The Haunting of Hill House (25 page)

“I’ll come,” she said aloud, and was speaking up to Theodora, who leaned over her. The room was perfectly quiet, and between the still curtains at the window she could see the sunlight. Luke sat in a chair by the window; his face was bruised and his shirt was torn, and he was still drinking brandy. The doctor sat back in another chair; his hair freshly combed, looking neat and dapper and self-possessed. Theodora, leaning over Eleanor, said, “She’s all right, I think,” and Eleanor sat up and shook her head, staring. Composed and quiet, the house lifted itself primly around her, and nothing had been moved.

“How . . .” Eleanor said, and all three of them laughed.

“Another day,” the doctor said, and in spite of his appearance his voice was wan. “Another night,” he said.

“As I tried to say earlier,” Luke remarked, “living in a haunted house plays hell with a sense of humor; I really did not intend to make a forbidden pun,” he told Theodora.

“How—are they?” Eleanor asked, the words sounding unfamiliar and her mouth stiff.

“Both sleeping like babies,” the doctor said. “Actually,” he said, as though continuing a conversation begun while Eleanor slept, “I cannot believe that my wife stirred up that storm, but I do admit that one more word about pure love . . .”

“What happened?” Eleanor asked; I must have been gritting my teeth all night, she thought, the way my mouth feels.

“Hill House went dancing,” Theodora said, “taking us along on a mad midnight fling. At least, I
think
it was dancing; it might have been turning somersaults.”

“It’s almost nine,” the doctor said. “When Eleanor is ready . . .”

“Come along, baby,” Theodora said. “Theo will wash your face for you and make you all neat for breakfast.”

Did anyone tell them that Mrs. Dudley clears at ten?” Theodora looked into the coffee pot speculatively.

The doctor hesitated. “I hate to wake them after such a night.”

“But Mrs. Dudley clears at ten.”

“They’re coming,” Eleanor said. “I can hear them on the stairs.” I can hear everything, all over the house, she wanted to tell them.

Then, distantly, they could all hear Mrs. Montague’s voice, raised in irritation and Luke, realizing, said, “Oh, Lord—they can’t find the dining room,” and hurried out to open doors.

“—properly aired.” Mrs. Montague’s voice preceded her, and she swept into the dining room, tapped the doctor curtly on the shoulder by way of greeting and seated herself with a general nod to the others. “I must say,” she began at once, “that I think you might have called us for breakfast. I suppose everything is cold? Is the coffee bearable?”

“Good morning,” Arthur said sulkily, and sat down himself with an air of sullen ill temper. Theodora almost upset the coffee pot in her haste to set a cup of coffee before Mrs. Montague.

“It
seems
hot enough,” Mrs. Montague said. “I shall speak to your Mrs. Dudley this morning in any case. That room must be aired.”

“And your night?” the doctor asked timidly. “Did you spend a—ah—profitable night?”

“If by profitable you meant comfortable, John, I wish you would say so. No, in answer to your most civil inquiry, I did
not
spend a comfortable night. I did not sleep a wink. That room is unendurable.”

“Noisy old house, isn’t it?” Arthur said. “Branch kept tapping against my window all night; nearly drove me crazy, tapping and tapping.”

“Even with the windows open that room is stuffy. Mrs. Dudley’s coffee is not as poor as her housekeeping. Another cup, if you please. I am astonished, John, that you put me in a room not properly aired; if there is to be any communication with those beyond, the air circulation, at least, ought to be adequate. I smelled dust all night.”

“Can’t understand
you,
” Arthur said to the doctor, “letting yourself get all nervy about this place. Sat there all night long with my revolver and not a mouse stirred. Except for that infernal branch tapping on the window. Nearly drove me crazy,” he confided to Theodora.

“We will not give up hope, of course.” Mrs. Montague scowled at her husband. “Perhaps tonight there may be some manifestations.”

“Theo?” Eleanor put down her notepad, and Theodora, scribbling busily, looked up with a frown. “I’ve been thinking about something.”

“I
hate
writing these notes; I feel like a damn fool trying to write this crazy stuff.”

“I’ve been wondering.”

