by Edith Nesbit
I will not describe the Red House to you — because perhaps you do not care about a house having three staircases and more cupboards and odd corners than we’d ever seen before, and great attics with beams, and enormous drawers on rollers, let into the wall — and half the rooms not furnished, and those that were all with old-looking, interesting furniture. There was something about that furniture that even the present author can’t describe — as though any of it might have secret drawers or panels — even the chairs. It was all beautiful, and mysterious in the deepest degree.
When we had been all over the house several times, we thought about the cellars. There was only one servant in the kitchen (so we saw Mr. and Mrs. Red House must be poor but honest, like we used to be), and we said to her —
“How do you do? We’ve got leave to go wherever we like, and please where are the cellars, and may we go in?”
She was quite nice, though she seemed to think there was an awful lot of us. People often think this. She said:
“Lor, love a duck — yes, I suppose so,” in not ungentle tones, and showed us.
I don’t think we should ever have found the way from the house into the cellar by ourselves. There was a wide shelf in the scullery with a row of gentlemanly boots on it that had been cleaned, and on the floor in front a piece of wood. The general servant — for such indeed she proved to be — lifted up the wood and opened a little door under the shelf. And there was the beginning of steps, and the entrance to them was half trap-door, and half the upright kind — a thing none of us had seen before.
She gave us a candle-end, and we pressed forward to the dark unknown. The stair was of stone, arched overhead like churches — and it twisted most unlike other cellar stairs. And when we got down it was all arched like vaults, very cobwebby.
“Just the place for crimes,” said Dicky. There was a beer cellar, and a wine cellar with bins, and a keeping cellar with hooks in the ceiling and stone shelves — just right for venison pasties and haunches of the same swift animal.
Then we opened a door and there was a cellar with a well in it.
“To throw bodies down, no doubt,” Oswald explained.
They were cellars full of glory, and passages leading from one to the other like the Inquisition, and I wish ours at home were like them.
There was a pile of beer barrels in the largest cellar, and it was H.O. who said, “Why not play ‘King of the Castle?’”
So we did. We had a most refreshing game. It was exactly like Denny to be the one who slipped down behind the barrels, and did not break a single one of all his legs or arms.
“No,” he cried, in answer to our anxious inquiries. “I’m not hurt a bit, but the wall here feels soft — at least not soft — but it doesn’t scratch your nails like stone does, so perhaps it’s the door of a secret dungeon or something like that.”
“Good old Dentist!” replied Oswald, who always likes Denny to have ideas of his own, because it was us who taught him the folly of white-mousishness.
“It might be,” he went on, “but these barrels are as heavy as lead, and much more awkward to collar hold of.”
“Couldn’t we get in some other way?” Alice said. “There ought to be a subterranean passage. I expect there is if we only knew.”
Oswald has an enormous geographical bump in his head. He said —
“Look here! That far cellar, where the wall doesn’t go quite up to the roof — that space we made out was under the dining-room — I could creep under there. I believe it leads into behind this door.”
“Get me out! Oh do, do get me out, and let me come!” shouted the barrel-imprisoned Dentist from the unseen regions near the door.
So we got him out by Oswald lying flat on his front on the top barrel, and the Dentist clawed himself up by Oswald’s hands while the others kept hold of the boots of the representative of the house of Bastable, which, of course, Oswald is, whenever Father is not there.
“Come on,” cried Oswald, when Denny was at last able to appear, very cobwebby and black. “Give us what’s left of the matches!”
The others agreed to stand by the barrels and answer our knocking on the door if we ever got there.
“But I daresay we shall perish on the way,” said Oswald hopefully.
So we started. The other cellar was easily found by the ingenious and geography-bump-headed Oswald. It opened straight on to the moat, and we think it was a boathouse in middle-aged times.
Denny made a back for Oswald, who led the way, and then he turned round and hauled up his inexperienced, but rapidly improving, follower on to the top of the wall that did not go quite up to the roof.
