Chapter XIII. "I Am Colin"

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Mary took the picture back to the house when she went to her
supper and she showed it to Martha.

"Eh!" said Martha with great pride. "I never knew our Dickon
was as clever as that. That there's a picture of a missel thrush on
her nest, as large as life an' twice as natural."

Then Mary knew Dickon had meant the picture to be a message. He
had meant that she might be sure he would keep her secret. Her garden
was her nest and she was like a missel thrush. Oh, how she did like
that queer, common boy!

She hoped he would come back the very next day and she fell
asleep looking forward to the morning.

But you never know what the weather will do in Yorkshire,
particularly in the springtime. She was awakened in the night by the
sound of rain beating with heavy drops against her window. It was
pouring down in torrents and the wind was "wuthering" round the
corners and in the chimneys of the huge old house. Mary sat up in
bed and felt miserable and angry.

"The rain is as contrary as I ever was," she said. "It came
because it knew I did not want it."

She threw herself back on her pillow and buried her face. She
did not cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating
rain, she hated the wind and its "wuthering." She could not go to
sleep again. The mournful sound kept her awake because she felt
mournful herself. If she had felt happy it would probably have
lulled her to sleep. How it "wuthered" and how the big raindrops
poured down and beat against the pane!

"It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on
and on crying," she said.

She had been lying awake turning from side to side for about an
hour, when suddenly something made her sit up in bed and turn her
head toward the door listening. She listened and she listened.

"It isn't the wind now," she said in a loud whisper. "That isn't
the wind. It is different. It is that crying I heard before."

The door of her room was ajar and the sound came down the
corridor, a far-off faint sound of fretful crying. She listened for a
few minutes and each minute she became more and more sure. She felt
as if she must find out what it was. It seemed even stranger than
the secret garden and the buried key. Perhaps the fact that she was
in a rebellious mood made her bold. She put her foot out of bed and
stood on the floor.

"I am going to find out what it is," she said. "Everybody is in
bed and I don't care about Mrs. Medlock--I don't care!"

There was a candle by her bedside and she took it up and went
softly out of the room. The corridor looked very long and dark, but
she was too excited to mind that. She thought she remembered the
corners she must turn to find the short corridor with the door
covered with tapestry--the one Mrs. Medlock had come through the day
she lost herself. The sound had come up that passage. So she went on
with her dim light, almost feeling her way, her heart beating so loud
that she fancied she could hear it. The far-off faint crying went on
and led her. Sometimes it stopped for a moment or so and then began
again. Was this the right corner to turn? She stopped and thought.
Yes it was. Down this passage and then to the left, and then up two
broad steps, and then to the right again. Yes, there was the tapestry
door.

She pushed it open very gently and closed it behind her, and she
stood in the corridor and could hear the crying quite plainly, though
it was not loud. It was on the other side of the wall at her left
and a few yards farther on there was a door. She could see a glimmer
of light coming from beneath it. The Someone was crying in that
room, and it was quite a young Someone.

So she walked to the door and pushed it open, and there she was
standing in the room!

It was a big room with ancient, handsome furniture in it. There
was a low fire glowing faintly on the hearth and a night light
burning by the side of a carved four-posted bed hung with brocade,
and on the bed was lying a boy, crying fretfully.

Mary wondered if she was in a real place or if she had fallen
asleep again and was dreaming without knowing it.

The boy had a sharp, delicate face the color of ivory and he
seemed to have eyes too big for it. He had also a lot of hair which
tumbled over his forehead in heavy locks and made his thin face seem
smaller. He looked like a boy who had been ill, but he was crying
more as if he were tired and cross than as if he were in pain.

Mary stood near the door with her candle in her hand, holding
her breath. Then she crept across the room, and, as she drew nearer,
the light attracted the boy's attention and he turned his head on his
pillow and stared at her, his gray eyes opening so wide that they
seemed immense.

"Who are you?" he said at last in a half-frightened whisper.
"Are you a ghost?"

"No, I am not," Mary answered, her own whisper sounding half
frightened. "Are you one?"

He stared and stared and stared. Mary could not help noticing
what strange eyes he had. They were agate gray and they looked too
big for his face because they had black lashes all round them.

"No," he replied after waiting a moment or so. "I am Colin."

"Who is Colin?" she faltered.

"I am Colin Craven. Who are you?"

"I am Mary Lennox. Mr. Craven is my uncle."

