It was not pleasant to stand in a strange house in an unknown
neighborhood, drenched, hungry and unprotected, hearing fearful
sounds like danger threatening under foot.
Corinne felt a speechless desire to be back in the creek again and
on the point of drowning; that would soon be over. But who could tell
what might occur after this groaning in the cellar?
“I heard a noise,” said Grandma Padgett, to bespeak their attention,
as if they could remember ever hearing anything else.
“It's cats, I think,” said Robert Day, husky with courage.
Cats could not groan in such short and painful catches. Conjectures
of many colors appeared and disappeared like flashes in Bobaday's
mind. The groaner was somebody that bad Dutch landlord had half
murdered and put in the cellar. Maybe the floor was built to give way
and let every traveller fall into a pit! Or it might be some boy or
girl left behind by wicked movers to starve. Or a beggarman, wanting
the house to himself, could be making that noise to frighten them
away.
The sharp groans were regularly uttered. Corinne buried her head in
her mother's skirts and waited to be taken or left, as the Booggar
pleased.
“Well,” said Grandma Padgett, “I suppose we'll have to go and see
what ails that Thing down there. It may be a human bein' in distress.”
Robert feared it was something else, but he would not have mentioned
it to his grandmother.
“What'll we carry to see with?” he eagerly inquired. It was easy to
be eager, because they had no lights except the brands in the
fireplace.
Grandma Padgett, who in her early days had carried live coals from
neighbors' houses miles away, saw how to dispense with lamp or
candle. She took a shovel full of embers--and placed a burning chip
on top. The chip would have gone out by itself, but was kept blazing
by the coals underneath.
“Shall I go ahead?” inquired Robert.
“No, you walk behind. And you might carry a piece of stick,” replied
his grandmother, conveying a hint which made his shoulder blades feel
chilly.
They moved toward the cellar entrance in a slow procession, to keep
the chip from flaring out.
“Don't hang to me so!” Grandma Padgett remonstrated with her
daughter. “I sh'll step on you, and down we'll all go and set the
house afire.”
Garrets are cheerful, cobwebby places, always full of slits where
long, smoky sun-rays can poke in. An amber warmth cheers the darkness
of garrets; you feel certain there is nothing ugly hiding behind the
remotest and dustiest box. If rats or mice inhabit it, they are
jovial fellows. But how different is a cellar, and especially a
cellar neglected. You plunge down rough steps into a cavern. A mouldy
air from dried-up and forgotten vegetables meets you. The earth may
not be moist underfoot, but it has not the kind feeling of sun-warmed
earth. And if big rats hide there, how bold and hideous they are!
There are cool farmhouse cellars floored with cement and shelved with
sweet-smelling pine, where apple-bins make incense, and swinging-shelves
of butter, tables of milk crocks, lines of fruit cans and home-made
catsup bottles, jars of pickles and chowder, and white covered pastry
and cake, promise abundant hospitality. But these are inverted garrets,
rather than cellars. They are refrigerators for pure air; and they keep
a mellow light of their own. When you go into one of them it seems as
if the house were standing on its head to express its joy and comfort.
But the Susan House cellar was one of dread, aside from the noise
proceeding out of it. Bobaday knew this before they opened a door
upon a narrow-throated descent.
One of Zene's stories became vivid. It was a story of a house where
nobody could stay, though the landlord offered it rent-free. But
along came two good youths without any money, and for board and
lodging, they undertook to break the spell by sleeping there three
nights. The first two nights they were not disturbed, and sat with
their candle, reading good books until after midnight. But the third,
just on the stroke of twelve, a noise began in the cellar! So they
took their candle, and, armed with nothing except good books, went
below, and in the furthest corner they saw a little old man with a
red nightcap on his head, sitting astride of a barrel! In Zene's
story the little old man only had it on his mind to tell these good
youths where to dig for his money; and when they had secured the
money, he amiably disappeared, and the house was pleasant to live in
ever afterward.
This tale, heard in the barn while Zene was greasing harnesses, and
heard without Grandma Padgett's sanction, now made her grandson
shiver with dread as his feet went down into the Susan House dungeon.
It was trying enough to be exploring a strange cellar full of groans,
without straining your eyes in expectation of seeing a little old man
in a red nightcap, sitting astride of a barrel!
“Who's there?” said Grandma Padgett with stern emphasis, as she held
her beacon stretched out into the cellar.
The groaning ceased for an awful space of time. Aunt Corinne was
behind her nephew, and she squatted on the step to peer with
distended eyes, lest some hand should reach up and grab her by the
foot.
It was a small square cellar, having earthen sides, but piles of
pine boxes made ambushes everywhere.
“Come out!” Grandma Padgett spoke again. “We won't have any tricks
played. But if you're hurt, we can help you.”
It was like addressing solid darkness, for the chip was languishing
upon its coals, and cast but a dim red glare around the shovel.
Still some being crept toward them from the darkness, uttering a
prolonged and hearty groan, as if to explode at once the
accumulations of silence.