The Secret Garden
out of the room. The corridor looked very long and dark, but she was
too excited to mind that. She thought she remembered the corners she
must turn to find the short corridor with the door covered with
tapestry—the one Mrs. Medlock had come through the day she lost
herself. The sound had come up that passage. So she went on with her
dim light, almost feeling her way, her heart beating so loud that she
fancied she could hear it. The far-off faint crying went on and led
her. Sometimes it stopped for a moment or so and then began again. Was
this the right corner to turn? She stopped and thought. Yes it was.
Down this passage and then to the left, and then up two broad steps,
and then to the right again. Yes, there was the tapestry door.
She pushed it open very gently and closed it behind her, and she stood
in the corridor and could hear the crying quite plainly, though it was
not loud. It was on the other side of the wall at her left and a few
yards farther on there was a door. She could see a glimmer of light
coming from beneath it. The Someone was crying in that room, and it was
quite a young Someone.
So she walked to the door and pushed it open, and there she was
standing in the room!
It was a big room with ancient, handsome furniture in it. There was a
low fire glowing faintly on the hearth and a night light burning by the
side of a carved four-posted bed hung with brocade, and on the bed was
lying a boy, crying fretfully.
Mary wondered if she was in a real place or if she had fallen asleep
again and was dreaming without knowing it.
The boy had a sharp, delicate face the color of ivory and he seemed to
have eyes too big for it. He had also a lot of hair which tumbled over
his forehead in heavy locks and made his thin face seem smaller. He
looked like a boy who had been ill, but he was crying more as if he
were tired and cross than as if he were in pain.
Mary stood near the door with her candle in her hand, holding her
breath. Then she crept across the room, and, as she drew nearer, the
light attracted the boy’s attention and he turned his head on his
pillow and stared at her, his gray eyes opening so wide that they
seemed immense.
“Who are you?” he said at last in a half-frightened whisper. “Are you a
ghost?”
“No, I am not,” Mary answered, her own whisper sounding half
frightened. “Are you one?”
He stared and stared and stared. Mary could not help noticing what
strange eyes he had. They were agate gray and they looked too big for
his face because they had black lashes all round them.
“No,” he replied after waiting a moment or so. “I am Colin.”
“Who is Colin?” she faltered.
“I am Colin Craven. Who are you?”
“I am Mary Lennox. Mr. Craven is my uncle.”
“He is my father,” said the boy.
“Your father!” gasped Mary. “No one ever told me he had a boy! Why
didn’t they?”
“Come here,” he said, still keeping his strange eyes fixed on her with
an anxious expression.
She came close to the bed and he put out his hand and touched her.
“You are real, aren’t you?” he said. “I have such real dreams very
often. You might be one of them.”
Mary had slipped on a woolen wrapper before she left her room and she
put a piece of it between his fingers.
“Rub that and see how thick and warm it is,” she said. “I will pinch
you a little if you like, to show you how real I am. For a minute I
thought you might be a dream too.”
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
“From my own room. The wind wuthered so I couldn’t go to sleep and I
heard someone crying and wanted to find out who it was. What were you
crying for?”
“Because I couldn’t go to sleep either and my head ached. Tell me your
name again.”
“Mary Lennox. Did no one ever tell you I had come to live here?”
He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to look a
little more as if he believed in her reality.
“No,” he answered. “They daren’t.”
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Because I should have been afraid you would see me. I won’t let people
see me and talk me over.”
“Why?” Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.
“Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father
won’t let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to
speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live. My
father hates to think I may be like him.”
“Oh, what a queer house this is!” Mary said. “What a queer house!
Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are
locked up—and you! Have you been locked up?”
“No. I stay in this room because I don’t want to be moved out of it. It
tires me too much.”
“Does your father come and see you?” Mary ventured.
“Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn’t want to see me.”
“Why?” Mary could not help asking again.
A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy’s face.
“My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at
me. He thinks I don’t know, but I’ve heard people talking. He almost
hates me.”
“He hates the garden, because she died,” said Mary half speaking to
herself.
“What garden?” the boy asked.
“Oh! just—just a garden she used to like,” Mary stammered. “Have you
been here always?”
“Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside,
but I won’t stay because people stare at me. I used to wear an iron
thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to
see me and said it was stupid. He told them to take it off and keep me
out in the fresh air. I hate fresh air and I don’t want to go out.”
“I didn’t when first I came here,” said Mary. “Why do you keep looking
at me like that?”
“Because of the dreams that are so real,” he answered rather fretfully.
“Sometimes when I open my eyes I don’t believe I’m awake.”
