The Haunting of Hill House (16 page)

“Like the doorway of a tomb,” she said. “It’s warm enough inside, though.”

Luke came, hesitated in the cold spot, and then moved quickly to get out of it, and Eleanor, following, felt with incredulity the piercing cold that struck her between one step and the next; it was like passing through a wall of ice, she thought, and asked the doctor, “What is it?”

The doctor was patting his hands together with delight. “You can keep your Turkish corners, my boy,” he said. He reached out a hand and held it carefully over the location of the cold. “They
cannot
explain this,” he said. “The very essence of the tomb, as Theodora points out. The cold spot in Borley Rectory only dropped eleven degrees,” he went on complacently. “This, I should think, is considerably colder. The heart of the house.”

Theodora and Eleanor had moved to stand closer together; although the nursery was warm, it smelled musty and close, and the cold crossing the doorway was almost tangible, visible as a barrier which must be crossed in order to get out. Beyond the windows the gray stone of the tower pressed close; inside, the room was dark and the line of nursery animals painted along the wall seemed somehow not at all jolly, but as though they were trapped, or related to the dying deer in the sporting prints of the game room. The nursery, larger than the other bedrooms, had an indefinable air of neglect found nowhere else in Hill House, and it crossed Eleanor’s mind that even Mrs. Dudley’s diligent care might not bring her across that cold barrier any oftener than necessary.

Luke had stepped back across the cold spot and was examining the hall carpet, then the walls, patting at the surfaces as though hoping to discover some cause for the odd cold. “It
couldn’t
be a draft,” he said, looking up at the doctor. “Unless they’ve got a direct air line to the North Pole. Everything’s solid, anyway.”

“I wonder who slept in the nursery,” the doctor said irrelevantly. “Do you suppose they shut it up, once the children were gone?”

“Look,” Luke said, pointing. In either corner of the hall, over the nursery doorway, two grinning heads were set; meant, apparently, as gay decorations for the nursery entrance, they were no more jolly or carefree than the animals inside. Their separate stares, captured forever in distorted laughter, met and locked at the point of the hall where the vicious cold centered. “When you stand where they can look at you,” Luke explained, “they freeze you.”

Curiously, the doctor stepped down the hall to join him, looking up. “Don’t leave us alone in here,” Theodora said, and ran out of the nursery, pulling Eleanor through the cold, which was like a fast slap, or a close cold breath. “A fine place to chill our beer,” she said, and put out her tongue at the grinning faces.

“I must make a full account of this,” the doctor said happily.

“It doesn’t seem like an
impartial
cold,” Eleanor said, awkward because she was not quite sure what she meant. “I felt it as
deliberate,
as though something wanted to give me an unpleasant shock.”

“It’s because of the faces, I suppose,” the doctor said; he was on his hands and knees, feeling along the floor. “Measuring tape and thermometer,” he told himself, “chalk for an outline; perhaps the cold intensifies at night? Everything is worse,” he said, looking at Eleanor, “if you think something is looking at you.”

Luke stepped through the cold, with a shiver, and closed the door to the nursery; he came back to the others in the hall with a kind of leap, as though he thought he could escape the cold by not touching the floor. With the nursery door closed they realized all at once how much darker it had become, and Theodora said restlessly, “Let’s get downstairs to our parlor; I can feel those hills pushing in.”

“After five,” Luke said. “Cocktail time. I suppose,” he said to the doctor, “you will trust me to mix you a cocktail again tonight?”

“Too much vermouth,” the doctor said, and followed them lingeringly, watching the nursery door over his shoulder.

“I propose,” the doctor said, setting down his napkin, “that we take our coffee in our little parlor. I find that fire very cheerful.”

Theodora giggled. “Mrs. Dudley’s gone, so let’s race around fast and get all those doors and windows open and take everything down from the shelves—”

“The house seems different when she’s not in it,” Eleanor said.

“Emptier.” Luke looked at her and nodded; he was arranging the coffee cups on a tray, and the doctor had already gone on, doggedly opening doors and propping them. “Each night I realize suddenly that we four are alone here.”

