The Secret Garden
and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the
hole peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.
Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to
a little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion
and made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were cuddled up asleep
near her. If there was no one else alive in the hundred rooms there
were seven mice who did not look lonely at all.
“If they wouldn’t be so frightened I would take them back with me,”
said Mary.
She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any
farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her way by
turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up and down
until she found the right one; but at last she reached her own floor
again, though she was some distance from her own room and did not know
exactly where she was.
“I believe I have taken a wrong turning again,” she said, standing
still at what seemed the end of a short passage with tapestry on the
wall. “I don’t know which way to go. How still everything is!”
It was while she was standing here and just after she had said this
that the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry, but not
quite like the one she had heard last night; it was only a short one, a
fretful childish whine muffled by passing through walls.
“It’s nearer than it was,” said Mary, her heart beating rather faster.
“And it _is_ crying.”
She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her, and then
sprang back, feeling quite startled. The tapestry was the covering of a
door which fell open and showed her that there was another part of the
corridor behind it, and Mrs. Medlock was coming up it with her bunch of
keys in her hand and a very cross look on her face.
“What are you doing here?” she said, and she took Mary by the arm and
pulled her away. “What did I tell you?”
“I turned round the wrong corner,” explained Mary. “I didn’t know which
way to go and I heard someone crying.” She quite hated Mrs. Medlock at
the moment, but she hated her more the next.
“You didn’t hear anything of the sort,” said the housekeeper. “You come
along back to your own nursery or I’ll box your ears.”
And she took her by the arm and half pushed, half pulled her up one
passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own
room.
“Now,” she said, “you stay where you’re told to stay or you’ll find
yourself locked up. The master had better get you a governess, same as
he said he would. You’re one that needs someone to look sharp after
you. I’ve got enough to do.”
She went out of the room and slammed the door after her, and Mary went
and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage. She did not cry, but ground
her teeth.
“There _was_ someone crying—there _was_—there _was!_” she said to
herself.
She had heard it twice now, and sometime she would find out. She had
found out a great deal this morning. She felt as if she had been on a
long journey, and at any rate she had had something to amuse her all
the time, and she had played with the ivory elephants and had seen the
gray mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet cushion.
CHAPTER VII.
THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed
immediately, and called to Martha.
“Look at the moor! Look at the moor!”
The rainstorm had ended and the gray mist and clouds had been swept
away in the night by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a
brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. Never, never
had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue. In India skies were hot and blazing;
this was of a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the
waters of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high
in the arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece. The
far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of
gloomy purple-black or awful dreary gray.
“Aye,” said Martha with a cheerful grin. “Th’ storm’s over for a bit.
It does like this at this time o’ th’ year. It goes off in a night like
it was pretendin’ it had never been here an’ never meant to come again.
That’s because th’ springtime’s on its way. It’s a long way off yet,
but it’s comin’.”
“I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England,” Mary
said.
“Eh! no!” said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black lead
brushes. “Nowt o’ th’ soart!”
“What does that mean?” asked Mary seriously. In India the natives spoke
different dialects which only a few people understood, so she was not
surprised when Martha used words she did not know.
Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.
“There now,” she said. “I’ve talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs.
Medlock said I mustn’t. ‘Nowt o’ th’ soart’ means
‘nothin’-of-the-sort,’” slowly and carefully, “but it takes so long to
say it. Yorkshire’s th’ sunniest place on earth when it is sunny. I
told thee tha’d like th’ moor after a bit. Just you wait till you see
th’ gold-colored gorse blossoms an’ th’ blossoms o’ th’ broom, an’ th’
heather flowerin’, all purple bells, an’ hundreds o’ butterflies
flutterin’ an’ bees hummin’ an’ skylarks soarin’ up an’ singin’. You’ll
want to get out on it at sunrise an’ live out on it all day like Dickon
does.”
“Could I ever get there?” asked Mary wistfully, looking through her
window at the far-off blue. It was so new and big and wonderful and
such a heavenly color.
“I don’t know,” answered Martha. “Tha’s never used tha’ legs since tha’
was born, it seems to me. Tha’ couldn’t walk five mile. It’s five mile
to our cottage.”
“I should like to see your cottage.”
Martha stared at her a moment curiously before she took up her
polishing brush and began to rub the grate again. She was thinking that
the small plain face did not look quite as sour at this moment as it
had done the first morning she saw it. It looked just a trifle like
little Susan Ann’s when she wanted something very much.
“I’ll ask my mother about it,” she said. “She’s one o’ them that nearly
always sees a way to do things. It’s my day out today an’ I’m goin’
home. Eh! I am glad. Mrs. Medlock thinks a lot o’ mother. Perhaps she
could talk to her.”
