The Secret Garden
Written for Nanni.
When Marie came to Paris, she believed she had stepped into a garden. It was an ugly, ugly grey garden with too many walls and not enough roses, where lots of things were dead and lots of weeds were growing and the statues were gargoyles and angels mixed together. Marie had opened a door, but she didn't like what was behind it. She shook her head and thought of stepping back, but when she turned she found the door had snapped shut behind her.
At first, she spent a few hours tapping on the walls and searching for a way to get out, but Paris was sealed as tightly as stones and mortar and creeping, flowering vines twisting together and up like a prison. Marie knew she would hate Paris.
She had come because there was no where else to go. Her parents had died, her grandmother was mad, her grandfather hated young girls. She was spoilt and her face (a face that might have been pretty if she smiled, but she never would) was so pale that it was almost yellow; and her eyes were angry, dark eyes. A long time ago--it wasn't a long time ago, but by now it felt so, and her parents had been dead for a year--she had been poor. She had been always told by her mother that she must be sweet-tempered, demure, solicitous. She had been told that she must be everything that would make her a desirable wife, because if she were not married, she would die.
She thought it was true, and she hated her mother.
She had been always told by her father that she must not learn anything except how to look alluring and shy at the same time. She had been told that she must do everything that would make men want her for a wife, because if she were not married, her parents would also die.
She believed this wholeheartedly, and she hated her father.
Marie never laughed unless she felt like it, and this was nearly never. When she was sixteen, she knew that she did not mind whether or not she and her parents died, and she did nothing to improve herself. Often she was cross. She had not smiled in seven years except for herself, and secretly (she had smiled secretly exactly four times), but she never found anything worth smiling for anyway.
She was still poor.
She hated Paris.
Marie had waited, without caring, for whatever might happen when she grew up, but nothing had really happened. Her parents had died, one night in October. Her grandmother did not know who she was; her grandfather did not want her. She was eighteen years old and had long hair that she pinned up because when it was down it make her face look less yellow and cross. She came to Paris, and found it was a walled garden, but the door was locked behind her and she couldn't climb over the walls.
In winter, she lost her work as a dancer for the third time because she was clumsy and ugly. She lost her lodging for a sixth time because she couldn't pay rent. She had no reputation to lose, but she made snowballs until her fingers began to turn white, and threw them at passers-by, just in case she might have had a little bit of one that she hadn't known about.
Her twenty-third snowball hit a man she'd thought was old because he was bald, and, apparently, had lost his wits--she knew he was bald because he wore no hat, despite the cold and the snow. Her twenty-third snowball struck him exactly in the centre of the back of his bald head and a good deal of the snow stuck, white and wet and misshaped by the force of the blow. He turned around and looked at her, and Marie realised that he was a very young man, and that he was smiling.
"Hello there!" he called. "Hello! You've a very good aim, my girl!"
Marie looked back at him, steadily, and very crossly. She didn't speak.
The young man walked to her and knelt. "I've a very good idea you're cold."
"Of course I'm cold. What do you think, the golden sunshine's got me a bit too toasty for these terribly heavy clothes?"
He smiled ruefully. "I deserved that. Ah, well. May I take you home?"
"I haven't got a home," she snapped.
"I meant mine, not yours."
"And I'm not a whore."
"I didn't intend to imply that." His tone was patient, but his voice was soft. Marie frowned. "You're sitting in the street by yourself throwing snow at people. I fancy you need somewhere to stay. Well, you're welcome to my house. It's very luxurious, for I happen just to have refurnished it, and there are five guest rooms at the moment, and to-night for supper my cook is preparing lamb casserole, so you'll have a place to sleep and something to eat. Will you come?"
For a few moments, she watched him. His eyes were grey and friendly, and his lopsided laughing smile did not remind her of anything. She wondered what his name was.
"All right."
The young man lived in a boarding house with shabby wallpaper and tiny dusty windows clouded over with dirt and spiderwebs. There was one bed, with no sheets and one blanket, and one chair, a few large crates covered with papers, a short pile of books, and a large ornate candelabra that looked completely out of place beside everything else, despite the fact that it was tarnished. On one of the crates was a small wrapt package that the young man unwrapped for her; seeping through several layers of paper was a smallish chunk of cooked lamb and some boiled potatoes, and he brought out from underneath a different crate a half-bottle of wine.