"He is my father," said the boy.

"Your father!" gasped Mary. "No one ever told me he had a boy!
Why didn't they?"

"Come here," he said, still keeping his strange eyes fixed on
her with an anxious expression.

She came close to the bed and he put out his hand and touched
her.

"You are real, aren't you?" he said. "I have such real dreams
very often. You might be one of them."

Mary had slipped on a woolen wrapper before she left her room
and she put a piece of it between his fingers.

"Rub that and see how thick and warm it is," she said. "I will
pinch you a little if you like, to show you how real I am. For a
minute I thought you might be a dream too."

"Where did you come from?" he asked.

"From my own room. The wind wuthered so I couldn't go to sleep
and I heard some one crying and wanted to find out who it was. What
were you crying for?"

"Because I couldn't go to sleep either and my head ached. Tell
me your name again."

"Mary Lennox. Did no one ever tell you I had come to live
here?"

He was still fingering the fold of her wrapper, but he began to
look a little more as if he believed in her reality.

"No," he answered. "They daren't."

"Why?" asked Mary.

"Because I should have been afraid you would see me. I won't let
people see me and talk me over."

"Why?" Mary asked again, feeling more mystified every moment.

"Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My
father won't let people talk me over either. The servants are not
allowed to speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I
shan't live. My father hates to think I may be like him."

"Oh, what a queer house this is!" Mary said. "What a queer
house! Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and
gardens are locked up--and you! Have you been locked up?"

"No. I stay in this room because I don't want to be moved out of
it. It tires me too much."

"Does your father come and see you?" Mary ventured.

"Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn't want to see
me."

"Why?" Mary could not help asking again.

A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy's face.

"My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to
look at me. He thinks I don't know, but I've heard people talking.
He almost hates me."

"He hates the garden, because she died," said Mary half speaking
to herself.

"What garden?" the boy asked.

"Oh! just--just a garden she used to like," Mary stammered.
"Have you been here always?" "Nearly always. Sometimes I have been
taken to places at the seaside, but I won't stay because people stare
at me. I used to wear an iron thing to keep my back straight, but a
grand doctor came from London to see me and said it was stupid. He
told them to take it off and keep me out in the fresh air. I hate
fresh air and I don't want to go out."

"I didn't when first I came here," said Mary. "Why do you keep
looking at me like that?"

"Because of the dreams that are so real," he answered rather
fretfully. "Sometimes when I open my eyes I don't believe I'm
awake."

"We're both awake," said Mary. She glanced round the room with
its high ceiling and shadowy corners and dim fire-light. "It looks
quite like a dream, and it's the middle of the night, and everybody
in the house is asleep--everybody but us. We are wide awake."

"I don't want it to be a dream," the boy said restlessly.

Mary thought of something all at once.

"If you don't like people to see you," she began, "do you want
me to go away?"

He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little
pull.

"No," he said. "I should be sure you were a dream if you went.
If you are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to
hear about you."

Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down
on the cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She
wanted to stay in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the
mysterious boy.

"What do you want me to tell you?" she said.

He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he
wanted to know which corridor her room was on; he wanted to know what
she had been doing; if she disliked the moor as he disliked it; where
she had lived before she came to Yorkshire. She answered all these
questions and many more and he lay back on his pillow and listened.
He made her tell him a great deal about India and about her voyage
across the ocean. She found out that because he had been an invalid
he had not learned things as other children had. One of his nurses
had taught him to read when he was quite little and he was always
reading and looking at pictures in splendid books.

Though his father rarely saw him when he was awake, he was given
all sorts of wonderful things to amuse himself with. He never seemed
to have been amused, however. He could have anything he asked for
and was never made to do anything he did not like to do. "Everyone
is obliged to do what pleases me," he said indifferently. "It makes
me ill to be angry. No one believes I shall live to grow up."

He said it as if he was so accustomed to the idea that it had
ceased to matter to him at all. He seemed to like the sound of
Mary's voice. As she went on talking he listened in a drowsy,
interested way. Once or twice she wondered if he were not gradually
falling into a doze. But at last he asked a question which opened up
a new subject.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I am ten," answered Mary, forgetting herself for the moment,
"and so are you."

"How do you know that?" he demanded in a surprised voice.

"Because when you were born the garden door was locked and the
key was buried. And it has been locked for ten years."

Colin half sat up, turning toward her, leaning on his elbows.

