Music Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us on Snewscast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by the Wildard Adoration. Tonight, we'll read the next part to The Secret Garden, a novel by Francis Hodgson Bernat, published in 1911. In the last episode, Marion Collin explore the many empty rooms of their manner on rainy days. Colin expresses his desire for his father to finally come home so he can give up the secret and reveal his newfound vitality. Colin has become so well that he starts to believe that the magic he has been espousing may be another word for God. Mrs. Susan Sourby, Dickens' mother also makes a surprise visit to their garden. They find her to be instantly trustworthy and charming. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. Susan Sauerby had packed a basket which held a regular feast this morning, and when the hungry hour came and Dickin brought it out from its hiding place, she sat down with them under their tree and watched them devour their food, laughing and quite gloating over their appetites. She was full of fun and made them laugh at all sorts of odd things. She told them stories in broad Yorkshire and taught them new words. She laughed as if she could not help it when they told her of the increasing difficulty there was in pretending that Colin was still a fretful invalid. You see, we can't help laughing nearly all the time when we are together. Explained Colin? And it doesn't sound ill at all. We try to choke it back, but it'll burst out, and that sounds worse than ever." There's one thing that comes into my mind so often," said Mary, and I can scarcely ever hold in when I think of it suddenly. I keep thinking, suppose Collins' face should get to look like a full moon. It isn't like one yet, but he gets a little bit fatter every day, and suppose some morning it should look like one, what should we do? I can see that has a good bit of play act in to do," said Susan Sourby. But that won't have to keep it up much longer. Mr. Craven will come home. Do you think he will? Ask Colin. Why? Susan Sourby chuckled softly. I suppose it had not break thy heart if he found out before that told him in the own way. She said, thus laid awake nights plan in it. I couldn't bear anyone else to tell him, said Colin. I think about different ways every day. I think now I'll just want to run into his room. "'That'll be a fine start for him,' said Susan Sourby. "'I'd like to see his face lad. I would that. He might come back. That'd him on. One of the things they talked of was the visit they were to make to her cottage. They planned it all. They were to drive over the moor and lunch out of doors among the heather. They would see all the twelve children and Dickens garden and would not come back until they were tired. Susan Sourbe got up at last to return to the house and Mrs. Metlock. It was time for Colin to be wheeled back also. But before he got into his chair, he stood quite close to Susan and fixed his eyes on her with a kind of bewildered adoration, and he suddenly caught hold of the fold of her blue cloak and held it fast. You are just what I wanted," he said. I wish you were my mother as well as Dickens. All at once Susan Sourby bent down and drew him with her warm arms close against the bosom under the blue cloak, as if he had been Dickens' brother. The quick mist swept over her eyes. Ah, dear lad, she said. The own mothers in the Saravary Garden, I do believe. She couldn't keep out of it. They father monk come back to the Hemaan. Chapter 27. In the Garden In each century, since the beginning of the world, wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century, more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century, hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first, people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done. Then they begin to hope it can be done. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done, and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was the thoughts, just mere thoughts, are as powerful as electric batteries, as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought, or a bad one get into your mind, is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in, you may never get over it as long as you live. So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored, and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins and morland cottages crowded with children, with queer, crab-dolled gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemates, with springtime and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a more boy and his creatures. There was no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her tired. So long as Colin shut himself up in his room, and thought only of his fears, and weakness, and his detestation of people who looked at him, and reflected hourly on humps and early death. He was a hysterical, half crazy little hypochondriac, who knew nothing of the sunshine and the spring, and also did not know that he could get well and could stand upon his feet if he tried to do it. When new, beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him. His blood ran healthily through his veins, and strength poured into him like a flood. His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple, and there was nothing weird about it at all. Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend to rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow. While the secret garden was coming alive and two children were coming alive with it, there was a man wandering about certain far away beautiful places in the Norwegian fjords and the valleys and mountains of Switzerland. And he was a man who, for ten years, had kept his mind filled with dark and heartbroken thinking. He had not been courageous. He had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of the dark ones. He had wandered by blue lakes and thought them. He had lain on mountain sides with sheets of deep blue gentian's blooming all about him, and flower breaths feeling all the air, and he had thought them. A terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy, and he had let his soul fill itself with blackness, and had refused obstinately to allow any rift of light to pierce through. He had forgotten and deserted his home and his duties. When he traveled about, darkness so brooded over him that the sight of him was a wrong done to other people because it was as if he poisoned the air about him with gloom. Most strangers thought he He be either half-mad, or a man was some hidden crime on his soul. He was a tall man with a drawn face and crooked shoulders, and the name he always entered on hotel registers was Archibald Craven, Missalthweight Manor, Yorkshire, England. He had traveled far and wide since the day he saw Mistress Mary in his study and told her she might have her bit of earth. He had been in the most beautiful places in Europe, though he had remained nowhere more than a few days. He had chosen the quietest and remotest spots. He had been on the tops of mountains whose heads were in the clouds, and had looked down on other mountains when the sun rose and touched them with such light as made it seem as if the world were just being born. But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day when he realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing had happened. He was in a wonderful valley in the Austrian Tyrol and he had been walking alone through such beauty as might have lifted any man's soul out of shadow. He had walked a long way, and it had not lifted his. But at last he had felt tired and had thrown himself down to rest on a carpet of moss by a stream. It was a clear little stream which ran quite merrily along on its narrow way through the luscious damp greenness. Sometimes it made a sound rather like very low laughter as it bubbled over in round stones. He saw birds calm and dip their heads to drink in it and then flick their wings and fly away. It seemed like a thing alive and yet its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper.