"Keeps it chilled under there," he told her, smiling his lopsided laughing smile.
"Clever," Marie said. "Have anything to put it in?"
"I fear I don't; but I'll abstain to-night. You're the one who's been out freezing. It's yours."
"Too kind."
"By the way," he said, after she had eaten part of the meat and potatoes and drunk some of the wine, "what do they call you? I like knowing names."
"Musetta," Marie said. It was what she'd called herself while she was dancing, and it was still the first thing she thought of when someone asked her.
The young man smiled. "It's Musichetta now. Less clich�, and better for you."
"You can't just take my name and turn it into something else."
"Ah, but you're forgetting. Musetta isn't your name. I asked what you were called. I shan't touch whatever your dear mother and father decided belonged to you, but your alias I'll gladly discredit. Musichetta. Sounds like a dance, doesn't it?"
"What's your name?"
"Daniel. I'm Daniel. And that, dancing girl, is my name."
"What'll I call you?"
"Bossuet," he said, and bowed.
It turned out that Daniel was a gardener. He knew the roseless paths that made up Paris, and he knew where the seeds were growing. Marie had thought it was a garden full of dead things, but Daniel explained that they were only sleeping. He knew how to tend to the beds of flowers. He knew how to train the vines that grew up the big stone walls. He knew how to stake up the parts where the roses had begun to fall because they were heavy from so many blooms, and he could water and weed and hoe the dirt until it softened and let the new sprouts grow.
She lived with him after that, because he never told her to leave. He wouldn't let her wear her hair pinned up, so she wore it down, and it softened her face just like the soil Daniel tended to. They lived in the tiny shabby boarding-house, and Marie slept in the little bed--Daniel slept in the chair, although it made his back ache. He only smiled, though ruefully.
Marie found another job dancing, where they liked her better because she wore her hair down. She was still clumsy, but she wasn't as ugly.
It turned out that Daniel was student as well as a gardener. He went to the Universit�. Marie thought that was funny, and laughed her eighth laugh in the last seven years, making double her smiles. Daniel wanted to know why she thought him amusing, and she told him he wasn't meant to be a student.
That made Daniel laugh at her.
Everyone she met loved Daniel. He was foolish often enough, and he had the worst luck of anyone she'd ever met (although Marie had never met many people, she must admit), but people liked him for it. He made them laugh and he made them fond, and he was such a good gardener that everything he did had a purpose for the sleeping garden of Paris. She discovered that he knew where the seeds were growing because he had planted them there. Even when he was sarcastic or wry, which he was sometimes, because his bad luck made it impossible to be anything else, he was only doing something for the garden. Everyone she met loved Daniel, and Marie did too.
At first it had bothered her, but she got used to it after a while.
"Dancing girl," he said to her one day. "Have you noticed that it's spring now?"
"What?"
"Look out the window."
Marie glanced towards it. "I can't."
Daniel laughed, and went to clean some of the panels of glass with his sleeve, although his sleeve was so dirty already that it didn't make much difference. "That's true, I'm afraid. We'll have to go out."
"Go out where?" she asked, looking at him suspiciously. "I'm not going to your nasty little caf� again. That friend of yours is an impertinent wretch, and he tried to kiss me."
"Courfeyrac? Yes, I fear that Courfeyrac is incorrigible. Actually, we'll be going to stroll through town. I'll buy you a hat."
"Oh?"
"My dear 'Chetta, I'm not always penniless."
"You are now, though."
"Oh! Harsh truth! Very well, I'll steal you a hat."
"I don't need a hat."
"Very true. What you really need is something to put silliness into that brutally practical mind of yours. You're always bringing me back to reality just when I'd like to daydream." Daniel kissed her. "Ah, well."
"What was that for?"
"I adore you. Are you going to pretend you haven't been pining after me for weeks? I knew it from the moment I saw you."
"I've only loved you for a month," Marie told him.
"Then I'm off by--four months. That's not bad."
"Take me out and buy me a hat."
With a clumsy bow, he put her threadbare shawl about her shoulders and led her by the hand to the door. They walked in the garden that was Paris until dark, and Daniel cheerfully pointed out the roses. Marie had realised that they really were there some time ago, but she still had trouble finding them--Daniel always knew where they were. He laughed and while he laughed he worked at gardening. At first Marie stood back and watched him, but slowly she began to join in.
