ISBN: 9788893457125
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Table of contents
THERE IS NO ONE LEFT
MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
ACROSS THE MOOR
MARTHA
THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR
“THERE WAS SOMEONE CRYING—THERE WAS!”
THE KEY TO THE GARDEN
THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY
THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE EVER LIVED IN
DICKON
THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH
“MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?”
“I AM COLIN”
A YOUNG RAJAH
NEST BUILDING
“I WON’T!” SAID MARY
A TANTRUM
“THA’ MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME”
“IT HAS COME!”
“I SHALL LIVE FOREVER—AND EVER—AND EVER!”
BEN WEATHERSTAFF
WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
MAGIC
“LET THEM LAUGH”
THE CURTAIN
“IT’S MOTHER!”
IN THE GARDEN
THERE IS NO ONE LEFT
When Mary Lennox was sent to
Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was
the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too.
She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair
and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow
because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one
way or another. Her father had held a position under the English
Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother
had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse
herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all,
and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah,
who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem
Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So
when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out
of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing
she was kept out of the way also. She never remembered seeing
familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other
native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own
way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was
disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was
as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young
English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked
her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when
other governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a
shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to
really want to know how to read books she would never have learned
her letters at all.
One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years
old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still
when she saw that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her
Ayah.
“Why did you come?” she said to the strange woman. “I will not let
you stay. Send my Ayah to me.”
The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah
could not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat
and kicked her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that
it was not possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.
There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was
done in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed
missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy
and scared faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah
did not come. She was actually left alone as the morning went on,
and at last she wandered out into the garden and began to play by
herself under a tree near the veranda. She pretended that she was
making a flower-bed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms
into little heaps of earth, all the time growing more and more
angry and muttering to herself the things she would say and the
names she would call Saidie when she returned.
“Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!” she said, because to call a native a
pig is the worst insult of all.
She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when
she heard her mother come out on the veranda with someone. She was
with a fair young man and they stood talking together in low
strange voices. Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy.
She had heard that he was a very young officer who had just come
from England. The child stared at him, but she stared most at her
mother. She always did this when she had a chance to see her,
because the Mem Sahib—Mary used to call her that oftener than
anything else—was such a tall, slim, pretty person and wore such
lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly silk and she had a delicate
little nose which seemed to be disdaining things, and she had large
laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and floating, and Mary
said they were “full of lace.” They looked fuller of lace than ever
this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all. They were
large and scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy officer’s
face.
“Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?” Mary heard her say.
“Awfully,” the young man answered in a trembling voice. “Awfully,
Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago.”
The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.
“Oh, I know I ought!” she cried. “I only stayed to go to that silly
dinner party. What a fool I was!”
At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the
servants’ quarters that she clutched the young man’s arm, and Mary
stood shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and
wilder. “What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Lennox gasped.
“Someone has died,” answered the boy officer. “You did not say it
had broken out among your servants.”
“I did not know!” the Mem Sahib cried. “Come with me! Come with
me!” and she turned and ran into the house.
After that appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the
morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its
most fatal form and people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been
taken ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that
the servants had wailed in the huts. Before the next day three
other servants were dead and others had run away in terror. There
was panic on every side, and dying people in all the bungalows.
During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid
herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone. Nobody
thought of her, nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of
which she knew nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through
the hours. She only knew that people were ill and that she heard
mysterious and frightening sounds. Once she crept into the
dining-room and found it empty, though a partly finished meal was
on the table and chairs and plates looked as if they had been
hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly for some reason.
The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty she drank
a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and she
did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely
drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again,
frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound
of feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep
her eyes open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for
a long time.
Many things happened during the hours in which she slept so
heavily, but she was not disturbed by the wails and the sound of
things being carried in and out of the bungalow.
When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was
perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She
heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had
got well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered
also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would
be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary
had been rather tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her
nurse had died. She was not an affectionate child and had never
cared much for anyone. The noise and hurrying about and wailing
over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry because
no one seemed to remember that she was alive. Everyone was too
panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was fond of. When
people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but
themselves. But if everyone had got well again, surely someone
would remember and come to look for her.
But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow
more and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting
and when she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and
watching her with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because
he was a harmless little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed
in a hurry to get out of the room. He slipped under the door as she
watched him.
“How queer and quiet it is,” she said. “It sounds as if there were
no one in the bungalow but me and the snake.”
Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and
then on the veranda. They were men’s footsteps, and the men entered
the bungalow and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak
to them and they seemed to open doors and look into rooms.
“What desolation!” she heard one voice say. “That pretty, pretty
woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though
no one ever saw her.”
Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the
door a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing
and was frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel
disgracefully neglected. The first man who came in was a large
officer she had once seen talking to her father. He looked tired
and troubled, but when he saw her he was so startled that he almost
jumped back.
“Barney!” he cried out. “There is a child here! A child alone! In a
place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!”
“I am Mary Lennox,” the little girl said, drawing herself up
stiffly. She thought the man was very rude to call her father’s
bungalow “A place like this!” “I fell asleep when everyone had the
cholera and I have only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?”
“It is the child no one ever saw!” exclaimed the man, turning to
his companions. “She has actually been forgotten!”
“Why was I forgotten?” Mary said, stamping her foot. “Why does
nobody come?”
The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary
even thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.
“Poor little kid!” he said. “There is nobody left to come.”
It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she
had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been
carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had
not died also had left the house as quickly as they could get out
of it, none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib.
That was why the place was so quiet. It was true that there was no
one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling
snake.
MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
Mary had liked to look at her
mother from a distance and she had thought her very pretty, but as
she knew very little of her she could scarcely have been expected
to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone. She did not
miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a self-absorbed child she
gave her entire thought to herself, as she had always done. If she
had been older she would no doubt have been very anxious at being
left alone in the world, but she was very young, and as she had
always been taken care of, she supposed she always would be. What
she thought was that she would like to know if she was going to
nice people, who would be polite to her and give her her own way as
her Ayah and the other native servants had done.
She knew that she was not going to stay at the English
clergyman’s house where she was taken at first. She did not want to
stay. The English clergyman was poor and he had five children
nearly all the same age and they wore shabby clothes and were
always quarreling and snatching toys from each other. Mary hated
their untidy bungalow and was so disagreeable to them that after
the first day or two nobody would play with her. By the second day
they had given her a nickname which made her furious.
It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little boy with
impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary hated him. She
was playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing
the day the cholera broke out. She was making heaps of earth and
paths for a garden and Basil came and stood near to watch her.
Presently he got rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.
“Why don’t you put a heap of stones there and pretend it is a
rockery?” he said. “There in the middle,” and he leaned over her to
point.
“Go away!” cried Mary. “I don’t want boys. Go away!”
For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease. He was
always teasing his sisters. He danced round and round her and made
faces and sang and laughed.
“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row.”
He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too; and the
crosser Mary got, the more they sang “Mistress Mary, quite
contrary”; and after that as long as she stayed with them they
called her “Mistress Mary Quite Contrary” when they spoke of her to
each other, and often when they spoke to her.
“You are going to be sent home,” Basil said to her, “at the end of
the week. And we’re glad of it.”
“I am glad of it, too,” answered Mary. “Where is home?”
“She doesn’t know where home is!” said Basil, with seven-year-old
scorn. “It’s England, of course. Our grandmama lives there and our
sister Mabel was sent to her last year. You are not going to your
grandmama. You have none. You are going to your uncle. His name is
Mr. Archibald Craven.”
“I don’t know anything about him,” snapped Mary.
“I know you don’t,” Basil answered. “You don’t know anything. Girls
never do. I heard father and mother talking about him. He lives in
a great, big, desolate old house in the country and no one goes
near him. He’s so cross he won’t let them, and they wouldn’t come
if he would let them. He’s a hunchback, and he’s horrid.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck
her fingers in her ears, because she would not listen any more.
But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when Mrs.
Crawford told her that night that she was going to sail away to
England in a few days and go to her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven,
who lived at Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and
stubbornly uninterested that they did not know what to think about
her. They tried to be kind to her, but she only turned her face
away when Mrs. Crawford attempted to kiss her, and held herself
stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her shoulder.
“She is such a plain child,” Mrs. Crawford said pityingly,
afterward. “And her mother was such a pretty creature. She had a
very pretty manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I
ever saw in a child. The children call her ‘Mistress Mary Quite
Contrary,’ and though it’s naughty of them, one can’t help
understanding it.”
“Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty
manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some
pretty ways too. It is very sad, now the poor beautiful thing is
gone, to remember that many people never even knew that she had a
child at all.”
