Любовник леди Чаттерлей / Lady Chatterley's Lover. Дэвид Герберт ЛоуренсЧитать онлайн книгу.
houses, rows of small, blackened, gloomy, brick houses, with slate roofs.
Connie was accustomed to Kensington or the Scotch hills: that was her England. With the stoicism of the young she took in the ugliness of the coal-and-iron Midlands at a glance, as not to be thought about. From the rather gloomy rooms at Wragby she heard the rumble at the pit, the little whistle of the colliery locomotives. Tevershall pit-bank was burning, had been burning for years, and it would cost thousands to put it out. So it had to burn. And when the wind was that way, which was often, the house was full of the stench. But even on windless days the air always smelt of something under-earth: sulphur, iron or coal. And even on the Christmas roses the soot settled, like black manna from the skies of doom.
Well, there it was: fated like the rest of things! It was rather awful, but you couldn’t kick it away. It just went on. At night she could see red spots burning in the sky. It was the furnaces. At first they fascinated Connie; she felt she was living underground. Then she got used to them. And in the morning it rained.
Clifford pretended to like Wragby better than London. This country had a will of its own, and the people had guts. Connie wondered what else they had: certainly neither eyes nor minds. The people were as haggard, shapeless, and sad as the countryside, and as unfriendly. They spoke a slurring dialect.
There had been no welcome home for the young couple, no festivities, no deputation, not even a single flower. Only a ride in a motor-car up a dark road through gloomy trees, out to the slope of the park where grey sheep were feeding, to the hill where the house spread its dark brown facade, and the housekeeper and her husband were waiting to welcome them.
There was no communication between Wragby Hall and Tevershall village. No caps were touched, no curtseys bobbed[11]. The colliers merely stared; the tradesmen lifted their caps to Connie as to an acquaintance, and nodded awkwardly to Clifford; that was all. It was not that she and Clifford were unpopular, they merely belonged to another species, different from the colliers. You stick to your side, I’ll stick to mine!
The attitude of the miners’ wives—We think ourselves as good as you, if you are Lady Chatterley! – puzzled Connie at first extremely.
Clifford left them alone[12], and she learnt to do the same: she just went by without looking at them, and they stared as if she were a walking wax figure. When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty and contemptuous. In fact he was contemptuous of anyone not in his own class. And he was neither liked nor disliked by the people: he was just part of things, like the pit-bank and Wragby itself.
But Clifford was really extremely shy now he was lamed. He hated seeing anyone except the personal servants. For he had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair. Nevertheless he was just as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he wore the Bond Street neckties just as before.
Connie and he were attached to one another. He was much too hurt in himself, the great shock of his maiming. And Connie stuck to him passionately.
But she could not help feeling how little connexion he really had with people. The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as objects rather than men. He was in some way afraid of them, he could not bear to have them look at him now he was lame.
He was remote. He was not in actual touch with anybody, save, traditionally, with Wragby. Connie felt that she herself didn’t really touch him.
Yet he was absolutely dependent on her, he needed her every moment. Big and strong as he was, he was helpless. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a sort of bath-chair with a motor attachment, in which he could ride slowly round the park. But alone he was like a lost thing. He needed Connie to be there, to assure him he existed at all.
Still he was ambitious. He had taken to writing stories; curious, very personal stories about people he had known. Clever, and yet, in some mysterious way, meaningless. It was as if the whole thing took place in a vacuum.
Clifford was very sensitive about these stories. He wanted everyone to think them good, of the best. They appeared in the most modern magazines, and were praised and blamed as usual. But to Clifford the blame was torture. It was as if the whole of his being were in his stories.
Connie helped him as much as she could. At first she was thrilled. He talked everything over with her monotonously, persistently, and she had to respond with all her might.
Of physical life they lived very little. She had to control the house. But the housekeeper had served Sir Geofrf ey for many years, and his wife who waited at table, had been in the house for forty years. Even the very housemaids were no longer young. It was awful! What could you do with such a place, but leave it alone! So she left it alone.
Connie’s father, where he paid a short visit to Wragby, said in private to his daughter: As for Clifford’s writing, it’s smart, but there’s nothing in it. It won’t last! Connie looked at him: What did he mean by nothing in it? If the critics praised it, and Clifford’s name was almost famous, and it even brought in money…what did her father mean by saying there was nothing in Clifford’s writing?
It was in her second winter at Wragby her father said to her: ‘I hope, Connie, you won’t let circumstances force you into being a demi-vierge[13].’
‘A demi-vierge!’ replied Connie vaguely. ‘Why? Why not?’
‘Unless you like it, of course!’ said her father hastily. To Clifford he said the same, when the two men were alone: ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t quite suit Connie to be a demi-vierge.’
‘A half-virgin!’ replied Clifford, translating the phrase to be sure of it.
He thought for a moment, then flushed very red. He was angry and offended.
‘In what way doesn’t it suit her?’ he asked stifylf.
‘She’s getting thin… It’s not her style.’
Clifford wanted to say something later to Connie about the half-virgin state of her affairs. But he could not bring himself to do it. He was at once too intimate with her and not intimate enough. He was so very much at one with her, in his mind and hers, but bodily they were non-existent to one another, and utterly out of touch.
Connie guessed, however, that her father had said something, and that something was in Clifford’s mind.
Connie and Clifford had now been nearly two years at Wragby. Their common interests were connected only with his work. The rest was non-existence. Wragby was there, the servants… Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods that joined the park, and enjoyed the solitude, kicking the brown leaves of autumn, and picking the primroses of spring. But it was all a dream: no touch, no contact! Only this life with Clifford and his stories which wouldn’t last.
Clifford had quite a number of friends, acquaintances really, and he invited them to Wragby. He invited all sorts of people, critics and writers, people who would help to praise his books. And they were flattered at being asked to Wragby. Connie understood it all perfectly. But why not?
She was hostess to these people, mostly men. She was hostess also to Clifford’s aristocratic relations. Being a ruddy, country-looking girl, inclined to freckles, with big blue eyes, and curling, brown hair, and a soft voice, and rather strong, female body she was considered a little old-fashioned and ‘womanly’. She was not like a boy, with a boy’s flat breast and little buttocks. She was too feminine to be quite smart.
So the men, especially those no longer young, were very nice to her indeed. But, knowing how poor Clifford would feel at the slightest sign of flirting
Никто не приподнимал шляпу и не приседал в реверансе.
не обращал на них внимания