Chapter Chapter 20 · I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!

. I SHALL LIVE FOREVER--AND EVER--AND EVER!

"

But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came

some very windy days and then Colin was threatened with a cold, which

two things happening one after the other would no doubt have thrown him

into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning

to do and almost every day Dickon came in, if only for a few minutes, to

talk about what was happening on the moor and in the lanes and hedges

and on the borders of streams. The things he had to tell about otters'

and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds' nests and

field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost tremble

with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an animal

charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole

busy underworld was working.

"They're same as us," said Dickon, "only they have to build their homes

every year. An' it keeps 'em so busy they fair scuffle to get 'em

done."

The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made

before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the garden.

No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after they turned

a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the

ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and more fixed in

his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was one of its

greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect that

they had a secret. People must think that he was simply going out with

Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object to their

looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks about their

route. They would go up this path and down that one and cross the other

and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they were looking at

the "bedding-out plants" the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having

arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one would

think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the shrubbery walks and

lose themselves until they came to the long walls. It was almost as

serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of march made by great

generals in time of war.

Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the

invalid's apartments had of course filtered through the servants' hall

into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding

this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from Master

Colin's room to the effect that he must report himself in the apartment

no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to speak to

him.

"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat,

"what's to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn't to be looked at

calling up a man he's never set eyes on."

Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a glimpse

of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his uncanny

looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard oftenest

was that he might die at any moment and there had been numerous fanciful

descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by people who

had never seen him.

"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach," said Mrs. Medlock, as

she led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened the

hitherto mysterious chamber.

"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mrs. Medlock," he

answered.

"They couldn't well change for the worse," she continued; "and queer as

it all is there's them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand

up under. Don't you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the

middle of a menagerie and Martha Sowerby's Dickon more at home than you

or me could ever be."

There really was a sort of Magic about Dickon, as Mary always privately

believed. When Mr. Roach heard his name he smiled quite leniently.

"He'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine,"

he said. "And yet it's not impudence, either. He's just fine, is that

lad."

It was perhaps well he had been prepared or he might have been startled.

When the bedroom door was opened a large crow, which seemed quite at

home perched on the high back of a carven chair, announced the entrance

of a visitor by saying "Caw--Caw" quite loudly. In spite of Mrs.

Medlock's warning, Mr. Roach only just escaped being sufficiently

undignified to jump backward.

The young Rajah was neither in bed nor on his sofa. He was sitting in an

armchair and a young lamb was standing by him shaking its tail in

feeding-lamb fashion as Dickon knelt giving it milk from its bottle. A

squirrel was perched on Dickon's bent back attentively nibbling a nut.

The little girl from India was sitting on a big footstool looking on.

"Here is Mr. Roach, Master Colin," said Mrs. Medlock.

The young Rajah turned and looked his servitor over--at least that was

what the head gardener felt happened.

"Oh, you are Roach, are you?" he said. "I sent for you to give you some

very important orders."

"Very good, sir," answered Roach, wondering if he was to receive

instructions to fell all the oaks in the park or to transform the

orchards into water-gardens.

"I am going out in my chair this afternoon," said Colin. "If the fresh

air agrees with me I may go out every day. When I go, none of the

gardeners are to be anywhere near the Long Walk by the garden walls. No

one is to be there. I shall go out about two o'clock and every one must

keep away until I send word that they may go back to their work."

"Very good, sir," replied Mr. Roach, much relieved to hear that the oaks

might remain and that the orchards were safe.

"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 good-natured 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, every one 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 new-born 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 to-day."

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