"What garden door was locked? Who did it? Where was the key
buried?" he exclaimed as if he were suddenly very much interested.

"It--it was the garden Mr. Craven hates," said Mary nervously.
"He locked the door. No one--no one knew where he buried the key."
"What sort of a garden is it?" Colin persisted eagerly.

"No one has been allowed to go into it for ten years," was
Mary's careful answer.

But it was too late to be careful. He was too much like
herself. He too had had nothing to think about and the idea of a
hidden garden attracted him as it had attracted her. He asked
question after question. Where was it? Had she never looked for the
door? Had she never asked the gardeners?

"They won't talk about it," said Mary. "I think they have been
told not to answer questions."

"I would make them," said Colin.

"Could you?" Mary faltered, beginning to feel frightened. If he
could make people answer questions, who knew what might happen!

"Everyone is obliged to please me. I told you that," he said.
"If I were to live, this place would sometime belong to me. They all
know that. I would make them tell me."

Mary had not known that she herself had been spoiled, but she
could see quite plainly that this mysterious boy had been. He
thought that the whole world belonged to him. How peculiar he was and
how coolly he spoke of not living.

"Do you think you won't live?" she asked, partly because she was
curious and partly in hope of making him forget the garden.

"I don't suppose I shall," he answered as indifferently as he
had spoken before. "Ever since I remember anything I have heard
people say I shan't. At first they thought I was too little to
understand and now they think I don't hear. But I do. My doctor is
my father's cousin. He is quite poor and if I die he will have all
Misselthwaite when my father is dead. I should think he wouldn't
want me to live."

"Do you want to live?" inquired Mary.

"No," he answered, in a cross, tired fashion. "But I don't want
to die. When I feel ill I lie here and think about it until I cry
and cry."

"I have heard you crying three times," Mary said, "but I did not
know who it was. Were you crying about that?" She did so want him to
forget the garden.

"I dare say," he answered. "Let us talk about something else.
Talk about that garden. Don't you want to see it?"

"Yes," answered Mary, in quite a low voice.

"I do," he went on persistently. "I don't think I ever really
wanted to see anything before, but I want to see that garden. I want
the key dug up. I want the door unlocked. I would let them take me
there in my chair. That would be getting fresh air. I am going to
make them open the door."

He had become quite excited and his strange eyes began to shine
like stars and looked more immense than ever.

"They have to please me," he said. "I will make them take me
there and I will let you go, too."

Mary's hands clutched each other. Everything would be
spoiled--everything! Dickon would never come back. She would never
again feel like a missel thrush with a safe-hidden nest.

"Oh, don't--don't--don't--don't do that!" she cried out.

He stared as if he thought she had gone crazy!

"Why?" he exclaimed. "You said you wanted to see it."

"I do," she answered almost with a sob in her throat, "but if
you make them open the door and take you in like that it will never
be a secret again."

He leaned still farther forward.

"A secret," he said. "What do you mean? Tell me."

Mary's words almost tumbled over one another.

"You see--you see," she panted, "if no one knows but
ourselves--if there was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy--if
there was--and we could find it; and if we could slip through it
together and shut it behind us, and no one knew any one was inside
and we called it our garden and pretended that--that we were missel
thrushes and it was our nest, and if we played there almost every day
and dug and planted seeds and made it all come alive--"

"Is it dead?" he interrupted her.

"It soon will be if no one cares for it," she went on. "The
bulbs will live but the roses--"

He stopped her again as excited as she was herself.

"What are bulbs?" he put in quickly.

"They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working
in the earth now--pushing up pale green points because the spring is
coming."

"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like? You don't
see it in rooms if you are ill."

"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the
sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth," said
Mary. "If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could
watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are
alive. Don't you. see? Oh, don't you see how much nicer it would be
if it was a secret?"

He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd
expression on his face.

"I never had a secret," he said, "except that one about not
living to grow up. They don't know I know that, so it is a sort of
secret. But I like this kind better."

"If you won't make them take you to the garden," pleaded Mary,
"perhaps--I feel almost sure I can find out how to get in sometime.
And then--if the doctor wants you to go out in your chair, and if you
can always do what you want to do, perhaps--perhaps we might find
some boy who would push you, and we could go alone and it would
always be a secret garden."

"I should--like--that," he said very slowly, his eyes looking
dreamy. "I should like that. I should not mind fresh air in a
secret garden."

