The Key to the Garden (The Secret Garden (Full Cast))

01Chapter 7 The Key to the Garden Two days after this, when Mary opened her eyes, she sat upright in bed immediately and called to Martha.

02Look at the moor!

03Look at the moor!

04The rainstorm had ended, and the grey mist and clouds had been swept away in the night by the wind.

05The wind itself had ceased, and a brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland.

06Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue.

07In India skies were hot and blazing.

08This was of a deep, cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters of some lovely, bottomless lake.

09And here and there, high, high in the arched blueness, floated small clouds of snow-white fleece.

10The far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of gloomy purple-black or awful dreary grey.

11Aye, said Martha, with a cheerful grin, the storm's over for a bit.

12It does like this at this time o'year.

13It goes off in a night like it was pretending it had never been here, and never meant to come again.

14That's because the springtime's on its way.

15It's a long way off yet, but it's coming.

16I thought perhaps it always rained or looked dark in England, Mary said.

17And no, said Martha, sitting up on her heels among her black lead brushes.

18Now to the sort.

19What does that mean?

20asked Mary seriously.

21In India the natives spoke different dialects which only a few people understood, so she was not surprised when Martha used words she did not know.

22Martha laughed as she had done the first morning.

23There now, she said.

24I've talked broad Yorkshire again like Mrs.

25Medlock says I mustn't.

26Now to the sort means nothing of the sort.

27Slowly and carefully.

28But it takes so long to say it.

29Yorkshire's the sunniest place on earth when it is sunny.

30I told thee that like them more after a bit.

31Just you wait till you see the gold-coloured gorse blossoms, and the blossoms of the broom, and the heather flowering, all purple bells, and hundreds of butterflies fluttering, and bees humming, and skylarks soaring up and singing.

32You'll want to get out on it at sunrise, and live out on it all day like Dickon does.

33Could I ever get there?

34asked Mary wistfully, looking through her window at the far-off blue.

35It was so new and big and wonderful, and such a heavenly colour.

36I don't know, answered Martha.

37There's never used the leg since there was born, it seems to me.

38The couldn't walk five mile.

39It's five mile to our cottage.

40I should like to see your cottage.

41Martha stared at her a moment curiously before she took up her polishing brush and began to rub the grate again.

42She was thinking that the small, plain face did not look quite as sour at this moment as it had done the first morning she saw it.

43It looked just a trifle like little Susan Ann's when she wanted something very much.

44I'll ask my mother about it, she said.

45She's one of them that nearly always sees a way to do things.

46It's my day out to-day, and I'm going home.

47Oh, I am glad.

48Mrs.

49Medlock thinks a lot of mother.

50Perhaps she could talk to her.

51I like your mother, said Mary.

52I should think they did, agreed Martha, polishing away.

53I've never seen her, said Mary.

54No, they hasn't, replied Martha.

55She sat up on her heels again and rubbed the end of her nose with the back of her hand as if puzzled for a moment, but she ended quite positively.

56Well, she's that sensible and hard-working and good-natured and clean that no one could help liking her, whether they'd seen her or not.

57When I'm going home to her on my day out, I just jump for joy when I'm crossing the moor.

58I like Dickon, added Mary.

59And I've never seen him.

60Well, said Martha stoutly, I've told thee that the very birds like him, and the rabbits and wild sheep and ponies, and the foxes themselves.

61A wonder, staring at her reflectively, what Dickon would think of thee?

62He wouldn't like me, said Mary in her stiff, cold little way.

63No one does.

64Martha looked reflective again.

65How does the lack the self?

66She inquired, really quite as if she were curious to know.

67Mary hesitated a moment and thought it over.

68Not at all.

69Really?

70She answered.

71But I never thought of that before.

72Martha grinned a little, as if it's some homely recollection.

73Mother said that to me once, she said.

74She was at her wash-tub, and I was in a bad temper, and talking ill of folk, and she turns round on me and says, The young vixen tha.

75There tha stand saying tha doesn't like this one, and tha doesn't like that one.

76How does tha like the self?

77It made me laugh, and it brought me to my senses in a minute.

78She went away in high spirits as soon as she had given Mary her breakfast.

