Page 71 - lady-chatterlys-lover

and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to
be encountered at their worst.
So it was with Clifford. Once he was ‘well’, once he was
back at Wragby, and writing his stories, and feeling sure of
life, in spite of all, he seemed to forget, and to have recov-
ered all his equanimity. But now, as the years went by, slowly,
slowly, Connie felt the bruise of fear and horror coming up,
and spreading in him. For a time it had been so deep as to
be numb, as it were non-existent. Now slowly it began to as-
sert itself in a spread of fear, almost paralysis. Mentally he
still was alert. But the paralysis, the bruise of the too-great
shock, was gradually spreading in his affective self.
And as it spread in him, Connie felt it spread in her. An
inward dread, an emptiness, an indifference to everything
gradually spread in her soul. When Clifford was roused, he
could still talk brilliantly and, as it were, command the fu-
ture: as when, in the wood, he talked about her having a
child, and giving an heir to Wragby. But the day after, all the
brilliant words seemed like dead leaves, crumpling up and
turning to powder, meaning really nothing, blown away on
any gust of wind. They were not the leafy words of an effec-
tive life, young with energy and belonging to the tree. They
were the hosts of fallen leaves of a life that is ineffectual.
So it seemed to her everywhere. The colliers at Tevershall
were talking again of a strike, and it seemed to Connie there
again it was not a manifestation of energy, it was the bruise
of the war that had been in abeyance, slowly rising to the
surface and creating the great ache of unrest, and stupor of
discontent. The bruise was deep, deep, deep...the bruise of

0 Lady Chatterly’s Lover