Page 93 - lady-chatterlys-lover

She had an idea that he would have to be a foreigner: not
an Englishman, still less an Irishman. A real foreigner.
But wait! wait! Next winter she would get Clifford to
London; the following winter she would get him abroad to
the South of France, Italy. Wait! She was in no hurry about
the child. That was her own private affair, and the one point
on which, in her own queer, female way, she was serious to
the bottom of her soul. She was not going to risk any chance
comer, not she! One might take a lover almost at any mo-
ment, but a man who should beget a child on one...wait!
wait! it’s a very different matter.—’Go ye into the streets
and byways of Jerusalem...’ It was not a question of love; it
was a question of a MAN. Why, one might even rather hate
him, personally. Yet if he was the man, what would one’s
personal hate matter? This business concerned another part
of oneself.
It had rained as usual, and the paths were too sodden
for Clifford’s chair, but Connie would go out. She went out
alone every day now, mostly in the wood, where she was re-
ally alone. She saw nobody there.
This day, however, Clifford wanted to send a message to
the keeper, and as the boy was laid up with influenza, some-
body always seemed to have influenza at Wragby, Connie
said she would call at the cottage.
The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were slowly
dying. Grey and clammy and silent, even from the shuffling
of the collieries, for the pits were working short time, and
today they were stopped altogether. The end of all things!
In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only

Lady Chatterly’s Lover