The valley was very, very still. As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald Craven gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet as quiet as the valley itself. He wondered if he were not going to sleep, but he wasn't. He sat and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see things growing at its edge. There was one lovely mass of blue forget-me-nots growing so close to the stream that its leaves were wet, and at these he found himself looking as he remembered he had looked at such things years ago. He was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was and what wonders of blue its hundreds of little blossoms were. He did not know that just that simple thought was slowly filling his mind. Filling and filling it until other things were softly pushed aside. It was as if a sweet, clear spring had begun to rise in a stagnant pool and and had risen and risen until at last it swept the dark water away. But of course he did not think of this himself. He only knew that the valley seemed to grow quieter and quieter as he sat and stared at the bright,

delicate, blue-ness. He did not know how long he sat there, or what was happening to him,

but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he got up slowly and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft breath and wondering at himself. seemed to have been unbound and released in him very quietly. What is it? He said Almost in a whisper and he passed his hand over his forehead. I Almost feel as if I were alive. I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to be able to explain how this had happened to him. Neither does anyone else yet. He did not understand at all himself. But he remembered this strange hour, once afterward, when he was at Missothwait again, and he found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out as he went into the secret garden. I am going to live forever and ever and ever. The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening, and he slept a new, postosed-full sleep, but it was not with him very long. He did not know that it could be capped. By the next night he had opened the doors wide to his dark thoughts, and they had come I'm trupping and rushing back. He left the valley and went on his wandering way again. But, strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes. Sometimes half hours went, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to lift itself again, and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one. Slowly, slowly, for no reason that he knew of, he was coming alive with the garden. As the golden summer changed into the deep golden autumn, he went to the lake of Como. There, he found the loveliness of a dream. He spent his days upon the crystal-blueness of the lake, where he walked back into the soft, thick fudger of the hills, and tramped until he was so tired that he might sleep. But by this This time, he had begun to sleep better. He knew.

