Таинственный сад

Frances Hodgson BURNETT

THE SECRET  

GARDEN

CLASSICAL LITERATURE

УДК  372.8 
ББК  81.2 Англ-93 
 
Б48

ISBN 978-5-9925-1654-8

Бёрнетт, Френсис Ходжсон.

Б48        Таинственный сад / Ф. Х. Бёрнетт : книга для чтения  

на английском языке. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2023. — 
320 с. — (Classical Literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1654-8.

Героиня романа «Таинственный сад» — осиротевшая Мери 

Леннокс, волею судьбы оказавшаяся в особняке своего дяди. 
Она привыкает к новой жизни, знакомится с людьми, живущими не богато, но счастливо и дружно, учится любить, расцветает и оживает.

Однажды Мери и ее новые друзья входят в загадочный ста
рый сад, который был заперт много лет. Им предстоит разгадать тайну этого удивительного места, преображающего души 
людей.

Книга Фрэнсис Бёрнетт популярна и любима во всем мире. 

Она стала основой множества фильмов, сериалов, спектаклей, 
мюзиклов и мультфильмов. Роман понравится всем, кто изучает английский язык. Неадаптированный текст печатается без 
сокращений.

УДК 372.8

ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2023
Все права защищены

CHAPTER I

There Is No One Left

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Man
or to live with her uncle everybody said she was the 
most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, 
too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin 
light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, 
and her face was yellow because she had been born in 
India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her 
father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her 
mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to 
parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not 
wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she 
handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to 
understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib 
she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. 
So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was 
kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She 
never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the 
dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and 
as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way 
in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry 

if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was 
six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig 
as ever lived. The young English governess who came to 
teach her to read and write disliked her so much that 
she gave up her place in three months, and when other 
governesses came to try to fill it they always went away 
in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not 
chosen to really want to know how to read books she 
would never have learned her letters at all.

One frightfully hot morning, when she was about 

nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she 
became crosser still when she saw that the servant who 
stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.

"Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman. 

"I will not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me."

The woman looked frightened, but she only stam
mered that the Ayah could not come and when Mary 
threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked her, 
she looked only more frightened and repeated that it 
was not possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

There was something mysterious in the air that 

morning. Nothing was done in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing, while those 
whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and 
scared faces. But no one would tell her anything and her 
Ayah did not come. She was actually left alone as the 
morning went on, and at last she wandered out into the 
garden and began to play by herself under a tree near 
the veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into 

little heaps of earth, all the time growing more and more 
angry and muttering to herself the things she would say 
and the names she would call Saidie when she returned.

"Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call 

a native a pig is the worst insult of all.

She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and 

over again when she heard her mother come out on the 
veranda with some one. She was with a fair young man 
and they stood talking together in low strange voices. 
Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy. 
She had heard that he was a very young officer who had 
just come from England. The child stared at him, but she 
stared most at her mother. She always did this when she 
had a chance to see her, because the Mem Sahib—Mary 
used to call her that oftener than anything else—was 
such a tall, slim, pretty person and wore such lovely 
clothes. Her hair was like curly silk and she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things, 
and she had large laughing eyes. All her clothes were 
thin and floating, and Mary said they were "full of lace." 
They looked fuller of lace than ever this morning, but 
her eyes were not laughing at all. They were large and 
scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy officer's face.

"Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her say.
"Awfully," the young man answered in a trembling 

voice. "Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have gone to 
the hills two weeks ago."

The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.
"Oh, I know I ought!" she cried. "I only stayed to go 

to that silly dinner party. What a fool I was!"

At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing 

broke out from the servants' quarters that she clutched 
the young man's arm, and Mary stood shivering from 
head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.

"What is it? What is it?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.
"Some one has died," answered the boy officer. "You 

did not say it had broken out among your servants."

"I did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with 

me! Come with me!" and she turned and ran into the 
house.

After that appalling things happened, and the mys
teriousness of the morning was explained to Mary. The 
cholera had broken out in its most fatal form and people 
were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill in the 
night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had wailed in the huts. Before the next day three 
other servants were dead and others had run away in 
terror. There was panic on every side, and dying people 
in all the bungalows.

During the confusion and bewilderment of the second 

day Mary hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by 
every one. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her, 
and strange things happened of which she knew nothing. 
Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She 
only knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening sounds. Once she crept into the diningroom and found it empty, though a partly finished meal 
was on the table and chairs and plates looked as if they had 
been hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly 
for some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and 

being thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly 
filled. It was sweet, and she did not know how strong it 
was. Very soon it made her intensely drowsy, and she went 
back to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened 
by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of 
feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely 
keep her eyes open and she lay down on her bed and knew 
nothing more for a long time.

Many things happened during the hours in which 

she slept so heavily, but she was not disturbed by the 
wails and the sound of things being carried in and out 
of the bungalow.

When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. 

The house was perfectly still. She had never known it to 
be so silent before. She heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the 
cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also 
who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. 
There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would 
know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired of 
the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. 
She was not an affec tionate child and had never cared 
much for any one. The noise and hurrying about and 
wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she had 
been angry because no one seemed to remember that 
she was alive. Every one was too panic-stricken to think 
of a little girl no one was fond of. When people had the 
cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but 
themselves. But if every one had got well again, surely 
some one would remember and come to look for her.

But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house 

seemed to grow more and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when she looked down 
she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her 
with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he 
was a harmless little thing who would not hurt her and 
he seemed in a hurry to get out of the room. He slipped 
under the door as she watched him.

"How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if 

there was no one in the bungalow but me and the snake."

Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the 

compound, and then on the veranda. They were men's 
footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow and talked 
in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to them and 
they seemed to open doors and look into rooms.

"What desolation!" she heard one voice say. "That 

pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard 
there was a child, though no one ever saw her."

Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery 

when they opened the door a few minutes later. She 
looked an ugly, cross little thing and was frowning 
because she was beginning to be hungry and feel disgracefully neglected. The first man who came in was a 
large officer she had once seen talking to her father. He 
looked tired and troubled, but when he saw her he was 
so startled that he almost jumped back.

"Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child 

alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"

"I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing her
self up stiffly. She thought the man was very rude to call 

her father's bungalow "A place like this!" "I fell asleep 
when every one had the cholera and I have only just 
wakened up. Why does nobody come?"

"It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man, 

turning to his companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"

"Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. 

"Why does nobody come?"

The young man whose name was Barney looked at 

her very sadly. Mary even thought she saw him wink his 
eyes as if to wink tears away.

"Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to 

come."

It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary 

found out that she had neither father nor mother left; 
that they had died and been carried away in the night, 
and that the few native servants who had not died also 
had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, 
none of them even remembering that there was a Missie 
Sahib. That was why the place was so quiet. It was true 
that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and 
the little rustling snake.

CHAPTER II

Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance 

and she had thought her very pretty, but as she knew 
very little of her she could scarcely have been expected 
to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone. 
She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a selfabsorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as 
she had always done. If she had been older she would no 
doubt have been very anxious at being left alone in the 
world, but she was very young, and as she had always 
been taken care of, she supposed she always would be. 
What she thought was that she would like to know if she 
was going to nice people, who would be polite to her and 
give her her own way as her Ayah and the other native 
servants had done.

She knew that she was not going to stay at the Eng
lish clergyman's house where she was taken at first. She 
did not want to stay. The English clergyman was poor 
and he had five children nearly all the same age and 
they wore shabby clothes and were always quarreling 
and snatching toys from each other. Mary hated their 
untidy bungalow and was so disagreeable to them that 
after the first day or two nobody would play with her.