Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  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 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 ske
letons. Not white clean skeletons, hung on wires, like the one yon see at the doctor’s, but skeletons with the flesh hardened on their bones, with their long dry hair hanging on each side of their brown faces, where the skin in drying had drawn itself back from their gleaming teeth and empty eye-sockets. Skeletons draped in mouldering shreds of shrouds and grave-clothes, their lean fingers still clothed with dry skin, seemed to reach out towards me. There they stood, men, women, and children, knee-deep in loose bones collected from the other vaults of the church, and heaped round them. On the wall near the door I saw the dried body of a little child hung up by its hair.

  I don’t think I screamed or cried, or even said a word. I think I was paralysed with horror, but I remember presently going back up those stairs, holding tightly to that kindly hand, and not daring to turn my head lest one of those charnel-house faces should peep out at me from some niche in the damp wall.

  It must have been late afternoon, and in the hurry of dressing for the table d’hote my stupor of fright must have passed unnoticed, for the next thing I remember is being alone in a large room, waiting as usual for my supper to be sent up. For my mother did not approve of late dinners for little people, and I was accustomed to have bread-and-milk alone while she and my sisters dined.

  It was a large room, and very imperfectly lighted by the two wax candles in silver candlesticks. There were two windows and a curtained alcove, where the beds were. Suddenly my blood ran cold. What was behind that curtain? Beds. “ Yes,” whispered something that was I, and yet not I; “but suppose there are no beds there now. Only mummies, mummies, mummies!”

  A sudden noise; I screamed with terror. It was only the door opening to let the waiter in. He was a young waiter. hardly more than a boy, and had always smiled kindly at me when we met, though hitherto our intercourse had not gone farther. Now I rushed to him and flung my arms round him, to his immense amazement and the near ruin of my bread and milk. He spoke no English and I no French, but somehow he managed to understand that I was afraid, and afraid of that curtained alcove.

  He set down the bread and milk, and be took me in his arms and together we fetched more candles, and then he drew back the awful curtain, and showed me the beds lying white and quiet. If 1 could have spoken French I should have said

  “Yes; but how do I know it was all like that just now, before you drew the curtain back?”

  As it was I said nothing, only clung to his neck.

  I hope he did not get into any trouble that night for neglected duties, for he did not attempt to leave me till my mother came bade. He sat down with me on his knee and petted me and sang to me under his breath, and fed me with the bread and milk, when by-and-by I grew calm enough to take it. All good things be with him wherever he is! I like best to think of him in a little hotel of his own, a quiet little country inn standing back from a straight road bordered with apple trees and poplars. There are wooden benches outside the door, and within a whitewashed kitchen, where a plump rosy-faced woman is busy with many cares — never busy enough, however, to pass the master of the house without a loving word or a loving look. I like to believe that now he has little children of his own, who hold out their arms when he opens the door, and who climb upon his knees clamouring for those same songs which be sang, out of the kindness of his boyish heart, to the little frightened English child, such a long, long time ago.

  The mummies of Bordeaux were the crowning horror of my childish life; it is to them, I think, more than to any other thing, that I owe nights and nights of anguish and horror, long years of bitterest fear and dread. All the other fears could have been effaced but the shock of that sight branded it on my brain, and I never forgot it. For many years I could not bring myself to go about any house in the dark, and long after I was a grown woman I was tortured, in the dark watches, by imagination and memory, who rose strong and united, overpowering my will and my reason as utterly as in my baby days.

  It was not till I had two little children of my own that I was able to conquer this mortal terror of darkness, and teach imagination her place, under the foot of reason and the will.

  My children, I resolved, should never know such fear. And to guard them from it I must banish it from my own soul. It was not easy, but it was done. It is banished now, and my babies, thank God, never have known it. It was a dark cloud that overshadowed my childhood, and I don’t believe my mother ever knew how dark it was, for I could not tell anyone the full horror of it while it was over me; and when it had passed I came from under it, as one who has lived long years in an enchanter’s castle, where the sun is darkened always, might come forth into the splendour of noontide. Such an one breathes God’s sweet air and beholds the free heavens with joyous leaps of heart; but he does not speak soon nor lightly of what befell in the dark, in the evil days, in the Castle of the Enchanter.

  PART VI.

