The Solitary Summer | Page 2

long sentence for a week."
He slowly brought his gaze from the stars down to me and smiled.
Then he drew me on to his knee.
"Don't get affectionate," I urged; "it is words, not deeds, that I want.
But I'll stay here if you'll talk."
"Well then, I will talk. What am I to say? You know you do as you
please, and I never interfere with you. If you do not want to have any
one here this summer you will not have any one, but you will find it a
very long summer."
"No, I won't."
"And if you lie on the heath all day, people will think you are mad."
"What do I care what people think?"
"No, that is true. But you will catch cold, and your little nose will
swell."
"Let it swell."
"And when it is hot you will be sunburnt and your skin spoilt."

"I don't mind my skin."
"And you will be dull."
"Dull?"
It often amuses me to reflect how very little the Man of Wrath really
knows me. Here we have been three years buried in the country, and I
as happy as a bird the whole time. I say as a bird, because other people
have used the simile to describe absolute cheerfulness, although I do
not believe birds are any happier than any one else, and they quarrel
disgracefully. I have been as happy then, we will say, as the best of
birds, and have had seasons of solitude at intervals before now during
which dull is the last word to describe my state of mind. Everybody, it
is true, would not like it, and I had some visitors here a fortnight ago
who left after staying about a week and clearly not enjoying themselves.
They found it dull, I know, but that of course was their own fault; how
can you make a person happy against his will? You can knock a great
deal into him in the way of learning and what the schools call extras,
but if you try for ever you will not knock any happiness into a being
who has not got it in him to be happy. The only result probably would
be that you knock your own out of yourself. Obviously happiness must
come from within, and not from without; and judging from my past
experience and my present sensations, I should say that I have a store
just now within me more than sufficient to fill five quiet months.
"I wonder," I remarked after a pause, during which I began to suspect
that I too must belong to the serried ranks of the femmes incomprises,
"why you think I shall be dull. The garden is always beautiful, and I am
nearly always in the mood to enjoy it. Not quite always, I must confess,
for when those Schmidts were here" (their name was not Schmidt, but
what does that matter?) "I grew almost to hate it. Whenever I went into
it there they were, dragging themselves about with faces full of
indignant resignation. Do you suppose they saw one of those blue
hepaticas overflowing the shrubberies? And when I drove with them
into the woods, where the fairies were so busy just then hanging the
branches with little green jewels, they talked about Berlin the whole
time, and the good savouries their new chef makes."
"Well, my dear, no doubt they missed their savouries. Your garden, I
acknowledge, is growing very pretty, but your cook is bad. Poor
Schmidt sometimes looked quite ill at dinner, and the beauty of your

floral arrangements in no way made up for the inferior quality of the
food. Send her away."
"Send her away? Be thankful you have her. A bad cook is more
effectual a great deal than Kissingen and Carlsbad and Homburg rolled
into one, and very much cheaper. As long as I have her, my dear man,
you will be comparatively thin and amiable. Poor Schmidt, as you call
him, eats too much of those delectable savouries, and then looks at his
wife and wonders why he married her. Don't let me catch you doing
that."
"I do not think it is very likely," said the Man of Wrath; but whether he
meant it prettily, or whether he was merely thinking of the
improbability of his ever eating too much of the local savouries, I
cannot tell. I object, however, to discussing cooks in the garden on a
starlight night, so I got off his knee and proposed that we should stroll
round a little.
It was such a sweet evening, such a fitting close to a beautiful May Day,
and the flowers shone in the twilight like pale stars, and the air was full
of fragrance, and I envied the bats