THE WONDERFUL GARDEN
It was very glorious to wake up the next morning in enormous soft
beds—four-posted, with many-folded silk hangings, and shiny furniture
that reflected the sunlight as dark mirrors might do. And breakfast
was nice, with different sorts of things to eat, in silver dishes with
spirit-lamps under them,—bacon and sausages and scrambled eggs, and as
much toast and marmalade as you wanted; not just porridge and apples,
as at Aunt Emmeline’s. There were tea and coffee and hot milk. They all
chose hot milk.
‘I feel,’ said Caroline, pouring it out of a big silver jug with little
bits of ivory between the handle and the jug to keep the handle from
getting too hot, ‘I feel that we’re going to enjoy every second of the
time we’re here.’
‘Rather,’ said Charles, through sausage. ‘Isn’t Uncle Charles a dear,’
he added more distinctly. ‘I dreamed about him last night—that he
painted his face out of the paint-box I gave Caro, and then we blew him
out with the bellows to make him fatter.’
‘And did it?’ Caroline asked.
‘He burst,’ said Charles briefly, ‘and turned into showers of dead
leaves.’
There was an interval of contented silence. Then—
‘What shall we do first?’ said Charles. And his sisters with one voice
answered, ‘Explore, of course.’
And they finished their breakfast to dreams of exploring every hole and
corner of the wonderful house.
But when they rang to have breakfast taken away it was Mrs. Wilmington
who appeared.
‘Your uncle desired me to say that he thinks it’s healthy for you
to spend some hours in the hopen—_o_pen air,’ she said, speaking in
a small distinct voice. ‘He himself takes the air of an afternoon.
So will you please all go out at once,’ she ended in a burst of
naturalness, ‘and not come ’ome, _h_ome, till one o’clock.’
‘Where are we to go?’ asked Charlotte, not pleased.
‘Not beyond the park and grounds,’ said the housekeeper. ‘And,’ she
added reluctantly, ‘Mr. Charles said if there was any pudding you
liked to mention——’
A brief consultation ended in, ‘Treacle hat, please’; and when Mrs.
Wilmington had minced off, they turned to each other and said:
‘The brick!’
‘The old duck!’ and
‘Something like an uncle.’
Then they went out, as they had been told to do. And they took off
their shoes and stockings, which they had not been told to do—but,
on the other hand, had not been told not to—and walked barefooted in
the grass still cool and dewy under the trees. And they put on their
boots again and explored the park, and explored the stable-yard, where
a groom was rubbing bright the silver buckles of the harness and
whistling as he rubbed. They explored the stables and the harness-room
and the straw-loft and the hay-loft. And then they went back to the
park and climbed trees—a little way, because though they had always
known that they would climb trees if ever they had half a chance, they
had not, till now, had any chance at all.
And all the while they were doing all this they were looking—at the
back of their minds, even when they weren’t doing it with the part you
think with—for the garden.
And there wasn’t any garden!
That was the plain fact that they had to face after two hours of
sunshine and green out-of-doors.
‘And I’m certain mother said there was a garden,’ Caroline said,
sitting down suddenly on the grass; ‘a beautiful garden and a terrace.’
‘Perhaps the Uncle didn’t like it, and he’s had it made not garden
again—“Going back to Nature” that would be, like Aunt Emmeline talks
about,’ Charles suggested.
‘And it’s dreadful if there’s no garden,’ said Caroline, ‘because of
the flowers we were going to send in letters. Wild flowers don’t have
such deep meanings, I’m certain.’
‘And besides we haven’t seen any wild flowers,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh,
bother!’
‘Never mind,’ Charles said, ‘think of exploring the house—and finding
the book, perhaps. We’ll ask the Elegant One, when we go in, why there
isn’t a garden.’
‘We won’t wait till then,’ said Charlotte; ‘let’s go and ask that jolly
man who’s polishing the harness. He looked as if he wouldn’t mind us
talking to him.’
‘It was him drove us yesterday,’ Charles pointed out.
So they went as to an old friend. And when they asked William why
there wasn’t a garden he answered surprisingly and rather indignantly:
‘Ain’t they shown you, Miss? Not a garden? There ain’t a garden to beat
it hereabouts. Come on, I’ll show you.’
And, still more surprisingly, he led the way to the back door.
‘We aren’t to go indoors till dinner-time,’ said Caroline; ‘and
besides, we _should_ like to see the garden—if there really is one.’
‘Of course there is one, Miss,’ said William. ‘She’ll never see you if
you’re quick. She’ll be in her room by now—at her accounts and things.
And the Master’s never about in these back parts in the morning.’
‘I suppose it’s a lock-up garden and he’s going to get the key,’ said
Charles in a whisper. But William wasn’t.
