Chapter XIX. "It has Come!"

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Of course Dr. Craven had been sent for the morning after Colin
had had his tantrum. He was always sent for at once when such a
thing occurred and he always found, when he arrived, a white shaken
boy lying on his bed, sulky and still so hysterical that he was ready
to break into fresh sobbing at the least word. In fact, Dr. Craven
dreaded and detested the difficulties of these visits. On this
occasion he was away from Misselthwaite Manor until afternoon.

"How is he?" he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably when he
arrived. "He will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits some day.
The boy is half insane with hysteria and self-indulgence."

"Well, sir," answered Mrs. Medlock, "you'll scarcely believe
your eyes when you see him. That plain sour-faced child that's
almost as bad as himself has just bewitched him. How she's done it
there's no telling. The Lord knows she's nothing to look at and you
scarcely ever hear her speak, but she did what none of us dare do.
She just flew at him like a little cat last night, and stamped her
feet and ordered him to stop screaming, and somehow she startled him
so that he actually did stop, and this afternoon--well just come up
and see, sir. It's past crediting."

The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered his patient's
room was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the
door he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his
dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a
picture in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who
at that moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face
was so glowing with enjoyment.

"Those long spires of blue ones--we'll have a lot of those,"
Colin was announcing. "They're called Del-phin-iums."

"Dickon says they're larkspurs made big and grand," cried
Mistress Mary. "There are clumps there already."

Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became quite still
and Colin looked fretful.

"I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my boy," Dr. Craven
said a trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous man.

"I'm better now--much better," Colin answered, rather like a
Rajah. "I'm going out in my chair in a day or two if it is fine. I
want some fresh air."

Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and looked at him
curiously.

"It must be a very fine day," he said, "and you must be very
careful not to tire yourself."

"Fresh air won't tire me," said the young Rajah.

As there had been occasions when this same young gentleman had
shrieked aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh air would give
him cold and kill him, it is not to be wondered at that his doctor
felt somewhat startled.

"I thought you did not like fresh air," he said.

"I don't when I am by myself," replied the Rajah; "but my cousin
is going out with me."

"And the nurse, of course?" suggested Dr. Craven.

"No, I will not have the nurse," so magnificently that Mary
could not help remembering how the young native Prince had looked
with his diamonds and emeralds and pearls stuck all over him and the
great rubies on the small dark hand he had waved to command his
servants to approach with salaams and receive his orders.

"My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am always better
when she is with me. She made me better last night. A very strong
boy I know will push my carriage."

Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome hysterical boy
should chance to get well he himself would lose all chance of
inheriting Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous man, though
he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let him run into actual
danger.

"He must be a strong boy and a steady boy," he said. "And I must
know something about him. Who is he? What is his name?"

"It's Dickon," Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt somehow that
everybody who knew the moor must know Dickon. And she was right, too.
She saw that in a moment Dr. Craven's serious face relaxed into a
relieved smile.

"Oh, Dickon," he said. "If it is Dickon you will be safe
enough. He's as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon."

"And he's trusty," said Mary. "He's th' trustiest lad i'
Yorkshire." She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she forgot
herself.

"Did Dickon teach you that?" asked Dr. Craven, laughing
outright.

"I'm learning it as if it was French," said Mary rather coldly.
"It's like a native dialect in India. Very clever people try to
learn them. I like it and so does Colin." "Well, well," he said.
"If it amuses you perhaps it won't do you any harm. Did you take
your bromide last night, Colin?"

"No," Colin answered. "I wouldn't take it at first and after
Mary made me quiet she talked me to sleep--in a low voice--about the
spring creeping into a garden."

"That sounds soothing," said Dr. Craven, more perplexed than
ever and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting on her stool and
looking down silently at the carpet. "You are evidently better, but
you must remember--"

"I don't want to remember," interrupted the Rajah, appearing
again. "When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains
everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because
I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you
forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him
brought here." And he waved a thin hand which ought really to have
been covered with royal signet rings made of rubies. "It is because
my cousin makes me forget that she makes me better."

Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a "tantrum";
usually he was obliged to remain a very long time and do a great many
things. This afternoon he did not give any medicine or leave any new
orders and he was spared any disagreeable scenes. When he went
downstairs he looked very thoughtful and when he talked to Mrs.
Medlock in the library she felt that he was a much puzzled man.

"Well, sir," she ventured, "could you have believed it?"

"It is certainly a new state of affairs," said the doctor. "And
there's no denying it is better than the old one."

"I believe Susan Sowerby's right--I do that," said Mrs. Medlock.
"I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite yesterday and had a
bit of talk with her. And she says to me, 'Well, Sarah Ann, she
mayn't be a good child, an' she mayn't be a pretty one, but she's a
child, an' children needs children.' We went to school together,
Susan Sowerby and me."

"She's the best sick nurse I know," said Dr. Craven. "When I
find her in a cottage I know the chances are that I shall save my
patient."

Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan Sowerby.

"She's got a way with her, has Susan," she went on quite
volubly. "I've been thinking all morning of one thing she said
yesterday. She says, `Once when I was givin' th' children a bit of a
preach after they'd been fightin' I ses to 'em all, "When I was at
school my jography told as th' world was shaped like a orange an' I
found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to
nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times
it seems like there's not enow quarters to go round. But don't
you--none o' you--think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find
out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it out without hard knocks."
`What children learns from children,' she says, 'is that there's no
sense in grabbin' at th' whole orange--peel an' all. If you do
you'll likely not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to
eat.'"

"She's a shrewd woman," said Dr. Craven, putting on his coat.

"Well, she's got a way of saying things," ended Mrs. Medlock,
much pleased. "Sometimes I've said to her, 'Eh! Susan, if you was a
different woman an' didn't talk such broad Yorkshire I've seen the
times when I should have said you was clever.'"

That night Colin slept without once awakening and when he opened
his eyes in the morning he lay still and smiled without knowing
it--smiled because he felt so curiously comfortable. It was actually
nice to be awake, and he turned over and stretched his limbs
luxuriously. He felt as if tight strings which had held him had
loosened themselves and let him go. He did not know that Dr. Craven
would have said that his nerves had relaxed and rested themselves.
Instead of lying and staring at the wall and wishing he had not
awakened, his mind was full of the plans he and Mary had made
yesterday, of pictures of the garden and of Dickon and his wild
creatures. It was so nice to have things to think about. And he had
not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard feet running along
the corridor and Mary was at the door. The next minute she was in the
room and had run across to his bed, bringing with her a waft of fresh
air full of the scent of the morning.

"You've been out! You've been out! There's that nice smell of
leaves!" he cried.

She had been running and her hair was loose and blown and she
was bright with the air and pink-cheeked, though he could not see
it.

"It's so beautiful!" she said, a little breathless with her
speed. "You never saw anything so beautiful! It has come! I thought
it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here
now! It has come, the Spring! Dickon says so!"

"Has it?" cried Colin, and though he really knew nothing about
it he felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in bed.

"Open the window!" he added, laughing half with joyful
excitement and half at his own fancy. "Perhaps we may hear golden
trumpets!"

And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a moment and in
a moment more it was opened wide and freshness and softness and
scents and birds' songs were pouring through.

"That's fresh air," she said. "Lie on your back and draw in
long breaths of it. That's what Dickon does when he's lying on the
moor. He says he feels it in his veins and it makes him strong and
he feels as if he could live forever and ever. Breathe it and
breathe it."

She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, but she caught
Colin's fancy.

"`Forever and ever'! Does it make him feel like that?" he said,
and he did as she told him, drawing in long deep breaths over and
over again until he felt that something quite new and delightful was
happening to him.

Mary was at his bedside again.

"Things are crowding up out of the earth," she ran on in a
hurry. "And there are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and
the green veil has covered nearly all the gray and the birds are in
such a hurry about their nests for fear they may be too late that
some of them are even fighting for places in the secret garden. And
the rose-bushes look as wick as wick can be, and there are primroses
in the lanes and woods, and the seeds we planted are up, and Dickon
has brought the fox and the crow and the squirrels and a new-born
lamb."

And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb Dickon had
found three days before lying by its dead mother among the gorse
bushes on the moor. It was not the first motherless lamb he had
found and he knew what to do with it. He had taken it to the cottage
wrapped in his jacket and he had let it lie near the fire and had fed
it with warm milk. It was a soft thing with a darling silly baby face
and legs rather long for its body. Dickon had carried it over the
moor in his arms and its feeding bottle was in his pocket with a
squirrel, and when Mary had sat under a tree with its limp warmness
huddled on her lap she had felt as if she were too full of strange
joy to speak. A lamb--a lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like
a baby!

She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and
drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a
little at the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the
room many a warm day because her patient was sure that open windows
gave people cold.

"Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?" she
inquired.

"No," was the answer. "I am breathing long breaths of fresh
air. It makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for
breakfast. My cousin will have breakfast with me."

The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for
two breakfasts. She found the servants' hall a more amusing place
than the invalid's chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the
news from upstairs. There was a great deal of joking about the
unpopular young recluse who, as the cook said, "had found his master,
and good for him." The servants' hall had been very tired of the
tantrums, and the butler, who was a man with a family, had more than
once expressed his opinion that the invalid would be all the better
"for a good hiding."

When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for two was put
upon the table he made an announcement to the nurse in his most
Rajah-like manner.

"A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels, and a new-born
lamb, are coming to see me this morning. I want them brought upstairs
as soon as they come," he said. "You are not to begin playing with
the animals in the servants' hall and keep them there. I want them
here." The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a
cough.

"Yes, sir," she answered.

"I'll tell you what you can do," added Colin, waving his hand.
"You can tell Martha to bring them here. The boy is Martha's brother.
His name is Dickon and he is an animal charmer."

"I hope the animals won't bite, Master Colin," said the
nurse.

"I told you he was a charmer," said Colin austerely. "Charmers'
animals never bite."

"There are snake-charmers in India," said Mary. "and they can
put their snakes' heads in their mouths."

"Goodness!" shuddered the nurse.

They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon
them. Colin's breakfast was a very good one and Mary watched him
with serious interest.

"You will begin to get fatter just as I did," she said. "I never
wanted my breakfast when I was in India and now I always want it."

"I wanted mine this morning," said Colin. "Perhaps it was the
fresh air. When do you think Dickon will come?"

He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary held up
her hand.

"Listen!" she said. "Did you hear a caw?"

Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world to
hear inside a house, a hoarse "caw-caw."

"Yes," he answered.

"That's Soot," said Mary. "Listen again. Do you hear a
bleat--a tiny one?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Colin, quite flushing.

"That's the new-born lamb," said Mary. "He's coming."

Dickon's moorland boots were thick and clumsy and though he
tried to walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he walked through
the long corridors. Mary and Colin heard him marching--marching,
until he passed through the tapestry door on to the soft carpet of
Colin's own passage.

"If you please, sir," announced Martha, opening the door, "if
you please, sir, here's Dickon an' his creatures."

Dickon came in smiling his nicest wide smile. The new- born lamb
was in his arms and the little red fox trotted by his side. Nut sat
on his left shoulder and Soot on his right and Shell's head and paws
peeped out of his coat pocket.

Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared--as he had stared when
he first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder and delight. The
truth was that in spite of all he had heard he had not in the least
understood what this boy would be like and that his fox and his crow
and his squirrels and his lamb were so near to him and his
friendliness that they seemed almost to be part of himself. Colin
had never talked to a boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed by
his own pleasure and curiosity that he did not even think of
speaking.

But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward. He had not
felt embarrassed because the crow had not known his language and had
only stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met.
Creatures were always like that until they found out about you. He
walked over to Colin's sofa and put the new-born lamb quietly on his
lap, and immediately the little creature turned to the warm velvet
dressing-gown and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds and butt
its tight-curled head with soft impatience against his side. Of
course no boy could have helped speaking then.

"What is it doing?" cried Colin. "What does it want?"

"It wants its mother," said Dickon, smiling more and more. "I
brought it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha'd like to see it
feed."

He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his
pocket.

"Come on, little 'un," he said, turning the small woolly white
head with a gentle brown hand. "This is what tha's after. Tha'll
get more out o' this than tha' will out o' silk velvet coats. There
now," and he pushed the rubber tip of the bottle into the nuzzling
mouth and the lamb began to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.

After that there was no wondering what to say. By the time the
lamb fell asleep questions poured forth and Dickon answered them all.
He told them how he had found the lamb just as the sun was rising
three mornings ago. He had been standing on the moor listening to a
skylark and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky until
he was only a speck in the heights of blue.

"I'd almost lost him but for his song an' I was wonderin' how a
chap could hear it when it seemed as if he'd get out o' th' world in
a minute--an' just then I heard somethin' else far off among th'
gorse bushes. It was a weak bleatin' an' I knowed it was a new lamb
as was hungry an' I knowed it wouldn't be hungry if it hadn't lost
its mother somehow, so I set off searchin'. Eh! I did have a look for
it. I went in an' out among th' gorse bushes an' round an' round an'
I always seemed to take th' wrong turnin'. But at last I seed a bit
o' white by a rock on top o' th' moor an' I climbed up an' found th'
little 'un half dead wi' cold an' clemmin'." While he talked, Soot
flew solemnly in and out of the open window and cawed remarks about
the scenery while Nut and Shell made excursions into the big trees
outside and ran up and down trunks and explored branches. Captain
curled up near Dickon, who sat on the hearth-rug from preference.

They looked at the pictures in the gardening books and Dickon
knew all the flowers by their country names and knew exactly which
ones were already growing in the secret garden.

"I couldna' say that there name," he said, pointing to one under
which was written "Aquilegia," "but us calls that a columbine, an'
that there one it's a snapdragon and they both grow wild in hedges,
but these is garden ones an' they're bigger an' grander. There's
some big clumps o' columbine in th' garden. They'll look like a bed
o' blue an' white butterflies flutterin' when they're out."

"I'm going to see them," cried Colin. "I am going to see
them!"

"Aye, that tha' mun," said Mary quite seriously. "An' tha'
munnot lose no time about it."