Page 429 - lady-chatterlys-lover

’Read it!’ said the sepulchral voice.
’Why, if it’s a letter from her ladyship, I’m sure her lady-
ship wouldn’t want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford.
You can tell me what she says, if you wish.’
’Read it!’ repeated the voice.
’Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford,’ she said.
And she read the letter.
’Well, I AM surprised at her ladyship,’ she said. ‘She
promised so faithfully she’d come back!’
The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of
wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs Bolton looked at it
and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male
hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning
something about that very unpleasant disease.
She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in
his senses must have KNOWN his wife was in love with
somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was
sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of it, only
he wouldn’t admit it to himself. If he would have admitted
it, and prepared himself for it: or if he would have admit-
ted it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that
would have been acting like a man. But no! he knew it, and
all the time tried to kid himself it wasn’t so. He felt the devil
twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on
him. This state of falsity had now brought on that crisis of
falsity and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity.
‘It comes’, she thought to herself, hating him a little, ‘be-
cause he always thinks of himself. He’s so wrapped up in his
own immortal self, that when he does get a shock he’s like a

Lady Chatterly’s Lover