My School-Days | Page 6

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 Angoul?��me--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 f?ate--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 the dews of agony and terror.
My nurse--ah, how good she was to me--never went downstairs to supper after she found out my terrors which she very quickly did. She used to sit in the day nursery with the door open "a tiny crack," and that light was company, because I knew I had only to call out, and someone who loved me would come and banish fear. But a light without human companionship was worse than darkness, especially a little light. Night-lights, deepening the shadows with their