The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson BurnettЧитать онлайн книгу.
“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 goodnatured 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 newborn 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