08 - My School Days by E. Nesbit

In this enchanting memoir, the author takes us on a nostalgic journey through her school days, originally serialized in The Girls Own Paper from October 1896 to September 1897. Filled with heartfelt stories about beloved teachers, cherished friends, and the childhood fears that lingered into adulthood, this account also offers a vibrant depiction of the most memorable summer of her youth. Summary by Cori Samuel.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part eight of My School Days by een Esbitt. The
slippervox recording is in the public domain. Part eight. In Auverne,
we were to leave Bannuat. Imagine my delight when I
found we were to travel not by train but in
an open carriage. In this we were to drive through

(00:24):
the mountains, the mysterious snow clad mountains into Spain, where
the Alhambro was, and oranges and Spanish nuts, and all
sorts of delightful things. But alas for my hopes, my
brother at home in England chose to have hooping cough,
and so our horses heads were turned north and farewell

(00:45):
for ever to my visions of Spain. We drove through
lovely country to the other Bannert, bannuet de Luchamp. On
the way we passed a large yellowstone castle on a hill.
Most of the castle was in ruins, but a great
square tower without door or window, still stood as strong

(01:05):
and firm as on the day when the last stone
was patted into place with the trowel. We wandered round
this tower in vain, trying to find a door. But
it is that there is no door, said our driver.
At last, within that tower is buried a treasure. Some
day a great wind will blow, and then that tower

(01:25):
will fall to the ground, and then the folks of
the village will divide the treasure and become kings of France.
It is an old prophecy, but suggested my mother, has
no one tried to get in and see if there
really is a treasure. The driver crossed himself. The saints forbid,

(01:46):
he said, who are we that we should interfere with
the holy prophecy. Besides, the tower is haunted. We could
not help wondering how far the ghost and prophecy would
have protected that tower from English villas. We drove on presently.
We stopped at a little wayside shrine with a painted

(02:07):
image of Saint John in it and a little shell
of holy water. At the side of that shrine was
a stone with an iron ring in it. Nothing more
was needed to convince me that this was the entrance
to a subterranean passage leading to the tower where the
treasure was. Imagine the dreams that occupied me for the

(02:27):
rest of the drive. If I could creep back at
the dead of night to the shrine, a thing which,
as a matter of fact, I would much rather have
died than attempted. If I should pull up that heavy
stone and go down the damp subterranean passage and find
the treasure in iron boxes, rubies and diamonds and emeralds

(02:47):
and beautiful gold and silver dishes, then we should all
be very rich for the rest of our lives. And
I could send Marguerite a talking doll that opened and
shut its eyes, and a pony carriage. And each of
the boys should have a new paint box with real
moist colors, and as many sable brushes as they liked,
twenty each if they wanted them. And I should have

(03:10):
a chariot drawn by four tame zebras in red and
silver harness. And my mother should have a gold crown
with diamonds for Sundays, and a silver one with rubies
and emeralds for every day. And I imagine I fell
asleep at this point and awoke to find myself lifted
out of the carriage at Bagnuet de Luchemp. I didn't

(03:33):
go back and lift up the stone with the iron ring.
But the dream was a serviceable one, and did duty
nobly in idle hours for many a long year. In fact,
I come across it unexpectedly sometimes even now. We spent
a day or two at Bagnuet de Luchemp, and I
believe it rained all the time. We drove in a

(03:54):
drizzling rain across a rather gloomy country to see the
Cascade d'anfeur. As my memory serves me, we crossed a
dreary plain and entered a sort of theater or semicircle
of high black rocks. In the center of the horseshoe.
Down the face of the rock ran a thin silver line.

(04:15):
This was the Cascade d'anfeur, eminently unimpressive on first view.
But when we got out of our carriage and walked
across the rough ground and stood under the heavy shadow
of the black cliffs, the thin white line had changed
and grown to a dense body of smoothly falling water
that fell over the cliff's sheer edge and disappeared like

(04:37):
a column of green glass, into a circular hole at
the foot of the cliff. That hole goes down down,
said our guide, No one knows how far, except the
good God who made it. The water did not fill
up the hole. An empty black space some yards wide

(04:57):
was between us and the falling water. Our guide heaved
a lump of rock over the edge. You not hear
it strike water, he said, And though we listened for
some time, we did not hear it strike anything. That
was the horror of it. We drove on the next

(05:17):
day to Saint Bertrand to Coming, a little town on
a hill with many steeples, whose bells answered each other
with sweet, jangling voices as we reached its gates in
the peace of the evening. Most of this driving tour
has faded from my mind, but I shall never forget
the drive from Orelac to Murat. We started late in

(05:39):
the afternoon because my sisters wished to see the Auverne
mountains by moonlight. We had a large open carriage with
a sort of rumble behind and a wide box seat
in front. The driver, a blue bloused Ruffian of plausible manners,
agreed to take us and our luggage to Murat for
a certain price, which I have forgot. All our luggage

(06:02):
was packed upon his carriage. We too were packed in it,
and we started. About five miles from the town. The
driver halted and came to the door of the carriage.
Miss Darme, he said, a young relative of mine will
join us here. He will sit on the box with me.
My mother objected that, as we were paying for the carriage,

(06:24):
we had a right to refuse to allow his friend
to enter it as you will, madame. He said calmly,
but if you refuse to accommodate my step son, a
young man of the most high distinction, I shall place
you and your boxes in the middle of the road
and leave you planted there. Three English ladies and a
little girl alone in a strange country, five miles from

(06:47):
any town. What could we do? My mother consented. A
mile or two further on, two blue bloused figures got
up suddenly from their seat by the roadside. My father
and brother in law, said our driver. My mother saw
that protest was vain, so these two were stowed in
a rumble, and the carriage jolted on more heavily. We

(07:11):
now began to be seriously frightened. I know I endured
agonies of torture, no doubt. These were highwaymen, and at
the nearest convenient spot they would stop the carriage and
murder us all. In the next few miles, two more
passengers were added to our number, a cousin and an
uncle all wore blue blouses and had villainous looking faces.