“It is like coal mines,” he said, beginning to crawl on hands and knees over what felt like very prickly beach, “only we’ve no picks or shovels.”
“And no Sir Humphry Davy safety lamps,” said Denny in sadness.
“They wouldn’t be any good,” said Oswald; “they’re only to protect the hard-working mining men against fire-damp and choke-damp. And there’s none of those kinds here.”
“No,” said Denny, “the damp here is only just the common kind.”
“Well, then,” said Oswald, and they crawled a bit further still on their furtive and unassuming stomachs.
“This is a very glorious adventure. It is, isn’t it?” inquired the Dentist in breathlessness, when the young stomachs of the young explorers had bitten the dust for some yards further.
“Yes,” said Oswald, encouraging the boy, “and it’s your find, too,” he added, with admirable fairness and justice, unusual in one so young. “I only hope we shan’t find a mouldering skeleton buried alive behind that door when we get to it. Come on. What are you stopping for now?” he added kindly.
“It’s — it’s only cobwebs in my throat,” Denny remarked, and he came on, though slower than before.
Oswald, with his customary intrepid caution, was leading the way, and he paused every now and then to strike a match because it was pitch dark, and at any moment the courageous leader might have tumbled into a well or a dungeon, or knocked his dauntless nose against something in the dark.
“It’s all right for you,” he said to Denny, when he had happened to kick his follower in the eye. “You’ve nothing to fear except my boots, and whatever they do is accidental, and so it doesn’t count, but I may be going straight into some trap that has been yawning for me for countless ages.”
“I won’t come on so fast, thank you,” said the Dentist. “I don’t think you’ve kicked my eye out yet.”
So they went on and on, crampedly crawling on what I have mentioned before, and at last Oswald did not strike the next match carefully enough, and with the suddenness of a falling star his hands, which, with his knees, he was crawling on, went over the edge into infinite space, and his chest alone, catching sharply on the edge of the precipice, saved him from being hurled to the bottom of it.
“Halt!” he cried, as soon as he had any breath again. But, alas! it was too late! The Dentist’s nose had been too rapid, and had caught up the boot-heel of the daring leader. This was very annoying to Oswald, and was not in the least his fault.
“Do keep your nose off my boots half a sec.,” he remarked, but not crossly. “I’ll strike a match.”
And he did, and by its weird and unscrutatious light looked down into the precipice.
Its bottom transpired to be not much more than six feet below, so Oswald turned the other end of himself first, hung by his hands, and dropped with fearless promptness, uninjured, in another cellar. He then helped Denny down. The cornery thing Denny happened to fall on could not have hurt him so much as he said.
The light of the torch, I mean match, now revealed to the two bold and youthful youths another cellar, with things in it — very dirty indeed, but of thrilling interest and unusual shapes, but the match went out before we could see exactly what the things were.
OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH.
The next match was the last
but one, but Oswald was undismayed, whatever Denny may have been. He lighted it and looked hastily round. There was a door.
“Bang on that door — over there, silly!” he cried, in cheering accents, to his trusty lieutenant; “behind that thing that looks like a chevaux de frize.”
Denny had never been to Woolwich, and while Oswald was explaining what a chevaux de frize is, the match burnt his fingers almost to the bone, and he had to feel his way to the door and hammer on it yourself.
The blows of the others from the other side were deafening.
All was saved.
It was the right door.
“Go and ask for candles and matches,” shouted the brave Oswald. “Tell them there are all sorts of things in here — a chevaux de frize of chair-legs, and — —”
“A shovel of what?” asked Dicky’s voice hollowly from the other side of the door.
“Freeze,” shouted Denny. “I don’t know what it means, but do get a candle and make them unbarricade the door. I don’t want to go back the way we came.” He said something about Oswald’s boots that he was sorry for afterwards, so I will not repeat it, and I don’t think the others heard, because of the noise the barrels made while they were being climbed over.
