Читать книгу Любовник леди Чаттерлей / Lady Chatterley's Lover онлайн | страница 54

On one of her bad days she went out alone to walk in the wood, ponderously, heeding nothing, not even noticing where she was. The report of a gun not far off startled and angered her.

Then, as she went, she heard voices, and recoiled. People! She didn’t want people. But her quick ear caught another sound, and she roused; it was a child sobbing. At once she attended; someone was ill-treating a child. She strode swinging down the wet drive, her sullen resentment uppermost. She felt just prepared to make a scene.

Turning the corner, she saw two figures in the drive beyond her: the keeper, and a little girl in a purple coat and moleskin cap, crying.

“Ah, shut it up, tha false little bitch!” came the man’s angry voice, and the child sobbed louder.

Constance strode nearer, with blazing eyes. The man turned and looked at her, saluting coolly, but he was pale with anger.

“What’s the matter? Why is she crying?” demanded Constance, peremptory but a little breathless.

A faint smile like a sneer came on the man’s face. “Nay, yo mun ax “er,” he replied callously, in broad vernacular.[44]

Connie felt as if he had hit her in the face, and she changed colour. Then she gathered her defiance, and looked at him, her dark blue eyes blazing rather vaguely.

“I asked you,” she panted.

He gave a queer little bow, lifting his hat. “You did, your Ladyship,” he said; then, with a return to the vernacular: “but I canna tell yer.” And he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance.

Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black-haired thing of nine or ten. “What is it, dear? Tell me why you’re crying!” she said, with the conventionalized sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, self-conscious. Still more sweetness on Connie’s part.

“There, there, don’t you cry! Tell me what they’ve done to you!’… an intense tenderness of tone. At the same time she felt in the pocket of her knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.

“Don’t you cry then!” she said, bending in front of the child. “See what I’ve got for you!”