Chapter VI. "There was Some One Crying--There was!"

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when
Mary looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist
and cloud. There could be no going out today.

"What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?" she
asked Martha.

"Try to keep from under each other's feet mostly," Martha
answered. "Eh! there does seem a lot of us then. Mother's a
good-tempered woman but she gets fair moithered. The biggest ones
goes out in th' cow-shed and plays there. Dickon he doesn't mind th'
wet. He goes out just th' same as if th' sun was shinin'. He says he
sees things on rainy days as doesn't show when it's fair weather. He
once found a little fox cub half drowned in its hole and he brought
it home in th' bosom of his shirt to keep it warm. Its mother had
been killed nearby an' th' hole was swum out an' th' rest o' th'
litter was dead. He's got it at home now. He found a half-drowned
young crow another time an' he brought it home, too, an' tamed it.
It's named Soot because it's so black, an' it hops an' flies about
with him everywhere."

The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha's
familiar talk. She had even begun to find it interesting and to be
sorry when she stopped or went away. The stories she had been told by
her Ayah when she lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha
had to tell about the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who
lived in four little rooms and never had quite enough to eat. The
children seemed to tumble about and amuse themselves like a litter of
rough, good-natured collie puppies. Mary was most attracted by the
mother and Dickon. When Martha told stories of what "mother" said or
did they always sounded comfortable.

"If I had a raven or a fox cub I could play with it," said Mary.
"But I have nothing."

Martha looked perplexed.

"Can tha' knit?" she asked.

"No," answered Mary.

"Can tha'sew?"

"No."

"Can tha' read?"

"Yes."

"Then why doesn't tha, read somethin', or learn a bit o'
spellin'? Tha'st old enough to be learnin' thy book a good bit
now."

"I haven't any books," said Mary. "Those I had were left in
India."

"That's a pity," said Martha. "If Mrs. Medlock'd let thee go
into th' library, there's thousands o' books there."

Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly
inspired by a new idea. She made up her mind to go and find it
herself. She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock
seemed always to be in her comfortable housekeeper's sitting-room
downstairs. In this queer place one scarcely ever saw any one at all.
In fact, there was no one to see but the servants, and when their
master was away they lived a luxurious life below stairs, where there
was a huge kitchen hung about with shining brass and pewter, and a
large servants' hall where there were four or five abundant meals
eaten every day, and where a great deal of lively romping went on
when Mrs. Medlock was out of the way.

Mary's meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her,
but no one troubled themselves about her in the least. Mrs. Medlock
came and looked at her every day or two, but no one inquired what she
did or told her what to do. She supposed that perhaps this was the
English way of treating children. In India she had always been
attended by her Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her,
hand and foot. She had often been tired of her company. Now she was
followed by nobody and was learning to dress herself because Martha
looked as though she thought she was silly and stupid when she wanted
to have things handed to her and put on.

"Hasn't tha' got good sense?" she said once, when Mary had stood
waiting for her to put on her gloves for her. "Our Susan Ann is twice
as sharp as thee an' she's only four year' old. Sometimes tha' looks
fair soft in th' head."

Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it
made her think several entirely new things.

She stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after
Martha had swept up the hearth for the last time and gone downstairs.
She was thinking over the new idea which had come to her when she
heard of the library. She did not care very much about the library
itself, because she had read very few books; but to hear of it
brought back to her mind the hundred rooms with closed doors. She
wondered if they were all really locked and what she would find if
she could get into any of them. Were there a hundred really? Why
shouldn't she go and see how many doors she could count? It would be
something to do on this morning when she could not go out. She had
never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew
nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it
necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even
if she had seen her.

She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor, and
then she began her wanderings. It was a long corridor and it
branched into other corridors and it led her up short flights of
steps which mounted to others again. There were doors and doors, and
there were pictures on the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of
dark, curious landscapes, but oftenest they were portraits of men and
women in queer, grand costumes made of satin and velvet. She found
herself in one long gallery whose walls were covered with these
portraits. She had never thought there could be so many in any
house. She walked slowly down this place and stared at the faces
which also seemed to stare at her. She felt as if they were
wondering what a little girl from India was doing in their house.
Some were pictures of children--little girls in thick satin frocks
which reached to their feet and stood out about them, and boys with
puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or with big ruffs
around their necks. She always stopped to look at the children, and
wonder what their names were, and where they had gone, and why they
wore such odd clothes. There was a stiff, plain little girl rather
like herself. She wore a green brocade dress and held a green parrot
on her finger. Her eyes had a sharp, curious look.