“Although Mrs. Dudley’s not much good as far as company is concerned; it’s funny,” Eleanor said, looking down at the dinner table, “I dislike Mrs. Dudley as much as any of you, but my mother would
never
let me get up and leave a table looking like this until morning.”

“If she wants to leave before dark she has to clear away in the morning,” Theodora said without interest. “
I
’m certainly not going to do it.”

“It’s not nice to walk away and leave a dirty table.”

“You couldn’t get them back on the right shelves anyway, and she’d have to do it all over again just to get your fingermarks off things.”

“If I just took the silverware and let it soak—”

“No,” Theodora said, catching her hand. “Do you want to go out into that kitchen all alone, with all those doors?”

“No,” Eleanor said, setting down the handful of forks she had gathered. “I guess I don’t, really.” She lingered to look uneasily at the table, at the crumpled napkins and the drop of wine spilled by Luke’s place, and shook her head. “I don’t know what my mother would say, though.”

“Come on,” Theodora said. “They’ve left lights for us.”

The fire in the little parlor was bright, and Theodora sat down beside the coffee tray while Luke brought brandy from the cupboard where he had carefully set it away the night before. “We must be cheerful at all costs,” he said. “I’ll challenge you again tonight, Doctor.”

Before dinner they had ransacked the other downstairs rooms for comfortable chairs and lamps, and now their little parlor was easily the pleasantest room in the house. “Hill House has really been very kind to us,” Theodora said, giving Eleanor her coffee, and Eleanor sat down gratefully in a pillowy, overstuffed chair. “No dirty dishes for Eleanor to wash, a pleasant evening in good company, and perhaps the sun shining again tomorrow.”

“We must plan our picnic,” Eleanor said.

“I am going to get fat and lazy in Hill House,” Theodora went on. Her insistence on naming Hill House troubled Eleanor. It’s as though she were saying it deliberately, Eleanor thought, telling the house she knows its name, calling the house to tell it where we are; is it bravado? “Hill House, Hill House, Hill House,” Theodora said softly, and smiled across at Eleanor.

“Tell me,” Luke said politely to Theodora, “since you
are
a princess, tell me about the political situation in your country.”

“Very unsettled,” Theodora said. “I ran away because my father, who is of course the king, insists that I marry Black Michael, who is the pretender to the throne. I, of course, cannot endure the sight of Black Michael, who wears one gold earring and beats his grooms with a riding crop.”

“A most unstable country,” Luke said. “How did you ever manage to get away?”

“I fled in a hay wagon, disguised as a milkmaid. They never thought to look for me there, and I crossed the border with papers I forged myself in a woodcutter’s hut.”

“And Black Michael will no doubt take over the country now in a
coup d’état?
”

“Undoubtedly. And he can have it.”

It’s like waiting in a dentist’s office, Eleanor thought, watching them over her coffee cup; waiting in a dentist’s office and listening to other patients make brave jokes across the room, all of you certain to meet the dentist sooner or later. She looked up suddenly, aware of the doctor near her, and smiled uncertainly.

“Nervous?” the doctor asked, and Eleanor nodded.

“Only because I wonder what’s going to happen,” she said.

“So do I.” The doctor moved a chair and sat down beside her. “You have the feeling that something—whatever it is—is going to happen soon?”

“Yes. Everything seems to be waiting.”

“And
they
”—the doctor nodded at Theodora and Luke, who were laughing at each other—“
they
meet it in
their
way; I wonder what it will do to all of us. I would have said a month ago that a situation like this would never really come about, that we four would sit here together, in this house.”
He
does not name it, Eleanor noticed. “I’ve been waiting for a long time,” he said.

“You think we are right to stay?”

“Right?” he said. “I think we are all incredibly silly to stay. I think that an atmosphere like this one can find out the flaws and faults and weaknesses in all of us, and break us apart in a matter of days. We have only one defense, and that is running away. At least it can’t
follow
us, can it? When we feel ourselves endangered we can leave, just as we came. And,” he added dryly, “just as fast as we can go.”

“But we are forewarned,” Eleanor said, “and there are four of us together.”

“I have already mentioned this to Luke and Theodora,” he said. “Promise me absolutely that you will leave, as fast as you can, if you begin to feel the house catching at you.”

