Chapter 3 Chapter Three Across the Wilderness

She slept a long time, and when she awoke Mrs. Medlock had bought lunch in a basket from a station.They ate some chicken, "cold beef" bread and butter, and some hot tea. The downpour seemed to be getting worse, and everyone at the station was wearing wet, shiny waterproof clothing.The security guard lit the lamps in the carriage, and Mrs. Medlock was in much better spirits after drinking tea and eating chicken and beef.Then fell asleep.Mary sat there, staring at her, watching her dainty hat slide aside, until she herself fell asleep again to the soothing sound of rain splashing on the window.When she woke up again, it was very dark outside.The train had stopped on a platform and Mrs. Medlock was shaking her.

"You've had enough sleep!" she said. "It's time to open your eyes! We've reached Sweet Station, and we still have a long way to go." Mary got up and tried to keep her eyes open while Mrs. Medlock packed her things.The little girl didn't offer to help her, because in India, it was always the native servants who carried things, and it was appropriate for others to serve her. The station was small, and no one got off except them.The station master spoke gruffly and good-naturedly to Mrs. Medlock, with a strange, flattened accent, which Mary later learned spoke the Yorkshire dialect.

"I'm happy to see Nat come back," he said, "and Nat to bring Dat back." "Oh, it's her," answered Mrs. Medlock, also with a Yorkshire accent, and tossed her head at Mary. "How's Mrs. Na?" "It's okay. The carriage is waiting for Namen outside." In front of the small platform outside, a four-wheeled carriage was parked.Mary saw that the carriage was stylish, and so was the driver who helped her into it.His long waterproof coat, the tarpaulin over his hat were dripping and glowing, as was everything, including the burly station master.

He closed the door, and he and the coachman stacked the trunks, and they drove off.The little girl found a bolster in the corner where she was sitting, but she wasn't going to sleep again.She looked out of the window, curious to see the road which was leading her to that strange place Mrs. Medlock had spoken of.She was by no means a timid child, not to say she was frightened, but she felt unpredictable, in a big house with nearly a hundred locked rooms—a house on the edge of a moor. "What's a moor?" she said abruptly to Mrs. Medlock. "Look out of the window for ten minutes and you'll see it," the woman replied. "We'd have to run five miles across Misser Field to get to the manor. You can't see much because it's dark tonight, but you can." to some."

Mary asked no more, but waited in the darkness in the corner, her eyes looking out of the window.The carriage lights cast beams of light ahead of them, and she caught glimpses of something passing.After leaving the station, they drove through a tiny village, and she saw white powder farmhouses with lights in them.Then they passed a church, and the parsonage, and little farmhouse windows that looked like shop windows, with toys and sweets and other odds and ends for sale.Then they got on the road and she saw hedgerows and trees.Nothing changed for a long time—or at least she thought it was a long time.

Finally the horse started to slow down and seemed to be going uphill and now there were no hedges and trees.She could see nothing but the thick blackness on either side.There was a big bump in the carriage, and she leaned forward, pressing her face against the glass window. "Well! we're sure we're off to the moor now," said Mrs. Medlock. A yellow light from the carriage lamps illuminated the rough pavement, and the road seemed to pass through shrubs and low plants, which ended in a vast darkness that spread around the plants, to the left and to the right.A gust of wind blows, the voice is monotonous, wild, deep, and hasty.

"That's—that's not the sea, is it?" said Mary, turning to look at her traveling companion. "No, no," answered Mrs. Medlock, "nor fields and mountains, but endless and boundless heaths, where nothing grows but heather and gorse and gorse, and nothing grows, Only wild ponies and sheep." "I think it might be the sea, if there's water in it," said Mary. "It sounded like the sea just now." "It's the wind blowing through the bushes," said Mrs. Medlock. "It's a wild and gloomy place to me, but many people like it—especially when the heather is in bloom."

They kept driving in the dark, even though the rain had stopped and the wind was rushing by, whistling and making strange noises.The road was sometimes high and sometimes low, and the carriage passed several small bridges. The water flow under the bridge was very fast and the noise was loud.It seemed to Mary that the journey would never end, that the wide, bleak moor was a vast ocean, and that she was crossing it dryly in a single line. "I don't like it here," she thought, "I don't like it here." Her lips tightened even more. As the horse was going uphill, Mary saw a light.Mrs. Medlock breathed a long sigh of relief.

"Oh, I'm glad to see that light flickering," she announced. "It's the porter's light. Wait a minute and we'll have a nice cup of tea anyway." "Wait," as she said, indeed, for after the carriage had entered the gates of the manor house it went two miles up the avenue, where the trees almost met overhead, as if through a dim vaulted arcade. From the arcade they drove into an open field and stopped in front of an unfathomably long but low-built house that seemed to surround a stone courtyard loosely.At first Mary thought there were no lights in those windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw a dim red light in a corner upstairs.

The huge entrance door was made of heavy oak panels with novel shapes, decorated with large iron nails and inlaid with large iron rods.It opened into a vast hall, dimly lit, and the faces and armored figures on the walls made Mary reluctant to take a second look.She stood on the stone floor, a small, strange black figure.Her appearance on the outside and the feeling in her heart are the same small, lost, and weird. A neat, thin old man stood beside the footman who opened the door for them. "You take her to her room," he said hoarsely. "He doesn't want to see her. He's going to London tomorrow morning."

"Very well, Mr. Pitcher," replied Mrs. Medlock, "just tell me what to do, and I will do it." "What you have to do, Mrs. Medlock," said Mr. Pitcher, "is to keep him from being disturbed, from seeing things he doesn't want to see." Then Mary Lennox was led to her room, up a wide flight of stairs, down a long corridor, up a short flight of steps, through one corridor and another, until a door swung open from the wall, and she Find yourself in a room with a fire and supper on the table. Mrs. Medlock said coldly: "Well, here you are! This room and the one next door are yours—you must live in these two only. Don't forget!" So Miss Mary came to Misselwest Manor, and I fear she never felt more out of sorts in all her life.