The Secret Garden - rozdział 1- 7
Rozdział 1
Mary Lennox was a little skinny 10-year old girl who was quite used to living in India all her life. She had thin yellow hair and an ugly yellow face with an angry look, because she was always upset with something or somebody. Her father was always busy and her mother cared more for going to parties than for looking after her only child. So, when Mary was born, she was given to an Indian servant called Ayah, who was told to keep the child out of sight. Mary was a rude, spoilt and selfish child, used to always being obeyed by her servants. She did not know what it felt like to like other people and she had nobody to play with her since there was not a single person who liked her.
One extremely hot morning she woke up, and, instead of seeing Ayah she saw another servant. She asked:
Why have you come? I will not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me!
The servant looked frightened but replied that Ayah couldn’t come. This made Mary so angry that she started kicking and hitting the poor woman. But Ayah did not come back.
There was something definitely strange about that morning. Nothing seemed to be done the way it had always been done: no Ayah, no morning wash, no help with getting dressed - no one to attend to her every need. In fact, most of the servants seemed to be missing. So Mary decided to walk around the house and found her mother at the veranda, talking to a young man. This man looked worried – in fact, he looked terrified. Mary overheard her mother asking the young officer:
Is it really so very bad?
Awful, you should have left two weeks ago.
I know but I had to go to this silly party.
You never said that it had broken out among your servants.
Because I didn’t know, replied Mary’s mother.
It was an outbreak of cholera and people were dying very quickly. Everyone was panicking and they had completely forgotten about Mary. A few days later, not only had all the servants died but her parents had too.
Rozdział 2
It was raining the following day, so Mary couldn’t walk outside again.
'What do your brothers and sisters do when it’s raining?' she asked Martha.
'They play but there is not much to do. Only Dickon goes to the moor when it’s raining. He says he has to look after his animals.'
'I have nothing to do.' said Mary sadly.
'Can you read?'
'I can but I have no books.'
‘If only Mrs Medlock allowed you to go the big library in the house. You would surely find something to read for yourself then – there are thousands of books there.'
Mary, who never felt the need to ask anybody for permission, decided to look for the library herself. She wanted to wander around the house and see whether there really were so many locked rooms. She moved along the corridors and tried to open some of the doors she saw. Suddenly she heard the same cry that she had heard the day before. But it was so much nearer now, she could almost hear where it was coming from. Looking for a way in, she came across Mrs. Medlock.
'What are you doing here?' Mrs. Medlock shouted. 'What did I tell you? Keep to your own room!'
'I turned the wrong corridor and got lost. I didn’t know where to go and then I heard somebody crying.' Mary tried to explain.
'You didn’t hear any such thing. Go back to your room now.' To make sure she did, Mrs Medlock went with Mary all the way to her room, and locked her inside.
Mary was furious. 'Somebody was crying. And I heard it twice.'
Rozdział 3
It was a windy day but Mary was so pleased with her new toy that she didn’t much care about the cold weather and happily skipped around the gardens. Although she wasn’t very good at first she didn’t give up. She decided to skip along the walls surrounding the garden with no door. She saw the Robin again, who was following her. He had never seen a skipping rope before either. As for Mary, she wondered whether he knew how to get inside the garden. All the walls around it were covered with thick ivy. Just then, the wind blew apart the ivy leaves, and Mary saw a small metal lock. Was this the lock to the secret garden? She took the key out of her pocket, carefully placed it into the lock and turned it. It worked! She looked round to see if anyone had seen her. But there was no one. She opened the door and walked straight through into the secret garden.
The garden was wild. Mary could, however, imagine how the garden must have once looked: mysterious in all its beauty.
It was completely still inside. Mary had no idea whether the rose trees and other plants were still alive. She saw some pale green things coming out of the earth – small green plants just like the ones Ben had told her about. She knew they were first spring flowers.
Slowly, she walked around, carefully taking care not to step on any of the flowerbeds. When she got to the small green plants, she decided to pull at the grass around to give the plants more air and more sun. She picked up a sharp piece of wood and started digging around them.
Rozdział 4
Mary and Dickon became great friends, so much so that she looked forward to seeing him and working together in the secret garden. But as spring came, the weather changed for the worse and thunderstorms started to wake her in the middle of the night. She found it terribly difficult to get to asleep again – and it wasn’t only the wind and rain that bothered her. She started to hear that cry again, the same cry that she had heard during her first days at the manor. So one night, she decided, once and for all, to find whatever was making that disturbing noise. She got up and went the same way she had gone the last time she had met Mrs Medlock. It seemed the further she went, the louder the cry became. Then, ahead of her, she saw a door with light coming out from beneath it. She slowly walked up to it and gently pushed it open to find herself in a huge room with a big bed in the middle. On it lay a small boy. He was very pale, with huge grey eyes, seemingly too big for his small face.
Rozdział 5
The doctor left, quite relieved to see the boy looking so well, and acting like a normal child. And Colin, well, he had never felt better: he fell asleep with a smile on his face and slept more peacefully than he had ever done before.
When he awoke the following morning, he waited for Mary to come and see him. She ran into his room, shouting:
'It’s so beautiful. You’ve never seen anything quite that beautiful before. It has come! Spring has come. Dickon said so!'
'Has it?'
'Open the window!' Mary cried and ran to open it. 'Breathe the fresh air.'
When breakfast was served, Colin told his servant: 'A boy with his animals is coming to see me this morning. I want them brought up here as soon as they come. You can tell Martha to bring them. The boy is her brother.'
A few minutes later they heard the strangest sound. It was Dickon with his crow, his lamb, his squirrels and his fox. Colin stared at them in amazement and delight. Dickon let Colin play with them.
Rozdział 6
They moved slowly, Dickon pushing Colin’s wheelchair and Mary walking beside them. When Colin reached the open, he lifted his face to the sky and began looking around at everything that surrounded them. When they reached the wall covered with ivy, Mary again told them all about the discovery of the hidden door to the garden. Colin was wheeled through and came out on the other side. His face, by this stage, had already become pink with anticipation. He looked alive and well.
'I shall get well! I shall get well! Mary and Dickon, I shall get better! And I will live forever and ever and ever!' he shouted. It was then that he saw spring for the first time -'why,' he thought 'was it that spring had never been more than just a word?' The word itself now came alive with the full force of the blossom found around him. He wanted to live it fully and would not let go.
They drew his wheel-chair under a plum tree and, and while Colin sat there admiring the garden, Mary and Dickon worked.
Rozdział 7
Then it was magic as they called it - the wonderful things that happened in the garden. The green things began to show buds, and then the buds began to show colours: blue, red, purple, yellow. And the roses – light fresh leaves and the buds, tiny buds. Colin saw it all, watching every change that took place there. He liked lying on the grass, watching things grow. But, more determined still, he kept practising to walk.
Days passed. Colin spent as much time as he could in the garden. His appetite improved. To the great surprise of his nurse and Mrs Medlock, Colin, together with Mary, ate twice as much as they used to before. Although Colin put his new-found appetite down to the fresh air, his nurse decided to contact his doctor to examine Colin on this matter.
'You are not feverish and what extra weight you gained is healthy. If you keep this up, my boy, we need not talk of dying. Your father will be happy to hear of this remarkable improvement.'
'I won’t have him told! It will only disappoint him if I get worse again – and I might get worse this very night. I might have a terrible fever. I won’t have letters written to my father. You are making me angry and you know that it is bad for me. I feel hot already.'
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