This noise, however, was like balmy zephyrs compared to the noise the barrels insisted on making when Dicky had collected some grown-ups and the barrels were being rolled away. During this thunder-like interval Denny and Oswald were all the time in the pitch dark. They had lighted their last match, and by its flickering gleam we saw a long, large mangle.
“It’s like a double coffin,” said Oswald, as the match went out. “You can take my arm if you like, Dentist.”
The Dentist did — and then afterwards he said he only did it because he thought Oswald was frightened of the dark.
“It’s only for a little while,” said Oswald in the pauses of the barrel-thunder, “and I once read about two brothers confined for life in a cage so constructed that the unfortunate prisoners could neither sit, lie, nor stand in comfort. We can do all those things.”
“Yes,” said Denny; “but I’d rather keep on standing if it’s the same to you, Oswald. I don’t like spiders — not much, that is.”
“You are right,” said Oswald with affable gentleness; “and there might be toads perhaps in a vault like this — or serpents guarding the treasure like in the Cold Lairs. But of course they couldn’t have cobras in England. They’d have to put up with vipers, I suppose.”
Denny shivered, and Oswald could feel him stand first on one leg and then on the other.
“I wish I could stand on neither of my legs for a bit,” he said, but Oswald answered firmly that this could not be.
And then the door opened with a crack-crash, and we saw lights and faces through it, and something fell from the top of the door that Oswald really did think for one awful instant was a hideous mass of writhing serpents put there to guard the entrance.
“Like a sort of live booby-trap,” he explained; “just the sort of thing a magician or a witch would have thought of doing.”
But it was only dust and cobwebs — a thick, damp mat of them.
Then the others surged in, in light-hearted misunderstanding of the perils Oswald had led Denny into — I mean through, with Mr. Red House and another gentleman, and loud voices and candles that dripped all over everybody’s hands, as well as their clothes, and the solitary confinement of the gallant Oswald was at an end. Denny’s solitary confinement was at an end, too — and he was now able to stand on both legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so full of fortitude.
“This is a find,” said the pleased voice of Mr. Red House. “Do you know, we’ve been in this house six whole months and a bit, and we never thought of there being a door here.”
“Perhaps you don’t often play ‘King of the Castle,’” said Dora politely; “it is rather a rough game, I always think.”
“Well, curiously enough, we never have,” said Mr. Red House, beginning to lift out the chairs, in which avocation we all helped, of course.
“Nansen is nothing to you! You ought to have a medal for daring explorations,” said the other gentleman, but nobody gave us one, and, of course, we did not want any reward for doing our duty, however tight and cobwebby.
The cellars proved to be well stocked with spiders and old furniture, but no toads or snakes, which few, if any, regretted. Snakes are outcasts from human affection. Oswald pities them, of course.
There was a great lumpish thing in four parts that Mr. Red House said was a press, and a ripping settle — besides the chairs, and some carved wood that Mr. Red House and his friend made out to be part of an old four-post bed. There was also a wooden thing like a box with another box on it at one end, and H.O. said —
“You could make a ripping rabbit-hutch out of that.”
Oswald thought so himself. But Mr. Red House said he had other uses for it, and would bring it up later.
It took us all that was left of the afternoon to get the things up the stairs into the kitchen. It was hard work, but we know all about the dignity of labour. The general hated the things we had so enterprisingly discovered. I suppose she knew who would have to clean them, but Mrs. Red House was awfully pleased and said we were dears.
We were not very clean dears by the time our work was done, and when the other gentleman said, “Won’t you all take a dish of tea under my humble roof?” the words “Like this?” were formed by more than one youthful voice.
“Well, if you would be happier in a partially cleansed state?” said Mr. Red House. And Mrs. Red House, who is my idea of a feudal lady in a castle, said, “Oh, come along, let’s go and partially clean ourselves. I’m dirtier than anybody, though I haven’t explored a bit. I’ve often noticed that the more you admire things the more they come off on you!”
