Таинственный сад / The secret garden

“I don’t want it,” Mary said.

“You don’t want your porridge!” Martha exclaimed incredulously.

“No.”

“You don’t know how good it is.”

“I don’t want it,” repeated Mary.

“Eh!” said Martha. “If our children were at this table!”

“Why?” said Mary coldly.

“Why!” echoed Martha. “Because they are hungry as young hawks and foxes.”

“I don’t know what it is to be hungry,” said Mary.

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.”

Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire and listened to the wind. But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something else. It was a curious sound-a child was crying somewhere. But Mary was sure this sound was inside the house, not outside it. It was far away, but it was inside. She turned round and looked at Martha.

“Do you hear anyone crying?” she said.

Martha suddenly looked confused.

“No,” she answered. “It’s the wind.”

“But listen,” said Mary. “It’s in the house-down one of those long corridors. It is someone crying-and it isn’t a grown-up person.”

Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key.

“It was the wind,” said Martha stubbornly. “Or it was little Betty Butterworth, the scullery-maid[15]. She’s had the toothache all day.”

But Mary did not believe she was speaking the truth.

Chapter VI

“There was someone crying – there was!”

The next day the rain poured down in torrents.

“What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?” she asked Martha.

“Eh! The biggest ones go out in the cow-shed and play there,” Martha answered. “Dickon doesn’t mind the wet. He goes out just the same[16]. He once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he brought it home to keep it warm. He found a half-drowned young crow another time and he brought it home, too, and tamed it. Its name is Soot because it’s black.”

“I want to have a raven or a fox cub to with it,” said Mary. “But I have nothing.”

Martha looked perplexed.

“Can you knit?” she asked.

“No,” answered Mary.

“Can you sew?”

“No.”

“Can you read?”

“Yes. But I have no books,” said Mary. “Those I had were left in India.”

“That’s a pity,” said Martha. “Ask Mrs. Medlock to go into the library, there are thousands of books there.”

Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly inspired by a new idea. She decided to go and find it herself. She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock was always in her comfortable housekeeper’s sitting-room downstairs. In this queer place one scarcely ever saw anyone at all.

Mrs. Medlock came and looked at her every day, but no one inquired what she did or told her what to do. She supposed that perhaps this was the English custom. In India, her Ayah followed her all the time. Mary was often tired of her company. Now she nobody followed her.

Mary stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after her breakfast. She was thinking over the new idea. She did not care very much about the library itself, because she read very few books. But the hundred rooms with closed doors! She wondered if they were all really locked. Were there a hundred really? How many doors can she count?

She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor. It was a long corridor and it branched into other corridors and it led her up short flights of steps which mounted to others again. There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes, sometimes they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand costumes. She found herself in one long gallery whose walls were covered with these portraits. She walked slowly down this place and stared at the faces. Some were pictures of children-little girls in thick satin frocks and boys with puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or with big ruffs around their necks.

Suddenly she heard a cry. It was a short one, a fretful, childish whine.

“It’s near,” said Mary.

She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her, and then sprang back. The tapestry was the covering of a door. Suddenly Mrs. Medlock came up with her bunch of keys in her hand and a very cross look on her face.

“What are you doing here?” she said, and she took Mary by the arm and pulled her away. “What did I tell you?”

“I turned round the wrong corner,” explained Mary. “I didn’t know which way to go and I heard someone crying.”

“You didn’t hear anything!” said the housekeeper. “Come back to your own nursery!”

And she took her by the arm and pushed, pulled her up one passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own room.

“Now,” she said, “you stay here. The master will get you a governess to look after you.”

She went out of the room and slammed the door after her. Mary went and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage.

“There was someone crying-there was-there was!” she said to herself.

Chapter VII

The key of the garden

Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes she sat upright in bed immediately, and called to Martha.

“Look at the moor! Look at the moor!”

A brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. In India skies were hot and blazing. The world of the moor looked softly blue instead of gloomy purple-black or awful dreary gray.

“I thought perhaps it always rained in England,” Mary said.

