Chapter V. The Cry in the Corridor

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennox was exactly
like the others. Every morning she awoke in her tapestried room and
found Martha kneeling upon the hearth building her fire; every
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. She 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. She 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.
But 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 color into her cheeks and brightened her dull eyes
when she did not know anything about it.

But 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.

"Tha' got on well enough with that this mornin', didn't tha'?"
said Martha.

"It tastes nice today," said Mary, feeling a little surprised
her self.

"It's th' air of th' moor that's givin' thee stomach for tha'
victuals," answered Martha. "It's lucky for thee that tha's got
victuals as well as appetite. There's been twelve in our cottage as
had th' stomach an' nothin' to put in it. You go on playin' you out
o' doors every day an' you'll get some flesh on your bones an' you
won't be so yeller."

"I don't play," said Mary. "I have nothing to play with."

"Nothin' to play with!" exclaimed Martha. "Our children plays
with sticks and stones. They just runs about an' shouts an' looks at
things." Mary did not shout, but she looked at things. There was
nothing else to do. She walked round and round the gardens and
wandered about the paths in the park. Sometimes 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. Once when she was walking
toward him he picked up his spade and turned away as if he did it on
purpose.

One place she went to oftener than to any other. It was the long
walk outside the gardens with the walls round them. There were bare
flower-beds on either side of it and against the walls ivy grew
thickly. There was one part of the wall where the creeping dark green
leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemed as if for a long
time that part had been neglected. The 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.

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

"Oh!" she cried out, "is it you--is 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.

He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped along the
wall as if he were telling her all sorts of things. It seemed to
Mistress Mary as if she understood him, too, though he was not
speaking in words. It was as if he said:

"Good morning! Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't
everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come
on!"

Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flights
along the wall she ran after him. Poor little thin, sallow, ugly
Mary--she actually looked almost pretty for a moment.

"I like you! I 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. But the robin seemed to be quite
satisfied and chirped and whistled back at her. At last he spread his
wings and made a darting flight to the top of a tree, where he
perched and sang loudly. That reminded Mary of the first time she had
seen him. He had been swinging on a tree-top then and she had been
standing in the orchard. Now 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.

"It's in the garden no one can go into," she said to herself.
"It's the garden without a door. He lives in there. How I wish I
could see what it is like!"

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

"It is the garden," she said. "I am sure it is."

She 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. Then 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.

"It's very queer," she said. "Ben Weatherstaff said there was
no door and there is no door. But there must have been one ten years
ago, because Mr. Craven buried the key."

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

She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she sat down to
her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsy and comfortable. She
did not feel cross when Martha chattered away. She felt as if she
rather liked to hear her, and at last she thought she would ask her a
question. She asked it after she had finished her supper and had sat
down on the hearth-rug before the fire.

"Why did Mr. Craven hate the garden?" she said.

She had made Martha stay with her and Martha had not objected at
all. She 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 footman and upper-housemaids made fun of
her Yorkshire speech and looked upon her as a common little thing,
and sat and whispered among themselves. Martha liked to talk, and
the strange child who had lived in India, and been waited upon by
"blacks," was novelty enough to attract her.

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

"Art tha' thinkin' about that garden yet?" she said. "I knew
tha' would. That was just the way with me when I first heard about
it."

"Why did he hate it?" Mary persisted.

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

"Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house," she said. "You
could bare stand up on the moor if you was out on it tonight."

Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened, and
then she understood. It 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. But 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.
She intended to know if Martha did.

Then Martha gave up her store of knowledge.

"Mind," she said, "Mrs. Medlock said it's not to be talked
about. There's lots o' things in this place that's not to be talked
over. That's Mr. Craven's orders. His troubles are none servants'
business, he says. But for th' garden he wouldn't be like he is. It
was Mrs. Craven's garden that she had made when first they were
married an' she just loved it, an' they used to 'tend the flowers
themselves. An' none o' th' gardeners was ever let to go in. Him
an' her used to go in an' shut th' door an' stay there hours an'
hours, readin' and talkin'. An, she was just a bit of a girl an'
there was an old tree with a branch bent like a seat on it. An' she
made roses grow over it an' she used to sit there. But one day when
she was sittin' there th' branch broke an' she fell on th' ground an'
was hurt so bad that next day she died. Th' doctors thought he'd go
out o' his mind an' die, too. That's why he hates it. No one's never
gone in since, an' he won't let any one talk about it."

Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire
and listened to the wind "wutherin'." It seemed to be "wutherin'"
louder than ever. At that moment a very good thing was happening to
her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to
Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin
and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her
blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first
time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for
some one.

But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to
something else. She did not know what it was, because at first she
could scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself. It was a curious
sound--it seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere.
Sometimes the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently
Mistress Mary felt quite sure this sound was inside the house, not
outside it. It was far away, but it was inside. She turned round and
looked at Martha.

"Do you hear any one crying?" she said.

Martha suddenly looked confused.

"No," she answered. "It's th' wind. Sometimes it sounds like
as if some one was lost on th' moor an' wailin'. It's got all sorts
o' sounds."

"But listen," said Mary. "It's in the house--down one of those
long corridors."

And 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.

"There!" said Mary. "I told you so! It is some one crying--and
it isn't a grown-up person."

Martha 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 "wutherin'" for a few moments.

"It was th' wind," said Martha stubbornly. "An' if it wasn't, it
was little Betty Butterworth, th' scullery-maid. She's had th'
toothache all day."

But something troubled and awkward in her manner made Mistress
Mary stare very hard at her. She did not believe she was speaking
the truth.