Lady Chatterley's Lover

by D.H. Lawrence

So she sauntered slowly back, listening. As she came near, the cottage
looked just the same. A dog barked, and she knocked at the door, her
heart beating in spite of herself.

She heard the man coming lightly downstairs. He opened the door
quickly, and startled her. He looked uneasy himself, but instantly a
laugh came on his face.

'Lady Chatterley!' he said. 'Will you come in?'

His manner was so perfectly easy and good, she stepped over the
threshold into the rather dreary little room.

'I only called with a message from Sir Clifford,' she said in her soft,
rather breathless voice.

The man was looking at her with those blue, all-seeing eyes of his,
which made her turn her face aside a little. He thought her comely,
almost beautiful, in her shyness, and he took command of the situation
himself at once.

'Would you care to sit down?' he asked, presuming she would not. The
door stood open.

'No thanks! Sir Clifford wondered if you would and she delivered her
message, looking unconsciously into his eyes again. And now his eyes
looked warm and kind, particularly to a woman, wonderfully warm, and
kind, and at ease.

'Very good, your Ladyship. I will see to it at once.'

Taking an order, his whole self had changed, glazed over with a sort of
hardness and distance. Connie hesitated, she ought to go. But she
looked round the clean, tidy, rather dreary little sitting-room with
something like dismay.

'Do you live here quite alone?' she asked.

'Quite alone, your Ladyship.'

'But your mother...?'

'She lives in her own cottage in the village.'

'With the child?' asked Connie.

'With the child!'

And his plain, rather worn face took on an indefinable look of
derision. It was a face that changed all the time, baffling.

'No,' he said, seeing Connie stand at a loss, 'my mother comes and
cleans up for me on Saturdays; I do the rest myself.'

Again Connie looked at him. His eyes were smiling again, a little
mockingly, but warm and blue, and somehow kind. She wondered at him. He
was in trousers and flannel shirt and a grey tie, his hair soft and
damp, his face rather pale and worn-looking. When the eyes ceased to
laugh they looked as if they had suffered a great deal, still without
losing their warmth. But a pallor of isolation came over him, she was
not really there for him.

She wanted to say so many things, and she said nothing. Only she looked
up at him again, and remarked:

'I hope I didn't disturb you?'

The faint smile of mockery narrowed his eyes.

'Only combing my hair, if you don't mind. I'm sorry I hadn't a coat on,
but then I had no idea who was knocking. Nobody knocks here, and the
unexpected sounds ominous.'

He went in front of her down the garden path to hold the gate. In his
shirt, without the clumsy velveteen coat, she saw again how slender he
was, thin, stooping a little. Yet, as she passed him, there was
something young and bright in his fair hair, and his quick eyes. He
would be a man about thirty-seven or eight.

She plodded on into the wood, knowing he was looking after her; he
upset her so much, in spite of herself.

FROM:Chapter 6 Project Guttenberg