CHAPTER XXIII.

MAGIC

Dr. Craven had been waiting some time at the house when they returned

to it. He had indeed begun to wonder if it might not be wise to send

someone out to explore the garden paths. When Colin was brought back to

his room the poor man looked him over seriously.

“You should not have stayed so long,” he said. “You must not overexert

yourself.”

“I am not tired at all,” said Colin. “It has made me well. Tomorrow I

am going out in the morning as well as in the afternoon.”

“I am not sure that I can allow it,” answered Dr. Craven. “I am afraid

it would not be wise.”

“It would not be wise to try to stop me,” said Colin quite seriously.

“I am going.”

Even Mary had found out that one of Colin’s chief peculiarities was

that he did not know in the least what a rude little brute he was with

his way of ordering people about. He had lived on a sort of desert

island all his life and as he had been the king of it he had made his

own manners and had had no one to compare himself with. Mary had indeed

been rather like him herself and since she had been at Misselthwaite

had gradually discovered that her own manners had not been of the kind

which is usual or popular. Having made this discovery she naturally

thought it of enough interest to communicate to Colin. So she sat and

looked at him curiously for a few minutes after Dr. Craven had gone.

She wanted to make him ask her why she was doing it and of course she

did.

“What are you looking at me for?” he said.

“I’m thinking that I am rather sorry for Dr. Craven.”

“So am I,” said Colin calmly, but not without an air of some

satisfaction. “He won’t get Misselthwaite at all now I’m not going to

die.”

“I’m sorry for him because of that, of course,” said Mary, “but I was

thinking just then that it must have been very horrid to have had to be

polite for ten years to a boy who was always rude. I would never have

done it.”

“Am I rude?” Colin inquired undisturbedly.

“If you had been his own boy and he had been a slapping sort of man,”

said Mary, “he would have slapped you.”

“But he daren’t,” said Colin.

“No, he daren’t,” answered Mistress Mary, thinking the thing out quite

without prejudice. “Nobody ever dared to do anything you didn’t

like—because you were going to die and things like that. You were such

a poor thing.”

“But,” announced Colin stubbornly, “I am not going to be a poor thing.

I won’t let people think I’m one. I stood on my feet this afternoon.”

“It is always having your own way that has made you so queer,” Mary

went on, thinking aloud.

Colin turned his head, frowning.

“Am I queer?” he demanded.

“Yes,” answered Mary, “very. But you needn’t be cross,” she added

impartially, “because so am I queer—and so is Ben Weatherstaff. But I

am not as queer as I was before I began to like people and before I

found the garden.”

“I don’t want to be queer,” said Colin. “I am not going to be,” and he

frowned again with determination.

He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while and then Mary saw

his beautiful smile begin and gradually change his whole face.

“I shall stop being queer,” he said, “if I go every day to the garden.

There is Magic in there—good Magic, you know, Mary. I am sure there

is.”

“So am I,” said Mary.

“Even if it isn’t real Magic,” Colin said, “we can pretend it is.

_Something_ is there—_something!_”

“It’s Magic,” said Mary, “but not black. It’s as white as snow.”

They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months

that followed—the wonderful months—the radiant months—the amazing ones.

Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a

garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will

know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass

there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing

their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the

crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and the

buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade

of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had

been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben Weatherstaff

had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from between the

bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely clinging things

to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and

the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and

white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines or campanulas.

“She was main fond o’ them—she was,” Ben Weatherstaff said. “She liked

them things as was allus pointin’ up to th’ blue sky, she used to tell.

Not as she was one o’ them as looked down on th’ earth—not her. She

just loved it but she said as th’ blue sky allus looked so joyful.”

The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended

them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score,

gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years and which

it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had

got there. And the roses—the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled

round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their

branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long

garlands falling in cascades—they came alive day by day, hour by hour.

Fair fresh leaves, and buds—and buds—tiny at first but swelling and

working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent

delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden

air.

