Mistress Mary Quite Contrary (The Secret Garden (Full Cast))

01CHAPTER II.

02MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY.

03Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance, and she had thought her very pretty.

04But 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.

05She 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.

06If she had been older, she would no doubt have been very anxious at being left alone in the world.

07But she was very young, and as she had always been taken care of, she supposed she always would be.

08What 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.

09She knew that she was not going to stay at the English clergyman's house where she was taken at first.

10She did not want to stay.

11The 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.

12Mary hated their untidy bungalow, and was so disagreeable to them that after the first day or two nobody would play with her.

13By the second day they had given her a nickname which made her furious.

14It was Basil who thought of it first.

15Basil was a little boy with impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary hated him.

16She was playing by herself under a tree, just as she had been playing the day the cholera broke out.

17She was making heaps of earth and paths for a garden, and Basil came and stood near to watch her.

18Presently he got rather interested, and suddenly made a suggestion.

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

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

21"'Go away!' cried Mary.

22"'I don't want boys.

23Go away!' For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease.

24He was always teasing his sisters.

25He danced round and round her, and made faces, and sang and laughed.

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

27With silver bells and cockle-shells, and marigolds all in a row.' He sang it until the other children heard and laughed too.

28And 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.

29"'You are going to be sent home,' Basil said to her.

30"'At the end of the week, and we are glad of it.' "'I am glad of it too,' answered Mary.

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

32"'It's England, of course.

33Our grandmamma lives there, and our sister Mabel was sent to her last year.

34"'You are not going to your grandmamma.

35You have none.

36You are going to your uncle.

37His name is Mr.

38Archibald Craven.' "'I don't know anything about him,' snapped Mary.

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

40"'You don't know anything.

41Girls never do.

42I heard father and mother talking about him.

43He lives in a great, big, desolate old house in the country, and no one goes near him.

44He's so cross he won't let them, and they wouldn't come if he would let them.

45He'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.

46But she thought it over a great deal afterward, and when Mrs.

47Crawford told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few days and go to her uncle, Mr.

48Archibald Craven, who lived at Misselthwaite Manor, she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested that they did not know what to think about her.

49They tried to be kind to her, but she only turned her face away when Mrs.

50Crawford attempted to kiss her, and held herself stiffly when Mr.

51Crawford pattered her shoulder.

52"'She's such a plain child,' Mrs.

53Crawford said pityingly afterward.

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

55She had a very pretty manner, too, and Mary has the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a child.

56The 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.

57It 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.

58Crawford.

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

60Think of the servants running away and leaving her all alone in that deserted bungalow.' "'Colonel MacGrew 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 that Mrs.

68Medlock did not think much of her.

69"'My word, she's a plain little piece of goods,' she said.

70"'And we'd heard her mother was a beauty.

71She 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.

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

73Children alter so much.' "'She'll have to alter a great deal,' answered Mrs.

74Medlock.

75"'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.

76She 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.

77What sort of a place was it, and what would he be like?

78What was a hunchback?

79She had never seen one.

80Perhaps there were none in India.

81Since 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.

82She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to anyone, even when her father and mother had been alive.

83Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers, but she had never really seemed to be anyone's little girl.

84She had had servants and food and clothes, but no one had taken any notice of her.

85She did not know that this was because she was a disagreeable child, but then, of course, she did not know she was disagreeable.

86She often thought that other people were, but she did not know that she was so herself.

87She thought Mrs.

88Medlock the most disagreeable person she had ever seen, with her common, highly-coloured face and her common fine bonnet.

89When 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.

90It would have made her angry to think people imagined she was her little girl.

91But Mrs.

92Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her and her thoughts.

93She was the kind of woman who would— Stand no nonsense from young ones.

94At least that is what she would have said if she had been asked.

95She had not wanted to go to London just when her sister Mariah'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.

96Archibald Craven told her to do.

97She never dared even to ask a question.

98Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera.

99Mr.

100Craven had said in his short, cold way, Captain Lennox was my wife's brother, and I am their daughter's guardian.

101The child is to be brought here.

102You must go to London and bring her yourself.

103So 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 little thin 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.

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

112Do you know anything about your uncle?

113No, said Mary.

114Never heard your father and mother talk about him?

115No, said Mary, frowning.

116She frowned because she remembered that her father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular.

117Certainly they had never told her things.

118Humph!

119muttered Mrs.

120Medlock, staring at her queer, unresponsive little face.

121She did not say any more for a few moments, and then she began again.

122I suppose you might as well be told something, to prepare you.

123You are going to a queer place.

124Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs.

125Medlock looked rather discomfited by her apparent indifference, but after taking a breath she went on.

126Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way.

127And Mr.

128Craven's proud of it in his way, and that's gloomy enough too.

129The house is six hundred years old, and it's on the edge of a 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 have 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.

130She paused and took another breath.

131But there's nothing else.

132She ended suddenly.

133Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself.

134It all sounded so unlike India, and anything new rather attracted her.

135But she did not intend to look as if she were interested.

136That was one of her unhappy, disagreeable ways.

137So she sat still.

138Well, said Mrs.

139Medlock, what do you think of it?

140Nothing, she answered.

141I know nothing about such places.

142That made Mrs.

143Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.

144But you are like an old woman.

145Don't you care?

146It doesn't matter, said Mary.

147Whether I care or not.

148You are right enough there, said Mrs.

149Medlock.

150It doesn't.

151What you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don't know, unless it's because it's the easiest way.

152He's not going to trouble himself about you, that's sure and certain.

153He never troubles himself about no one.

154She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time.

155He's got a crooked back, she said.

156That's at him wrong.

157He was a sour young man and he got no good of all his money and big plays till he was married.

158Mary's eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to care.

159She had never thought of the hunchbacks being married and she was a trifle surprised.

160Mrs.

161Medlock saw this and as she was a talkative woman she continued with more interest.

162This was one way of passing some of the time at any rate.

163She was a sweet pretty thing and he'd have walked the world over to get her a blade of grass she wanted.

164Nobody thought she'd marry him, but she did.

165And the people said she married him for his money, but she didn't.

166She didn't.

167Positively.

168When she died.

169Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

170Oh!

171Did she die?

172She exclaimed, quite without meaning to.

173She had just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called Riquet à la Hoop.

174It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr.

175Archibald Craven.

176Yes, she died.

177Mrs.

178Medlock answered.

179And it made him queerer than ever.

180He cares about nobody.

181He won't see people.

182Most 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.

183Pitcher's an old fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his ways.

184It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel cheerful.

185A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with their doors locked.

186A house on the edge of a moor, whatsoever a moor was, sounded dreary.

187A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also.

188She 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.

189When you're in the house don't go wandering and poking about.

190Mr.

191Craven won't have it.

192I shall not want to go poking about, said sour little Mary.

193And just as suddenly as she'd begun to be rather sorry for Mr.

194Archibald Craven, she began to cease to be sorry and to think he was unpleasant enough to deserve all that had happened to him.

195And 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.

196She watched it so long and steadily that the greyness grew heavier and heavier before her eyes and she fell asleep.

197End of chapter 2