"Lawrence, D. H - Lady Chatterley's Lover" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawrence D. H)

none. No caps were touched, no curtseys bobbed. The colliers merely
stared; the tradesmen lifted their caps to Connie as to an
acquaintance, and nodded awkwardly to Clifford; that was all. Gulf
impassable, and a quiet sort of resentment on either side. At first
Connie suffered from the steady drizzle of resentment that came from
the village. Then she hardened herself to it, and it became a sort of
tonic, something to live up to. It was not that she and Clifford were
unpopular, they merely belonged to another species altogether from the
colliers. Gulf impassable, breach indescribable, such as is perhaps
nonexistent south of the Trent. But in the Midlands and the industrial
North gulf impassable, across which no communication could take place.
You stick to your side, I'll stick to mine! A strange denial of the
common pulse of humanity.

Yet the village sympathized with Clifford and Connie in the abstract.
In the flesh it was--You leave me alone!--on either side.

The rector was a nice man of about sixty, full of his duty, and
reduced, personally, almost to a nonentity by the silent--You leave me
alone!--of the village. The miners' wives were nearly all Methodists.
The miners were nothing. But even so much official uniform as the
clergyman wore was enough to obscure entirely the fact that he was a
man like any other man. No, he was Mester Ashby, a sort of automatic
preaching and praying concern.

This stubborn, instinctive--We think ourselves as good as you, if you
ARE Lady Chatterley!--puzzled and baffled Connie at first extremely.
The curious, suspicious, false amiability with which the miners' wives
met her overtures; the curiously offensive tinge of--Oh dear me! I AM
somebody now, with Lady Chatterley talking to me! But she needn't think
I'm not as good as her for all that!--which she always heard twanging
in the women's half-fawning voices, was impossible. There was no
getting past it. It was hopelessly and offensively nonconformist.

Clifford left them alone, and she learnt to do the same she just went
by without looking at them, and they stared as if she were a walking
wax figure. When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty
and contemptuous; one could no longer afford to be friendly. In fact he
was altogether rather supercilious and contemptuous of anyone not in
his own class. He stood his ground, without any attempt at
conciliation. And he was neither liked nor disliked by the people he
was just part of things, like the pit-bank and Wragby itself.

But Clifford was really extremely shy and self-conscious now he was
lamed. He hated seeing anyone except just the personal servants. For he
had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair. Nevertheless he
was just as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he
wore the careful Bond Street neckties just as before, and from the top
he looked just as smart and impressive as ever. He had never been one
of the modern ladylike young men rather bucolic even, with his ruddy