Kabanata Kabanata 5 · THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR

. THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR

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 to-day," said Mary, feeling a little surprised herself.

"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, 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 was 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 down-stairs

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 to-night."

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' an' 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. She was getting on.

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

that 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

down-stairs; 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.