“It’s either in the cellar, miss—but Mr. Rayner keeps the key of that—or else in Sarah’s store cupboard.”
“That is in the left wing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Very well, Jane. I have found Sarah’s keys; so I will look in there and see if I can find any,” said I.
I did not much like taking this task upon myself; but it would not do to offend the nurse; and I thought it better to venture into Sarah’s domain myself than to trust the duty to Jane.
“Oh, and, if you please, Miss Christie, could you get us out some candles and some moist sugar? They are in there I know, for Sarah went to Beaconsburgh for them yesterday.”
I said I would; and, lighting a candle, I rather nervously pulled open the heavy door of the left wing and entered that mysterious part of the house sacred to Mrs. Rayner. Oh, how cold it was as the door closed behind me! I was growing nervous after the adventures I had had lately, and I did not like to hear the muffled thud of that door as it swung to after me. The store-room was the first door on the right, I knew; and I tremblingly tried the keys until I came to the one which opened it. I shivered. It was colder than ever in there, a great big bare room, with shelves and cupboards, and old hampers and boxes, and odds and ends of lumber. I could not help thinking how angry Sarah would be if she knew I was in the room, where no member of the household but herself ever ventured, and which had therefore grown into an importance it did not deserve, for it was a very ordinary apartment, and the cupboard I first opened, in search of candles and moist sugar, was a very ordinary cupboard, with the usual store of jams and pickle-jars and household stores of all kinds, except, of course, I thought angrily, as I shivered again with the cold, the candles and moist sugar of which I was in search. I opened another cupboard, I searched on the open shelves, but could not find either of the things I wanted.
At last I caught sight of a black bag lying on the floor; it looked like the very black bag Sarah had had in her hand when I saw her start for Beaconsburgh on the previous day; perhaps she had not taken her purchases out yet. I took it up; but suddenly my attention was diverted by the fact that in one of the boards of the floor on the spot where it had lain there was a tiny ring. If I had not had my attention very much on the alert in this unaccustomed place, it would have escaped my notice. As it was, I put my finger through it, and found that it raised a trap-door.
I raised it only a few inches, and shut it again directly—not that I had no curiosity about it, but that I had also some fear. An unsuspected trap-door in a house so full of surprises as the Alders had an interest of a rather appalling kind. At last I gathered up my courage, and little by little raised the door and put it right back, not without a horrid wonder whether there was any spring in it which would shut me down if I ventured on the ladder I saw below me.
The rush of cold air when the trap-door was wide open seemed to take my breath away. I held my candle over the opening, and saw that some three feet below the ladder was green and slimy, and that a foot below that there was water. Was it a well? Suddenly there flashed through my mind Sarah’s words in her delirium of the night before—“The water’s deep in the cellar.” I looked about me for something to try the depth of the water with, for go down I must. I found a rod that looked like those used for the bottom of window-blinds, and cautiously, candle in hand, ventured on the ladder. It was quite firm.