Colin saw it all, watching each change as it took place. Every morning

he was brought out and every hour of each day when it didn’t rain he

spent in the garden. Even gray days pleased him. He would lie on the

grass “watching things growing,” he said. If you watched long enough,

he declared, you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also you could

make the acquaintance of strange busy insect things running about on

various unknown but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying tiny

scraps of straw or feather or food, or climbing blades of grass as if

they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the

country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and

making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so

like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Ants’ ways,

beetles’ ways, bees’ ways, frogs’ ways, birds’ ways, plants’ ways, gave

him a new world to explore and when Dickon revealed them all and added

foxes’ ways, otters’ ways, ferrets’ ways, squirrels’ ways, and trout’

and water-rats’ and badgers’ ways, there was no end to the things to

talk about and think over.

And this was not the half of the Magic. The fact that he had really

once stood on his feet had set Colin thinking tremendously and when

Mary told him of the spell she had worked he was excited and approved

of it greatly. He talked of it constantly.

“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely

one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it.

Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen

until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”

The next morning when they went to the secret garden he sent at once

for Ben Weatherstaff. Ben came as quickly as he could and found the

Rajah standing on his feet under a tree and looking very grand but also

very beautifully smiling.

“Good morning, Ben Weatherstaff,” he said. “I want you and Dickon and

Miss Mary to stand in a row and listen to me because I am going to tell

you something very important.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” answered Ben Weatherstaff, touching his forehead. (One

of the long concealed charms of Ben Weatherstaff was that in his

boyhood he had once run away to sea and had made voyages. So he could

reply like a sailor.)

“I am going to try a scientific experiment,” explained the Rajah. “When

I grow up I am going to make great scientific discoveries and I am

going to begin now with this experiment.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff promptly, though this was the

first time he had heard of great scientific discoveries.

It was the first time Mary had heard of them, either, but even at this

stage she had begun to realize that, queer as he was, Colin had read

about a great many singular things and was somehow a very convincing

sort of boy. When he held up his head and fixed his strange eyes on you

it seemed as if you believed him almost in spite of yourself though he

was only ten years old—going on eleven. At this moment he was

especially convincing because he suddenly felt the fascination of

actually making a sort of speech like a grown-up person.

“The great scientific discoveries I am going to make,” he went on,

“will be about Magic. Magic is a great thing and scarcely anyone knows

anything about it except a few people in old books—and Mary a little,

because she was born in India where there are fakirs. I believe Dickon

knows some Magic, but perhaps he doesn’t know he knows it. He charms

animals and people. I would never have let him come to see me if he had

not been an animal charmer—which is a boy charmer, too, because a boy

is an animal. I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not

sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us—like

electricity and horses and steam.”

This sounded so imposing that Ben Weatherstaff became quite excited and

really could not keep still.

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said and he began to stand up quite straight.

“When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead,” the orator

proceeded. “Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and

making things out of nothing. One day things weren’t there and another

they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very

curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be

scientific. I keep saying to myself, ‘What is it? What is it?’ It’s

something. It can’t be nothing! I don’t know its name so I call it

Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from

what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushes it up

and draws it. Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up

through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being

happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making

me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things

out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees,

flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it

must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places. The Magic in

this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a

man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some

and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I

don’t know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it

and calling it perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way

to get it. When I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept

saying to herself as fast as she could, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’

and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her

Magic helped me—and so did Dickon’s. Every morning and evening and as

often in the daytime as I can remember I am going to say, ‘Magic is in

me! Magic is making me well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as

strong as Dickon!’ And you must all do it, too. That is my experiment

Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” said Ben Weatherstaff. “Aye, aye!”

“If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through

drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment

succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking

about them until they stay in your mind forever and I think it will be

the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you

it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.”

“I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were fakirs

who said words over and over thousands of times,” said Mary.

“I’ve heard Jem Fettleworth’s wife say th’ same thing over thousands o’

times—callin’ Jem a drunken brute,” said Ben Weatherstaff dryly.

“Summat allus come o’ that, sure enough. He gave her a good hidin’ an’

went to th’ Blue Lion an’ got as drunk as a lord.”

Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he

cheered up.