“Eh! no!” said Martha, sitting up on her heels.

“Can I ever get there?” asked Mary wistfully, looking through her window at the far-off blue. It was new and big and wonderful.

“I don’t know,” answered Martha. “Five miles, I think.”

“I want to see your cottage.”

Martha stared at her.

“I’ll ask my mother about it,” Martha said. “Mrs. Medlock likes my mother. Perhaps she can talk to her.”

“I like your mother, too” said Mary.

“Of course,” agreed Martha.

“And I like Dickon,” added Mary.

“Well,” said Martha stoutly, “all the birds like him and the rabbits and wild sheep and the ponies, and the foxes.”

“But he won’t like me,” said Mary. “No one does.”

“Do you like yourself?” Martha inquired.

Mary hesitated a moment.

“Not at all-really,” she answered.

Martha went away after the breakfast. She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the cottage, and she was going to help her mother.

Mary went out into the garden. She went into the first kitchen-garden and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other gardeners.

She began to like the garden and Ben Weatherstaff – like the robin and Dickon and Martha’s mother. She was beginning to like Martha, too. She went outside the long, ivy-covered wall over which she could see the tree-tops.

She looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side. The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers, but there were tall and low shrubs. The robin hopped about under them. He stopped on it to look for a worm. A dog scratched quite a deep hole there.

Mary looked at it and saw something in the soil. It was an old key!

Mary stood up and looked at it.

“Perhaps it is the key to the secret garden!” she said in a whisper.

Mary put the key in her pocket. She will always carry it with her when she goes out – to find the hidden door.

Chapter VIII

The Robin who showed the way

“I’ve brought you a present,” Martha said in the morning, with a cheerful grin.

“A present!” exclaimed Mary.

“Yes. It’s a skipping-rope.”

She brought it out from under her apron and exhibited it quite proudly. It was a strong, slender rope with a striped red and blue handle at each end. Mary gazed at it with a mystified expression.

“What is it for?” she asked curiously.

“Just watch me!” cried out Martha.

And she ran into the middle of the room and, taking a handle in each hand, began to skip, and skip, and skip.

“I could skip longer than that,” Martha said when she stopped. “But I’m fat now.”

Mary was excited.

“It looks nice,” she said. “Do you think I could ever skip like that?”

“You just try it,” urged Martha.

Mary’s arms and legs were weak, but she liked it so much that she did not want to stop. She opened the door to go out, and then suddenly thought of something and turned back rather slowly.

“Martha,” she said, “the money for this rope was your wages. Thank you.”

She said it stiffly and held out her hand[17] because she did not know what else to do.

Martha laughed. Mary felt a little awkward as she went out of the room.

The skipping-rope was a wonderful thing. She counted and skipped, and skipped and counted, until her cheeks were quite red. The sun was shining and a little wind was blowing. She skipped round the fountain garden, and up one walk and down another. She skipped at last into the kitchen-garden and saw Ben Weatherstaff digging and talking to his robin, which was hopping about him. She skipped down the walk toward him and he lifted his head and looked at her with a curious expression.

“Well!” he exclaimed. “Upon my word![18] You have child’s blood in your veins instead of sour buttermilk.”

“I never skipped before,” Mary said. “I’m just beginning.”

“Keep on,” said Ben.

Mary skipped round all the gardens and round the orchard. The robin followed her and greeted her with a chirp. The girl laughed.

“Yesterday you showed me the key,” she said. “Show me the door today!”

The robin flew to the top of the wall and sang a loud, lovely trill. One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down the walk. It waved the branches of the trees. Mary stepped close to the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy trails. She saw a round knob which was covered by the leaves. It was the knob of a door.

She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them aside. Mary’s heart began to thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement. What was this under her hands which was square and made of iron?

It was the lock of the door! She put her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and put the key in and turned it.

The door opened slowly. She slipped through it, and shut it behind her. She was standing inside the secret garden.

Chapter IX

A very strange house

It was the most mysterious-looking place anyone can imagine. The high walls were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she saw many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass. There were many trees in the garden, too. here were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary did not know whether they were dead or alive.

