CHAPTER VI.

“THERE WAS SOMEONE CRYING—THERE WAS!”

The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when Mary

looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist and

cloud. There could be no going out today.

“What do you do in your cottage when it rains like this?” she asked

Martha.

“Try to keep from under each other’s feet mostly,” Martha answered.

“Eh! there does seem a lot of us then. Mother’s a good-tempered woman

but she gets fair moithered. The biggest ones goes out in th’ cow-shed

and plays there. Dickon he doesn’t mind th’ wet. He goes out just th’

same as if th’ sun was shinin’. He says he sees things on rainy days as

doesn’t show when it’s fair weather. He once found a little fox cub

half drowned in its hole and he brought it home in th’ bosom of his

shirt to keep it warm. Its mother had been killed nearby an’ th’ hole

was swum out an’ th’ rest o’ th’ litter was dead. He’s got it at home

now. He found a half-drowned young crow another time an’ he brought it

home, too, an’ tamed it. It’s named Soot because it’s so black, an’ it

hops an’ flies about with him everywhere.”

The time had come when Mary had forgotten to resent Martha’s familiar

talk. She had even begun to find it interesting and to be sorry when

she stopped or went away. The stories she had been told by her Ayah

when she lived in India had been quite unlike those Martha had to tell

about the moorland cottage which held fourteen people who lived in four

little rooms and never had quite enough to eat. The children seemed to

tumble about and amuse themselves like a litter of rough, good-natured

collie puppies. Mary was most attracted by the mother and Dickon. When

Martha told stories of what “mother” said or did they always sounded

comfortable.

“If I had a raven or a fox cub I could play with it,” said Mary. “But I

have nothing.”

Martha looked perplexed.

“Can tha’ knit?” she asked.

“No,” answered Mary.

“Can tha’ sew?”

“No.”

“Can tha’ read?”

“Yes.”

“Then why doesn’t tha read somethin’, or learn a bit o’ spellin’?

Tha’st old enough to be learnin’ thy book a good bit now.”

“I haven’t any books,” said Mary. “Those I had were left in India.”

“That’s a pity,” said Martha. “If Mrs. Medlock’d let thee go into th’

library, there’s thousands o’ books there.”

Mary did not ask where the library was, because she was suddenly

inspired by a new idea. She made up her mind to go and find it herself.

She was not troubled about Mrs. Medlock. Mrs. Medlock seemed always to

be in her comfortable housekeeper’s sitting-room downstairs. In this

queer place one scarcely ever saw anyone at all. In fact, there was no

one to see but the servants, and when their master was away they lived

a luxurious life below stairs, where there was a huge kitchen hung

about with shining brass and pewter, and a large servants’ hall where

there were four or five abundant meals eaten every day, and where a

great deal of lively romping went on when Mrs. Medlock was out of the

way.

Mary’s meals were served regularly, and Martha waited on her, but no

one troubled themselves about her in the least. Mrs. Medlock came and

looked at her every day or two, but no one inquired what she did or

told her what to do. She supposed that perhaps this was the English way

of treating children. In India she had always been attended by her

Ayah, who had followed her about and waited on her, hand and foot. She

had often been tired of her company. Now she was followed by nobody and

was learning to dress herself because Martha looked as though she

thought she was silly and stupid when she wanted to have things handed

to her and put on.

“Hasn’t tha’ got good sense?” she said once, when Mary had stood

waiting for her to put on her gloves for her. “Our Susan Ann is twice

as sharp as thee an’ she’s only four year’ old. Sometimes tha’ looks

fair soft in th’ head.”

Mary had worn her contrary scowl for an hour after that, but it made

her think several entirely new things.

She stood at the window for about ten minutes this morning after Martha

had swept up the hearth for the last time and gone downstairs. She was

thinking over the new idea which had come to her when she heard of the

library. She did not care very much about the library itself, because

she had read very few books; but to hear of it brought back to her mind

the hundred rooms with closed doors. She wondered if they were all

really locked and what she would find if she could get into any of

them. Were there a hundred really? Why shouldn’t she go and see how

many doors she could count? It would be something to do on this morning

when she could not go out. She had never been taught to ask permission

to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would

not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk

about the house, even if she had seen her.

She opened the door of the room and went into the corridor, and then

she began her wanderings. It was a long corridor and it branched into

other corridors and it led her up short flights of steps which mounted

to others again. There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on

the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes,

but oftenest they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand

costumes made of satin and velvet. She found herself in one long

gallery whose walls were covered with these portraits. She had never

thought there could be so many in any house. She walked slowly down

this place and stared at the faces which also seemed to stare at her.

She felt as if they were wondering what a little girl from India was

doing in their house. Some were pictures of children—little girls in

thick satin frocks which reached to their feet and stood out about

them, and boys with puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or

with big ruffs around their necks. She always stopped to look at the

children, and wonder what their names were, and where they had gone,

and why they wore such odd clothes. There was a stiff, plain little

girl rather like herself. She wore a green brocade dress and held a

green parrot on her finger. Her eyes had a sharp, curious look.