He led them into a whitewashed passage that had cupboards and larders
opening out of it and ended in a green baize door. He opened this, and
there they were in the hall.
‘Quick,’ he said, and crossed it, unlatched another door and held it
open. ‘Come in quiet,’ he said, and closed the door again. And there
they all were in a little square room with a stone staircase going
down the very middle of it, like a well. There was a wooden railing
round three sides of the stairway, and nothing else in the room at all,
except William and the children.
‘A secret staircase,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, it can’t be, really. How
_lovely_!’
‘I daresay it was a secret once,’ said William, striking a match and
lighting a candle that stood at the top of the stairs in a brass
candlestick. ‘You see there wasn’t always these banisters, and you
can see that ridge along the wall. My grandfather says it used to be
boarded over and that’s where the joists went. They’d have a trap-door
or something over the stairway, I shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘But what’s the stair for?—Where does it _go_? Are we going down?’ the
children asked.
‘Yes, and sharp too. Nobody’s supposed to go this way except the
Master. But you’ll not tell on me. I’ll go first. Mind the steps, Miss.
They’re a bit wore at the edges, like.’
They minded the steps, going carefully down, following the blinking,
winking, blue and yellow gleam of the candle.
There were not many steps.
‘Straight ahead now,’ said William, holding the candle up to show the
groined roof of a long straight passage, built of stone, and with stone
flags for the floor of it.
‘How perfectly ripping!’ said Charlotte breathlessly. ‘It _is_
brickish of you to bring us here. Where does it go to?’
‘You wait a bit,’ said William, and went on. The passage ended in
another flight of steps—up this time,—and the steps ended in a door,
and when William had opened this every one blinked and shut their eyes,
for the doorway framed green leaves with blue sky showing through them,
and——
‘’Ere’s the garden,’ said William; and here, indeed, it was.
‘There’s another door the other end what the gardeners go in and out
of,’ said William. ‘I’ll get you a key sometime.’
The door had opened into a sort of arch—an arbour, for its entrance was
almost veiled by thick-growing shrubs.
‘Oh, thank you,’ said Caroline; ‘but when did they make this passage,
and what for?’
‘They made that passage when the folks in the house was too grand to
go through the stable-yard and too lazy to go round,’ said William.
‘There’s no stable-yard way now,’ he added. ‘So long! I must be getting
back, Miss. Don’t you let on as I brought you through.’
‘Of course not,’ every one said. Charles added, ‘But I didn’t know the
house was as old as secret passages in history times.’
‘It’s any age you please,’ said William; ‘the back parts is.’
He went back through the door, and the children went out through the
leafy screen in front, into the most beautiful garden that could be,
with a wall. I like unwalled gardens myself, with views from the
terraces. From this garden you could see nothing but tall trees and—the
garden itself.
The lower half was a vegetable garden arranged in squares with dwarf
fruit-trees and flower-borders round them, like the borders round
old-fashioned pocket-handkerchiefs. Then about half-way up the garden
came steps—stone balustrades, a terrace, and beyond that a flower
garden with smooth green turf paths, box-edged, a sundial in the
middle, and in the flower-beds flowers—more flowers than I could give
names to.
‘How perfectly perfect!’ Charlotte said.
‘I do wish I’d brought out my _Language Of_!’ said Caroline.
‘How awfully tidy everything is!’ said Charles in awe-struck tones.
It was.
There was nowhere an imperfect leaf, a deformed bud, or a misshapen
flower. Every plant grew straight and strong, and with an extraordinary
evenness.
‘They look like pictures of plants more than like real ones,’ said
Caroline quite truly.
An old gardener was sweeping the terrace steps, and gave the children
‘Good morning.’
They gave it back, and stayed to watch him. It seemed polite to say
something before turning away. So Caroline said:
‘How beautifully everything grows here.’
‘Ay,’ said the old man, ‘it do. Say perfect and you won’t be far out.’
‘It’s very clever of you,’ said Charlotte. ‘Ill weeds don’t grow in a
single place in _your_ garden.’
‘I don’t say as I don’t do something,’ said the old man, ‘but seems
as if there was a blessing on the place—everything thrives and grows
just-so. It’s the soil or the aspick, p’raps. I dunno. An’ I’ve noticed
things.’
‘What things?’ was the natural question.
‘Oh, just things,’ the gardener answered shortly, and swept away to the
end of the long steps.
‘I say’—Caroline went after him to do it—‘I say, may we pick the
flowers?’
‘In moderation,’ said the gardener, and went away.
‘I wonder what he’d call moderation,’ said Charles; and they discussed
this question so earnestly that the dinner-bell rang before they had
picked any flowers at all.
