The Secret Garden

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

Martha began to rub her grate again.

‘I’m Mrs Medlock’s servant,’ she said stoutly. ‘And she’s Mr Craven’s – but I’m to do the housemaid’s work up here an’ wait on you a bit. But you won’t need much waitin’ on.’

‘Who is going to dress me?’ demanded Mary.

Martha sat up on her heels again and stared. She spoke in broad Yorkshire in her amazement.

‘Canna’ tha’ dress thysen?’ she said.

‘What do you mean? I don’t understand your language,’ said Mary.

‘Eh! I forgot,’ Martha said. ‘Mrs Medlock told me I’d have to be careful or you wouldn’t know what I was sayin’. I mean can’t you put on your own clothes?’

‘No,’ answered Mary, quite indignantly. ‘I never did in my life. My Ayah dressed me, of course.’

‘Well,’ said Martha, evidently not in the least aware that she was impudent, ‘it’s time tha’ should learn. Tha’ cannot begin younger. It’ll do thee good to wait on thysen a bit. My mother always said she couldn’t see why grand people’s children didn’t turn out fair fools – what with nurses an’ bein’ washed an’ dressed an’ took out to walk as if they was puppies!’

‘It is different in India,’ said Mistress Mary disdainfully. She could scarcely stand this.

But Martha was not at all crushed.

‘Eh! I can see it’s different,’ she answered almost sympathetically. ‘I dare say it’s because there’s such a lot o’ blacks there instead o’ respectable white people. When I heard you was comin’ from India I thought you was a black too.’

Mary sat up in bed, furious.

‘What!’ she said. ‘What! You thought I was a native. You – you daughter of a pig!’

Martha stared and looked hot.

‘Who are you callin’ names?’ she said. ‘You needn’t be so vexed. That’s not th’ way for a young lady to talk. I’ve nothin’ against th’ blacks. When you read about ’em in tracts they’re always very religious. You always read as a black’s a man an’ a brother. I’ve never seen a black, an’ I was fair pleased to think I was goin’ to see one close. When I come in to light your fire this mornin’ I crep’ up to your bed an’ pulled th’ cover back careful to look at you. An’ there you was,’ disappointedly, ‘no more black than me – for all you’re so yeller.’

Mary did not even try to control her rage and humiliation.

‘You thought I was a native! You dared! You don’t know anything about natives! They are not people – they’re servants who must salaam to you. You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!’

She was in such a rage and felt so hopeless before the girl’s simple stare, and somehow she suddenly felt so horribly lonely and far away from everything she understood and which understood her, that she threw herself face downward on the pillows and burst into passionate sobbing. She sobbed so unrestrainedly that good-natured Yorkshire Martha was a little frightened and quite sorry for her. She went to the bed and bent over her.

‘Eh! you mustn’t cry like that there!’ she begged. ‘You mustn’t for sure. I didn’t know you’d be vexed. I don’t know anythin’ about anythin’ – just like you said. I beg your pardon, miss. Do stop cryin’.’

There was something comforting and really friendly in her queer Yorkshire speech and sturdy way which had a good effect on Mary. She gradually ceased crying and became quiet. Martha looked relieved.

‘It’s time for thee to get up now,’ she said. ‘Mrs Medlock said I was to carry tha’ breakfast an’ tea an’ dinner into th’ room next to this. It’s been made into a nursery for thee. I’ll help thee on with thy clothes if tha’ll get out of bed. If th’ buttons are at th’ back tha’ cannot button them up tha’self.’

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.

‘Those are not mine,’ she said. ‘Mine are black.’

She looked the thick white wool coat and dress over, and added with cool approval:

‘Those are nicer than mine.’

‘These are th’ ones tha’ must put on,’ Martha answered. ‘Mr Craven ordered Mrs Medlock to get ’em in London. He said, “I won’t have a child dressed in black wanderin’ about like a lost soul,” he said. “It’d make the place sadder than it is. Put colour on her.” Mother she said she knew what he meant. Mother always knows what a body means. She doesn’t hold with black hersel’.’

‘I hate black things,’ said Mary.

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.

‘Why doesn’t tha’ put on tha’ own shoes?’ she said when Mary quietly held out her foot.

‘My Ayah did it,’ answered Mary, staring. ‘It was the custom.’

She said that very often – ‘It was the custom.’ The native servants were always saying it. If one told them to do a thing their ancestors had not done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly and said, ‘It is not the custom’ and one knew that was the end of the matter.

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 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 rustic 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 things.

If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would perhaps have laughed at Martha’s readiness to talk, but Mary only listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner. At first she was not at all interested, but gradually, as the girl rattled on in her good-tempered, homely way, Mary began to notice what she was saying.

‘Eh! you should see ’em all,’ she said. ‘There’s twelve of us an’ my father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can tell you my mother’s put to it to get porridge for ’em all. They tumble about on th’ moor an’ play there all day, an’ mother says th’ air of th’ moor fattens ’em. She says she believes they eat th’ grass same as th’ wild ponies do. Our Dickon, he’s twelve years old and he’s got a young pony he calls his own.’

‘Where did he get it?’ asked Mary.

‘He found it on th’ moor with its mother when it was a little one, an’ he began to make friends with it an’ give it bits o’ bread an’ pluck young grass for it. And it got to like him so it follows him about an’ it lets him get on its back. Dickon’s a kind lad an’ animals like him.’

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 been interested in anyone but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment. 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 centre 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.

‘I don’t want it,’ she said.

‘Tha’ doesn’t want thy porridge!’ Martha exclaimed incredulously.

‘No.’

‘Tha’ doesn’t know how good it is. Put a bit o’ treacle on it or a bit o’ sugar.’

‘I don’t want it,’ repeated Mary.

‘Eh!’ said Martha. ‘I can’t abide to see good victuals go to waste. If our children was at this table they’d clean it bare in five minutes.’

‘Why?’ asked Mary coldly.

‘Why!’ echoed Martha. ‘Because they scarce ever had their stomachs full in their lives. They’re as hungry as young hawks an’ foxes.’

‘I don’t know what it is to be hungry,’ said Mary, with the indifference of ignorance.

Martha looked indignant.

‘Well, it would do thee good to try it. I can see that plain enough,’ she said outspokenly. ‘I’ve no patience with folks as sits an’ just stares at good bread an’ meat. My word! don’t I wish Dickon and Phil an’ Jane an’ th’ rest of ’em had what’s here under their pinafores.’