THE SECRET GARDEN

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

CHAPTER I. THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everyone agreed she was the most disagreeable-looking child anyone had ever seen. And it was true. She had a thin face, a thin body, thin pale hair, and a sour expression. Her skin looked sallow because she had been born in India and had been sickly for most of her life. Her father worked for the British government there and was always busy and often unwell himself. Her mother was a great beauty who cared only about attending parties and enjoying herself with fashionable people. She had never wanted a daughter, and once Mary was born, she handed the baby over to an Ayah (an Indian nursemaid), making it clear that if the woman wanted to please her mistress, she should keep the child out of sight as much as possible.

So Mary spent her infancy—sickly, fretful, and unattractive—tucked away, and her toddler years the same way. She never grew familiar with anyone besides the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, who obeyed her every whim, since her mother would grow angry if disturbed by the child's crying. By the time Mary turned six, she had become as selfish and demanding a little tyrant as ever lived. The young English governess hired to teach her to read disliked her so intensely that she quit after three months, and each governess who followed left even sooner than the last. If Mary hadn't genuinely wanted to learn to read, she might never have learned her letters at all.

One blisteringly hot morning, when she was about nine, Mary woke up cross, and grew even crosser upon discovering that the servant standing by her bed was not her Ayah.

"Why did you come?" she demanded of the strange woman. "I won't let you stay. Send my Ayah to me."

The woman looked frightened but only stammered that the Ayah could not come. When Mary flew into a rage and began hitting and kicking her, the woman grew more frightened still, repeating that it simply wasn't possible for the Ayah to attend to Missie Sahib (a term of respectful address for a young mistress) that day.

Something strange hung in the air that morning. Nothing followed its usual routine, and several servants seemed to have vanished, while those Mary did see crept or rushed about with pale, frightened faces. No one would explain anything, and her Ayah never appeared. Left entirely alone as the morning wore on, Mary eventually wandered into the garden and began playing by herself under a tree near the veranda (a covered porch). She pretended to plant a flower bed, sticking large red hibiscus blossoms into little mounds of dirt, growing angrier by the minute and muttering under her breath all the insults she planned to hurl at her Ayah, Saidie, the moment she returned.

"Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, since calling a native servant a pig was considered the worst insult imaginable.

She was grinding her teeth and repeating this when she heard her mother step onto the veranda with someone. Her mother was accompanied by a fair-haired young man, and the two spoke together in low, strained voices. Mary recognized him as a young officer newly arrived from England, though he looked almost like a boy. The child stared at him, but stared even harder at her mother. She always did this on the rare occasions she got to see her, because the "Mem Sahib" (as Mary usually called her, a respectful term for a married Englishwoman) was so tall, slender, and lovely, always dressed beautifully. Her hair was like curling silk, her small nose seemed to look down on everything with faint scorn, and her eyes were large and usually full of laughter. All her clothing was thin and flowing, "full of lace," as Mary put it. It looked more lace-covered than ever this morning—but her eyes were not laughing now. They were wide with fear, and lifted pleadingly toward the young officer's face.

"Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her mother ask.

"Awfully," the young man answered, his voice shaking. "Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You should have left for the hills two weeks ago."

Mrs. Lennox wrung her hands.

"Oh, I know I should have!" she cried. "I only stayed for that ridiculous dinner party. What a fool I was!"

At that instant, a loud wail rose from the servants' quarters, and she gripped the young man's arm in alarm while Mary stood frozen, shivering. The wailing grew louder and wilder.

"What is it? What's happening?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.

"Someone has died," the young officer answered. "You didn't mention it had broken out among your servants."

"I didn't know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with me! Come with me!" And she rushed into the house.

After that, terrible things happened quickly, and the mystery of the morning became clear. Cholera (a deadly, fast-spreading disease) had broken out in its most severe form, and people were dying rapidly. The Ayah had fallen ill during the night and had just died—which explained the wailing from the servants' huts. By the next day, three more servants were dead, and others had fled in terror. Panic spread through every household, with the dying found in bungalow after bungalow.

