The Haunting of Hill House (18 page)

“We've been wandering around for quite a while,” the doctor said. “We never dreamed that you ladies were awake until we heard your voices.” He spoke gravely. “There is one thing we have not taken into account,” he said.

They looked at him, puzzled, and he explained, checking on his fingers in his lecture style. “First,” he said, “Luke and I were awakened earlier than you ladies, clearly; we have been up and about, outside and in, for better than two hours, led on what you perhaps might allow me to call a wild-goose chase. Second, neither of us”—he glanced inquiringly at Luke as he spoke—“heard any sound up here until your voices began. It was perfectly quiet. That is, the sound which hammered on your door was not audible to us. When we gave up our vigil and decided to come upstairs we apparently drove away whatever was waiting outside your door. Now, as we sit here together, all is quiet.”

“I still don't see what you mean,” Theodora said, frowning.

“We must take precautions,” he said.

“Against what? How?”

“When Luke and I are called outside, and you two are kept imprisoned inside, doesn't it begin to seem”—and his voice was very quiet—“doesn't it begin to seem that the intention is, somehow, to separate us?”

Looking at herself in the mirror, with the bright morning sunlight freshening even the blue room of Hill House, Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long. Abandoning a lifelong belief that to name happiness is to dissipate it, she smiled at herself in the mirror and told herself silently, You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness. Looking away from her own face in the mirror, she thought blindly, Journeys end in lovers meeting, lovers meeting.

“Luke?” It was Theodora, calling outside in the hall. “You carried off one of my stockings last night, and you are a thieving cad, and I hope Mrs. Dudley can hear me.”

Eleanor could hear Luke, faintly, answering; he protested that a gentleman had a right to keep the favors bestowed upon him by a lady, and he was absolutely certain that Mrs. Dudley could hear every word.

“Eleanor?” Now Theodora pounded on the connecting door. “Are you awake? May I come in?”

“Come, of course,” Eleanor said, looking at her own face in the mirror. You deserve it, she told herself, you have spent your life earning it. Theodora opened the door and said happily, “How pretty you look this morning, my Nell. This curious life agrees with you.”

Eleanor smiled at her; the life clearly agreed with Theodora too.

“We ought by rights to be walking around with dark circles under our eyes and a look of wild despair,” Theodora said, putting an arm around Eleanor and looking into the mirror beside her, “and look at us—two blooming, fresh young lovelies.”

“I'm thirty-four years old,” Eleanor said, and wondered what obscure defiance made her add two years.

“And you look about fourteen,” Theodora said. “Come along; we've earned our breakfast.”

Laughing, they raced down the great staircase and found their way through the game room and into the dining room. “Good morning,” Luke said brightly. “And how did everyone sleep?”

“Delightfully, thank you,” Eleanor said. “Like a baby.”

“There may have been a little noise,” Theodora said, “but one has to expect that in these old houses. Doctor, what do we do this morning?”

“Hm?” said the doctor, looking up. He alone looked tired, but his eyes were lighted with the same brightness they found, all, in one another; it is excitement, Eleanor thought; we are all enjoying ourselves.

“Ballechin House,” the doctor said, savoring his words. “Borley Rectory. Glamis Castle. It is incredible to find oneself experiencing it, absolutely incredible. I could
not
have believed it. I begin to understand, dimly, the remote delight of your true medium. I think I shall have the marmalade, if you would be so kind. Thank you. My wife will never believe me. Food has a new flavor—do you find it so?”

“It isn't just that Mrs. Dudley has surpassed herself, then; I was wondering,” Luke said.

“I've been trying to remember,” Eleanor said. “About last night, I mean. I can remember
knowing
that I was frightened, but I can't imagine actually
being
frightened—”

“I remember the cold,” Theodora said, and shivered.

“I think it's because it was so unreal by any pattern of thought I'm used to; I mean, it just didn't make
sense
.” Eleanor stopped and laughed, embarrassed.

