Page 295 - lady-chatterlys-lover

of his head.
’You might be right. I was a fool ever to come back here.
But I felt stranded and had to go somewhere. A man’s a poor
bit of a wastrel blown about. But you’re right. I’ll get a di-
vorce and get clear. I hate those things like death, officials
and courts and judges. But I’ve got to get through with it.
I’ll get a divorce.’
And she saw his jaw set. Inwardly she exulted. ‘I think I
will have a cup of tea now,’ she said. He rose to make it. But
his face was set. As they sat at table she asked him:
’Why did you marry her? She was commoner than
yourself. Mrs Bolton told me about her. She could never un-
derstand why you married her.’
He looked at her fixedly.
’I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘The first girl I had, I began with
when I was sixteen. She was a school-master’s daughter over
at Ollerton, pretty, beautiful really. I was supposed to be a
clever sort of young fellow from Sheffield Grammar School,
with a bit of French and German, very much up aloft. She
was the romantic sort that hated commonness. She egged
me on to poetry and reading: in a way, she made a man of
me. I read and I thought like a house on fire, for her. And
I was a clerk in Butterley offices, thin, white-faced fellow
fuming with all the things I read. And about EVERY-
THING I talked to her: but everything. We talked ourselves
into Persepolis and Timbuctoo. We were the most literary-
cultured couple in ten counties. I held forth with rapture to
her, positively with rapture. I simply went up in smoke. And
she adored me. The serpent in the grass was sex. She some-

Lady Chatterly’s Lover