Page 83 - lady-chatterlys-lover

chaelis didn’t.
And the bounders who pretended they did, and started
working the sex game, they were worse than ever.
It was just dismal, and one had to put up with it. It was
quite true, men had no real glamour for a woman: if you
could fool yourself into thinking they had, even as she had
fooled herself over Michaelis, that was the best you could
do. Meanwhile you just lived on and there was nothing to it.
She understood perfectly well why people had cocktail par-
ties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were ready to
drop. You had to take it out some way or other, your youth,
or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! You
felt as old as Methuselah, and yet the thing fizzed somehow,
and didn’t let you be comfortable. A mean sort of life! And
no prospect! She almost wished she had gone off with Mick,
and made her life one long cocktail party, and jazz evening.
Anyhow that was better than just mooning yourself into the
grave.
On one of her bad days she went out alone to walk in
the wood, ponderously, heeding nothing, not even noticing
where she was. The report of a gun not far off startled and
angered her.
Then, as she went, she heard voices, and recoiled. People!
She didn’t want people. But her quick ear caught anoth-
er sound, and she roused; it was a child sobbing. At once
she attended; someone was ill-treating a child. She strode
swinging down the wet drive, her sullen resentment upper-
most. She felt just prepared to make a scene.
Turning the corner, she saw two figures in the drive be-

Lady Chatterly’s Lover