The Cry in the Corridor (The Secret Garden)

01V.

02THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the others.

03Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room, and found Martha kneeling upon the hearth building her fire.

04Every morning she ate her breakfast in the nursery, which had nothing amusing in it, and after each breakfast she gazed out of the window across to the huge moor, which seemed to spread out on all sides and climb up to the sky, and after she had stared for a while she realized that if she did not go out she would have to stay in and do nothing, and so she went out.

05She did not know that this was the best thing she could have done, and she did not know that, when she began to walk quickly or even run along the paths and down the avenue, she was stirring her slow blood and making herself stronger by fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor.

06She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the wind which rushed at her face and roared, and held her back as if it were some giant she could not see.

07But the big breaths of rough fresh air blown over the heather filled her lungs with something which was good for her whole thin body, and whipped some red colour into her cheeks and brightened her dull eyes, when she did not know anything about it.

08But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doors, she wakened one morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it, and went on eating it until her bowl was empty.

09"'Thy got on well enough with that this morning, didn't thuh?' said Martha.

10"'It tastes nice to-day,' said Mary, feeling a little surprised herself.

11"'It's the air of the moor that's given thee stomach for the victuals,' answered Martha.

12"'It's lucky for thee that thou's got victuals as well as appetite.

13There's been twelve in our cottage as had the stomach and nothing to put in it.

14You go on playing you out of doors every day, and you'll get some flesh on your bones, and you won't be so yeller.' "'I don't play,' said Mary.

15"'I have nothing to play with.' "'Nothing to play with,' exclaimed Martha.

16"'Our children play as with sticks and stones.

17They just runs about and shouts and looks at things.' Mary did not shout, but she looked at things.

18There was nothing else to do.

19She walked round and round the gardens and wandered about the paths in the park.

20Sometimes she looked for Ben Weatherstaff, but though several times she saw him at work, he was too busy to look at her, or was too surly.

21Once when she was walking toward him he picked up his spade and turned away, as if he did it on purpose.

22One place she went to oftener than to any other.

23It was the long walk outside the gardens, with the walls round them.

24There were bare flower-beds on either side of it, and against the walls ivy grew thickly.

25There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark-green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere.

26It seemed as if for a long time that part had been neglected.

27The rest of it had been clipped and made to look neat, but at this lower end of the walk it had not been trimmed at all.

28A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff, Mary stopped to notice this, and wondered why it was so.

29She had just paused, and was looking up at a long spray of ivy swinging in the wind, when she saw a gleam of scarlet, and heard a brilliant chirp, and there on the top of the wall perched Ben Weatherstaff's robin redbreast, tilting forward to look at her with his small head on one side.

30"'Oh!' she cried out.

31"'Is it you?

32Is it you?' And it did not seem at all queer to her that she spoke to him, as if she were sure that he would understand and answer her.

33He did answer.

34He twittered and chirped and hopped along the wall, as if he were telling her all sorts of things.

35It seemed to Mistress Mary as if she understood him too, though he was not speaking in words.

36It was as if he said, "'Good morning!

37Isn't the wind nice?

38Isn't the sun nice?

39Isn't everything nice?

40Let us both chirp and hop and twitter.

41Come on, come on!' Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the wall, she ran after him.

42Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary!

43She actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

44"'I like you!

45I like you!' she cried out, pattering down the walk, and she chirped and tried to whistle, which last she did not know how to do in the least.

46But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied, and chirped and whistled back at her.

47At last he spread his wings, and made a darting flight to the top of a tree, where he perched and sang loudly.

48That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him.

49He had been swinging on a tree-top then, and she had been standing in the orchard.

50Now she was on the other side of the orchard, and standing in the path outside a wall, much lower down, and there was the same tree inside.

51It's the garden no one can go into, she said to herself.

52It's the garden without a door.

53He lives in there.

54How I wish I could see what it is like!

55She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered the first morning.

56Then she ran down the path through the other door, and then into the orchard.

57And when she stood and looked up, there was the tree on the other side of the wall, and there was the robin just finishing his song, and beginning to preen his feathers with his beak.

58It is the garden, she said.

59I am sure it is.

60She walked round, and looked closely at that side of the orchard wall, but she only found what she had found before, that there was no door in it.