“I believe she scarcely ever looked at her,” sighed Mrs. Crawford.
“When her Ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the
little thing. Think of the servants running away and leaving her
all alone in that deserted bungalow. Colonel McGrew said he nearly
jumped out of his skin when he opened the door and found her
standing by herself in the middle of the room.”
Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of an officer’s
wife, who was taking her children to leave them in a
boarding-school. She was very much absorbed in her own little boy
and girl, and was rather glad to hand the child over to the woman
Mr. Archibald Craven sent to meet her, in London. The woman was his
housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock.
She was a stout woman, with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes.
She wore a very purple dress, a black silk mantle with jet fringe
on it and a black bonnet with purple velvet flowers which stuck up
and trembled when she moved her head. Mary did not like her at all,
but as she very seldom liked people there was nothing remarkable in
that; besides which it was very evident Mrs. Medlock did not think
much of her.
“My word! she’s a plain little piece of goods!” she said. “And we’d
heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn’t handed much of it
down, has she, ma’am?”
“Perhaps she will improve as she grows older,” the officer’s wife
said good-naturedly. “If she were not so sallow and had a nicer
expression, her features are rather good. Children alter so much.”
“She’ll have to alter a good deal,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “And,
there’s nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite—if you
ask me!”
They thought Mary was not listening because she was standing a
little apart from them at the window of the private hotel they had
gone to. She was watching the passing buses and cabs and people,
but she heard quite well and was made very curious about her uncle
and the place he lived in. What sort of a place was it, and what
would he be like? What was a hunchback? She had never seen one.
Perhaps there were none in India.
Since she had been living in other people’s houses and had had no
Ayah, she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts
which were new to her. She had begun to wonder why she had never
seemed to belong to anyone even when her father and mother had been
alive. Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and
mothers, but she had never seemed to really be anyone’s little
girl. She had had servants, and food and clothes, but no one had
taken any notice of her. She did not know that this was because she
was a disagreeable child; but then, of course, she did not know she
was disagreeable. She often thought that other people were, but she
did not know that she was so herself.
She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever
seen, with her common, highly colored face and her common fine
bonnet. When the next day they set out on their journey to
Yorkshire, she walked through the station to the railway carriage
with her head up and trying to keep as far away from her as she
could, because she did not want to seem to belong to her. It would
have made her angry to think people imagined she was her little
girl.
But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her
thoughts. She was the kind of woman who would “stand no nonsense
from young ones.” At least, that is what she would have said if she
had been asked. She had not wanted to go to London just when her
sister Maria’s daughter was going to be married, but she had a
comfortable, well paid place as housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor
and the only way in which she could keep it was to do at once what
Mr. Archibald Craven told her to do. She never dared even to ask a
question.
“Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera,” Mr. Craven had
said in his short, cold way. “Captain Lennox was my wife’s brother
and I am their daughter’s guardian. The child is to be brought
here. You must go to London and bring her yourself.”
So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.
Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and
fretful. She had nothing to read or to look at, and she had folded
her thin little black-gloved hands in her lap. Her black dress made
her look yellower than ever, and her limp light hair straggled from
under her black crêpe hat.
“A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life,” Mrs.
Medlock thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and
pettish.) She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing
anything; and at last she got tired of watching her and began to
talk in a brisk, hard voice.
“I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are
going to,” she said. “Do you know anything about your uncle?”
“No,” said Mary.
“Never heard your father and mother talk about him?”
“No,” said Mary frowning. She frowned because she remembered that
her father and mother had never talked to her about anything in
particular. Certainly they had never told her things.
“Humph,” muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive
little face. She did not say any more for a few moments and then
she began again.
“I suppose you might as well be told something—to prepare you. You
are going to a queer place.”
Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather
discomfited by her apparent indifference, but, after taking a
breath, she went on.
“Not but that it’s a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr.
Craven’s proud of it in his way—and that’s gloomy enough, too. The
house is six hundred years old and it’s on the edge of the moor,
and there’s near a hundred rooms in it, though most of them’s shut
up and locked. And there’s pictures and fine old furniture and
things that’s been there for ages, and there’s a big park round it
and gardens and trees with branches trailing to the ground—some of
them.” She paused and took another breath. “But there’s nothing
else,” she ended suddenly.
Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded so
unlike India, and anything new rather attracted her. But she did
not intend to look as if she were interested. That was one of her
unhappy, disagreeable ways. So she sat still.
