Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden

F >> Frances Hodgson Burnett >> The Secret Garden

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

[Illustration: "IT SEEMED SCARCELY BEARABLE TO LEAVE SUCH
DELIGHTFULNESS"--_Page 231_]

THE
SECRET GARDEN

BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

_Author of_

"_The Shuttle_," "_The Making of a Marchioness_," "_The Methods of Lady
Walderhurst_," "_That Lass o' Lowries_," "_Through One Administration_,"
"_Little Lord Fauntleroy_" "_A Lady of Quality_," etc.

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

_Copyright, 1911, by_
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

_Copyright, 1910, 1911, by_
THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING CO.

_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian._

_August, 1911._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I THERE IS NO ONE LEFT 1
II MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY 10
III ACROSS THE MOOR 23
IV MARTHA 30
V THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR 55
VI "THERE WAS SOME ONE CRYING--THERE WAS!" 65
VII THE KEY OF THE GARDEN 75
VIII THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY 85
IX THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN 97
X DICKON 111
XI THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH 128
XII "MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?" 140
XIII "I AM COLIN" 153
XIV A YOUNG RAJAH 172
XV NEST BUILDING 189
XVI "I WON'T!" SAID MARY 207
XVII A TANTRUM 218
XVIII "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME" 229
XIX "IT HAS COME!" 239
XX "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!" 255
XXI BEN WEATHERSTAFF 268
XXII WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN 284
XXIII MAGIC 292
XXIV "LET THEM LAUGH" 310
XXV THE CURTAIN 328
XXVI "IT'S MOTHER!" 339
XXVII IN THE GARDEN 353

THE SECRET GARDEN

CHAPTER I

THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle
everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It
was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin
light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was
yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one
way or another. Her father had held a position under the English
Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had
been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself
with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary
was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to
understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the
child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly,
fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she
became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way
also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces
of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her
and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be
angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years
old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The
young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked
her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other
governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter
time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to
know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.

One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she
awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw
that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.

"Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman. "I will not let you
stay. Send my Ayah to me."

The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could
not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked
her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not
possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done
in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing,
while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared
faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come. She
was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last she wandered
out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree near the
veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck
big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth, all the time
growing more and more angry and muttering to herself the things she
would say and the names she would call Saidie when she returned.

"Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call a native a pig
is the worst insult of all.

She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she
heard her mother come out on the veranda with some one. She was with a
fair young man and they stood talking together in low strange voices.
Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy. She had heard that
he was a very young officer who had just come from England. The child
stared at him, but she stared most at her mother. She always did this
when she had a chance to see her, because the Mem Sahib--Mary used to
call her that oftener than anything else--was such a tall, slim, pretty
person and wore such lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly silk and
she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things, and
she had large laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and floating, and
Mary said they were "full of lace." They looked fuller of lace than ever
this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all. They were large and
scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy officer's face.

"Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her say.

"Awfully," the young man answered in a trembling voice. "Awfully, Mrs.
Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago."

The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.

"Oh, I know I ought!" she cried. "I only stayed to go to that silly
dinner party. What a fool I was!"

At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the
servants' quarters that she clutched the young man's arm, and Mary stood
shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.

"What is it? What is it?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.

"Some one has died," answered the boy officer. "You did not say it had
broken out among your servants."

"I did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with me! Come with me!" and
she turned and ran into the house.

After that appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the
morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its most
fatal form and people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill
in the night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had
wailed in the huts. Before the next day three other servants were dead
and others had run away in terror. There was panic on every side, and
dying people in all the bungalows.

During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself
in the nursery and was forgotten by every one. Nobody thought of her,
nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she knew
nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She only
knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening
sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though a
partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and plates looked as
if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly for
some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty
she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and
she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely
drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again,
frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of
feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes
open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for a long time.

Many things happened during the hours in which she slept so heavily, but
she was not disturbed by the wails and the sound of things being carried
in and out of the bungalow.

When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was
perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She
heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got
well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who
would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new Ayah,
and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired
of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She was not
an affectionate child and had never cared much for any one. The noise
and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and
she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive.
Every one was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was
fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered
nothing but themselves. But if every one had got well again, surely some
one would remember and come to look for her.

But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more
and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when
she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her
with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he was a harmless
little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry to get out
of the room. He slipped under the door as she watched him.

