Chapter II
    MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY
   

4.    Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance
5.    and she had thought her very pretty, but as she knew
6.    very little of her she could scarcely have been expected
7.    to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone.
8.    She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a
9.    self-absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself,
10.    as she had always done. If she had been older she would
11.    no doubt have been very anxious at being left alone in
12.    the world, but she was very young, and as she had always
13.    been taken care of, she supposed she always would be.
14.    What she thought was that she would like to know if she was
15.    going to nice people, who would be polite to her and give
16.    her her own way as her Ayah and the other native servants
17.    had done.
18.    She knew that she was not going to stay at the English
19.    clergyman's house where she was taken at first. She did
20.    not want to stay. The English clergyman was poor and he
21.    had five children nearly all the same age and they wore
22.    shabby clothes and were always quarreling and snatching
23.    toys from each other. Mary hated their untidy bungalow
24.    and was so disagreeable to them that after the first day
25.    or two nobody would play with her. By the second day
26.    they had given her a nickname which made her furious.
27.    It was Basil who thought of it first. Basil was a little
28.    boy with impudent blue eyes and a turned-up nose, and Mary
29.    hated him. She was playing by herself under a tree,
30.    just as she had been playing the day the cholera broke out.
31.    She was making heaps of earth and paths for a garden
32.    and Basil came and stood near to watch her. Presently he
33.    got rather interested and suddenly made a suggestion.
34.    "Why don't you put a heap of stones there and pretend
35.    it is a rockery?" he said. "There in the middle,"
36.    and he leaned over her to point.
37.    "Go away!" cried Mary. "I don't want boys. Go away!"
38.    For a moment Basil looked angry, and then he began to tease.
39.    He was always teasing his sisters. He danced round
40.    and round her and made faces and sang and laughed.
41.    "Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
42.    How does your garden grow?
43.    With silver bells, and cockle shells,
44.    And marigolds all in a row."
45.    He sang it until the other children heard and laughed, too;
46.    and the crosser Mary got, the more they sang "Mistress Mary,
47.    quite contrary"; and after that as long as she stayed
48.    with them they called her "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary"
49.    when they spoke of her to each other, and often when they
50.    spoke to her.
51.    "You are going to be sent home," Basil said to her,
52.    "at the end of the week. And we're glad of it."
53.    "I am glad of it, too," answered Mary. "Where is home?"
54.    "She doesn't know where home is!" said Basil,
55.    with seven-year-old scorn. "It's England, of course.
56.    Our grandmama lives there and our sister Mabel was sent
57.    to her last year. You are not going to your grandmama.
58.    You have none. You are going to your uncle. His name is
59.    Mr. Archibald Craven."
60.    "I don't know anything about him," snapped Mary.
61.    "I know you don't," Basil answered. "You don't know anything.
62.    Girls never do. I heard father and mother talking about him.
63.    He lives in a great, big, desolate old house in the
64.    country and no one goes near him. He's so cross he won't
65.    let them, and they wouldn't come if he would let them.
66.    He's a hunchback, and he's horrid." "I don't believe you,"
67.    said Mary; and she turned her back and stuck her fingers
68.    in her ears, because she would not listen any more.
69.    But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when
70.    Mrs. Crawford told her that night that she was going
71.    to sail away to England in a few days and go to her uncle,
72.    Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived at Misselthwaite Manor,
73.    she looked so stony and stubbornly uninterested that
74.    they did not know what to think about her. They tried
75.    to be kind to her, but she only turned her face away
76.    when Mrs. Crawford attempted to kiss her, and held
77.    herself stiffly when Mr. Crawford patted her shoulder.
78.    "She is such a plain child," Mrs. Crawford said pityingly,
79.    afterward. "And her mother was such a pretty creature.
80.    She had a very pretty manner, too, and Mary has the most
81.    unattractive ways I ever saw in a child. The children
82.    call her `Mistress Mary Quite Contrary,' and though
83.    it's naughty of them, one can't help understanding it."
84.    "Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face
85.    and her pretty manners oftener into the nursery Mary
86.    might have learned some pretty ways too. It is very sad,
87.    now the poor beautiful thing is gone, to remember that
88.    many people never even knew that she had a child at all."
89.    "I believe she scarcely ever looked at her,"
90.    sighed Mrs. Crawford. "When her Ayah was dead there
91.    was no one to give a thought to the little thing.