“Well,” said Mrs. Medlock. “What do you think of it?”
“Nothing,” she answered. “I know nothing about such places.”
That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.
“Eh!” she said, “but you are like an old woman. Don’t you care?”
“It doesn’t matter” said Mary, “whether I care or not.”
“You are right enough there,” said Mrs. Medlock. “It doesn’t. What
you’re to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don’t know, unless
because it’s the easiest way. He’s not going to trouble himself
about you, that’s sure and certain. He never troubles himself about
no one.”
She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in
time.
“He’s got a crooked back,” she said. “That set him wrong. He was a
sour young man and got no good of all his money and big place till
he was married.”
Mary’s eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem
to care. She had never thought of the hunchback’s being married and
she was a trifle surprised. Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a
talkative woman she continued with more interest. This was one way
of passing some of the time, at any rate.
“She was a sweet, pretty thing and he’d have walked the world over
to get her a blade o’ grass she wanted. Nobody thought she’d marry
him, but she did, and people said she married him for his money.
But she didn’t—she didn’t,” positively. “When she died—”
Mary gave a little involuntary jump.
“Oh! did she die!” she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had
just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called
“Riquet à la Houppe.” It had been about a poor hunchback and a
beautiful princess and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr.
Archibald Craven.
“Yes, she died,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “And it made him queerer
than ever. He cares about nobody. He won’t see people. Most of the
time he goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself
up in the West Wing and won’t let anyone but Pitcher see him.
Pitcher’s an old fellow, but he took care of him when he was a
child and he knows his ways.”
It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel
cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with
their doors locked—a house on the edge of a moor—whatsoever a moor
was—sounded dreary. A man with a crooked back who shut himself up
also! She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together,
and it seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour
down in gray slanting lines and splash and stream down the
window-panes. If the pretty wife had been alive she might have made
things cheerful by being something like her own mother and by
running in and out and going to parties as she had done in frocks
“full of lace.” But she was not there any more.
“You needn’t expect to see him, because ten to one you won’t,” said
Mrs. Medlock. “And you mustn’t expect that there will be people to
talk to you. You’ll have to play about and look after yourself.
You’ll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you’re to
keep out of. There’s gardens enough. But when you’re in the house
don’t go wandering and poking about. Mr. Craven won’t have it.”
“I shall not want to go poking about,” said sour little Mary and
just as suddenly as she had begun to be rather sorry for Mr.
Archibald Craven she began to cease to be sorry and to think he was
unpleasant enough to deserve all that had happened to him.
And she turned her face toward the streaming panes of the window of
the railway carriage and gazed out at the gray rain-storm which
looked as if it would go on forever and ever. She watched it so
long and steadily that the grayness grew heavier and heavier before
her eyes and she fell asleep.
ACROSS THE MOOR
She slept a long time, and when
she awakened Mrs. Medlock had bought a lunchbasket at one of the
stations and they had some chicken and cold beef and bread and
butter and some hot tea. The rain seemed to be streaming down more
heavily than ever and everybody in the station wore wet and
glistening waterproofs. The guard lighted the lamps in the
carriage, and Mrs. Medlock cheered up very much over her tea and
chicken and beef. She ate a great deal and afterward fell asleep
herself, and Mary sat and stared at her and watched her fine bonnet
slip on one side until she herself fell asleep once more in the
corner of the carriage, lulled by the splashing of the rain against
the windows. It was quite dark when she awakened again. The train
had stopped at a station and Mrs. Medlock was shaking her.
“You have had a sleep!” she said. “It’s time to open your
eyes! We’re at Thwaite Station and we’ve got a long drive before
us.”
Mary stood up and tried to keep her eyes open while Mrs. Medlock
collected her parcels. The little girl did not offer to help her,
because in India native servants always picked up or carried things
and it seemed quite proper that other people should wait on one.
The station was a small one and nobody but themselves seemed to be
getting out of the train. The station-master spoke to Mrs. Medlock
in a rough, good-natured way, pronouncing his words in a queer
broad fashion which Mary found out afterward was Yorkshire.
“I see tha’s got back,” he said. “An’ tha’s browt th’ young ’un
with thee.”
“Aye, that’s her,” answered Mrs. Medlock, speaking with a Yorkshire
accent herself and jerking her head over her shoulder toward Mary.
“How’s thy Missus?”
“Well enow. Th’ carriage is waitin’ outside for thee.”
A brougham stood on the road before the little outside platform.