  She was the most beautiful person in the world. She had brown eyes and pink cheeks, a blue silk dress and a white bonnet with orange-blossoms in it. She had two pairs of shoes and two pairs of stockings, and she had two wigs, a brown and a flaxen one. All her clothes took off and on, and there was a complete change of them.

  I saw her first at a bazaar and longed to possess her, but her price was two guineas, and no hope mingled with my longing.

  Here let me make a confession, I had never really loved a doll. My affections up to that time had been lavished on a black and white spotted penny rabbit, bought at a Kentish fair; but when I saw Rénee, it seemed to me that if I could love a doll, this would be the one.

  We were at Pau then in a “select boarding-house.” I was bored with travel, as I believe all children are — so large a part of a child’s life is made up of little familiar playthings and objects; it has little of that historic and artistic sense which lends colour and delight to travel. I was tired of wandering about, and glad to think we were to stay in Pau for the winter. The bazaar pleased me. It was got up by the English residents, and their fancy-work was the fancy-work of the church bazaars in England, and I felt at home among it, and when my eyes rested on Rénee I saw the most delightful object I had seen for many weeks. I looked and longed, and longed and looked, and then suddenly in a moment one of the great good fortunes of my life happened to me. The beautiful doll was put up to be raffled, and my sister won her. I trembled with joy as she and her wardrobe were put into my hands. I took her home. I dressed and undressed her twenty times a day. I made her play the part of heroine in all my favourite stories. I told her fairy-tales and took her to bed with me at night for company, but I never loved her. I have never been able to love a doll in my life.

  My mother came to me the next day as I was changing Rénee’s wig, and said, “Don’t you think it’s almost time that you began to have some lessons again; I don’t want my little girl to grow up quite ignorant, you wouldn’t like that yourself, would you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully, feeling that ignorance in a grown-up state was surely to be preferred to a return to Stamford and long division.

  “I am not going to send you to school,” my mother hastened to add, doubtless seeing the cloud that gathered in my face. “I know a French lady here who has a little girl about your age, and she says that you can go and live with her for a little while and learn French.”

  “Is she a nice little girl,” I asked. “What is she like?”

  “Well, she’s rather like your new doll,” my mother laughed, “when it has the flaxen wig on. Think how nice it will be to be able to write letters home in French.”

  I knew Miss —— could not write letters in French, and the prospect of crushing her with my new literary attainment filled my wicked little heart.

  “I should like to go and live with the little girl who is like my new dollie,” I said, “if you will come and see me every day.”

  So I went, my doll’s clothes packed in their little tin trunk. And I stood stealing shy side-glances at Marguerite, who was certainly very like my doll, while my mother and her m
other were exchanging last civilities. I was so pleased with the new surroundings, the very French interior, the excitement of being received as a member by a real French family, that I forgot to cry till the wheels of my mother’s carriage had rolled away from the door.

  Then I was left, a little English child without a word of French in the bosom of a French family, and as this came upon me I burst into a flood of tears.

  Madame Lourdes could speak no English but she knew the universal language, the language of love and kindness.

  She drew me to her ample lap, wiped my eyes, smiled at me and chattered volubly in her own tongue words whose sense was dead to me, but whose tone breathed of tenderness and sympathy. By the time Mdlle. Lourdes, the only English-speaking member of the family came home from her daily round of teaching, Marguerite and I were unpacking my doll’s clothes together and were laughing at our vain efforts to understand each other.

  I learned French in three mouths. All day I was with Madame Lourdes or Marguerite, neither of whom knew a word of English. It was French or silence, and any healthy child would have chosen French, as I did. They were three happy months. I adored Marguerite who was, I think, the typical good child of the French story-books. She wore her hair in a little yellow plait down her back.

  I do not think we ever got into wilful mischief. For instance, our starving the cat was quite unintentional. We were playing bandits in a sort of cellar that opened from the triangular courtyard in front of the house and it occurred to us that Mimi would make an excellent captive princess, so we caught her and put her in a hamper at the end of the cellar, and when my mother called to take us home to tea with her we rushed off and left the poor princess still a prisoner. If we hadn’t been out that evening we must have been reminded of her existence by the search for her, but Madame Lourdes, failing to find the cat, concluded that she must have run away or met with an accident, and did not mention the matter to us out of consideration for our feelings, so that it was not till two nights later that I started up in bed about midnight and pulled Marguerite’s yellow pigtail wildly.