“How still it is!” she whispered. “How still!”

Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin did not flutter his wings; he sat and looked at Mary.

“No wonder,” she whispered again. “I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years.”

She moved away from the door. She was glad that there was grass under her feet and that her steps made no sounds. She walked under one of the gray arches between the trees.

“Are they are all dead?” she said. “Is it a dead garden?”

She was inside the wonderful secret garden. The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky seemed even more brilliant than it was over the moor. The robin flew after her from one bush to another. Everything was strange and silent, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.

She did not want it to be a dead garden. Her skipping-rope hung over her arm. She came near the alcove. There was a flower-bed in it, and she knelt down.

“These might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered.

She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She liked it very much. “Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other. I will go all over the garden and look.”

She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass.

“It isn’t a dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.”

She found a sharp piece of wood and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear places around them.

“Now they can breathe,” she said. “I am going to do more. I’ll do all I can see. If I have no time today I can come tomorrow.”

She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself immensely. The robin was busy. He was very much pleased to see that.

Mary worked in her garden until it was time to go to her midday dinner. She put on her coat and hat, and picked up her skipping-rope. She was really happy.

“I shall come back this afternoon,” she said, looking all round at her new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes.

Then she ran lightly across the grass, pushed the old door and slipped through it under the ivy. She had such red cheeks and such bright eyes that Martha was delighted.

“Martha,” she said, “what are those white roots that look like onions?”

“They’re bulbs,” answered Martha. “Dickon has planted a lot of them in our garden.”

“Does Dickon know all about them?” asked Mary.

“Our Dickon can make a flower grow out of a brick walk.”

Mary finished her dinner and went to her favorite seat on the hearth-rug.

“I want to have a little spade,” she said.

“Are you going to dig?” asked Martha, laughing.

Mary looked at the fire and pondered a little. She must be careful. She wasn’t doing any harm. But if Mr. Craven knows about the open door he will be angry and get a new key.

“This is such a big lonely place,” she said slowly. “The house is lonely, and the park is lonely, and the gardens are lonely. There is no one to talk to here except you and Ben Weatherstaff. But you must work and Ben Weatherstaff doesn’t speak to me often. I will make a little garden if he gives me some seeds.”

“There now![19]” Martha exclaimed. “My mother says, ‘That girl from India can dig and rake and be happy.’”

“Really?” said Mary. “How many things she knows, doesn’t she?”

“Eh!” said Martha. “Of course, she does.’”

“How much does a spade cost-a little one?” Mary asked.

“Well, at Thwaite village there’s a shop. I saw little garden sets with a spade and a rake and a fork for two shillings.”

“I’ve got more in my purse,” said Mary. “Mrs. Morrison gave me five shillings and Mrs. Medlock gave me some money from Mr. Craven. I didn’t know what to buy.”

“Oh, you’re rich,” said Martha. “You can buy anything you want. In the shop at Thwaite they sell packages of flower-seeds for a penny each, and our Dickon knows which are the prettiest ones and how to make them grow. Do you know how to write?”

“Yes,” Mary answered.

“We can write a letter to Dickon and ask him to go and buy the garden tools and the seeds.”

“Oh! you’re a good girl!” Mary cried. “You are, really! I didn’t know you were so nice!”

“I’ll bring a pen and ink and some paper.”

Martha ran out of the room, and Mary stood by the fire and twisted her thin little hands together with sheer pleasure.

“If I have a spade,” she whispered, “I can make the earth nice and soft and dig up weeds. If I have seeds and can make flowers grow the garden won’t be dead at all.”

When Martha returned with her pen and ink and paper, she dictated a letter to Mary:

“My Dear Dickon:

Miss Mary has plenty of money. Will you go to Thwaite and buy her some flower seeds and a set of garden tools to make a flower-bed? Pick the prettiest ones and easy to grow. Give my love to mother and everyone of you. Miss Mary is going to tell me a lot. So you will hear about elephants and camels and lions and tigers.