Chapter VII. The Key to the Garden

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

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 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' 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!"