Mr. Craven returns and sees Colin

The return of Archibald Craven to Misselthwaite Manor and his reunion with his son Colin marks the emotional climax of the novel, the moment when years of grief, isolation, and mistaken belief are swept away by the living proof of the garden's restorative power. Having wandered through Europe in a state of deep melancholy for ten years, Mr. Craven is drawn home by a combination of a vivid dream in which his dead wife Lilias calls to him from the garden and a plainspoken letter from Susan Sowerby urging him to return. What he finds shatters every expectation he had carried.

The Dream and the Letter

While staying at the Lake of Como, Mr. Craven fell into a deep sleep on a terrace and dreamed he heard a voice calling, "Archie! Archie!"—sweet, clear, and happy. He answered, "Lilias! Lilias!" and the voice replied, "In the garden. In the garden!" The dream felt so real that when he woke he was still under its spell, a strange calmness and lightness upon him. That same morning he received a letter from Susan Sowerby, who had once spoken to him on the moor about Mary Lennox. She wrote plainly: "Please, sir, I would come home if I was you. I think you would be glad to come and—if you will excuse me, sir—I think your lady would ask you to come if she was here." He read the letter twice, kept thinking about the dream, and decided to return to Yorkshire at once.

The Journey Home and the Walk to the Garden

On the long train journey, Mr. Craven found himself thinking of his son as he had not done in ten years. He remembered the black days after his wife's death, when he had raved like a madman because the child lived and the mother was dead. He had refused to see the baby, and when he finally did, it was such a weak, wretched thing that everyone expected it to die. He had supplied doctors and nurses but had shrunk from the boy, burying himself in his own misery. Now, however, he began to think in a new way: "Perhaps I have been all wrong for ten years." He stopped at the Sowerby cottage on his way across the moor, but Susan was out helping a woman with a new baby; he left a gold sovereign for the children and drove on, feeling a sense of homecoming he had thought he could never feel again. At the Manor, Mrs. Medlock told him that Colin was "different"—he ate enormously or nothing at all, insisted on going out every day with Mary and Dickon, stayed in the garden from morning until night, and sometimes laughed in a queer way. When Mr. Craven asked where Colin was, she answered, "In the garden, sir." He repeated the words to himself and walked out through the shrubbery and the fountain beds, crossing the lawn and turning into the Long Walk by the ivied walls.

The Bursting Forth

As he drew near the hidden door, Mr. Craven stopped, listening. Inside the garden he heard sounds—running, scuffling feet, lowered voices, exclamations, and smothered joyous cries. It seemed like the uncontrollable laughter of children trying not to be heard. Then the moment came: the feet ran faster, the door in the wall was flung wide open, the sheet of ivy swinging back, and a boy burst through at full speed, dashing almost into his arms. Mr. Craven caught him to save him from falling and held him away to look. He was a tall, handsome boy, glowing with life, with splendid color leaping to his face from running. He threw thick hair back from his forehead and lifted a pair of strange gray eyes—eyes full of boyish laughter, rimmed with black lashes like a fringe. It was the eyes that made Mr. Craven gasp for breath. The boy drew himself up to his very tallest and said, "Father, I'm Colin. You can't believe it. I scarcely can myself. I'm Colin." Mr. Craven, still stunned, repeated, "In the garden! In the garden!" and Colin explained that the garden had done it—and Mary and Dickon and the creatures and the Magic. He was well, he could beat Mary in a race, he was going to be an athlete. Mr. Craven put his hands on both the boy's shoulders and held him still, unable to speak for a moment. Then he said, "Take me into the garden, my boy, and tell me all about it."

The Reunion and the Walk Back to the House

They led him into the garden, which was a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet blue and flaming scarlet, with sheaves of late lilies and late roses climbing and hanging and clustering. Mr. Craven stood silent, looking round and round, and said, "I thought it would be dead." Colin answered, "Mary thought so at first. But it came alive." They sat down under their tree—all but Colin, who wanted to stand while he told the story. He poured it forth in headlong boy fashion: the mystery and Magic and wild creatures, the weird midnight meeting with Mary, the coming of the spring, the passion of insulted pride that had dragged him to his feet to defy Ben Weatherstaff, the odd companionship, the play acting, the great secret so carefully kept. Mr. Craven laughed until tears came into his eyes, and sometimes tears came when he was not laughing. At the end, Colin declared, "Now it need not be a secret any more. I am never going to get into the chair again. I shall walk back with you, Father—to the house." And so they walked across the lawn together, the Master of Misselthwaite and his son, Colin, walking as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire, with his head up and his eyes full of laughter. In the servants' hall, Ben Weatherstaff, watching from the window, said, "Look there, if tha's curious. Look what's comin' across th' grass." When Mrs. Medlock looked, she threw up her hands and gave a little shriek, and every servant within hearing bolted to the window, their eyes almost starting out of their heads.