The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked
through the door leading from the second garden. He looked
startled when he saw Mary, and then touched his cap.
He had a surly old face, and did not seem at all pleased
to see her--but then she was displeased with his garden
and wore her "quite contrary" expression, and certainly
did not seem at all pleased to see him.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"One o' th' kitchen-gardens," he answered.

"What is that?" said Mary, pointing through the other
green door.

"Another of 'em," shortly. "There's another on t'other
side o' th' wall an' there's th' orchard t'other side o' that."

"Can I go in them?" asked Mary.

"If tha' likes. But there's nowt to see."

Mary made no response. She went down the path and through
the second green door. There, she found more walls
and winter vegetables and glass frames, but in the second
wall there was another green door and it was not open.
Perhaps it led into the garden which no one had seen for
ten years. As she was not at all a timid child and always
did what she wanted to do, Mary went to the green door
and turned the handle. She hoped the door would not open
because she wanted to be sure she had found the mysterious
garden--but it did open quite easily and she walked
through it and found herself in an orchard. There were
walls all round it also and trees trained against them,
and there were bare fruit-trees growing in the winter-browned
grass--but there was no green door to be seen anywhere.
Mary looked for it, and yet when she had entered the
upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall
did not seem to end with the orchard but to extend
beyond it as if it enclosed a place at the other side.
She could see the tops of trees above the wall,
and when she stood still she saw a bird with a bright
red breast sitting on the topmost branch of one of them,
and suddenly he burst into his winter song--almost
as if he had caught sight of her and was calling to her.

She stopped and listened to him and somehow his cheerful,
friendly little whistle gave her a pleased feeling--even
a disagreeable little girl may be lonely, and the big closed
house and big bare moor and big bare gardens had made this
one feel as if there was no one left in the world but herself.
If she had been an affectionate child, who had been
used to being loved, she would have broken her heart,
but even though she was "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary"
she was desolate, and the bright-breasted little bird
brought a look into her sour little face which was almost
a smile. She listened to him until he flew away.
He was not like an Indian bird and she liked him and
wondered if she should ever see him again. Perhaps he
lived in the mysterious garden and knew all about it.

Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do
that she thought so much of the deserted garden. She was
curious about it and wanted to see what it was like.
Why had Mr. Archibald Craven buried the key? If he
had liked his wife so much why did he hate her garden?
She wondered if she should ever see him, but she knew
that if she did she should not like him, and he would
not like her, and that she should only stand and stare
at him and say nothing, though she should be wanting
dreadfully to ask him why he had done such a queer thing.

"People never like me and I never like people," she thought.
"And I never can talk as the Crawford children could.
They were always talking and laughing and making noises."

She thought of the robin and of the way he seemed to sing
his song at her, and as she remembered the tree-top he
perched on she stopped rather suddenly on the path.

"I believe that tree was in the secret garden--I feel sure
it was," she said. "There was a wall round the place
and there was no door."

She walked back into the first kitchen-garden she had entered
and found the old man digging there. She went and stood beside
him and watched him a few moments in her cold little way.
He took no notice of her and so at last she spoke to him.

"I have been into the other gardens," she said.

"There was nothin' to prevent thee," he answered crustily.

"I went into the orchard."

"There was no dog at th' door to bite thee," he answered.

"There was no door there into the other garden,"
said Mary.

"What garden?" he said in a rough voice, stopping his
digging for a moment.

"The one on the other side of the wall," answered Mistress Mary.
"There are trees there--I saw the tops of them. A bird
with a red breast was sitting on one of them and he sang."

To her surprise the surly old weather-beaten face
actually changed its expression. A slow smile spread
over it and the gardener looked quite different. It made
her think that it was curious how much nicer a person
looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.

He turned about to the orchard side of his garden and began
to whistle--a low soft whistle. She could not understand
how such a surly man could make such a coaxing sound.
Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened.
She heard a soft little rushing flight through the air--and
it was the bird with the red breast flying to them,
and he actually alighted on the big clod of earth quite near
to the gardener's foot.

"Here he is," chuckled the old man, and then he spoke
to the bird as if he were speaking to a child.

"Where has tha' been, tha' cheeky little beggar?"
he said. "I've not seen thee before today. Has tha,
begun tha' courtin' this early in th' season? Tha'rt
too forrad."

The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked up at him
with his soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop.
He seemed quite familiar and not the least afraid.
He hopped about and pecked the earth briskly, looking for
seeds and insects. It actually gave Mary a queer feeling
in her heart, because he was so pretty and cheerful
and seemed so like a person. He had a tiny plump body
and a delicate beak, and slender delicate legs.

"Will he always come when you call him?" she asked almost
in a whisper.

