The Secret Garden
“Things are crowding up out of the earth,” she ran on in a hurry. “And
there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil
has covered nearly all the gray and the birds are in such a hurry about
their nests for fear they may be too late that some of them are even
fighting for places in the secret garden. And the rose-bushes look as
wick as wick can be, and there are primroses in the lanes and woods,
and the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the
crow and the squirrels and a new-born lamb.”
And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb Dickon had found
three days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse bushes on
the moor. It was not the first motherless lamb he had found and he knew
what to do with it. He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his
jacket and he had let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm
milk. It was a soft thing with a darling silly baby face and legs
rather long for its body. Dickon had carried it over the moor in his
arms and its feeding bottle was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when
Mary had sat under a tree with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she
had felt as if she were too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb—a
lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby!
She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and
drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a
little at the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the
room many a warm day because her patient was sure that open windows
gave people cold.
“Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?” she inquired.
“No,” was the answer. “I am breathing long breaths of fresh air. It
makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast. My
cousin will have breakfast with me.”
The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two
breakfasts. She found the servants’ hall a more amusing place than the
invalid’s chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from
upstairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young
recluse who, as the cook said, “had found his master, and good for
him.” The servants’ hall had been very tired of the tantrums, and the
butler, who was a man with a family, had more than once expressed his
opinion that the invalid would be all the better “for a good hiding.”
When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for two was put upon the
table he made an announcement to the nurse in his most Rajah-like
manner.
“A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels, and a new-born lamb,
are coming to see me this morning. I want them brought upstairs as soon
as they come,” he said. “You are not to begin playing with the animals
in the servants’ hall and keep them there. I want them here.”
The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a cough.
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
“I’ll tell you what you can do,” added Colin, waving his hand. “You can
tell Martha to bring them here. The boy is Martha’s brother. His name
is Dickon and he is an animal charmer.”
“I hope the animals won’t bite, Master Colin,” said the nurse.
“I told you he was a charmer,” said Colin austerely. “Charmers’ animals
never bite.”
“There are snake-charmers in India,” said Mary. “And they can put their
snakes’ heads in their mouths.”
“Goodness!” shuddered the nurse.
They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon them.
Colin’s breakfast was a very good one and Mary watched him with serious
interest.
“You will begin to get fatter just as I did,” she said. “I never wanted
my breakfast when I was in India and now I always want it.”
“I wanted mine this morning,” said Colin. “Perhaps it was the fresh
air. When do you think Dickon will come?”
He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary held up her hand.
“Listen!” she said. “Did you hear a caw?”
Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world to hear
inside a house, a hoarse “caw-caw.”
“Yes,” he answered.
“That’s Soot,” said Mary. “Listen again. Do you hear a bleat—a tiny
one?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Colin, quite flushing.
“That’s the new-born lamb,” said Mary. “He’s coming.”
Dickon’s moorland boots were thick and clumsy and though he tried to
walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he walked through the long
corridors. Mary and Colin heard him marching—marching, until he passed
through the tapestry door on to the soft carpet of Colin’s own passage.
“If you please, sir,” announced Martha, opening the door, “if you
please, sir, here’s Dickon an’ his creatures.”
Dickon came in smiling his nicest wide smile. The new-born lamb was in
his arms and the little red fox trotted by his side. Nut sat on his
left shoulder and Soot on his right and Shell’s head and paws peeped
out of his coat pocket.
Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared—as he had stared when he
first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder and delight. The truth
was that in spite of all he had heard he had not in the least
understood what this boy would be like and that his fox and his crow
and his squirrels and his lamb were so near to him and his friendliness
that they seemed almost to be part of himself. Colin had never talked
to a boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed by his own pleasure and
curiosity that he did not even think of speaking.
But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward. He had not felt
embarrassed because the crow had not known his language and had only
stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met. Creatures
were always like that until they found out about you. He walked over to
Colin’s sofa and put the new-born lamb quietly on his lap, and
immediately the little creature turned to the warm velvet dressing-gown
and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds and butt its tight-curled
head with soft impatience against his side. Of course no boy could have
helped speaking then.
