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The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

T >> the end of the year but we >> The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett



THE SECRET GARDEN
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT


Author of

"The Shuttle,"
"The Making of a Marchioness,"
"The Methods of Lady
Walderhurst,"
"The Lass o' Lowries,"
"Through One Administration,"
"Little Lord Fauntleroy,"
"A Lady of Quality," etc.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE

I THERE IS NO ONE LEFT
II MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
III ACROSS THE MOOR
IV MARTHA
V THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR
VI "THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"
VII THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
VIII THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
IX THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN
X DICKON
XI THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH
XII "MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?"
XIII "I AM COLIN"
XIV A YOUNG RAJAH
XV NEST BUILDING
XVI "I WON'T!" SAID MARY
XVII A TANTRUM
XVIII "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME"
XIX "IT HAS COME!"
XX "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!"
XXI BEN WEATHERSTAFF
XXII WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
XXIII MAGIC
XIV "LET THEM LAUGH"
XXV THE CURTAIN
XXVI "IT'S MOTHER!"
XXVII IN THE GARDEN





THE SECRET GARDEN
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT




CHAPTER I

THERE IS NO ONE LEFT


When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor
to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most
disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too.
She had a little thin face and a little thin body,
thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow,
and her face was yellow because she had been born in
India and had always been ill in one way or another.
Her father had held a position under the English
Government and had always been busy and ill himself,
and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only
to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people.
She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary
was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah,
who was made to understand that if she wished to please
the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much
as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little
baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became
a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of
the way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly
anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other
native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave
her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib
would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying,
by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical
and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young English
governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked
her so much that she gave up her place in three months,
and when other governesses came to try to fill it they
always went away in a shorter time than the first one.
So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know how
to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.

One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine
years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became
crosser still when she saw that the servant who stood
by her bedside was not her Ayah.

"Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman.
"I will not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me."

The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered
that the Ayah could not come and when Mary threw herself
into a passion and beat and kicked her, she looked only
more frightened and repeated that it was not possible
for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

There was something mysterious in the air that morning.
Nothing was done in its regular order and several of the
native servants seemed missing, while those whom Mary
saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared faces.
But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come.
She was actually left alone as the morning went on,
and at last she wandered out into the garden and began
to play by herself under a tree near the veranda.
She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck
big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth,
all the time growing more and more angry and muttering
to herself the things she would say and the names she
would call Saidie when she returned.

"Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call
a native a pig is the worst insult of all.

She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over
again when she heard her mother come out on the veranda
with some one. She was with a fair young man and they stood
talking together in low strange voices. Mary knew the fair
young man who looked like a boy. She had heard that he
was a very young officer who had just come from England.
The child stared at him, but she stared most at her mother.
She always did this when she had a chance to see her,
because the Mem Sahib--Mary used to call her that oftener
than anything else--was such a tall, slim, pretty person
and wore such lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly
silk and she had a delicate little nose which seemed
to be disdaining things, and she had large laughing eyes.
All her clothes were thin and floating, and Mary said they
were "full of lace." They looked fuller of lace than ever
this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all.
They were large and scared and lifted imploringly to the fair
boy officer's face.

"Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her say.

"Awfully," the young man answered in a trembling voice.
"Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills
two weeks ago."

The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.

"Oh, I know I ought!" she cried. "I only stayed to go
to that silly dinner party. What a fool I was!"

At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke
out from the servants' quarters that she clutched the young
man's arm, and Mary stood shivering from head to foot.
The wailing grew wilder and wilder. "What is it? What is it?"
Mrs. Lennox gasped.

"Some one has died," answered the boy officer. "You did
not say it had broken out among your servants."

"I did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with me!
Come with me!" and she turned and ran into the house.

After that, appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness
of the morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had
broken out in its most fatal form and people were dying
like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill in the night,
and it was because she had just died that the servants
had wailed in the huts. Before the next day three other
servants were dead and others had run away in terror.
There was panic on every side, and dying people in all
the bungalows.