Mary began to recover her breath and feel safer because the idea
of keeping the secret seemed to please him. She felt almost sure that
if she kept on talking and could make him see the garden in his mind
as she had seen it he would like it so much that he could not bear to
think that everybody might tramp in to it when they chose.

"I'll tell you what I think it would be like, if we could go
into it," she said. "It has been shut up so long things have grown
into a tangle perhaps."

He lay quite still and listened while she went on talking about
the roses which might have clambered from tree to tree and hung
down--about the many birds which might have built their nests there
because it was so safe. And then she told him about the robin and Ben
Weatherstaff, and there was so much to tell about the robin and it
was so easy and safe to talk about it that she ceased to be afraid.
The robin pleased him so much that he smiled until he looked almost
beautiful, and at first Mary had thought that he was even plainer
than herself, with his big eyes and heavy locks of hair.

"I did not know birds could be like that," he said. "But if you
stay in a room you never see things. What a lot of things you know.
I feel as if you had been inside that garden."

She did not know what to say, so she did not say anything. He
evidently did not expect an answer and the next moment he gave her a
surprise.

"I am going to let you look at something," he said. "Do you see
that rose-colored silk curtain hanging on the wall over the
mantel-piece?"

Mary had not noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it. It
was a curtain of soft silk hanging over what seemed to be some
picture.

"Yes," she answered.

"There is a cord hanging from it," said Colin. "Go and pull
it."

Mary got up, much mystified, and found the cord. When she pulled
it the silk curtain ran back on rings and when it ran back it
uncovered a picture. It was the picture of a girl with a laughing
face. She had bright hair tied up with a blue ribbon and her gay,
lovely eyes were exactly like Colin's unhappy ones, agate gray and
looking twice as big as they really were because of the black lashes
all round them.

"She is my mother," said Colin complainingly. "I don't see why
she died. Sometimes I hate her for doing it."

"How queer!" said Mary.

"If she had lived I believe I should not have been ill always,"
he grumbled. "I dare say I should have lived, too. And my father
would not have hated to look at me. I dare say I should have had a
strong back. Draw the curtain again."

Mary did as she was told and returned to her footstool.

"She is much prettier than you," she said, "but her eyes are
just like yours--at least they are the same shape and color. Why is
the curtain drawn over her?"

He moved uncomfortably.

"I made them do it," he said. "Sometimes I don't like to see
her looking at me. She smiles too much when I am ill and miserable.
Besides, she is mine and I don't want everyone to see her." There
were a few moments of silence and then Mary spoke.

"What would Mrs. Medlock do if she found out that I had been
here?" she inquired.

"She would do as I told her to do," he answered. "And I should
tell her that I wanted you to come here and talk to me every day. I
am glad you came."

"So am I," said Mary. "I will come as often as I can, but"--she
hesitated--"I shall have to look every day for the garden door."

"Yes, you must," said Colin, "and you can tell me about it
afterward."

He lay thinking a few minutes, as he had done before, and then
he spoke again.

"I think you shall be a secret, too," he said. "I will not tell
them until they find out. I can always send the nurse out of the
room and say that I want to be by myself. Do you know Martha?"

"Yes, I know her very well," said Mary. "She waits on me."

He nodded his head toward the outer corridor.

"She is the one who is asleep in the other room. The nurse went
away yesterday to stay all night with her sister and she always makes
Martha attend to me when she wants to go out. Martha shall tell you
when to come here."

Then Mary understood Martha's troubled look when she had asked
questions about the crying.

"Martha knew about you all the time?" she said.

"Yes; she often attends to me. The nurse likes to get away from
me and then Martha comes."

"I have been here a long time," said Mary. "Shall I go away
now? Your eyes look sleepy."

"I wish I could go to sleep before you leave me," he said rather
shyly.

"Shut your eyes," said Mary, drawing her footstool closer, "and
I will do what my Ayah used to do in India. I will pat your hand and
stroke it and sing something quite low."

"I should like that perhaps," he said drowsily.

Somehow she was sorry for him and did not want him to lie awake,
so she leaned against the bed and began to stroke and pat his hand
and sing a very low little chanting song in Hindustani.

"That is nice," he said more drowsily still, and she went on
chanting and stroking, but when she looked at him again his black
lashes were lying close against his cheeks, for his eyes were shut
and he was fast asleep. So she got up softly, took her candle and
crept away without making a sound.