Chapter XVII. A Tantrum

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

She had got up very early in the morning and had worked hard in
the garden and she was tired and sleepy, so as soon as Martha had
brought her supper and she had eaten it, she was glad to go to bed.
As she laid her head on the pillow she murmured to herself:

"I'll go out before breakfast and work with Dickon and then
afterward--I believe--I'll go to see him."

She thought it was the middle of the night when she was awakened
by such dreadful sounds that she jumped out of bed in an instant.
What was it--what was it? The next minute she felt quite sure she
knew. Doors were opened and shut and there were hurrying feet in the
corridors and some one was crying and screaming at the same time,
screaming and crying in a horrible way.

"It's Colin," she said. "He's having one of those tantrums the
nurse called hysterics. How awful it sounds."

As she listened to the sobbing screams she did not wonder that
people were so frightened that they gave him his own way in
everything rather than hear them. She put her hands over her ears and
felt sick and shivering.

"I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," she kept
saying. "I can't bear it."

Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and
then she remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought
that perhaps the sight of her might make him worse. Even when she
pressed her hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the
awful sounds out. She hated them so and was so terrified by them
that suddenly they began to make her angry and she felt as if she
should like to fly into a tantrum herself and frighten him as he was
frightening her. She was not used to any one's tempers but her own.
She took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her
foot.

"He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop!
Somebody ought to beat him!" she cried out.

Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and
her door opened and the nurse came in. She was not laughing now by
any means. She even looked rather pale.

"He's worked himself into hysterics," she said in a great hurry.
"He'll do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come
and try, like a good child. He likes you."

"He turned me out of the room this morning," said Mary, stamping
her foot with excitement.

The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had
been afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the
bed-clothes.

"That's right," she said. "You're in the right humor. You go
and scold him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as
quick as ever you can."

It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had
been funny as well as dreadful--that it was funny that all the
grown-up people were so frightened that they came to a little girl
just because they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.

She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the
screams the higher her temper mounted. She felt quite wicked by the
time she reached the door. She slapped it open with her hand and ran
across the room to the four-posted bed.

"You stop!" she almost shouted. "You stop! I hate you!
Everybody hates you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and
let you scream yourself to death! You will scream yourself to death
in a minute, and I wish you would!" A nice sympathetic child could
neither have thought nor said such things, but it just happened that
the shock of hearing them was the best possible thing for this
hysterical boy whom no one had ever dared to restrain or
contradict.

He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands
and he actually almost jumped around, he turned so quickly at the
sound of the furious little voice. His face looked dreadful, white
and red and swollen, and he was gasping and choking; but savage
little Mary did not care an atom.

"If you scream another scream," she said, "I'll scream too --and
I can scream louder than you can and I'll frighten you, I'll frighten
you!"

He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him
so. The scream which had been coming almost choked him. The tears
were streaming down his face and he shook all over.

"I can't stop!" he gasped and sobbed. "I can't--I can't!"

"You can!" shouted Mary. "Half that ails you is hysterics and
temper--just hysterics--hysterics--hysterics!" and she stamped each
time she said it.

"I felt the lump--I felt it," choked out Colin. "I knew I
should. I shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die," and
he began to writhe again and turned on his face and sobbed and wailed
but he didn't scream.

"You didn't feel a lump!" contradicted Mary fiercely. "If you
did it was only a hysterical lump. Hysterics makes lumps. There's
nothing the matter with your horrid back--nothing but hysterics! Turn
over and let me look at it!"

She liked the word "hysterics" and felt somehow as if it had an
effect on him. He was probably like herself and had never heard it
before.

"Nurse," she commanded, "come here and show me his back this
minute!"

The nurse, Mrs. Medlock and Martha had been standing huddled
together near the door staring at her, their mouths half open. All
three had gasped with fright more than once. The nurse came forward
as if she were half afraid. Colin was heaving with great breathless
sobs.

"Perhaps he--he won't let me," she hesitated in a low voice.

Colin heard her, however, and he gasped out between two sobs:

"Sh-show her! She-she'll see then!"

It was a poor thin back to look at when it was bared. Every rib
could be counted and every joint of the spine, though Mistress Mary
did not count them as she bent over and examined them with a solemn
savage little face. She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the
nurse turned her head aside to hide the twitching of her mouth. There
was just a minute's silence, for even Colin tried to hold his breath
while Mary looked up and down his spine, and down and up, as intently
as if she had been the great doctor from London.

"There's not a single lump there!" she said at last. "There's
not a lump as big as a pin--except backbone lumps, and you can only
feel them because you're thin. I've got backbone lumps myself, and
they used to stick out as much as yours do, until I began to get
fatter, and I am not fat enough yet to hide them. There's not a lump
as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!"