92.    Think of the servants running away and leaving her all
93.    alone in that deserted bungalow. Colonel McGrew said he
94.    nearly jumped out of his skin when he opened the door
95.    and found her standing by herself in the middle of the room."
96.    Mary made the long voyage to England under the care of
97.    an officer's wife, who was taking her children to leave
98.    them in a boarding-school. She was very much absorbed
99.    in her own little boy and girl, and was rather glad to hand
100.    the child over to the woman Mr. Archibald Craven sent
101.    to meet her, in London. The woman was his housekeeper
102.    at Misselthwaite Manor, and her name was Mrs. Medlock.
103.    She was a stout woman, with very red cheeks and sharp
104.    black eyes. She wore a very purple dress, a black
105.    silk mantle with jet fringe on it and a black bonnet
106.    with purple velvet flowers which stuck up and trembled
107.    when she moved her head. Mary did not like her at all,
108.    but as she very seldom liked people there was nothing
109.    remarkable in that; besides which it was very evident
110.    Mrs. Medlock did not think much of her.
111.    "My word! she's a plain little piece of goods!" she said.
112.    "And we'd heard that her mother was a beauty. She hasn't
113.    handed much of it down, has she, ma'am?" "Perhaps she
114.    will improve as she grows older," the officer's wife
115.    said good-naturedly. "If she were not so sallow and had
116.    a nicer expression, her features are rather good.
117.    Children alter so much."
118.    "She'll have to alter a good deal," answered Mrs. Medlock.
119.    "And, there's nothing likely to improve children at
120.    Misselthwaite--if you ask me!" They thought Mary was not
121.    listening because she was standing a little apart from them
122.    at the window of the private hotel they had gone to.
123.    She was watching the passing buses and cabs and people,
124.    but she heard quite well and was made very curious about
125.    her uncle and the place he lived in. What sort of a place
126.    was it, and what would he be like? What was a hunchback?
127.    She had never seen one. Perhaps there were none in India.
128.    Since she had been living in other people's houses
129.    and had had no Ayah, she had begun to feel lonely
130.    and to think queer thoughts which were new to her.
131.    She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong
132.    to anyone even when her father and mother had been alive.
133.    Other children seemed to belong to their fathers and mothers,
134.    but she had never seemed to really be anyone's little girl.
135.    She had had servants, and food and clothes, but no one
136.    had taken any notice of her. She did not know that this
137.    was because she was a disagreeable child; but then,
138.    of course, she did not know she was disagreeable.
139.    She often thought that other people were, but she did not
140.    know that she was so herself.
141.    She thought Mrs. Medlock the most disagreeable person
142.    she had ever seen, with her common, highly colored face
143.    and her common fine bonnet. When the next day they set
144.    out on their journey to Yorkshire, she walked through
145.    the station to the railway carriage with her head up
146.    and trying to keep as far away from her as she could,
147.    because she did not want to seem to belong to her.
148.    It would have made her angry to think people imagined she
149.    was her little girl.
150.    But Mrs. Medlock was not in the least disturbed by her
151.    and her thoughts. She was the kind of woman who would
152.    "stand no nonsense from young ones." At least, that is
153.    what she would have said if she had been asked. She had
154.    not wanted to go to London just when her sister Maria's
155.    daughter was going to be married, but she had a comfortable,
156.    well paid place as housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor
157.    and the only way in which she could keep it was to do
158.    at once what Mr. Archibald Craven told her to do.
159.    She never dared even to ask a question.
160.    "Captain Lennox and his wife died of the cholera,"
161.    Mr. Craven had said in his short, cold way. "Captain Lennox
162.    was my wife's brother and I am their daughter's guardian.
163.    The child is to be brought here. You must go to London
164.    and bring her yourself."
165.    So she packed her small trunk and made the journey.
166.    Mary sat in her corner of the railway carriage and looked
167.    plain and fretful. She had nothing to read or to look at,
168.    and she had folded her thin little black-gloved hands in
169.    her lap. Her black dress made her look yellower than ever,
170.    and her limp light hair straggled from under her black
171.    crepe hat.
172.    "A more marred-looking young one I never saw in my life,"
173.    Mrs. Medlock thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and
174.    means spoiled and pettish.) She had never seen a child
175.    who sat so still without doing anything; and at last she
176.    got tired of watching her and began to talk in a brisk,
177.    hard voice.
178.    "I suppose I may as well tell you something about where
179.    you are going to," she said. "Do you know anything
180.    about your uncle?"
181.    "No," said Mary.
182.    "Never heard your father and mother talk about him?"
