3
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.”
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 broughamg 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,h 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 lowbuilt 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.