Martha looked indignant.
“Well, try it.”
“Why don’t you take that to your brothers?” suggested Mary.
“It’s not mine,” answered Martha stoutly.
Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade.
“Put on warm clothes and play outside,” said Martha. “It’ll do you good.”
Mary went to the window. There were gardens and paths and big trees, but everything looked dull and wintry.
“Who will go with me?” she inquired.
Martha stared.
“You’ll go alone,” she answered. “You’ll learn to play like other children do when they haven’t got sisters and brothers. Our Dickon goes off on the moor by himself and plays for hours. That’s how he made friends with the pony. He’s got sheep on the moor that knows him, and birds.”
Mary decided to go out.
“If you go round that way you’ll come to the gardens,” Martha said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. “There are a lot of flowers in summer-time in that place. But one of the gardens is locked up. No one goes there.”
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Mr. Craven shut it when his wife died so suddenly. He didn’t let anyone go inside. It was her garden. He locked the door and dug a hole and buried the key. Oh! There’s Mrs. Medlock’s bell ringing-I must run.”
After she was gone Mary turned down the walk[13] which led to the door in the shrubbery. She was thinking about the secret garden. She wondered what it looked like and whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens, with wide lawns and winding walks with borders. There were trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens, and a large pool with an old gray fountain in its midst. But the flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing.
She went toward the wall and found that there was a green door in the ivy. This was not the closed garden, evidently. She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens. She saw another open green door, revealing bushes and pathways. The place was bare and ugly enough, Mary thought.
Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the door leading from the second garden. He saw Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly old face. She was displeased with his garden.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“One of the kitchen-gardens,” he answered.
“What is that?” said Mary, pointing through the other green door.
“Another of them. There’s another on the other side of the wall and there is the orchard the other side of that.”
“Can I go in them?” asked Mary.
“If you like. But there is nothing to see there.”
Mary made no response. She went down the path and through the second green door. There she found more walls and winter vegetables and glass frames, but in the second wall there was another green door and it was not open. Perhaps it led into the secret garden. Mary went to the green door and turned the handle. The door opened quite easily and she walked through it and found herself in an orchard. She saw a bird with a bright red breast sitting on the branch. Suddenly the bird sang its winter song.
She stopped and listened to the bird and somehow its cheerful, friendly little whistle gave her a pleased feeling. Even a disagreeable little girl may be lonely. She was desolate, and the bright-breasted little bird looked into her sour little face which was almost a smile. She listened to it until it flew away. It was not like an Indian bird and she liked it. Perhaps it lived in the mysterious garden and knew all about it.
Mary was curious about it and wanted to see what it was like. Why did Mr. Archibald Craven bury the key? If he liked his wife so much why does he hate her garden?
“People never like me and I never like people,” she thought. “And I can never talk as the Crawford children can. They are always talking and laughing and making noises.”
She walked back into the first kitchen-garden and found the old man digging there. She went and stood beside him and watched him.
“I visited the other gardens,” she said.
“So what?” he asked crustily.
“I went into the orchard.”
“There was no dog at the door to bite you,” he answered.
“There was no door there into the other garden,” said Mary.
“What garden?” he said in a rough voice.
“The one on the other side of the wall,” answered Mistress Mary. “There are trees there-I saw the tops of them. A bird with a red breast was sitting on one of them and singing.”
To her surprise the surly face actually changed its expression. A slow smile spread over it and the gardener looked quite different. It was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled.
He began to whistle. Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. The bird with the red breast flew to them, and alighted near to the gardener’s foot.
Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at it.
“I’m lonely,” she said.
The old gardener stared at her.
“Are you that little wench from India?” he asked.
Mary nodded.
He began to dig again.
“What is your name?” Mary inquired.
“Ben Weatherstaff,” he answered, and then he added with a surly chuckle, “I’m lonely myself except when he’s with me,” and he jerked his thumb toward the robin. “He’s the only friend I’ve got.”
“I have no friends at all,” said Mary. “I never had. My Ayah didn’t like me and I never played with anyone.”
Suddenly a little sound broke out near her and she turned round. The bird was singing.
“Will you make friends with me?” Mary said to the robin. “Will you?”
“Why,” Ben Weatherstaff cried out, “you are a real child instead of a sharp old woman. You talk like Dickon talks to his animals on the moor.”
“Do you know Dickon?” Mary asked.
“Everybody knows him. Dickon is wandering about everywhere. Blackberries and heather-bells know him. Foxes shows him where their cubs lie, skylarks don’t hide their nests from him.”
Chapter V
The cry in the corridor
Each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the others. Every morning she awoke in her room and found Martha. Every morning she ate her breakfast in the nursery. After each breakfast she gazed out of the window across to the huge moor. Then she went out. She began to walk quickly or even run along the paths.
One day she woke up and was hungry. When she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it.
Then she went out. There was nothing else to do. She walked round and round the gardens and wandered about the paths in the park.
One place she went to oftener than to any other. It was the long walk outside the gardens with the walls round them. There were bare flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly. There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere.
“Where is that secret garden?” she said to herself.
She ran up the walk to the green door. Then she ran down the path through the other door and then into the orchard.
She walked round and looked closely at the side of the orchard wall, but there was no door in it. Then she ran through the kitchen-gardens again and out into the walk outside the long ivy-covered wall. She walked to the end of it and looked at it, but there was no door; and then she walked to the other end, looking again, but there was no door.
“It’s very queer,” she said. “Ben Weatherstaff said there was no door and there is no door. But Mr. Craven buried the key.”
She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable.
“Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?” she asked Martha.
“Do you think about that garden?” said Martha.
“Why did he hate it?” Mary persisted.
“Mrs. Medlock says it’s not to be talked about[14]. There are lots of things in this place not to be talked over. That’s Mr. Craven’s order. Listen. It was Mrs. Craven’s garden and she loved it very much. They were planting flowers together. And nobody came into that garden. Mr. Craven and his wife shut the door and stayed there hours and hours, reading and talking. And there was an old tree with a branch. She liked to sit on that branch. But one day when she was sitting there, the branch broke and she fell on the ground and was hurt. Then she died. That’s why he hates it. No one goes there, and he doesn’t let anyone talk about it.”