“They’re two young ’uns growin’ fast, an’ health’s comin’ back to both of ’em.Children like that feels like young wolves an’ food’s flesh an’ blood to ’em,” said Mrs. Sowerby.Then she smiled Dickon’s own curving smile. “Eh!but they’re enjoyin’ theirselves for sure,” she said.
She was quite right, the comfortable wonderful mother creature—and she had never been more so than when she said their “play actin’” would be their joy.Colin and Mary found it one of their most thrilling sources of entertainment.The idea of protecting themselves from suspicion had been unconsciously suggested to them first by the puzzled nurse and then by Dr. Craven himself.
“Your appetite. Is improving very much, Master Colin,” the nurse had said one day.“You used to eat nothing, and so many things disagreed with you.”
“Nothing disagrees with me now” replied Colin,and then seeing the nurse looking at him curiously he suddenly remembered that perhaps he ought not to appear too well just yet.“At least things don’t so often disagree with me. It’s the fresh air.”
“Perhaps it is,” said the nurse, still looking at him with a mystified expression.“But I must talk to Dr. Craven about it.”
“How she stared at you!” said Mary when she went away. “As if she thought there must be something to find out.”
“I won’t have her finding out things,” said Colin. “No one must begin to find out yet.”
When Dr. Craven came that morning he seemed puzzled, also. He asked a number of questions, to Colin’s great annoyance.
“You stay out in the garden a great deal,” he suggested. “Where do you go?”
Colin put on his favorite air of dignified indifference to opinion.
“I will not let anyone know where I go,” he answered. “I go to a place I like.Everyone has orders to keep out of the way. I won’t be watched and stared at. You know that!”
“You seem to be out all day but I do not think it has done you harm—I do not think so.The nurse says that you eat much more than you have ever done before.”
“Perhaps,” said Colin, prompted by a sudden inspiration, “perhaps it is an unnatural appetite.”
“I do not think so, as your food seems to agree with you,” said Dr. Craven.“You are gaining flesh rapidly and your color is better.”
“Perhaps—perhaps I am bloated and feverish,” said Colin, assuming a discouraging air of gloom.“People who are not going to live are often—different.”
Dr. Craven shook his head. He was holding Colin’s wrist and he pushed up his sleeve and felt his arm.
“You are not feverish,” he said thoughtfully, “and such flesh as you have gained is healthy.If you can keep this up, my boy, we need not talk of dying.Your father will be happy to hear of this remarkable improvement.”
“I won’t have him told!” Colin broke forth fiercely. “It will only disappoint him if I get worse again—and I may get worse this very night.I might have a raging fever. I feel as if I might be beginning to have one now.I won’t have letters written to my father—I won’t—I won’t!You are making me angry and you know that is bad for me. I feel hot already.I hate being written about and being talked over as much as I hate being stared at!”
“Hush-h!my boy,” Dr. Craven soothed him. “Nothing shall be written without your permission.You are too sensitive about things. You must not undo the good which has been done.”
He said no more about writing to Mr. Craven and when he saw the nurse he privately warned her that such a possibility must not be mentioned to the patient.
“The boy is extraordinarily better,” he said. “His advance seems almost abnormal.But of course he is doing now of his own free will what we could not make him do before. Still,he excites himself very easily and nothing must be said to irritate him.”
Mary and Colin were much alarmed and talked together anxiously.From this time dated their plan of “play actin’.”
“I may be obliged to have a tantrum,” said Colin regretfully.“I don’t want to have one and I’m not miserable enough now to work myself into a big one.Perhaps I couldn’t have one at all. That lump doesn’t come in my throat now and I keep thinking of nice things instead of horrible ones.But if they talk about writing to my father I shall have to do something.”
He made up his mind to eat less, but unfortunately it was not possible to carry out this brilliant idea when he wakened each morning with an amazing appetite and the table near his sofa was set with a breakfast of home-made bread and fresh butter, snow-white eggs, raspberry jam and clotted cream. Mary always breakfasted with him and when they found themselves at the table—particularly if there were delicate slices of sizzling ham sending forth tempting odors from under a hot silver cover—they would look into each other’s eyes in desperation.
“I think we shall have to eat it all this morning, Mary,” Colin always ended by saying.“We can send away some of the lunch and a great deal of the dinner.”
But they never found they could send away anything and the highly polished condition of the empty plates returned to the pantry awakened much comment.
“I do wish,” Colin would say also, “I do wish the slices of ham were thicker,and one muffin each is not enough for anyone.”