"How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if there was no one
in the bungalow but me and the snake."

Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on
the veranda. They were men's footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow
and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to them and they
seemed to open doors and look into rooms.

"What desolation!" she heard one voice say. "That pretty, pretty woman!
I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever
saw her."

Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the door
a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and was
frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel disgracefully
neglected. The first man who came in was a large officer she had once
seen talking to her father. He looked tired and troubled, but when he
saw her he was so startled that he almost jumped back.

"Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child alone! In a
place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"

"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly.
She thought the man was very rude to call her father's bungalow "A place
like this!" "I fell asleep when every one had the cholera and I have
only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?"

"It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man, turning to his
companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"

"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. "Why does nobody
come?"

The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even
thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.

"Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."

It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had
neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away
in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had
left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even
remembering that there was a Missie Sahib. That was why the place was so
quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and
the little rustling snake.

CHAPTER II

MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY

Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she had thought
her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could scarcely
have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when she was
gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a
self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had
always done. If she had been older she would no doubt have been very
anxious at being left alone in the world, but she was very young, and as
she had always been taken care of, she supposed she always would be.
What she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to
nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as her
Ayah and the other native servants had done.

She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman's house
where she was taken at first. She did not want to stay. The English
clergyman was poor and he had five children nearly all the same age and
they wore shabby clothes and were always quarreling and snatching toys
from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow and was so
disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody would play
with her. By the second day they had given her a nickname which made her
furious.

It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little boy with
impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose and Mary hated him. She was
playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day
the cholera broke out. She was making heaps of earth and paths for a
garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he got
rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.

"Why don't you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a rockery?"
he said. "There in the middle," and he leaned over her to point.

"Go away!" cried Mary. "I don't want boys. Go away!"

For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was
always teasing his sisters. He danced round and round her and made faces
and sang and laughed.

"Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row."

He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the
crosser Mary got, the more they sang "Mistress Mary, quite contrary";
and after that as long as she stayed with them they called her "Mistress
Mary Quite Contrary" when they spoke of her to each other, and often
when they spoke to her.

"You are going to be sent home," Basil said to her, "at the end of the
week. And we're glad of it."

"I am glad of it, too," answered Mary. "Where is home?"

"She doesn't know where home is!" said Basil, with seven-year-old scorn.
"It's England, of course. Our grandmama lives there and our sister Mabel
was sent to her last year. You are not going to your grandmama. You have
none. You are going to your uncle. His name is Mr. Archibald Craven."

"I don't know anything about him," snapped Mary.

"I know you don't," Basil answered. "You don't know anything. Girls
never do. I heard father and mother talking about him. He lives in a
great, big, desolate old house in the country and no one goes near him.
He's so cross he won't let them, and they wouldn't come if he would let
them. He's a hunchback, and he's horrid."

"I don't believe you," said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her
fingers in her ears, because she would not listen any more.

But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when Mrs. Crawford
told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few
days and go to her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived at
Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested
that they did not know what to think about her. They tried to be kind to
her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs. Crawford attempted to
kiss her, and held herself stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her
shoulder.

"She is such a plain child," Mrs. Crawford said pityingly, afterward.
"And her mother was such a pretty creature. She had a very pretty
manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a
child. The children call her 'Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,' and though
it's naughty of them, one can't help understanding it."

"Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty
manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty
ways too. It is very sad, now the poor beautiful thing is gone, to
remember that many people never even knew that she had a child at all."

"I believe she scarcely ever looked at her," sighed Mrs. Crawford.
"When her Ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the little
thing. Think of the servants running away and leaving her all alone in
that deserted bungalow. Colonel McGrew said he nearly jumped out of his
skin when he opened the door and found her standing by herself in the
middle of the room."

Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer's
wife, who was taking her children to leave them in a boarding-school.
She was very much absorbed in her own little boy and girl, and was
rather glad to hand the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven
sent to meet her, in London. The woman was his housekeeper at
Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock. She was a stout
woman, with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes. She wore a very purple
dress, a black silk mantle with jet fringe on it and a black bonnet with
purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled when she moved her
head. Mary did not like her at all, but as she very seldom liked people
there was nothing remarkable in that; besides which it was very evident
Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.

"My word! she's a plain little piece of goods!" she said. "And we'd
heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn't handed much of it down,
has she, ma'am?"

