Любовник леди Чаттерлей / Lady Chatterley's Lover

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, baking.

“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.