19
“It Has Come!”
Of course Dr. Craven had been sent for the
morning after Colin had had his tantrum. He was always sent for at
once when such a thing occurred and he always found, when he
arrived, a white shaken boy lying on his bed, sulky and still so
hysterical that he was ready to break into fresh sobbing at the
least word. In fact, Dr. Craven dreaded and detested the
difficulties of these visits. On this occasion he was away from
Misselthwaite Manor until afternoon.
“How is he?” he asked Mrs. Medlock rather irritably
when he arrived. “He will break a blood-vessel in one of those fits
some day. The boy is half insane with hysteria and
self-indulgence.”
“Well, sir,” answered Mrs. Medlock, “you’ll
scarcely believe your eyes when you see him. That plain sour-faced
child that’s almost as bad as himself has just bewitched him. How
she’s done it there’s no telling. The Lord knows she’s nothing to
look at and you scarcely ever hear her speak, but she did what none
of us dare do. She just flew at him like a little cat last night,
and stamped her feet and ordered him to stop screaming, and somehow
she startled him so that he actually did stop, and this
afternoon-well, just come up and see, sir. It’s past
crediting.”
The scene which Dr. Craven beheld when he entered
his patient’s room was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs.
Medlock opened the door he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was
on his sofa in his dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite
straight looking at a picture in one of the garden books and
talking to the plain child who at that moment could scarcely be
called plain at all because her face was so glowing with
enjoyment.
“Those long spires of blue ones-we’ll have a lot of
those,” Colin was announcing. “They’re called Del-phin-iums.”
“Dickon says they’re larkspurs made big and grand,”
cried Mistress Mary. “There are clumps there already.”
Then they saw Dr. Craven and stopped. Mary became
quite still and Colin looked fretful.
“I am sorry to hear you were ill last night, my
boy,” Dr. Craven said a trifle nervously. He was rather a nervous
man.
“I’m better now-much better,” Colin answered,
rather like a Rajah. “I’m going out in my chair in a day or two if
it is fine. I want some fresh air.”
Dr. Craven sat down by him and felt his pulse and
looked at him curiously.
“It must be a very fine day,” he said, “and you
must be very careful not to tire yourself.”
“Fresh air won’t tire me,” said the young
Rajah.
As there had been occasions when this same young
gentleman had shrieked aloud with rage and had insisted that fresh
air would give him cold and kill him, it is not to be wondered at
that his doctor felt somewhat startled.
“I thought you did not like fresh air,” he
said.
“I don’t when I am by myself,” replied the Rajah;
“but my cousin is going out with me.”
“And the nurse, of course?” suggested Dr.
Craven.
“No, I will not have the nurse,” so magnificently
that Mary could not help remembering how the young native Prince
had looked with his diamonds and emeralds and pearls stuck all over
him and the great rubies on the small dark hand he had waved to
command his servants to approach with salaams and receive his
orders.
“My cousin knows how to take care of me. I am
always better when she is with me. She made me better last night. A
very strong boy I know will push my carriage.”
Dr. Craven felt rather alarmed. If this tiresome
hysterical boy should chance to get well he himself would lose all
chance of inheriting Misselthwaite; but he was not an unscrupulous
man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let him run
into actual danger.
“He must be a strong boy and a steady boy,” he
said. “And I must know something about him. Who is he? What is his
name?”
“It’s Dickon,” Mary spoke up suddenly. She felt
somehow that everybody who knew the moor must know Dickon. And she
was right, too. She saw that in a moment Dr. Craven’s serious face
relaxed into a relieved smile.
“Oh, Dickon,” he said. “If it is Dickon you will be
safe enough. He’s as strong as a moor pony, is Dickon.”
“And he’s trusty,” said Mary. “He’s th’ trustiest
lad i’ Yorkshire.” She had been talking Yorkshire to Colin and she
forgot herself
“Did Dickon teach you that?” asked Dr. Craven,
laughing outright.
“I’m learning it as if it was French,” said Mary
rather coldly. “It’s like a native dialect in India. Very clever
people try to learn them. I like it and so does Colin.”
