Page 91 - lady-chatterlys-lover

tute oneself, let it be to a bitch-goddess! One could always
despise her even while one prostituted oneself to her, which
was good.
Clifford, of course, had still many childish taboos and
fetishes. He wanted to be thought ‘really good’, which was
all cock-a-hoopy nonsense. What was really good was what
actually caught on. It was no good being really good and
getting left with it. It seemed as if most of the ‘really good’
men just missed the bus. After all you only lived one life,
and if you missed the bus, you were just left on the pave-
ment, along with the rest of the failures.
Connie was contemplating a winter in London with Clif-
ford, next winter. He and she had caught the bus all right, so
they might as well ride on top for a bit, and show it.
The worst of it was, Clifford tended to become vague, ab-
sent, and to fall into fits of vacant depression. It was the
wound to his psyche coming out. But it made Connie want
to scream. Oh God, if the mechanism of the consciousness
itself was going to go wrong, then what was one to do? Hang
it all, one did one’s bit! Was one to be let down ABSOLUTE-
LY?
Sometimes she wept bitterly, but even as she wept she
was saying to herself: Silly fool, wetting hankies! As if that
would get you anywhere!
Since Michaelis, she had made up her mind she wanted
nothing. That seemed the simplest solution of the otherwise
insoluble. She wanted nothing more than what she’d got;
only she wanted to get ahead with what she’d got: Clifford,
the stories, Wragby, the Lady-Chatterley business, money

0 Lady Chatterly’s Lover