79She was going to walk five miles across the moor to the cottage, and she was going to help her mother with the washing, and do the week's baking, and enjoy herself thoroughly.

80Mary felt lonelier than ever when she knew she was no longer in the house.

81She went out into the garden as quickly as possible, and the first thing she did was to run round and round the fountain flower garden ten times.

82She counted the times carefully, and when she had finished she felt in better spirits.

83The sunshine made the whole place look different.

84The high, deep blue sky arched over Misselthwaite as well as over the moor, and she kept lifting her face and looking up into it, trying to imagine what it would be like to lie down on one of the little snow-white clouds and float about.

85She went into the first kitchen garden, and found Ben Weatherstaff working there with two other gardeners.

86The change in the weather seemed to have done him good.

87He spoke to her of his own accord.

88Springtime's coming, he said.

89Cannot that smell it?

90Mary sniffed, and thought she could.

91I smell something nice and fresh and damp, she said.

92That's a good rich earth, he answered, digging away.

93It's in a good humour, making ready to grow things.

94It's glad when planting time comes.

95It's dull in winter, when it's got nout to do.

96In the flower gardens out there, things will be stirring down below in the dark.

97The sun's warming them.

98You'll see bits of green spikes sticking out of the black earth after a bit.

99What will they be?

100Asked Mary.

101Crocuses and snowdrops and daffodown dillies.

102Has there never seen them?

103No.

104Everything is hot and wet and green after the rains in India, said Mary.

105And I think things grow up in a night.

106These won't grow up in a night, said Weatherstaff.

107I'll have to wait for em.

108They'll poke up a bit higher here, and push out a spike more there, and uncurl a leaf this day, and another that.

109You watch em.

110I'm going to, answered Mary.

111Very soon she heard the soft rustling flight of wings again, and she knew at once that the robin had come again.

112He was very pert and lively, and hopped about so close to her feet, and put his head on one side and looked at her so slyly, that she asked Ben Weatherstaff a question.

113Do you think he remembers me?

114She said.

115Remembers thee?

116Said Weatherstaff indignantly.

117He knows every cabbage stump of the gardens, let alone the people.

118He's never seen a little wench here before, and he's bent on finding out all about thee.

119There's no need to try to hide anything from him.

120Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he lives?

121Mary inquired.

122What garden?

123grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.

124The one where the old rose-trees are.

125She could not help asking, because she wanted so much to know.

126Are all the flowers dead, or do some of them come again in the summer?

127Are there ever any roses?

128Ask him.

129Said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the robin.

130He's the only one who knows.

131No one else has seen inside it for ten years.

132Ten years was a long time, Mary thought.

133She had been born ten years ago.

134She walked away, slowly thinking.

135She had begun to like the garden just as she had begun to like the robin, and Dickon, and Martha's mother.

136She was beginning to like Martha, too.

137That seemed a good many people to like, when you were not used to liking.

138She thought of the robin as one of the people.

139She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall over which she could see the tree-tops, and the second time she walked up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her, and it was all through Ben Weatherstaff's robin.

140She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side, there he was hopping about and pretending to peck things out of the earth, to persuade her that he had not followed her.

141But she knew he had followed her, and the surprise so filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little.

142"'You do remember me!' she cried out.

143"'You do!

144You are prettier than anything else in the world!' She chirped and talked and coaxed and he hopped, and flirted his tail and twittered.

145It was as if he were talking.

146His red waistcoat was like satin, and he puffed his tiny breast out, and was so fine and so grand and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how important and like a human person a robin could be.

147Mistress Mary forgot that she had ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her to draw closer and closer to him, and bend down and talk and try to make something like robin sounds.

148Oh, to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as that!

149He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way.

150He knew it because he was a real person, only nicer than any other person in the world.

151She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.

152The flower-bed was not quite bare.

153It was bare of flowers, because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned-up earth.

154He stopped on it to look for a worm.

155The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole, and he had scratched quite a deep hole.

156Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly turned soil.

157It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass, and when the robin flew up into a tree near by she put out her hand and picked the ring up.

158It was more than a ring, however.

159It was an old key, which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

160Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face as it hung from her finger.

161Perhaps it has been buried for ten years, she said in a whisper.

162Perhaps it is the key to the garden.

163End of chapter 7