Chapter 17 Chapter Seventeen

She rose early in the morning and worked hard in the garden, and she was so tired and sleepy that she was happy to go to bed once Martha brought her supper and finished it.She lay her head on the pillow and murmured to herself: "I'll go out and work with Dickon before breakfast, and then - I believe - I'll go and see him." It was about midnight when she was suddenly awakened by a horrible sound and she jumped out of bed.What is that - what is that?The next moment she felt sure she knew what it was.Doors were being opened and shut, and footsteps were hurrying along the corridors, while people were crying and screaming, in a horrific way.

"It's Colin," she said. "He's having that kind of tantrum the nurse calls hysterical. That sounds scary." As she listened to the sobbing screams, she stopped wondering why they'd rather go with him than hear the screams.She put her hands to her ears, feeling sick and shaking. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," she kept saying, "I can't take it." For a moment she wondered if he would stop if she dared to go to him, and then she remembered how he had thrown her out of the room and thought maybe seeing her would make it worse for him.Even pressing her hands closer to her ears could not block the terrible sound.She hated and dreaded the scream so much that suddenly she was driven into a rage and felt like throwing a tantrum too, to frighten him as he was frightening her now.She is not used to anyone's temper but her own.She took her hands from her ears, jumped up, and stamped her feet.

"He has to stop! Someone has to stop him! Someone has to beat him!" she yelled. Just then she heard footsteps in the corridor, almost running, the door opened and the nurse came in.Now she's not smiling at all.She even looked pale. "He's got himself hysterical," she said hastily. "He'll hurt himself. No one can do anything to him. You try and be a good boy. He likes you." "He kicked me out of the room this morning," Mary said, stomping her feet excitedly. Stamping made the nurse happy instead.In fact, she had just been worried that she would see Mary hiding under the sheets and crying.

"That's right," she said. "You've got the right attitude. Go ahead and scold him. Make him think of something new. Go, boy, as soon as possible." It wasn't until after the fact that Mary realized that it was ridiculous and terrible--the funny thing is that all the adults are afraid to go to a little girl just because they think she is as bad as Colin himself. She flitted down the corridor, the closer she got to the screams, the more angry she was.When she walked to the door, she already felt very angry.She slammed the door open with her hand and ran across the room to the four-poster bed.

"Stop!" she almost yelled, "Stop! I hate you! Everybody hates you! I wish everyone would run out of the house and let yourself scream to death! You'd be killing yourself in no time Scream to death, I wish you would!" A good sympathetic kid would neither think nor say it, but as it happens, the shock of those words is the best that can happen , for this hysterical boy, no one has ever dared to restrain and oppose the boy. He had been lying with his face buried, beating the pillow with his hands, but he almost jumped up and turned over when he heard the small angry voice, and he turned quickly.His face looked scary, red and white and swollen, and he gasped and gasped, but wild little Mary didn't care a bit.

"If you scream again," she said, "I'll scream too—I can scream louder than you, and I'll scare you to death, I'll scare you to death!" He actually stopped screaming because she startled him.He was nearly choked by the rising scream.Tears streamed down his face, and he was shaking. "I can't stop!" he gasped, sobbing, "I can't—I can't!" "You can!" cried Mary. "Half your illness is hysteria and temper—that's hysteria—hysteria—hysteria!" She stamped her foot each time she said it. "I feel the lump—I feel it," Colin choked out. "I knew I would. I'd have a tumor on my back and I'd die." Sobbing, whimpering, but no screaming.

"You don't feel the bag!" Marie retorted furiously. "If you did, it was just a hysterical bag. Hysterics can pick up a bag. There's nothing wrong with your nasty back—except hysteria! Turn over and let the Let me see!" She liked the word "hysterical" and thought it somehow worked for him.He probably, like herself, had never heard the word. "Nurse," she ordered, "come here right now and show me his back!" The nurse, Mrs. Medlock, and Martha had been standing huddled in the doorway, staring at her with their mouths half-open.All three held their breath more than once in fright.The nurse stepped forward, as if half-frightened.Colin's body heaved and fell because of the violent breathless sobs.

"Maybe he—he won't let me," she whispered hesitantly. Colin heard her, however, gasping out between two sobs: "Show—show her! Then she'll know!" Her back was exposed, she was so thin that she couldn't bear to see her.Every rib, every joint in the spine, was counted, though Miss Mary did not count when she bent over to examine, her savage little face dignified.She looked so sour and old-fashioned that the nurse turned her head to hide the twitch of her mouth.There was a minute of silence, because even Colin was trying to hold his breath, while Mary checked his spine up and down, up and down, as focused as if she were the great physician from London.

