Фрэнсис Элиза Ходжсон Бёрнетт – The Secret Garden / Таинственный сад (страница 3)

“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 Mrs. Medlock collected her parcels. The station was a small one. A smart carriage stood on the road before the outside platform. A smart footman helped them in and they drove off. Mary sat and looked out of the window thinking about the queer place Mrs. Medlock had spoken of.

“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 [31] 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 [32] 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 the hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more trees. She could see nothing. A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound. It was just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.On and on they drove through the darkness. 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 moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was passing on a strip of dry land. At last the carriage passed through the park gates.

They drove out of the vault [33] into a clear space and stopped before an immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone court [34]. 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 [35] 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.

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.

Chapter IV

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 [36] ^[37] 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 [38] 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 [39] 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.

After that Mary began to talk with the housemaid about the moor. The housemaid told her about it with great interest.

Mary listened to her with a grave, puzzled expression. The native servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this. They were obsequious [40] and servile [41] ^[42] and did not presume to talk to their masters as if they were their equals. They made salaams'¹ and called them “protector of the poor” and names of that sort. They say “please” and “thank you” and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the face when she was angry. She wondered a little what this girl would do if one slapped her in the face. She was a round, rosy, good- natured-looking creature, but she had a sturdy way which made Mistress Mary wonder if she might not even slap back- if the person who slapped her was only a little girl.

“You are a strange servant,” she said from her pillows, rather haughtily.

Martha sat up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and laughed, without seeming the least out of temper.

“Eh! I know that,” she said. “If there was a grand Missus at Misselthwaite I should never have been even one of th' under house-maids. I might have been let to be scullery maid [43]but I'd never have been let upstairs. I'm too common an' I talk too much Yorkshire. But this is a funny house for all it's so grand. Seems like there's neither Master nor Mistress except Mr. Pitcher an' Mrs. Medlock. Mr. Craven, he won't be troubled about anythin' when he's here, an' he's nearly always away. Mrs. Medlock gave me th' place out o' kindness. She told me she could never have done it if Misselthwaite had been like other big houses.”

“Are you going to be my servant?” Mary asked, still in her imperious little Indian way.

Martha began to rub her grate again.

Martha did not expect to hear that. She was so amazed. She began to speak in broad Yorkshire but Mary did not understand her at all. At first Martha thought that Mary was a black. These words made Mary furious. She began to call Martha bad words. She did not even try to control her rage and humiliation. Somehow she suddenly felt so horribly lonely and she threw herself face downward on the pillows and burst into tears. She cried so loud that good-natured Martha was a little frightened and quite sorry for her. She bent over her and beg her pardon. There was something comforting and really friendly in her queer Yorkshire speech and Mary gradually stopped crying and became quiet. Martha looked relieved. When Mary at last decided to get up, the clothes Martha took from the wardrobe were not the ones she had worn when she arrived the night before with Mrs. Medlock. The dressing process was one which taught them both something. Martha had “buttoned up” her little sisters and brothers but she had never seen a child who stood still and waited for another person to do things for her as if she had neither hands nor feet of her own.

It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary should do anything but stand and allow herself to be dressed like a doll, but before she was ready for breakfast she began to suspect that her life at Misselthwaite Manor would end by teaching her a number of things quite new to her-things such as putting on her own shoes and stockings, and picking up things she let fall. If Martha had been a well-trained fine young lady's maid she would have been more subservient [44] ^[45] and respectful and would have known that it was her business to brush hair, and button boots, and pick things up and lay them away. She was, however, only an untrained Yorkshire rustic¹ who had been brought up in a moorland cottage with a swarm of little brothers and sisters who had never dreamed of doing anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger ones who were either babies in arms or just learning to totter about and tumble over [46] things.

At first Mary listened to Martha very coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner. But later she began to notice what she was saying. Martha told Mary about her family and especially about Dickon who liked animals and had his own pony.

Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own and had always thought she should like one. So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon, and as she had never before been interested in any one but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment [47] When she went into the room which had been made into a nursery for her, she found that it was rather like the one she had slept in. It was not a child's room, but a grown-up person's room, with gloomy old pictures on the walls and heavy old oak chairs. A table in the center was set with a good substantial breakfast. But she had always had a very small appetite, and she looked with something more than indifference at the first plate Martha set before her.

Martha made her eat porridge but she did not want. She said that she did not know what it was to be hungry. Martha looked indignant. She said if Dickon and Phil had been there they would have eaten the whole breakfast. She also added that when she had a day off she would go home to help her mother. Listening to her, Mary drank some tea and ate a little toast and some marmalade. After that Martha said to Mary to run out and play but she did not want to play alone. Martha convinced her to go by herself just to learn to play like other children did when they did not have sisters and brothers. Martha found her coat and hat for her and a pair of stout little boots and she showed her her way downstairs. She warned her that one of the gardens was locked up. No one had been in it for ten years. There was another locked door added to the hundred in the strange house. Mr. Craven had it shut when his wife died so sudden. He won't let no one go inside. It was her garden. He locked the door and dug a hole and buried the key.