Lady Chatterley’s Lover · Chapter 15 (3/3)

“Look at Jane!” he said. “In all her blossoms! Who’ll put blossoms on you next year, Jinny? Me, or somebody else? ‘Goodbye my bluebell, farewell to you!’ I hate that song, it’s early war days.” He had sat down, and was pulling on his stockings. She still stood unmoving. He laid his hand on the slope of her buttocks. “Pretty little Lady Jane!” he said. “Perhaps in Venice you’ll find a man who’ll put jasmine in your maidenhair, and a pomegranate flower in your navel. Poor little Lady Jane!”

“Don’t say those things!” she said. “You only say them to hurt me.”

He dropped his head. Then he said, in dialect:

“Ay, maybe I do, maybe I do! Well then, I’ll say nowt, an’ ha’ done wi’t. But tha mun dress thysen, an’ go back to thy stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand. Time’s up! Time’s up for Sir John, an’ for little Lady Jane! Put thy shimmy on, Lady Chatterley! Tha might be anybody, standin’ there be-out even a shimmy, an’ a few rags o’ flowers. There then, there then, I’ll undress thee, tha bobtailed young throstle.” And he took the leaves from her hair, kissing her damp hair, and the flowers from her breasts, and kissed her breasts, and kissed her navel, and kissed her maidenhair, where he left the flowers threaded. “They mun stop while they will,” he said. “So! There tha’rt bare again, nowt but a bare-arsed lass an’ a bit of a Lady Jane! Now put thy shimmy on, for tha mun go, or else Lady Chatterley’s going to be late for dinner, an’ where ’ave yer been to my pretty maid!”

She never knew how to answer him when he was in this condition of the vernacular. So she dressed herself and prepared to go a little ignominiously home to Wragby. Or so she felt it: a little ignominiously home.

He would accompany her to the broad riding. His young pheasants were all right under the shelter.

When he and she came out on to the riding, there was Mrs. Bolton faltering palely towards them.

“Oh, my Lady, we wondered if anything had happened!”

“No! Nothing has happened.”

Mrs. Bolton looked into the man’s face, that was smooth and new-looking with love. She met his half-laughing, half-mocking eyes. He always laughed at mischance. But he looked at her kindly.

“Evening, Mrs. Bolton! Your Ladyship will be all right now, so I can leave you. Good night to your ladyship! Good night, Mrs. Bolton!”

He saluted and turned away.