“Well?” Theodora smiled a little. “You look so serious,” she said. “Are you coming to some great decision?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said, deciding. “About what I’m going to do afterwards. After we all leave Hill House.”

“Well?”

“I’m coming with you,” Eleanor said.

“Coming where with me?”

“Back with you, back home. I”—and Eleanor smiled wryly—“am going to follow you home.”

Theodora stared. “Why?” she asked blankly.

“I never had anyone to care about,” Eleanor said, wondering where she had heard someone say something like this before. “I want to be someplace where I belong.”

“I am not in the habit of taking home stray cats,” Theodora said lightly.

Eleanor laughed too. “I
am
a kind of stray cat, aren’t I?”

“Well.” Theodora took up her pencil again. “You have your own home,” she said. “You’ll be glad enough to get back to it when the time comes, Nell my Nellie. I suppose we’ll all be glad to get back home. What are you saying about those noises last night?
I
can’t describe them.”

“I’ll come, you know,” Eleanor said. “I’ll just come.”

“Nellie, Nellie.” Theodora laughed again. “Look,” she said. “This is just a summer, just a few weeks’ visit to a lovely old summer resort in the country. You have your life back home, I have
my
life. When the summer is over, we go back. We’ll write each other, of course, and maybe visit, but Hill House is not forever, you know.”

“I can get a job; I won’t be in your way.”

“I don’t understand.” Theodora threw down her pencil in exasperation. “Do you
always
go where you’re not wanted?”

Eleanor smiled placidly. “I’ve never been wanted
anywhere,
” she said.

“It’s all so motherly,” Luke said. “Everything so soft. Everything so padded. Great embracing chairs and sofas which turn out to be hard and unwelcome when you sit down, and reject you at once—”

“Theo?” Eleanor said softly, and Theodora looked at her and shook her head in bewilderment.

“—and hands everywhere. Little soft glass hands, curving out to you, beckoning—”

“Theo?” Eleanor said.

“No,” Theodora said. “I won’t have you. And I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

“Perhaps,” Luke said, watching them, “the single most repulsive aspect is the emphasis upon the globe. I ask you to regard impartially the lampshade made of tiny pieces of broken glass glued together, or the great round balls of the lights upon the stairs or the fluted iridescent candy jar at Theo’s elbow. In the dining room there is a bowl of particularly filthy yellow glass resting upon the cupped hands of a child, and an Easter egg of sugar with a vision of shepherds dancing inside. A bosomy lady supports the stair-rail on her head, and under glass in the drawing room—”

“Nellie, leave me alone. Let’s walk down to the brook or something.”

“—a child’s face, done in cross-stitch. Nell, don’t look so apprehensive; Theo has only suggested that you walk down to the brook. If you like, I will go along.”

“Anything,” Theodora said.

“To frighten away rabbits. If you like, I will carry a stick. If you like, I will not come at all. Theo has only to say the word.”

Theodora laughed. “Perhaps Nell would rather stay here and write on walls.”

“So unkind,” Luke said. “Callous of you, Theo.”

“I want to hear more about the shepherds dancing in the Easter egg,” Theodora said.

“A world contained in sugar. Six very tiny shepherds dancing, and a shepherdess in pink and blue reclining upon a mossy bank enjoying them; there are flowers and trees and sheep, and an old goatherd playing pipes. I would like to have been a goatherd, I think.”

“If you were not a bullfighter,” Theodora said.

“If I were not a bullfighter. Nell’s affairs are the talk of the cafés, you will recall.”

“Pan,” Theodora said. “You should live in a hollow tree, Luke.”

“Nell,” Luke said, “you are not listening.”

“I think you frighten her, Luke.”

“Because Hill House will be mine someday, with its untold treasures and its cushions? I am not gentle with a house, Nell; I might take a fit of restlessness and smash the sugar Easter egg, or shatter the little child hands or go stomping and shouting up and down the stairs striking at glued-glass lamps with a cane and slashing at the bosomy lady with the staircase on her head; I might—”

“You see? You do frighten her.”

“I believe I do,” Luke said. “Nell, I am only talking nonsense.”

“I don’t think he even owns a cane,” Theodora said.