(07:35):
The uncle, who looked like a paupoise and smelt horribly
of brandy, was put inside the carriage with us because
there was now no room left in any other part
of the conveyance. The family party laughed and jolted in
a patois wholly unintelligible to us. I was convinced that
they were arranging for the disposal of our property and

(07:56):
our bodies. After the murder, my mother and sisters were
talking in low voices in English. If we only get
to the half way house safe, she said, we can
appeal to the landlord for protection. And after a seemingly
interminable drive, we got to the half way house. It

(08:19):
was a low, roughly built, dirty or berge with an
uneven earthen floor, the ceilings, benches, and tables black with age,
just the place where travelers are always murdered in Christmas stories.
My teeth chattered with terror, but there was a certain
pleasure in the excitement all the same. We ordered supper.

(08:40):
It was now near midnight, and while it was being prepared,
my mother emptied her purse of awe save the money
promise to the driver and attend franc Piece to pay
for our suppers. The rest of the money she put
into a canvas bag which hung round her neck, where
she always carried her bank notes. The supper like something
out of a fairy tale, a clean cloth in itself,

(09:04):
an incongruous accident in such a place. New milk, new bread,
and new honey. When the woman brought in our bill,
my mother poured out her woes and confessed her fear
of the driver's intention. Nonsense, said the woman briskly. He's
the best man in the world. He's my own son.

(09:24):
Surely he has a right to give his own relations
a lift in his carriage if he likes. But we
had paid for his carriage. He has no right to
put other people in when we are paying for it.
Oh yes, he has retorted the woman shortly. You paid
him so much to take you to Murat, and he
will take you to Murat. But there was nothing said
about his not taking any one else. And he says

(09:47):
now he won't take you on to Murrat unless you
pay him double the fare you agreed for. His horses
are tired. I should think they were muttered. My sister,
considering the number of extra passengers they have dragged. My
mother emptied her purse on the table. You see, she said,
here is only the money I promised your son, and

(10:09):
enough to pay for our suppers. But when we get
to Murat, I shall find money waiting for me, and
I will give him what you ask. I believe this
conduct of my mother saved us, at any rate, from
being robbed by violence. The inn stood quite by itself
in one of the loneliest spots, and the mountains of Auverne.
If they had believed that we were worth robbing, and

(10:31):
had chosen to rob us, nothing could have saved us.
We started again. My mother now began to make light
of the adventure, and my terror subsided sufficiently for me
to be able to note the terrible grandeur of the scenery.
We passed through, vast masses of bare volcanic rock, iron

(10:51):
gray in the moonlight, with black chasms and mysterious gorges,
each one eloquent of bandits and gnomes, and an absolute
stillness save for the rattle of our carriage, as though
with vegetation, life too had ceased, as though indeed we
rode through a land death still under the enchantment of

(11:13):
some evil magician. The rocks and the mountains beyond them
towered higher and higher on each side of the road.
The strip of flat ground between us and the rocks
grew narrower, till presently the road wound between two vast
black cliffs, and the strip of sky high up looked

(11:33):
bright and blue. The tall cliffs were on either side,
and presently I saw with dismay that in front of
us the dark cliffs stretched right across the road. We
seemed to be driving straight into the heart of the rock.
In another moment, with a crack of the whip and
an encouraging word or two, the driver urged his horses

(11:55):
to a gallop, and we plunged through a dark archway
in a pitch darkness. For with a jolt the carriage
lamps went out. We had just been able to see
that we had passed out of the night air into
a tunnel cut in a solid rock. Oh. How thankful
we were then that the paupoise and all the rest
of our driver's relations had been left behind. At the

(12:18):
half way house. The driver lighted the lamps again almost immediately.
He seemed in a better temper than before, and explained
to us that this was the great arch and the mountains,
And to me, he added, it will be something for
you to remember and to tell your children about when
you are old, Which was certainly true. That tunnel was

(12:41):
unbearably long. As we rattled through its cavernous depths. I
could not persuade myself that at any moment our drivers
accomplices might not spring out upon us and kill us
there and then who would ever have known? Oh the
relief of seeing at last a faint pinprick of light.
It grew larger and larger and larger, and at last,

(13:05):
through another arch we rattled out into the moonlight again.
Of course, I shall never know now how many of
the terrors of that night were imaginary. It is not
pleasant even now to think of what might have happened.
At last we reached our journey's end, a miserable, filthy inn,

(13:26):
and with a thankful heart, saw the last of our
blue bloused driver. The landlady objected very strongly to letting
us in, and we objected still more strongly to the
accommodation which she at last consented to offer us. The
sheets were gray with dirt, and the pillows grimed with
the long succession of heads that had lain on them.

(13:48):
A fire was the only good thing that we got
at Marat. To go to bed was impossible. We sat
round the fire waiting for daylight and the first morning train.
My mother took me on her knee. I grew warm
and very comfortable and forgot all my troubles. Ah, I said,
with sleepy satisfaction, this is very nice. It's just like home.

(14:15):
The contrast between my words and that filthy, squalid inn
must have been irresistibly comic, for my mother and sisters
laughed till I thought they would never stop. My innocent remark.
And some bread and milk, the only things clean enough
to touch. She had us all up wonderfully, and in

(14:35):
another twenty four hours my mother and sisters were all
saying to each other that perhaps, after all there had
been nothing to be frightened about. But all the same,
I don't think any of that party would ever have
cared to face another night drive through the mountains of Auverne.
End of Part eight z