Chapter 5 The Cry In The Corridor
At first each day which passed by for Mary Lennoxwas exactly like the others. Every morning she awokein her tapestried room and found Martha kneeling uponthe hearth building her fire; every morning she ate herbreakfast in the nursery which had nothing amusing in it;and after each breakfast she gazed out of the windowacross to the huge moor which seemed to spread out on allsides and climb up to the sky, and after she had staredfor a while she realized that if she did not go out shewould have to stay in and do nothing--and so she went out.
She did not know that this was the best thing she couldhave done, and she did not know that, when she began to walkquickly or even run along the paths and down the avenue,she was stirring her slow blood and making herself strongerby fighting with the wind which swept down from the moor.
She ran only to make herself warm, and she hated the windwhich rushed at her face and roared and held her backas if it were some giant she could not see. But the bigbreaths of rough fresh air blown over the heather filledher lungs with something which was good for her wholethin body and whipped some red color into her cheeks andbrightened her dull eyes when she did not know anythingabout it.
But after a few days spent almost entirely out of doorsshe wakened one morning knowing what it was to be hungry,and when she sat down to her breakfast she did not glancedisdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but tookup her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating ituntil 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 littlesurprised her self.
"It's th' air of th' moor that's givin' thee stomachfor tha' victuals," answered Martha. "It's luckyfor 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 childrenplays 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 wanderedabout the paths in the park. Sometimes she looked forBen Weatherstaff, but though several times she saw himat work he was too busy to look at her or was too surly.
Once when she was walking toward him he picked up his spadeand 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 wallsround them. There were bare flower-beds on eitherside of it and against the walls ivy grew thickly.
There was one part of the wall where the creeping darkgreen leaves were more bushy than elsewhere. It seemedas 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 trimmedat 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 ivyswinging in the wind when she saw a gleam of scarlet andheard 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 onone side.
"Oh!" she cried out, "is it you--is it you?" And itdid not seem at all queer to her that she spoke to himas if she were sure that he would understand and answer her.
He did answer. He twittered and chirped and hopped alongthe 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 hesaid:
"Good morning! Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn'teverything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter.
Come on! Come on!"Mary began to laugh, and as he hopped and took little flightsalong 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 didnot know how to do in the least. But the robin seemedto be quite satisfied and chirped and whistled back at her.
At last he spread his wings and made a darting flightto 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 beenstanding in the orchard. Now she was on the other sideof the orchard and standing in the path outside a wall--muchlower 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 enteredthe first morning. Then she ran down the path throughthe other door and then into the orchard, and when shestood and looked up there was the tree on the other sideof the wall, and there was the robin just finishing hissong 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 theorchard wall, but she only found what she had foundbefore--that there was no door in it. Then she ranthrough the kitchen-gardens again and out into the walkoutside the long ivy-covered wall, and she walked tothe 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 saidthere was no door and there is no door. But there musthave been one ten years ago, because Mr. Craven buriedthe key."This gave her so much to think of that she began to bequite interested and feel that she was not sorry that shehad come to Misselthwaite Manor. In India she had alwaysfelt hot and too languid to care much about anything.
The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begunto blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to wakenher up a little.
She stayed out of doors nearly all day, and when she satdown to her supper at night she felt hungry and drowsyand comfortable. She did not feel cross when Marthachattered 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 satdown 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 notobjected at all. She was very young, and used to a crowdedcottage full of brothers and sisters, and she found itdull in the great servants' hall downstairs where thefootman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshirespeech and looked upon her as a common little thing,and sat and whispered among themselves. Martha likedto talk, and the strange child who had lived in India,and been waited upon by "blacks," was novelty enoughto attract her.
She sat down on the hearth herself without waitingto be asked.
"Art tha' thinkin' about that garden yet?" she said.
"I knew tha' would. That was just the way with me when Ifirst heard about it.""Why did he hate it?" Mary persisted.
Martha tucked her feet under her and made herselfquite comfortable.
"Listen to th' wind wutherin' round the house," she said.
"You could bare stand up on the moor if you was out onit tonight."Mary did not know what "wutherin'" meant until she listened,and then she understood. It must mean that hollowshuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round thehouse as if the giant no one could see were buffeting itand beating at the walls and windows to try to break in.
But one knew he could not get in, and somehow it madeone feel very safe and warm inside a room with a redcoal fire.
"But why did he hate it so?" she asked, after shehad 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 betalked about. There's lots o' things in this place that'snot 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 wasMrs. Craven's garden that she had made when first theywere married an' she just loved it, an' they used to 'tendthe flowers themselves. An' none o' th' gardeners wasever 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 seaton it. An' she made roses grow over it an' she usedto sit there. But one day when she was sittin' there th'
branch broke an' she fell on th' ground an' was hurtso bad that next day she died. Th' doctors thought he'dgo 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 talkabout it."Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked atthe 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 shecame to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if shehad 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 listento something else. She did not know what it was,because at first she could scarcely distinguish it fromthe wind itself. It was a curious sound--it seemed almostas if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes the windsounded rather like a child crying, but presently MistressMary 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 itsounds 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 oneof those long corridors."And at that very moment a door must have been openedsomewhere downstairs; for a great rushing draft blew alongthe passage and the door of the room they sat in was blownopen with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feetthe light was blown out and the crying sound was swept downthe far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly thanever.
"There!" said Mary. "I told you so! It is some onecrying--and it isn't a grown-up person."Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but beforeshe did it they both heard the sound of a door in some farpassage 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 madeMistress Mary stare very hard at her. She did not believeshe was speaking the truth.