6
“There Was Some One Crying—There
Was”
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.l
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 bro-cade dress
and held a green parrot on her finger. Her eyes had a sharp,
curious look.
There was a stiff plain little girl.... She
wore a green brocade dress and held a green parrot on her
finger
![004](/epubstore/B/F-H-Burnett/The-secret-garden/OEBPS/bano_9781411433120_oeb_004_r1.jpg)
“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 mahoutsm or
palanquinsn 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 frightened 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.