No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken
childish words had on him. If he had ever had any one to talk to
about his secret terrors--if he had ever dared to let himself ask
questions--if he had had childish companions and had not lain on his
back in the huge closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the
fears of people who were most of them ignorant and tired of him, he
would have found out that most of his fright and illness was created
by himself. But he had lain and thought of himself and his aches and
weariness for hours and days and months and years. And now that an
angry unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not
as ill as he thought he was he actually felt as if she might be
speaking the truth.

"I didn't know," ventured the nurse, "that he thought he had a
lump on his spine. His back is weak because he won't try to sit up.
I could have told him there was no lump there." Colin gulped and
turned his face a little to look at her.

"C-could you?" he said pathetically.

"Yes, sir."

"There!" said Mary, and she gulped too.

Colin turned on his face again and but for his long-drawn broken
breaths, which were the dying down of his storm of sobbing, he lay
still for a minute, though great tears srteamed down his face and wet
the pillow. Actually the tears meant that a curious great relief had
come to him. Presently he turned and looked at the nurse again and
strangely enough he was not like a Rajah at all as he spoke to
her.

"Do you think--I could--live to grow up?" he said.

The nurse was neither clever nor soft-hearted but she could
repeat some of the London doctor's words.

"You probably will if you will do what you are told to do and
not give way to your temper, and stay out a great deal in the fresh
air."

Colin's tantrum had passed and he was weak and worn out with
crying and this perhaps made him feel gentle. He put out his hand a
little toward Mary, and I am glad to say that, her own tantum having
passed, she was softened too and met him half-way with her hand, so
that it was a sort of making up.

"I'll--I'll go out with you, Mary," he said. "I shan't hate
fresh air if we can find--" He remembered just in time to stop
himself from saying "if we can find the secret garden" and he ended,
"I shall like to go out with you if Dickon will come and push my
chair. I do so want to see Dickon and the fox and the crow."

The nurse remade the tumbled bed and shook and straightened the
pillows. Then she made Colin a cup of beef tea and gave a cup to
Mary, who really was very glad to get it after her excitement. Mrs.
Medlock and Martha gladly slipped away, and after everything was neat
and calm and in order the nurse looked as if she would very gladly
slip away also. She was a healthy young woman who resented being
robbed of her sleep and she yawned quite openly as she looked at
Mary, who had pushed her big footstool close to the four-posted bed
and was holding Colin's hand.

"You must go back and get your sleep out," she said. "He'll drop
off after a while--if he's not too upset. Then I'll lie down myself
in the next room."

"Would you like me to sing you that song I learned from my
Ayah?" Mary whispered to Colin.

His hand pulled hers gently and he turned his tired eyes on her
appealingly.

"Oh, yes!" he answered. "It's such a soft song. I shall go to
sleep in a minute."

"I will put him to sleep," Mary said to the yawning nurse. "You
can go if you like."

"Well," said the nurse, with an attempt at reluctance. "If he
doesn't go to sleep in half an hour you must call me."

"Very well," answered Mary.

The nurse was out of the room in a minute and as soon as she was
gone Colin pulled Mary's hand again.

"I almost told," he said; "but I stopped myself in time. I won't
talk and I'll go to sleep, but you said you had a whole lot of nice
things to tell me. Have you--do you think you have found out
anything at all about the way into the secret garden?"

Mary looked at his poor little tired face and swollen eyes and
her heart relented.

"Ye-es," she answered, "I think I have. And if you will go to
sleep I will tell you tomorrow." His hand quite trembled.

"Oh, Mary!" he said. "Oh, Mary! If I could get into it I think
I should live to grow up! Do you suppose that instead of singing the
Ayah song--you could just tell me softly as you did that first day
what you imagine it looks like inside? I am sure it will make me go
to sleep."

"Yes," answered Mary. "Shut your eyes."

He closed his eyes and lay quite still and she held his hand and
began to speak very slowly and in a very low voice.

"I think it has been left alone so long--that it has grown all
into a lovely tangle. I think the roses have climbed and climbed and
climbed until they hang from the branches and walls and creep over
the ground--almost like a strange gray mist. Some of them have died
but many--are alive and when the summer comes there will be curtains
and fountains of roses. I think the ground is full of daffodils and
snowdrops and lilies and iris working their way out of the dark. Now
the spring has begun--perhaps--perhaps--"

The soft drone of her voice was making him stiller and stiller
and she saw it and went on.

"Perhaps they are coming up through the grass--perhaps there are
clusters of purple crocuses and gold ones--even now. Perhaps the
leaves are beginning to break out and uncurl--and perhaps--the gray
is changing and a green gauze veil is creeping--and creeping
over--everything. And the birds are coming to look at it--because it
is--so safe and still. And perhaps--perhaps--perhaps--" very softly
and slowly indeed, "the robin has found a mate--and is building a
nest."

And Colin was asleep.