the examinations, and had taken up gardening in the hope of getting back
his health and spirits. I thought this a very sensible plan, and was
beginning to feel interested in him when one day the post brought me a
registered packet containing a manuscript play he had written called
"The Lawyer as Gardener," dedicated to me. The Man of Wrath and I were
both in it, the Man of Wrath, however, only in the list of characters,
so that he should not feel hurt, I suppose, for he never appeared on the
scenes at all. As for me, I was represented as going about quoting
Tolstoi in season and out of season to the gardeners--a thing I protest
I never did. The young man was sent home to his people, and I have been
asking myself ever since what there is about this place that it should
so persistently produce books and lunacy?
On the outskirts of the forest, where shafts of dusty sunlight slanted
through the trees, children were picking wortleberries for market as I
passed last night, with hands and faces and aprons smudged into one blue
stain. I had decided to go to a water-mill belonging to the Man of Wrath
which lies far away in a clearing, so far away and so lonely and so
quiet that the very spirit of peace seems to brood over it for ever; and
all the way the wortleberry carpet was thick and unbroken. Never were
the pines more pungent than after the long heat, and their rosy stems
flushed pinker as I passed. Presently I got beyond the region of
wortleberry-pickers, the children not caring to wander too far into the
forest so late, and I jolted over the roots into the gathering shadows
more and more pervaded by that feeling that so refreshes me, the feeling
of being absolutely alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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