Bab Bab 2 · MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY

. 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

any one 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 any one'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 very 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 any one 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.