Page 397 - lady-chatterlys-lover

seems to make him more monstrous and shocking than a
murderer like Crippen. Yet these people in Tevershall are a
loose lot, if one is to believe all accounts.
The trouble is, however, the execrable Bertha Coutts has
not confined herself to her own experiences and sufferings.
She has discovered, at the top of her voice, that her husband
has been ‘keeping’ women down at the cottage, and has
made a few random shots at naming the women. This has
brought a few decent names trailing through the mud, and
the thing has gone quite considerably too far. An injunction
has been taken out against the woman.
I have had to interview Mellors about the business, as it
was impossible to keep the woman away from the wood. He
goes about as usual, with his Miller-of-the-Dee air, I care
for nobody, no not I, if nobody care for me! Nevertheless, I
shrewdly suspect he feels like a dog with a tin can tied to its
tail: though he makes a very good show of pretending the
tin can isn’t there. But I heard that in the village the women
call away their children if he is passing, as if he were the
Marquis de Sade in person. He goes on with a certain im-
pudence, but I am afraid the tin can is firmly tied to his tail,
and that inwardly he repeats, like Don Rodrigo in the Span-
ish ballad: ‘Ah, now it bites me where I most have sinned!’
I asked him if he thought he would be able to attend to
his duty in the wood, and he said he did not think he had
neglected it. I told him it was a nuisance to have the woman
trespassing: to which he replied that he had no power to
arrest her. Then I hinted at the scandal and its unpleasant
course. ‘Ay,’ he said. ‘folks should do their own fuckin’, then

Lady Chatterly’s Lover