Page 271 - lady-chatterlys-lover

kept a channel through the flowers. But Connie, walking
behind, had watched the wheels jolt over the wood-ruff and
the bugle, and squash the little yellow cups of the creeping-
jenny. Now they made a wake through the forget-me-nots.
All the flowers were there, the first bluebells in blue pools,
like standing water.
’You are quite right about its being beautiful,’ said Clif-
ford. ‘It is so amazingly. What is QUITE so lovely as an
English spring!’
Connie thought it sounded as if even the spring bloomed
by act of Parliament. An English spring! Why not an Irish
one? or Jewish? The chair moved slowly ahead, past tufts
of sturdy bluebells that stood up like wheat and over grey
burdock leaves. When they came to the open place where
the trees had been felled, the light flooded in rather stark.
And the bluebells made sheets of bright blue colour, here
and there, sheering off into lilac and purple. And between,
the bracken was lifting its brown curled heads, like legions
of young snakes with a new secret to whisper to Eve. Clif-
ford kept the chair going till he came to the brow of the hill;
Connie followed slowly behind. The oak-buds were open-
ing soft and brown. Everything came tenderly out of the
old hardness. Even the snaggy craggy oak-trees put out the
softest young leaves, spreading thin, brown little wings like
young bat-wings in the light. Why had men never any new-
ness in them, any freshness to come forth with! Stale men!
Clifford stopped the chair at the top of the rise and
looked down. The bluebells washed blue like flood-water
over the broad riding, and lit up the downhill with a warm

0 Lady Chatterly’s Lover