"Perhaps she will improve as she grows older," the officer's wife said
good-naturedly. "If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression,
her features are rather good. Children alter so much."

"She'll have to alter a good deal," answered Mrs. Medlock. "And there's
nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite--if you ask me!"

They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a little
apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had gone to. She
was watching the passing buses and cabs, and people, but she heard quite
well and was made very curious about her uncle and the place he lived
in. What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like? What was a
hunchback? She had never seen one. Perhaps there were none in India.

Since she had been living in other people's houses and had had no Ayah,
she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were new
to her. She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to
any one even when her father and mother had been alive. Other children
seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never seemed
to really be any one's little girl. She had had servants, and food and
clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her. She did not know that
this was because she was a disagreeable child; but then, of course, she
did not know she was disagreeable. She often thought that other people
were, but she did not know that she was so herself.

She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever seen,
with her common, highly colored face and her common fine bonnet. When
the next day they set out on their journey to Yorkshire, she walked
through the station to the railway carriage with her head up and trying
to keep as far away from her as she could, because she did not want to
seem to belong to her. It would have made her very angry to think people
imagined she was her little girl.

But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her thoughts.
She was the kind of woman who would "stand no nonsense from young ones."
At least, that is what she would have said if she had been asked. She
had not wanted to go to London just when her sister Maria's daughter was
going to be married, but she had a comfortable, well paid place as
housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor and the only way in which she could
keep it was to do at once what Mr. Archibald Craven told her to do. She
never dared even to ask a question.

"Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera," Mr. Craven had said
in his short, cold way. "Captain Lennox was my wife's brother and I am
their daughter's guardian. The child is to be brought here. You must go
to London and bring her yourself."

So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.

Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and
fretful. She had nothing to read or to look at, and she had folded her
thin little black-gloved hands in her lap. Her black dress made her look
yellower than ever, and her limp light hair straggled from under her
black crepe hat.

"A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life," Mrs. Medlock
thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and pettish.) She
had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything; and at
last she got tired of watching her and began to talk in a brisk, hard
voice.

"I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are going
to," she said. "Do you know anything about your uncle?"

"No," said Mary.

"Never heard your father and mother talk about him?"

"No," said Mary frowning. She frowned because she remembered that her
father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular.
Certainly they had never told her things.

"Humph," muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive
little face. She did not say any more for a few moments and then she
began again.

"I suppose you might as well be told something--to prepare you. You are
going to a queer place."

Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather discomfited by
her apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on.

"Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven's
proud of it in his way--and that's gloomy enough, too. The house is six
hundred years old and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's near a
hundred rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked. And
there's pictures and fine old furniture and things that's been there for
ages, and there's a big park round it and gardens and trees with
branches trailing to the ground--some of them." She paused and took
another breath. "But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly.

Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded so unlike
India, and anything new rather attracted her. But she did not intend to
look as if she were interested. That was one of her unhappy,
disagreeable ways. So she sat still.

"Well," said Mrs. Medlock. "What do you think of it?"

"Nothing," she answered. "I know nothing about such places."

That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.

"Eh!" she said, "but you are like an old woman. Don't you care?"

"It doesn't matter," said Mary, "whether I care or not."

"You are right enough there," said Mrs. Medlock. "It doesn't. What
you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don't know, unless
because it's the easiest way. _He's_ not going to trouble himself about
you, that's sure and certain. He never troubles himself about no one."

She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.

"He's got a crooked back," she said. "That set him wrong. He was a sour
young man and got no good of all his money and big place till he was
married."

Mary's eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to
care. She had never thought of the hunchback's being married and she was
a trifle surprised. Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative
woman she continued with more interest. This was one way of passing some
of the time, at any rate.

"She was a sweet, pretty thing and he'd have walked the world over to
get her a blade o' grass she wanted. Nobody thought she'd marry him, but
she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she
didn't--she didn't," positively. "When she died--"

Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

"Oh! did she die!" she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had just
remembered a French fairy story she had once read called "Riquet a la
Houppe." It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess and
it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.

"Yes, she died," Mrs. Medlock answered. "And it made him queerer than
ever. He cares about nobody. He won't see people. Most of the time he
goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in the
West Wing and won't let any one but Pitcher see him. Pitcher's an old
fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his
ways."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18