The most absorbing thing, however,was the preparations to be made before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the garden. No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and more fixed in his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect that they had a secret. People must think that he was simply going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object to their looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks about their route. They would go up this path and down that one and cross the other and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they were looking at the “bedding-out plants” the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the long walls. It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of march made by great generals in time of war.
Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the invalid’s apartments had of course filtered through the servants’ hall into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from Master Colin’s room to the effect that he must report himself in the apartment no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to speak to him.
“Well, well,” he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat, “what’s to do now?His Royal Highness that wasn’t to be looked at calling up a man he’s never set eyes on.”
Mr. Roach was not without curiosity.He had never caught even a glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his uncanny looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard oftenest was that he might die at any moment and there had been numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by people who had never seen him.
“Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach,” said Mrs. Medlock,as she led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened the hitherto mysterious chamber.
“Let’s hope they’re changing for the better, Mrs.Medlock,” he answered.
“They couldn’t well change for the worse,” she continued; “and queer as it all is there’s them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand up under. Don’t you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the middle of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby’s Dickon more at home than you or me could ever be.”
There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon,as Mary always privately believed. When Mr.Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.
“He’d be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine,” he said. “And yet it’s not impudence, either.He’s just fine, is that lad.”
It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might have been startled.When the bedroom door was opened a large crow,which seemed quite at home perched on the high back of a carven chair,announced the entrance of a visitor by saying “Caw—Caw” quite loudly.In spite of Mrs. Medlock’s warning, Mr.Roach only just escaped being sufficiently undignified to jump backward.
The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on his sofa.He was sitting in an armchair and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail in feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A squirrel was perched on Dickon’s bent back attentively nibbling a nut. The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.
“Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin,” said Mrs. Medlock.
The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over—at least that was what the head gardener felt happened.
“Oh, you are Roach, are you?” he said. “I sent for you to give you some very important orders. ”
“Very good, sir,” answered Roach,wondering if he was to receive instructions to fell all the oaks in the park or to transform the orchards into water-gardens.
“I am going out in my chair this afternoon,” said Colin.“If the fresh air agrees with me I may go out every day.When I go, none of the gardeners are to be anywhere near the Long Walk by the garden walls. No one is to be there. I shall go out about two o’clock and everyone must keep away until I send word that they may go back to their work.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Mr. Roach,much relieved to hear that the oaks might remain and that the orchards were safe.
“Mary,” said Colin, turning to her,“what is that thing you say in India when you have finished talking and want people to go?”
“You say, ‘You have my permission to go, ’” answered Mary.
The Rajah waved his hand.
“You have my permission to go, Roach,” he said. “But,remember, this is very important.”
“Caw—Caw!” remarked the crow hoarsely but not impolitely.
“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Roach,and Mrs. Medlock took him out of the room.
Outside in the corridor,being a rather good-natured man,he smiled until he almost laughed.
“My word!” he said, “he’s got a fine lordly way with him, hasn’t he?You’d think he was a whole Royal Family rolled into one—Prince Consort and all. ”
“Eh!” protested Mrs. Medlock,“we’ve had to let him trample all over everyone of us ever since he had feet and he thinks that’s what folks was born for.”
“Perhaps he’ll grow out of it, if he lives,” suggested Mr. Roach.
“Well, there’s one thing pretty sure,” said Mrs.Medlock. “If he does live and that Indian child stays here I’ll warrant she teaches him that the whole orange does not belong to him, as Susan Sowerby says. And he’ll be likely to find out the size of his own quarter.”
Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.
“It’s all safe now,” he said.“And this afternoon I shall see it—this afternoon I shall be in it!”
Dickon went back to the garden with his creatures and Mary stayed with Colin.She did not think he looked tired but he was very quiet before their lunch came and he was quiet while they were eating it. She wondered why and asked him about it.
“What big eyes you’ve got, Colin,” she said.“When you are thinking they get as big as saucers.What are you thinking about now?”
“I can’t help thinking about what it will look like, ” he answered.
“The garden?” asked Mary.
“The springtime,” he said.“I was thinking that I’ve really never seen it before.I scarcely ever went out and when I did go I never looked at it.I didn’t even think about it.”
“I never saw it in India because there wasn’t any, ” said Mary.
Shut in and morbid as his life had been,Colin had more imagination than she had and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.
“That morning when you ran in and said ‘It’s come!It’s come!’, you made me feel quite queer.It sounded as if things were coming with a great procession and big bursts and wafts of music. I’ve a picture like it in one of my books—crowds of lovely people and children with garlands and branches with blossoms on them, everyone laughing and dancing and crowding and playing on pipes. That was why I said, ‘Perhaps we shall hear golden trumpets’ and told you to throw open the window.”
“How funny!” said Mary. “That’s really just what it feels like.And if all the flowers and leaves and green things and birds and wild creatures danced past at once, what a crowd it would be!I’m sure they’d dance and sing and flute and that would be the wafts of music. ”