Любовник леди Чаттерлей / Lady Chatterley's Lover. Дэвид Герберт ЛоуренсЧитать онлайн книгу.
was so beautifully out of contact. She and Clifford lived in their ideas and his books. She entertained. There were always people in the house. Time went on as the clock does, half past eight instead of half past seven.
Chapter 3
Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness, which was taking possession of her like madness. It thrilled inside her body, somewhere, till she felt she must jump into water and swim to get away from it; a mad restlessness. It made her heart beat violently for no reason. And she was getting thinner.
It was just restlessness. She would rush off across the park, abandon Clifford, and lie in the grass. To get away from the house…she must get away from the house and everybody.
Vaguely she knew herself that she was going to pieces in some way. Vaguely she knew she was out of connexion: she had lost touch with the world. Only Clifford and his books, which did not exist…which had nothing in them! Vaguely she knew. But it was like beating her head against a stone.
Her father told her again: ‘Why don’t you get yourself a beau[14], Connie? Do you all the good in the world.’
That winter Michaelis came for a few days. He was a young Irishman who had already made a large fortune by his plays in America. He had been taken up quite enthusiastically for a time by smart society[15] in London, for he wrote smart society plays. Then gradually smart society realized that he had made them look ridiculous. He was discovered to be anti-English, which was to the class worse than the dirtiest crime. He was cut dead, and his corpse thrown into the refuse can[16].
Nevertheless Michaelis had his apartment in Mayfair[17], and walked down Bond Street perfectly dressed by the best tailors.
Clifford was inviting the young man of thirty at an unfavorable moment in that young man’s career. Yet Clifford did not hesitate. Michaelis had the ear of a few million people, probably; and would no doubt be grateful to be asked down to Wragby, when the rest of the smart world was cutting him.
Connie wondered a little over Clifford’s instinct to become known as a writer, as a first-class modern writer. Clifford discovered new channels of publicity. He had all kinds of people at Wragby.
Michaelis arrived duly, in a very neat car, with a chauffeur and a manservant. He was absolutely Bond Street! But at sight of him Clifford saw that he wasn’t exactly what his appearance intended to show. To Clifford this was final and enough. Yet he was very polite to the man, because he wanted to sell himself to the goddess of Success also, if only she would have him.
Michaelis obviously wasn’t an Englishman, in spite of all the tailors, hatters, barbers, booters of the very best quarter of London. Poor Michaelis had been much kicked, so that he had a slightly tail-between-the-legs[18] look even now. He had pushed his way by instinct and impertinence to the stage, with his plays. He had caught the public. And he had thought the kicking days were over. Alas, they weren’t… They never would be. For he, in a sense, asked to be kicked. He pined to be where he didn’t belong…among the English upper classes. And how he hated them!
Nevertheless he travelled with his manservant and his very neat car, this Dublin mongrel.
There was something about him that Connie liked. He didn’t put on airs to himself, he had no illusions about himself. He talked to Clifford briefly, practically, about all the things Clifford wanted to know. He knew he had been asked down to Wragby to be made use of, and like a business man, he let himself be asked questions, and he answered with as little feeling as possible.
‘Money!’ he said. ‘Money is a sort of instinct. It’s a sort of property of nature in a man to make money. Once you start, you make money, and you go on; up to a point, I suppose.’
‘But you’ve got to begin,’ said Clifford.
‘Oh, quite! You’ve got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You should beat your way in. Once you’ve done that, you can’t help it.’
‘And you think it’s a writer of popular plays that you’ve got to be?’ asked Connie.
‘There, exactly!’ he said, turning to her. ‘There’s nothing in popularity. There’s nothing in the public, if it comes to that. There’s nothing really in my plays to make them popular. It’s not that. They just are like the weather…the sort that will have to be…for the time being.’
He turned his slow eyes on Connie, and she trembled a little. He seemed so old; and at the same time he was lonely like a child. An outcast, but with a desperate bravery.
‘At least it’s wonderful what you’ve done at your time of life,’ said Clifford.
‘I’m thirty…yes, I’m thirty!’ said Michaelis, sharply and suddenly, with a curious laugh; triumphant, and bitter.
‘And are you alone?’ asked Connie.
‘How do you mean? Do I live alone? I’ve got my servant. He’s a Greek, so he says. And I’m going to marry. Oh, yes, I must marry.’
‘It sounds like going to have your tonsils cut,’ laughed Connie. ‘Will it be an efof rt?’
He looked at her admiringly. ‘Well, Lady Chatterley, somehow it will! I find… excuse me… I find I can’t marry an Englishwoman, not even an Irishwoman…’
‘Try an American,’ said Clifford.
‘Oh, American!’ He laughed. ‘No, I’ve asked my man if he will find me a Turk or something…something nearer to the Oriental.’
Connie really wondered at this queer, melancholy specimen of extraordinary success; it was said he had an income of fifty thousand dollars from America alone. Sometimes he was handsome. Connie felt a sudden, strange sympathy for him, amounting almost to love. The outsider! And they called him a bounder! How much more bounderish and assertive Clifford looked! How much stupider!
Michaelis knew at once he had made an impression on her. He turned his eyes on her. He was estimating her, and the extent of the impression he had made. For the English he was the outsider. Yet women sometimes fell for him…Englishwomen too.
Breakfast was served in the bedrooms; Clifford never appeared before lunch, and the dining-room was a little gloomy. After coffee Michaelis, restless and ill-sitting soul, wondered what he should do. It was a fine November day. He looked over the melancholy park. My God! What a place!
He sent a servant to ask, could he be of any service to Lady Chatterley: he thought of driving into Shefifeld. The answer came, would he care to go up to Lady Chatterley’s sitting-room.
Connie had a sitting-room on the third floor, the top floor of the central portion of the house. Clifford’s rooms were on the ground floor, of course. Michaelis was flattered by being asked up to Lady Chatterley’s own parlour. In her room he glanced round at the fine German reproductions of Renoir and Cezanne.
‘It’s very pleasant up here,’ he said, with his queer smile. ‘You are wise to get up to the top.’
‘Yes, I think so,’ she said.
Her room was the only gay, modern one in the house, the only spot in Wragby where her personality was revealed. Clifford had never seen it, and she asked very few people up.
Now she and Michaelis sat on opposite sides of the fire and talked. She asked him about himself, his mother and father, his brothers… Michaelis talked frankly about himself, quite frankly, then showing pride in his success.
‘But
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