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Chapter XX
"I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!"
But they were obliged to wait more than a week because
first there came some very windy days and then Colin
was threatened with a cold, which two things happening
one after the other would no doubt have thrown him into
a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious
planning to do and almost every day Dickon came in,
if only for a few minutes, to talk about what was happening
on the moor and in the lanes and hedges and on the borders
of streams. The things he had to tell about otters'
and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds'
nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough
to make you almost tremble with excitement when you
heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer
and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety
the whole busy underworld was working.
"They're same as us," said Dickon, "only they have to
build their homes every year. An' it keeps 'em so busy
they fair scuffle to get 'em done."
The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations
to be made before Colin could be transported with sufficient
secrecy to the garden. No one must see the chair-carriage
and Dickon and Mary after they turned a certain corner
of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside
the ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become
more and more fixed in his feeling that the mystery
surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms.
Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect
that they had a secret. People must think that he
was simply going out with Mary and Dickon because he
liked them and did not object to their looking at him.
They had long and quite delightful talks about their route.
They would go up this path and down that one and cross
the other and go round among the fountain flower-beds
as if they were looking at the "bedding-out plants"
the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having arranged.
That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one
would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into
the shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came
to the long walls. It was almost as serious and elaborately
thought out as the plans of march made by geat generals
in time of war.
Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring
in the invalid's apartments had of course filtered
through the servants' hall into the stable yards
and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding this,
Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders
from Master Colin's room to the effect that he must report
himself in the apartment no outsider had ever seen,
as the invalid himself desired to speak to him.
"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed
his coat, "what's to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn't
to be looked at calling up a man he's never set eyes on."
Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never
caught even a glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen
exaggerated stories about his uncanny looks and ways
and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard
oftenest was that he might die at any moment and there
had been numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped
back and helpless limbs, given by people who had never seen him.
"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach,"
said Mrs. Medlock, as she led him up the back staircase
to the corridor on to which opened the hitherto mysterious
chamber.
"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock,"
he answered.
"They couldn't well change for the worse," she continued;
"and queer as it all is there's them as finds their
duties made a lot easier to stand up under. Don't you
be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the middle
of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home
than you or me could ever be."
There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary
always privately believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name
he smiled quite leniently.
"He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom
of a coal mine," he said. "And yet it's not impudence,
either. He's just fine, is that lad."
It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might
have been startled. When the bedroom door was opened
a large crow, which seemed quite at home perched on
the high back of a carven chair, announced the entrance
of a visitor by saying "Caw--Caw" quite loudly.
In spite of Mrs. Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just
escaped being sufficiently undignified to jump backward.
The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on his sofa.
He was sitting in an armchair and a young lamb was standing
by him shaking its tail in feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon
knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A squirrel was
perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.
The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool
looking on.
"Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin," said Mrs. Medlock.
The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over--at
least that was what the head gardener felt happened.
"Oh, you are Roach, are you?" he said. "I sent for you
to give you some very important orders."
"Very good, sir," answered Roach, wondering if he was
to receive instructions to fell all the oaks in the park
or to transform the orchards into water-gardens.
"I am going out in my chair this afternoon," said Colin.
"If the fresh air agrees with me I may go out every day.
When I go, none of the gardeners are to be anywhere near
the Long Walk by the garden walls. No one is to be there.
I shall go out about two o'clock and everyone must
keep away until I send word that they may go back to
their work."
"Very good, sir," replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear
that the oaks might remain and that the orchards were safe.
"Mary," said Colin, turning to her, "what is that thing
you say in India when you have finished talking and want
people to go?"
"You say, `You have my permission to go,'" answered Mary.
The Rajah waved his hand.
"You have my permission to go, Roach," he said.
"But, remember, this is very important."
"Caw--Caw!" remarked the crow hoarsely but not impolitely.
"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir," said Mr. Roach,
and Mrs. Medlock took him out of the room.
Outside in the corridor, being a rather good-natured man,
he smiled until he almost laughed.
"My word!" he said, "he's got a fine lordly way with him,
hasn't he? You'd think he was a whole Royal Family rolled
into one--Prince Consort and all.".
"Eh!" protested Mrs. Medlock, "we've had to let him
trample all over every one of us ever since he had feet
and he thinks that's what folks was born for."
"Perhaps he'll grow out of it, if he lives," suggested Mr. Roach.
"Well, there's one thing pretty sure," said Mrs. Medlock.
"If he does live and that Indian child stays here I'll
warrant she teaches him that the whole orange does not
belong to him, as Susan Sowerby says. And he'll be likely
to find out the size of his own quarter."
Inside the room Colin was leaning back on his cushions.
"It's all safe now," he said. "And this afternoon I
shall see it--this afternoon I shall be in it!"
Dickon went back to the garden with his creatures and Mary
stayed with Colin. She did not think he looked tired
but he was very quiet before their lunch came and he
was quiet while they were eating it. She wondered why
and asked him about it.
"What big eyes you've got, Colin," she said. "When you
are thinking they get as big as saucers. What are you
thinking about now?"
"I can't help thinking about what it will look like,"
he answered.