[Illustration: ‘How beautifully everything grows here.’]
The gate at the end of the garden was open, and they went out that way.
Over the gate was a stone with words and a date. They stopped to spell
out the carved letters:
HERE BE DREAMES
1589
RESPICE FINEM.
Caroline copied the last two words in the grey-covered pocket-book; and
when Mrs. Wilmington came in to carve the mutton, Caroline asked what
the words meant.
‘I never inquired,’ said the housekeeper. ‘It must be quite out of date
now, whatever it meant once. But you must have been in the garden to
see that. How did you get in?’
An awkward question. There was nothing for it but to say:
‘By the secret passage.’ And Charles said it.
‘No one uses that but your uncle,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘and you were
requested to keep out of doors till dinner-time.’
She shut her mouth with a snap and went on carving.
‘Sorry,’ said Caroline.
‘Granted,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, but not cordially; and having placed
two slices of mutton on each plate went away.
‘It _is_ jolly having meals by ourselves,’ said Charlotte; ‘only I wish
she wasn’t cross.’
‘We ought to be extra manner-y, I expect, when we’re by ourselves,’
said Caroline. ‘May I pass you the salt, Charles?’
‘No, you mayn’t,’ said Charles. ‘Thank you, I mean; but there’s one at
each corner. That’s one each for us, and one over for——’
‘For _her_.’ Charlotte pointed to the picture of the dark-eyed,
fair-haired lady.
‘Let’s put a chair for her,’ said Charlotte, ‘and pretend she’s come to
dinner. Then we shall have to behave like grown-up people.’
‘I never can remember about behaving,’ said Charles wearily; ‘such a
lot of things—and none of them seem to matter. Why shouldn’t you drink
with your mouth full? It’s your own mouth.’
‘And eating peas with your knife. I think it would be as good as
conjuring, doing it without cutting yourself’—Charlotte tried to lift
the peas from her plate with her knife—‘let alone the balancing,’ she
added, as they rolled off among the mutton.
‘Don’t,’ said Caroline. ‘She’s looking at you. Charles, you’re the only
gentleman, worse luck—I wish I was a boy—put a chair for her.’
And a large green-seated chair, whose mahogany back was inlaid with a
brass scroll pattern, was wheeled to the empty space on the fourth side
of the table.
‘Now we must none of us look at her—in the picture, I mean. And then we
can’t be sure that she isn’t sitting in that chair,’ said Caroline.
After dinner Caroline looked up ‘Remorse’s regret’ in _The Language of
Flowers_. It was agreed that Mrs. Wilmington had better have a bouquet.
‘Brambles,’ Caroline said, her finger in the book, ‘they’re Remorse—but
they wouldn’t make a very comfortable nosegay. And Regret’s verbena,
and I don’t even know what it is.’
‘Put pansies with the brambles,’ said Charlotte; ‘that’ll be thoughts
of remorse.’
So the housekeeper, coming down very neat in her afternoon dress of
shiny black alpaca, was met by a bunch of pansies.
‘To show we think we’re remorsish about the secret stairs,’ said
Charlotte; ‘and look out, because the brambles are the remorse and they
prick like Billy-o!’
Mrs. Wilmington smiled, and looked quite nice-looking.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I am sure you will remember not to repeat the
fault.’
Which wasn’t the nicest way of receiving a remorse bouquet; but, then
as Charlotte said, perhaps she couldn’t help not knowing the nice
ways. And anyhow, she seemed pleased, and that was the great thing, as
Charlotte pointed out.
Then, having done something to please Mrs. Wilmington, they longed to
do something to please some one else, and the Uncle was the only person
they could think of doing anything to please.
‘Suppose we arranged all the books in the dining-room bookcase, in
colours,—all the reds together and all the greens, and the ugly ones
all on a shelf by themselves,’ Charlotte suggested. And the others
agreed. So that the afternoon flew by like any old bird, as Caroline
put it; and when tea came, and the floor and sofa and chairs were
covered with books, and one shelf was gay with red books and half a
shelf demure in green—
‘Your uncle isn’t coming in to-day,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘and I’m
sure it’s just as well. _What_ a mess! Here, let me put them back, and
go and wash your hands.’
‘We’ll put them back,’ the children said, but in vain. They had to go
to wash their hands, and Mrs. Wilmington continued to put the books
back all the time they were having tea. Patiently and carefully she did
it, not regarding the colours at all, and her care and her patience
seemed to say, more loudly than any words she could have spoken, ‘Yes;
there you sit, having your nice tea, and I cannot have _my_ tea,
because I have to clear up after you. But I do not complain. No.’
They would have much rather she had complained, of course. But they
couldn’t say so.