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CHAPTER XXV THE CURTAIN
And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.
In the robin's nest there were Eggs and the robin's mate sat upon them keeping them
warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings.
At first she was very nervous and the robin himself was indignantly watchful.
Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by
the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of
the little pair that in the garden there
was nothing which was not quite like themselves--nothing which did not
understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them--the immense, tender,
terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs.
If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her
innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl
round and crash through space and come to
an end--if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly there could
have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air.
But they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his mate knew they knew it.
At first the robin watched Mary and Colin with sharp anxiety.
For some mysterious reason he knew he need not watch Dickon.
The first moment he set his dew-bright black eye on Dickon he knew he was not a
stranger but a sort of robin without beak or feathers.
He could speak robin (which is a quite distinct language not to be mistaken for
any other). To speak robin to a robin is like speaking
French to a Frenchman.
Dickon always spoke it to the robin himself, so the *** gibberish he used
when he spoke to humans did not matter in the least.
The robin thought he spoke this gibberish to them because they were not intelligent
enough to understand feathered speech. His movements also were robin.
They never startled one by being sudden enough to seem dangerous or threatening.
Any robin could understand Dickon, so his presence was not even disturbing.
But at the outset it seemed necessary to be on guard against the other two.
In the first place the boy creature did not come into the garden on his legs.
He was pushed in on a thing with wheels and the skins of wild animals were thrown over
him. That in itself was doubtful.
Then when he began to stand up and move about he did it in a *** unaccustomed way
and the others seemed to have to help him.
The robin used to secrete himself in a bush and watch this anxiously, his head tilted
first on one side and then on the other.
He thought that the slow movements might mean that he was preparing to pounce, as
cats do. When cats are preparing to pounce they
creep over the ground very slowly.
The robin talked this over with his mate a great deal for a few days but after that he
decided not to speak of the subject because her terror was so great that he was afraid
it might be injurious to the Eggs.
When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it was an immense
relief.
But for a long time--or it seemed a long time to the robin--he was a source of some
anxiety. He did not act as the other humans did.
He seemed very fond of walking but he had a way of sitting or lying down for a while
and then getting up in a disconcerting manner to begin again.
One day the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to learn to fly by
his parents he had done much the same sort of thing.
He had taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to rest.
So it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly--or rather to walk.
He mentioned this to his mate and when he told her that the Eggs would probably
conduct themselves in the same way after they were fledged she was quite comforted
and even became eagerly interested and
derived great pleasure from watching the boy over the edge of her nest--though she
always thought that the Eggs would be much cleverer and learn more quickly.
But then she said indulgently that humans were always more clumsy and slow than Eggs
and most of them never seemed really to learn to fly at all.
You never met them in the air or on tree- tops.
After a while the boy began to move about as the others did, but all three of the
children at times did unusual things.
They would stand under the trees and move their arms and legs and heads about in a
way which was neither walking nor running nor sitting down.
They went through these movements at intervals every day and the robin was never
able to explain to his mate what they were doing or tying to do.
He could only say that he was sure that the Eggs would never flap about in such a
manner; but as the boy who could speak robin so fluently was doing the thing with
them, birds could be quite sure that the actions were not of a dangerous nature.
Of course neither the robin nor his mate had ever heard of the champion wrestler,
Bob Haworth, and his exercises for making the muscles stand out like lumps.
Robins are not like human beings; their muscles are always exercised from the first
and so they develop themselves in a natural manner.
If you have to fly about to find every meal you eat, your muscles do not become
atrophied (atrophied means wasted away through want of use).
When the boy was walking and running about and digging and weeding like the others,
the nest in the corner was brooded over by a great peace and content.
Fears for the Eggs became things of the past.
Knowing that your Eggs were as safe as if they were locked in a bank vault and the
fact that you could watch so many curious things going on made setting a most
entertaining occupation.
On wet days the Eggs' mother sometimes felt even a little dull because the children did
not come into the garden. But even on wet days it could not be said
that Mary and Colin were dull.
One morning when the rain streamed down unceasingly and Colin was beginning to feel
a little restive, as he was obliged to remain on his sofa because it was not safe
to get up and walk about, Mary had an inspiration.
"Now that I am a real boy," Colin had said, "my legs and arms and all my body are so
full of Magic that I can't keep them still.
They want to be doing things all the time.
Do you know that when I waken in the morning, Mary, when it's quite early and
the birds are just shouting outside and everything seems just shouting for joy--
even the trees and things we can't really
hear--I feel as if I must jump out of bed and shout myself.
If I did it, just think what would happen!" Mary giggled inordinately.
"The nurse would come running and Mrs. Medlock would come running and they would
be sure you had gone crazy and they'd send for the doctor," she said.
Colin giggled himself.