So we all washed as much as we cared to, and went to tea at the gentleman’s house, which was only a cottage, but very beautiful. He had been a war correspondent, and he knew a great many things, besides having books and books of pictures.
It was a splendid party.
We thanked Mrs. R.H. and everybody when it was time to go, and she kissed the girls and the little boys, and then she put her head on one side and looked at Oswald and said, “I suppose you’re too old?”
Oswald did not like to say he was not. If kissed at all he would prefer it being for some other reason than his being not too old for it. So he did not know what to say. But Noël chipped in with —
“You’ll never be too old for it,” to Mrs. Red House — which seemed to Oswald most silly and unmeaning, because she was already much too old to be kissed by people unless she chose to begin it. But every one seemed to think Noël had said something clever. And Oswald felt like a young ass. But Mrs. R.H. looked at him so kindly and held out her hand so queenily that, before he knew he meant to, he had kissed it like you do the Queen’s. Then, of course, Denny and Dicky went and did the same. Oswald wishes that the word “kiss” might never be spoken again in this world. Not that he minded kissing Mrs. Red House’s hand in the least, especially as she seemed to think it was nice of him to — but the whole thing is such contemptible piffle.
We were seen home by the gentleman who wasn’t Mr. Red House, and he stood a glorious cab with a white horse who had a rolling eye, from Blackheath Station, and so ended one of the most adventuring times we ever got out of a play-beginning.
The time ended as the author has pointed out, but not its resultingness. Thus we ever find it in life — the most unharmful things, thoroughly approved even by grown-ups, but too often lead to something quite different, and that no one can possibly approve of, not even yourself when you come to think it over afterwards, like Noël and H.O. had to.
It was but natural that the hearts of the young explorers should have dwelt fondly on everything underground, even drains, which was what made us read a book by Mr. Hugo, all the next day. It is called “The Miserables,” in French, and the man in it, who
is a splendid hero, though a convict and a robber and various other professions, escapes into a drain with great rats in it, and is miraculously restored to the light of day, unharmed by the kindly rodents. (N.B. — Rodents mean rats.)
When we had finished all the part about drains it was nearly dinner-time, and Noël said quite suddenly in the middle of a bite of mutton —
“The Red House isn’t nearly so red as ours is outside. Why should the cellars be so much cellarier? Shut up H.O.!” For H.O. was trying to speak.
Dora explained to him how we don’t all have exactly the same blessings, but he didn’t seem to see it.
“It doesn’t seem like the way things happen in books,” he said, “In Walter Scott it wouldn’t be like that, nor yet in Anthony Hope. I should think the rule would be the redder the cellarier. If I was putting it into poetry I should make our cellars have something much wonderfuller in them than just wooden things. H.O., if you don’t shut up I’ll never let you be in anything again.”
“There’s that door you go down steps to,” said Dicky; “we’ve never been in there. If Dora and I weren’t going with Miss Blake to be fitted for boots we might try that.”
“That’s just what I was coming to. (Stow it, H.O.!) I felt just like cellars to-day, while you other chaps were washing your hands for din. — and it was very cold; but I made H.O. feel the same, and we went down, and — that door isn’t shut now.”
The intelligible reader may easily guess that we finished our dinner as quickly as we could, and we put on our outers, sympathising with Dicky and Dora, who, owing to boots, were out of it, and we went into the garden. There are five steps down to that door. They were red brick when they began, but now they are green with age and mysteriousness and not being walked on. And at the bottom of them the door was, as Noël said, not fastened. We went in.
“It isn’t beery, winey cellars at all,” Alice said; “it’s more like a robber’s store-house. Look there.”
We had got to the inner cellar, and there were heaps of carrots and other vegetables.
“Halt, my men!” cried Oswald, “advance not an inch further! The bandits may lurk not a yard from you!”
