Page 387 - lady-chatterlys-lover

for anything. Besides, she was pregnant. She knew now. So
the stupor of sunlight and lagoon salt and sea-bathing and
lying on shingle and finding shells and drifting away, away
in a gondola, was completed by the pregnancy inside her,
another fullness of health, satisfying and stupefying.
She had been at Venice a fortnight, and she was to stay
another ten days or a fortnight. The sunshine blazed over
any count of time, and the fullness of physical health made
forgetfulness complete. She was in a sort of stupor of well-
being.
From which a letter of Clifford roused her.
We too have had our mild local excitement. It appears
the truant wife of Mellors, the keeper, turned up at the cot-
tage and found herself unwelcome. He packed her off, and
locked the door. Report has it, however, that when he re-
turned from the wood he found the no longer fair lady
firmly established in his bed, in PURIS NATURALIBUS;
or one should say, in IMPURIS NATURALIBUS. She had
broken a window and got in that way. Unable to evict the
somewhat man-handled Venus from his couch, he beat a
retreat and retired, it is said, to his mother’s house in Tever-
shall. Meanwhile the Venus of Stacks Gate is established in
the cottage, which she claims is her home, and Apollo, ap-
parently, is domiciled in Tevershall.
I repeat this from hearsay, as Mellors has not come to me
personally. I had this particular bit of local garbage from our
garbage bird, our ibis, our scavenging turkey-buzzard, Mrs
Bolton. I would not have repeated it had she not exclaimed:
her Ladyship will go no more to the wood if THATwoman’s

Lady Chatterly’s Lover