The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Of course Mary did not waken early the next morning. She slept late because she was tired, and when Martha brought her breakfast she told her that though Colin was quite quiet he was ill and feverish as he always was after he had worn himself out with a fit of crying. Mary ate her breakfast slowly as she listened.

  "He says he wishes tha' would please go and see him as soon as tha' can," Martha said. "It's queer what a fancy he's took to thee. Tha' did give it him last night for sure--didn't tha'? Nobody else would have dared to do it. Eh! poor lad! He's been spoiled till salt won't save him. Mother says as th' two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way--or always to have it. She doesn't know which is th' worst. Tha' was in a fine temper tha'self, too. But he says to me when I went into his room, 'Please ask Miss Mary if she'll please come an' talk to me?' Think o' him saying please! Will you go, Miss?"

  "I'll run and see Dickon first," said Mary. "No, I'll go and see Colin first and tell him--I know what I'll tell him," with a sudden inspiration.

  She had her hat on when she appeared in Colin's room and for a second he looked disappointed. He was in bed. His face was pitifully white and there were dark circles round his eyes.

  "I'm glad you came," he said. "My head aches and I ache all over because I'm so tired. Are you going somewhere?"

  Mary went and leaned against his bed.

  "I won't be long," she said. "I'm going to Dickon, but I'll come back. Colin, it's--it's something about the garden."

  His whole face brightened and a little color came into it.

  "Oh! is it?" he cried out. "I dreamed about it all night. I heard you say something about gray changing into green, and I dreamed I was standing in a place all filled with trembling little green leaves and there were birds on nests everywhere and they looked so soft and still. I'll lie and think about it until you come back."

  In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden. The fox and the crow were with him again and this time he had brought two tame squirrels.

  "I came over on the pony this mornin'," he said. "Eh! he is a good little chap--Jump is! I brought these two in my pockets. This here one he's called Nut an' this here other one's called Shell."

  When he said "Nut" one squirrel leaped on to his right shoulder and when he said "Shell" the other one leaped on to his left shoulder.

  When they sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet, Soot solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell nosing about close to them, it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave such delightfulness, but when she began to tell her story somehow the look in Dickon's funny face gradually changed her mind. She could see he felt sorrier for Colin than she did. He looked up at the sky and all about him.

  "Just listen to them birds--th' world seems full of 'em--all whistlin' an' pipin'," he said. "Look at 'em dartin' about, an' hearken at 'em callin' to each other. Come springtime seems like as if all th' world's callin'. The leaves is uncurlin' so you can see 'em--an', my word, th' nice smells there is about!" sniffing with his happy turned-up nose. "An' that poor lad lyin' shut up an' seein' so little that he gets to thinkin' o' things as sets him screamin'. Eh! my! we mun get him out here--we mun get him watchin' an' listenin' an' sniffin' up th' air an' get him just soaked through wi' sunshine. An' we munnot lose no time about it."

  When he was very much interested he often spoke quite broad Yorkshire though at other times he tried to modify his dialect so that Mary could better understand. But she loved his broad Yorkshire and had in fact been trying to learn to speak it herself. So she spoke a little now.

  "Aye, that we mun," she said (which meant "Yes, indeed, we must"). "I'll tell thee what us'll do first," she proceeded, and Dickon grinned, because when the little wench tried to twist her tongue into speaking Yorkshire it amused him very much. "He's took a graidely fancy to thee. He wants to see thee and he wants to see Soot an' Captain. When I go back to the house to talk to him I'll ax him if tha' canna come an' see him tomorrow mornin'--an' bring tha' creatures wi' thee--an' then--in a bit, when there's more leaves out, an' happen a bud or two, we'll get him to come an' tha shall push him in his chair an' we'll bring him here an' show him everything."

  When she stopped she was quite proud of herself. She had never made a long speech in Yorkshire before and she had remembered very well.

  "Tha' mun talk a bit o' Yorkshire like that to Mester Colin," Dickon chuckled. "Tha'll make him laugh an' there's nowt as good for ill folk as laughin' is. Mother says she believes as half a hour's good laugh every mornin' 'ud cure a chap as was makin' ready for typhus fever."

  "I'm going to talk Yorkshire to him this very day," said Mary, chuckling herself.

  The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the earth and the boughs with wands. It was hard to go away and leave it all, particularly as Nut had actually crept on to her dress and Shell had scrambled down the trunk of the apple-tree they sat under and stayed there looking at her with inquiring eyes. But she went back to the house and when she sat down close to Colin's bed he began to sniff as Dickon did though not in such an experienced way.

  "You smell like flowers and--and fresh things," he cried out quite joyously. "What is it you smell of? It's cool and warm and sweet all at the same time."

  "It's th' wind from th' moor," said Mary. "It comes o' sittin' on th' grass under a tree wi' Dickon an' wi' Captain an' Soot an' Nut an' Shell. It's th' springtime an' out o' doors an' sunshine as smells so graidely."

