“I saw,” said Mr. Small. His voice had that hard edge, the way it had when he had seen the mess in the kitchen. “And he wore new hide gloves like the first time. You bet I saw!”
Mr. Small tore one of the torches from its sconce and thrust it in the opening to the cave. He went inside, and Thomas followed. They were in a tunnel similar to the one under the house of Dies Drear. It ended some thirty feet ahead, in what appeared to be a room. Mr. Small threw the torch out the door, since the room ahead of them was lit. They went cautiously forward. And once inside the room, they stood against the wall next to the tunnel, looking all around.
“This is where he lives,” Mr. Small said. “I’ve never been inside it, but there’s his forge. And over there must be where he sleeps. The other tunnel entrance to the right must lead to the place where he keeps his horses. I do remember, he mentioned to me that there was an inner tunnel leading from this main room.”
The cave was perhaps twenty-five feet wide and thirty feet long. The ceiling of rough and jagged stone was fifteen feet high. Thomas hadn’t ever seen anything like it. One portion of the room was carpeted, with a large, worn armchair and a table for eating. There were photographs on the wall nearest to the table, and many yellowed calendars. On the other side of the room was a simple, brass bed. There was a pair of slippers placed neatly beside the bed, and flung across it was a robe.
What light there was in the room came from Mr. Pluto’s forge. There was a fire burning, and his bellows rested on a tree stump next to the forge.
This was the first bellows Thomas had seen. He stared at it for a long time. He had known it would be large, but he had no idea it was such an awesome, strange instrument. A mighty bellows it was, old as an old man and tough and weathered as old Pluto himself had to be.
“Where the devil is he?” Mr. Small said. “He didn’t come out the way we came in … so that leaves just two ways he could have gone.”
Mr. Small crossed the room. There against the far wall was a ladder. Above the ladder in the ceiling, Thomas noticed for the first time, were two wood doors.
“Papa! Look!” Thomas said.
“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Small. “On the other side of those doors is the platform you stumbled upon last night. It’s a trap, you see. He built that platform just so he would know when folks were approaching. You always run into it before you expect to, even when you know where it is. That’s why I came around the hill, so as not to be found out before I was ready.”
Mr. Small climbed part way up the ladder. The doors were locked from the inside. “He didn’t leave from up here.”
“How about the tunnel leading to the horses?” Thomas said.
“You stay here,” said Mr. Small, coming down the ladder. “If I find him, I’ll bring him back with me.”
He left the main cave and was back again in a minute without Mr. Pluto. “Looks like he has vanished into thin air,” he said. “Maybe he is the devil, like you thought.”
Thomas’ father stood by the forge, with his hands deep in his pockets. Thomas knew he hadn’t been serious about old Pluto being the devil. But where was Pluto? And what did he mean by running away from them?
“So there’s another way,” Mr. Small said. “There has to be another way out.”
“A secret way?” Thomas wanted to know.
“At least one he never let on to me about,” Mr. Small said.
Thomas walked around the room. In back of the table in the corner was a woodburning cooking stove. The stovepipe went through a metal plate attached to the wall above the stove. There was more than likely a natural opening to the surface ground, Thomas decided, that would allow the smoke to escape. He put his hand gingerly on one round, iron cooking unit in the stove. It was cold. There was no fire at all.
“We’ll wait for him,” Mr. Small said. “He has to come back. This is his home.”
Thomas walked around and around. He let into his mind everything he saw in the room. He didn’t touch anything there, but he saw all there was to see, and closing his eyes, he remembered where most things were placed. Then, he stood still in the room.
That’s not it, he thought. You can hide something pretty well by putting an object in front of it. You have to know what you’re doing though. Most of the time, you’ll just attract attention. The best way is to leave it out in the open. Leave what?
He spun around the room, taking in the bare part of the floor, that space between the table and the bed. He scanned the walls where the calendars and photographs left off. On the wall opposite, there were many harnesses, many lengths of rope, and some chain. There were clothing hooks. And on the wall nearest to the entrance, there were cooking utensils by the stove; below that Thomas saw a pile of firewood.
