The Haunting of Hill House (19 page)

“Lovely Luke.” Theodora stretched luxuriously.

“Lovely Hill House,” Eleanor said. “Theo, there is a kind of little summerhouse in the side garden, all overgrown; I noticed it yesterday. Can we explore it this morning?”

“Delighted,” Theodora said. “I would not like to leave one inch of Hill House uncherished. Anyway, it's too nice a day to stay inside.”

“We'll ask Luke to come too,” Eleanor said. “And you, Doctor?”

“My notes—” the doctor began, and then stopped as the door opened so suddenly that in Eleanor's mind was only the thought that Luke had not dared face Mrs. Dudley after all, but had stood, waiting, pressed against the door; then, looking at his white face and hearing the doctor say with fury, “I broke my own first rule; I sent him alone,” she found herself only asking urgently, “Luke? Luke?”

“It's all right.” Luke even smiled. “But come into the long hallway.”

Chilled by his face and his voice and his smile, they got up silently and followed him through the doorway into the dark long hallway which led back to the front hall. “Here,” Luke said, and a little winding shiver of sickness went down Eleanor's back when she saw that he was holding a lighted match up to the wall.

“It's—writing?” Eleanor asked, pressing closer to see.

“Writing,” Luke said. “I didn't even notice it until I was coming back. Mrs. Dudley said no,” he added, his voice tight.

“My flash.” The doctor took his flashlight from his pocket, and under its light, as he moved slowly from one end of the hall to the other, the letters stood out clearly. “Chalk,” the doctor said, stepping forward to touch a letter with the tip of his finger. “Written in chalk.”

The writing was large and straggling and ought to have looked, Eleanor thought, as though it had been scribbled by bad boys on a fence. Instead, it was incredibly real, going in broken lines over the thick paneling of the hallway. From one end of the hallway to the other the letters went, almost too large to read, even when she stood back against the opposite wall.

“Can you read it?” Luke asked softly, and the doctor, moving his flashlight, read slowly: HELP ELEANOR COME HOME.

“No.” And Eleanor felt the words stop in her throat; she had seen her name as the doctor read it. It is me, she thought. It is my name standing out there so clearly; I should not be on the walls of this house. “Wipe it off,
please,
” she said, and felt Theodora's arm go around her shoulders. “It's
crazy,
” Eleanor said, bewildered.

“Crazy is the word, all right,” Theodora said strongly. “Come back inside, Nell, and sit down. Luke will get something and wipe it off.”

“But it's
crazy,
” Eleanor said, hanging back to see her name on the wall.
“Why—?”

Firmly the doctor put her through the door into the little parlor and closed it; Luke had already attacked the message with his handkerchief. “Now you listen to me,” the doctor said to Eleanor. “Just because your name—”

“That's it,” Eleanor said, staring at him. “It knows my name, doesn't it? It knows
my
name.”

“Shut up, will you?” Theodora shook her violently. “It could have said any of us; it knows
all
our names.”

“Did you write it?” Eleanor turned to Theodora. “Please tell me—I won't be angry or anything, just so I can know that—maybe it was only a joke? To frighten me?” She looked appealingly at the doctor.

“You know that none of us wrote it,” the doctor said.

Luke came in, wiping his hands on his handkerchief, and Eleanor turned hopefully. “Luke,” she said, “you wrote it, didn't you? When you went out?”

Luke stared, and then came to sit on the arm of her chair. “Listen,” he said, “you want me to go writing your name everywhere? Carving your initials on trees? Writing ‘Eleanor, Eleanor' on little scraps of paper?” He gave her hair a soft little pull. “I've got more sense,” he said. “Behave yourself.”

“Then why me?” Eleanor said, looking from one of them to another; I am outside, she thought madly, I am the one chosen, and she said quickly, beggingly, “Did I do something to attract attention, more than anyone else?”

“No more than usual, dear,” Theodora said. She was standing by the fireplace, leaning on the mantel and tapping her fingers, and when she spoke she looked at Eleanor with a bright smile. “Maybe you wrote it yourself.”