"Aye, that he will. I've knowed him ever since he was
a fledgling. He come out of th' nest in th' other garden an'
when first he flew over th' wall he was too weak to fly
back for a few days an' we got friendly. When he went
over th' wall again th' rest of th' brood was gone an'
he was lonely an' he come back to me."

"What kind of a bird is he?" Mary asked.

"Doesn't tha' know? He's a robin redbreast an'
they're th' friendliest, curiousest birds alive.
They're almost as friendly as dogs--if you know how to get
on with 'em. Watch him peckin' about there an' lookin'
round at us now an' again. He knows we're talkin' about him."

It was the queerest thing in the world to see the old fellow.
He looked at the plump little scarlet-waistcoated bird
as if he were both proud and fond of him.

"He's a conceited one," he chuckled. "He likes to hear
folk talk about him. An' curious--bless me, there never
was his like for curiosity an' meddlin'. He's always comin'
to see what I'm plantin'. He knows all th' things Mester
Craven never troubles hissel' to find out. He's th'
head gardener, he is."

The robin hopped about busily pecking the soil and now
and then stopped and looked at them a little. Mary thought
his black dewdrop eyes gazed at her with great curiosity.
It really seemed as if he were finding out all about her.
The queer feeling in her heart increased. "Where did the
rest of the brood fly to?" she asked.

"There's no knowin'. The old ones turn 'em out o' their nest an'
make 'em fly an' they're scattered before you know it.
This one was a knowin' one an, he knew he was lonely."

Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked
at him very hard.

"I'm lonely," she said.

She had not known before that this was one of the things
which made her feel sour and cross. She seemed to find
it out when the robin looked at her and she looked
at the robin.

The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald head
and stared at her a minute.

"Art tha' th' little wench from India?" he asked.

Mary nodded.

"Then no wonder tha'rt lonely. Tha'lt be lonlier before
tha's done," he said.

He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into
the rich black garden soil while the robin hopped
about very busily employed.

"What is your name?" Mary inquired.

He stood up to answer her.

"Ben Weatherstaff," he answered, and then he added with a
surly chuckle, "I'm lonely mysel' except when he's with me,"
and he jerked his thumb toward the robin. "He's th'
only friend I've got."

"I have no friends at all," said Mary. "I never had.
My Ayah didn't like me and I never played with any one."

It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with
blunt frankness, and old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire
moor man.

"Tha' an' me are a good bit alike," he said.
"We was wove out of th' same cloth. We're neither of us
good lookin' an' we're both of us as sour as we look.
We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll warrant."

This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard
the truth about herself in her life. Native servants
always salaamed and submitted to you, whatever you did.
She had never thought much about her looks, but she wondered
if she was as unattractive as Ben Weatherstaff and she
also wondered if she looked as sour as he had looked
before the robin came. She actually began to wonder
also if she was "nasty tempered." She felt uncomfortable.

Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near
her and she turned round. She was standing a few feet
from a young apple-tree and the robin had flown on to one
of its branches and had burst out into a scrap of a song.
Ben Weatherstaff laughed outright.

"What did he do that for?" asked Mary.

"He's made up his mind to make friends with thee,"
replied Ben. "Dang me if he hasn't took a fancy to thee."

"To me?" said Mary, and she moved toward the little tree
softly and looked up.

"Would you make friends with me?" she said to the robin
just as if she was speaking to a person. "Would you?"
And she did not say it either in her hard little voice
or in her imperious Indian voice, but in a tone so soft
and eager and coaxing that Ben Weatherstaff was as surprised
as she had been when she heard him whistle.

"Why," he cried out, "tha' said that as nice an' human as
if tha' was a real child instead of a sharp old woman.
Tha' said it almost like Dickon talks to his wild things on th' moor."

"Do you know Dickon?" Mary asked, turning round rather
in a hurry.

"Everybody knows him. Dickon's wanderin' about everywhere.
Th' very blackberries an' heather-bells knows him.
I warrant th' foxes shows him where their cubs
lies an' th' skylarks doesn't hide their nests from him."

Mary would have liked to ask some more questions.
She was almost as curious about Dickon as she was about
the deserted garden. But just that moment the robin,
who had ended his song, gave a little shake of his wings,
spread them and flew away. He had made his visit and had
other things to do.

"He has flown over the wall!" Mary cried out, watching him.
"He has flown into the orchard--he has flown across the
other wall--into the garden where there is no door!"

"He lives there," said old Ben. "He came out o' th' egg there.
If he's courtin', he's makin' up to some young madam
of a robin that lives among th' old rose-trees there."

"Rose-trees," said Mary. "Are there rose-trees?"

Ben Weatherstaff took up his spade again and began to dig.

"There was ten year' ago," he mumbled.

"I should like to see them," said Mary. "Where is
the green door? There must be a door somewhere."

Ben drove his spade deep and looked as uncompanionable
as he had looked when she first saw him.