During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary
hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone.
Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her, and strange things
happened of which she knew nothing. Mary alternately cried
and slept through the hours. She only knew that people were
ill and that she heard mysterious and tightening sounds.
Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty,
though a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs
and plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed
back when the diners rose suddenly for some reason.
The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty
she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled.
It was sweet, and she did not know how strong it was.
Very soon it made her intensely drowsy, and she went back
to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by cries
she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of feet.
The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her
eyes open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more
for a long time.

Many things happened during the hours in which she slept
so heavily, but she was not disturbed by the wails and the
sound of things being carried in and out of the bungalow.

When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall.
The house was perfectly still. She had never known
it to be so silent before. She heard neither voices
nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of
the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered
also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead.
There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know
some new stories. Mary had been rather tired of the
old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died.
She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much
for any one. The noise and hurrying about and wailing
over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry
because no one seemed to remember that she was alive.
Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little
girl no one was fond of. When people had the cholera
it seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves.
But if everyone had got well again, surely some one would
remember and come to look for her.

But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed
to grow more and more silent. She heard something rustling
on the matting and when she looked down she saw a little
snake gliding along and watching her with eyes like jewels.
She was not frightened, because he was a harmless little
thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry
to get out of the room. He slipped under the door as she
watched him.

"How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as
if there were no one in the bungalow but me and the snake."

Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound,
and then on the veranda. They were men's footsteps,
and the men entered the bungalow and talked in low voices.
No one went to meet or speak to them and they seemed
to open doors and look into rooms. "What desolation!"
she heard one voice say. "That pretty, pretty woman!
I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child,
though no one ever saw her."

Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they
opened the door a few minutes later. She looked an ugly,
cross little thing and was frowning because she was
beginning to be hungry and feel disgracefully neglected.
The first man who came in was a large officer she had once
seen talking to her father. He looked tired and troubled,
but when he saw her he was so startled that he almost
jumped back.

"Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child
alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"

"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself
up stiffly. She thought the man was very rude to call her
father's bungalow "A place like this!" "I fell asleep when
everyone had the cholera and I have only just wakened up.
Why does nobody come?"

"It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man,
turning to his companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"

"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot.
"Why does nobody come?"

The young man whose name was Barney lookedat her very sadly.
Mary even thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink
tears away.

"Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."

It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found
out that she had neither father nor mother left;
that they had died and been carried away in the night,
and that the few native servants who had not died also had
left the house as quickly as they could get out of it,
none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib.
That was why the place was so quiet. It was true that there
was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little
rustling snake.



Chapter II

MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY


Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance
and she had thought her very pretty, but as she knew
very little of her she could scarcely have been expected
to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone.
She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a
self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself,
as she had always done. If she had been older she would
no doubt have been very anxious at being left alone in
the world, but she was very young, and as she had always
been taken care of, she supposed she always would be.
What she thought was that she would like to know if she was
going to nice people, who would be polite to her and give
her her own way as her Ayah and the other native servants
had done.

She knew that she was not going to stay at the English
clergyman's house where she was taken at first. She did
not want to stay. The English clergyman was poor and he
had five children nearly all the same age and they wore
shabby clothes and were always quarreling and snatching
toys from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow
and was so disagreeable to them that after the first day
or two nobody would play with her. By the second day
they had given her a nickname which made her furious.

It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little
boy with impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary
hated him. She was playing by herself under a tree,
just as she had been playing the day the cholera broke out.
She was making heaps of earth and paths for a garden
and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he
got rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.

"Why don't you put a heap of stones there and pretend
it is a rockery?" he said. "There in the middle,"
and he leaned over her to point.

"Go away!" cried Mary. "I don't want boys. Go away!"

For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease.
He was always teasing his sisters. He danced round
and round her and made faces and sang and laughed.

"Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row."

He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too;
and the crosser Mary got, the more they sang "Mistress Mary,
quite contrary"; and after that as long as she stayed
with them they called her "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary"
when they spoke of her to each other, and often when they
spoke to her.