"The garden?" asked Mary.
"The springtime," he said. "I was thinking that I've really
never seen it before. I scarcely ever went out and when I
did go I never looked at it. I didn't even think about it."
"I never saw it in India because there wasn't any,"
said Mary.
Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more
imagination than she had and at least he had spent a good
deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.
"That morning when you ran in and said `It's come! It's
come!, you made me feel quite queer. It sounded as if
things were coming with a great procession and big bursts
and wafts of music. I've a picture like it in one of my
books--crowds of lovely people and children with garlands
and branches with blossoms on them, everyone laughing
and dancing and crowding and playing on pipes. That was
why I said, `Perhaps we shall hear golden trumpets'
and told you to throw open the window."
"How funny!" said Mary. "That's really just what it
feels like. And if all the flowers and leaves and green
things and birds and wild creatures danced past at once,
what a crowd it would be! I'm sure they'd dance and sing
and flute and that would be the wafts of music."
They both laughed but it was not because the idea was
laughable but because they both so liked it.
A little later the nurse made Colin ready. She noticed
that instead of lying like a log while his clothes were
put on he sat up and made some efforts to help himself,
and he talked and laughed with Mary all the time.
"This is one of his good days, sir," she said to Dr. Craven,
who dropped in to inspect him. "He's in such good spirits
that it makes him stronger."
"I'll call in again later in the afternoon, after he has
come in," said Dr. Craven. "I must see how the going
out agrees with him. I wish," in a very low voice,
"that he would let you go with him."
"I'd rather give up the case this moment, sir, than even
stay here while it's suggested," answered the nurse.
With sudden firmness.
"I hadn't really decided to suggest it," said the doctor,
with his slight nervousness. "We'll try the experiment.
Dickon's a lad I'd trust with a new-born child."
The strongest footman in the house carried Colin down
stairs and put him in his wheeled chair near which Dickon
waited outside. After the manservant had arranged
his rugs and cushions the Rajah waved his hand to him
and to the nurse.
"You have my permission to go," he said, and they both
disappeared quickly and it must be confessed giggled
when they were safely inside the house.
Dickon began to push the wheeled chair slowly and steadily.
Mistress Mary walked beside it and Colin leaned back
and lifted his face to the sky. The arch of it looked
very high and the small snowy clouds seemed like white birds
floating on outspread wings below its crystal blueness.
The wind swept in soft big breaths down from the moor
and was strange with a wild clear scented sweetness.
Colin kept lifting his thin chest to draw it in,
and his big eyes looked as if it were they which were
listening--listening, instead of his ears.
"There are so many sounds of singing and humming and
calling out," he said. "What is that scent the puffs
of wind bring?"
"It's gorse on th' moor that's openin' out," answered Dickon.
"Eh! th' bees are at it wonderful today."
Not a human creature was to be caught sight of in the
paths they took. In fact every gardener or gardener's
lad had been witched away. But they wound in and out
among the shrubbery and out and round the fountain beds,
following their carefully planned route for the mere
mysterious pleasure of it. But when at last they turned
into the Long Walk by the ivied walls the excited sense
of an approaching thrill made them, for some curious reason
they could not have explained, begin to speak in whispers.
"This is it," breathed Mary. "This is where I used
to walk up and down and wonder and wonder." "Is it?"
cried Colin, and his eyes began to search the ivy with
eager curiousness. "But I can see nothing," he whispered.
"There is no door."
"That's what I thought," said Mary.
Then there was a lovely breathless silence and the chair
wheeled on.
"That is the garden where Ben Weatherstaff works,"
said Mary.
"Is it?" said Colin.
A few yards more and Mary whispered again.
"This is where the robin flew over the wall," she said.
"Is it?" cried Colin. "Oh! I wish he'd come again!"
"And that," said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under
a big lilac bush, "is where he perched on the little
heap of earth and showed me the key."
Then Colin sat up.
"Where? Where? There?" he cried, and his eyes were as big
as the wolf's in Red Riding-Hood, when Red Riding-Hood
felt called upon to remark on them. Dickon stood still
and the wheeled chair stopped.
"And this," said Mary, stepping on to the bed close to the ivy,
"is where I went to talk to him when he chirped at me
from the top of the wall. And this is the ivy the wind
blew back," and she took hold of the hanging green curtain.
"Oh! is it--is it!" gasped Colin.
"And here is the handle, and here is the door.
Dickon push him in--push him in quickly!"
And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.
But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions,
even though he gasped with delight, and he had covered
his eyes with his hands and held them there shutting
out everything until they were inside and the chair
stopped as if by magic and the door was closed.
Not till then did he take them away and look round
and round and round as Dickon and Mary had done.
And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays
and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves
had crept, and in the grass under the trees and the gray
urns in the alcoves and here and there everywhere
were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white
and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head
and there were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes
and humming and scents and scents. And the sun fell
warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely touch.
And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him.
He looked so strange and different because a pink glow
of color had actually crept all over him--ivory face
and neck and hands and all.
"I shall get well! I shall get well!" he cried out.
"Mary! Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live forever
and ever and ever!"
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