“We’re both awake,” said Mary. She glanced round the room with its high
ceiling and shadowy corners and dim fire-light. “It looks quite like a
dream, and it’s the middle of the night, and everybody in the house is
asleep—everybody but us. We are wide awake.”
“I don’t want it to be a dream,” the boy said restlessly.
Mary thought of something all at once.
“If you don’t like people to see you,” she began, “do you want me to go
away?”
He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull.
“No,” he said. “I should be sure you were a dream if you went. If you
are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to hear about
you.”
Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down on the
cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She wanted to stay
in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the mysterious boy.
“What do you want me to tell you?” she said.
He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he wanted to
know which corridor her room was on; he wanted to know what she had
been doing; if she disliked the moor as he disliked it; where she had
lived before she came to Yorkshire. She answered all these questions
and many more and he lay back on his pillow and listened. He made her
tell him a great deal about India and about her voyage across the
ocean. She found out that because he had been an invalid he had not
learned things as other children had. One of his nurses had taught him
to read when he was quite little and he was always reading and looking
at pictures in splendid books.
Though his father rarely saw him when he was awake, he was given all
sorts of wonderful things to amuse himself with. He never seemed to
have been amused, however. He could have anything he asked for and was
never made to do anything he did not like to do.
“Everyone is obliged to do what pleases me,” he said indifferently. “It
makes me ill to be angry. No one believes I shall live to grow up.”
He said it as if he was so accustomed to the idea that it had ceased to
matter to him at all. He seemed to like the sound of Mary’s voice. As
she went on talking he listened in a drowsy, interested way. Once or
twice she wondered if he were not gradually falling into a doze. But at
last he asked a question which opened up a new subject.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“I am ten,” answered Mary, forgetting herself for the moment, “and so
are you.”
“How do you know that?” he demanded in a surprised voice.
“Because when you were born the garden door was locked and the key was
buried. And it has been locked for ten years.”
Colin half sat up, turning toward her, leaning on his elbows.
“What garden door was locked? Who did it? Where was the key buried?” he
exclaimed as if he were suddenly very much interested.
“It—it was the garden Mr. Craven hates,” said Mary nervously. “He
locked the door. No one—no one knew where he buried the key.”
“What sort of a garden is it?” Colin persisted eagerly.
“No one has been allowed to go into it for ten years,” was Mary’s
careful answer.
But it was too late to be careful. He was too much like herself. He too
had had nothing to think about and the idea of a hidden garden
attracted him as it had attracted her. He asked question after
question. Where was it? Had she never looked for the door? Had she
never asked the gardeners?
“They won’t talk about it,” said Mary. “I think they have been told not
to answer questions.”
“I would make them,” said Colin.
“Could you?” Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened. If he could
make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!
“Everyone is obliged to please me. I told you that,” he said. “If I
were to live, this place would sometime belong to me. They all know
that. I would make them tell me.”
Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she could see
quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He thought that the
whole world belonged to him. How peculiar he was and how coolly he
spoke of not living.
“Do you think you won’t live?” she asked, partly because she was
curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.
“I don’t suppose I shall,” he answered as indifferently as he had
spoken before. “Ever since I remember anything I have heard people say
I shan’t. At first they thought I was too little to understand and now
they think I don’t hear. But I do. My doctor is my father’s cousin. He
is quite poor and if I die he will have all Misselthwaite when my
father is dead. I should think he wouldn’t want me to live.”
“Do you want to live?” inquired Mary.
“No,” he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. “But I don’t want to die.
When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry and cry.”
“I have heard you crying three times,” Mary said, “but I did not know
who it was. Were you crying about that?” She did so want him to forget
the garden.
“I dare say,” he answered. “Let us talk about something else. Talk
about that garden. Don’t you want to see it?”
“Yes,” answered Mary, in quite a low voice.
“I do,” he went on persistently. “I don’t think I ever really wanted to
see anything before, but I want to see that garden. I want the key dug
up. I want the door unlocked. I would let them take me there in my
chair. That would be getting fresh air. I am going to make them open
the door.”
He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine like
stars and looked more immense than ever.
“They have to please me,” he said. “I will make them take me there and
I will let you go, too.”
Mary’s hands clutched each other. Everything would be
spoiled—everything! Dickon would never come back. She would never again
feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest.
“Oh, don’t—don’t—don’t—don’t do that!” she cried out.
He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy!
“Why?” he exclaimed. “You said you wanted to see it.”
“I do,” she answered almost with a sob in her throat, “but if you make