‘Where are we to go?’ asked Charlotte, not pleased.
‘Not beyond the park and grounds,’ said the housekeeper. ‘And,’ she added reluctantly, ‘Mr. Charles said if there was any pudding you liked to mention – ’
A brief consultation ended in, ‘Treacle hat, please’; and when Mrs. Wilmington had minced off, they turned to each other and said:
‘The brick!’
‘The old duck!’ and
‘Something like an uncle.’
Then they went out, as they had been told to do. And they took off their shoes and stockings, which they had not been told to do – but, on the other hand, had not been told not to – and walked barefooted in the grass still cool and dewy under the trees. And they put on their boots again and explored the park, and explored the stable-yard, where a groom was rubbing bright the silver buckles of the harness and whistling as he rubbed. They explored the stables and the harness-room and the straw-loft and the hay-loft. And then they went back to the park and climbed trees – a little way, because though they had always known that they would climb trees if ever they had half a chance, they had not, till now, had any chance at all.
And all the while they were doing all this they were looking – at the back of their minds, even when they weren’t doing it with the part you think with – for the garden.
And there wasn’t any garden!
That was the plain fact that they had to face after two hours of sunshine and green out-of-doors.
‘And I’m certain mother said there was a garden,’ Caroline said, sitting down suddenly on the grass; ‘a beautiful garden and a terrace.’
‘Perhaps the Uncle didn’t like it, and he’s had it made not garden again – “Going back to Nature” that would be, like Aunt Emmeline talks about,’ Charles suggested.
‘And it’s dreadful if there’s no garden,’ said Caroline, ‘because of the flowers we were going to send in letters. Wild flowers don’t have such deep meanings, I’m certain.’
‘And besides we haven’t seen any wild flowers,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh, bother!’
‘Never mind,’ Charles said, ‘think of exploring the house – and finding the book, perhaps. We’ll ask the Elegant One, when we go in, why there isn’t a garden.’
‘We won’t wait till then,’ said Charlotte; ‘let’s go and ask that jolly man who’s polishing the harness. He looked as if he wouldn’t mind us talking to him.’
‘It was him drove us yesterday,’ Charles pointed out.
So they went as to an old friend. And when they asked William why there wasn’t a garden he answered surprisingly and rather indignantly:
‘Ain’t they shown you, Miss? Not a garden? There ain’t a garden to beat it hereabouts. Come on, I’ll show you.’
And, still more surprisingly, he led the way to the back door.
‘We aren’t to go indoors till dinner-time,’ said Caroline; ‘and besides, we should like to see the garden – if there really is one.’
‘Of course there is one, Miss,’ said William. ‘She’ll never see you if you’re quick. She’ll be in her room by now – at her accounts and things. And the Master’s never about in these back parts in the morning.’
‘I suppose it’s a lock-up garden and he’s going to get the key,’ said Charles in a whisper. But William wasn’t.
He led them into a whitewashed passage that had cupboards and larders opening out of it and ended in a green baize door. He opened this, and there they were in the hall.
‘Quick,’ he said, and crossed it, unlatched another door and held it open. ‘Come in quiet,’ he said, and closed the door again. And there they all were in a little square room with a stone staircase going down the very middle of it, like a well. There was a wooden railing round three sides of the stairway, and nothing else in the room at all, except William and the children.
‘A secret staircase,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, it can’t be, really. How lovely!’
‘I daresay it was a secret once,’ said William, striking a match and lighting a candle that stood at the top of the stairs in a brass candlestick. ‘You see there wasn’t always these banisters, and you can see that ridge along the wall. My grandfather says it used to be boarded over and that’s where the joists went. They’d have a trap-door or something over the stairway, I shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘But what’s the stair for? – Where does it go? Are we going down?’ the children asked.
‘Yes, and sharp too. Nobody’s supposed to go this way except the Master. But you’ll not tell on me. I’ll go first. Mind the steps, Miss. They’re a bit wore at the edges, like.’
They minded the steps, going carefully down, following the blinking, winking, blue and yellow gleam of the candle.
There were not many steps.
‘Straight ahead now,’ said William, holding the candle up to show the groined roof of a long straight passage, built of stone, and with stone flags for the floor of it.
‘How perfectly ripping!’ said Charlotte breathlessly. ‘It is brickish of you to bring us here. Where does it go to?’
‘You wait a bit,’ said William, and went on. The passage ended in another flight of steps – up this time, – and the steps ended in a door, and when William had opened this every one blinked and shut their eyes, for the doorway framed green leaves with blue sky showing through them, and —
‘’Ere’s the garden,’ said William; and here, indeed, it was.
‘There’s another door the other end what the gardeners go in and out of,’ said William. ‘I’ll get you a key sometime.’
The door had opened into a sort of arch – an arbour, for its entrance was almost veiled by thick-growing shrubs.
‘Oh, thank you,’ said Caroline; ‘but when did they make this passage, and what for?’
‘They made that passage when the folks in the house was too grand to go through the stable-yard and too lazy to go round,’ said William. ‘There’s no stable-yard way now,’ he added. ‘So long! I must be getting back, Miss. Don’t you let on as I brought you through.’
‘Of course not,’ every one said. Charles added, ‘But I didn’t know the house was as old as secret passages in history times.’
‘It’s any age you please,’ said William; ‘the back parts is.’
He went back through the door, and the children went out through the leafy screen in front, into the most beautiful garden that could be, with a wall. I like unwalled gardens myself, with views from the terraces. From this garden you could see nothing but tall trees and – the garden itself.
The lower half was a vegetable garden arranged in squares with dwarf fruit-trees and flower-borders round them, like the borders round old-fashioned pocket-handkerchiefs. Then about half-way up the garden came steps – stone balustrades, a terrace, and beyond that a flower garden with smooth green turf paths, box-edged, a sundial in the middle, and in the flower-beds flowers – more flowers than I could give names to.
‘How perfectly perfect!’ Charlotte said.
‘I do wish I’d brought out my Language Of!’ said Caroline.
‘How awfully tidy everything is!’ said Charles in awe-struck tones.
It