  She said it as broadly as she could, and you do not know how broadly Yorkshire sounds until you have heard some one speak it. Colin began to laugh.

  "What are you doing?" he said. "I never heard you talk like that before. How funny it sounds."

  "I'm givin' thee a bit o' Yorkshire," answered Mary triumphantly. "I canna' talk as graidely as Dickon an' Martha can but tha' sees I can shape a bit. Doesn't tha' understand a bit o' Yorkshire when tha' hears it? An' tha' a Yorkshire lad thysel' bred an' born! Eh! I wonder tha'rt not ashamed o' thy face."

  And then she began to laugh too and they both laughed until they could not stop themselves and they laughed until the room echoed and Mrs. Medlock opening the door to come in drew back into the corridor and stood listening amazed.

  "Well, upon my word!" she said, speaking rather broad Yorkshire herself because there was no one to hear her and she was so astonished. "Whoever heard th' like! Whoever on earth would ha' thought it!"

  There was so much to talk about. It seemed as if Colin could never hear enough of Dickon and Captain and Soot and Nut and Shell and the pony whose name was Jump. Mary had run round into the wood with Dickon to see Jump. He was a tiny little shaggy moor pony with thick locks hanging over his eyes and with a pretty face and a nuzzling velvet nose. He was rather thin with living on moor grass but he was as tough and wiry as if the muscle in his little legs had been made of steel springs. He had lifted his head and whinnied softly the moment he saw Dickon and he had trotted up to him and put his head across his shoulder and then Dickon had talked into his ear and Jump had talked back in odd little whinnies and puffs and snorts. Dickon had made him give Mary his small front hoof and kiss her on her cheek with his velvet muzzle.

  "Does he really understand everything Dickon says?" Colin asked.

  "It seems as if he does," answered Mary. "Dickon says anything will understand if you're friends with it for sure, but you have to be friends for sure."

  Colin lay quiet a little while and his strange gray eyes seemed to be staring at the wall, but Mary saw he was thinking.

  "I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people."

  "Can't you bear me?" asked Mary.

  "Yes, I can," he answered. "It's funny but I even like you."

  "Ben Weatherstaff said I was like him," said Mary. "He said he'd warrant we'd both got the same nasty tempers. I think you are like him t
oo. We are all three alike--you and I and Ben Weatherstaff. He said we were neither of us much to look at and we were as sour as we looked. But I don't feel as sour as I used to before I knew the robin and Dickon."

  "Did you feel as if you hated people?"

  "Yes," answered Mary without any affectation. "I should have detested you if I had seen you before I saw the robin and Dickon."

  Colin put out his thin hand and touched her.

  "Mary," he said, "I wish I hadn't said what I did about sending Dickon away. I hated you when you said he was like an angel and I laughed at you but--but perhaps he is."

  "Well, it was rather funny to say it," she admitted frankly, "because his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but--but if an angel did come to Yorkshire and live on the moor--if there was a Yorkshire angel--I believe he'd understand the green things and know how to make them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild creatures as Dickon does and they'd know he was friends for sure."

  "I shouldn't mind Dickon looking at me," said Colin; "I want to see him."

  "I'm glad you said that," answered Mary, "because--because--"

  Quite suddenly it came into her mind that this was the minute to tell him. Colin knew something new was coming.

  "Because what?" he cried eagerly.

  Mary was so anxious that she got up from her stool and came to him and caught hold of both his hands.

  "Can I trust you? I trusted Dickon because birds trusted him. Can I trust you--for sure--for sure?" she implored.

  Her face was so solemn that he almost whispered his answer.

  "Yes--yes!"

  "Well, Dickon will come to see you tomorrow morning, and he'll bring his creatures with him,"

  "Oh! Oh!" Colin cried out in delight.

  "But that's not all," Mary went on, almost pale with solemn excitement. "The rest is better. There is a door into the garden. I found it. It is under the ivy on the wall."

  If he had been a strong healthy boy Colin would probably have shouted "Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" but he was weak and rather hysterical; his eyes grew bigger and bigger and he gasped for breath.

  "Oh! Mary!" he cried out with a half sob. "Shall I see it? Shall I get into it? Shall I live to get into it?" and he clutched her hands and dragged her toward him.

  "Of course you'll see it!" snapped Mary indignantly. "Of course you'll live to get into it! Don't be silly!"

  And she was so un-hysterical and natural and childish that she brought him to his senses and he began to laugh at himself and a few minutes afterward she was sitting on her stool again telling him not what she imagined the secret garden to be like but what it really was, and Colin's aches and tiredness were forgotten and he was listening enraptured.

  "It is just what you thought it would be," he said at last. "It sounds just as if you had really seen it. You know I said that when you told me first."

  Mary hesitated about two minutes and then boldly spoke the truth.

  "I had seen it--and I had been in," she said. "I found the key and got in weeks ago. But I daren't tell you--I daren't because I was so afraid I couldn't trust you--for sure!"

  Chapter Nineteen

  "It Has Come!"

