CHAPTER XVII.
IN AN EMPTY HOUSE.
It was with a certain air of importance that Mrs. Winter walked along the pavement, closely followed by Madge. The friendly old woman always took a great interest in her neighbours' affairs, and she thoroughly enjoyed seeing the recovery of the lost money with her own eyes. When, after about a dozen steps, the front-door of the adjoining house was reached, Mrs. Winter smiled with conscious pride as she put the key into the key-hole. It was a critical moment. If the children ever recovered their lost money it would be entirely owing to her exertions. Not many elderly women in Churchbury that afternoon were playing such an exciting part.
The street in which Mrs. Winter lived was an old one, and consequently built without any regularity. It thus happened that next to Mrs. Winter's tiny shop stood a substantial family dwelling-house, whose cellars, as it has been said, took up rather more room on the pavement than seemed rightly to belong to them. Since the death of the last occupant some time before, the house had stood empty; only the caretaker visited it occasionally to air the rooms.
When Mrs. Winter pushed the heavy, creaking front-door open Madge followed her into a roomy hall, out of which a handsome staircase led to the upper part of the house. It was all very dignified and dreary. When the door was shut the noise echoed all over the house. It was not a very cheerful sound, especially heard in the sombre twilight caused by windows with the blinds all drawn down.
"We shall want a light for the cellar," observed Mrs. Winter. "The man said I should find all that was required on the window-sill in the hall—and here it is too!" she continued joyfully, holding up as she spoke a box of matches and a short candle stuck in a bottle.
Madge was exceedingly interested in this simple form of candlestick, and asked permission to carry it, in spite of the grease trickling down the bottle on to her fingers at every draught, as soon as the candle was lighted.
"It's a fine house. I've been over it many a time in old Doctor Freeman's day," said Mrs. Winter thoughtfully. "But it isn't much to see now since the sale, with all the furniture gone out of the rooms and the carpets up. Besides, we have not the time to lose going over it, or the lady will get tired of waiting for you."
Madge always liked investigating unknown places and things, but still she could not deny that Miss Thompson was awaiting her return rather anxiously. And when Mrs. Winter, taking another key fully as large as the first, proceeded to push open a heavy door and disclose a steep flight of slippery stone steps leading downwards into the cellars, Madge had the comfort of feeling that at all events she was seeing the most interesting part of the house. The bedrooms, or even attics, could not be as thrilling as that yawning chasm beneath her feet into which she was now about to plunge.
"Poor old Doctor Freeman set a great store on his collection of wine," observed Mrs. Winter as she slowly went down the cellar steps, feeling with her hands along the wall, for the bit of candle that Madge carried in front gave a very insufficient light, and she was terribly afraid of slipping. However, her nervousness did not prevent her from giving Madge a long account of the sale that had taken place after Dr. Freeman's death, and of the large sums of money that people gave for his treasured collections of wine.
"And to my thinking he would have been much wiser to drink it himself, poor gentleman!" she concluded. "But each one knows what he likes best, and if he preferred the look of the bottles to the taste of what was in them—well, 'twas his own to do what he liked with!"
Madge did not listen very attentively to Mrs. Winter's somewhat rambling discourse. By this time they had reached the bottom step, and another large key having been produced the last heavy door was opened with a loud creak. To any young lady who had read as many fairy-tales as Madge, the situation irresistibly suggested a subterranean cavern, in which unlimited gold was stored away by thrifty dwarfs.
"And there really is a lot of money there," thought Madge; "five shillings and sevenpence might easily be called a heap of treasure—with a little pretending. But I do wish Betty and John were here to help to discover it! We should have so much more fun."
Mrs. Winter was not a very satisfactory companion on an adventurous expedition. She was kindness itself—nobody could have been more good-natured,—but she did not seem quite to enter into the spirit of the thing. The dark mysterious cavern remained to her nothing but Dr. Freeman's empty wine-cellar; and it evidently never occurred to her for a moment that there was anything to be gained by calling the candle-end a torch! Life in the nursery and schoolroom at home had afforded Madge comparatively few opportunities for real adventure; and when one suddenly fell across her path it was tiresome to have an unappreciative companion who took everything as a matter of course.
