Part 24 (2/2)
Cerissa looked uneasy.
”Is the door locked?”
”I re'ly couldn't say,” she confessed.
”Do you mean to say that all you sensible people in this house have avoided that room for three years? And you don't even know if the door is locked?”
”I--I don't use that part for anything, and cleaning is wasted on a place that's never used, and I can't _get_ anybody”--
”I am not criticising your housekeeping. Will you go up there with me now, Cerissa? I want to understand about this.”
”What, just now, do you mean? I'm afraid I haven't got the time this morning, Mrs. Bogardus. Dinner's at half-past twelve. It's a quarter to eleven”--
”Very well. You think the door is not locked?”
”If it is, the key must be in the door. Oh, don't go, please, Mrs.
Bogardus. Wait till Chauncey conies in”--
”I wish you'd send Chauncey up when he does come in. Ask him to bring a screw-driver.” Mrs. Bogardus rose and examined her jacket. It was still damp. She asked for a cape, or some sort of wrap, as her waist was thin, and the rain had chilled the morning air.
For the sake of decency, Cerissa escorted her visitor across the hall pa.s.sage into the loom-room--a loom-room in name only for upwards of three generations. Becky had devoted it to the rough work of the house, and to certain special uses, such as the care of the butchering products, the making of soft soap and root beer. Here the churning was done, by hand, with a wooden dasher, which spread a circle of white drops, later to become grease-spots. The floor of the loom-room was laid in large brick tiles, more or less loose in their sockets, with an occasional earthy depression marking the grave of a missing tile.
Becky's method of cleaning was to sluice it out and scrub it with an old broom. The seepage of generations before her time had thus added their constant quota to the old well's sum of iniquity.
Mrs. Bogardus had not visited this part of the old house for many years.
After her father's death she had shrunk from its painful a.s.sociations.
Later she grew indifferent; but as she pa.s.sed now into the gloomy place--doubly dark with the deep foliage of June on a rainy morning--she was afraid of her own thoughts. Henceforth she was a woman with a diseased consciousness. ”What can't be cured must be _seared_,” flashed over her as she set her face to the stairway.
These stairs, leading up into the back attic or ”kitchen chamber,” being somewhat crowded for s.p.a.ce, advanced two steps into the room below. As the stair door opened outward, and the stairs were exceedingly steep and dark, every child of the house, in turn, had suffered a bad fall in consequence; but the arrangement remained in all its natural depravity, for ”children must learn.”
Little Emmy of the old days had loved to sit upon these steps, a trifle raised above the kitchen traffic, yet cognizant of all that was going on, and ready to descend promptly if she smelled fresh crullers frying, or baked sweet apples steaming hot from the oven. If Becky's foot were heard upon the stairs above, she would jump quick enough; but if the step had a clumping, boyish precipitancy, she sat still and laughed, and planted her back against the door. Often she had teased Adam in this way, keeping him prisoner from his duties, helpless in his good nature either to scold her or push her off. But once he circ.u.mvented her, slipping off his shoes and creeping up the stairs again, and making his escape by the roof and the boughs of the old maple. Then it was Emmy who was teased, who sat a foolish half hour on the stairs alone and missed a beautiful ride to the wood lot; but she would not speak to Adam for two days afterward.
Becky's had been the larger of the two bedrooms in the attic, Adam's the smaller--tucked low under the eaves, and entered by crawling around the big chimney that came bulking up to the light like a great tree caught between house walls. The stairs hugged the chimney and made use of its support. Adam would warm his hands upon it coming down on bitter mornings. From force of habit, Emily Bogardus laid her smooth white hand upon the clammy bricks. No tombstone could be colder than that heart of house warmth now.
The roof of the kitchen chamber had been raised a story higher, and the chimney as it went up contracted to quite a modern size. This elevation gave room for the incongruous tower bedroom that had hurt the symmetry of the old house, spoiled its n.o.ble sweep of roof, and given rise to so much unpleasant conjecture as to its use. It was this excrescence, the record of those last unloved and unloving years of her father's life, which Mrs. Bogardus would have removed, but was prevented by her son.
”You go back now, Cerissa,” she said to the panting woman behind her. ”I see the key is in the lock. You may send Chauncey after a while; there is no hurry.”
”Oh!” gasped Cerissa. ”Do you see _that!_”
”What?”
”I thought there was something--something behind that slit.”
”There isn't. Step this way. There, can't you see the light?”
Mrs. Bogardus grasped Cerissa by the shoulders and held her firmly in front of a narrow loophole that pierced the part.i.tion close beside the door. Light from the room within showed plainly; but it gave an unpleasantly human expression to the entrance, like a furtive eye on the watch.
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