The Secret Garden
began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.
Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what
he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed
again and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it
slept and, the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes.
He shrank from it.
One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon
was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver. The
stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not
go into the villa he lived in. He walked down to a little bowered
terrace at the water’s edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the
heavenly scents of the night. He felt the strange calmness stealing
over him and it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep.
He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream; his
dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming. He
remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought
he was. He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent of the late
roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet he heard a
voice calling. It was sweet and clear and happy and far away. It seemed
very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at his very
side.
“Archie! Archie! Archie!” it said, and then again, sweeter and clearer
than before, “Archie! Archie!”
He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled. It was such a real
voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.
“Lilias! Lilias!” he answered. “Lilias! where are you?”
“In the garden,” it came back like a sound from a golden flute. “In the
garden!”
And then the dream ended. But he did not awaken. He slept soundly and
sweetly all through the lovely night. When he did awake at last it was
brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring at him. He was an
Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the servants of the villa
were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign
master might do. No one ever knew when he would go out or come in or
where he would choose to sleep or if he would roam about the garden or
lie in the boat on the lake all night. The man held a salver with some
letters on it and he waited quietly until Mr. Craven took them. When he
had gone away Mr. Craven sat a few moments holding them in his hand and
looking at the lake. His strange calm was still upon him and something
more—a lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done had not
happened as he thought—as if something had changed. He was remembering
the dream—the real—real dream.
“In the garden!” he said, wondering at himself. “In the garden! But the
door is locked and the key is buried deep.”
When he glanced at the letters a few minutes later he saw that the one
lying at the top of the rest was an English letter and came from
Yorkshire. It was directed in a plain woman’s hand but it was not a
hand he knew. He opened it, scarcely thinking of the writer, but the
first words attracted his attention at once.
“_Dear Sir:_
I am Susan Sowerby that made bold to speak to you once on the moor. It
was about Miss Mary I spoke. I will make bold to speak again. Please,
sir, I would come home if I was you. I think you would be glad to come
and—if you will excuse me, sir—I think your lady would ask you to come
if she was here.
Your obedient servant,
Susan Sowerby.”
Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its envelope.
He kept thinking about the dream.
“I will go back to Misselthwaite,” he said. “Yes, I’ll go at once.”
And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered Pitcher to
prepare for his return to England.
In a few days he was in Yorkshire again, and on his long railroad
journey he found himself thinking of his boy as he had never thought in
all the ten years past. During those years he had only wished to forget
him. Now, though he did not intend to think about him, memories of him
constantly drifted into his mind. He remembered the black days when he
had raved like a madman because the child was alive and the mother was
dead. He had refused to see it, and when he had gone to look at it at
last it had been, such a weak wretched thing that everyone had been
sure it would die in a few days. But to the surprise of those who took
care of it the days passed and it lived and then everyone believed it
would be a deformed and crippled creature.
He had not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a father
at all. He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had
shrunk from the mere thought of the boy and had buried himself in his
own misery. The first time after a year’s absence he returned to
Misselthwaite and the small miserable looking thing languidly and
indifferently lifted to his face the great gray eyes with black lashes
round them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had
adored, he could not bear the sight of them and turned away pale as
death. After that he scarcely ever saw him except when he was asleep,
and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid, with a
vicious, hysterical, half-insane temper. He could only be kept from
furies dangerous to himself by being given his own way in every detail.
All this was not an uplifting thing to recall, but as the train whirled
him through mountain passes and golden plains the man who was “coming
alive” began to think in a new way and he thought long and steadily and
deeply.
“Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years,” he said to himself. “Ten
years is a long time. It may be too late to do anything—quite too late.
What have I been thinking of!”
Of course this was the wrong Magic—to begin by saying “too late.” Even
Colin could have told him that. But he knew nothing of Magic—either
black or white. This he had yet to learn. He wondered if Susan Sowerby
had taken courage and written to him only because the motherly creature
had realized that the boy was much worse—was fatally ill. If he had not
been under the spell of the curious calmness which had taken possession
of him he would have been more wretched than ever. But the calm had
brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to
thoughts of the worst he actually found he was trying to believe in
better things.
“Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him good
and control him?” he thought. “I will go and see her on my way to
Misselthwaite.”