"You are going to be sent home," Basil said to her,
"at the end of the week. And we're glad of it."

"I am glad of it, too," answered Mary. "Where is home?"

"She doesn't know where home is!" said Basil,
with seven-year-old scorn. "It's England, of course.
Our grandmama lives there and our sister Mabel was sent
to her last year. You are not going to your grandmama.
You have none. You are going to your uncle. His name is
Mr. Archibald Craven."

"I don't know anything about him," snapped Mary.

"I know you don't," Basil answered. "You don't know anything.
Girls never do. I heard father and mother talking about him.
He lives in a great, big, desolate old house in the
country and no one goes near him. He's so cross he won't
let them, and they wouldn't come if he would let them.
He's a hunchback, and he's horrid." "I don't believe you,"
said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her fingers
in her ears, because she would not listen any more.

But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when
Mrs. Crawford told her that night that she was going
to sail away to England in a few days and go to her uncle,
Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived at Misselthwaite Manor,
she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested that
they did not know what to think about her. They tried
to be kind to her, but she only turned her face away
when Mrs. Crawford attempted to kiss her, and held
herself stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her shoulder.

"She is such a plain child," Mrs. Crawford said pityingly,
afterward. "And her mother was such a pretty creature.
She had a very pretty manner, too, and Mary has the most
unattractive ways I ever saw in a child. The children
call her `Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,' and though
it's naughty of them, one can't help understanding it."

"Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face
and her pretty manners oftener into the nursery Mary
might have learned some pretty ways too. It is very sad,
now the poor beautiful thing is gone, to remember that
many people never even knew that she had a child at all."

"I believe she scarcely ever looked at her,"
sighed Mrs. Crawford. "When her Ayah was dead there
was no one to give a thought to the little thing.
Think of the servants running away and leaving her all
alone in that deserted bungalow. Colonel McGrew said he
nearly jumped out of his skin when he opened the door
and found her standing by herself in the middle of the room."

Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of
an officer's wife, who was taking her children to leave
them in a boarding-school. She was very much absorbed
in her own little boy and girl, and was rather glad to hand
the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven sent
to meet her, in London. The woman was his housekeeper
at Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock.
She was a stout woman, with very red cheeks and sharp
black eyes. She wore a very purple dress, a black
silk mantle with jet fringe on it and a black bonnet
with purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled
when she moved her head. Mary did not like her at all,
but as she very seldom liked people there was nothing
remarkable in that; besides which it was very evident
Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.

"My word! she's a plain little piece of goods!" she said.
"And we'd heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn't
handed much of it down, has she, ma'am?" "Perhaps she
will improve as she grows older," the officer's wife
said good-naturedly. "If she were not so sallow and had
a nicer expression, her features are rather good.
Children alter so much."

"She'll have to alter a good deal," answered Mrs. Medlock.
"And, there's nothing likely to improve children at
Misselthwaite--if you ask me!" They thought Mary was not
listening because she was standing a little apart from them
at the window of the private hotel they had gone to.
She was watching the passing buses and cabs and people,
but she heard quite well and was made very curious about
her uncle and the place he lived in. What sort of a place
was it, and what would he be like? What was a hunchback?
She had never seen one. Perhaps there were none in India.

Since she had been living in other people's houses
and had had no Ayah, she had begun to feel lonely
and to think queer thoughts which were new to her.
She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong
to anyone even when her father and mother had been alive.
Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers,
but she had never seemed to really be anyone's little girl.
She had had servants, and food and clothes, but no one
had taken any notice of her. She did not know that this
was because she was a disagreeable child; but then,
of course, she did not know she was disagreeable.
She often thought that other people were, but she did not
know that she was so herself.

She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person
she had ever seen, with her common, highly colored face
and her common fine bonnet. When the next day they set
out on their journey to Yorkshire, she walked through
the station to the railway carriage with her head up
and trying to keep as far away from her as she could,
because she did not want to seem to belong to her.
It would have made her angry to think people imagined she
was her little girl.