"Where do you live now?" said Mary aloud to her. "I wish you
were here."

Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning. It
seemed as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but her
own small self, wandering about upstairs and down, through narrow
passages and wide ones, where it seemed to her that no one but
herself had ever walked. Since so many rooms had been built, people
must have lived in them, but it all seemed so empty that she could
not quite believe it true.

It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she
thought of turning the handle of a door. All the doors were shut, as
Mrs. Medlock had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the
handle of one of them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a
moment when she felt that it turned without difficulty and that when
she pushed upon the door itself it slowly and heavily opened. It was
a massive door and opened into a big bedroom. There were embroidered
hangings on the wall, and inlaid furniture such as she had seen in
India stood about the room. A broad window with leaded panes looked
out upon the moor; and over the mantel was another portrait of the
stiff, plain little girl who seemed to stare at her more curiously
than ever.

"Perhaps she slept here once," said Mary. "She stares at me so
that she makes me feel queer."

After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many
rooms that she became quite tired and began to think that there must
be a hundred, though she had not counted them. In all of them there
were old pictures or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on
them. There were curious pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in
nearly all of them.

In one room, which looked like a lady's sitting-room, the
hangings were all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a
hundred little elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes,
and some had their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were
much bigger than the others and some were so tiny that they seemed
only babies. Mary had seen carved ivory in India and she knew all
about elephants. She opened the door of the cabinet and stood on a
footstool and played with these for quite a long time. When she got
tired she set the elephants in order and shut the door of the
cabinet.

In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty
rooms, she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw
something. Just after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a
tiny rustling sound. It made her jump and look around at the sofa by
the fireplace, from which it seemed to come. In the corner of the
sofa there was a cushion, and in the velvet which covered it there
was a hole, and out of the hole peeped a tiny head with a pair of
tightened eyes in it.

Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes
belonged to a little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into
the cushion and made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were
cuddled up asleep near her. If there was no one else alive in the
hundred rooms there were seven mice who did not look lonely at
all.

"If they wouldn't be so frightened I would take them back with
me," said Mary.

She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander
any farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her
way by turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up
and down until she found the right one; but at last she reached her
own floor again, though she was some distance from her own room and
did not know exactly where she was.

"I believe I have taken a wrong turning again," she said,
standing still at what seemed the end of a short passage with
tapestry on the wall. "I don't know which way to go. How still
everything is!"

It was while she was standing here and just after she had said
this that the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry,
but not quite like the one she had heard last night; it was only a
short one, a fretful childish whine muffled by passing through
walls.

"It's nearer than it was," said Mary, her heart beating rather
faster. "And it is crying."

She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her, and
then sprang back, feeling quite startled. The tapestry was the
covering of a door which fell open and showed her that there was
another part of the corridor behind it, and Mrs. Medlock was coming
up it with her bunch of keys in her hand and a very cross look on her
face.

"What are you doing here?" she said, and she took Mary by the
arm and pulled her away. "What did I tell you?"

"I turned round the wrong corner," explained Mary. "I didn't
know which way to go and I heard some one crying." She quite hated
Mrs. Medlock at the moment, but she hated her more the next.

"You didn't hear anything of the sort," said the housekeeper.
"You come along back to your own nursery or I'll box your ears."

And she took her by the arm and half pushed, half pulled her up
one passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of
her own room.

"Now," she said, "you stay where you're told to stay or you'll
find yourself locked up. The master had better get you a governess,
same as he said he would. You're one that needs some one to look
sharp after you. I've got enough to do."

She went out of the room and slammed the door after her, and
Mary went and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage. She did not cry,
but ground her teeth.

"There was some one crying--there was--there was!" she said to
herself.

She had heard it twice now, and sometime she would find out. She
had found out a great deal this morning. She felt as if she had been
on a long journey, and at any rate she had had something to amuse her
all the time, and she had played with the ivory elephants and had
seen the gray mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet
cushion.