All she thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed
garden, and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps
open it and see what was inside the walls, and what had happened to the
old rose-trees. It was because it had been shut up so long that she
wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other
places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten
years. Besides that, if she liked it she could go into it every day and
shut the door behind her, and she could make up some play of her own
and play it quite alone, because nobody would ever know where she was,
but would think the door was still locked and the key buried in the
earth. The thought of that pleased her very much.
Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred
mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse
herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually
awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong,
pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had
given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her
blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always
been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in
this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things.
Already she felt less contrary, though she did not know why.
She put the key in her pocket and walked up and down her walk. No one
but herself ever seemed to come there, so she could walk slowly and
look at the wall, or, rather, at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was the
baffling thing. Howsoever carefully she looked she could see nothing
but thickly growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was very much
disappointed. Something of her contrariness came back to her as she
paced the walk and looked over it at the tree-tops inside. It seemed so
silly, she said to herself, to be near it and not be able to get in.
She took the key in her pocket when she went back to the house, and she
made up her mind that she would always carry it with her when she went
out, so that if she ever should find the hidden door she would be
ready.
Mrs. Medlock had allowed Martha to sleep all night at the cottage, but
she was back at her work in the morning with cheeks redder than ever
and in the best of spirits.
53