"Not a single bag!" she finally said, "none as big as a pinpoint—except the ones on the spine, which you can feel because you're so skinny. The same bulge, until I started to grow meat, I didn't have enough meat to cover them. There are no pinpoint bulges! If you say there are any, I will laugh!" No one but Colin knew what effect those stubborn, childish words had on him.If he had had anyone to speak of his secret fears—if he had dared himself to ask—if he had boyish companions who hadn’t been lying in huge closed houses breathing heavy air filled with people’s Fear, they were mostly ignorant, bore him, and he would have found out that more than half his fears and diseases were made up by himself.And yet he lay there, thinking of himself, his pain and boredom, hours, days, months, years.Now an angry, unsympathetic little girl stubbornly insisted that he was not as ill as he himself thought, and he thought she might be telling the truth.

"I don't know," the nurse said cautiously. "He thought he had a lump on his spine. His back was weak because he didn't want to sit up. I could have told him there was no lump." Colin swallowed hard, turned slightly to look at her, "Is—is it?" he asked pitifully. "Yes, sir." "Look!" said Mary, swallowing hard too. Colin activated the facial muscles again, only to take a deep breath, which was interrupted, the aftermath of the sobbing storm he had unleashed, and he lay still for a minute, despite the tears streaming down his face Wet the pillow.In fact, the tears meant a strange relief to him.At this time, he turned his head and looked at the nurse again. It was very strange that he didn't speak to her like an Indian prince at all.

"You think—I can—live to grow up?" he said. The nurse was neither quick-witted nor soft-hearted, but she could repeat some of the words of the London doctor. "You probably will, if you do what you're told, don't give in to your temper without self-control, and get out and get a lot of fresh air." Colin's temper had passed, and he was weak and exhausted from crying, and perhaps that made him feel tender.He held out a hand to Mary, and I am happy to say that her own temper passed and mellowed, and she met him on the way, and it was reconciled. "I'd—would go out with you, Mary," he said, "I wouldn't hate the fresh air, if we could find—" He had just had time to remember, and stopped himself from saying, "If we found the Secret Garden," and it turned out What he said was, "I'd love to go out with you if Deacon would come and push my wheelchair. I'd really like to see Deacon and the fox and the crow." The nurse rearranged the tangled bed and straightened the pillows.Then she made Colin a glass of beef gravy, and gave Mary a glass too, which she was really glad to have after her excitement.Mrs. Medlock and Martha would run away when everything was neat and calm and in order, and the nurse would have been willing to run away.She was a healthy young girl who hated sleep deprivation, and yawned wildly as she looked at Mary, who had pushed her stool close to the four-poster bed and was holding Colin's hand. "You go back to sleep," she said. "He'll be asleep in a while—if he's not too angry. Then I'll go to the next room and lie down." "Would you like me to sing you a song, which I learned from my nurse?" whispered Mary to Colin. His hand took hers gently, and his tired eyes turned to her, begging. "Oh, yes!" he answered, "how sweet that song is. I shall be asleep in a moment." "I'll put him to sleep," Mary said to the yawning nurse. "You can go if you like." "Then," said the nurse, reluctantly trying in vain, "if he won't sleep for half an hour, you must call me." "No problem," Mary replied. The nurse was out of the room at once, and as soon as she was gone Colin took Mary's hand again. "I almost said it," he said, "but I stopped in time. I can't talk, I'm going to sleep, but you said you had a lot of good things to tell me. Did you--do you think you'd find Is there even a little bit of way to the secret garden?" Mary looked at his poor, tired little face, and his swollen eyes, and her heart grew piteous. "Yes," she answered, "I think I've found it. I can tell you to-morrow if you go to bed." His hands were shaking. "Oh, Mary!" he said, "oh, Mary! If I could get in, I think I'd live to grow up! Don't you think it's okay not to sing the nurse's song—you can tell me what you think it looks like inside What's it like? Just whisper it to me like you did on the first day. I'm sure it'll put me to sleep." "Okay," said Mary, "close your eyes." He closed his eyes and lay still, while she held his hand and began to speak very slowly, in a low voice. "I think it's been left alone for so long - nice tangles all over the place. I think the roses have climbed and climbed and climbed until they're hanging from the branches and the walls and all over the ground - almost Like a strange gray mist. Some are dead, but many--alive, and when summer comes there will be curtains of roses, fountains of roses. I think the ground is full of narcissus, snowdrops, lilies, irises Flowers, pushing out in the dark. Now spring has begun—maybe—maybe—” Her gentle, continuous whisper was making him more and more peaceful, she saw, and continued. "Maybe they'll grow out of the grass - maybe there'll be clusters of purple crocuses, and red ones - even now. Maybe the leaves are just starting to come out and unfurl - maybe - gray in the Variations, the thin green sides are crawling—covered with—everything. Birds come to see the Secret Garden—because it's—so safe and peaceful. Maybe—maybe—maybe—” Her voice Gentle and slow indeed, "The robin has found his wife—and is building a nest." Colin fell asleep. 【①Beef juice: British tradition, the original juice of beef stew is rich in nutrients and used to nourish the body of patients.Similar to the chicken soup given to the sick in China. 】