And his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him. Perhaps, he thought, my body is growing stronger. It was growing stronger, but because of the rare, peaceful hours when his thoughts were changed, his soul was slowly growing stronger too. He began to think of Missothwait and wonder if he should not go home. Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy, and asked himself what he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-poster bed again, and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory white face while it slept, and the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the clothes shut eyes. He shrank from it. One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver. The stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not go into the villa he lived in. He walked down to a little bowored terrace at the water's edge, and sat upon a seat, and breathed in all the heavenly sense of the night. He felt the strange calmness stealing over him, and it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep. He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream. His dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming. He remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought he was. He thought that he sat and breathed in the scent of the late roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet, and he heard a voice calling. It was sweet and clear and happy and far

away. It seemed very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at his very Archie, Archie, Archie, it said. And then again, sweeter and clearer than before. Archie, Archie, he thought he sprang to his feet, not even startled. It was such a real voice, And it seemed so natural that he should hear it. Lilius, Lilius, he answered. Lilius, where are you? In the garden, it came back like a sound from a golden flute. In the garden. And then the dream ended. But he did not awaken. He slept soundly and sweetly all through the lovely night. When he did awake, at last it was brilliant morning and a servant was standing, staring at him. He was an Italian servant, and was accustomed, as all the servants of the Vila were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign master might do. No one ever knew when he would go out or come in, or where he would choose to sleep, or if he would roam about the garden, or lie in the boat on the lake all night. The man had some letters, and he waited quietly until Mr. Craven took them. When he had gone away, Mr. Craven sat a few moments, holding them in his hand, and looking at the lake. His strange calm was still upon him, and something more. a lightness as if the cruel thing which had been done had not happened as he thought, as if something had changed. He was remembering the dream, the real, real dream. In the garden, he said, wondering at himself, in the garden, but the doors locked, and the key is buried deep. When he glanced at the letters a few minutes later, he saw that the one lying at the top of the rest was an English letter and came from Yorkshire. It was directed in a plain woman's hand but it was not a hand he knew. He opened it, scarcely thinking of the writer, but the first words attracted his attention at once. Dear Sir, I am Susan Sourby that made bold to speak to you once on the more. It was about Miss Mary I spoke. I will make bold to speak again. Please Sir, I would come home if I was you. I think you would be glad to come in. If you will excuse me, sir. I think your lady would ask you to come if she was here. Your obedient servant, Susan Sourby. Mr. Craven read the letter twice before he put it back in its envelope. He kept thinking about the dream. I will go back to Miss Lothwite." He said, Yes, I'll go at once. And he went through the garden to the villa and ordered pitcher to prepare for his return to England. In a few days he was in Yorkshire again, and on his long railroad journey he found himself thinking of his boy, as he had never thought in all the ten years past. During those years he had only wished to forget him. Now, though he did not intend to think about him, memories of him constantly drifted into his mind. He remembered the black days when he had raved like a madman because the child was alive and the mother was dead. It refused to see it.

And when he had gone to look at it, at last it had been such a weak, wretched thing that everyone had been sure it would die in a few days. But to the surprise of those who took care of it, the days passed, and it lived, and then everyone believed it would be a deformed and crippled creature. He had not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a father at all. He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had shrunk from the mere thought of the boy, and had buried himself in his own misery. The first time, after a year's absence, he returned to Missilethweight, in the small miserable looking thing languidly and indefinitely lifted to his face the great, gray eyes with black lashes around them, so like, and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had adored. He could not bear the sight of them, and turned away pale as death., he scarcely ever saw him, except when he was asleep, and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid, with a vicious, hysterical, half insane temper. He could only be kept from furies dangerous to himself by being given his own way in every detail. All this was not an uplifting thing to recall, but as the train whirled him through mountain passes and golden plains, the man who was coming alive began to think in a new way, and he thought long and steadily and deeply. Perhaps I have been wrong for ten years. He said to himself, ten years is a long time. It may be too late to do anything, quite too late, what have I been thinking of? Of course, this was the wrong magic to begin by saying too late. Even Colin could have told him that. But he knew nothing of magic, either black or white. This he had yet to learn. He wondered if Susan Sourby had taken courage and ridden to him only because the motherly creature had realized that the boy was much worse. If he had not been under the spell of the curious calmness which had taken possession of him, he would have been more wretched than ever. But the calm had brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to thoughts of the worst, he actually found he was trying to believe in better things. you you