“It’s enough for a person who is going to die,” answered Mary when first she heard this,“but it’s not enough for a person who is going to live.I sometimes feel as if I could eat three when those nice fresh heather and gorse smells from the moor come pouring in at the open window. ”
The morning that Dickon—after they had been enjoying themselves in the garden for about two hours—went behind a big rosebush and brought forth two tin pails and revealed that one was full of rich new milk with cream on the top of it, and that the other held cottage-made currant buns folded in a clean blue and white napkin, buns so carefully tucked in that they were still hot, there was a riot of surprised joyfulness. What a wonderful thing for Mrs. Sowerby to think of!What a kind, clever woman she must be!How good the buns were!And what delicious fresh milk!
“Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon,” said Colin.“It makes her think of ways to do things—nice things. She is a Magic person.Tell her we are grateful, Dickon—extremely grateful.”
He was given to using rather grown-up phrases at times. He enjoyed them.He liked this so much that he improved upon it.
“Tell her she has been most bounteous and our gratitude is extreme.”
And then forgetting his grandeur he fell to and stuffed himself with buns and drank milk out of the pail in copious draughts in the manner of any hungry little boy who had been taking unusual exercise and breathing in moorland air and whose breakfast was more than two hours behind him.
This was the beginning of many agreeable incidents of the same kind.They actually awoke to the fact that as Mrs.Sowerby had fourteen people to provide food for she might not have enough to satisfy two extra appetites every day.So they asked her to let them send some of their shillings to buy things.
Dickon made the stimulating discovery that in the wood in the park outside the garden where Mary had first found him piping to the wild creatures there was a deep little hollow where you could build a sort of tiny oven with stones and roast potatoes and eggs in it. Roasted eggs were a previously unknown luxury and very hot potatoes with salt and fresh butter in them were fit for a woodland king—besides being deliciously satisfying. You could buy both potatoes and eggs and eat as many as you liked without feeling as if you were taking food out of the mouths of fourteen people.
Every beautiful morning the Magic was worked by the mystic circle under the plum-tree which provided a canopy of thickening green leaves after its brief blossom-time was ended. After the ceremony Colin always took his walking exercise and throughout the day he exercised his newly found power at intervals. Each day he grew stronger and could walk more steadily and cover more ground. And each day his belief in the Magic grew stronger—as well it might. He tried one experiment after another as he felt himself gaining strength and it was Dickon who showed him the best things of all.
“Yesterday,” he said one morning after an absence,“I went to Thwaite for mother an’ near th’ Blue Cow Inn I seed Bob Haworth.He’s the strongest chap on th’ moor. He’s the champion wrestler an’ he can jump higher than any other chap an’ throw th’ hammer farther.He’s gone all th’ way to Scotland for th’ sports some years.He’s knowed me ever since I was a little ’un an’ he’s a friendly sort an’ I axed him some questions.Th’ gentry calls him a athlete and I thought o’ thee, Mester Colin, and I says,‘How did tha’ make tha’ muscles stick out that way, Bob?Did tha’ do anythin’ extra to make thysel’ so strong?’ An’ he says ‘Well, yes, lad, I did. A strong man in a show that came to Thwaite once showed me how to exercise my arms an’ legs an’ every muscle in my body.An’ I says, ‘Could a delicate chap make himself stronger with’em, Bob?’ an’ he laughed an’ says, ‘Art tha’ th’ delicate chap?’ an’ I says, ‘No, but I knows a young gentleman that’s gettin’ well of a long illness an’ I wish I knowed some o’ them tricks to tell him about.’ I didn’t say no names an’ he didn’t ask none.He’s friendly same as I said an’ he stood up an’ showed me good-natured like,an’ I imitated what he did till I knowed it by heart.”
Colin had been listening excitedly.
“Can you show me?” he cried. “Will you?”
“Aye, to be sure,” Dickon answered, getting up.“But he says tha’ mun do ’em gentle at first an’ be careful not to tire thysel’.Rest in between times an’ take deep breaths an’ don’t overdo.”
“I’ll be careful,” said Colin. “Show me!Show me!Dickon, you are the most Magic boy in the world!”
Dickon stood up on the grass and slowly went through a carefully practical but simple series of muscle exercises.Colin watched them with widening eyes. He could do a few while he was sitting down.Presently he did a few gently while he stood upon his already steadied feet.Mary began to do them also. Soot, who was watching the performance,became much disturbed and left his branch and hopped about restlessly because he could not do them too.
