`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 on ravished 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.
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>