The Cry in the Corridor (The Secret Garden (Full Cast))

01chapter v the cry in the corridor At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly like the others.

02Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room and found Martha kneeling upon the hearth building her fire.

03Every 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.

04She 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 to 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.

05She 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.

06But 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.

07But 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.

08Don't be so yeller.

09I don't play, said Mary.

10I have nothing to play with.

11Nothing to play with, exclaimed Martha.

12Our children plays with sticks and stones.

13They just runs about and shouts and looks at things.

14Mary did not shout, but she looked at things.

15There was nothing else to do.

16She walked round and round the gardens and wandered about the paths in the park.

17Sometimes 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.

18Once when she was walking toward him he picked up his spade and turned away, as if he did it on purpose.

19One place she went to oftener than to any other.

20It was the long walk outside the gardens with the walls round them.

21There were bare flower-beds on either side of it, and against the walls ivy grew thickly.

22There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green leaves were more bushy than elsewhere.

23It seemed as if for a long time that part had been neglected.

24The 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.

25A few days after she had talked to Ben Weatherstaff Mary stopped to notice this and wondered why it was so.

26She 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 forward perched Ben Weatherstaff's robin redbreast, tilting forward to look at her with his small head on one side.

27Isn't the sun nice?

28Isn't everything nice?

29Let us both chirp and hop and twitter.

30Come on!

31Come on!

32Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights along the wall she ran after him.

33Poor little thin, sallow, ugly Mary!

34She actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

35I like you!

36I like you!

37she 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.

38But the robin seemed to be quite satisfied and chirped and whistled back at her.

39At last he spread his wings and made a daring flight to the top of a tree where he perched and sang loudly.

40That reminded Mary of the first time she had seen him.

41He had been swinging on a tree-top then, and she had been standing in the orchard.

42Now 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.

43It's in the garden no one can go into, she said to herself.

44It's the garden without a door.

45He lives in there.

46How I wish I could see what it is like.

47She ran up the walk to the green door she had entered the first morning.

48Then she ran down the path through the other door and then into the orchard, and 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.

49It is the garden, she said.

50I am sure it is.

51She 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.

52Then 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, and then she walked to the other end, looking again, but there was no door.

53It's very queer, she said.

54Ben Weatherstaff said there was no door and there is no door.

55But there must have been one ten years ago, because Mr.

56Craven buried the key.

57This 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.

58In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything.

59The 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.

60She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable.

61She did not feel cross when Martha chattered away.

62She felt as if she rather liked to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a question.

63She asked it after she had finished her supper, and had sat down on the hearth-rug before the fire.

64Why did Mr.

65Craven hate the garden?

66she said.

67She had made Martha stay with her, and Martha had not objected at all.

68She 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 down on her as a common little thing, and sat and whispered among themselves.

69Martha liked to talk, and the strange child who had lived in India and been waited upon by blacks was novelty enough to attract her.

70She sat down on the hearth herself without waiting to be asked.

71"'A'n't thou thinking about that garden yet?' she said.

72"'I knew the wood.

73That was just the way with me when I first heard about it.' "'Why did he hate it?' Mary persisted.

74Martha tucked her feet under her and made herself quite comfortable.

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

76"'You could bare 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.

77It 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 and break in.

78But 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." "'But why did he hate it so?' she asked after she had listened.

79She intended to know if Martha did.

80Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.

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

82Medlock says it's not to be talked about.

83There's lots of things in this place that's not to be talked over.

84That's Mr.

85Craven's orders.

86His troubles are none servant's business,' he says.

87But for the garden he wouldn't be like he is.

88It was Mrs.

89Craven's garden that she had made when first they was married, and she just loved it, and they used to tend the flowers themselves.

90And none of the gardeners was ever let go in.

91Him and her used to go in and shut the door and stay there hours and hours reading and talking.

92And she was just a bit of a girl, and there was an old tree with a branch bent like a seat in it.

93And she made roses grow over it, and she used to sit there.

94But one day when she was sitting there the branch broke, and she fell on the ground and was hurt so bad that the next day she died.

95The doctors thought he'd go out of his mind and die too.

96That's why he hates it.

97No one's ever gone in since.

98And he won't let anyone talk about it.

99Mary did not ask any more questions.

100She looked at the red fire and listened to the wind wuthering.

101It seemed to be wuthering louder than ever.

102At that moment a very good thing was happening to her.

103Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor.

104She had felt as if she had understood a robin, and that he had understood her.

105She had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm.

106She had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life.

107And she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.

108But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something else.

109She did not know what it was, because at first she could scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself.

110It was a curious sound.

111It seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere.

112Sometimes the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure this sound was inside the house, not outside it.

113It was far away, but it was inside.

114She turned round and looked at Martha.

115Do you hear anyone crying?

116she said.

117Martha suddenly looked confused.

118No, she answered.

119It's the wind.

120Sometimes it sounds as if it was someone lost on the moor and wailing.

121It's got all sorts of sounds.

122But listen, said Mary, it's in the house, down one of those long corridors.

123And 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.

124There!

125said Mary.

126I told you so.

127It is someone crying, and it isn't a grown-up person.

128Martha 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 wuthering for a few moments.

129It was the wind, said Martha stubbornly, and if it wasn't, it was little Betty Butterworth, the scullery maid.

130She's had the toothache all day.

131But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress Mary stare very hard at her.

132She did not believe she was speaking the truth.

133End of chapter 5