On the far wall, above which were the trapdoors in the ceiling, there was nothing save that ladder. And one, single length of rope almost hidden by shadow in the corner.
“Papa …” Thomas started across the room.
Mr. Small had had no intention of waiting all night for Pluto. He remembered his wife alone, locked in the big house. His anger came back, flowing into him cool as night air. He’d been looking the room over all the time. He had come to focus on that blank wall, just as Thomas had.
They both started toward the rope at the same time. It hung from a hook of some kind. Indeed, it was looped somehow, loosely, around an old clothes hook. Mr. Small moved the ladder over to it and climbed up, so that his eye was on a level with the hook. Just above the hook was a smooth hole. Mr. Small saw that the rope came out of the hole. And looped around the hook, it hid the hole entirely. You wouldn’t see it unless you had a chance to stand, as Mr. Small was now, looking sideways at it.
“This is it, Thomas,” Mr. Small said. Carefully he climbed down the ladder and returned it to its position against the wall. He then took hold of the rope. Slowly it pulled down and down, like a bell rope. When he let go of it, it returned to its former position.
Between the ladder and the rope, the wall began to slide. Thomas heard a grating sound. It wasn’t loud, but it was unpleasant, the way the sound of rock rubbing against rock can be. When it stopped, after a moment, that wall had slid back completely. And what now lay before them was far beyond dream, or even nightmare.
Mr. Small took hold of Thomas’ arm. No matter how hard Thomas tried to pull away, his father held onto him and dragged him down.
“Lord!” Mr. Small whispered. “My Lord in heaven, look at that! Look at it! Look at it!”
Chapter 14
THEY HAD TO WALK down into it. Considering that they were underground to begin with, they had to walk down into it from an unbelievable height. They had to walk down a wet, slippery ramp of chalk-white limestone, with enormous stalactites hanging just above their heads.
Mr. Small had to drag his son along. Thomas gaped at the stalactites, fearful that one might fall on him. He was terrified of the stalagmites that they had to walk through. He kept jumping away from them as though they were creatures from another world.
“You’ve seen them before, Thomas,” Mr. Small said. “Get hold of yourself!”
All Thomas could think about was a fragmentary bit of information from an earth-studies class, which he had somehow filed away in his mind: Stalagmite: a calcium carbonate deposit shaped like an icicle and formed by the dripping of percolating calcareous water … Stalagmite: dripping of percolating calcareous …
But he could not connect the phrases with the monstrous forms around him. They stood like sentinels guarding what had to be one of the most stupendous caverns anyone had ever seen.
Only no one had ever seen it, thought Mr. Small. No one besides himself and Thomas, and Mr. Pluto and Pesty, who sat down there watching them come, waiting for them to get there and to get on with it.
They took their time, Thomas and Mr. Small. The knowledge that all of it had remained down there for a century or more was almost more than Mr. Small’s mind could take at one time. So it was that he literally carried Thom
as forward while, at the same time, trying to hold himself back.
Once they had cleared the stalactites and stalagmites, Thomas and Mr. Small were well into the cavern. But they still had to go down. They had reached a place much like a rampart arch in a staircase. They could stand almost level; the limestone beneath their feet was completely dry. But they still had more of the ramp to walk to reach where Pluto sat, behind a massively constructed desk.
It’s Renaissance, Mr. Small thought, staring at the desk. The desk was dark, and elaborately veneered with fine woods. And it was decorated with the usual metal ornamentation of the period, although this decoration was far superior to anything Mr. Small had ever seen in a museum.
It has to be French Renaissance. Where the devil did old man Drear get hold of such an incredible work?
Mr. Pluto sat behind the desk with his profile toward them. He had propped one elbow on the desk with the hand under his chin and the index finger extended to his cheek. A brown woolen throw covered his shoulders like a cloak of gloom. It wasn’t so much that he watched Mr. Small and Thomas come slowly forward, it was more that he listened and dreaded for them to come.
There is no war, Thomas thought. Mr. Pluto is the king!