Angry, Eleanor almost shouted. “You think I
want
to see my name scribbled all over this foul house? You think
I
like the idea that I'm the center of attention?
I
'm not the spoiled baby, after all—
I
don't like being singled out—”

“Asking for help, did you notice?” Theodora said lightly. “Perhaps the spirit of the poor little companion has found a means of communication at last. Maybe she was only waiting for some drab, timid—”

“Maybe it was only addressed to me because no possible appeal for help could get through that iron selfishness of yours; maybe I might have more sympathy and understanding in one minute than—”

“And maybe, of course, you wrote it to yourself,” Theodora said again.

After the manner of men who see women quarreling, the doctor and Luke had withdrawn, standing tight together in miserable silence; now, at last, Luke moved and spoke. “That's enough, Eleanor,” he said, unbelievably, and Eleanor whirled around, stamping. “How dare you?” she said, gasping. “How
dare
you?”

And the doctor laughed, then, and she stared at him and then at Luke, who was smiling and watching her. What is wrong with me? she thought. Then—but they think Theodora did it on purpose, made me mad so I wouldn't be frightened; how shameful to be maneuvered that way. She covered her face and sat down in her chair.

“Nell, dear,” Theodora said, “I
am
sorry.”

I must say something, Eleanor told herself; I must show them that I am a good sport, after all; a good sport; let them think that I am ashamed of myself. “
I
'm sorry,” she said. “I was frightened.”

“Of course you were,” the doctor said, and Eleanor thought, How simple he is, how transparent; he believes every silly thing he has ever heard. He thinks, even, that Theodora shocked me out of hysteria. She smiled at him and thought, Now I am back in the fold.

“I really thought you were going to start shrieking,” Theodora said, coming to kneel by Eleanor's chair. “
I
would have, in your place. But we can't afford to have you break up, you know.”

We can't afford to have anyone but Theodora in the center of the stage, Eleanor thought; if Eleanor is going to be the outsider, she is going to be it all alone. She reached out and patted Theodora's head and said, “Thanks. I guess I was kind of shaky for a minute.”

“I wondered if you two were going to come to blows,” Luke said, “until I realized what Theodora was doing.”

Smiling down into Theodora's bright, happy eyes, Eleanor thought, But that isn't what Theodora was doing at all.

Time passed lazily at Hill House. Eleanor and Theodora, the doctor and Luke, alert against terror, wrapped around by the rich hills and securely set into the warm, dark luxuries of the house, were permitted a quiet day and a quiet night—enough, perhaps, to dull them a little. They took their meals together, and Mrs. Dudley's cooking stayed perfect. They talked together and played chess; the doctor finished
Pamela
and began on
Sir Charles Grandison
. A compelling need for occasional privacy led them to spend some hours alone in their separate rooms, without disturbance. Theodora and Eleanor and Luke explored the tangled thicket behind the house and found the little summerhouse, while the doctor sat on the wide lawn, writing, within sight and hearing. They found a walled-in rose garden, grown over with weeds, and a vegetable garden tenderly nourished by the Dudleys. They spoke often of arranging their picnic by the brook. There were wild strawberries near the summerhouse, and Theodora and Eleanor and Luke brought back a handkerchief full and lay on the lawn near the doctor, eating them, staining their hands and their mouths; like children, the doctor told them, looking up with amusement from his notes. Each of them had written—carelessly, and with little attention to detail—an account of what they thought they had seen and heard so far in Hill House, and the doctor had put the papers away in his portfolio. The next morning—their third morning in Hill House—the doctor, aided by Luke, had spent a loving and maddening hour on the floor of the upstairs hall, trying, with chalk and measuring tape, to determine the precise dimensions of the cold spot, while Eleanor and Theodora sat cross-legged on the hall floor, noting down the doctor's measurements and playing tictac-toe. The doctor was considerably hampered in his work by the fact that, his hands repeatedly chilled by the extreme cold, he could not hold either the chalk or the tape for more than a minute at a time. Luke, inside the nursery doorway, could hold one end of the tape until his hand came into the cold spot, and then his fingers lost strength and relaxed helplessly. A thermometer, dropped into the center of the cold spot, refused to register any change at all, but continued doggedly maintaining that the temperature there was the same as the temperature down the rest of the hall, causing the doctor to fume wildly against the statisticians of Borley Rectory, who had caught an eleven-degree drop. When he had defined the cold spot as well as he could, and noted his results in his notebook, he brought them downstairs for lunch and issued a general challenge to them, to meet him at croquet in the cool of the afternoon.

