Craven Comes Home

While the secret garden was returning to life, a man with high crooked shoulders was wandering round the most beautiful places in Europe.

For ten years, he had lived his lonely life, his heart full of sadness and his head full of dark dreams.

Everywhere he went, he carried his unhappiness with him like a black cloud.

Other travelers thought he was half mad or a man who could not forget some terrible crime.

His name was Craven.

But one day, as he sat by a mountain stream, he actually lokked at a flower, and for the frist time in ten years, he realized how beautiful something living could be.

The valley seemed very quiet as he sat there, staring at the flower.

He felt strangly calm.

What is happening to me? he whispered. I feel different, I almost feel I am alive again.

At that moment, hundreds of miles away in Yorkshire, Colin was seeing the secret garden for the first time, and saying. 

I am going to live for ever and ever and ever.

But Craven did not know this.

That night, in his hotel room, he slept better than usual.

As the weeks passed, he even began to think a little about his home and his son.

One evening in late summer, as he was sitting quietly beside a lake, he felt the strange calmness again.

He fell asllep, and had a dream that seemed very real.

He heard a voice calling him.

It was sweet and clear and happy, the voice of his young wife.

My dear, he jumped up. Where are you?

In the garden, called the beautiful voice. And then the dream ended.

In the morning ,when he woke, he remembered the dream.

She says she is in the garden, he thought. But the door is lokced the key is buried.

That  morning he received a letter from Susan.

In it, she asked him to come home, but she did not give a reason.

Craven thought of his dream, and decided to return to Engliand immediately.

On the long journey back to Yorkshire, he was thinking about Colin.

I wonder how he is. I wanted to forget him, becasue he makes me think of his mother.

He lived, and she died. But perhaps I have been wrong.

Susan says I should go home, so perhaps she thinks I can help him.

When he arrived home, he found the housekeeper very confused about Colin's health.