“I promise,” Eleanor said, smiling. He is trying to make me feel braver, she thought, and was grateful. “It’s all right, though,” she told him. “Really, it’s all right.”

“I will feel no hesitation about sending you away,” he said, rising, “if it seems to be necessary. Luke?” he said. “Will the ladies excuse us?”

While they set up the chessboard and men Theodora wandered, cup in hand, around the room, and Eleanor thought, She moves like an animal, nervous and alert; she can’t sit still while there is any scent of disturbance in the air; we are all uneasy. “Come and sit by me,” she said, and Theodora came, moving with grace, circling to a resting spot. She sat down in the chair the doctor had left, and leaned her head back tiredly; how lovely she is, Eleanor thought, how thoughtlessly, luckily lovely. “Are you tired?”

Theodora turned her head, smiling. “I can’t stand waiting much longer.”

“I was just thinking how relaxed you looked.”

“And
I
was just thinking of—when was it? day before yesterday?—and wondering how I could have brought myself to leave there and come here. Possibly I’m homesick.”

“Already?”

“Did you ever think about being homesick? If your home was Hill House would you be homesick for it? Did those two little girls cry for their dark, grim house when they were taken away?”

“I’ve never been away from anywhere,” Eleanor said carefully, “so I suppose I’ve never been homesick.”

“How about now? Your little apartment?”

“Perhaps,” Eleanor said, looking into the fire, “I haven’t had it long enough to believe it’s my own.”

“I want my own bed,” Theodora said, and Eleanor thought, She is sulking again; when she is hungry or tired or bored she turns into a baby. “I’m sleepy,” Theodora said.

“It’s after eleven,” Eleanor said, and as she turned to glance at the chess game the doctor shouted with joyful triumph, and Luke laughed.

“Now, sir,” the doctor said. “
Now,
sir.”

“Fairly beaten, I admit,” Luke said. He began to gather the chessmen and set them back into their box. “Any reason why I can’t take a drop of brandy upstairs with me? To put myself to sleep, or give myself Dutch courage, or some such reason. Actually”—and he smiled over at Theodora and Eleanor—“I plan to stay up and read for a while.”

“Are you still reading
Pamela
?” Eleanor asked the doctor.

“Volume two. I have three volumes to go, and then I shall begin
Clarissa Harlowe,
I think. Perhaps Luke would care to borrow—”

“No, thanks,” Luke said hastily. “I have a suitcase full of mystery stories.”

The doctor turned to look around. “Let me see,” he said, “fire screened, lights out. Leave the doors for Mrs. Dudley to close in the morning.”

Tiredly, following one another, they went up the great stairway, turning out lights behind them. “Has everyone got a flashlight, by the way?” the doctor asked, and they nodded, more intent upon sleep than the waves of darkness which came after them up the stairs of Hill House.

“Good night, everyone,” Eleanor said, opening the door to the blue room.

“Good night,” Luke said.

“Good night,” Theodora said.

“Good night,” the doctor said. “Sleep tight.”

“Coming, mother, coming,” Eleanor said, fumbling for the light. “It’s all right, I’m coming.”
Eleanor,
she heard,
Eleanor
. “Coming, coming,” she shouted irritably, “just a
minute,
I’m
coming
.”

“Eleanor?”

Then she thought, with a crashing shock which brought her awake, cold and shivering, out of bed and awake:
I am in Hill House
.

“What?” she cried out. “What? Theodora?”

“Eleanor? In here.”

“Coming.” No time for the light; she kicked a table out of the way, wondering at the noise of it, and struggled briefly with the door of the connecting bathroom. That is not the table falling, she thought; my mother is knocking on the wall. It was blessedly light in Theodora’s room, and Theodora was sitting up in bed, her hair tangled from sleep and her eyes wide with the shock of awakening; I must look the same way, Eleanor thought, and said, “I’m here, what
is
it? ”—and then heard, clearly for the first time, although she had been hearing it ever since she awakened. “What
is
it?” she whispered.

She sat down slowly on the foot of Theodora’s bed, wondering at what seemed calmness in herself. Now, she thought, now. It is only a noise, and terribly cold, terribly, terribly cold. It is a noise down the hall, far down at the end, near the nursery door, and terribly cold,
not
my mother knocking on the wall.