Mistress Mary Quite Contrary (The Secret Garden)

01CHAPTER II.

02MISTRESS 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.

03She 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.

04If 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.

05What 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.

06She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman's house, where she was taken at first.

07She did not want to stay.

08The English clergyman was poor, and he had five children nearly all the same age, and they wore shabby clothes, and were always quarrelling and snatching toys from each other.

09Mary hated their untidy bungalow, and was so disagreeable to them, that after the first day or two nobody would play with her.

10By the second day they had given her a nickname which made her furious.

11It was Basil who thought of it first.

12Basil was a little boy with impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary hated him.

13She was playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day the cholera broke out.

14She was making heaps of earth and paths for a garden, and Basil came and stood near to watch her.

15Presently he got rather interested, and suddenly made a suggestion.

16"'Why don't you put a heap of stones there, and pretend it is a rockery?' he said.

17"'There, in the middle.' And he leaned over her to point.

18"'Go away!' cried Mary.

19"'I don't want boys.

20Go away!' For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease.

21He was always teasing his sisters.

22He danced round and round her, and made faces, and sang and laughed.

23"'Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

24With silver bells and cockle-shells, and marigolds all in a row?' He sang it until the other children heard and laughed too.

25And 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.

26"'You are going to be sent home,' Basil said to her at the end of the week.

27"'And we're glad of it.' "'I am glad of it, too,' answered Mary.

28"'Where is home?' "'She doesn't know where home is,' said Basil, with seven-year-old scorn.

29"'It's England, of course.

30Our grandmama lives there, and our sister Mabel was sent to her last year.

31You are not going to your grandmama.

32You have none.

33You are going to your uncle.

34His name is Mr.

35Archibald Craven.' "'I don't know anything about him,' snapped Mary.

36"'I know you don't,' Basil answered.

37"'You don't know anything.

38Girls never do.

39I heard father and mother talking about him.

40He lives in a great, big, desolate old house in the country, and no one goes near him.

41He's so cross he won't let them, and they wouldn't come if he would let them.

42He's a hunchback, and he's horrid.' "'I don't believe you,' said Mary.

43And she turned her back and stuck her fingers in her ears, because she would not listen any more.

44But she thought over it a great deal afterward, and when Mrs.

45Crawford told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few days and go to her uncle, Mr.

46Archibald Craven, who lived at Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested that they did not know what to think about her.

47They tried to be kind to her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs.

48Crawford attempted to kiss her, and held herself stiffly when Mr.

49Crawford patted her shoulder.

50"'She is such a plain child,' Mrs.

51Crawford said pityingly afterward.

52"'And her mother was such a pretty creature.

53She had a very pretty manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a child.

54The 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.

55It 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.

56"'I believe she scarcely ever looked at her,' sighed Mrs.

57Crawford.

58"'When her ayah was dead there was no one to give a thought to the little thing.

59Think of the servants running away and leaving her all alone in that deserted bungalow.

60Colonel 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.

61She was very much absorbed in her own little boy and girl, and was rather glad to hand the child over to the woman Mr.

62Archibald Craven sent to meet her in London.

63The woman was his housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs.

64Medlock.

65She was a stout woman with very red cheeks and sharp black eyes.

66She 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.

67Mary 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.

68Medlock did not think much of her.

69My word, she's a plain little piece of goods, she said, and we'd heard that her mother was a beauty.

70She hasn't handed much of it down, has she, ma'am?

71Perhaps she will improve as she grows older, the officer's wife said good-naturedly.

72If she were not so sallow and had a nicer expression, her features are rather good.

73Children alter so much.

74She'll have to alter a good deal, answered Mrs.

75Medlock, and there's nothing likely to improve children at Misselthwaite, if you ask me.

76They 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.

77She 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.

78What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like?

79What was a hunchback?

80She had never seen one.

81Perhaps there were none in India.

82Since she had been living in other people's houses and had had no Aya, she had begun to feel lonely and to think queer thoughts which were new to her.

83She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to anyone, even when her father and mother had been alive.

84Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never seemed to really be anyone's little girl.

85She had had servants and food and clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her.

86She did not know that this was because she was a disagreeable child, but then, of course, she did not know she was disagreeable.

87She often thought that other people were, but she did not know that she was so herself.

88She thought Mrs.

89Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever seen, with her common, highly-coloured face and her common fine bonnet.

90When 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.

91It would have made her angry to think people imagined she was her little girl.

92But Mrs.

93Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her thoughts.

94She was the kind of woman who would stand no nonsense from young ones.

95At least, that is what she would have said if she had been asked.

96She 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.

97Archibald Craven told her to do.

98She never dared even to ask a question.

99"'Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera,' Mr.

100Craven had said in his short, cold way.

101"'Captain Lennox was my wife's brother, and I am their daughter's guardian.

102The child is to be brought here.

103You must go to London and bring her yourself.' So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.

104Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked plain and fretful.

105She had nothing to read or to look at, and she had folded her thin little black-gloved hands in her lap.

106Her black dress made her look yellower than ever, and her limp, light hair straggled from under her black crepe hat.

107A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life, Mrs.

108Medlock thought.

109Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and pettish.

110She 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.

111"'I suppose I may as well tell you something about where you are going to,' she said.

112"'Do you know anything about your uncle?' "'No,' said Mary.

113"'Never heard your father and mother talk about him?' "'No,' said Mary, frowning.

114She frowned because she remembered that her father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular.

115Certainly they had never told her things.' "'Humph!' muttered Mrs.

116Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive little face.

117She did not say any more for a few moments, and then she began again.

118"'I suppose you might as well be told something, to prepare you.

119You are going to a queer place.' Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs.

120Medlock looked rather discomfited by her apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on.

121"'Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr.

122Craven's proud of it in his way, and that's gloomy enough, too.

123The 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 shut up and locked.

124And 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.

125"'But there's nothing else,' she ended suddenly.

126Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself.

127It all sounded so unlike India, and anything new rather attracted her.

128But she did not intend to look as if she were interested.

129That was one of her unhappy, disagreeable ways.

130So she sat still.

131"'Well?' said Mrs.

132Medlock.

133"'What do you think of it?' "'Nothing,' she answered.

134"'I know nothing about such places.' "'That made Mrs.

135Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.

136"'Eh,' she said, "'but you are like an old woman.

137Don't you care?' "'It doesn't matter,' said Mary, "'whether I care or not.' "'You are right enough there,' said Mrs.

138Medlock.

139"'It doesn't.

140What you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don't know, unless because it's the easiest way.

141He's not going to trouble himself about you, that's sure and certain.

142He never troubles himself about no one.' She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.

143"'He's got a crooked back,' she said.

144"'That set him wrong.

145He 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.

146She had never thought of the hunchback's being married, and she was a trifle surprised.

147Mrs.

148Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative woman, she continued with more interest.

149This was one way of passing some of the time, at any rate.

150"'She was a sweet, pretty thing, and he'd have walked the world over to get her a blade o' grass she wanted.

151Nobody thought she'd marry him, but she did, and people said she married him for his money.

152But she didn't.

153She didn't!' Positively.

154"'When she died,' Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

155"'Oh!

156did she die?' she exclaimed, quite without meaning to.

157She had just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called Riquet a la Oup.

158It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess, and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr.

159Archibald Craven.

160"'Yes, she died,' Mrs.

161Medlock answered, and it made him queerer than ever.

162He 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.

163Pitcher'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.

164A 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.

165A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also.

166She 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 grey slanting lines and splash and stream down the window panes.

167If 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.

168But she was not there any more.

169"'You needn't expect to see him because ten to one you won't,' said Mrs.

170Medlock.

171"'And you mustn't expect that there will be people to talk to you.

172You will have to play about and look after yourself.

173You'll be told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you're to keep out of.

174There's gardens enough.

175But when you're in the house, don't go wandering and poking about.

176Mr.

177Craven won't have it.' "'I shall not want to go poking about,' said sour little Mary.

178And just as suddenly as she had begun to be rather sorry for Mr.

179Archibald Craven, she began to cease to be sorry, and to think he was unpleasant enough to deserve all that had happened to him.

180And she turned her face toward the streaming panes of the window of the railway carriage and gazed out at the grey rainstorm which looked as if it would go on for ever and ever.

181She watched it so long and steadily that the greyness grew heavier and heavier before her eyes, and she fell asleep.

182End of chapter 2 Read by Kara Schallenberg on January 5, 2006 in Oceanside, California and she was a little and she was a little and she was a little and she was a little and she was a little