My School-Days | Page 7

horrid possibilities are a mere refinement of cruelty, and some friends who thought to do me a kindness by leaving the gas burning low gave me one of the most awful nights I ever had.
It was a strange house in Sutherland Gardens--a house with large rooms and heavy hangings--with massive wardrobes and deep ottoman boxes. The immense four-post beds stood out about a yard from the wall, for some "convenience of sweeping" reason, I believe. Consider the horror of having behind you, as you lay trembling in the chill linen of a strange bed, a dark space, no comforting solid wall that you could put your hand up to and touch, but a dark space, from which, even now, in the black silence something might be stealthily creeping--something which would presently lean over you, in the dark-whose touch you would feel, not knowing whether it were the old woman in the mask or some new terror.
That was the torture of the first night. The next I begged that the gas might be left "full on." It was, and I fell asleep in comparative security. But while I slept, came some thrifty soul, and finding the gas "burning to waste" turned it down. Not out--down.
I awoke in a faint light, and presently sat up in bed to see where it came from, and this is what I saw. A corpse laid out under white draperies, and at its foot a skeleton with luminous skull and outstretched bony arm.
I knew, somewhere far away and deep down, my reason knew that the dead body was a white dress laid on a long ottoman, that the skull was the opal globe of the gas and the arm the pipe of the gas-bracket, but that was not reason's hour. Imagination held sway, and her poor little victim, who was ten years old then, and ought to have renown better, sat up in bed, hour after hour, with the shadowy void behind lien The dark curtains on each side, and in front that horror.
Next day I went home, which was perhaps a good thing for my brain.
When my father was alive we lived in a big house in Kennington Lane, where he taught young men agriculture and chemistry. My father had a big meadow and garden, and had a sort of small farm there. Fancy a farm in Kennington!
Among the increase that blessed his shed was a two-headed calf. The head and shoulders of this were stuffed, and inspired me with a terror which my brothers increased by pursuing me with the terrible object. But one of my father's pupils to whom I owe that and many other kindnesses, one day seized me under one arm and the two-headed horror under the other, and thus equipped we pursued my brothers. They fled shrieking, and I never feared it again.
In a dank stone-flagged room where the boots were blacked, and the more unwieldy chemicals housed, there was nailed on the wall the black skin of an emu. That skin, with its wiry black feathers that fluttered dismally in the draught, was no mere bird's skin to me. It hated me, it wished me ill. It was always lurking for me in the dark, ready to rush out at me. It was waiting for me at the top of the flight, while the old woman with the mask stretched skinny hands out to grasp my little legs as I went up the nursery stairs. I never passed the skin without covering my eyes with my hands. From this terror that walked by night I was delivered by Mr. Kearns, now public analyst for Sheffield. He took me on his shoulder, where I felt quite safe, reluctant but not resisting, to within a couple of yards of the emu.
"Now," he said, "will you do what I tell you?"
"Not any nearer," I said evasively.
"Now you know I won't let it hurt you."
"Yes."
"Then will you stroke it, if I do first?"
I didn't want to.
"To please me."
That argument was conclusive, for I loved him.
Then we approached the black feathers, I clinging desperately to his neck, and sobbing convulsively.
"No-no-no-not any nearer!"
But he was kind and wise, and insisted. His 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