She began to laugh, too. She found it made gardening much easier. To tend a garden, one had to get down on one's knees in the dirt and pull weeds in the sun, and one had to trowel and dig in spots full of rocks, and one had to lay dead fish under the rosebushes in order to make them grow tall and spread. Somehow, for Daniel, all of that was simple, and Marie thought perhaps it was because he laughed. She began to laugh, too. It was much easier than smiling.
She didn't look cross now. She didn't feel cross. She was slowly becoming beautiful.
They had nothing to eat for the next three days, but Daniel bought her a pink-coloured bonnet decorated with a bunch of silk roses just above her left ear.
A few weeks later, Marie met Christian.
Christian thought he was going to die.
She had met him by accident--he was coming from the chemist's shop, she was coming from the pawnbroker's--he looked as though he were going to cry, and she was laughing, because the pawnbroker had smiled at her and given her a much higher price than the one they'd expected for Daniel's candelabra. She was too busy laughing to notice where she was going, and she knocked into him.
"Pardon!" she said at once, righting herself. He had made no move to help her. He had begun to cry. "What on earth is wrong?" she asked, a little tartly. He had interrupted her laugh.
"You've--you've--" He couldn't speak.
"You're behaving like a very silly boy. I only knocked into you--I can't have hurt you."
"You've--"
"Well, go on, answer me."
"I'm going to die," he burst out suddenly, and Marie couldn't help being taken aback.
"Not because of me, surely?" she asked, much softer than before. "What's wrong? Are you ill?"
He was young, perhaps younger than Daniel, and had the most beautiful black curls she had ever seen. His eyes were dark, too, but his face was pale, and he stared at her with tears running down his cheeks. She realised that he was rather small and thin, and looked cold even in the beautiful warm weather that had spread all through the garden since June began. He was clutching a knobbed gentleman's stick in one small hand. At once she began to feel a little guilty. She didn't quite like it.
"I--I--I've got a fever, and I've had it for months now, and my heart doesn't work properly. My head aches. Nothing helps. I've tried laudanum and morphine. I know I'm going to die."
"You've seen a doctor?"
"I am a doctor!" he said miserably.
"You aren't," Marie said. "You can't even be out of school."
He stopped.
"Well, you aren't," Marie said again. "You're younger than Bossuet, and he's only been going for two years."
He stared at her sulkily. "I'm studying to be a doctor. I know enough about medical things. Blood-letting hasn't helped, either, and I'm afraid of lancets, anyway. They cause burns, and burns spread until they consume the entire body. Besides, my heart doesn't work properly--my father's physician told me that. I'm going to die."
"How doesn't your heart work properly?"
"It's not quick enough, and if I move about too much it pains me. It hurts as though it will kill me."
"I'm terribly sorry. Did I hurt you, then, when I crashed into you?" she asked softly.
"Yes. You ought to look where you're going."
"I'm sorry. Would you like to sit down for a bit?"
Now he sniffled and wiped his eyes on a handkerchief from his left pocket and his nose on one from his right pocket. "Yes."
The closest place she knew from the pawnbroker's was the room she shared with Daniel, and at any rate she didn't have money to take him to a caf�. Marie led him back to her room and showed him in, then went to fetch the bottle of wine (to-day two-thirds full) from beneath the crate. He looked around and sniffled again.
"It's not very clean here. I shall probably get dust in my lungs and aggravate my cough."
"You have a cough, too?" She offered him the bottle.
"I've got a lot of things. I've been ill all my life. Am I meant to drink that right from the bottle?"
"We don't have any glasses."
He blinked at the little bed. "There's more than one of you?"
"Bossuet lives here, too."
"Oh! Is he your--?"
"We're not married." Marie smiled without thinking. "I'm his Musichetta." It made five smiles.
"Is that your name, Musichetta? That's pretty. I'm Christian," he said. "I live in a--well, it's not so dusty where I live. And we have glasses."
"What were you doing down here?"
"Someone told me this chemist was very good at remedies." Christian sighed a little. "I shall die, but sometimes I try something, even when I know it's hopeless."
"If it's hopeless, I don't suppose it would hurt so much to drink the wine." Still smiling, she tucked her knees close beneath her skirts. She had sat down on the chair. She could feel her legs pressing through against her chest. "You might as well, and it'll make you feel better. We keep it chilled beneath the crate."
