Chapter Chapter 17 · A TANTRUM

after this--but at any

rate you've given him something to have hysterics about, and I'm glad

of it."

Mary went back to her room not feeling at all as she had felt when she

had come in from the garden. She was cross and disappointed but not at

all sorry for Colin. She had looked forward to telling him a great many

things and she had meant to try to make up her mind whether it would be

safe to trust him with the great secret. She had been beginning to think

it would be, but now she had changed her mind entirely. She would never

tell him and he could stay in his room and never get any fresh air and

die if he liked! It would serve him right! She felt so sour and

unrelenting that for a few minutes she almost forgot about Dickon and

the green veil creeping over the world and the soft wind blowing down

from the moor.

Martha was waiting for her and the trouble in her face had been

temporarily replaced by interest and curiosity. There was a wooden box

on the table and its cover had been removed and revealed that it was

full of neat packages.

"Mr. Craven sent it to you," said Martha. "It looks as if it had

picture-books in it."

Mary remembered what he had asked her the day she had gone to his room.

"Do you want anything--dolls--toys--books?" She opened the package

wondering if he had sent a doll, and also wondering what she should do

with it if he had. But he had not sent one. There were several beautiful

books such as Colin had, and two of them were about gardens and were

full of pictures. There were two or three games and there was a

beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold pen

and inkstand.

Everything was so nice that her pleasure began to crowd her anger out of

her mind. She had not expected him to remember her at all and her hard

little heart grew quite warm.

"I can write better than I can print," she said, "and the first thing I

shall write with that pen will be a letter to tell him I am much

obliged."

If she had been friends with Colin she would have run to show him her

presents at once, and they would have looked at the pictures and read

some of the gardening books and perhaps tried playing the games, and he

would have enjoyed himself so much he would never once have thought he

was going to die or have put his hand on his spine to see if there was a

lump coming. He had a way of doing that which she could not bear. It

gave her an uncomfortable frightened feeling because he always looked so

frightened himself. He said that if he felt even quite a little lump

some day he should know his hunch had begun to grow. Something he had

heard Mrs. Medlock whispering to the nurse had given him the idea and he

had thought over it in secret until it was quite firmly fixed in his

mind. Mrs. Medlock had said his father's back had begun to show its

crookedness in that way when he was a child. He had never told any one

but Mary that most of his "tantrums" as they called them grew out of his

hysterical hidden fear. Mary had been sorry for him when he had told

her.

"He always began to think about it when he was cross or tired," she said

to herself. "And he has been cross to-day. Perhaps--perhaps he has been

thinking about it all afternoon."

She stood still, looking down at the carpet and thinking.

"I said I would never go back again--" she hesitated, knitting her

brows--"but perhaps, just perhaps, I will go and see--if he wants me--in

the morning. Perhaps he'll try to throw his pillow at me again, but--I

think--I'll go."

Chapter 17. A TANTRUM

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 wakened 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 streamed 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 tantrum 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 to-morrow."

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.