Mary saw that it was a smart carriage and that it was a smart
footman who helped her in. His long waterproof coat and the
waterproof covering of his hat were shining and dripping with rain
as everything was, the burly station-master included.
When he shut the door, mounted the box with the coachman, and they
drove off, the little girl found herself seated in a comfortably
cushioned corner, but she was not inclined to go to sleep again.
She sat and looked out of the window, curious to see something of
the road over which she was being driven to the queer place Mrs.
Medlock had spoken of. She was not at all a timid child and she was
not exactly frightened, but she felt that there was no knowing what
might happen in a house with a hundred rooms nearly all shut up—a
house standing on the edge of a moor.
“What is a moor?” she said suddenly to Mrs. Medlock.
“Look out of the window in about ten minutes and you’ll see,” the
woman answered. “We’ve got to drive five miles across Missel Moor
before we get to the Manor. You won’t see much because it’s a dark
night, but you can see something.”
Mary asked no more questions but waited in the darkness of her
corner, keeping her eyes on the window. The carriage lamps cast
rays of light a little distance ahead of them and she caught
glimpses of the things they passed. After they had left the station
they had driven through a tiny village and she had seen whitewashed
cottages and the lights of a public house. Then they had passed a
church and a vicarage and a little shop-window or so in a cottage
with toys and sweets and odd things set out for sale. Then they
were on the highroad and she saw hedges and trees. After that there
seemed nothing different for a long time—or at least it seemed a
long time to her.
At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were
climbing up-hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges
and no more trees. She could see nothing, in fact, but a dense
darkness on either side. She leaned forward and pressed her face
against the window just as the carriage gave a big jolt.
“Eh! We’re on the moor now sure enough,” said Mrs. Medlock.
The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road
which seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing things which
ended in the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and
around them. A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low,
rushing sound.
“It’s—it’s not the sea, is it?” said Mary, looking round at her
companion.
“No, not it,” answered Mrs. Medlock. “Nor it isn’t fields nor
mountains, it’s just miles and miles and miles of wild land that
nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives
on but wild ponies and sheep.”
“I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it,” said
Mary. “It sounds like the sea just now.”
“That’s the wind blowing through the bushes,” Mrs. Medlock said.
“It’s a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there’s plenty
that likes it—particularly when the heather’s in bloom.”
On and on they drove through the darkness, and though the rain
stopped, the wind rushed by and whistled and made strange sounds.
The road went up and down, and several times the carriage passed
over a little bridge beneath which water rushed very fast with a
great deal of noise. Mary felt as if the drive would never come to
an end and that the wide, bleak moor was a wide expanse of black
ocean through which she was passing on a strip of dry land.
“I don’t like it,” she said to herself. “I don’t like it,” and she
pinched her thin lips more tightly together.
The horses were climbing up a hilly piece of road when she first
caught sight of a light. Mrs. Medlock saw it as soon as she did and
drew a long sigh of relief.
“Eh, I am glad to see that bit o’ light twinkling,” she exclaimed.
“It’s the light in the lodge window. We shall get a good cup of tea
after a bit, at all events.”
It was “after a bit,” as she said, for when the carriage passed
through the park gates there was still two miles of avenue to drive
through and the trees (which nearly met overhead) made it seem as
if they were driving through a long dark vault.
They drove out of the vault into a clear space and stopped before
an immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round
a stone court. At first Mary thought that there were no lights at
all in the windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that
one room in a corner upstairs showed a dull glow.
The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped
panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron
bars. It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted
that the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the
suits of armor made Mary feel that she did not want to look at
them. As she stood on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd
little black figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she
looked.
A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door
for them.
“You are to take her to her room,” he said in a husky voice. “He
doesn’t want to see her. He’s going to London in the morning.”
“Very well, Mr. Pitcher,” Mrs. Medlock answered. “So long as I know
what’s expected of me, I can manage.”
“What’s expected of you, Mrs. Medlock,” Mr. Pitcher said, “is that
you make sure that he’s not disturbed and that he doesn’t see what
he doesn’t want to see.”
And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase and down a long
corridor and up a short flight of steps and through another
corridor and another, until a door opened in a wall and she found
herself in a room with a fire in it and a supper on a table.
Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously:
“Well, here you are! This room and the next are where you’ll
live—and you must keep to them. Don’t you forget that!”
It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor and
she had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life.
MARTHA