“What is it doing?” cried Colin. “What does it want?”
“It wants its mother,” said Dickon, smiling more and more. “I brought
it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha’d like to see it feed.”
He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his pocket.
“Come on, little ’un,” he said, turning the small woolly white head
with a gentle brown hand. “This is what tha’s after. Tha’ll get more
out o’ this than tha’ will out o’ silk velvet coats. There now,” and he
pushed the rubber tip of the bottle into the nuzzling mouth and the
lamb began to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.
After that there was no wondering what to say. By the time the lamb
fell asleep questions poured forth and Dickon answered them all. He
told them how he had found the lamb just as the sun was rising three
mornings ago. He had been standing on the moor listening to a skylark
and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky until he was only
a speck in the heights of blue.
“I’d almost lost him but for his song an’ I was wonderin’ how a chap
could hear it when it seemed as if he’d get out o’ th’ world in a
minute—an’ just then I heard somethin’ else far off among th’ gorse
bushes. It was a weak bleatin’ an’ I knowed it was a new lamb as was
hungry an’ I knowed it wouldn’t be hungry if it hadn’t lost its mother
somehow, so I set off searchin’. Eh! I did have a look for it. I went
in an’ out among th’ gorse bushes an’ round an’ round an’ I always
seemed to take th’ wrong turnin’. But at last I seed a bit o’ white by
a rock on top o’ th’ moor an’ I climbed up an’ found th’ little ’un
half dead wi’ cold an’ clemmin’.”
While he talked, Soot flew solemnly in and out of the open window and
cawed remarks about the scenery while Nut and Shell made excursions
into the big trees outside and ran up and down trunks and explored
branches. Captain curled up near Dickon, who sat on the hearth-rug from
preference.
They looked at the pictures in the gardening books and Dickon knew all
the flowers by their country names and knew exactly which ones were
already growing in the secret garden.
“I couldna’ say that there name,” he said, pointing to one under which
was written “Aquilegia,” “but us calls that a columbine, an’ that there
one it’s a snapdragon and they both grow wild in hedges, but these is
garden ones an’ they’re bigger an’ grander. There’s some big clumps o’
columbine in th’ garden. They’ll look like a bed o’ blue an’ white
butterflies flutterin’ when they’re out.”
“I’m going to see them,” cried Colin. “I am going to see them!”
“Aye, that tha’ mun,” said Mary quite seriously. “An’ tha’ munnot lose
no time about it.”
CHAPTER XX.
“I SHALL LIVE FOREVER—AND EVER—AND EVER!”
But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came
some very windy days and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which
two things happening one after the other would no doubt have thrown him
into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning
to do and almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes,
to talk about what was happening on the moor and in the lanes and
hedges and on the borders of streams. The things he had to tell about
otters’ and badgers’ and water-rats’ houses, not to mention birds’
nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost
tremble with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an
animal charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety
the whole busy underworld was working.
“They’re same as us,” said Dickon, “only they have to build their homes
every year. An’ it keeps ’em so busy they fair scuffle to get ’em
done.”
The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made
before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the
garden. No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after
they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk
outside the ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and
more fixed in his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was
one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever
suspect that they had a secret. People must think that he was simply
going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object
to their looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks about
their route. They would go up this path and down that one and cross the
other and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they were
looking at the “bedding-out plants” the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had
been having arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do that
no one would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the
shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the long walls.
It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of
march made by great generals in time of war.
Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the
invalid’s apartments had of course filtered through the servants’ hall
into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding
this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from
Master Colin’s room to the effect that he must report himself in the
apartment no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to
speak to him.
“Well, well,” he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat,
“what’s to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn’t to be looked at
calling up a man he’s never set eyes on.”
Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a glimpse
of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his uncanny
looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard oftenest
was that he might die at any moment and there had been numerous
fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by