The Secret Garden
they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very
curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be
scientific. I keep saying to myself, ‘What is it? What is it?’ It’s
something. It can’t be nothing! I don’t know its name so I call it
Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from
what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushes it up
and draws it. Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up
through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being
happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making
me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things
out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees,
flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it
must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places. The Magic in
this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a
man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some
and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I
don’t know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it
and calling it perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way
to get it. When I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept
saying to herself as fast as she could, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’
and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her
Magic helped me—and so did Dickon’s. Every morning and evening and as
often in the daytime as I can remember I am going to say, ‘Magic is in
me! Magic is making me well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as
strong as Dickon!’ And you must all do it, too. That is my experiment
Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?”
“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff. “Aye, aye!”
“If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through
drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment
succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking
about them until they stay in your mind forever and I think it will be
the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you
it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.”
“I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were fakirs
who said words over and over thousands of times,” said Mary.
“I’ve heard Jem Fettleworth’s wife say th’ same thing over thousands o’
times—callin’ Jem a drunken brute,” said Ben Weatherstaff dryly.
“Summat allus come o’ that, sure enough. He gave her a good hidin’ an’
went to th’ Blue Lion an’ got as drunk as a lord.”
Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he
cheered up.
“Well,” he said, “you see something did come of it. She used the wrong
Magic until she made him beat her. If she’d used the right Magic and
had said something nice perhaps he wouldn’t have got as drunk as a lord
and perhaps—perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.”
Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little
old eyes.
“Tha’rt a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mester Colin,”
he said. “Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I’ll give her a bit of a
hint o’ what Magic will do for her. She’d be rare an’ pleased if th’
sinetifik ’speriment worked—an’ so ’ud Jem.”
Dickon had stood listening to the lecture, his round eyes shining with
curious delight. Nut and Shell were on his shoulders and he held a
long-eared white rabbit in his arm and stroked and stroked it softly
while it laid its ears along its back and enjoyed itself.
“Do you think the experiment will work?” Colin asked him, wondering
what he was thinking. He so often wondered what Dickon was thinking
when he saw him looking at him or at one of his “creatures” with his
happy wide smile.
He smiled now and his smile was wider than usual.
“Aye,” he answered, “that I do. It’ll work same as th’ seeds do when
th’ sun shines on ’em. It’ll work for sure. Shall us begin it now?”
Colin was delighted and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of fakirs
and devotees in illustrations Colin suggested that they should all sit
cross-legged under the tree which made a canopy.
“It will be like sitting in a sort of temple,” said Colin. “I’m rather
tired and I want to sit down.”
“Eh!” said Dickon, “tha’ mustn’t begin by sayin’ tha’rt tired. Tha’
might spoil th’ Magic.”
Colin turned and looked at him—into his innocent round eyes.
“That’s true,” he said slowly. “I must only think of the Magic.”
It all seemed most majestic and mysterious when they sat down in their
circle. Ben Weatherstaff felt as if he had somehow been led into
appearing at a prayer-meeting. Ordinarily he was very fixed in being
what he called “agen’ prayer-meetin’s” but this being the Rajah’s
affair he did not resent it and was indeed inclined to be gratified at
being called upon to assist. Mistress Mary felt solemnly enraptured.
Dickon held his rabbit in his arm, and perhaps he made some charmer’s
signal no one heard, for when he sat down, cross-legged like the rest,
the crow, the fox, the squirrels and the lamb slowly drew near and made
part of the circle, settling each into a place of rest as if of their
own desire.
“The ‘creatures’ have come,” said Colin gravely. “They want to help
us.”
Colin really looked quite beautiful, Mary thought. He held his head
high as if he felt like a sort of priest and his strange eyes had a
wonderful look in them. The light shone on him through the tree canopy.
“Now we will begin,” he said. “Shall we sway backward and forward,
Mary, as if we were dervishes?”
“I canna’ do no swayin’ back’ard and for’ard,” said Ben Weatherstaff.
“I’ve got th’ rheumatics.”
“The Magic will take them away,” said Colin in a High Priest tone, “but
we won’t sway until it has done it. We will only chant.”
“I canna’ do no chantin’” said Ben Weatherstaff a trifle testily. “They
turned me out o’ th’ church choir th’ only time I ever tried it.”
No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin’s face was not
even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the Magic.
“Then I will chant,” he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy
spirit. “The sun is shining—the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The
flowers are growing—the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being
alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me—the
Magic is in me. It is in me—it is in me. It’s in everyone of us. It’s
in Ben Weatherstaff’s back. Magic! Magic! Come and help!”