61Then she ran through the kitchen gardens again, and out into the walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall, and she walked to the end of it, and looked at it, but there was no door.

62And then she walked to the other end, looking again, but there was no door.

63It's very queer, she said.

64Ben Weatherstaff said there was no door, and there is no door.

65But there must have been one ten years ago, because Mr.

66Craven buried the key.

67This gave her so much to think of that she began to be quite interested, and feel that she was not sorry that she had come to Misselthwaite Manor.

68In India she had always felt hot, and too languid to care much about anything.

69The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain, and to waken her up a little.

70She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable.

71She did not feel cross when Martha chattered away.

72She felt as if she rather liked to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a question.

73She asked it after she had finished her supper, and had sat down on the hearth-rub before the fire.

74Why did Mr.

75Craven hate the garden?

76she said.

77She had made Martha stay with her, and Martha had not objected at all.

78She was very young, and used to a crowded cottage full of brothers and sisters, and she found it dull in the great servants' hall downstairs, where the footmen and upper housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire speech, and looked upon her as a common little thing, and sat and whispered among themselves.

79Martha liked to talk, and the strange child who had lived in India, and been waited upon by blacks, was novelty enough to attract her.

80She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting to be asked.

81"'Art the thinking about that garden yet?' she said.

82"'I knew the wood.

83That was just the way with me when I first heard about it.' "'Why did he hate it?' Mary persisted.

84Martha tucked her feet under her, and made herself quite comfortable.

85"'Listen to the wind wuthering round the house,' she said.

86"'You could bear stand up on the moor if you was out on it to-night.' Mary did not know what wuthering meant until she listened, and then she understood.

87It must mean that hollow, shuddering sort of roar, which rushed round and round the house as if the giant no one could see, were buffeting it, and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in.

88But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it made one feel very safe and warm inside a room with a red coal fire.

89"'But why did he hate it so?' she asked, after she had listened.

90She intended to know if Martha did.

91Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.

92"'Mind,' she said, "'Mrs.

93Medlock said it's not to be talked about.

94There's lots of things in this place that's not to be talked over.

95That's Mr.

96Craven's orders.

97His troubles are none servant's business,' he says.

98But for the garden he wouldn't be like he is.

99It was Mrs.

100Craven's garden that she had made when first they were married, and she just loved it.

101And they used to tend the flowers themselves, and none of the gardeners was ever let to go in.

102Him and her used to go in and shut the door, and stay there hours and hours reading and talking.

103And she was just a bit of a girl, and there was an old tree with a branch bent like a seat on it.

104And she made roses grow over it, and she used to sit there.

105But one day when she was sitting there, the branch broke, and she fell on the ground, and was hurt so bad that next day she died.

106The doctors thought he'd go out of his mind and die too.

107That's why he hates it.

108No one's never gone in since, and he won't let anyone talk about it.

109Mary did not ask any more questions.

110She looked at the red fire, and listened to the wind wuthering.

111It seemed to be wuthering louder than ever.

112At that moment, a very good thing was happening to her.

113Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor.

114She had felt as if she had understood a robin, and that he had understood her.

115She had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm.

116She had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life, and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.

117But as she was listening to the wind, she began to listen to something else.

118She did not know what it was, because at first she could scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself.

119It was a curious sound.

120It seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere.

121Sometimes the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure this sound was inside the house, not outside it.

122It was far away, but it was inside.

123She turned round, and looked at Martha.

124Do you hear anyone crying?

125she said.

126Martha suddenly looked confused.

127No, she answered.

128It's the wind.

129Sometimes it sounds like as if someone was lost on the moor and wailing.

130It's got all sorts of sounds.

131But listen, said Mary, it's in the house, down one of those long corridors.

132And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere downstairs, for a great rushing draft blew along the passage, and the door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet, the light was blown out, and the crying sound was swept down the far corridor, so that it was to be heard more plainly than ever.

133There, said Mary, I told you so.

134It is someone crying, and it isn't a grown-up person.

135Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it they both heard the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a bang, and then everything was quiet, for even the wind ceased weatherin' for a few moments.

136It was the wind, said Martha stubbornly, and if it wasn't, it was little Betty Butterworth, the scullery maid.

137She's had the toothache all day.

138But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary stare very hard at her.

139She did not believe she was speaking the truth.