Presently a trifling accident brought about a change in the situation. At the farther end of the long cellar there was a very faint glimmer of light coming through a grating overhead.
"That's where your money dropped down," observed Mrs. Winter. "You are sure to find it scattered on the ground under the grating."
At this suggestion Madge very naturally ran forward, and the violent draught coming from the opening above blew out the candle she carried in her hand.
Poor Mrs. Winter was greatly disturbed by suddenly finding herself in the dark. Even by the light of the candle it had seemed hard work to her coming down the steep steps, and how she was ever to get up them again in total darkness she really did not know. Yet she would not consent to let Madge go back to the hall where the matches had had been left and light the candle, fearing that the little girl might set fire to the house.
"Then I may stay here in the dark by myself while you go, may I?" pleaded Madge, who did not wish to waste a minute of her time in this exciting place.
"Yes, I suppose so," replied Mrs. Winter, rather wondering at the little girl's taste, but too much occupied in the effort of feeling her way to the stairs to pay much attention to anything else. Presently she could be heard slowly mounting step by step, then the door at the top of the stairs shut with a noisy clang behind her, and there was silence.
Madge was all alone in the dark. It was certainly delightfully exciting, but not, strictly speaking, quite so enjoyable as she had anticipated. The chief pleasure would be in afterwards describing to Betty and John what had happened. In the meantime she would be very brave, and Mrs. Winter might return at any moment with the candle.
The worst of darkness and silence is, that they seem to increase every moment. What is merely gloomy at first becomes almost intolerable as time goes on. All sorts of horrid ideas came into Madge's head. Could it be that Mrs. Winter had shut her in and gone home? Or fallen down in a fit in the hall? Or that the cellar door had slammed with a spring-lock and could not be got open again? None of these suppositions would have seemed very probable in the light; but Madge was becoming too frightened to form a clear judgment on the subject. She longed to call out in the hopes of getting an answer from Mrs. Winter, but dread of hearing her own voice echoing through the empty house kept her silent. And from the same cause she remained standing motionless on the spot where she had been left. The terror of stepping on some strange soft object that would squeak or squash under her feet was enough to keep her still. She thought of Lewis Brand's tales about rats and toads in Mrs. Howard's cellar, and she wondered that he did not go mad when shut up among them.
As Madge was standing stiff with fright, and straining her ears to catch a distant sound of footsteps that never seemed to come, she suddenly remembered the grating at the farther end of the cellar. "What a stupid creature I am!" she exclaimed joyfully, as, turning her head, she again caught sight of the reassuring glimmer of light behind her. It had been there all the time, while she was staring into the darkness in the opposite direction.
In another moment Madge was cautiously creeping towards the grating. She could only go slowly pushing one foot before her in order to avoid stepping heavily on some hidden horror; for the daylight struggling through the tiny opening overhead only faintly lighted the ground immediately below, leaving the rest of the cellar in total darkness.
Even this feeble patch of twilight quite restored Madge's confidence. She would reach it and feel about for the lost money, then if Mrs. Winter did not speedily return she could no doubt find her way back up the cellar steps without any help. When Madge was not frightened she was just as sensible and energetic as a grown-up person.
Hardly had she resolved on this most practical course, however, when there was a wild scuffle round her legs, and something brushed past her with glaring eyes—something that uttered confused sounds of rage as it lurked in the darkness to spring out upon her.
Poor Madge! She forgot her age, her dignity, and her character for good common sense. She only remembered alarming stories about hobgoblins and witches, and she began to scream. Luckily Mrs. Winter had by this time found the box of matches, and very soon returned with the candle. Then all at once the scene changed. The mysterious haunted cavern again became nothing but a large cellar full of empty shelves, hung with festoons of cobwebs. And the lurking monster turned out to be a half-starved kitten, that must at some time have followed the caretaker down the steps and got locked in.
With trembling hands and a rather shamefaced expression Madge collected the fallen coins, many of which had rolled out of the bag to some distance. She could not bear to think that Mrs. Winter had heard her screaming like a frightened baby. The annoyance of this recollection prevented her from taking any interest in the poor kitten that Mrs. Winter was gently coaxing towards her; and it was not until they were again back in the little shop that Madge regained her customary good spirits.