Amid the chaos and confusion of the second day, Mary hid in the nursery, forgotten by everyone. No one thought of her, no one wanted her, and strange, frightening things happened all around without her understanding any of it. She alternated between crying and sleeping through the long hours, aware only that people were sick and that eerie, frightening sounds surrounded her. Once she crept into the dining room and found it deserted, though a half-eaten meal still sat on the table, chairs shoved back as if the diners had leapt up suddenly. The child ate some fruit and crackers and, feeling thirsty, drank from a nearly full glass of wine on the table. It tasted sweet, and she didn't realize how strong it was. Soon it made her deeply drowsy, and she returned to the nursery, shut herself in—frightened by the cries from the servants' huts and the sound of hurrying feet—and lay down. The wine made her so sleepy she could barely keep her eyes open, and she fell into a heavy sleep that lasted a long time.

Many things happened during those hours of deep sleep, but the wails and the sounds of things being carried in and out of the house never disturbed her.

When she woke, she lay staring at the wall. The house was utterly silent—more silent than she had ever known it to be. No voices, no footsteps. She wondered if everyone had recovered from the cholera and the crisis had passed. She also wondered who would take care of her now that her Ayah was dead. Surely there would be a new Ayah, one who might know some new stories—Mary had grown rather tired of the old ones. She didn't cry over her nurse's death. She wasn't an affectionate child and had never been deeply attached to anyone. The commotion and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she felt angry that no one seemed to remember she existed. Everyone had been too terrified to think about a little girl nobody particularly loved. It seemed that when people caught cholera, they thought only of themselves. But surely, once everyone recovered, someone would remember her and come looking.

But no one came. As she lay waiting, the house grew even more silent. She noticed something rustling across the floor mat and looked down to see a small snake gliding along, watching her with eyes like tiny jewels. She wasn't frightened—he was a harmless little creature in a hurry to get away—and she watched him slip out under the door.

"How strange and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as though there's no one in the house but me and the snake."

Almost immediately, she heard footsteps crossing the yard outside, then the veranda. Men's footsteps. They entered the house, speaking in low voices. No one greeted them; they seemed to be opening doors and looking into empty rooms.

"What devastation!" one voice said. "That pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child too, though I heard there was a child no one ever actually saw."

Mary stood in the middle of the nursery when the door opened moments later. She looked cross and unkempt, frowning because she was growing hungry and felt shamefully neglected. The first man to enter was a large officer she had once seen speaking with her father. He looked exhausted and troubled, but the sight of her made him jump back in shock.

"Barney!" he shouted. "There's a child here! A child, alone! In conditions like this! Heaven help us, who is she?"

"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly. She thought it very rude of him to call her father's house "conditions like this!" "I fell asleep while everyone had the cholera, and I've only just woken up. Why has no one come?"

"It's the child no one ever saw!" the man exclaimed, turning to his companions. "She's actually been forgotten!"

"Why was I forgotten?" Mary demanded, stamping her foot. "Why does nobody come?"

The young man called Barney looked at her with deep sadness. Mary even thought she saw him blink back tears.

"Poor little thing," he said. "There's no one left to come."

That was the strange, sudden way Mary learned she had neither mother nor father left—that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had survived had fled the house as fast as they could, none of them remembering there was a Missie Sahib still inside. That was why everything had gone so quiet. It was true: there was no one in the house but herself and the small, rustling snake.

CHAPTER II. MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY

Mary had enjoyed watching her mother from a distance and thought her very pretty, but since she knew so little about her, it would have been unreasonable to expect her to love or truly miss her now that she was gone. And indeed, she didn't miss her at all. Being a self-centered child, she gave her full attention to herself, just as she always had. An older child might have felt great anxiety at being left alone in the world, but Mary was still young, and having always been cared for by someone, she assumed that would continue. Her main concern was whether she'd be sent to nice people who would treat her politely and let her have her own way, as her Ayah and the other servants always had.

She understood she wouldn't be staying at the English clergyman's house where she was first taken in. She had no wish to stay there. The English cl—