But when on his way across the moor he stopped the carriage at the
cottage, seven or eight children who were playing about gathered in a
group and bobbing seven or eight friendly and polite curtsies told him
that their mother had gone to the other side of the moor early in the
morning to help a woman who had a new baby. “Our Dickon,” they
volunteered, was over at the Manor working in one of the gardens where
he went several days each week.
Mr. Craven looked over the collection of sturdy little bodies and round
red-cheeked faces, each one grinning in its own particular way, and he
awoke to the fact that they were a healthy likable lot. He smiled at
their friendly grins and took a golden sovereign from his pocket and
gave it to “our ’Lizabeth Ellen” who was the oldest.
“If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown for
each of, you,” he said.
Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove away,
leaving ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy behind.
The drive across the wonderfulness of the moor was a soothing thing.
Why did it seem to give him a sense of homecoming which he had been
sure he could never feel again—that sense of the beauty of land and sky
and purple bloom of distance and a warming of the heart at drawing,
nearer to the great old house which had held those of his blood for six
hundred years? How he had driven away from it the last time, shuddering
to think of its closed rooms and the boy lying in the four-posted bed
with the brocaded hangings. Was it possible that perhaps he might find
him changed a little for the better and that he might overcome his
shrinking from him? How real that dream had been—how wonderful and
clear the voice which called back to him, “In the garden—In the
garden!”
“I will try to find the key,” he said. “I will try to open the door. I
must—though I don’t know why.”
When he arrived at the Manor the servants who received him with the
usual ceremony noticed that he looked better and that he did not go to
the remote rooms where he usually lived attended by Pitcher. He went
into the library and sent for Mrs. Medlock. She came to him somewhat
excited and curious and flustered.
“How is Master Colin, Medlock?” he inquired.
“Well, sir,” Mrs. Medlock answered, “he’s—he’s different, in a manner
of speaking.”
“Worse?” he suggested.
Mrs. Medlock really was flushed.
“Well, you see, sir,” she tried to explain, “neither Dr. Craven, nor
the nurse, nor me can exactly make him out.”
“Why is that?”
“To tell the truth, sir, Master Colin might be better and he might be
changing for the worse. His appetite, sir, is past understanding—and
his ways—”
“Has he become more—more peculiar?” her master, asked, knitting his
brows anxiously.
“That’s it, sir. He’s growing very peculiar—when you compare him with
what he used to be. He used to eat nothing and then suddenly he began
to eat something enormous—and then he stopped again all at once and the
meals were sent back just as they used to be. You never knew, sir,
perhaps, that out of doors he never would let himself be taken. The
things we’ve gone through to get him to go out in his chair would leave
a body trembling like a leaf. He’d throw himself into such a state that
Dr. Craven said he couldn’t be responsible for forcing him. Well, sir,
just without warning—not long after one of his worst tantrums he
suddenly insisted on being taken out every day by Miss Mary and Susan
Sowerby’s boy Dickon that could push his chair. He took a fancy to both
Miss Mary and Dickon, and Dickon brought his tame animals, and, if
you’ll credit it, sir, out of doors he will stay from morning until
night.”
“How does he look?” was the next question.
“If he took his food natural, sir, you’d think he was putting on
flesh—but we’re afraid it may be a sort of bloat. He laughs sometimes
in a queer way when he’s alone with Miss Mary. He never used to laugh
at all. Dr. Craven is coming to see you at once, if you’ll allow him.
He never was as puzzled in his life.”
“Where is Master Colin now?” Mr. Craven asked.
“In the garden, sir. He’s always in the garden—though not a human
creature is allowed to go near for fear they’ll look at him.”
Mr. Craven scarcely heard her last words.
“In the garden,” he said, and after he had sent Mrs. Medlock away he
stood and repeated it again and again. “In the garden!”
He had to make an effort to bring himself back to the place he was
standing in and when he felt he was on earth again he turned and went
out of the room. He took his way, as Mary had done, through the door in
the shrubbery and among the laurels and the fountain beds. The fountain
was playing now and was encircled by beds of brilliant autumn flowers.
He crossed the lawn and turned into the Long Walk by the ivied walls.
He did not walk quickly, but slowly, and his eyes were on the path. He
felt as if he were being drawn back to the place he had so long
forsaken, and he did not know why. As he drew near to it his step
became still more slow. He knew where the door was even though the ivy
hung thick over it—but he did not know exactly where it lay—that buried
key.
So he stopped and stood still, looking about him, and almost the moment