He didn't laugh, but he did drink a bit. She went on talking to him. He was going to the Universit�, too, but he'd never met Daniel. He was well-off, but he didn't have any friends. He told her it was no use, because he knew he was going to die, so he didn't bother. Marie didn't tell him she thought that was ridiculous, because she didn't think he'd listen to her.
A few hours later, he went home.
That evening, Daniel came in with the candelabra.
"Hello!"
"You got it back," Marie said, astonished.
"Oh, yes. Don't doubt me, dancing girl." He kissed her cheek. "I'm a master at these things. I went in and proceeded to explain to the pawnbroker how it was all worthless metal, and whatever wench had sold it to him had cheated him terribly. As a side note, I don't think you should try to pawn anything over there for a long while. At any rate, I persuaded him to throw the wretched failure out, and as soon as he'd dusted his hands of it and vanished back into the shop, I took it off the rubbish heap."
"You're horrible."
"But very, very practical. We need light in this nasty little place, or we won't have anything." Daniel smiled. "Moonlight can't get through that window, after all, and your radiance is a special kind that glows but doesn't cast enough of anything to see by."
"Oh?"
"Indeed. By that glow, mademoiselle, I can locate you and kiss you, but I can't do my schoolwork."
"What's more important?"
"I'd love to say it was you--"
"I wish you would."
"Very well, then. We've got the candelabra, in any event. To-night, nothing is more important than you, dancing girl. Now, tell me whether I've got anybody to be jealous of to-day. Who smiled at you in the street? Which of the rogues in that little place you dance at tried to win you with gifts and pretty words?"
"I knocked into a boy coming out of the chemist's."
"Aha! Was he handsome?"
"Terribly. He had lovely eyes."
"I'll try to keep my jealous rage in check. How was his hair?"
"Black curls."
"I'm wounded to the core!" Daniel stabbed himself violently in the chest with his hands and fell to the floor. Of course, Marie laughed. She laughed all the time now. After a moment he looked up at her from the floor, through the dusty half-darkness of their little room. It was almost night. "Well?"
"He believes he's going to die. It was all I could do to keep him from crying the whole time."
"Not your type, then."
"He could have been," Marie said after a pause. "He could have. He was all right when I got him to stop thinking about it."
She thought she could make him out, staring at her curiously. When he spoke, his voice sounded oddly thoughtful.
"Must I be jealous of him after all, my girl?"
"Not yet."
Daniel laughed, and got up off the floor. "I love you."
"You love everything, Bossuet."
"Except bad wine," he chided gently, putting his arm about her. Marie smiled for the sixth time and felt it move her face into a new shape. "You're beautiful."
"You can't even see me."
She had begun to cry, without making a sound, but Daniel was laughing again. She closed her eyes. She had never been happy before, nothing had ever made her happy, no one had ever made her want to smile. Her four smiles had been only for herself. It was new and clean and sharp, like falling into snow--it was like breaking out a shell, as though her sixth smile had cracked a dried layer of paint that covered her face and kept her frozen. It hurt and it felt safe. It felt good. It was so strange and warm and enormous that she felt as though her heart were breaking with the bigness, and she began to cry.
Daniel was laughing again, and Marie, who was smiling even though she was crying, knew she would not count her smiles any longer.
The garden went on blooming, all through June and into July. She had never seen anything so beautiful before, and it astonished her. When she had come to Paris, it was dead; now everything was alive. Daniel tended to it every day, and she began to help him. He showed her how to weed and water, and how to pull back vines and tie them up, showed her how to build trellises and guide the roses along them until the flowers were taller than she was.
When she met Christian again, it was as she was coming back from dancing, and he was standing outside her door, poking the ragged carpeting with his stick. As he saw her he jumped a little and looked at her earnestly.
"What on earth are you doing here?" Marie asked.
"I was looking for you. I remembered where you lived. I like you."
"My feet ache. We can talk inside. Come along, you." She unlocked the door and let him follow her inside, then collapsed on the bed and pulled off her ugly thick shoes. She danced in dancing shoes, but only an idiot would wear them through the streets on the way home--and at any rate, the walking shoes hurt no more or less than her dancing shoes at the end of the day. "All right, now, what this?" she asked, less sharply than before. "You were looking for me?"
"I'm lonely. I don't know anybody, and I'm afraid because I'm going to die. I wanted you to talk to."
"That's flattering. What do you want to talk to me about?"
"Bossuet sounded wonderful. I haven't forgotten anything you told me last time. Will you tell me more about him?"