From that time the exercises were part of the day’s duties as much as the Magic was.It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried,and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived they would have been lost.But the little oven in the hollow and Mrs. Sowerby’s bounties were so satisfying that Mrs.Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again.You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oatcakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.
“They are eating next to nothing,” said the nurse.“They’ll die of starvation if they can’t be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet see how they look.”
“Look!” exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. “Eh!I’m moithered to death with them. They’re a pair of young Satans.Bursting their jackets one day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can tempt them with.Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread sauce did they set a fork into yesterday—and the poor woman fair _invented_ a pudding for them—and back it’s sent. She almost cried. She’s afraid she’ll be blamed if they starve themselves into their graves.”
Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully,He wore an extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him and showed him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to look at—but it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin’s sofa and examined him. He had been called to London on business and had not seen the boy for nearly two weeks. When young things begin to gain health they gain it rapidly. The waxen tinge had left, Colins skin and a warm rose showed through it; his beautiful eyes were clear and the hollows under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out. His once dark, heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily from his forehead and were soft and warm with life. His lips were fuller and of a normal color. In fact as an imitation of a boy who was a confirmed invalid he was a disgraceful sight. Dr. Craven held his chin in his hand and thought him over.
“I am sorry to hear that you do not eat anything,” he said. “That will not do.You will lose all you have gained—and you have gained amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago.”
“I told you it was an unnatural appetite,” answered Colin.
Mary was sitting on her stool nearby and she suddenly made a very queer sound which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost choking.
“What is the matter?” said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her.
Mary became quite severe in her manner.
“It was something between a sneeze and a cough,” she replied with reproachful dignity, “and it got into my throat.”
“But,” she said afterward to Colin, “I couldn’t stop myself.It just burst out because all at once I couldn’t help remembering that last big potato you ate and the way your mouth stretched when you bit through that thick lovely crust with jam and clotted cream on it.”
“Is there any way in which those children can get food secretly?” Dr. Craven inquired of Mrs. Medlock.
“There’s no way unless they dig it out of the earth or pick it off the trees,” Mrs.Medlock answered. “They stay out in the grounds all day and see no one but each other.And if they want anything different to eat from what’s sent up to them they need only ask for it.”
“Well,” said Dr. Craven, “so long as going without food agrees with them we need not disturb ourselves. The boy is a new creature.”
“So is the girl,” said Mrs. Medlock. “She’s begun to be downright pretty since she’s filled out and lost her ugly little sour look.Her hair’s grown thick and healthy looking and she’s got a bright color. The glummest,ill-natured little thing she used to be and now her and Master Colin laugh together like a pair of crazy young ones. Perhaps they’re growing fat on that.”
“Perhaps they are,” said Dr. Craven. “Let them laugh.”
CHAPTER XXV. THE CURTAIN
And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.In the robin’s nest there were Eggs and the robin’s mate sat upon them keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings.At first she was very nervous and the robin himself was indignantly watchful.Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days,but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves—nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them—the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end—if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his mate knew they knew it.
At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety.For some mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon.The first moment he set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a stranger but a sort of robin without beak or feathers.He could speak robin (which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for any other).To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman.Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself,so the queer gibberish he used when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least.The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent enough to understand feathered speech.His movements also were robin. They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous or threatening.Any robin could understand Dickon, so his presence was not even disturbing.
But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other two.In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden on his legs.He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of wild animals were thrown over him.That in itself was doubtful. Then when he began to stand up and move about he did it in a queer unaccustomed way and the others seemed to have to help him.The robin used to secrete himself in a bush and watch this anxiously,his head tilted first on one side and then on the other.He thought that the slow movements might mean that he was preparing to pounce, as cats do.When cats are preparing to pounce they creep over the ground very slowly.The robin talked this over with his mate a great deal for a few days but after that he decided not to speak of the subject because her terror was so great that he was afraid it might be injurious to the Eggs.
When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it was an immense relief.But for a long time—or it seemed a long time to the robin—he was a source of some anxiety.He did not act as the other humans did.He seemed very fond of walking but he had a way of sitting or lying down for a while and then getting up in a disconcerting manner to begin again.
One day the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to learn to fly by his parents he had done much the same sort of thing.He had taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to rest.So it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly—or rather to walk.He mentioned this to his mate and when he told her that the Eggs would probably conduct themselves in the same way after they were fledged she was quite comforted and even became eagerly interested and derived great pleasure from watching the boy over the edge of her nest—though she always thought that the Eggs would be much cleverer and learn more quickly. But then she said indulgently that humans were always more clumsy and slow than Eggs and most of them never seemed really to learn to fly at all. You never met them in the air or on tree-tops.