But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her
and her thoughts. She was the kind of woman who would
"stand no nonsense from young ones." At least, that is
what she would have said if she had been asked. She had
not wanted to go to London just when her sister Maria's
daughter was going to be married, but she had a comfortable,
well paid place as housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor
and the only way in which she could keep it was to do
at once what Mr. Archibald Craven told her to do.
She never dared even to ask a question.

"Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera,"
Mr. Craven had said in his short, cold way. "Captain Lennox
was my wife's brother and I am their daughter's guardian.
The child is to be brought here. You must go to London
and bring her yourself."

So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.

Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked
plain and fretful. She had nothing to read or to look at,
and she had folded her thin little black-gloved hands in
her lap. Her black dress made her look yellower than ever,
and her limp light hair straggled from under her black
crepe hat.

"A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life,"
Mrs. Medlock thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and
means spoiled and pettish.) She had never seen a child
who sat so still without doing anything; and at last she
got tired of watching her and began to talk in a brisk,
hard voice.

"I suppose I may as well tell you something about where
you are going to," she said. "Do you know anything
about your uncle?"

"No," said Mary.

"Never heard your father and mother talk about him?"

"No," said Mary frowning. She frowned because she
remembered that her father and mother had never talked
to her about anything in particular. Certainly they
had never told her things.

"Humph," muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer,
unresponsive little face. She did not say any more for
a few moments and then she began again.

"I suppose you might as well be told something--to
prepare you. You are going to a queer place."

Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather
discomfited by her apparent indifference, but, after taking
a breath, she went on.

"Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way,
and Mr. Craven's proud of it in his way--and that's
gloomy enough, too. The house is six hundred years old
and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's near a hundred
rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked.
And there's pictures and fine old furniture and things
that's been there for ages, and there's a big park round
it and gardens and trees with branches trailing to the
ground--some of them." She paused and took another breath.
"But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly.

Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded
so unlike India, and anything new rather attracted her.
But she did not intend to look as if she were interested.
That was one of her unhappy, disagreeable ways. So she
sat still.

"Well," said Mrs. Medlock. "What do you think of it?"

"Nothing," she answered. "I know nothing about such places."

That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.

"Eh!" she said, "but you are like an old woman.
Don't you care?"

"It doesn't matter" said Mary, "whether I care or not."

"You are right enough there," said Mrs. Medlock.
"It doesn't. What you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor
for I don't know, unless because it's the easiest way.
He's not going to trouble himself about you, that's sure
and certain. He never troubles himself about no one."

She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something
in time.

"He's got a crooked back," she said. "That set him wrong.
He was a sour young man and got no good of all his money
and big place till he was married."

Mary's eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention
not to seem to care. She had never thought of the
hunchback's being married and she was a trifle surprised.
Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative woman
she continued with more interest. This was one way
of passing some of the time, at any rate.

"She was a sweet, pretty thing and he'd have walked
the world over to get her a blade o' grass she wanted.
Nobody thought she'd marry him, but she did,
and people said she married him for his money.
But she didn't--she didn't," positively. "When she died--"

Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

"Oh! did she die!" she exclaimed, quite without meaning to.
She had just remembered a French fairy story she had once
read called "Riquet a la Houppe." It had been about a poor
hunchback and a beautiful princess and it had made her
suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.

"Yes, she died," Mrs. Medlock answered. "And it
made him queerer than ever. He cares about nobody.
He won't see people. Most of the time he goes away,
and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in
the West Wing and won't let any one but Pitcher see him.
Pitcher's an old fellow, but he took care of him when he
was a child and he knows his ways."

It sounded like something in a book and it did not make
Mary feel cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms,
nearly all shut up and with their doors locked--a house on
the edge of a moor--whatsoever a moor was--sounded dreary.
A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also! She
stared out of the window with her lips pinched together,
and it seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun
to pour down in gray slanting lines and splash and stream
down the window-panes. If the pretty wife had been alive
she might have made things cheerful by being something
like her own mother and by running in and out and going
to parties as she had done in frocks "full of lace."
But she was not there any more.

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