Chapter III. Across the Moor

The Secret Garden

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

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."

Mary stood up and tried to keep her eyes open while Mrs. Medlock
collected her parcels. The little girl did not offer to help her,
because in India native servants always picked up or carried things
and it seemed quite proper that other people should wait on one.

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 brougham 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 our 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, 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 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 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.