Elizabeth and Her German Garden

I love my garden. I am writing in it now in the late afternoon loveliness, much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a cold shower. Two owls are perched near me, and are carrying on a long conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales. The gentleman owl says A bar of musical notation depicts three quick notes., and she answers from her tree a little way off, A bar of musical notation depicts two short, sharp notes., beautifully assenting to and completing her lord’s remark, as becomes a properly constructed German she-owl. They say the same thing over and over again so emphatically that I think it must be something nasty about me; but I shall not let myself be frightened away by the sarcasm of owls.

This is less a garden than a wilderness. No one has lived in the house, much less in the garden, for twenty-five years, and it is such a pretty old place that the people who might have lived here and did not, deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town, must have belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed. Noseless too, though it does not sound pretty; but the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves.

The other day at a dinner party in the nearest town (it took us the whole afternoon to get there) the women after dinner were curious to know how I had endured the winter, cut off from everybody and snowed up sometimes for weeks.

“Ah, these husbands!” sighed an ample lady, lugubriously shaking her head; “they shut up their wives because it suits them, and don’t care what their sufferings are.”

Then the others sighed and shook their heads too, for the ample lady was a great local potentate, and one began to tell how another dreadful husband had brought his young wife into the country and had kept her there, concealing her beauty and accomplishments from the public in a most cruel manner, and how, after spending a certain number of years in alternately weeping and producing progeny, she had quite lately run away with somebody unspeakable⁠—I think it was the footman, or the baker, or someone of that sort.

“But I am quite happy,” I began, as soon as I could put in a word.

“Ah, a good little wife, making the best of it,” and the female potentate patted my hand, but continued gloomily to shake her head.

“You cannot possibly be happy in the winter entirely alone,” asserted another lady, the wife of a high military authority and not accustomed to be contradicted.

“But I am.”

“But how can you possibly be at your age? No, it is not possible.”

“But I am.”

“Your husband ought to bring you to town in the winter.”

“But I don’t want to be brought to town.”

“And not let you waste your best years buried.”

“But I like being buried.”

“Such solitude is not right.”

“But I’m not solitary.”

“And can come to no good.” She was getting quite angry.

There was a chorus of No Indeeds at her last remark, and renewed shaking of heads.

made me turn round with a start, just in time to receive the shock of a body tumbling out of the mist and knocking violently against me.

It was a little girl of about twelve years old.

“Hullo!” said the little girl in excellent English; and then we stared at each other in astonishment.

“I thought you were Miss Robinson,” said the little girl, offering no apology for having nearly knocked me down. “Who are you?”

“Miss Robinson? Miss Robinson?” I repeated, my eyes fixed on the little girl’s face, and a host of memories stirring within me. “Why, didn’t she marry a missionary, and go out to some place where they ate him?”

The little girl stared harder. “Ate him? Marry? What, has she been married all this time to somebody who’s been eaten and never let on? Oh, I say, what a game!” And she threw back her head and laughed till the garden rang again.

“O hush, you dreadful little girl!” I implored, catching her by the arm, and terrified beyond measure by the loudness of her mirth. “Don’t make that horrid noise⁠—we are certain to be caught if you don’t stop⁠—”

The little girl broke off a shriek of laughter in the middle and shut her mouth with a snap. Her eyes, round and black and shiny like boot buttons, came still further out of her head. “Caught?” she said eagerly. “What, are you afraid of being caught too? Well, this is a game!” And with her hands plunged deep in the pockets of her coat she capered in front of me in the excess of her enjoyment, reminding me of a very fat black lamb frisking round the dazed and passive sheep its mother.

Neither do I like sick husbands, so, full of sympathy, I begged her to come, and here she is. And the other is Minora.

Why I have to have Minora I don’t know, for I was not even aware of her existence a fortnight ago. Then coming down cheerfully one morning to breakfast⁠—it was the very day after my return from England⁠—I found a letter from an English friend, who up till then had been perfectly innocuous, asking me to befriend Minora. I read the letter aloud for the benefit of the Man of Wrath, who was eating Spickgans, a delicacy much sought after in these parts. “Do, my dear Elizabeth,” wrote my friend, “take some notice of the poor thing. She is studying art in Dresden, and has nowhere literally to go for Christmas. She is very ambitious and hardworking⁠—”

“Then,” interrupted the Man of Wrath, “she is not pretty. Only ugly girls work hard.”

“⁠—and she is really very clever⁠—”

“I do not like clever girls, they are so stupid,” again interrupted the Man of Wrath.

“⁠—and unless some kind creature like yourself takes pity on her she will be very lonely.”

“Then let her be lonely.”

“Her mother is my oldest friend, and would be greatly distressed to think that her daughter should be alone in a foreign town at such a season.”

“I do not mind the distress of the mother.”

“Oh, dear me,” I exclaimed impatiently, “I shall have to ask her to come!”

“If you should be inclined,” the letter went on, “to play the good Samaritan, dear Elizabeth, I am positive you would find Minora a bright, intelligent companion⁠—”

“Minora?” questioned the Man of Wrath.