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

When Miss Chatterley--Emma--came down to London from the Midlands to do
some nursing work, she was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey
and his determined patriotism. Herbert, the elder brother and heir,
laughed outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench
props. But Clifford only smiled a little uneasily. Everything was
ridiculous, quite true. But when it came too close and oneself became
ridiculous too... At least people of a different class, like Connie,
were earnest about something. They believed in something.

They were rather earnest about the Tommies, and the threat of
conscription, and the shortage of sugar and toffee for the children. In
all these things, of course, the authorities were ridiculously at
fault. But Clifford could not take it to heart. To him the authorities
were ridiculous AB OVO, not because of toffee or Tommies.

And the authorities felt ridiculous, and behaved in a rather ridiculous
fashion, and it was all a mad hatter's tea-party for a while. Till
things developed over there, and Lloyd George came to save the
situation over here. And this surpassed even ridicule, the flippant
young laughed no more.

In 1916 Herbert Chatterley was killed, so Clifford became heir. He was
terrified even of this. His importance as son of Sir Geoffrey, and
child of Wragby, was so ingrained in him, he could never escape it. And
yet he knew that this too, in the eyes of the vast seething world, was
ridiculous. Now he was heir and responsible for Wragby. Was that not
terrible and also splendid and at the same time, perhaps, purely
absurd

Sir Geoffrey would have none of the absurdity. He was pale and tense,
withdrawn into himself, and obstinately determined to save his country
and his own position, let it be Lloyd George or who it might. So cut
off he was, so divorced from the England that was really England, so
utterly incapable, that he even thought well of Horatio Bottomley. Sir
Geoffrey stood for England and Lloyd George as his forebears had stood
for England and St George and he never knew there was a difference. So
Sir Geoffrey felled timber and stood for Lloyd George and England,
England and Lloyd George.

And he wanted Clifford to marry and produce an heir. Clifford felt his
father was a hopeless anachronism. But wherein was he himself any
further ahead, except in a wincing sense of the ridiculousness of
everything, and the paramount ridiculousness of his own position For
willy-nilly he took his baronetcy and Wragby with the last seriousness.

The gay excitement had gone out of the war...dead. Too much death and
horror. A man needed support arid comfort. A man needed to have an
anchor in the safe world. A man needed a wife.