“Well, well,” he said. “If it amuses you perhaps it
won’t do you any harm. Did you take your bromideae
last night, Colin?”
“No,” Colin answered. “I wouldn’t take it at first
and after Mary made me quiet she talked me to sleep—in a low
voice-about the spring creeping into a garden.”
“That sounds soothing,” said Dr. Craven, more
perplexed than ever and glancing sideways at Mistress Mary sitting
on her stool and looking down silently at the carpet. “You are
evidently better, but you must remember—”
“I don’t want to remember,” interrupted the Rajah,
appearing again. “When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have
pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream
because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could
make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have
him brought here.” And he waved a thin hand which ought really to
have been covered with royal signet rings made of rubies. “It is
because my cousin makes me forget that she makes me better.”
Dr. Craven had never made such a short stay after a
“tantrum”; usually he was obliged to remain a very long time and do
a great many things. This afternoon he did not give any medicine or
leave any new orders and he was spared any disagreeable scenes.
When he went downstairs he looked very thoughtful and when he
talked to Mrs. Medlock in the library she felt that he was a much
puzzled man.
“Well, sir,” she ventured, “could you have believed
it?”
“It is certainly a new state of affairs,” said the
doctor. “And there’s no denying it is better than the old
one.”
“I believe Susan Sowerby’s right—I do that,” said
Mrs. Medlock. “I stopped in her cottage on my way to Thwaite
yesterday and had a bit of talk with her. And she says to me,
‘Well, Sarah Ann, she mayn’t be a good child, an’ she mayn’t be a
pretty one, but she’s a child, an’ children needs children.’ We
went to school together, Susan Sowerby and me.”
“She’s the best sick nurse I know,” said Dr.
Craven. “When I find her in a cottage I know the chances are that I
shall save my patient.”
Mrs. Medlock smiled. She was fond of Susan
Sowerby.
“She’s got a way with her, has Susan,” she went on
quite volubly. “I’ve been thinking all morning of one thing she
said yesterday. She says, ‘Once when I was givin’ th’ children a
bit of a preach after they’d been fightin’ I ses to ’em all, ”When
I was at school my jography told as th’ world was shaped like a
orange an’ I found out before I was ten that th’ whole orange
doesn’t belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a
quarter an’ there’s times it seems like there’s not enow quarters
to go round. But don’t you—none o’ you—think as you own th’ whole
orange or you’ll find out you’re mistaken, an you won’t find it out
without hard knocks.” What children learns from children,’ she
says, ‘is that there’s no sense in grabbin’ at th’ whole
orange—peel an’ all. If you do you’ll likely not get even th’ pips,
an’ them’s too bitter to eat.’”
“She’s a shrewd woman,” said Dr. Craven, putting on
his coat.
“Well, she’s got a way of saying things,” ended
Mrs. Medlock, much pleased. “Sometimes I’ve said to her, ‘Eh!
Susan, if you was a different woman an’ didn’t talk such broad
Yorkshire I’ve seen the times when I should have said you was
clever.’ ”
That night Colin slept without once awakening and
when he opened his eyes in the morning he lay still and smiled
without knowing it—smiled because he felt so curiously comfortable.
It was actually nice to be awake, and he turned over and stretched
his limbs luxuriously. He felt as if tight strings which had held
him had loosened themselves and let him go. He did not know that
Dr. Craven would have said that his nerves had relaxed and rested
themselves. Instead of lying and staring at the wall and wishing he
had not awakened, his mind was full of the plans he and Mary had
made yesterday, of pictures of the garden and of Dickon and his
wild creatures. It was so nice to have things to think about. And
he had not been awake more than ten minutes when he heard feet
running along the corridor and Mary was at the door. The next
minute she was in the room and had run across to his bed, bringing
with her a waft of fresh air full of the scent of the
morning.
“You’ve been out! You’ve been out! There’s that
nice smell of leaves!” he cried.
She had been running and her hair was loose and
blown and she was bright with the air and pink-cheeked, though he
could not see it.
“It’s so beautiful!” she said, a little breathless
with her speed. “You never saw anything so beautiful! It has come!
I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming.
It is here now! It has come, the Spring! Dickon says so!”