After a while the boy began to move about as the others did,but all three of the children at times did unusual things.They would stand under the trees and move their arms and legs and heads about in a way which was neither walking nor running nor sitting down.They went through these movements at intervals every day and the robin was never able to explain to his mate what they were doing or tying to do.He could only say that he was sure that the Eggs would never flap about in such a manner;but as the boy who could speak robin so fluently was doing the thing with them,birds could be quite sure that the actions were not of a dangerous nature.Of course neither the robin nor his mate had ever heard of the champion wrestler, Bob Haworth,and his exercises for making the muscles stand out like lumps. Robins are not like human beings;their muscles are always exercised from the first and so they develop themselves in a natural manner.If you have to fly about to find every meal you eat,your muscles do not become atrophied (atrophied means wasted away through want of use).
When the boy was walking and running about and digging and weeding like the others,the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace and content.Fears for the Eggs became things of the past.Knowing that your Eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the fact that you could watch so many curious things going on made setting a most entertaining occupation. On wet days the Eggs’ mother sometimes felt even a little dull because the children did not come into the garden.
But even on wet days it could not be said that Mary and Colin were dull.One morning when the rain streamed down unceasingly and Colin was beginning to feel a little restive,as he was obliged to remain on his sofa because it was not safe to get up and walk about, Mary had an inspiration.
“Now that I am a real boy,” Colin had said,“my legs and arms and all my body are so full of Magic that I can’t keep them still.They want to be doing things all the time. Do you know that when I waken in the morning, Mary,when it’s quite early and the birds are just shouting outside and everything seems just shouting for joy—even the trees and things we can’t really hear—I feel as if I must jump out of bed and shout myself. If I did it, just think what would happen!”
Mary giggled inordinately.
“The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and they would be sure you had gone crazy and they’d send for the doctor, ” she said.
Colin giggled himself. He could see how they would all look—how horrified by his outbreak and how amazed to see him standing upright.
“I wish my father would come home,” he said. “I want to tell him myself.I’m always thinking about it—but we couldn’t go on like this much longer.I can’t stand lying still and pretending, and besides I look too different. I wish it wasn’t raining today.”
It was then Mistress Mary had her inspiration.
“Colin,” she began mysteriously, “do you know how many rooms there are in this house?”
“About a thousand, I suppose,” he answered.
“There’s about a hundred no one ever goes into,” said Mary.“And one rainy day I went and looked into ever so many of them. No one ever knew, though Mrs.Medlock nearly found me out. I lost my way when I was coming back and I stopped at the end of your corridor.That was the second time I heard you crying.”
Colin started up on his sofa.
“A hundred rooms no one goes into,” he said. “It sounds almost like a secret garden.Suppose we go and look at them. Wheel me in my chair and nobody would know we went.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Mary. “No one would dare to follow us.There are galleries where you could run. We could do our exercises.There is a little Indian room where there is a cabinet full of ivory elephants. There are all sorts of rooms.”
“Ring the bell,” said Colin.
When the nurse came in he gave his orders.
“I want my chair,” he said. “Miss Mary and I are going to look at the part of the house which is not used.John can push me as far as the picture-gallery because there are some stairs.Then he must go away and leave us alone until I send for him again.”
Rainy days lost their terrors that morning.When the footman had wheeled the chair into the picture-gallery and left the two together in obedience to orders,Colin and Mary looked at each other delighted.As soon as Mary had made sure that John was really on his way back to his own quarters below stairs, Colin got out of his chair.
“I am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other,” he said,“and then I am going to jump and then we will do Bob Haworth’s exercises.”
And they did all these things and many others.They looked at the portraits and found the plain little girl dressed in green brocade and holding the parrot on her finger.
“All these,” said Colin, “must be my relations. They lived a long time ago. That parrot one,I believe, is one of my great, great, great, great aunts. She looks rather like you,Mary—not as you look now but as you looked when you came here.Now you are a great deal fatter and better looking.”
“So are you,” said Mary, and they both laughed.
They went to the Indian room and amused themselves with the ivory elephants.They found the rose-colored brocade boudoir and the hole in the cushion the mouse had left,but the mice had grown up and run away and the hole was empty.They saw more rooms and made more discoveries than Mary had made on her first pilgrimage.They found new corridors and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they liked and weird old things they did not know the use of.It was a curiously entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were miles away from them was a fascinating thing.
