Page 286 - lady-chatterlys-lover

is ten times the human being you are: you GENTLEMAN!’
He reached and rang the bell for Mrs Bolton. But he was
yellow at the gills.
She went up to her room, furious, saying to herself: ‘Him
and buying people! Well, he doesn’t buy me, and therefore
there’s no need for me to stay with him. Dead fish of a gen-
tleman, with his celluloid soul! And how they take one in,
with their manners and their mock wistfulness and gentle-
ness. They’ve got about as much feeling as celluloid has.’
She made her plans for the night, and determined to
get Clifford off her mind. She didn’t want to hate him. She
didn’t want to be mixed up very intimately with him in any
sort of feeling. She wanted him not to know anything at all
about herself: and especially, not to know anything about
her feeling for the keeper. This squabble of her attitude to
the servants was an old one. He found her too familiar, she
found him stupidly insentient, tough and indiarubbery
where other people were concerned.
She went downstairs calmly, with her old demure bear-
ing, at dinner-time. He was still yellow at the gills: in for
one of his liver bouts, when he was really very queer.—He
was reading a French book.
’Have you ever read Proust?’ he asked her.
’I’ve tried, but he bores me.’
’He’s really very extraordinary.’
’Possibly! But he bores me: all that sophistication! He
doesn’t have feelings, he only has streams of words about
feelings. I’m tired of self-important mentalities.’
’Would you prefer self-important animalities?’