“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 low-built 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 up-stairs 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.
MARTHA
When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because
a young housemaid had come into her room to light
the fire and was kneeling on the hearth-rug raking
out the cinders noisily. Mary lay and watched
her for a few moments and then began to look about
the room. She had never seen a room at all like
it and thought it curious and gloomy. The walls
were covered with tapestry with a forest scene embroidered
on it. There were fantastically dressed people
under the trees and in the distance there was a glimpse
of the turrets of a castle. There were hunters
and horses and dogs and ladies. Mary felt as
if she were in the forest with them. Out of a
deep window she could see a great climbing stretch
of land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to
look rather like an endless, dull, purplish sea.
