THE ENCHANTED GARDEN.
Marjory Trevellian was what is accounted among her class “a good
scholar,” and she had taught the little boy to read and write, to “say
his tables,” and to “cypher,” as she termed the initiatory arithmetical
exercises.
It was plain, however, that the boy was not abandoned to chance, but
that an eye was upon him, and some friendly, if not conscientious
direction, controlling his destiny.
In one of his visits Tom Orange handed her a letter, written in the
same neat clerk’s hand in which the short memorandum that accompanied
each remittance was penned. Having read the letter she was thoughtful.
When Tom had gone away, she said--
“You are to be taught like a gentleman, as you are, my darling, and
you’re not to be sent to school for three or four years, and in the
meantime Mr. Wharton--he’s a kind, good gentleman--is to teach you for
two hours every evening after the school is over. You know his house.
It is about a mile away from this; just half-way on the road to the
grammar school.”
“But I’m to live at home, Granny, all the same?” inquired the boy in
great trepidation.
“Lord love it, to be sure he is,” she answered, beaming on him with
great affection. “Only two hours, and every one likes Mr. Wharton, and
I’m desired to go to his house to take his orders, to-morrow.”
So she did, and the new order of things was established with very
little disturbance of the old.
The narrow road which the boy every afternoon passed to and from
Doctor Wharton’s house makes, about half-way, a sudden curve. It is a
wooded road, not without little ups and downs, and formidable ruts,
and blocks of worn old stone, so large as to shock all the rules of
modern road-making.
Upon this curve, so as nearly to front the boy’s line of march, is a
very old fruit garden, with a discoloured ivy-grown wall, on which are
growing moss and house-leek, and here and there tufts of grass and
wall-flower. Over the wall are seen ancient standard plum and cherry
and pear-trees, and beyond them the upper windows, and the steep, grey
roof, and slender chimneys of a house as much out of date as the
garden.
In the garden-wall is a tall door with worn fluted pilasters
corresponding in antiquity with the rest of the building and its
belongings. This stone framework has an iron door, old-fashioned and
fancifully wrought into arabesques of spikes, leaves, and stars,
facing the quiet road, and within this a strong wooden door.
Fruit-trees are, of course, always interesting to boys, but quite
another interest mingled in the feeling with which little Willie
viewed such glimpses of the old grey house and its background of dark
and towering timber as his approach afforded, and he often wished, as
he passed, that a hole in the wall might afford him a peep into the
old garden and a glimpse of its owners. He sometimes heard their
voices.
A clear, childish laugh he had heard more than once, from among the
tall fruit-trees and climbing roses that over-topped the wall, and a
sweet female voice also faintly prattling with the child.
One evening, as he returned from Doctor Wharton’s, with his books
buckled in his strap swinging from his hand, having slackened his pace
as usual when he found himself under the garden wall, to his infinite
delight the inner wooden door, which had always obstructed his
curiosity, was open. The outer gate of iron rails and foliage was
locked, but through its bars he could see at last the garden. Its
trees were old and overgrown. It was wonderfully dark, with roses and
other flowers glowing here and there, and one straight walk leading up
to the house, and continuing the line of the narrow bridge which, at
the iron door, crossed what seemed a sort of moat, whose banks were
overgrown with docks and nettles. He could see part of the steps
leading up to the door of the house, and a portion of one of its
windows. The rest was concealed by the thick foliage, and the effect
of this little glimpse was increased by the deep shadow of the
foreground.
It was not very far from sunset, and the small birds were already
singing among the boughs, and the deep shadow--the antique and
neglected air and the silence of the place--gave it, in his romantic
eyes, a character of monastic mystery and enchantment.
As he gazed straight up the dark walk towards the house, suddenly a
man turned the corner of the yew hedge that met the bridge’s parapet
close to him, and walking straight up to the door, with a gruff look
at the little boy, shut and locked the wooden door in his face.
So all was gone for the present. He knew there was no good in looking
through the key-hole, for envious fortune had hung a spray of
sweetbriar so as effectually to intercept the view, and nothing
remained but the dingy chocolate-coloured planks before him, and the
foliage and roses trembling over the old wall.
Many a time again he passed and re-passed the door without a like good
hap.
At length, however, one evening he found the envious wooden door once
more open, and the view again disclosed through the iron bars.
A very pretty little girl, with golden hair, was standing on tip-toe
near, and with all her soul was striving to reach an apple with a
stick which she held in her tiny fingers.
Seeing him she fixed her large eyes on him, and said, with an air of
command--
“Come, and climb up the tree and get me that apple.”
His heart beat quick--there was nothing he liked better.
“But I can’t get in,” he said, blushing; “the door is locked.”
“Oh! I’ll call mamma--she’ll let you in. Don’t you know mamma?”
“No, I never saw her,” answered the boy.
“Wait there, and I’ll fetch her.”
And so she was gone.
