The Secret Garden
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.
CHAPTER III.
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.
CHAPTER IV.
MARTHA
When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because a young
housemaid had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on
the hearth-rug raking out the cinders noisily. Mary lay and watched her
for a few moments and then began to look about the room. She had never
seen a room at all like it and thought it curious and gloomy. The walls
were covered with tapestry with a forest scene embroidered on it. There
were fantastically dressed people under the trees and in the distance
there was a glimpse of the turrets of a castle. There were hunters and
horses and dogs and ladies. Mary felt as if she were in the forest with
them. Out of a deep window she could see a great climbing stretch of
land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to look rather like an
endless, dull, purplish sea.
“What is that?” she said, pointing out of the window.
Martha, the young housemaid, who had just risen to her feet, looked and
pointed also.
“That there?” she said.
“Yes.”
“That’s th’ moor,” with a good-natured grin. “Does tha’ like it?”
“No,” answered Mary. “I hate it.”
“That’s because tha’rt not used to it,” Martha said, going back to her
hearth. “Tha’ thinks it’s too big an’ bare now. But tha’ will like it.”
“Do you?” inquired Mary.
“Aye, that I do,” answered Martha, cheerfully polishing away at the
grate. “I just love it. It’s none bare. It’s covered wi’ growin’ things
as smells sweet. It’s fair lovely in spring an’ summer when th’ gorse
an’ broom an’ heather’s in flower. It smells o’ honey an’ there’s such
a lot o’ fresh air—an’ th’ sky looks so high an’ th’ bees an’ skylarks
makes such a nice noise hummin’ an’ singin’. Eh! I wouldn’t live away
from th’ moor for anythin’.”