He could see how they would all look--how horrified by his outbreak and how amazed to
see him standing upright. "I wish my father would come home," he
said.
"I want to tell him myself. I'm always thinking about it--but we
couldn't go on like this much longer. I can't stand lying still and pretending,
and besides I look too different.
I wish it wasn't raining today." It was then Mistress Mary had her
inspiration.
"Colin," she began mysteriously, "do you know how many rooms there are in this
house?" "About a thousand, I suppose," he answered.
"There's about a hundred no one ever goes into," said Mary.
"And one rainy day I went and looked into ever so many of them.
No one ever knew, though Mrs. Medlock nearly found me out.
I lost my way when I was coming back and I stopped at the end of your corridor.
That was the second time I heard you crying."
Colin started up on his sofa. "A hundred rooms no one goes into," he
said.
"It sounds almost like a secret garden. Suppose we go and look at them.
Wheel me in my chair and nobody would know we went."
"That's what I was thinking," said Mary.
"No one would dare to follow us. There are galleries where you could run.
We could do our exercises. There is a little Indian room where there
is a cabinet full of ivory elephants.
There are all sorts of rooms." "Ring the bell," said Colin.
When the nurse came in he gave his orders. "I want my chair," he said.
"Miss Mary and I are going to look at the part of the house which is not used.
John can push me as far as the picture- gallery because there are some stairs.
Then he must go away and leave us alone until I send for him again."
Rainy days lost their terrors that morning.
When the footman had wheeled the chair into the picture-gallery and left the two
together in obedience to orders, Colin and Mary looked at each other delighted.
As soon as Mary had made sure that John was really on his way back to his own quarters
below stairs, Colin got out of his chair.
"I am going to run from one end of the gallery to the other," he said, "and then I
am going to jump and then we will do Bob Haworth's exercises."
And they did all these things and many others.
They looked at the portraits and found the plain little girl dressed in green brocade
and holding the parrot on her finger.
"All these," said Colin, "must be my relations.
They lived a long time ago. That parrot one, I believe, is one of my
great, great, great, great aunts.
She looks rather like you, Mary--not as you look now but as you looked when you came
here. Now you are a great deal fatter and better
looking."
"So are you," said Mary, and they both laughed.
They went to the Indian room and amused themselves with the ivory elephants.
They found the rose-colored brocade boudoir and the hole in the cushion the mouse had
left, but the mice had grown up and run away and the hole was empty.
They saw more rooms and made more discoveries than Mary had made on her first
pilgrimage.
They found new corridors and corners and flights of steps and new old pictures they
liked and weird old things they did not know the use of.
It was a curiously entertaining morning and the feeling of wandering about in the same
house with other people but at the same time feeling as if one were miles away from
them was a fascinating thing.
"I'm glad we came," Colin said. "I never knew I lived in such a big ***
old place. I like it.
We will ramble about every rainy day.
We shall always be finding new *** corners and things."
That morning they had found among other things such good appetites that when they
returned to Colin's room it was not possible to send the luncheon away
untouched.
When the nurse carried the tray down-stairs she slapped it down on the kitchen dresser
so that Mrs. Loomis, the cook, could see the highly polished dishes and plates.
"Look at that!" she said.
"This is a house of mystery, and those two children are the greatest mysteries in it."
"If they keep that up every day," said the strong young footman John, "there'd be
small wonder that he weighs twice as much to-day as he did a month ago.
I should have to give up my place in time, for fear of doing my muscles an injury."
That afternoon Mary noticed that something new had happened in Colin's room.
She had noticed it the day before but had said nothing because she thought the change
might have been made by chance.
She said nothing today but she sat and looked fixedly at the picture over the
mantel. She could look at it because the curtain
had been drawn aside.
That was the change she noticed. "I know what you want me to tell you," said
Colin, after she had stared a few minutes. "I always know when you want me to tell you
something.
You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back.
I am going to keep it like that." "Why?" asked Mary.
"Because it doesn't make me angry any more to see her laughing.
I wakened when it was bright moonlight two nights ago and felt as if the Magic was
filling the room and making everything so splendid that I couldn't lie still.
I got up and looked out of the window.
The room was quite light and there was a patch of moonlight on the curtain and
somehow that made me go and pull the cord.
She looked right down at me as if she were laughing because she was glad I was
standing there. It made me like to look at her.
I want to see her laughing like that all the time.
I think she must have been a sort of Magic person perhaps."
"You are so like her now," said Mary, "that sometimes I think perhaps you are her ghost
made into a boy." That idea seemed to impress Colin.
He thought it over and then answered her slowly.
"If I were her ghost--my father would be fond of me."
"Do you want him to be fond of you?" inquired Mary.
"I used to hate it because he was not fond of me.
If he grew fond of me I think I should tell him about the Magic.
It might make him more cheerful."