"There was ten year' ago, but there isn't now," he said.

"No door!" cried Mary. "There must be." "None as any
one can find, an' none as is any one's business.
Don't you be a meddlesome wench an' poke your nose where
it's no cause to go. Here, I must go on with my work.
Get you gone an' play you. I've no more time."

And he actually stopped digging, threw his spade over
his shoulder and walked off, without even glancing
at her or saying good-by.

CHAPTER V

THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR

At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox
was exactly like the others. Every morning she awoke
in her tapestried room and found Martha kneeling upon
the hearth building her fire; every morning she ate her
breakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it;
and after each breakfast she gazed out of the window
across to the huge moor which seemed to spread out on all
sides and climb up to the sky, and after she had stared
for a while she realized that if she did not go out she
would have to stay in and do nothing--and so she went out.
She did not know that this was the best thing she could
have done, and she did not know that, when she began to walk
quickly or even run along the paths and down the avenue,
she was stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger
by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor.
She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind
which rushed at her face and roared and held her back
as if it were some giant she could not see. But the big
breaths of rough fresh air blown over the heather filled
her lungs with something which was good for her whole
thin body and whipped some red color into her cheeks and
brightened her dull eyes when she did not know anything
about it.

But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors
she wakened one morning knowing what it was to be hungry,
and when she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance
disdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but took
up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it
until her bowl was empty.

"Tha' got on well enough with that this mornin', didn't tha'?"
said Martha.

"It tastes nice today," said Mary, feeling a little
surprised her self.

"It's th' air of th' moor that's givin' thee stomach
for tha' victuals," answered Martha. "It's lucky
for thee that tha's got victuals as well as appetite.
There's been twelve in our cottage as had th' stomach an'
nothin' to put in it. You go on playin' you out o'
doors every day an' you'll get some flesh on your bones an'
you won't be so yeller."

"I don't play," said Mary. "I have nothing to play with."

"Nothin' to play with!" exclaimed Martha. "Our children
plays with sticks and stones. They just runs about an'
shouts an' looks at things." Mary did not shout,
but she looked at things. There was nothing else to do.
She walked round and round the gardens and wandered
about the paths in the park. Sometimes she looked for
Ben Weatherstaff, but though several times she saw him
at work he was too busy to look at her or was too surly.
Once when she was walking toward him he picked up his spade
and turned away as if he did it on purpose.

One place she went to oftener than to any other.
It was the long walk outside the gardens with the walls
round them. There were bare flower-beds on either
side of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly.
There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark
green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed
as if for a long time that part had been neglected.
The rest of it had been clipped and made to look neat,
but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed
at all.

A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff,
Mary stopped to notice this and wondered why it was so.
She had just paused and was looking up at a long spray of ivy
swinging in the wind when she saw a gleam of scarlet and
heard a brilliant chirp, and there, on the top of the wall,
forward perched Ben Weatherstaff's robin redbreast,
tilting forward to look at her with his small head on
one side.

"Oh!" she cried out, "is it you--is it you?" And it
did not seem at all queer to her that she spoke to him
as if she were sure that he would understand and answer her.

He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along
the wall as if he were telling her all sorts of things.
It seemed to Mistress Mary as if she understood him, too,
though he was not speaking in words. It was as if he
said:

"Good morning! Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't
everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter.
Come on! Come on!"

Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights
along the wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow,
ugly Mary--she actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

"I like you! I like you!" she cried out, pattering down the walk;
and she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did
not know how to do in the least. But the robin seemed
to be quite satisfied and chirped and whistled back at her.
At last he spread his wings and made a darting flight
to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.
That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him.
He had been swinging on a tree-top then and she had been
standing in the orchard. Now she was on the other side
of the orchard and standing in the path outside a wall--much
lower down--and there was the same tree inside.

"It's in the garden no one can go into," she said to herself.
"It's the garden without a door. He lives in there.
How I wish I could see what it is like!"

She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered
the first morning. Then she ran down the path through
the other door and then into the orchard, and when she
stood and looked up there was the tree on the other side
of the wall, and there was the robin just finishing his
song and, beginning to preen his feathers with his beak.

"It is the garden," she said. "I am sure it is."

She walked round and looked closely at that side of the
orchard wall, but she only found what she had found
before--that there was no door in it. Then she ran
through the kitchen-gardens again and out into the walk
outside the long ivy-covered wall, and she walked to
the end of it and looked at it, but there was no door;
and then she walked to the other end, looking again,
but there was no door.

"It's very queer," she said. "Ben Weatherstaff said
there was no door and there is no door. But there must
have been one ten years ago, because Mr. Craven buried
the key."