Marie stared at him for a moment. This small, white-skinned young man, whose dark eyes watched her more intently than she remembered anybody ever watching her, was sitting in the shabby little chair beside the bed, ignoring the dust, ignoring everything but the prospect of hearing her tell about Daniel. What on earth was in his head? she wondered--for a moment. Then she smiled, laughed, rolled her eyes, and sat up, leaning against the headrest.
"All right. I'll tell you about Bossuet. He's the cleverest fellow you'll ever meet. He's always laughing at everything, in a funny sort of pained way, because he's got the worst luck of anybody in the whole world and he knows it, but he doesn't really mind. And do you know what? He's been a gardener. He told me about a big secret garden that no one else knows about, and he tended it all the time. I've never seen him but we didn't talk about his taking care of that garden."
"A garden?" Christian's eyes were wide. "My father had a garden. There were flowers and things. And trees. And squirrels."
"It's the most beautiful garden I've ever heard of. There were hundreds and hundreds of roses, and he planted it all the time, and the seeds were always coming up. He grew violets that were bigger and bluer than you ever thought violets could get, and columbine, and all sorts of things. He told me most people didn't even know it was there, at first, because it's inside walls, and--"
"I wish I could see it now. Is it still there?"
"It might be."
"I wish..." For an instant, he looked so beautiful and excited and interested that Marie couldn't speak. Then it passed, and he sighed. "Well, that's all right. Roses have pollen, and pollen makes my face swell."
"Joli, I don't think your face could ever swell. For one thing, it's too pretty, and for another thing your skin doesn't look stretchy enough. You could break out, perhaps, although I think you're too pretty for that, too, but, mark my words, you'll never swell."
Marie spun towards the door and burst out laughing.
"Bossuet! You wonderful wretched man! What are you doing here?"
"It's my mansion, too, my dancing girl. I opened the door and came in." Daniel grinned lopsided at her, then turned to Christian and bowed. "Joli, you must be the lovely young man my Musichetta knocked over last week. Welcome to our estate. I'll admit the largess must stun you a bit, but I expect you'll get used to it quickly."
She clapped. "That's right. After all, I did. We'll order a pheasant from the kitchens and--oh, shall we have new bread and baked apples to go with it?--and a bottle of the best wine our cellars can boast, and he'll begin to feel quite comfortable."
"Absolutely. With that in mind, I've brought supper with me. Here's your pheasant, bread, and apples." With a small flourish that overbalanced him--Marie caught his arm and pulled him up--Daniel stacked a pound of bread and six onions on the upturned crate-table, and fetched the wine bottle. "And wine! Let the feast begin."
Christian had gotten up at once when Daniel bowed to him, and now he looked from the table to Marie and back in an unsure manner, gesturing hesitantly at the door and then at the crate and then at himself and mumbling something.
"Oh, no. You've got to stay to supper now that you're here." She laughed again. "I won't have it any other way. Bossuet?"
"Ah, my dancing girl--if you want him, I'll lock the door and swallow the key before I let him leave."
"With your luck you'd choke on it. Let's prevent his untimely demise, shall we?" Marie smiled at Christian, and he smiled back, a small, excited smile. "Sit down."
Christian sat, right on the floor, without complaining about the dirt. Daniel took the chair, and Marie went back to the bed. Six onions made two for each, and the pound of bread divided into three jagged, mostly-equal pieces; they talked while they ate, this time about gossip that Daniel had picked up from the same place he had picked up the onions. Marie watched Christian secretly, and counted every time he looked delighted or fascinated. He didn't mention once to Daniel that he was going to die.
At midnight, he went home, so thoroughly exhausted that as soon as he'd given the driver the address and they'd got him into the fiacre, he fell fast asleep. Marie shook her head and giggled.
"Don't you like him?"
"Do you know, I rather do? He's very intelligent, but he's smitten with you, 'Chetta."
"You're mad."
"Well, obviously." Daniel grinned. "That's no argument."
"Do you mind if I tell him that the garden's right here, right here in Paris, and not some dead walled-up place far away that everyone's forgotten about now?"
"Musichetta."
"He's just as smitten with you as he is with me," she said suddenly, seriously. "And I think you're just as smitten with him as I am. He won't die unless he thinks he will. I want him to be ours if he wants to be."
