John Thomas and Lady Jane by D H Lawrence

Author:D H Lawrence [Lawrence, D H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackthorn Press
Published: 2015-04-09T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

Clifford wanted to go with Connie into the wood. There had been some hot days, the pear-blossom and the plum-blossom had emerged out of nowhere, in creamy and silver-white, upward-breathing snows, little hills and mountains of blooms.

It was indeed cruel for Clifford, that he had to be helped from one wheel-chair to another. His legs were quite useless. But his arms and shoulders were very strong, and he was very clever at swinging himself from one place to another. And Constance hardly felt the shock any more, of lifting those long, heavy, inert legs, and covering them up.

She was sorry for him as he puffed away all round the house, in his chair. But then, he had always believed in the immortality of the soul, or rather of the spirit, and the comparative worthlessness of the body. Nobody had stolen his soul or his spirit. He could still assert that stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.

She waited for him at the top of the drive, at the turn of the loop, by the great beech-tree, as he came chuffing along behind the yew trees. His low chair, with its little motor, puffed softly, and moved at a meek, invalid pace. As he came near her, he smiled.

‘Me on my foaming steed!’ he called.

‘Snorting at least,’ she replied, laughing.

‘A little nearer,’ he replied, as he glanced round at the long façade of the low, brown-stone house. ‘Wragby doesn’t seem to open its eyes any wider, no matter how I’m mounted,’ he added. ‘After all, I ride upon the achievement of the mind of man, and that beats a horse.’

‘Quite,’ she said. ‘And Plato’s soul riding to heaven on a two-horse chariot is all out of date since petrol.’

‘Absolutely! No black steed, no prevention of cruelty to animals! We’ll have some repairs done to the old place next year. I hope I may have a few hundreds in hand then.’

‘That will be good. If only there isn’t another strike.’

‘What in the name of heaven would be the use of their striking! Just ruin the industry — it’s no good, you know, Con! The human animal doesn’t know when it is well off. It’s worse than children: it’s vicious. It’s no good, there has either got to be compulsion, or anarchy.’

‘But I thought you said the other day you were a conservative-anarchist.’

‘So I am. People can be what they like and feel what they like, privately, so long as we keep the form of life intact. It’s the form that matters.’

‘That seems to me silly — like saying the egg can go as addled as it likes, so long as we don’t break the shell. But the shell will break of itself.’

He was in rather high feather this bright May morning. The larks were singing over the park, the distant pit was chuffing and rattling merrily. It seemed like the old days, before the war. She did not really want to talk about strikes or any of those things.

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