My School-Days | Page 8

big hand smoothed down
the feathers.
"Now, Daisy. You know you promised. Give me your hand."
I shut my eyes tight, and let him draw my hand down the dusty feathers.
Then I opened my eyes a little bit.
"Now you stroke it. Stroke the poor emu."
I did so.
"Are you afraid now?"
Curiously enough I wasn't. Poor Mr. Kearns paid dearly for his
kindness. For several weeks I gave him no peace, but insisted on being
taken, at all hours of the day and night to "stroke the poor emu." So
proud is one of a new courage.
After we left Kennington, I seem to have had a period of more ordinary
terrors-of dreams from which to awaken was mere relief; not a horror
scarcely less than that of the dream itself. I dreamed of cows and dogs,
of falling houses, and crumbling precipices. It was not till that night at
Rouen that the old horror of the dark came back, deepened by
superstitious dread.
But all this time I have not told you about the mummies at Bordeaux.
And now there is no room for them here. They must go into the next
chapter.

PART V.
THE MUMMIES AT BORDEAUX
IT was because I was tired of churches and picture-galleries, of fairs
and markets, of the strange babble of foreign tongues and the thin
English of the guide-book, that I begged so hard to be taken to see the
mummies. To me the name of a mummy was as a friend's name. As one
Englishman travelling across a desert seeks to find another of whom he
has heard in that far land, so I sought to meet these mummies who had
cousins at home, in the British Museum, in dear, dear England.
My fancy did not paint mummies for me apart from plate-glass cases,
camphor, boarded galleries, and kindly curators, and I longed to see
them as I longed to see home, and to hear my own tongue spoken about
me.
I was consumed by a fever of impatience for the three days which had
to go by before the coming of the day on which the treasures might be
visited. My sisters who were to lead me to these delights, believed too
that the mummies would be chiefly interesting on account of their
association with Bloomsbury.
Well, we went--I in my best blue silk frock, which I insisted on
wearing to honour the occasion, holding the hand of my sister and
positively skipping with delicious anticipation. There was some delay
about keys, during which my excitement was scarcely to be restrained.
Then we went through an arched doorway and along a flagged passage,
the old man who guided us explaining volubly in French as we went.
"What does he say?"
"He says they are natural mummies."
"What does that mean?"
"They are not embalmed by- man, like the Egyptian ones, but simply

by the peculiar earth of the churchyard where they were buried."
The words did not touch my conception of the glass cases and their
good-natured guardian.
The passage began to slope downward. A chill air breathed on our faces,
bringing with if a damp earthy smell. Then we came to some narrow
stone steps. Our guide spoke again.
"What does he say?"
"We are to be careful, the steps are slippery and mouldy."
I think even then my expectation still was of a long clean gallery, filled
with the white light of a London noon, shed through high skylights on
Egyptian treasures. But the stairs were dark, and I held my sister's hand
tightly. Down we went, down, down!
"What does he say?"
"We are under the church now; these are the vaults."
We went along another passage, the damp mouldy smell increasing,
and my clasp of my sister's hand grew closer and closer.
We stopped in front of a heavy door barred with iron, and our guide
turned a big reluctant key in a lock that grated.
"Les voila," he said, throwing open the door and drawing back
dramatically.
We were in the room before my sisters had time to see cause for
regretting that they had brought me.
The vision of dry boards and white light and glass cases vanished, and
in its stead I saw this:
A small vault, as my memory serves me, about fifteen feet square, with
an arched roof, from the centre of which hung a lamp that burned with

a faint blue light, and made the guide's candle look red and lurid. The
floor was flagged like the passages, and was as damp and chill. Round
three sides of the room ran a railing, and behind it--standing against the
wall, with a ghastly look of life in death--were about two hundred
skeletons. Not white clean skeletons, hung on wires, like