The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent
Martha's familiar talk. She had even begun to find it
interesting and to be sorry when she stopped or went away.
The stories she had been told by her Ayah when she lived
in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell about
the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived
in four little rooms and never had quite enough to eat.
The children seemed to tumble about and amuse themselves
like a litter of rough, good-natured collie puppies.
Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon.
When Martha told stories of what "mother" said or did they
always sounded comfortable.

"If I had a raven or a fox cub I could play with it,"
said Mary. "But I have nothing."

Martha looked perplexed.

"Can tha' knit?" she asked.

"No," answered Mary.

"Can tha'sew?"

"No."

"Can tha' read?"

"Yes."

"Then why doesn't tha, read somethin', or learn a bit o'
spellin'? Tha'st old enough to be learnin' thy book a good
bit now."

"I haven't any books," said Mary. "Those I had were left
in India."

"That's a pity," said Martha. "If Mrs. Medlock'd let thee
go into th' library, there's thousands o' books there."

Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was
suddenly inspired by a new idea. She made up her mind
to go and find it herself. She was not troubled about
Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock seemed always to be in her
comfortable housekeeper's sitting-room downstairs.
In this queer place one scarcely ever saw any one at all.
In fact, there was no one to see but the servants,
and when their master was away they lived a luxurious
life below stairs, where there was a huge kitchen hung
about with shining brass and pewter, and a large servants'
hall where there were four or five abundant meals eaten
every day, and where a great deal of lively romping went on
when Mrs. Medlock was out of the way.

Mary's meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her,
but no one troubled themselves about her in the least.
Mrs. Medlock came and looked at her every day or two,
but no one inquired what she did or told her what to do.
She supposed that perhaps this was the English way of
treating children. In India she had always been attended
by her Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her,
hand and foot. She had often been tired of her company.
Now she was followed by nobody and was learning to dress
herself because Martha looked as though she thought she was
silly and stupid when she wanted to have things handed to her
and put on.

"Hasn't tha' got good sense?" she said once, when Mary
had stood waiting for her to put on her gloves for her.
"Our Susan Ann is twice as sharp as thee an' she's only
four year' old. Sometimes tha' looks fair soft in th' head."

Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that,
but it made her think several entirely new things.

She stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning
after Martha had swept up the hearth for the last time
and gone downstairs. She was thinking over the new idea
which had come to her when she heard of the library.
She did not care very much about the library itself,
because she had read very few books; but to hear of it brought
back to her mind the hundred rooms with closed doors.
She wondered if they were all really locked and what
she would find if she could get into any of them.
Were there a hundred really? Why shouldn't she go and see
how many doors she could count? It would be something
to do on this morning when she could not go out.
She had never been taught to ask permission to do things,
and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would
not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she
might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.

She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor,
and then she began her wanderings. It was a long corridor
and it branched into other corridors and it led her up
short flights of steps which mounted to others again.
There were doors and doors, and there were pictures
on the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark,
curious landscapes, but oftenest they were portraits
of men and women in queer, grand costumes made of satin
and velvet. She found herself in one long gallery
whose walls were covered with these portraits. She had
never thought there could be so many in any house.
She walked slowly down this place and stared at the faces
which also seemed to stare at her. She felt as if they
were wondering what a little girl from India was doing
in their house. Some were pictures of children--little
girls in thick satin frocks which reached to their feet
and stood out about them, and boys with puffed sleeves
and lace collars and long hair, or with big ruffs around
their necks. She always stopped to look at the children,
and wonder what their names were, and where they had gone,
and why they wore such odd clothes. There was a stiff,
plain little girl rather like herself. She wore a green
brocade dress and held a green parrot on her finger.
Her eyes had a sharp, curious look.

"Where do you live now?" said Mary aloud to her.
"I wish you were here."

Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning.
It seemed as if there was no one in all the huge rambling
house but her own small self, wandering about upstairs
and down, through narrow passages and wide ones, where it
seemed to her that no one but herself had ever walked.
Since so many rooms had been built, people must have lived
in them, but it all seemed so empty that she could not quite
believe it true.

It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she
thought of turning the handle of a door. All the doors
were shut, as Mrs. Medlock had said they were, but at last she
put her hand on the handle of one of them and turned it.
She was almost frightened for a moment when she felt
that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed
upon the door itself it slowly and heavily opened.
It was a massive door and opened into a big bedroom.
There were embroidered hangings on the wall, and inlaid
furniture such as she had seen in India stood about the room.
A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor;
and over the mantel was another portrait of the stiff,
plain little girl who seemed to stare at her more curiously
than ever.

