The strongest footman in the house carried Colin downstairs 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 today.”
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 Ben Weatherstaff works,” said Mary.
“Is it?” said Colin.
A few yards more and Mary whispered again.
“This is where the robin flew over the wall,” she said.
“Is it?” cried Colin. “Oh! I wish he’d come again!”
“And that,” said Mary with solemn delight, pointing under a big lilac bush, “is where he perched on the little heap of earth and showed me the key.”
Then Colin sat up.
“Where? Where? There?” he cried, and his eyes were as big as the wolf’s in Red Riding Hood, when Red Riding Hood felt called upon to remark on them. Dickon stood still and the wheeled chair stopped.
“And this,” said Mary, stepping on to the bed close to the ivy, “is where I went to talk to him when he chirped at me from the top of the wall. And this is the ivy the wind blew back,” and she took hold of the hanging green curtain.
“Oh! is it—is it!” gasped Colin.
“And here is the handle, and here is the door. Dickon push him in—push him in quickly!”
And Dickon did it with one strong, steady, splendid push.
But Colin had actually dropped back against his cushions, even though he gasped with delight, and he had covered his eyes with his hands and held them there shutting out everything until they were inside and the chair stopped as if by magic and the door was closed. Not till then did he take them away and look round and round and round as Dickon and Mary had done. And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in the grass under the trees and the gray urns in the alcoves and here and there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and scents. And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely touch. And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him. He looked so strange and different because a pink glow of color had actually crept all over him—ivory face and neck and hands and all.
“I shall get well! I shall get well!” he cried out. “Mary! Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!”
XXI
Ben Weatherstaff
One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.
And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the Springtime
