The Secret Garden
The skipping-rope was a wonderful thing. She counted and skipped, and
skipped and counted, until her cheeks were quite red, and she was more
interested than she had ever been since she was born. The sun was
shining and a little wind was blowing—not a rough wind, but one which
came in delightful little gusts and brought a fresh scent of newly
turned earth with it. She skipped round the fountain garden, and up one
walk and down another. She skipped at last into the kitchen-garden and
saw Ben Weatherstaff digging and talking to his robin, which was
hopping about him. She skipped down the walk toward him and he lifted
his head and looked at her with a curious expression. She had wondered
if he would notice her. She wanted him to see her skip.
“Well!” he exclaimed. “Upon my word. P’raps tha’ art a young ’un, after
all, an’ p’raps tha’s got child’s blood in thy veins instead of sour
buttermilk. Tha’s skipped red into thy cheeks as sure as my name’s Ben
Weatherstaff. I wouldn’t have believed tha’ could do it.”
“I never skipped before,” Mary said. “I’m just beginning. I can only go
up to twenty.”
“Tha’ keep on,” said Ben. “Tha’ shapes well enough at it for a young
’un that’s lived with heathen. Just see how he’s watchin’ thee,”
jerking his head toward the robin. “He followed after thee yesterday.
He’ll be at it again today. He’ll be bound to find out what th’
skippin’-rope is. He’s never seen one. Eh!” shaking his head at the
bird, “tha’ curiosity will be th’ death of thee sometime if tha’
doesn’t look sharp.”
Mary skipped round all the gardens and round the orchard, resting every
few minutes. At length she went to her own special walk and made up her
mind to try if she could skip the whole length of it. It was a good
long skip and she began slowly, but before she had gone half-way down
the path she was so hot and breathless that she was obliged to stop.
She did not mind much, because she had already counted up to thirty.
She stopped with a little laugh of pleasure, and there, lo and behold,
was the robin swaying on a long branch of ivy. He had followed her and
he greeted her with a chirp. As Mary had skipped toward him she felt
something heavy in her pocket strike against her at each jump, and when
she saw the robin she laughed again.
“You showed me where the key was yesterday,” she said. “You ought to
show me the door today; but I don’t believe you know!”
The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall
and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show
off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when
he shows off—and they are nearly always doing it.
Mary Lennox had heard a great deal about Magic in her Ayah’s stories,
and she always said that what happened almost at that moment was Magic.
One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down the walk, and it was a
stronger one than the rest. It was strong enough to wave the branches
of the trees, and it was more than strong enough to sway the trailing
sprays of untrimmed ivy hanging from the wall. Mary had stepped close
to the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy
trails, and more suddenly still she jumped toward it and caught it in
her hand. This she did because she had seen something under it—a round
knob which had been covered by the leaves hanging over it. It was the
knob of a door.
She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them
aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly all was a loose and swinging
curtain, though some had crept over wood and iron. Mary’s heart began
to thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement.
The robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting his head on one
side, as if he were as excited as she was. What was this under her
hands which was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a
hole in?
It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put
her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the
keyhole. She put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do it,
but it did turn.
And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk
to see if anyone was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come,
it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help
it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the
door which opened slowly—slowly.
Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her
back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with
excitement, and wonder, and delight.
She was standing _inside_ the secret garden.
CHAPTER IX.
THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE EVER LIVED IN
It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place anyone could
imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless
stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted
together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great
many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry
brown and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rosebushes
if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so
spread their branches that they were like little trees. There were
other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place
look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over
them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains,
and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching
branch and had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges
of themselves. There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary
did not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin gray or
brown branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading
over everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had
fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy
tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious. Mary had
thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left
all by themselves so long; and indeed it was different from any other
place she had ever seen in her life.
“How still it is!” she whispered. “How still!”
Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who
had flown to his treetop, was still as all the rest. He did not even
flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary.
“No wonder it is still,” she whispered again. “I am the first person
who has spoken in here for ten years.”
She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she were afraid
of awakening someone. She was glad that there was grass under her feet
and that her steps made no sounds. She walked under one of the
fairy-like gray arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays
and tendrils which formed them.
“I wonder if they are all quite dead,” she said. “Is it all a quite
dead garden? I wish it wasn’t.”
If she had been Ben Weatherstaff she could have told whether the wood
was alive by looking at it, but she could only see that there were only
gray or brown sprays and branches and none showed any signs of even a
tiny leaf-bud anywhere.
But she was _inside_ the wonderful garden and she could come through
the door under the ivy any time and she felt as if she had found a
world all her own.
The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky
over this particular piece of Misselthwaite seemed even more brilliant
and soft than it was over the moor. The robin flew down from his
tree-top and hopped about or flew after her from one bush to another.
He chirped a good deal and had a very busy air, as if he were showing
her things. Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be
hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow she did not feel lonely
at all. All that troubled her was her wish that she knew whether all
the roses were dead, or if perhaps some of them had lived and might put
out leaves and buds as the weather got warmer. She did not want it to
be a quite dead garden. If it were a quite alive garden, how wonderful
it would be, and what thousands of roses would grow on every side!
Her skipping-rope had hung over her arm when she came in and after she
had walked about for a while she thought she would skip round the whole
garden, stopping when she wanted to look at things. There seemed to
have been grass paths here and there, and in one or two corners there
were alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall moss-covered flower
urns in them.
As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping.
There had once been a flowerbed in it, and she thought she saw
something sticking out of the black earth—some sharp little pale green
points. She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt
down to look at them.
“Yes, they are tiny growing things and they _might_ be crocuses or
snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered.
She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp
earth. She liked it very much.
“Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,” she
said. “I will go all over the garden and look.”
She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the
ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and
after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so
many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited
again.
“It isn’t a quite dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even
if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.”
She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so
thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their
way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to
grow. She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood
and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she
made nice little clear places around them.
“Now they look as if they could breathe,” she said, after she had
finished with the first ones. “I am going to do ever so many more. I’ll
do all I can see. If I haven’t time today I can come tomorrow.”
She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself
so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass
under the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her
coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down
on to the grass and the pale green points all the time.
The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see
gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben
Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to
eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature
who was not half Ben’s size and yet had had the sense to come into his
garden and begin at once.
Mistress Mary worked in her garden until it was time to go to her
midday dinner. In fact, she was rather late in remembering, and when
she put on her coat and hat, and picked up her skipping-rope, she could
not believe that she had been working two or three hours. She had been
actually happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale
green points were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as
cheerful as they had looked before when the grass and weeds had been
smothering them.
“I shall come back this afternoon,” she said, looking all round at her
new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes as if they
heard her.
Then she ran lightly across the grass, pushed open the slow old door
and slipped through it under the ivy. She had such red cheeks and such
bright eyes and ate such a dinner that Martha was delighted.