"By all means, bring him in. Show him that garden of mine. I never thought it was a garden, you know, until you described it that way. To me it's always been a business I'm running. A general store."
"I've always thought it was a garden. At first I thought it was dead. I didn't know it was sleeping."
"Are you saying that I've woken up the whole of Paris?"
Marie shrugged and smiled. "You're the gardener."
"Wickedly large garden for just one gardener, or even, perhaps, two. Now I feel certain that Joli should come along to help."
"Thank you, my dear. I'll go look for him to-morrow or the day after, unless he looks for me."
"Splendid."
They shared the rest of the wine and went to bed.
Christian did not come the next day, or the next, but Marie remembered the address he'd given to the driver of the fiacre two nights before. Daniel had no classes, so they went together on foot, she in her shawl, which had become tattered by now, and he hatless as usual. As they walked, Daniel would stop or go out of his way to tend to some of the flowers or sprouts, and Marie always helped. She had learned. People smiled at them sometimes, and she wanted to dance. Daniel smiled his lopsided, laughing smile and told her she was mad and wonderful.
Christian's boarding-place was expensive. It was not tiny and not shabby, and the windows were large and clean and bright. They admired the painted doors and stone steps, and pretended to feel self-conscious of their patched clothes and bare heads (they had sold Marie's bonnet back in June for half a ham to celebrate Daniel's birthday). They asked the concierge for Christian's room, although they hadn't the first idea of his last name, and described his black curls, his dark eyes, his small thin body, and at once her eyes lit up and she gave them the room number with a long-suffering grimace. They laughed to one another. They climbed the stairs.
When Marie knocked at Christian's door, there was no answer, but she looked at Daniel sideways and he grinned and covered his face with one big hand. She turned the knob.
Christian's room had curtains in the windows, and a large bed in one corner. There was a big desk and a chair, and a little table in the centre of the room. The table and the desk both had gas lamps. There was a bookshelf in a different corner, neatly filled with books, and the desk had neat stacks of papers placed on each side. There was a trunk full of clothing open at the foot of the bed, and a few pieces of fruit on the table.
For a moment Marie paused, certain the room was empty. Then Daniel poked her arm, and she realised that curled up in the bed, clutching the pillow, lay Christian, sleeping.
He looked much older when he slept. She could see that he was really the same age as Daniel. It was only because he was so small and so often afraid that she had thought he was younger. She went over and sat on the bed beside him. Daniel stayed back by the door, as though whatever she were about to do--not that she had any idea--was something he was respectfully leaving entirely to her.
Slowly, she began to smooth back Christian's hair, humming one of the songs she had danced to the day before.
"Musi... 'Chetta?"
"Oh, you're awake. Hello, there. It's afternoon. Surely we didn't tire you so much when visited?"
At once Christian recoiled, squashing himself against the wall and holding his hands out as if he meant to keep her back. "No, don't touch me! I'm so ill to-day I couldn't move this morning! I shall die, I shall die to-night, and you'll die too if you get too close! I'm so ill, and it's not only my heart to-day, my fever's gotten worse and you'll catch it!"
Marie laughed. "My dear, I've felt your forehead just a moment ago. It's quite cool. You're not ill."
"No, no, no!" He was gasping now, panting, and she stopped laughing abruptly. "I'm ill! I know I'm going to die to-night, and I'm so afraid! My father's physician told me--and I've learned--I'm so frightened, and I'm going to die, and--and--oh, Dieu, my heart--"
"Joli--" She put her arms out, but he only shook his head frantically. He had placed one hand over his heart and held it there, trembling.
"It's no use. I've been going to die my whole life, I've only been waiting, but this week I was more afraid than I was when I was a boy, because I know, I know. I can feel it inside me! I shall die! My heart aches, and my head aches, and I do have a fever, it's a terrible fever, I can hardly see--my eyes hurt and my hands hurt and I coughed all through the night-- I shall die! I shall die!"
"If you don't stop that at once, Joli, I fear you probably will."
Marie sighed with relief. Daniel had come away from the door and stood by the head of the bed, looking at Christian with both eyebrows raised. His look--his queer, amused grey eyes--and his words, half reprimand and half observation, had stopped Christian short.