He said it a great many times—not a thousand times but quite a goodly
number. Mary listened entranced. She felt as if it were at once queer
and beautiful and she wanted him to go on and on. Ben Weatherstaff
began to feel soothed into a sort of dream which was quite agreeable.
The humming of the bees in the blossoms mingled with the chanting voice
and drowsily melted into a doze. Dickon sat cross-legged with his
rabbit asleep on his arm and a hand resting on the lamb’s back. Soot
had pushed away a squirrel and huddled close to him on his shoulder,
the gray film dropped over his eyes. At last Colin stopped.
“Now I am going to walk round the garden,” he announced.
Ben Weatherstaff’s head had just dropped forward and he lifted it with
a jerk.
“You have been asleep,” said Colin.
“Nowt o’ th’ sort,” mumbled Ben. “Th’ sermon was good enow—but I’m
bound to get out afore th’ collection.”
He was not quite awake yet.
“You’re not in church,” said Colin.
“Not me,” said Ben, straightening himself. “Who said I were? I heard
every bit of it. You said th’ Magic was in my back. Th’ doctor calls it
rheumatics.”
The Rajah waved his hand.
“That was the wrong Magic,” he said. “You will get better. You have my
permission to go to your work. But come back tomorrow.”
“I’d like to see thee walk round the garden,” grunted Ben.
It was not an unfriendly grunt, but it was a grunt. In fact, being a
stubborn old party and not having entire faith in Magic he had made up
his mind that if he were sent away he would climb his ladder and look
over the wall so that he might be ready to hobble back if there were
any stumbling.
The Rajah did not object to his staying and so the procession was
formed. It really did look like a procession. Colin was at its head
with Dickon on one side and Mary on the other. Ben Weatherstaff walked
behind, and the “creatures” trailed after them, the lamb and the fox
cub keeping close to Dickon, the white rabbit hopping along or stopping
to nibble and Soot following with the solemnity of a person who felt
himself in charge.
It was a procession which moved slowly but with dignity. Every few
yards it stopped to rest. Colin leaned on Dickon’s arm and privately
Ben Weatherstaff kept a sharp lookout, but now and then Colin took his
hand from its support and walked a few steps alone. His head was held
up all the time and he looked very grand.
“The Magic is in me!” he kept saying. “The Magic is making me strong! I
can feel it! I can feel it!”
It seemed very certain that something was upholding and uplifting him.
He sat on the seats in the alcoves, and once or twice he sat down on
the grass and several times he paused in the path and leaned on Dickon,
but he would not give up until he had gone all round the garden. When
he returned to the canopy tree his cheeks were flushed and he looked
triumphant.
“I did it! The Magic worked!” he cried. “That is my first scientific
discovery.”
“What will Dr. Craven say?” broke out Mary.
“He won’t say anything,” Colin answered, “because he will not be told.
This is to be the biggest secret of all. No one is to know anything
about it until I have grown so strong that I can walk and run like any
other boy. I shall come here every day in my chair and I shall be taken
back in it. I won’t have people whispering and asking questions and I
won’t let my father hear about it until the experiment has quite
succeeded. Then sometime when he comes back to Misselthwaite I shall
just walk into his study and say ‘Here I am; I am like any other boy. I
am quite well and I shall live to be a man. It has been done by a
scientific experiment.’”
“He will think he is in a dream,” cried Mary. “He won’t believe his
eyes.”
Colin flushed triumphantly. He had made himself believe that he was
going to get well, which was really more than half the battle, if he
had been aware of it. And the thought which stimulated him more than
any other was this imagining what his father would look like when he
saw that he had a son who was as straight and strong as other fathers’
sons. One of his darkest miseries in the unhealthy morbid past days had
been his hatred of being a sickly weak-backed boy whose father was
afraid to look at him.
“He’ll be obliged to believe them,” he said.
“One of the things I am going to do, after the Magic works and before I
begin to make scientific discoveries, is to be an athlete.”
“We shall have thee takin’ to boxin’ in a week or so,” said Ben
Weatherstaff. “Tha’lt end wi’ winnin’ th’ Belt an’ bein’ champion
prize-fighter of all England.”
Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly.
“Weatherstaff,” he said, “that is disrespectful. You must not take
liberties because you are in the secret. However much the Magic works I
shall not be a prize-fighter. I shall be a Scientific Discoverer.”
“Ax pardon—ax pardon, sir” answered Ben, touching his forehead in
salute. “I ought to have seed it wasn’t a jokin’ matter,” but his eyes
twinkled and secretly he was immensely pleased. He really did not mind
being snubbed since the snubbing meant that the lad was gaining
strength and spirit.
CHAPTER XXIV.
“LET THEM LAUGH”
The secret garden was not the only one Dickon worked in. Round the