The Secret Garden
“He didn’t know he was doing it but he did. And I can’t tell you from
here while you’re shaking your fist at me.”
He stopped shaking his fist very suddenly at that very moment and his
jaw actually dropped as he stared over her head at something he saw
coming over the grass toward him.
At the first sound of his torrent of words Colin had been so surprised
that he had only sat up and listened as if he were spellbound. But in
the midst of it he had recovered himself and beckoned imperiously to
Dickon.
“Wheel me over there!” he commanded. “Wheel me quite close and stop
right in front of him!”
And this, if you please, this is what Ben Weatherstaff beheld and which
made his jaw drop. A wheeled chair with luxurious cushions and robes
which came toward him looking rather like some sort of State Coach
because a young Rajah leaned back in it with royal command in his great
black-rimmed eyes and a thin white hand extended haughtily toward him.
And it stopped right under Ben Weatherstaff’s nose. It was really no
wonder his mouth dropped open.
“Do you know who I am?” demanded the Rajah.
How Ben Weatherstaff stared! His red old eyes fixed themselves on what
was before him as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and
gulped a lump down his throat and did not say a word.
“Do you know who I am?” demanded Colin still more imperiously.
“Answer!”
Ben Weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes
and over his forehead and then he did answer in a queer shaky voice.
“Who tha’ art?” he said. “Aye, that I do—wi’ tha’ mother’s eyes starin’
at me out o’ tha’ face. Lord knows how tha’ come here. But tha’rt th’
poor cripple.”
Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed scarlet and
he sat bolt upright.
“I’m not a cripple!” he cried out furiously. “I’m not!”
“He’s not!” cried Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her fierce
indignation. “He’s not got a lump as big as a pin! I looked and there
was none there—not one!”
Ben Weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as
if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and
his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless old man and
he could only remember the things he had heard.
“Tha’—tha’ hasn’t got a crooked back?” he said hoarsely.
“No!” shouted Colin.
“Tha’—tha’ hasn’t got crooked legs?” quavered Ben more hoarsely yet.
It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his
tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been
accused of crooked legs—even in whispers—and the perfectly simple
belief in their existence which was revealed by Ben Weatherstaff’s
voice was more than Rajah flesh and blood could endure. His anger and
insulted pride made him forget everything but this one moment and
filled him with a power he had never known before, an almost unnatural
strength.
“Come here!” he shouted to Dickon, and he actually began to tear the
coverings off his lower limbs and disentangle himself. “Come here! Come
here! This minute!”
Dickon was by his side in a second. Mary caught her breath in a short
gasp and felt herself turn pale.
“He can do it! He can do it! He can do it! He can!” she gabbled over to
herself under her breath as fast as ever she could.
There was a brief fierce scramble, the rugs were tossed on the ground,
Dickon held Colin’s arm, the thin legs were out, the thin feet were on
the grass. Colin was standing upright—upright—as straight as an arrow
and looking strangely tall—his head thrown back and his strange eyes
flashing lightning.
“Look at me!” he flung up at Ben Weatherstaff. “Just look at me—you!
Just look at me!”
“He’s as straight as I am!” cried Dickon. “He’s as straight as any lad
i’ Yorkshire!”
What Ben Weatherstaff did Mary thought queer beyond measure. He choked
and gulped and suddenly tears ran down his weather-wrinkled cheeks as
he struck his old hands together.
“Eh!” he burst forth, “th’ lies folk tells! Tha’rt as thin as a lath
an’ as white as a wraith, but there’s not a knob on thee. Tha’lt make a
mon yet. God bless thee!”
Dickon held Colin’s arm strongly but the boy had not begun to falter.
He stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben Weatherstaff in the
face.
“I’m your master,” he said, “when my father is away. And you are to
obey me. This is my garden. Don’t dare to say a word about it! You get
down from that ladder and go out to the Long Walk and Miss Mary will
meet you and bring you here. I want to talk to you. We did not want
you, but now you will have to be in the secret. Be quick!”
Ben Weatherstaff’s crabbed old face was still wet with that one queer
rush of tears. It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from thin
straight Colin standing on his feet with his head thrown back.
“Eh! lad,” he almost whispered. “Eh! my lad!” And then remembering
himself he suddenly touched his hat gardener fashion and said, “Yes,
sir! Yes, sir!” and obediently disappeared as he descended the ladder.
CHAPTER XXII.
WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
When his head was out of sight Colin turned to Mary.
“Go and meet him,” he said; and Mary flew across the grass to the door
under the ivy.
Dickon was watching him with sharp eyes. There were scarlet spots on
his cheeks and he looked amazing, but he showed no signs of falling.
“I can stand,” he said, and his head was still held up and he said it
quite grandly.
“I told thee tha’ could as soon as tha’ stopped bein’ afraid,” answered
Dickon. “An’ tha’s stopped.”
“Yes, I’ve stopped,” said Colin.
Then suddenly he remembered something Mary had said.
“Are you making Magic?” he asked sharply.
Dickon’s curly mouth spread in a cheerful grin.
“Tha’s doin’ Magic thysel’,” he said. “It’s same Magic as made these
’ere work out o’ th’ earth,” and he touched with his thick boot a clump
of crocuses in the grass.
Colin looked down at them.
“Aye,” he said slowly, “there couldna’ be bigger Magic than that
there—there couldna’ be.”
He drew himself up straighter than ever.
“I’m going to walk to that tree,” he said, pointing to one a few feet
away from him. “I’m going to be standing when Weatherstaff comes here.