“I agree,” Luke said. “I found myself this morning
telling
myself what had happened last night; the reverse of a bad dream, as a matter of fact, where you keep telling yourself that it
didn't
really happen.”

“I thought it was exciting,” Theodora said.

The doctor lifted a warning finger. “It is still perfectly possible that it is all caused by subterranean waters.”

“Then more houses ought to be built over secret springs,” Theodora said.

The doctor frowned. “This excitement troubles me,” he said. “It is intoxicating, certainly, but might it not also be dangerous? An effect of the atmosphere of Hill House? The first sign that we have—as it were—fallen under a spell?”

“Then I will be an enchanted princess,” Theodora said.

“And yet,” Luke said, “if last night is a true measure of Hill House, we are not going to have much trouble; we were frightened, certainly, and found the experience unpleasant while it was going on, and yet I cannot remember that I felt in any
physical
danger; even Theodora telling that whatever was outside her door was coming to eat her did not really sound—”

“I know what she meant,” Eleanor said, “because I thought it was exactly the right word. The sense was that it wanted to consume us, take us into itself, make us a part of the house, maybe—oh, dear. I thought I knew what I was saying, but I'm doing it very badly.”

“No physical danger exists,” the doctor said positively. “No ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself. One cannot even say that the ghost attacks the mind, because the mind, the conscious, thinking mind, is invulnerable; in all our conscious minds, as we sit here talking, there is not one iota of belief in ghosts. Not one of us, even after last night, can say the word ‘ghost' without a little involuntary smile. No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense. Not one of us thinks rationally that what ran through the garden last night was a ghost, and what knocked on the door was a ghost, and yet there was certainly
something
going on in Hill House last night, and the mind's instinctive refuge—self-doubt—is eliminated. We cannot say, ‘It was my imagination,' because three other people were there too.”

“I could say,” Eleanor put in, smiling, “ ‘All three of you are in my imagination; none of this is real.' ”

“If I thought you could really believe that,” the doctor said gravely, “I would turn you out of Hill House this morning. You would be venturing far too close to the state of mind which would welcome the perils of Hill House with a kind of sisterly embrace.”

“He means he would think you were batty, Nell dear.”

“Well,” Eleanor said, “I expect I would be. If I had to take sides with Hill House against the rest of you, I would expect you to send me away.” Why me, she wondered, why me? Am I the public conscience? Expected always to say in cold words what the rest of them are too arrogant to recognize? Am I supposed to be the weakest, weaker than Theodora? Of all of us, she thought, I am surely the one least likely to turn against the others.

“Poltergeists are another thing altogether,” the doctor said, his eyes resting briefly on Eleanor. “They deal entirely with the physical world; they throw stones, they move objects, they smash dishes; Mrs. Foyster at Borley Rectory was a longsuffering woman, but she finally lost her temper entirely when her best teapot was hurled through the window. Poltergeists, however, are rock-bottom on the supernatural social scale; they are destructive, but mindless and will-less; they are merely undirected force. Do you recall,” he asked with a little smile, “Oscar Wilde's lovely story, ‘The Canterville Ghost'?”

“The American twins who routed the fine old English ghost,” Theodora said.

“Exactly. I have always liked the notion that the American twins were actually a poltergeist phenomenon; certainly poltergeists can overshadow any more interesting manifestation. Bad ghosts drive out good.” And he patted his hands happily. “They drive out everything else, too,” he added. “There is a manor in Scotland, infested with poltergeists, where as many as seventeen spontaneous fires have broken out in one day; poltergeists like to turn people out of bed violently by tipping the bed end over end, and I remember the case of a minister who was forced to leave his home because he was tormented, day after day, by a poltergeist who hurled at his head hymn books stolen from a rival church.”

Suddenly, without reason, laughter trembled inside Eleanor; she wanted to run to the head of the table and hug the doctor, she wanted to reel, chanting, across the stretches of the lawn, she wanted to sing and to shout and to fling her arms and move in great emphatic, possessing circles around the rooms of Hill House; I am here, I am here, she thought. She shut her eyes quickly in delight and then said demurely to the doctor, “And what do we do today?”

