Connie was inclined to agree. What was the good of discontented people who fitted in nowhere?
In the spell of fine weather Clifford, too, decided to go to the wood. The wind was cold, but not so tiresome, and the sunshine was like life itself, warm and full.
“It’s amazing,” said Connie, “how different one feels when there’s a really fresh fine day. Usually one feels the very air is half dead. People are killing the very air.”
“Do you think people are doing it?” he asked.
“I do. The steam of so much boredom, and discontent and anger out of all the people, just kills the vitality in the air. I’m sure of it.”
“Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere lowers the vitality of the people?” he said.
“No, it’s man that poisons the universe,” she asserted.
“Fouls his own nest,” remarked Clifford.
The chair puffed on. In the hazel copse catkins were hanging pale gold, and in sunny places the wood-anemones were wide open, as if exclaiming with the joy of life, just as good as in past days, when people could exclaim along with them. They had a faint scent of apple-blossom. Connie gathered a few for Clifford.
He took them and looked at them curiously.
“Thou still unravished bride of quietness,” he quoted. “It seems to fit flowers so much better than Greek vases.”
“Ravished is such a horrid word!” she said. “It’s only people who ravish things.”
“Oh, I don’t know … snails and things,” he said.
“Even snails only eat them, and bees don’t ravish.”
She was angry with him, turning everything into words. Violets were Juno’s eyelids, and windflowers were unravished brides. How she hated words, always coming between her and life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the life-sap out of living things.
The walk with Clifford was not quite a success. Between him and Connie there was a tension that each pretended not to notice, but there it was. Suddenly, with all the force of her female instinct, she was shoving him off. She wanted to be clear of him, and especially of his consciousness, his words, his obsession with himself, his endless treadmill obsession with himself, and his own words.
The weather came rainy again. But after a day or two she went out in the rain, and she went to the wood. And once there, she went towards the hut. It was raining, but not so cold, and the wood felt so silent and remote, inaccessible in the dusk of rain.
She came to the clearing. No one there! The hut was locked. But she sat on the log doorstep, under the rustic porch, and snuggled into her own warmth. So she sat, looking at the rain, listening to the many noiseless noises of it, and to the strange soughings of wind in upper branches, when there seemed to be no wind. Old oak trees stood around, grey, powerful trunks, rain-blackened, round and vital, throwing off reckless limbs. The ground was fairly free of undergrowth, the anemones sprinkled, there was a bush or two, elder, or guelder-rose, and a purplish tangle of bramble; the old russet of bracken almost vanished under green anemone ruffs. Perhaps this was one of the unravished places. Unravished! The whole world was ravished.
Some things can’t be ravished. You can’t ravish a tin of sardines. And so many women are like that; and men. But the earth … !
The rain was abating. It was hardly making darkness among the oaks any more. Connie wanted to go; yet she sat on. But she was getting cold; yet the overwhelming inertia of her inner resentment kept her there as if paralysed.
Ravished! How ravished one could be without ever being touched. Ravished by dead words become obscene, and dead ideas become obsessions.
A wet brown dog came running and did not bark, lifting a wet feather of a tail. The man followed in a wet black oilskin jacket, like a chauffeur, and face flushed a little. She felt him recoil in his quick walk, when he saw her. She stood up in the handbreadth of dryness under the rustic porch. He saluted without speaking, coming slowly near. She began to withdraw.
“I’m just going,” she said.
“Was yer waitin’ to get in?” he asked, looking at the hut, not at her.
“No, I only sat a few minutes in the shelter,” she said, with quiet dignity.
He looked at her. She looked cold.
“Sir Clifford ’adn’t got no other key, then?” he asked.
“No, but it doesn’t matter. I can sit perfectly dry under this porch. Good afternoon!” She hated the excess of vernacular in his speech.
He watched her closely, as she was moving away. Then he hitched up his jacket, and put his hand in his breeches pocket, taking out the key of the hut.
“ ’Appen yer’d better ’ave this key, an’ Ah mun fend for t’ bods some other road.”
She looked at him.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean as ’appen Ah can find anuther pleece as’ll du for rearin’ th’ pheasants. If yer want ter be ’ere, yo’ll non want me messin’ abaht a’ th’ time.”
She looked at him, getting his meaning through the fog of the dialect.
“Why don’t you speak ordinary English?” she said coldly.
“Me! Ah thowt it wor’ ordinary.”
She was silent for a few moments in anger.
“So if yer want t’ key, yer’d better ta’e it. Or ’appen Ah’d better gi’e ’t yer termorrer, an’ clear all t’ stuff aht fust. Would that du for yer?”
She became more angry.
“I didn’t want your key,” she said. “I don’t want you to clear anything out at all. I don’t in the least want to turn you out of your hut, thank you! I only wanted to be able to sit here sometimes, like today. But I can sit perfectly well under the porch, so please say no more about it.”
He looked at her again, with his wicked blue eyes.
“Why,” he began, in the broad slow dialect. “Your Ladyship’s as welcome as Christmas ter th’ hut an’ th’ key an’ iverythink as