  Of course Dr. Craven had been sent for the morning after Colin had had his tantrum. He was always sent for at once when such a thing occurred and he always found, when he arrived, a white shaken boy lying on his bed, sulky and still so hysterical that he was ready to break into fresh sobbing at the least word. In fact, Dr. Craven dreaded and detested the difficulties of these visits. On this occasion he was away from Misselthwaite Manor until afternoon.

  "How is he?" he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he arrived. "He will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits someday. The boy is half insane with hysteria and self-indulgence."

  "Well, sir," answered Mrs. Medlock, "you'll scarcely believe your eyes when you see him. That plain sour-faced child that's almost as bad as himself has just bewitched him. How she's done it there's no telling. The Lord knows she's nothing to look at and you scarcely ever hear her speak, but she did what none of us dare do. She just flew at him like a little cat last night, and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop screaming, and somehow she startled him so that he actually did stop, and this afternoon--well just come up and see, sir. It's past crediting."

  The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient's room was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the door he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a picture in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who at that moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face was so glowing with enjoyment.

  "Those long spires of blue ones--we'll have a lot of those," Colin was announcing. "They're called Del-phin-iums."

  "Dickon says they're larkspurs made big and grand," cried Mistress Mary. "There are clumps there already."

  Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still and Colin looked fretful.

  "I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy," Dr. Craven said a trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man.

  "I'm better now--much better," Colin answered, rather like a Rajah. "I'm going out in my chair in a day or two if it is fine. I want some fresh air."

  Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked at him curiously.

  "It must be a very fine day," he said, "and you must be very careful not to tire yourself."

  "Fresh air won't tire me," said the young Rajah.

  As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman had shrieked aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh air would give him cold and kill him, it is not to be wondered at that his doctor felt somewhat startled.

  "I thought you did not like fresh air," he said.

  "I don't when I am by myself," replied the Rajah; "but my cousin is going out with me."

  "And the nurse, of course?" suggested Dr. Craven.

  "No, I will not have the nurse," so magnificently that Mary could not help remembering how the young native Prince had looked with his diamonds and emeralds and pearls stuck all over him and the great rubies on the small dark hand he had waved to command his servants to approach with salaams and receive his orders.

  "My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am always better when she is with me. She made me better last night. A very strong boy I know will push my carriage."

  Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome hysterical boy should chance to get well he himself would lose all chance of inheriting Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual danger.

  "He must be a strong boy and a steady boy," he said. "And I must know something about him. Who is he? What is his name?"

  "It's Dickon," Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt somehow that everybody who knew the moor must know Dickon. And she was right, too. She saw that in a moment Dr. Craven's serious face relaxed into a relieved smile.

  "Oh, Dickon," he said. "If it is Dickon you will be safe enough. He's as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon."

  "And he's trusty," said Mary. "He's th' trustiest lad i' Yorkshire." She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she forgot herself.

  "Did Dickon teach you that?" asked Dr. Craven, laughing outright.

  "I'm learning it as if it was French," said Mary rather coldly. "It's like a native dialect in India. Very clever people try to learn them. I like it and so does Colin."

  "Well, well," he said. "If it amuses you perhaps it won't do you any harm. Did you take your bromide last night, Colin?"

  "No," Colin answered. "I wouldn't take it at first and after Mary made me quiet she talked me to sleep--in a low voice--about the spring creeping into a garden."

  "That sounds soothing," said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than ever and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting o
n her stool and looking down silently at the carpet. "You are evidently better, but you must remember--"

  "I don't want to remember," interrupted the Rajah, appearing again. "When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here." And he waved a thin hand which ought really to have been covered with royal signet rings made of rubies. "It is because my cousin makes me forget that she makes me better."

  Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a "tantrum"; usually he was obliged to remain a very long time and do a great many things. This afternoon he did not give any medicine or leave any new orders and he was spared any disagreeable scenes. When he went downstairs he looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs. Medlock in the library she felt that he was a much puzzled man.

  "Well, sir," she ventured, "could you have believed it?"

  "It is certainly a new state of affairs," said the doctor. "And there's no denying it is better than the old one."

  "I believe Susan Sowerby's right--I do that," said Mrs. Medlock. "I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had a bit of talk with her. And she says to me, 'Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn't be a good child, an' she mayn't be a pretty one, but she's a child, an' children needs children.' We went to school together, Susan Sowerby and me."

  "She's the best sick nurse I know," said Dr. Craven. "When I find her in a cottage I know the chances are that I shall save my patient."

  Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby.

  "She's got a way with her, has Susan," she went on quite volubly. "I've been thinking all morning of one thing she said yesterday. She says, 'Once when I was givin' th' children a bit of a preach after they'd been fightin' I ses to 'em all, "When I was at school my jography told as th' world was shaped like a orange an' I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's not enow quarters to go round. But don't you--none o' you--think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it out without hard knocks." 'What children learns from children,' she says, 'is that there's no sense in grabbin' at th' whole orange--peel an' all. If you do you'll likely not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to eat.'"