“You're still like a pack of children,” the doctor said, smiling too. “Always asking me what to do today. Can't you amuse yourselves with your toys? Or with each other?
I
have work to do.”

“All I
really
want to do”—and Theodora giggled—“is slide down that banister.” The excited gaiety had caught her as it had Eleanor.

“Hide and seek,” Luke said.

“Try not to wander around alone too much,” the doctor said. “I can't think of a good reason why not, but it does seem sensible.”

“Because there are bears in the woods,” Theodora said.

“And tigers in the attic,” Eleanor said.

“And an old witch in the tower, and a dragon in the drawing room.”

“I am quite serious,” the doctor said, laughing.

“It's ten o'clock. I clear—”

“Good morning, Mrs. Dudley,” the doctor said, and Eleanor and Theodora and Luke leaned back and laughed helplessly.

“I clear at ten o'clock.”

“We won't keep you long. About fifteen minutes, please, and then you can clear the table.”

“I clear breakfast at ten o'clock. I set on lunch at one. Dinner I set on at six. It's ten o'clock.”

“Mrs. Dudley,” the doctor began sternly, and then, noticing Luke's face tight with silent laughter, lifted his napkin to cover his eyes, and gave in. “You may clear the table, Mrs. Dudley,” the doctor said brokenly.

Happily, the sound of their laughter echoing along the halls of Hill House and carrying to the marble group in the drawing room and the nursery upstairs and the odd little top to the tower, they made their way down the passage to their parlor and fell, still laughing, into chairs. “We must not make fun of Mrs. Dudley,” the doctor said and leaned forward, his face in his hands and his shoulders shaking.

They laughed for a long time, speaking now and then in halfphrases, trying to tell one another something, pointing at one another wildly, and their laughter rocked Hill House until, weak and aching, they lay back, spent, and regarded one another. “Now—” the doctor began, and was stopped by a little giggling burst from Theodora.

“Now,” the doctor said again, more severely, and they were quiet. “I want more coffee,” he said, appealing. “Don't we all?”

“You mean go right in there and ask Mrs. Dudley?” Eleanor asked.

“Walk right up to her when it isn't one o'clock or six o'clock and just
ask
her for some coffee?” Theodora demanded.

“Roughly, yes,” the doctor said. “Luke, my boy, I have observed that you are already something of a favorite with Mrs. Dudley—”

“And how,” Luke inquired with amazement, “did you ever manage to observe anything so unlikely? Mrs. Dudley regards me with the same particular loathing she gives a dish not properly on its shelf; in Mrs. Dudley's eyes—”

“You are, after all, the heir to the house,” the doctor said coaxingly. “Mrs. Dudley must feel for you as an old family retainer feels for the young master.”

“In Mrs. Dudley's eyes I am something lower than a dropped fork. I beg of you, if you are contemplating asking the old fool for something, send Theo, or our charming Nell.
They
are not afraid—”

“Nope,” Theodora said. “You can't send a helpless female to face down Mrs. Dudley. Nell and I are here to be protected, not to man the battlements for you cowards.”

“The doctor—”

“Nonsense,” the doctor said heartily. “You certainly wouldn't think of asking
me,
an older man; anyway, you
know
she adores you.”

“Insolent graybeard,” Luke said. “Sacrificing me for a cup of coffee. Do not be surprised, and I say it darkly, do not be surprised if you lose your Luke in this cause; perhaps Mrs. Dudley has not yet had her own midmorning snack, and she is perfectly capable of a
filet de Luke à la meunière,
or perhaps
dieppoise,
depending upon her mood; if I do not return”—and he shook his finger warningly under the doctor's nose—“I entreat you to regard your lunch with the gravest suspicion.” Bowing extravagantly, as befitted one off to slay a giant, he closed the door behind him.