The Lord of the Underworld! thought Mr. Small. This is a dream I tell you. It has to be!
But it was no dream. Where the ramp became dry, the cavern grew warm. Mr. Small and Thomas felt it at once, and it was a dry heat.
A uniform temperature, thought Mr. Small. A heat coming from the depths of the earth. Just warm enough, dry enough for all this … this … wealth to maintain itself. It’s unbelievable!
At the end of the ramp, Mr. Small and Thomas were in the midst of the cavern. Barrel-shaped, the cavern rolled up and up over them into an immense, vaulted ceiling. Hanging on all sides were tapestries and Persian carpets reaching almost to the floor. There were row upon row of them, with colors that leaped and glowed in the light of torches grouped in the center of the cavern.
Mr. Small recognized in the carpets a color massing and texture, and particularly fine dye tones that one could find only in museums. He could believe easily enough that an eccentric man such as Dies Drear had to have been would possess them. What was astounding was that because of the constant climate in the cavern they were close to their original colors and textures.
But why did he have them here? wondered Mr. Small fleetingly. A source of sure and easy money?
Whatever the reason, Dies Drear had amassed and saved what was perhaps as fine and complete a collection of decorative art to be seen anywhere.
And that wasn’t all. Between the rows of hanging carpets and tapestries were whole canoes, a few as long as forty feet, and whole, richly painted, beautifully crafted totem poles. Interspersed among these were carved and painted wood chests. They were Indian also. They had to be, Mr. Small thought. And piled atop them were blankets with similar designs.
He wondered what Indian people had painstakingly crafted such work. He didn’t recognize any of it, although its value was obvious.
There were barrels upon barrels of silks and embroidered materials, which burst from the barrels and spilled out onto the floor. Mr. Small noticed some jewelry, pairs of shoes, watches, and chains of gold.
And there was more. One section of one huge wall was covered with glassware. Thomas stared at it. It was like a prism, for the glass came in colors ranging from aqua to deep brown and nearly black.
Thomas stood there next to Mr. Small at the end of the ramp, trembling all over. From the time they passed through the stalagmites, he realized they had discovered a place of great importance. Like his father, he had guessed rightly that they had stumbled upon the treasure house of Dies Drear.
The carpeting and tapestries were finer than anything Thomas could have imagined. They were hung very high up from oak cylinders, which had been polished a smooth, pale white. The cylinders hung on chains, which were suspended from hooks sunk into the vaulted ceiling. The rugs and tapestries were of varying lengths and sizes, and they divided the cavern into corridors of rich hues. In one shadowy depth of the cavern, Thomas noticed for a moment an enormous chain with links the width of three fingers. Some of the chain was wound around a winch, which had a lever attached to it. The rest of the chain rose up between tapestries to disappear in the murky darkness. With so much else to take in all at once, Thomas forgot all about it.
It was the glass that he couldn’t take his eyes off.
“There must be a million bottles,” he whispered to his father. His voice made echoing sounds, like many praying voices in a cathedral. He had to knot his hands at his sides to keep his arms from jerking convulsively. “Look at all the dishes and bowls and things. Why aren’t they dusty? Look how they glow!”
It was true, the glass shone and sparkled.
“Some of it is as old as time!” whispered Mr. Small. “See how misshapen some of it is. Probably the earliest hand-blown glass you’ll see anywhere.”
Pesty, who all this time had been sitting on the arm of Mr. Pluto’s great, carved chair, now rose and walked toward the ledges of glass. Suddenly there were hundreds of Pestys reflected in the glass. The sight of Pesty so perfectly reflected in so many different colors and shapes made Thomas dizzy.
There was a sliding ladder. Pesty hooked it into a groove on the wall above the glass. By climbing the ladder and pushing herself against a ledge, she could maneuver anywhere she wanted along the rows of glass. She demonstrated this for them now. She had taken up a cloth, and, ever so carefully, began to polish one thin-necked bottle.
Be careful! thought Mr. Small. Break that and you have smashed hundreds of dollars, you have let a part of history die.
