Page 58 - lady-chatterlys-lover

Chapter 5

n a frosty morning with a little February sun, Clif-
Oford and Connie went for a walk across the park to the
wood. That is, Clifford chuffed in his motor-chair, and Con-
nie walked beside him.
The hard air was still sulphurous, but they were both
used to it. Round the near horizon went the haze, opales-
cent with frost and smoke, and on the top lay the small blue
sky; so that it was like being inside an enclosure, always in-
side. Life always a dream or a frenzy, inside an enclosure.
The sheep coughed in the rough, sere grass of the park,
where frost lay bluish in the sockets of the tufts. Across
the park ran a path to the wood-gate, a fine ribbon of pink.
Clifford had had it newly gravelled with sifted gravel from
the pit-bank. When the rock and refuse of the underworld
had burned and given off its sulphur, it turned bright pink,
shrimp-coloured on dry days, darker, crab-coloured on wet.
Now it was pale shrimp-colour, with a bluish-white hoar
of frost. It always pleased Connie, this underfoot of sifted,
bright pink. It’s an ill wind that brings nobody good.
Clifford steered cautiously down the slope of the knoll
from the hall, and Connie kept her hand on the chair. In
front lay the wood, the hazel thicket nearest, the purplish
density of oaks beyond. From the wood’s edge rabbits
bobbed and nibbled. Rooks suddenly rose in a black train,