“Where do you live now?” said Mary aloud to her. “I wish you were

here.”

Surely no other little girl ever spent such a queer morning. It seemed

as if there was no one in all the huge rambling house but her own small

self, wandering about upstairs and down, through narrow passages and

wide ones, where it seemed to her that no one but herself had ever

walked. Since so many rooms had been built, people must have lived in

them, but it all seemed so empty that she could not quite believe it

true.

It was not until she climbed to the second floor that she thought of

turning the handle of a door. All the doors were shut, as Mrs. Medlock

had said they were, but at last she put her hand on the handle of one

of them and turned it. She was almost frightened for a moment when she

felt that it turned without difficulty and that when she pushed upon

the door itself it slowly and heavily opened. It was a massive door and

opened into a big bedroom. There were embroidered hangings on the wall,

and inlaid furniture such as she had seen in India stood about the

room. A broad window with leaded panes looked out upon the moor; and

over the mantel was another portrait of the stiff, plain little girl

who seemed to stare at her more curiously than ever.

“Perhaps she slept here once,” said Mary. “She stares at me so that she

makes me feel queer.”

After that she opened more doors and more. She saw so many rooms that

she became quite tired and began to think that there must be a hundred,

though she had not counted them. In all of them there were old pictures

or old tapestries with strange scenes worked on them. There were

curious pieces of furniture and curious ornaments in nearly all of

them.

In one room, which looked like a lady’s sitting-room, the hangings were

all embroidered velvet, and in a cabinet were about a hundred little

elephants made of ivory. They were of different sizes, and some had

their mahouts or palanquins on their backs. Some were much bigger than

the others and some were so tiny that they seemed only babies. Mary had

seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about elephants. She opened

the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these

for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants in

order and shut the door of the cabinet.

In all her wanderings through the long corridors and the empty rooms,

she had seen nothing alive; but in this room she saw something. Just

after she had closed the cabinet door she heard a tiny rustling sound.

It made her jump and look around at the sofa by the fireplace, from

which it seemed to come. In the corner of the sofa there was a cushion,

and in the velvet which covered it there was a hole, and out of the

hole peeped a tiny head with a pair of frightened eyes in it.

Mary crept softly across the room to look. The bright eyes belonged to

a little gray mouse, and the mouse had eaten a hole into the cushion

and made a comfortable nest there. Six baby mice were cuddled up asleep

near her. If there was no one else alive in the hundred rooms there

were seven mice who did not look lonely at all.

“If they wouldn’t be so frightened I would take them back with me,”

said Mary.

She had wandered about long enough to feel too tired to wander any

farther, and she turned back. Two or three times she lost her way by

turning down the wrong corridor and was obliged to ramble up and down

until she found the right one; but at last she reached her own floor

again, though she was some distance from her own room and did not know

exactly where she was.

“I believe I have taken a wrong turning again,” she said, standing

still at what seemed the end of a short passage with tapestry on the

wall. “I don’t know which way to go. How still everything is!”

It was while she was standing here and just after she had said this

that the stillness was broken by a sound. It was another cry, but not

quite like the one she had heard last night; it was only a short one, a

fretful childish whine muffled by passing through walls.

“It’s nearer than it was,” said Mary, her heart beating rather faster.

“And it _is_ crying.”

She put her hand accidentally upon the tapestry near her, and then

sprang back, feeling quite startled. The tapestry was the covering of a

door which fell open and showed her that there was another part of the

corridor behind it, and Mrs. Medlock was coming up it with her bunch of

keys in her hand and a very cross look on her face.

“What are you doing here?” she said, and she took Mary by the arm and

pulled her away. “What did I tell you?”

“I turned round the wrong corner,” explained Mary. “I didn’t know which

way to go and I heard someone crying.” She quite hated Mrs. Medlock at

the moment, but she hated her more the next.

“You didn’t hear anything of the sort,” said the housekeeper. “You come

along back to your own nursery or I’ll box your ears.”

And she took her by the arm and half pushed, half pulled her up one

passage and down another until she pushed her in at the door of her own

room.

“Now,” she said, “you stay where you’re told to stay or you’ll find

yourself locked up. The master had better get you a governess, same as

he said he would. You’re one that needs someone to look sharp after

you. I’ve got enough to do.”

She went out of the room and slammed the door after her, and Mary went

and sat on the hearth-rug, pale with rage. She did not cry, but ground

her teeth.

“There _was_ someone crying—there _was_—there _was!_” she said to

herself.

She had heard it twice now, and sometime she would find out. She had

found out a great deal this morning. She felt as if she had been on a

long journey, and at any rate she had had something to amuse her all

the time, and she had played with the ivory elephants and had seen the

gray mouse and its babies in their nest in the velvet cushion.