“Well,” he said, “you see something did come of it. She used the wrong

Magic until she made him beat her. If she’d used the right Magic and

had said something nice perhaps he wouldn’t have got as drunk as a lord

and perhaps—perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.”

Ben Weatherstaff chuckled and there was shrewd admiration in his little

old eyes.

“Tha’rt a clever lad as well as a straight-legged one, Mester Colin,”

he said. “Next time I see Bess Fettleworth I’ll give her a bit of a

hint o’ what Magic will do for her. She’d be rare an’ pleased if th’

sinetifik ’speriment worked—an’ so ’ud Jem.”

Dickon had stood listening to the lecture, his round eyes shining with

curious delight. Nut and Shell were on his shoulders and he held a

long-eared white rabbit in his arm and stroked and stroked it softly

while it laid its ears along its back and enjoyed itself.

“Do you think the experiment will work?” Colin asked him, wondering

what he was thinking. He so often wondered what Dickon was thinking

when he saw him looking at him or at one of his “creatures” with his

happy wide smile.

He smiled now and his smile was wider than usual.

“Aye,” he answered, “that I do. It’ll work same as th’ seeds do when

th’ sun shines on ’em. It’ll work for sure. Shall us begin it now?”

Colin was delighted and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of fakirs

and devotees in illustrations Colin suggested that they should all sit

cross-legged under the tree which made a canopy.

“It will be like sitting in a sort of temple,” said Colin. “I’m rather

tired and I want to sit down.”

“Eh!” said Dickon, “tha’ mustn’t begin by sayin’ tha’rt tired. Tha’

might spoil th’ Magic.”

Colin turned and looked at him—into his innocent round eyes.

“That’s true,” he said slowly. “I must only think of the Magic.”

It all seemed most majestic and mysterious when they sat down in their

circle. Ben Weatherstaff felt as if he had somehow been led into

appearing at a prayer-meeting. Ordinarily he was very fixed in being

what he called “agen’ prayer-meetin’s” but this being the Rajah’s

affair he did not resent it and was indeed inclined to be gratified at

being called upon to assist. Mistress Mary felt solemnly enraptured.

Dickon held his rabbit in his arm, and perhaps he made some charmer’s

signal no one heard, for when he sat down, cross-legged like the rest,

the crow, the fox, the squirrels and the lamb slowly drew near and made

part of the circle, settling each into a place of rest as if of their

own desire.

“The ‘creatures’ have come,” said Colin gravely. “They want to help

us.”

Colin really looked quite beautiful, Mary thought. He held his head

high as if he felt like a sort of priest and his strange eyes had a

wonderful look in them. The light shone on him through the tree canopy.

“Now we will begin,” he said. “Shall we sway backward and forward,

Mary, as if we were dervishes?”

“I canna’ do no swayin’ back’ard and for’ard,” said Ben Weatherstaff.

“I’ve got th’ rheumatics.”

“The Magic will take them away,” said Colin in a High Priest tone, “but

we won’t sway until it has done it. We will only chant.”

“I canna’ do no chantin’” said Ben Weatherstaff a trifle testily. “They

turned me out o’ th’ church choir th’ only time I ever tried it.”

No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin’s face was not

even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the Magic.

“Then I will chant,” he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy

spirit. “The sun is shining—the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The

flowers are growing—the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being

alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me—the

Magic is in me. It is in me—it is in me. It’s in everyone of us. It’s

in Ben Weatherstaff’s back. Magic! Magic! Come and help!”

He said it a great many times—not a thousand times but quite a goodly

number. Mary listened entranced. She felt as if it were at once queer

and beautiful and she wanted him to go on and on. Ben Weatherstaff

began to feel soothed into a sort of dream which was quite agreeable.

The humming of the bees in the blossoms mingled with the chanting voice

and drowsily melted into a doze. Dickon sat cross-legged with his

rabbit asleep on his arm and a hand resting on the lamb’s back. Soot

had pushed away a squirrel and huddled close to him on his shoulder,

the gray film dropped over his eyes. At last Colin stopped.

“Now I am going to walk round the garden,” he announced.