“As a matter of fact, I do. Nell, I am
only
talking nonsense. What is she thinking about, Theo?”

Theodora said carefully, “She wants me to take her home with me after we leave Hill House, and I won’t do it.”

Luke laughed. “Poor silly Nell,” he said. “Journeys end in lovers meeting. Let’s go down to the brook.”

 

“A mother house,” Luke said, as they came down the steps from the veranda to the lawn, “a housemother, a headmistress, a housemistress. I am sure I will be a very poor housemaster, like our Arthur, when Hill House belongs to me.”

“I can’t understand anyone wanting to own Hill House,” Theodora said, and Luke turned and looked back with amusement at the house.

“You never know what you are going to want until you see it clearly,” he said. “If I never had a chance of owning it I might feel very differently. What do people really want with each other, as Nell asked me once; what use are other people?”

“It was my fault my mother died,” Eleanor said. “She knocked on the wall and called me and called me and I never woke up. I ought to have brought her the medicine; I always did before. But this time she called me and I never woke up.”

“You should have forgotten all that by now,” Theodora said.

“I’ve wondered ever since if I did wake up. If I did wake up and hear her, and if I just went back to sleep. It would have been easy, and I’ve wondered about it.”

“Turn here,” Luke said. “If we’re going to the brook.”

“You worry too much, Nell. You probably just
like
thinking it was your fault.”

“It was going to happen sooner or later, in any case,” Eleanor said. “But of course no matter when it happened it was going to be my fault.”

“If it hadn’t happened you would never have come to Hill House.”

“We go single file along here,” Luke said. “Nell, go first.”

Smiling, Eleanor went on ahead, kicking her feet comfortably along the path. Now I know where I am going, she thought; I told her about my mother so
that’s
all right; I will find a little house, or maybe an apartment like hers. I will see her every day, and we will go searching together for lovely things—goldtrimmed dishes, and a white cat, and a sugar Easter egg, and a cup of stars. I will not be frightened or alone any more; I will call myself just
Eleanor
. “Are you two talking about me?” she asked over her shoulder.

After a minute Luke answered politely, “A struggle between good and evil for the soul of Nell. I suppose I will have to be God, however.”

“But of course she can
not
trust either of us,” Theodora said, amused.

“Not me, certainly,” Luke said.

“Besides, Nell,” Theodora said, “we were not talking about you at all. As though I were the games mistress,” she said, half angry, to Luke.

I have waited such a long time, Eleanor was thinking; I have finally earned my happiness. She came, leading them, to the top of the hill and looked down to the slim line of trees they must pass through to get to the brook. They are lovely against the sky, she thought, so straight and free; Luke was wrong about the softness everywhere, because the trees are hard like wooden trees. They are still talking about me, talking about how I came to Hill House and found Theodora and now I will not let her go. Behind her she could hear the murmur of their voices, edged sometimes with malice, sometimes rising in mockery, sometimes touched with a laughter almost of kinship, and she walked on dreamily, hearing them come behind. She could tell when they entered the tall grass a minute after she did, because the grass moved hissingly beneath their feet and a startled grasshopper leaped wildly away.

I could help her in her shop, Eleanor thought; she loves beautiful things and I would go with her to find them. We could go anywhere we pleased, to the edge of the world if we liked, and come back when we wanted to. He is telling her now what he knows about me: that I am not easily taken in, that I had an oleander wall around me, and she is laughing because I am not going to be lonely any more. They are very much alike and they are very kind; I would not really have expected as much from them as they are giving me; I was very right to come because journeys end in lovers meeting.

She came under the hard branches of the trees and the shadows were pleasantly cool after the hot sun on the path; now she had to walk more carefully because the path led downhill and there were sometimes rocks and roots across her way. Behind her their voices went on, quick and sharp, and then more slowly and laughing; I will not look back, she thought happily, because then they would know what I am thinking; we will talk about it together someday, Theo and I, when we have plenty of time. How strange I feel, she thought, coming out of the trees onto the last steep part of the path going down to the brook; I am caught in a kind of wonder, I am still with joy. I will not look around until I am next to the brook, where she almost fell the day we came; I will remind her about the golden fish in the brook and about our picnic.