When
Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody
said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too.
She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour
expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been
born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had
held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill
himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties
and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and
when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to
understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child
out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly
little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful,
toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She never remembered seeing
familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native
servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything,
because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the
time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as
ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read and write
disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other
governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than
the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know how to read
books she would never have learned her letters at all.
One
frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened
feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw that the servant
who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.
"Why
did you come?" she said to the strange woman. "I will not let you
stay. Send my Ayah to me."
The
woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could not come
and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked her, she looked
only more frightened and repeated that it was not possible for the Ayah to come
to Missie Sahib.
There
was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done in its
regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing, while those
whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared faces. But no one
would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come. She was actually left alone
as the morning went on, and at last she wandered out into the garden and began
to play by herself under a tree near the veranda. She pretended that she was
making a flower-bed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little
heaps of earth, all the time growing more and more angry and muttering to
herself the things she would say and the names she would call Saidie when she
returned.
"Pig!
Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call a native a pig is the
worst insult of all.
She
was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she heard her
mother come out on the veranda with some one. She was with a fair young man and
they stood talking together in low strange voices. Mary knew the fair young man
who looked like a boy. She had heard that he was a very young officer who had
just come from England. The child stared at him, but she stared most at her
mother. She always did this when she had a chance to see her, because the Mem
Sahib--Mary used to call her that oftener than anything else--was such a tall,
slim, pretty person and wore such lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly silk
and she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things, and
she had large laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and floating, and Mary
said they were "full of lace." They looked fuller of lace than ever
this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all. They were large and scared
and lifted imploringly to the fair boy officer's face.
"Is
it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her say.
"Awfully,"
the young man answered in a trembling voice. "Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You
ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago."
The
Mem Sahib wrung her hands.
"Oh,
I know I ought!" she cried. "I only stayed to go to that silly dinner
party. What a fool I was!"
At
that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the servants'
quarters that she clutched the young man's arm, and Mary stood shivering from
head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder. "What is it? What is
it?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.
"Some
one has died," answered the boy officer. "You did not say it had broken
out among your servants."
"I
did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with me! Come with
me!" and she turned and ran into the house.
After
that, appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the morning was
explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its most fatal form and people
were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill in the night, and it was
because she had just died that the servants had wailed in the huts. Before the
next day three other servants were dead and others had run away in terror.
There was panic on every side, and dying people in all the bungalows.
During
the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself in the
nursery and was forgotten by everyone. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted
her, and strange things happened of which she knew nothing. Mary alternately
cried and slept through the hours. She only knew that people were ill and that
she heard mysterious and tightening sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room
and found it empty, though a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs
and plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners rose
suddenly for some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being
thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and
she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely drowsy, and
she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by cries she
heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of feet. The wine made her so
sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes open and she lay down on her bed
and knew nothing more for a long time.
Many
things happened during the hours in which she slept so heavily, but she was not
disturbed by the wails and the sound of things being carried in and out of the
bungalow.
When
she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was perfectly still. She
had never known it to be so silent before. She heard neither voices nor
footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the cholera and all the
trouble was over. She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was
dead. There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories.
Mary had been rather tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse
had died. She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for any
one. The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened
her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was
alive. Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was
fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but
themselves. But if everyone had got well again, surely some one would remember
and come to look for her.
But
no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more and more
silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when she looked down
she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her with eyes like jewels.
She was not frightened, because he was a harmless little thing who would not
hurt her and he seemed in a hurry to get out of the room. He slipped under the
door as she watched him.
"How
queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if there were no one
in the bungalow but me and the snake."
Almost
the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on the veranda.
They were men's footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow and talked in low
voices. No one went to meet or speak to them and they seemed to open doors and
look into rooms. "What desolation!" she heard one voice say.
"That pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a
child, though no one ever saw her."
Mary
was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the door a few
minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and was frowning because
she was beginning to be hungry and feel disgracefully neglected. The first man
who came in was a large officer she had once seen talking to her father. He
looked tired and troubled, but when he saw her he was so startled that he
almost jumped back.
"Barney!"
he cried out. "There is a child here! A child alone! In a place like this!
Mercy on us, who is she!"
"I
am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly. She
thought the man was very rude to call her father's bungalow "A place like
this!" "I fell asleep when everyone had the cholera and I have only
just wakened up. Why does nobody come?"
"It
is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man, turning to his
companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"
"Why
was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. "Why does nobody
come?"
The
young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even thought she
saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.
"Poor
little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."
It
was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had neither
father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night,
and that the few native servants who had not died also had left the house as
quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even remembering that there
was a Missie Sahib. That was why the place was so quiet. It was true that there
was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling snake.