My School-Days | Page 6

and I, to my intense delight was measured for a small pair
of bright blue kid. I liked Poitiers--especially the old Byzantine church
now used as a stable. I picked up a bone there, and treasured it for
months. It was human, I was convinced, and I wove many romances
round the little brown relic-romances that considerably embittered the
reality when I came to know it.
"What's that?" Alfred asked picking the bone from its resting place in
cotton-wool in my corner drawer months afterwards.
"A human bone," I said gravely.
Alfred roared with aggravating laughter.
"It's only half a fowl's back--you little silly."
Ashamed and confused I flung the bone into the inmost recesses of the
drawer, and assured him that he was mistaken. But he wasn't.

We went from Poitiers to Angoulème--how often in school I have got
into trouble for tracing that route on the map of France when I should
have been tracing Cap Griz Nez, or the course of the Rhone! And so,
by easy, stages we reached Bordeaux.
Bordeaux was en fête--the great annual fair was in progress. The big
market-place was covered with booths filled with the most fascinating
objects.
I was very happy at Bordeaux until it occurred to some one to take me
to see the mummies. After that, "Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell
content." And here I cannot resist the temptation to put a long
parenthesis in my traveller's tale, and to write a little about what used to
frighten me when I was little. And then I shall tell you about my first
experience of learning French.

PART IV.
IN THE DARK
How can I write of it, sitting here in the shifting shade of the lime-trees,
with the sunny daisied grass stretching away to the border where the
hollyhocks and lilies and columbines are, my ears filled with the soft
swish-swish of the gardener's scythe at the other end of the lawn, and
the merry little voices of the children away in the meadow?
Only by shutting my eyes and ears to the sweet sounds and sights of
summer and the sun can I recall at all for you the dead silences, the
frozen terrors of the long, dark nights when I was little, and lonely, and
very very much afraid.
The first thing I remember that frightened me was running into my
father's dressing-room and finding him playing at wild beasts with my
brothers. He wore his great fur travelling coat inside out, and his roars
were completely convincing. I was borne away screaming, and
dreamed of wild beasts for many a long night afterwards.

Then came some nursery charades. I was the high-born orphan, whom
gipsies were to steal, and my part was to lie in a cradle, and, at the
proper moment to be carried away shrieking. I understood my part
perfectly--I was about three, I suppose--and had rehearsed it more than
once. Being carried off in the arms of the gipsy (my favourite sister)
was nothing to scream at, I thought, but she told me to scream, and I
did it. Unfortunately, however, there had been no dress rehearsals, and
when, on the night of the performance the high-born orphan found
itself close to a big black bonnet and a hideous mask, it did scream to
some purpose, and presently screaming itself into some sort of fit or
swoon, was put to bed, and stayed there for many days which passed
dreamlike. But that old woman haunted my dreams for years--haunts
them still indeed. I tell you I come across her in my dreams to this day.
She bends over me and puts her face close to mine, and I wake with a
spasm of agonised terror; only now it is not horrible to me to waken "in
the dark." I draw a few long breaths and as soon as my heart beats a
little less wildly I fall asleep again. But a child who wakes from an ugly
dream does not fall asleep so quickly. For to a child who is frightened,
the darkness and the silence of its lonely room are only a shade less
terrible than the wild horrors of dreamland. One used to lie awake in
the silence, listening, listening to the pad-pad of one's heart, straining
one's ears to make sure that it was not the pad-pad of something else,
something unspeakable creeping towards one out of the horrible dense
dark. One used to lie quite, quite still, I remember, listening, listening.
And when my nurse came to bed and tucked me up, she used to find
my pillow wet, and say to the under-nurse --
"Weakness, you know. The precious poppet doesn't seem to get any
stronger."
But my pillow was not wet with tears of weakness. These were