“Has it?” cried Colin, and though he really knew
nothing about it he felt his heart beat. He actually sat up in
bed.
“Open the window!” he added, laughing half with
joyful excitement and half at his own fancy. “Perhaps we may hear
golden trumpets!”
And though he laughed, Mary was at the window in a
moment and in a moment more it was opened wide and freshness and
scents and birds’ songs were pouring through.
“That’s fresh air,” she said. “Lie on your back and
draw in long breaths of it. That’s what Dickon does when he’s lying
on the moor. He says he feels it in his veins and it makes him
strong and he feels as if he could live forever and ever. Breathe
it and breathe it.”
She was only repeating what Dickon had told her,
but she caught Colin’s fancy.
“‘Forever and ever’! Does it make him feel like
that?” he said, and he did as she told him, drawing in long deep
breaths over and over again until he felt that something quite new
and delightful was happening to him.
Mary was at his bedside again.
“Things are crowding up out of the earth,” she ran
on in a hurry. “And there are flowers uncurling and buds on
everything and the green veil has covered nearly all the gray and
the birds are in such a hurry about their nests for fear they may
be too late that some of them are even fighting for places in the
secret garden. And the rose-bushes look as wick as wick can be, and
there are primroses in the lanes and woods, and the seeds we
planted are up, and Dickon has brought the fox and the crow and the
squirrels and a new-born lamb.”
“That’s fresh air,” she said. “Lie on your
back and draw in long breaths of it”
And then she paused for breath. The new-born lamb
Dickon had found three days before lying by its dead mother among
the gorse bushes on the moor. It was not the first motherless lamb
he had found and he knew what to do with it. He had taken it to the
cottage wrapped in his jacket and he had let it lie near the fire
and had fed it with warm milk. It was a soft thing with a darling
silly baby face and legs rather long for its body Dickon had
carried it over the moor in his arms and its feeding bottle was in
his pocket with a squirrel, and when Mary had sat under a tree with
its limp warmness huddled on her lap she had felt as if she were
too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb—a lamb! A living lamb who
lay on your lap like a baby!
She was describing it with great joy and Colin was
listening and drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse
entered. She started a little at the sight of the open window. She
had sat stifling in the room many a warm day because her patient
was sure that open windows gave people colds.
“Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?”
she inquired.
“No,” was the answer. “I am breathing long breaths
of fresh air. It makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa
for breakfast. My cousin will have breakfast with me.”
The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give
the order for two breakfasts. She found the servants’ hall a more
amusing place than the invalid’s chamber and just now everybody
wanted to hear the news from upstairs. There was a great deal of
joking about the unpopular young recluse who, as the cook said,
“had found his master, and good for him.” The servants’ hall had
been very tired of the tantrums, and the butler, who was a man with
a family, had more than once expressed his opinion that the invalid
would be all the better “for a good hiding.”
When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for
two was put upon the table he made an announcement to the nurse in
his most Rajah-like manner.
“A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels,
and a new-born lamb, are coming to see me this morning. I want them
brought upstairs as soon as they come,” he said. “You are not to
begin playing with the animals in the servants’ hall and keep them
there. I want them here.”
The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal
it with a cough.
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
“I’ll tell you what you can do,” added Colin,
waving his hand. “You can tell Martha to bring them here. The boy
is Martha’s brother. His name is Dickon and he is an animal
charmer.”
“I hope the animals won’t bite, Master Colin,” said
the nurse.
“I told you he was a charmer,” said Colin
austerely. “Charmers’ animals never bite.”
“There are snake-charmers in India,” said Mary;
“and they can put their snakes’ heads in their mouths.”
“Goodness!” shuddered the nurse.
They ate their breakfast with the morning air
pouring in upon them. Colin’s breakfast was a very good one and
Mary watched him with serious interest.
“You will begin to get fatter just as I did,” she
said. “I never wanted my breakfast when I was in India and now I
always want it.”
“I wanted mine this morning,” said Colin. “Perhaps
it was the fresh air. When do you think Dickon will come?”
He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes
Mary held up her hand.
“Listen!” she said. “Did you hear a caw?”
Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in
the world to hear inside a house, a hoarse “caw-caw”
“Yes,” he answered.
“That’s Soot,” said Mary. “Listen again. Do you
hear a bleat—a tiny one?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Colin, quite flushing.
“That’s the new-born lamb,” said Mary. “He’s
coming.”
Dickon’s moorland boots were thick and clumsy and
though he tried to walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he
walked through the long corridors. Mary and Colin heard him
marching—marching, until he passed through the tapestry door on to
the soft carpet of Colin’s own passage.
“If you please, sir,” announced Martha, opening the
door, “if you please, sir, here’s Dickon an’ his creatures.”
Dickon came in smiling his nicest wide smile. The
new-born lamb was in his arms and the little red fox trotted by his
side. Nut sat on his left shoulder and Soot on his right and
Shell’s head and paws peeped out of his coat pocket.
Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared—as he had
stared when he first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder and
delight. The truth was that in spite of all he had heard he had not
in the least understood what this boy would be like and that his
fox and his crow and his squirrels and his lamb were so near to him
and his friendliness that they seemed almost to be part of himself
Colin had never talked to a boy in his life and he was so
overwhelmed by his own pleasure and curiosity that he did not even
think of speaking.
But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward.
He had not felt embarrassed because the crow had not known his
language and had only stared and had not spoken to him the first
time they met. Creatures were always like that until they found out
about you. He walked over to Colin’s sofa and put the new-born lamb
quietly on his lap, and immediately the little creature turned to
the warm velvet dressing-gown and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into
its folds and butt its tight-curled head with soft impatience
against his side. Of course no boy could have helped speaking
then.
“What is it doing?” cried Colin. “What does it
want?”
“It wants its mother,” said Dickon, smiling more
and more. “I brought it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha’d
like to see it feed.”
He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle
from his pocket.
“Come on, little ’un,” he said, turning the small
woolly white head with a gentle brown hand. “This is what tha’s
after. Tha’ll get more out o’ this than tha’ will out o’ silk
velvet coats. There now,” and he pushed the rubber tip of the
bottle into the nuzzling mouth and the lamb began to suck it with
ravenous ecstasy
After that there was no wondering what to say. By
the time the lamb fell asleep questions poured forth and Dickon
answered them all. He told them how he had found the lamb just as
the sun was rising three mornings ago. He had been standing on the
moor listening to a skylark and watching him swing higher and
higher into the sky until he was only a speck in the heights of
blue.
“I’d almost lost him but for his song an’ I was
wonderin’ how a chap could hear it when it seemed as if he’d get
out o’ th’ world in a minute—an’ just then I heard somethin’ else
far off among th’ gorse bushes. It was a weak bleatin’ an’ I knowed
it was a new lamb as was hungry an’ I knowed it wouldn’t be hungry
if it hadn’t lost its mother somehow, so I set off searchin’. Eh! I
did have a look for it. I went in an’ out among th’ gorse bushes
an’ round an’ round an’ I always seemed to take th’ wrong turnin’.
But at last I seed a bit o’ white by a rock on top o’ th’ moor an’
I climbed up an’ found th’ little ‘un half dead wi’ cold an’
clemmin’.”af
While he talked, Soot flew solemnly in and out of
the open window and cawed remarks about the scenery while Nut and
Shell made excursions into the big trees outside and ran up and
down trunks and explored branches. Captain curled up near Dickon,
who sat on the hearth-rug from preference.
They looked at the pictures in the gardening books
and Dickon knew all the flowers by their country names and knew
exactly which ones were already growing in the secret garden.
“I couldna’ say that there name,” he said, pointing
to one under which was written “Aquilegia,” “but us calls that a
columbine, an’ that there one it’s a snapdragon and they both grow
wild in hedges, but these is garden ones an’ they’re bigger an’
grander. There’s some big clumps o’ columbine in th’ garden.
They’ll look like a bed o’ blue an’ white butterflies flutterin’
when they’re out.”
“I’m going to see them,” cried Colin. “I am going
to see them!”
“Aye, that tha’ mun,” said Mary quite seriously.
“An’ tha’ munnot lose no time about it.”