Читать книгу Любовник леди Чаттерлей / Lady Chatterley's Lover онлайн | страница 14

What could she do but leave it alone? So she left it alone. Miss Chatterley came sometimes, with her aristocratic thin face, and triumphed, finding nothing altered. She would never forgive Connie for ousting her from her union in consciousness with her brother. It was she, Emma, who should be bringing forth the stories, these books, with him; the Chatterley stories, something new in the world, that they, the Chatterleys, had put there. There was no other standard. There was no organic connexion with the thought and expression that had gone before. Only something new in the world: the Chatterley books, entirely personal.

Connie’s father, where he paid a flying visit to Wragby, and 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 the burly Scottish knight who had done himself well all his life, and her eyes, her big, still-wondering blue eyes became vague. Nothing in it! 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? What else could there be?

For Connie had adopted the standard of the young: what there was in the moment was everything. And moments followed one another without necessarily belonging to one another.

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.[28]”

“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 stiffly.

“She’s getting thin… angular. It’s not her style. She’s not the pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she’s a bonny Scotch trout.”