Ben Weatherstaff’s head had just dropped forward and he lifted it with

a jerk.

“You have been asleep,” said Colin.

“Nowt o’ th’ sort,” mumbled Ben. “Th’ sermon was good enow—but I’m

bound to get out afore th’ collection.”

He was not quite awake yet.

“You’re not in church,” said Colin.

“Not me,” said Ben, straightening himself. “Who said I were? I heard

every bit of it. You said th’ Magic was in my back. Th’ doctor calls it

rheumatics.”

The Rajah waved his hand.

“That was the wrong Magic,” he said. “You will get better. You have my

permission to go to your work. But come back tomorrow.”

“I’d like to see thee walk round the garden,” grunted Ben.

It was not an unfriendly grunt, but it was a grunt. In fact, being a

stubborn old party and not having entire faith in Magic he had made up

his mind that if he were sent away he would climb his ladder and look

over the wall so that he might be ready to hobble back if there were

any stumbling.

The Rajah did not object to his staying and so the procession was

formed. It really did look like a procession. Colin was at its head

with Dickon on one side and Mary on the other. Ben Weatherstaff walked

behind, and the “creatures” trailed after them, the lamb and the fox

cub keeping close to Dickon, the white rabbit hopping along or stopping

to nibble and Soot following with the solemnity of a person who felt

himself in charge.

It was a procession which moved slowly but with dignity. Every few

yards it stopped to rest. Colin leaned on Dickon’s arm and privately

Ben Weatherstaff kept a sharp lookout, but now and then Colin took his

hand from its support and walked a few steps alone. His head was held

up all the time and he looked very grand.

“The Magic is in me!” he kept saying. “The Magic is making me strong! I

can feel it! I can feel it!”

It seemed very certain that something was upholding and uplifting him.

He sat on the seats in the alcoves, and once or twice he sat down on

the grass and several times he paused in the path and leaned on Dickon,

but he would not give up until he had gone all round the garden. When

he returned to the canopy tree his cheeks were flushed and he looked

triumphant.

“I did it! The Magic worked!” he cried. “That is my first scientific

discovery.”

“What will Dr. Craven say?” broke out Mary.

“He won’t say anything,” Colin answered, “because he will not be told.

This is to be the biggest secret of all. No one is to know anything

about it until I have grown so strong that I can walk and run like any

other boy. I shall come here every day in my chair and I shall be taken

back in it. I won’t have people whispering and asking questions and I

won’t let my father hear about it until the experiment has quite

succeeded. Then sometime when he comes back to Misselthwaite I shall

just walk into his study and say ‘Here I am; I am like any other boy. I

am quite well and I shall live to be a man. It has been done by a

scientific experiment.’”

“He will think he is in a dream,” cried Mary. “He won’t believe his

eyes.”

Colin flushed triumphantly. He had made himself believe that he was

going to get well, which was really more than half the battle, if he

had been aware of it. And the thought which stimulated him more than

any other was this imagining what his father would look like when he

saw that he had a son who was as straight and strong as other fathers’

sons. One of his darkest miseries in the unhealthy morbid past days had

been his hatred of being a sickly weak-backed boy whose father was

afraid to look at him.

“He’ll be obliged to believe them,” he said.

“One of the things I am going to do, after the Magic works and before I

begin to make scientific discoveries, is to be an athlete.”

“We shall have thee takin’ to boxin’ in a week or so,” said Ben

Weatherstaff. “Tha’lt end wi’ winnin’ th’ Belt an’ bein’ champion

prize-fighter of all England.”

Colin fixed his eyes on him sternly.

“Weatherstaff,” he said, “that is disrespectful. You must not take

liberties because you are in the secret. However much the Magic works I

shall not be a prize-fighter. I shall be a Scientific Discoverer.”

“Ax pardon—ax pardon, sir” answered Ben, touching his forehead in

salute. “I ought to have seed it wasn’t a jokin’ matter,” but his eyes

twinkled and secretly he was immensely pleased. He really did not mind

being snubbed since the snubbing meant that the lad was gaining

strength and spirit.