago, and fitted with ev-
ery imaginable object. On top was a concentrated toilet set:
brushes, bottles, mirrors, combs, boxes, even three beau-
tiful little razors in safety sheaths, shaving-bowl and all.
Underneath came a sort of ESCRITOIRE outfit: blotters,
pens, ink-bottles, paper, envelopes, memorandum books:
and then a perfect sewing-outfit, with three different sized
scissors, thimbles, needles, silks and cottons, darning egg,
all of the very best quality and perfectly finished. Then there
was a little medicine store, with bottles labelled Laudanum,
Tincture of Myrrh, Ess. Cloves and so on: but empty. Ev-
erything was perfectly new, and the whole thing, when shut
up, was as big as a small, but fat weekend bag. And inside, it
fitted together like a puzzle. The bottles could not possibly
have spilled: there wasn’t room.
The thing was wonderfully made and contrived, excel-
lent craftsmanship of the Victorian order. But somehow it
was monstrous. Some Chatterley must even have felt it, for
the thing had never been used. It had a peculiar soulless-
ness.
Yet Mrs Bolton was thrilled.
’Look what beautiful brushes, so expensive, even the
shaving brushes, three perfect ones! No! and those scissors!

1 Lady Chatterly’s Lover