“I like your mother,” said Mary.
“I should think tha’ did,” agreed Martha, polishing away.
“I’ve never seen her,” said Mary.
“No, tha’ hasn’t,” replied Martha.
She sat up on her heels again and rubbed the end of her nose with the
back of her hand as if puzzled for a moment, but she ended quite
positively.
“Well, she’s that sensible an’ hard workin’ an’ good-natured an’ clean
that no one could help likin’ her whether they’d seen her or not. When
I’m goin’ home to her on my day out I just jump for joy when I’m
crossin’ the moor.”
“I like Dickon,” added Mary. “And I’ve never seen him.”
“Well,” said Martha stoutly, “I’ve told thee that th’ very birds likes
him an’ th’ rabbits an’ wild sheep an’ ponies, an’ th’ foxes
themselves. I wonder,” staring at her reflectively, “what Dickon would
think of thee?”
“He wouldn’t like me,” said Mary in her stiff, cold little way. “No one
does.”
Martha looked reflective again.
“How does tha’ like thysel’?” she inquired, really quite as if she were
curious to know.
Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.
“Not at all—really,” she answered. “But I never thought of that
before.”
Martha grinned a little as if at some homely recollection.
“Mother said that to me once,” she said. “She was at her wash-tub an’ I
was in a bad temper an’ talkin’ ill of folk, an’ she turns round on me
an’ says: ‘Tha’ young vixen, tha’! There tha’ stands sayin’ tha’
doesn’t like this one an’ tha’ doesn’t like that one. How does tha’
like thysel’?’ It made me laugh an’ it brought me to my senses in a
minute.”
She went away in high spirits as soon as she had given Mary her
breakfast. She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the
cottage, and she was going to help her mother with the washing and do
the week’s baking and enjoy herself thoroughly.
Mary felt lonelier than ever when she knew she was no longer in the
house. She went out into the garden as quickly as possible, and the
first thing she did was to run round and round the fountain flower
garden ten times. She counted the times carefully and when she had
finished she felt in better spirits. The sunshine made the whole place
look different. The high, deep, blue sky arched over Misselthwaite as
well as over the moor, and she kept lifting her face and looking up
into it, trying to imagine what it would be like to lie down on one of
the little snow-white clouds and float about. She went into the first
kitchen-garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other
gardeners. The change in the weather seemed to have done him good. He
spoke to her of his own accord.
“Springtime’s comin,’” he said. “Cannot tha’ smell it?”
Mary sniffed and thought she could.
“I smell something nice and fresh and damp,” she said.
“That’s th’ good rich earth,” he answered, digging away. “It’s in a
good humor makin’ ready to grow things. It’s glad when plantin’ time
comes. It’s dull in th’ winter when it’s got nowt to do. In th’ flower
gardens out there things will be stirrin’ down below in th’ dark. Th’
sun’s warmin’ ’em. You’ll see bits o’ green spikes stickin’ out o’ th’
black earth after a bit.”
“What will they be?” asked Mary.
“Crocuses an’ snowdrops an’ daffydowndillys. Has tha’ never seen them?”
“No. Everything is hot, and wet, and green after the rains in India,”
said Mary. “And I think things grow up in a night.”
“These won’t grow up in a night,” said Weatherstaff. “Tha’ll have to
wait for ’em. They’ll poke up a bit higher here, an’ push out a spike
more there, an’ uncurl a leaf this day an’ another that. You watch
’em.”
“I am going to,” answered Mary.
Very soon she heard the soft rustling flight of wings again and she
knew at once that the robin had come again. He was very pert and
lively, and hopped about so close to her feet, and put his head on one
side and looked at her so slyly that she asked Ben Weatherstaff a
question.
“Do you think he remembers me?” she said.
“Remembers thee!” said Weatherstaff indignantly. “He knows every
cabbage stump in th’ gardens, let alone th’ people. He’s never seen a
little wench here before, an’ he’s bent on findin’ out all about thee.
Tha’s no need to try to hide anything from _him_.”
“Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he
lives?” Mary inquired.
“What garden?” grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.
“The one where the old rose-trees are.” She could not help asking,
because she wanted so much to know. “Are all the flowers dead, or do
some of them come again in the summer? Are there ever any roses?”
“Ask him,” said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the
robin. “He’s the only one as knows. No one else has seen inside it for
ten year’.”
Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years
ago.
She walked away, slowly thinking. She had begun to like the garden just
as she had begun to like the robin and Dickon and Martha’s mother. She
was beginning to like Martha, too. That seemed a good many people to
like—when you were not used to liking. She thought of the robin as one
of the people. She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall
over which she could see the tree-tops; and the second time she walked
up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her,
and it was all through Ben Weatherstaff’s robin.
She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare
flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending