Chapter XXVII. In the Garden

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things
have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were
found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of
things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first
people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then
they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then
it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries
ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last
century was that thoughts--just mere thoughts--are as powerful as
electric batteries--as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one
as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is
as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If
you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it
as long as you live.

So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable
thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her
determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was
a yellow-faced, sickly, bored and wretched child. Circumstances,
however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of
it. They began to push her about for her own good. When her mind
gradually filled itself with robins, and moorland cottages crowded
with children, with queer crabbed old gardeners and common little
Yorkshire housemaids, with springtime and with secret gardens coming
alive day by day, and also with a moor boy and his "creatures," there
was no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her
liver and her digestion and made her yellow and tired.

So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thought only of
his fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at
him and reflected hourly on humps and early death, he was a
hysterical half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the
sunshine and the spring and also did not know that he could get well
and could stand upon his feet if he tried to do it. When new
beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began
to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and
strength poured into him like a flood. His scientific experiment was
quite practical and simple and there was nothing weird about it at
all. Much more surprising things can happen to any one who, when a
disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the
sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable
determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

          "Where, you tend a rose, my lad,          A 
thistle cannot grow."

While the secret garden was coming alive
and two children were coming alive with it, there was a man wandering
about certain far-away beautiful places in the Norwegian fiords and
the valleys and mountains of Switzerland and he was a man who for ten
years had kept his mind filled with dark and heart-broken thinking.
He had not been courageous; he had never tried to put any other
thoughts in the place of the dark ones. He had wandered by blue
lakes and thought them; he had lain on mountain-sides with sheets of
deep blue gentians blooming all about him and flower breaths filling
all the air and he had thought them. A terrible sorrow had fallen
upon him when he had been happy and he had let his soul fill itself
with blackness and had refused obstinately to allow any rift of light
to pierce through. He had forgotten and deserted his home and his
duties. When he traveled about, darkness so brooded over him that the
sight of him was a wrong done to other people because it was as if he
poisoned the air about him with gloom. Most strangers thought he must
be either half mad or a man with some hidden crime on his soul. He,
was a tall man with a drawn face and crooked shoulders and the name
he always entered on hotel registers was, "Archibald Craven,
Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire, England."

He had traveled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary
in his study and told her she might have her "bit of earth." He had
been in the most beautiful places in Europe, though he had remained
nowhere more than a few days. He had chosen the quietest and remotest
spots. He had been on the tops of mountains whose heads were in the
clouds and had looked down on other mountains when the sun rose and
touched them with such light as made it seem as if the world were
just being born.

But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day
when he realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing
had happened. He was in a wonderful valley in the Austrian Tyrol and
he had been walking alone through such beauty as might have lifted,
any man's soul out of shadow. He had walked a long way and it had
not lifted his. But at last he had felt tired and had thrown himself
down to rest on a carpet of moss by a stream. It was a clear little
stream which ran quite merrily along on its narrow way through the
luscious damp greenness. Sometimes it made a sound rather like very
low laughter as it bubbled over and round stones. He saw birds come
and dip their heads to drink in it and then flick their wings and fly
away. It seemed like a thing alive and yet its tiny voice made the
stillness seem deeper. The valley was very, very still.

As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald
Craven gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet, as quiet as
the valley itself. He wondered if he were going to sleep, but he was
not. He sat and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see
things growing at its edge. There was one lovely mass of blue
forget-me-nots growing so close to the stream that its leaves were
wet and at these he found himself looking as he remembered he had
looked at such things years ago. He was actually thinking tenderly
how lovely it was and what wonders of blue its hundreds of little
blossoms were. He did not know that just that simple thought was
slowly filling his mind--filling and filling it until other things
were softly pushed aside. It was as if a sweet clear spring had
begun to rise in a stagnant pool and had risen and risen until at
last it swept the dark water away. But of course he did not think of
this himself. He only knew that the valley seemed to grow quieter
and quieter as he sat and stared at the bright delicate blueness. He
did not know how long he sat there or what was happening to him, but
at last he moved as if he were awakening and he got up slowly and
stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft breath and
wondering at himself. Something seemed to have been unbound and
released in him, very quietly.

"What is it?" he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his
hand over his forehead. "I almost feel as if--I were alive!"

I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered
things to be able to explain how this had happened to him. Neither
does any one else yet. He did not understand at all himself--but he
remembered this strange hour months afterward when he was at
Misselthwaite again and he found out quite by accident that on this
very day Colin had cried out as he went into the secret garden:

"I am going to live forever and ever and ever!"

The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening
and he slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very
long. He did not know that it could be kept. By the next night he
had opened the doors wide to his dark thoughts and they had come
trooping and rushing back. He left the valley and went on his
wandering way again. But, strange as it seemed to him, there were
minutes--sometimes half-hours--when, without his knowing why, the
black burden seemed to lift itself again and he knew he was a living
man and not a dead one. Slowly--slowly--for no reason that he knew
of--he was "coming alive" with the garden.

As the golden summer changed into the deep golden autumn he went
to the Lake of Como. There he found the loveliness of a dream. He
spent his days upon the crystal blueness of the lake or he walked
back into the soft thick verdure of the hills and tramped until he
was tired so that he might sleep. But by this time he had begun to
sleep better, he knew, and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to
him.

"Perhaps," he thought, "my body is growing stronger."

It was growing stronger but--because of the rare peaceful hours
when his thoughts were changed--his soul was slowly growing stronger,
too. He began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not
go home. Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked
himself what he should feel when he went and stood by the carved
four-posted bed again and looked down at the sharply chiseled
ivory-white face while it slept and, the black lashes rimmed so
startlingly the close-shut eyes. He shrank from it.

One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned
the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and
silver. The stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful
that he did not go into the villa he lived in. He walked down to a
little bowered terrace at the water's edge and sat upon a seat and
breathed in all the heavenly scents of the night. He felt the strange
calmness stealing over him and it grew deeper and deeper until he
fell asleep.

He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream;
his dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming.
He remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had
thought he was. He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent
of the late roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his
feet he heard a voice calling. It was sweet and clear and happy and
far away. It seemed very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it
had been at his very side.

"Archie! Archie! Archie!" it said, and then again, sweeter and
clearer than before, "Archie! Archie!"

He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled. It was such
a real voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.

"Lilias! Lilias!" he answered. "Lilias! where are you?"

"In the garden," it came back like a sound from a golden flute.
"In the garden!"

And then the dream ended. But he did not awaken. He slept
soundly and sweetly all through the lovely night. When he did awake
at last it was brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring
at him. He was an Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the
servants of the villa were, to accepting without question any strange
thing his foreign master might do. No one ever knew when he would go
out or come in or where he would choose to sleep or if he would roam
about the garden or lie in the boat on the lake all night. The man
held a salver with some letters on it and he waited quietly until Mr.
Craven took them. When he had gone away Mr. Craven sat a few moments
holding them in his hand and looking at the lake. His strange calm
was still upon him and something more--a lightness as if the cruel
thing which had been done had not happened as he thought--as if
something had changed. He was remembering the dream--the real--real
dream.

"In the garden!" he said, wondering at himself. "In the garden!
But the door is locked and the key is buried deep."

When he glanced at the letters a few minutes later he saw that
the one lying at the top of the rest was an English letter and came
from Yorkshire. It was directed in a plain woman's hand but it was
not a hand he knew. He opened it, scarcely thinking of the writer,
but the first words attracted his attention at once.

"Dear Sir:

I am Susan Sowerby that made bold to speak to you once on the
moor. It was about Miss Mary I spoke. I will make bold to speak
again. Please, sir, I would come home if I was you. I think you
would be glad to come and--if you will excuse me, sir--I think your
lady would ask you to come if she was here.

Your obedient servant,

Susan Sowerby."

Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its
envelope. He kept thinking about the dream.

"I will go back to Misselthwaite," he said. "Yes, I'll go at
once."

And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered Pitcher
to prepare for his return to England.

In a few days he was in Yorkshire again, and on his long
railroad journey he found himself thinking of his boy as he had never
thought in all the ten years past. During those years he had only
wished to forget him. Now, though he did not intend to think about
him, memories of him constantly drifted into his mind. He remembered
the black days when he had raved like a madman because the child was
alive and the mother was dead. He had refused to see it, and when he
had gone to look at it at last it had been, such a weak wretched
thing that everyone had been sure it would die in a few days. But to
the surprise of those who took care of it the days passed and it
lived and then everyone believed it would be a deformed and crippled
creature.

He had not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a
father at all. He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but
he had shrunk from the mere thought of the boy and had buried himself
in his own misery. The first time after a year's absence he returned
to Misselthwaite and the small miserable looking thing languidly and
indifferently lifted to his face the great gray eyes with black
lashes round them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes
he had adored, he could not bear the sight of them and turned away
pale as death. After that he scarcely ever saw him except when he was
asleep, and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid,
with a vicious, hysterical, half-insane temper. He could only be
kept from furies dangerous to himself by being given his own way in
every detail.

All this was not an uplifting thing to recall, but as the train
whirled him through mountain passes and golden plains the man who was
"coming alive" began to think in a new way and he thought long and
steadily and deeply.

"Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years," he said to
himself. "Ten years is a long time. It may be too late to do
anything--quite too late. What have I been thinking of!"

Of course this was the wrong Magic--to begin by saying "too
late." Even Colin could have told him that. But he knew nothing of
Magic--either black or white. This he had yet to learn. He wondered
if Susan Sowerby had taken courage and written to him only because
the motherly creature had realized that the boy was much worse--was
fatally ill. If he had not been under the spell of the curious
calmness which had taken possession of him he would have been more
wretched than ever. But the calm had brought a sort of courage and
hope with it. Instead of giving way to thoughts of the worst he
actually found he was trying to believe in better things.

"Could it be possible that she sees that I may be able to do him
good and control him? " he thought. "I will go and see her on my way
to Misselthwaite."

But when on his way across the moor he stopped the carriage at
the cottage, seven or eight children who were playing about gathered
in a group and bobbing seven or eight friendly and polite curtsies
told him that their mother had gone to the other side of the moor
early in the morning to help a woman who had a new baby. "Our
Dickon," they volunteered, was over at the Manor working in one of
the gardens where he went several days each week.

Mr. Craven looked over the collection of sturdy little bodies
and round red-cheeked faces, each one grinning in its own particular
way, and he awoke to the fact that they were a healthy likable lot.
He smiled at their friendly grins and took a golden sovereign from
his pocket and gave it to "our 'Lizabeth Ellen" who was the
oldest.

"If you divide that into eight parts there will be half a crown
for each of, you," he said.

Then amid grins and chuckles and bobbing of curtsies he drove
away, leaving ecstasy and nudging elbows and little jumps of joy
behind.

The drive across the wonderfulness of the moor was a soothing
thing. Why did it seem to give him a sense of homecoming which he
had been sure he could never feel again--that sense of the beauty of
land and sky and purple bloom of distance and a warming of the heart
at drawing, nearer to the great old house which had held those of his
blood for six hundred years? How he had driven away from it the last
time, shuddering to think of its closed rooms and the boy lying in
the four-posted bed with the brocaded hangings. Was it possible that
perhaps he might find him changed a little for the better and that he
might overcome his shrinking from him? How real that dream had
been--how wonderful and clear the voice which called back to him, "In
the garden--In the garden!"

"I will try to find the key," he said. "I will try to open the
door. I must--though I don't know why."

When he arrived at the Manor the servants who received him with
the usual ceremony noticed that he looked better and that he did not
go to the remote rooms where he usually lived attended by Pitcher. He
went into the library and sent for Mrs. Medlock. She came to him
somewhat excited and curious and flustered.

"How is Master Colin, Medlock?" he inquired. "Well, sir," Mrs.
Medlock answered, "he's--he's different, in a manner of speaking."

"Worse?" he suggested.

Mrs. Medlock really was flushed.

"Well, you see, sir," she tried to explain, "neither Dr. Craven,
nor the nurse, nor me can exactly make him out."

"Why is that?"

"To tell the truth, sir, Master Colin might be better and he
might be changing for the worse. His appetite, sir, is past
understanding--and his ways--"

"Has he become more--more peculiar?" her master, asked, knitting
his brows anxiously.

"That's it, sir. He's growing very peculiar--when you compare
him with what he used to be. He used to eat nothing and then
suddenly he began to eat something enormous --and then he stopped
again all at once and the meals were sent back just as they used to
be. You never knew, sir, perhaps, that out of doors he never would
let himself be taken. The things we've gone through to get him to go
out in his chair would leave a body trembling like a leaf. He'd throw
himself into such a state that Dr. Craven said he couldn't be
responsible for forcing him. Well, sir, just without warning--not
long after one of his worst tantrums he suddenly insisted on being
taken out every day by Miss Mary and Susan Sowerby's boy Dickon that
could push his chair. He took a fancy to both Miss Mary and Dickon,
and Dickon brought his tame animals, and, if you'll credit it, sir,
out of doors he will stay from morning until night."

"How does he look?" was the next question.

"If he took his food natural, sir, you'd think he was putting on
flesh--but we're afraid it may be a sort of bloat. He laughs
sometimes in a queer way when he's alone with Miss Mary. He never
used to laugh at all. Dr. Craven is coming to see you at once, if
you'll allow him. He never was as puzzled in his life."

"Where is Master Colin now?" Mr. Craven asked.

"In the garden, sir. He's always in the garden--though not a
human creature is allowed to go near for fear they'll look at
him."

Mr. Craven scarcely heard her last words.

"In the garden," he said, and after he had sent Mrs. Medlock
away he stood and repeated it again and again. "In the garden!"

He had to make an effort to bring himself back to the place he
was standing in and when he felt he was on earth again he turned and
went out of the room. He took his way, as Mary had done, through the
door in the shrubbery and among the laurels and the fountain beds.
The fountain was playing now and was encircled by beds of brilliant
autumn flowers. He crossed the lawn and turned into the Long Walk by
the ivied walls. He did not walk quickly, but slowly, and his eyes
were on the path. He felt as if he were being drawn back to the place
he had so long forsaken, and he did not know why. As he drew near to
it his step became still more slow. He knew where the door was even
though the ivy hung thick over it--but he did not know exactly where
it lay--that buried key.

So he stopped and stood still, looking about him, and almost the
moment after he had paused he started and listened--asking himself if
he were walking in a dream.

The ivy hung thick over the door, the key was buried under the
shrubs, no human being had passed that portal for ten lonely
years--and yet inside the garden there were sounds. They were the
sounds of running scuffling feet seeming to chase round and round
under the trees, they were strange sounds of lowered suppressed
voices--exclamations and smothered joyous cries. It seemed actually
like the laughter of young things, the uncontrollable laughter of
children who were trying not to be heard but who in a moment or
so--as their excitement mounted--would burst forth. What in heaven's
name was he dreaming of--what in heaven's name did he hear? Was he
losing his reason and thinking he heard things which were not for
human ears? Was it that the far clear voice had meant?

And then the moment came, the uncontrollable moment when the
sounds forgot to hush themselves. The feet ran faster and
faster--they were nearing the garden door--there was quick strong
young breathing and a wild outbreak of laughing shows which could not
be contained--and the door in the wall was flung wide open, the sheet
of ivy swinging back, and a boy burst through it at full speed and,
without seeing the outsider, dashed almost into his arms.

Mr. Craven had extended them just in time to save him from
falling as a result of his unseeing dash against him, and when he
held him away to look at him in amazement at his being there he truly
gasped for breath.

He was a tall boy and a handsome one. He was glowing with life
and his running had sent splendid color leaping to his face. He
threw the thick hair back from his forehead and lifted a pair of
strange gray eyes--eyes full of boyish laughter and rimmed with black
lashes like a fringe. It was the eyes which made Mr. Craven gasp for
breath. "Who--What? Who!" he stammered.

This was not what Colin had expected--this was not what he had
planned. He had never thought of such a meeting. And yet to come
dashing out--winning a race--perhaps it was even better. He drew
himself up to his very tallest. Mary, who had been running with him
and had dashed through the door too, believed that he managed to make
himself look taller than he had ever looked before--inches taller.

"Father," he said, "I'm Colin. You can't believe it. I scarcely
can myself. I'm Colin."

Like Mrs. Medlock, he did not understand what his father meant
when he said hurriedly:

"In the garden! In the garden!"

"Yes," hurried on Colin. "It was the garden that did it--and
Mary and Dickon and the creatures--and the Magic. No one knows. We
kept it to tell you when you came. I'm well, I can beat Mary in a
race. I'm going to be an athlete."

He said it all so like a healthy boy--his face flushed, his
words tumbling over each other in his eagerness--that Mr. Craven's
soul shook with unbelieving joy.

Colin put out his hand and laid it on his father's arm.

"Aren't you glad, Father?" he ended. "Aren't you glad? I'm
going to live forever and ever and ever!"

Mr. Craven put his hands on both the boy's shoulders and held
him still. He knew he dared not even try to speak for a moment.

"Take me into the garden, my boy," he said at last. "And tell me
all about it."

And so they led him in.

The place was a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet
blue and flaming scarlet and on every side were sheaves of late
lilies standing together--lilies which were white or white and ruby.
He remembered well when the first of them had been planted that just
at this season of the year their late glories should reveal
themselves. Late roses climbed and hung and clustered and the
sunshine deepening the hue of the yellowing trees made one feel that
one, stood in an embowered temple of gold. The newcomer stood silent
just as the children had done when they came into its grayness. He
looked round and round.

"I thought it would be dead," he said."

"Mary thought so at first," said Colin. "But it came alive."

Then they sat down under their tree--all but Colin, who wanted
to stand while he told the story.

It was the strangest thing he had ever heard, Archibald Craven
thought, as it was poured forth in headlong boy fashion. Mystery and
Magic and wild creatures, the weird midnight meeting--the coming of
the spring--the passion of insulted pride which had dragged the young
Rajah to his feet to defy old Ben Weatherstaff to his face. The odd
companionship, the play acting, the great secret so carefully kept.
The listener laughed until tears came into his eyes and sometimes
tears came into his eyes when he was not laughing. The Athlete, the
Lecturer, the Scientific Discoverer was a laughable, lovable, healthy
young human thing.

"Now," he said at the end of the story, "it need not be a secret
any more. I dare say it will frighten them nearly into fits when
they see me--but I am never going to get into the chair again. I
shall walk back with you, Father--to the house."

Ben Weatherstaff's duties rarely took him away from the gardens,
but on this occasion he made an excuse to carry some vegetables to
the kitchen and being invited into the servants' hall by Mrs. Medlock
to drink a glass of beer he was on the spot--as he had hoped to
be--when the most dramatic event Misselthwaite Manor had seen during
the present generation actually took place. One of the windows
looking upon the courtyard gave also a glimpse of the lawn. Mrs.
Medlock, knowing Ben had come from the gardens, hoped that he might
have caught sight of his master and even by chance of his meeting
with Master Colin.

"Did you see either of them, Weatherstaff?" she asked.

Ben took his beer-mug from his mouth and wiped his lips with the
back of his hand.

"Aye, that I did," he answered with a shrewdly significant
air.

"Both of them?" suggested Mrs. Medlock.

"Both of 'em," returned Ben Weatherstaff. "Thank ye kindly,
ma'am, I could sup up another mug of it."

"Together?" said Mrs. Medlock, hastily overfilling his beer-mug
in her excitement.

"Together, ma'am," and Ben gulped down half of his new mug at
one gulp.

"Where was Master Colin? How did he look? What did they say to
each other?"

"I didna' hear that," said Ben, "along o' only bein' on th'
stepladder lookin, over th' wall. But I'll tell thee this. There's
been things goin' on outside as you house people knows nowt about.
An' what tha'll find out tha'll find out soon."

And it was not two minutes before he swallowed the last of his
beer and waved his mug solemnly toward the window which took in
through the shrubbery a piece of the lawn.

"Look there," he said, "if tha's curious. Look what's comin'
across th' grass."

When Mrs. Medlock looked she threw up her hands and gave a
little shriek and every man and woman servant within hearing bolted
across the servants' hall and stood looking through the window with
their eyes almost starting out of their heads.

Across the lawn came the Master of Misselthwaite and he looked
as many of them had never seen him. And by his, side with his head
up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and
steadily as any boy in Yorkshire--Master Colin.