"But you won't die," Marie said tartly, taking advantage of the pause, "if you just calm yourself and behave sensibly for a moment. Look at me. I told you that your forehead is quite cool, and I know for certain that you may have everything else, but you haven't a terrible fever. Don't look away! Come here. Now, for heaven's sake, you're a grown young man, you must be the same age as Bossuet, I've realised--you must stop behaving like a little child who's having a fit of temper. Perhaps there is something wrong with your heart. You've already told me that it gets worse when you have shocks. Calm down, and you'll feel better."
"Dancing girl, you're the very embodiment of reason." Daniel smiled at her, and took Christian's hand, which he had let fall from over his heart. "She's right, you know. I had an aunt with a weak heart. Terrible thing. We were never to excite her on pain of death, and it all went very well, because we were such good, quiet little children--alas, Joli, when I turned twelve she became convinced one of my brothers had put a toad in her bed, and had a fit of apoplexy as a result. She died screaming that he was the wickedest little creature she'd ever seen, and that she'd see him in hell."
Christian laughed nervously. "That's not true."
"Yes, it is." Raising his eyebrows again, Daniel sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard. "Quite true. My brother says he's always been terrified since of the idea of her popping out of a closet or a well or something and dragging him down. Anyway, it's a lesson."
"That one shouldn't frighten one's relatives or one may get pulled down to hell?"
"Excellent! No, that one shouldn't be susceptible to shocks or toads, and one will live a long and happy life. Besides, let me assure you that there are ten-thousand causes for heartache, only one of which can be imminent death. I'd rest easy, if I were you."
"Do you--both of you--do you really believe I won't die?"
"Eventually," Marie said, kissing his cheek. "For now, though, if you'll only treat yourself properly, I expect you'll live quite well."
"Will you show me the garden?"
"What?"
"The secret garden. The way you spoke of it, I knew you'd actually seen it. You said it was walled up now, but I wouldn't mind even seeing it dead, because if we had some seeds or something like that, well, couldn't you make it up again?" He looked at Daniel.
"The clever, clever man! You can see my garden just this instant, though I'll warn you, it might not come off quite the way you want. On the other hand, it might just cure you completely. Come to the window."
So Christian got up and went to the window. Marie stood beside him, resting her hand on her arm like a girl walking with her sweetheart. Daniel opened the curtains and jerked up the sash, pushed the window wide and brushed a few dead bugs off the sill.
"Look out, Joli. There's my garden, just as 'Chetta dreamt it up."
"I don't see it."
"I thought that might be the case. All right, 'Chetta. You're the one who saw it first. Explain it, if you will."
Marie smiled and pointed out across the street. "This is a newer bit. You can see that it's much brighter than the part where Bossuet and I live. Do you see, down there, around the door to that shop--those are columbines. They're purple and blue and pink and white, and that's how columbines are."
"They're ladies in hats."
"They're columbines."
Suddenly Christian's eyes widened, and a rush of colour came into his white cheeks. "They're columbines. They're columbines! You're completely mad, and you're completely wonderful! I see it now. It's real, but you made it up. I can't believe you, but I believe I love you--I love you both." He kissed them both, breathless and laughing, and leaned out the window, so far that Marie threw up her hands and Daniel grabbed the back of Christian's shirt. Christian was shouting his words. "Does that make everything beautiful? That's amazing! I was dying to see it! I should be dying now! You said shocks could kill someone, didn't you? You said that a shock killed your aunt! Look at me, I'm living and I can't believe it!"
"All right, all right," Daniel shouted back. Marie was laughing too hard to do anything. "Come back inside, now, why don't you? The shock hasn't killed you, but tumbling out the window will."
Christian ducked back inside, still flushed. "I love it. How do you tend it? What do you do to keep it growing?"
"Very simple, Joli. I talk to my flowers. You've heard ladies clucking to their windowsill plants, surely?"
"Oh, yes. It's despicable. That's what you do?"
"It's less despicable when he does it," Marie said. She had managed to stop laughing quite so hard. "Come out and we'll show you."
"I've got to dress first. I've got to--and we can't let anybody else know. It's a secret garden, isn't it? It was yours, and you showed me. Three's a lucky number. We can't let anybody else know."
"I doubt anybody else would care to know," Daniel said comfortably, but Christian was already buttoning up his waistcoat and pulling on his jacket.
"I won't wear a hat, for you aren't wearing hats--just let me put on my shoes, and I'm ready. I want to learn to talk to plants, too. I think you're both insane. Dieu, you don't mind if I'm in love with both of you?"
Marie snorted. "Don't mind it a bit."