"Perhaps she slept here once," said Mary. "She stares
at me so that she makes me feel queer."

After that she opened more doors and more. She saw
so many rooms that she became quite tired and began
to think that there must be a hundred, though she had not
counted them. In all of them there were old pictures
or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them.
There were curious pieces of furniture and curious
ornaments in nearly all of them.

In one room, which looked like a lady's sitting-room,
the hangings were all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet
were about a hundred little elephants made of ivory.
They were of different sizes, and some had their mahouts
or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than the
others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies.
Mary had seen carved ivory in India and she knew all
about elephants. She opened the door of the cabinet
and stood on a footstool and played with these for quite
a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants
in order and shut the door of the cabinet.

In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the
empty rooms, she had seen nothing alive; but in this
room she saw something. Just after she had closed the
cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound. It made
her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace,
from which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa
there was a cushion, and in the velvet which covered
it there was a hole, and out of the hole peeped a tiny
head with a pair of tightened 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 some one 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 some one 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 some one 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 as 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 thining 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' goodnatured 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 to peck things out of the
earth to persuade her that he had not followed her.
But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so filled
her with delight that she almost trembled a little.

"You do remember me!" she cried out. "You do! You are
prettier than anything else in the world!"

She chirped, and talked, and coaxed and he hopped,
and flirted his tail and twittered. It was as if he
were talking. His red waistcoat was like satin and he
puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand
and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her
how important and like a human person a robin could be.
Mistress Mary forgot that she had ever been contrary
in her life when he allowed her to draw closer and closer
to him, and bend down and talk and try to make something
like robin sounds.

Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near
to him as that! He knew nothing in the world would make
her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the
least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real
person--only nicer than any other person in the world.
She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.

The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers
because the perennial plants had been cut down for their
winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew
together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped
about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly
turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm.
The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying
to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole.

Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there,
and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the
newly-turned soil. It was something like a ring of rusty
iron or brass and when the robin flew up into a tree
nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up.
It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key
which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost
frightened face as it hung from her finger.

"Perhaps it has been buried for ten years," she said
in a whisper. "Perhaps it is the key to the garden!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY

She looked at the key quite a long time. She turned it
over and over, and thought about it. As I have said before,
she was not a child who had been trained to ask permission
or consult her elders about things. All she thought about
the key was that if it was the key to the closed garden,
and she could find out where the door was, she could
perhaps open it and see what was inside the walls,
and what had happened to the old rose-trees. It was because
it had been shut up so long that she wanted to see it.
It seemed as if it must be different from other places
and that something strange must have happened to it
during ten years. Besides that, if she liked it she
could go into it every day and shut the door behind her,
and she could make up some play of her own and play it
quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she was,
but would think the door was still locked and the key
buried in the earth. The thought of that pleased her
very much.

Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred
mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever
to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain
to working and was actually awakening her imagination.
There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the
moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had given
her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred
her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind.
In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak
to care much about anything, but in this place she
was beginning to care and to want to do new things.
Already she felt less "contrary," though she did not
know why.

She put the key in her pocket and walked up and down
her walk. No one but herself ever seemed to come there,
so she could walk slowly and look at the wall, or, rather,
at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was the baffling thing.
Howsoever carefully she looked she could see nothing
but thickly growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was
very much disappointed. Something of her contrariness
came back to her as she paced the walk and looked over it
at the tree-tops inside. It seemed so silly, she said
to herself, to be near it and not be able to get in.
She took the key in her pocket when she went back to
the house, and she made up her mind that she would always
carry it with her when she went out, so that if she ever
should find the hidden door she would be ready.

Mrs. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at
the cottage, but she was back at her work in the morning
with cheeks redder than ever and in the best of spirits.

"I got up at four o'clock," she said. "Eh! it was pretty on th'
moor with th' birds gettin' up an' th' rabbits scamperin'
about an' th' sun risin'. I didn't walk all th' way. A man
gave me a ride in his cart an' I did enjoy myself."

She was full of stories of the delights of her day out.
Her mother had been glad to see her and they had got the
baking and washing all out of the way. She had even made
each of the children a doughcake with a bit of brown sugar
in it.

"I had 'em all pipin' hot when they came in from playin'
on th' moor. An' th' cottage all smelt o' nice, clean hot bakin'
an' there was a good fire, an' they just shouted for joy.
Our Dickon he said our cottage was good enough for a king."

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