“It seems foolish,” he explained, “to spend a morning as glorious as this has been looking at a frigid place on a floor. We must plan to spend more time outside”—and was mildly surprised when they laughed.

“Is there still a world somewhere?” Eleanor asked wonderingly. Mrs. Dudley had made them a peach shortcake, and she looked down at her plate and said, “I am sure Mrs. Dudley goes somewhere else at night, and she brings back heavy cream each morning, and Dudley comes up with groceries every afternoon, but as far as I can remember there is no other place than this.”

“We are on a desert island,” Luke said.

“I can't picture any world but Hill House,” Eleanor said.

“Perhaps,” Theodora said, “we should make notches on a stick, or pile pebbles in a heap, one each day, so we will know how long we have been marooned.”

“How pleasant not to have any word from outside.” Luke helped himself to an enormous heap of whipped cream. “No letters, no newspapers; anything might be happening.”

“Unfortunately—” the doctor said, and then stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he went on. “I meant only to say that word
will
be reaching us from outside, and of course it is not unfortunate at all. Mrs. Montague—my wife, that is—will be here on Saturday.”

“But when is Saturday?” Luke asked. “Delighted to see Mrs. Montague, of course.”

“Day after tomorrow.” The doctor thought. “Yes,” he said after a minute, “I believe that the day after tomorrow is Saturday. We will know it is Saturday, of course,” he told them with a little twinkle, “because Mrs. Montague will be here.”

“I hope she is not holding high hopes of things going bump in the night,” Theodora said. “Hill House has fallen far short of its original promise, I think. Or perhaps Mrs. Montague will be greeted with a volley of psychic experiences.”

“Mrs. Montague,” the doctor said, “will be perfectly ready to receive them.”

“I wonder,” Theodora said to Eleanor as they left the lunch table under Mrs. Dudley's watchful eye, “why everything
has
been so quiet. I think this waiting is nerve-racking, almost worse than having something happen.”

“It's not us doing the waiting,” Eleanor said. “It's the house. I think it's biding its time.”

“Waiting until we feel secure, maybe, and then it will pounce.”

“I wonder how long it can wait.” Eleanor shivered and started up the great staircase. “I am almost tempted to write a letter to my sister. You know—‘Having a perfectly
splendid
time here in jolly old Hill House. . . . ' ”

“ ‘You really must plan to bring the whole family next summer,'” Theodora went on. “ ‘We sleep under blankets every night. . . . ' ”

“ ‘The air is so bracing, particularly in the upstairs hall. . . . ' ”

“ ‘You go around all the time just glad to be alive. . . . ' ”

“ ‘There's something going on every minute. . . . ' ”

“ ‘Civilization seems so far away. . . . ' ”

Eleanor laughed. She was ahead of Theodora, at the top of the stairs. The dark hallway was a little lightened this afternoon, because they had left the nursery door open and the sunlight came through the windows by the tower and touched the doctor's measuring tape and chalk on the floor. The light reflected from the stained-glass window on the stair landing and made shattered fragments of blue and orange and green on the dark wood of the hall. “I'm going to sleep,” she said. “I've never been so lazy in my life.”

“I'm going to lie on my bed and dream about streetcars,” Theodora said.

It had become Eleanor's habit to hesitate in the doorway of her room, glancing around quickly before she went inside; she told herself that this was because the room was so exceedingly blue and always took a moment to get used to. When she came inside she went across to open the window, which she always found closed; today she was halfway across the room before she heard Theodora's door slam back, and Theodora's smothered “Eleanor!” Moving quickly, Eleanor ran into the hall and to Theodora's doorway, to stop, aghast, looking over Theodora's shoulder. “What
is
it?” she whispered.