Knjigice
Learn-about book · Classic fairy tales
The Secret Garden
The story of a girl called Mary and a garden that woke up again
Also in: Skrivni vrt (Slovenian) · Tajomná záhrada (Slovak)
Far across the sea there lived a little girl called Mary. When she was left all alone, she was sent to her uncle in England — to a great grey house on a wide, windy moor. Mary was thin and pale and always cross. Nobody had taught her how to play, and nobody had ever hugged her. "I shall hate it here," she said as the carriage rolled into the mist.
1
The house had a hundred rooms, and every one of them was locked and silent. Mary had nobody to play with, so she wandered the gardens. There she met old Ben the gardener, grumbling over his spade. And onto that spade flew a tiny bird with a red breast — a robin. He tipped his head and looked at Mary, as if he had something to tell her.
2
Every day the robin waited for her on the wall. For the first time in her life Mary had a friend — and for the first time she laughed. Old Ben told her a secret: behind the high wall lay a garden, locked up for ten whole years. "The master buried the key, and nobody knows where the door is," he grumbled. After that Mary thought of nothing else.
3
One morning the robin hopped about on the freshly turned earth, chirping as if to say: "Look! Look!" Mary came closer. Something dark was peeping out of the soil. She brushed it away — and there in her hand lay an old, rusty key. Her heart thumped. "Perhaps this is the key to the secret garden," she whispered, and hid it deep in her pocket.
4
Next day the wind swept along the wall and lifted a curtain of ivy. Underneath, a doorknob gleamed. A door! Mary looked round — nobody. She pushed the key into the lock and slowly turned it. Click. The door swung open and Mary slipped through. She was standing in the secret garden — so quiet, like a dream.
5
The garden was asleep. The roses hung from the trees like grey cloaks, and everything was hushed and tangled. "Is it all dead?" Mary worried. Then in the grass she saw tiny green points pushing out of the earth. Something was alive after all! She found a stick and began clearing the old leaves away, so they could breathe.
6
One day a boy sat out on the heather, playing a wooden pipe. A little fox lay beside him and a crow perched on his shoulder. "I'm Dickon," he said. "I talk with the animals." Mary told him her secret and took him into the garden. Dickon knelt down by the branches. "Is it alive?" she asked. "It's alive!" he laughed. "It's only sleeping."
7
That night Mary heard crying in the corridors. She followed the sound down long dark passages to a hidden door. In a great bed lay a pale boy — her cousin Colin, whom she had never seen. "I can't walk," he said. "Everyone says I'm ill." Mary sat down beside him and told him until midnight about the moor, the robin, and the garden that slept.
8
Colin was used to everyone obeying his every word, but nobody had ever told him stories like these. "Is the garden really alive?" he asked each evening. "Alive," said Mary. "The roses are waking, the robin is nesting, and Dickon knows every creature on the moor." "Then I want to see it," he whispered. "Take me there. It shall be our secret."
9
One sunny morning Mary and Dickon wheeled Colin's chair along the path to the ivy door. "Close your eyes," said Mary. When Colin opened them he was in the middle of the secret garden: everything budding, cherry trees in blossom, the robin singing. Colin looked and looked, and his cheeks turned pink. "I shall get well," he said. "And live a hundred years!"
10
When old Ben spotted them over the wall, Colin was so cross that he — stood up! He stood on his own two feet, tall and straight. "Look at me!" he cried. After that they practised every day: walking round the garden, digging, planting. "It's Magic," the children said. Or perhaps it was only sun and soil and friendship — and legs growing stronger every day.
11
The garden bloomed as it never had before: roses climbing over the branches, poppies blazing, humming and singing everywhere. And the children bloomed with it. Mary was no longer pale and cross — she laughed and ran. Colin ran with her round the flower beds, the fox and the crow behind them. But they told nobody. The secret was far too lovely.
12
For long years Colin's father had wandered the world, heavy with sorrow. That summer something drew him home. As he stepped through the ivy door, someone came running straight into his arms — Colin! "Father, I can walk! I can run!" Together they looked round the garden, all ablaze with flowers. The secret garden was alive again — and so was the whole house, full of laughter from that day on.
13The End