The first flutter of his excitement was hardly over when he heard
steps and voices near, and the little girl returned, holding the hand
of a slight, pale lady, with a very pretty face, dressed all in black.
She had the key in her hand, and smiled gently on the little boy as
she approached. Her face was kind, and at once he trusted her.
“Oh! he has left the inner door open again,” she said, and with a
little nod and smile of welcome she opened the door, and the boy
entered the garden.
Both doors were now shut.
“Look up, little boy,” said the lady in black, with a very sweet
voice.
She liked his face. He was a very handsome little fellow, and with an
expression earnest, shy, and bright, and the indescribable character
of refinement too in his face. She smiled more kindly still, and
placing just the tip of her finger under his chin she said--
“You are a gentleman’s son, and you are nicely dressed. What is your
name?”
“My papa’s name is Mr. Henry,” he answered.
“And where do you go to school?”
“I don’t go to school. I say lessons to Mr. Wharton--about half a mile
from this.”
“It is great fun, I suppose, playing with the little boys--cricket,
and all that?”
“I’m not allowed to play with the little boys.”
“Who forbids you?”
“My friends won’t allow me.”
“Who are your friends?”
“I never saw them.”
“Really! and don’t you live with your papa?”
“No, I live with Marjory.”
“Do you mean with your mamma?”
“Oh, no. She died a long time ago.”
“And is your papa rich--why aren’t you with him?”
“He was rich, Granny says, but he grew poor.”
“And where is he now?”
“I don’t know. I’m to go to school,” he said, acquiring confidence the
more he looked in that sweet face. “My friends will send me, in three
years, Granny says.”
“You are a very nice little boy, and I’m sure a good little fellow.
We’ll have tea in a few minutes--you must stay and drink tea with us.”
The little fellow held his straw hat in his hand, and was looking up
in the face of the lady, whose slender fingers were laid almost
caressingly on his rich brown hair as she looked down smiling, with
eyes in which “the water stood.” Perhaps these forlorn childhoods had
a peculiar interest for her.
“And it is very polite of you taking off your hat to a lady, but put
it on again, for I’m not a bit better than you; and I’ll go and tell
them to get tea now. Dulcibella,” she called. “Dulcibella, this
little friend is coming to drink tea with us, and Amy and he will play
here till it comes, and don’t mind getting up, sit quiet and rest
yourself.”
And she signed with her hand, smiling, to repress her attempt to rise.
“Well, darling, play in sight o’ me, till your mamma comes back,” said
the rheumatic old woman, addressing the little girl; “and ye mustn’t
be pulling at that great rolling-stone; ye can’t move it, and ye may
break your pretty back trying.”
With these and similar injunctions the children were abandoned to
their play.
He found this pretty young lady imperious, but it was pleasant to be
so commanded, and the little boy climbed trees to gather her favourite
apples, and climbed the garden wall to pluck a bit of wallflower, and
at last she said--
“Now, we’ll play ninepins. There’s the box, set them up on the walk.
Yes, that’s right; you _have_ played; who taught you?”
“Granny.”
“Has Granny ninepins?”
“Yes, ever so much bigger than these.”
“Really! So Granny is rich, then?”
“I think so.”
“As rich as mamma?”
“Her garden isn’t so big.”
“Begin, do _you_; ah, ha! you’ve hit one, and who plays best?”
“Tom Orange does; does your mamma know Tom Orange?”
“I dare say she does. Dulcibella, does mamma know Tom Orange?”
“No, my dear.”
“No, she doesn’t,” echoed the little girl, “who is he?”
What, not know Tom Orange! How could that be? So he narrated on that
brilliant theme.
“Tom Orange must come to tea with mamma, I’ll tell her to ask him,”
decided the young lady.
So these little wiseacres pursued their game, and then had their tea,
and in about an hour the little boy found himself trudging home, with
a sudden misgiving, for the first time, as to the propriety of his
having made these acquaintances without Granny’s leave.
The kind voice, the beloved smile of Granny received him before the
cottage door.
“Welcome, darlin’, and where was my darlin’, and what kept him from
his old Granny?”
So they hugged and kissed, and then he related all that had happened,
and asked “was it any harm, Granny?”
“Not a bit, darlin’, that’s a good lady, and a grand lady, and a fit
companion for ye, and see how she knew the gentle blood in your pretty
face; and ye _may_ go, as she has asked you, to-morrow evening again,
and as often as she asks ye; for it was only the little fellows that’s
going about without edication or manners, that your friends, and who
can blame them, doesn’t like ye to keep company with--and who’d blame
them, seeing they’re seldom out of mischief, and that’s the beginning
o’ wickedness, and you’re going, but oh! darlin’, not for three long
years, thank God, to a grand school where there’s none but the best.”
So this chance acquaintance grew, and the lady seemed to take every
week a deeper interest in the fine little boy, so sensitive, generous,
and intelligent, and he very often drank tea with his new friends.