No need for Mr. Small to worry. No curator anywhere could have handled the old and valuable glass with such delicate care. She looked over her shoulder at Thomas and smiled proudly at him.
“Mr. Thomas,” she said. “This is my job to do.” Then she placed the bottle back and came down the ladder. She took her position beside Mr. Pluto again. He had turned around to the desk to face Thomas and Mr. Small.
For the first time, Mr. Small was aware of the books in great glass-doored cases to one side of the desk. Some, oblong and yellowed, lay on the desk. Old Pluto had folded his hands lightly on top of them. Mr. Small stared at them, his eyes feverish with wonder, for he understood what they were. He stared at Pluto and then again at the ledgers; and he thanked the Lord that this old man, like Dies Drear before him and like himself, too, was a keeper of history.
Gently Mr. Pluto drew one of the ledgers close to him.
“An accounting,” he said softly, his voice no better than a cry. He looked worn out—too tired, Thomas thought, to have had strength enough to mess up his Mama’s kitchen.
“The day by day barter of black people,” said Pluto. Sadly he smiled. “They weren’t Mr. Drear’s accounts … don’t know where he got them. But they tell a tale or two. They show how mean folks had to be to buy and sell our people.”
He stared dumbly at Mr. Small for a moment. Then he said, “I’m awful sorry I didn’t stop to speak with your wife at church this day. But I felt so low there for awhile. I felt just like I was going to lay myself down and not get up. I’ve been sick you see. Yes … yes.”
Vaguely Pluto looked around him. His old mind seemed to shift to something else. “I see you’ve found us out. I knew, oh yes. I knew you would when first you come over to see that house. Knew I hadn’t long … all these many years, no one. And then Pesty. Old Little Miss Bee!” He laughed and folded the child in his shawl.
“Ain’t it funny though, of all people, you can trust with a child? Never knew I could until one day she followed me in here. I didn’t know she had until I saw her perched upon that ladder. I was so sure she would then tell Mr. River Lewis Darrow. I was sure of it, and that him and his boys would clear me out and clean this hall out. But no. I guess it is her plaything. I never know why she won’t tell. But she likes to come here and I let he
r keep the glass. It is written down in the books that Mr. Drear was most fond of his glassware. Oh, Little Miss Bee and I can spend hours not even talking. Sometimes, I tell her stories about long ago, and she will fall asleep right in my arms.”
Again Pluto’s mind shifted. His eyes became frightened. He clutched at the ledgers on the desk. Pesty rubbed her head against his shoulder and put her hands upon his hands until he had calmed.
“They think because you’re old, they can walk in and take over,” Pluto said. “Isn’t that right? They come around a-howlin’ and pretending they’re the ghosts. But they don’t know, do you see? Little Miss Bee knows, don’t you, my babe?” The child nodded. “Yes!” said Pluto. “Some nights them Darrows forgets about me, but there will still be signs of the old man and the slaves. I’ve seen him! I’ve seen them! Then my black horse, he will run with the wind, those spirits bother him so. I reckon they want to ride him, but he won’t have nothing to do with ’em.”
“Mr. Pluto,” Mr. Small said softly. “Mr. Skinner. It will be all right.”
Thomas felt awful inside. Looking at Pluto so old, so afraid, he thought suddenly of Great-grandmother Jeffers.
Why do they have to grow sick and weak? Why must it end like that for them?
He was filled with sadness. It was evil of him to have thought such a tired old man could be the devil. He could no longer see Pluto as king. And there was a war, but it was Pluto’s with himself.
“We are sorry,” said Pluto. “I mean I … we … hadn’t ought to have fooled with you like that. Carrying on. Tricking you with stage magic …”
“Mr. Skinner, I wish you’d try very hard to make yourself clear,” said Mr. Small. “Tricked us? You couldn’t have had anything to do with what was done to the kitchen.”
“No,” Pesty said. “He means the other. He means about …”
But Pluto stopped her. “It was that I was afraid, that’s why we tricked you, don’t you see?” he said.
The House of Dies Drear Page 12