Ten minutes later they were out on the street. Christian had gotten hold of himself by now, and he watched quietly as Marie and Daniel tended to the garden, pulling weeds and training vines, tying back the enormous heavy bushes of roses to keep them up. They even planted seeds, digging in the dirt with their hands, filling up the holes again, moulding the soil with their hands, pouring on a little water when the seeds were safe. Marie had gotten very good with a hoe, and Daniel was always best at talking to the flowers, just as he had told Christian he did. He seemed love it more than anything else.
The next day Christian joined them. They had breakfast with him--it was their invitation, but he paid, for as usual neither Marie nor Daniel had any money--and he ate ravenously.
"I don't usually," he explained. "Eat breakfast, that is. I don't get up early enough. It's not safe to jolt one's senses awake at the crack of dawn."
Daniel grinned such a lopsided grin and raised his eyebrows so high that Christian flushed and went back to eating quickly.
After breakfast, Daniel and Christian went to classes, and Marie went to dance--when they met again it was outside the pawnshop where Marie had sold Daniel's candelabra. They went in and Christian bought a new stick, one with a shiny round knob at the top. The pawnbroker seemed to have forgotten the incident in June, for he smiled at Marie just as he had the last time. Daniel greeted him cheerfully, and afterwards told Christian he was already learning to plant seeds.
For the next week, they spent all their mornings and afternoons together, minding the garden. Together, they all kissed each other--Marie liked to give kisses when she was delighted, Daniel liked to do it when he was behaving in a particularly dry or rueful manner, and Christian gave them only after exclaiming,--
'How I love you both!'
On Saturday, they sauntered through the Luxembourg, Marie with an ugly battered parasol Daniel had found in a rubbish heap behind a house near Christian's apartment. Daniel was wearing a jacket with holes in both elbows and trousers that were so frayed about the cuffs that they stopped at his ankles. Christian was no longer white and not quite so thin and small, either. He was looking painfully serious, mainly because Daniel had just told him a very bad joke. Marie was laughing.
Christian cleared his throat suddenly. "Bossuet--Musichetta."
"Yes?" Marie enquired, coughing into her hand to stop her laughter.
"Mmm?" Daniel made his face as serious as Christian's.
"I've been thinking about something. You both laugh about that damned little hole of yours, and how you chill your wine and have just enough space for everything you need, but I don't like it. I'd like you to live with me. I'll rent a larger apartment--my father's quite well-off, and I receive an allowance, and it won't be any trouble. He'll only be pleased, since he'll think I'm gaining interest in life or getting a mistress or something to take my mind off my condition. Not that that's not partly true, but--you know. I'm asking you to come and live with me. You'll be safer, and--"
"Dearest Joli." Daniel shook his head. "I'm afraid you'll find we like that damned little hole of ours--"
Marie glanced at him and laughed again. "But we're both opportunistic wicked beggars."
"It's as she said. We agree. You'd better let me keep my clothes, though. I like them threadbare."
"I'd like a new dress, though," Marie said as she kissed Christian's cheek.
"You haven't any idea how pleased I am. You haven't any idea how--Dieu, you've--" He turned from her to Daniel earnestly, embraced them both by turns, gestured widely, shook his head, embraced them again. "Look at me. I was going to die a week ago. I was going to die. You've shown me into a secret garden, and now I can tend it, too! I know how to tend a garden, 'Chetta, Bossuet, and I'm so pleased I can't tell you how pleased I am!"
"We can tell," Daniel said, giving him a wry, affectionate look.
"I was going to die, and now I'm alive! My heart hasn't troubled me all week, you know--I've had headaches and things, but I hardly noticed them. I'm so pleased! I had blisters three days ago from walking with you so much, and they were terrible, they bled, but I didn't care, I assure you. I've learned how to plant seeds! I can see the garden--it's a secret, but I can see it!"
"It won't be a secret much longer, dear, if you keep shouting," Marie said, covering her laughing mouth with her fingertips.
"Look at me, both of you!" Christian cried, ignoring them both, stepping forward a little and spreading his arms. "Look at me! I won't die! I'm not going to die! I shall live! I shall live for-ever!"
Marie smiled. Daniel laughed. Christian looked back at them, and dropped his arms. For a moment he poked his stick into the dirt ponderously.
"Well, unless my cough gets worse."
Marie knew she would love Paris for-ever.
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