The Haunting of Hill House (18 page)

“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.

“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.”