This gave her so much to think of that she began to be
quite interested and feel that she was not sorry that she
had come to Misselthwaite Manor. In India she had always
felt hot and too languid to care much about anything.
The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun
to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken
her up a little.

She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat
down to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy
and comfortable. She did not feel cross when Martha
chattered away. She felt as if she rather liked to hear her,
and at last she thought she would ask her a question.
She asked it after she had finished her supper and had sat
down on the hearth-rug before the fire.

"Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?" she said.

She had made Martha stay with her and Martha had not
objected at all. She was very young, and used to a crowded
cottage full of brothers and sisters, and she found it
dull in the great servants' hall downstairs where the
footman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire
speech and looked upon her as a common little thing,
and sat and whispered among themselves. Martha liked
to talk, and the strange child who had lived in India,
and been waited upon by "blacks," was novelty enough
to attract her.

She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting
to be asked.

"Art tha' thinkin' about that garden yet?" she said.
"I knew tha' would. That was just the way with me when I
first heard about it."

"Why did he hate it?" Mary persisted.

Martha tucked her feet under her and made herself
quite comfortable.

"Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house," she said.
"You could bare stand up on the moor if you was out on
it tonight."

Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened,
and then she understood. It must mean that hollow
shuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round the
house as if the giant no one could see were buffeting it
and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in.
But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made
one feel very safe and warm inside a room with a red
coal fire.

"But why did he hate it so?" she asked, after she
had listened. She intended to know if Martha did.

Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.

"Mind," she said, "Mrs. Medlock said it's not to be
talked about. There's lots o' things in this place that's
not to be talked over. That's Mr. Craven's orders.
His troubles are none servants' business, he says.
But for th' garden he wouldn't be like he is. It was
Mrs. Craven's garden that she had made when first they
were married an' she just loved it, an' they used to 'tend
the flowers themselves. An' none o' th' gardeners was
ever let to go in. Him an' her used to go in an'
shut th' door an' stay there hours an' hours, readin'
and talkin'. An, she was just a bit of a girl an'
there was an old tree with a branch bent like a seat
on it. An' she made roses grow over it an' she used
to sit there. But one day when she was sittin' there th'
branch broke an' she fell on th' ground an' was hurt
so bad that next day she died. Th' doctors thought he'd
go out o' his mind an' die, too. That's why he hates it.
No one's never gone in since, an' he won't let any one talk
about it."

Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at
the red fire and listened to the wind "wutherin'."
It seemed to be "wutherin'" louder than ever.
At that moment a very good thing was happening to her.
Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she
came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she
had understood a robin and that he had understood her;
she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm;
she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life;
and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one.

But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen
to something else. She did not know what it was,
because at first she could scarcely distinguish it from
the wind itself. It was a curious sound--it seemed almost
as if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes the wind
sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress
Mary felt quite sure this sound was inside the house,
not outside it. It was far away, but it was inside.
She turned round and looked at Martha.

"Do you hear any one crying?" she said.

Martha suddenly looked confused.

"No," she answered. "It's th' wind. Sometimes it
sounds like as if some one was lost on th' moor an'
wailin'. It's got all sorts o' sounds."

"But listen," said Mary. "It's in the house--down one
of those long corridors."

And at that very moment a door must have been opened
somewhere downstairs; for a great rushing draft blew along
the passage and the door of the room they sat in was blown
open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet
the light was blown out and the crying sound was swept down
the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly than ever.

"There!" said Mary. "I told you so! It is some one
crying--and it isn't a grown-up person."

Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before
she did it they both heard the sound of a door in some far
passage shutting with a bang, and then everything was quiet,
for even the wind ceased "wutherin'" for a few moments.

"It was th' wind," said Martha stubbornly.
"An' if it wasn't, it was little Betty Butterworth,
th' scullery-maid. She's had th' toothache all day."

But something troubled and awkward in her manner made
Mistress Mary stare very hard at her. She did not believe
she was speaking the truth.

CHAPTER VI

"THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!"

The next day the rain poured down in torrents again,
and when Mary looked out of her window the moor was almost
hidden by gray mist and cloud. There could be no going
out today.

"What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?"
she asked Martha.

"Try to keep from under each other's feet mostly,"
Martha answered. "Eh! there does seem a lot of us then.
Mother's a good-tempered woman but she gets fair moithered.
The biggest ones goes out in th' cow-shed and plays there.
Dickon he doesn't mind th' wet. He goes out just th'
same as if th' sun was shinin'. He says he sees things
on rainy days as doesn't show when it's fair weather.
He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he
brought it home in th' bosom of his shirt to keep it warm.
Its mother had been killed nearby an' th' hole was swum
out an' th' rest o' th' litter was dead. He's got it at
home now. He found a half-drowned young crow another time an'
he brought it home, too, an' tamed it. It's named Soot
because it's so black, an' it hops an' flies about with
him everywhere."

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