“I’m glad we came,” Colin said. “I never knew I lived in such a big queer old place. I like it.We will ramble about every rainy day. We shall always be finding new queer corners and things.”
That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that when they returned to Colin’s room it was not possible to send the luncheon away untouched.
When the nurse carried the tray downstairs she slapped it down on the kitchen dresser so that Mrs.Loomis, the cook, could see the highly polished dishes and plates.
“Look at that!” she said. “This is a house of mystery, and those two children are the greatest mysteries in it.”
“If they keep that up every day,” said the strong young footman John,“there’d be small wonder that he weighs twice as much today as he did a month ago.I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of doing my muscles an injury.”
That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin’s room.She had noticed it the day before but had said nothing because she thought the change might have been made by chance.She said nothing today but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the mantel.She could look at it because the curtain had been drawn aside. That was the change she noticed.
“I know what you want me to tell you,” said Colin, after she had stared a few minutes.“I always know when you want me to tell you something.You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it like that.”
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Because it doesn’t make me angry any more to see her laughing.I wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the Magic was filling the room and making everything so splendid that I couldn’t lie still. I got up and looked out of the window. The room was quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain and somehow that made me go and pull the cord. She looked right down at me as if she were laughing because she was glad I was standing there. It made me like to look at her. I want to see her laughing like that all the time. I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps.”
“You are so like her now,” said Mary, “that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost made into a boy. ”
That idea seemed to impress Colin. He thought it over and then answered her slowly.
“If I were her ghost—my father would be fond of me,” he said.
“Do you want him to be fond of you?” inquired Mary.
“I used to hate it because he was not fond of me.If he grew fond of me I think I should tell him about the Magic. It might make him more cheerful.”
CHAPTER XXVI. “IT’S MOTHER!”
Their belief in the Magic was an abiding thing.After the morning’s incantations Colin sometimes gave them Magic lectures.
“I like to do it,” he explained, “because when I grow up and make great scientific discoveries I shall be obliged to lecture about them and so this is practise.I can only give short lectures now because I am very young,and besides Ben Weatherstaff would feel as if he were in church and he would go to sleep.”
“Th’ best thing about lecturin’,” said Ben,“is that a chap can get up an’ say aught he pleases an’ no other chap can answer him back.I wouldn’t be agen’ lecturin’ a bit mysel’ sometimes.”
But when Colin held forth under his tree old Ben fixed devouring eyes on him and kept them there.He looked him over with critical affection.It was not so much the lecture which interested him as the legs which looked straighter and stronger each day,the boyish head which held itself up so well,the once sharp chin and hollow cheeks which had filled and rounded out and the eyes which had begun to hold the light he remembered in another pair.Sometimes when Colin felt Ben’s earnest gaze meant that he was much impressed he wondered what he was reflecting on and once when he had seemed quite entranced he questioned him.
“What are you thinking about, Ben Weatherstaff?” he asked.
“I was thinkin’” answered Ben, “as I’d warrant tha’s gone up three or four pound this week.I was lookin’ at tha’ calves an’ tha’ shoulders. I’d like to get thee on a pair o’ scales.”
“It’s the Magic and—and Mrs. Sowerby’s buns and milk and things,” said Colin.“You see the scientific experiment has succeeded.”
That morning Dickon was too late to hear the lecture.When he came he was ruddy with running and his funny face looked more twinkling than usual.As they had a good deal of weeding to do after the rains they fell to work.They always had plenty to do after a warm deep sinking rain.The moisture which was good for the flowers was also good for the weeds which thrust up tiny blades of grass and points of leaves which must be pulled up before their roots took too firm hold. Colin was as good at weeding as anyone in these days and he could lecture while he was doing it.
“The Magic works best when you work, yourself,” he said this morning.“You can feel it in your bones and muscles. I am going to read books about bones and muscles,but I am going to write a book about Magic. I am making it up now. I keep finding out things.”
It was not very long after he had said this that he laid down his trowel and stood up on his feet.He had been silent for several minutes and they had seen that he was thinking out lectures,as he often did. When he dropped his trowel and stood upright it seemed to Mary and Dickon as if a sudden strong thought had made him do it.He stretched himself out to his tallest height and he threw out his arms exultantly.Color glowed in his face and his strange eyes widened with joyfulness.All at once he had realized something to the full.