I can rest against the tree if I like. When I want to sit down I will
sit down, but not before. Bring a rug from the chair.”
He walked to the tree and though Dickon held his arm he was wonderfully
steady. When he stood against the tree trunk it was not too plain that
he supported himself against it, and he still held himself so straight
that he looked tall.
When Ben Weatherstaff came through the door in the wall he saw him
standing there and he heard Mary muttering something under her breath.
“What art sayin’?” he asked rather testily because he did not want his
attention distracted from the long thin straight boy figure and proud
face.
But she did not tell him. What she was saying was this:
“You can do it! You can do it! I told you you could! You can do it! You
can do it! You _can!_”
She was saying it to Colin because she wanted to make Magic and keep
him on his feet looking like that. She could not bear that he should
give in before Ben Weatherstaff. He did not give in. She was uplifted
by a sudden feeling that he looked quite beautiful in spite of his
thinness. He fixed his eyes on Ben Weatherstaff in his funny imperious
way.
“Look at me!” he commanded. “Look at me all over! Am I a hunchback?
Have I got crooked legs?”
Ben Weatherstaff had not quite got over his emotion, but he had
recovered a little and answered almost in his usual way.
“Not tha’,” he said. “Nowt o’ th’ sort. What’s tha’ been doin’ with
thysel’—hidin’ out o’ sight an’ lettin’ folk think tha’ was cripple an’
half-witted?”
“Half-witted!” said Colin angrily. “Who thought that?”
“Lots o’ fools,” said Ben. “Th’ world’s full o’ jackasses brayin’ an’
they never bray nowt but lies. What did tha’ shut thysel’ up for?”
“Everyone thought I was going to die,” said Colin shortly. “I’m not!”
And he said it with such decision Ben Weatherstaff looked him over, up
and down, down and up.
“Tha’ die!” he said with dry exultation. “Nowt o’ th’ sort! Tha’s got
too much pluck in thee. When I seed thee put tha’ legs on th’ ground in
such a hurry I knowed tha’ was all right. Sit thee down on th’ rug a
bit young Mester an’ give me thy orders.”
There was a queer mixture of crabbed tenderness and shrewd
understanding in his manner. Mary had poured out speech as rapidly as
she could as they had come down the Long Walk. The chief thing to be
remembered, she had told him, was that Colin was getting well—getting
well. The garden was doing it. No one must let him remember about
having humps and dying.
The Rajah condescended to seat himself on a rug under the tree.
“What work do you do in the gardens, Weatherstaff?” he inquired.
“Anythin’ I’m told to do,” answered old Ben. “I’m kep’ on by
favor—because she liked me.”
“She?” said Colin.
“Tha’ mother,” answered Ben Weatherstaff.
“My mother?” said Colin, and he looked about him quietly. “This was her
garden, wasn’t it?”
“Aye, it was that!” and Ben Weatherstaff looked about him too. “She
were main fond of it.”
“It is my garden now. I am fond of it. I shall come here every day,”
announced Colin. “But it is to be a secret. My orders are that no one
is to know that we come here. Dickon and my cousin have worked and made
it come alive. I shall send for you sometimes to help—but you must come
when no one can see you.”
Ben Weatherstaff’s face twisted itself in a dry old smile.
“I’ve come here before when no one saw me,” he said.
“What!” exclaimed Colin. “When?”
“Th’ last time I was here,” rubbing his chin and looking round, “was
about two year’ ago.”
“But no one has been in it for ten years!” cried Colin.
“There was no door!”
“I’m no one,” said old Ben dryly. “An’ I didn’t come through th’ door.
I come over th’ wall. Th’ rheumatics held me back th’ last two year’.”
“Tha’ come an’ did a bit o’ prunin’!” cried Dickon. “I couldn’t make
out how it had been done.”
“She was so fond of it—she was!” said Ben Weatherstaff slowly. “An’ she
was such a pretty young thing. She says to me once, ‘Ben,’ says she
laughin’, ‘if ever I’m ill or if I go away you must take care of my
roses.’ When she did go away th’ orders was no one was ever to come
nigh. But I come,” with grumpy obstinacy. “Over th’ wall I come—until
th’ rheumatics stopped me—an’ I did a bit o’ work once a year. She’d
gave her order first.”
“It wouldn’t have been as wick as it is if tha’ hadn’t done it,” said
Dickon. “I did wonder.”
“I’m glad you did it, Weatherstaff,” said Colin. “You’ll know how to
keep the secret.”
“Aye, I’ll know, sir,” answered Ben. “An’ it’ll be easier for a man wi’
rheumatics to come in at th’ door.”
On the grass near the tree Mary had dropped her trowel. Colin stretched
out his hand and took it up. An odd expression came into his face and
he began to scratch at the earth. His thin hand was weak enough but
presently as they watched him—Mary with quite breathless interest—he
drove the end of the trowel into the soil and turned some over.
“You can do it! You can do it!” said Mary to herself. “I tell you, you
can!”
Dickon’s round eyes were full of eager curiousness but he said not a
word. Ben Weatherstaff looked on with interested face.
Colin persevered. After he had turned a few trowelfuls of soil he spoke
exultantly to Dickon in his best Yorkshire.
“Tha’ said as tha’d have me walkin’ about here same as other folk—an’
tha’ said tha’d have me diggin’. I thowt tha’ was just leein’ to please
me. This is only th’ first day an’ I’ve walked—an’ here I am diggin’.”
Ben Weatherstaff’s mouth fell open again when he heard him, but he
ended by chuckling.