183.    "No," said Mary frowning. She frowned because she
184.    remembered that her father and mother had never talked
185.    to her about anything in particular. Certainly they
186.    had never told her things.
187.    "Humph," muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at her queer,
188.    unresponsive little face. She did not say any more for
189.    a few moments and then she began again.
190.    "I suppose you might as well be told something--to
191.    prepare you. You are going to a queer place."
192.    Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather
193.    discomfited by her apparent indifference, but, after taking
194.    a breath, she went on.
195.    "Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way,
196.    and Mr. Craven's proud of it in his way--and that's
197.    gloomy enough, too. The house is six hundred years old
198.    and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's near a hundred
199.    rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked.
200.    And there's pictures and fine old furniture and things
201.    that's been there for ages, and there's a big park round
202.    it and gardens and trees with branches trailing to the
203.    ground--some of them." She paused and took another breath.
204.    "But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly.
205.    Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded
206.    so unlike India, and anything new rather attracted her.
207.    But she did not intend to look as if she were interested.
208.    That was one of her unhappy, disagreeable ways. So she
209.    sat still.
210.    "Well," said Mrs. Medlock. "What do you think of it?"
211.    "Nothing," she answered. "I know nothing about such places."
212.    That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh.
213.    "Eh!" she said, "but you are like an old woman.
214.    Don't you care?"
215.    "It doesn't matter" said Mary, "whether I care or not."
216.    "You are right enough there," said Mrs. Medlock.
217.    "It doesn't. What you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor
218.    for I don't know, unless because it's the easiest way.
219.    He's not going to trouble himself about you, that's sure
220.    and certain. He never troubles himself about no one."
221.    She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something
222.    in time.
223.    "He's got a crooked back," she said. "That set him wrong.
224.    He was a sour young man and got no good of all his money
225.    and big place till he was married."
226.    Mary's eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention
227.    not to seem to care. She had never thought of the
228.    hunchback's being married and she was a trifle surprised.
229.    Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative woman
230.    she continued with more interest. This was one way
231.    of passing some of the time, at any rate.
232.    "She was a sweet, pretty thing and he'd have walked
233.    the world over to get her a blade o' grass she wanted.
234.    Nobody thought she'd marry him, but she did,
235.    and people said she married him for his money.
236.    But she didn't--she didn't," positively. "When she died--"
237.    Mary gave a little involuntary jump.
238.    "Oh! did she die!" she exclaimed, quite without meaning to.
239.    She had just remembered a French fairy story she had once
240.    read called "Riquet a la Houppe." It had been about a poor
241.    hunchback and a beautiful princess and it had made her
242.    suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.
243.    "Yes, she died," Mrs. Medlock answered. "And it
244.    made him queerer than ever. He cares about nobody.
245.    He won't see people. Most of the time he goes away,
246.    and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in
247.    the West Wing and won't let any one but Pitcher see him.
248.    Pitcher's an old fellow, but he took care of him when he
249.    was a child and he knows his ways."
250.    It sounded like something in a book and it did not make
251.    Mary feel cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms,
252.    nearly all shut up and with their doors locked--a house on
253.    the edge of a moor--whatsoever a moor was--sounded dreary.
254.    A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also! She
255.    stared out of the window with her lips pinched together,
256.    and it seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun
257.    to pour down in gray slanting lines and splash and stream
258.    down the window-panes. If the pretty wife had been alive
259.    she might have made things cheerful by being something
260.    like her own mother and by running in and out and going
261.    to parties as she had done in frocks "full of lace."
262.    But she was not there any more.
263.    "You needn't expect to see him, because ten to one you won't,"
264.    said Mrs. Medlock. "And you mustn't expect that there
265.    will be people to talk to you. You'll have to play
266.    about and look after yourself. You'll be told what rooms
267.    you can go into and what rooms you're to keep out of.
268.    There's gardens enough. But when you're in the house
269.    don't go wandering and poking about. Mr. Craven won't
270.    have it."
271.    "I shall not want to go poking about," said sour little
272.    Mary and just as suddenly as she had begun to be rather
273.    sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven she began to cease to be
274.    sorry and to think he was unpleasant enough to deserve
275.    all that had happened to him.
276.    And she turned her face toward the streaming panes of the
277.    window of the railway carriage and gazed out at the gray
278.    rain-storm which looked as if it would go on forever and ever.
279.    She watched it so long and steadily that the grayness
grew heavier and heavier before her eyes and she fell asleep.

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