The Haunting of Hill House (8 page)

“Good Lord,” Theodora said, looking sideways at Eleanor. “How perfectly enchanting. A positive bower.”

“I set dinner on the dining-room sideboard at six sharp,” Mrs. Dudley said. “You can serve yourselves. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast ready for you at nine. That's the way I agreed to do.”

“You're frightened,” Theodora said, watching Eleanor.

“I can't keep the rooms up the way you'd like, but there's no one else you could get that would help me. I don't wait on people. What I agreed to, it doesn't mean I wait on people.”

“It was just when I thought I was all alone,” Eleanor said.

“I don't stay after six. Not after it begins to get dark.”

“I'm here now,” Theodora said, “so it's all right.”

“We have a connecting bathroom,” Eleanor said absurdly. “The rooms are exactly alike.”

Green dimity curtains hung over the windows in Theodora's room, the wallpaper was decked with green garlands, the bedspread and quilt were green, the marble-topped dresser and the huge wardrobe were the same. “I've never seen such awful places in my
life,
” Eleanor said, her voice rising.

“Like the very best hotels,” Theodora said, “or any good girl's camp.”

“I leave before dark comes,” Mrs. Dudley went on.

“No one can hear you if you scream in the night,” Eleanor told Theodora. She realized that she was clutching at the doorknob and, under Theodora's quizzical eye, unclenched her fingers and walked steadily across the room. “We'll have to find some way of opening these windows,” she said.

“So there won't be anyone around if you need help,” Mrs. Dudley said. “We couldn't hear you, even in the night. No one could.”

“All right now?” Theodora asked, and Eleanor nodded.

“No one lives any nearer than the town. No one else will come any nearer than that.”

“You're probably just hungry,” Theodora said. “And I'm starved myself.” She set her suitcase on the bed and slipped off her shoes.
“Nothing,”
she said, “upsets me more than being hungry; I snarl and snap and burst into tears.” She lifted a pair of softly tailored slacks out of the suitcase.

“In the night,” Mrs. Dudley said. She smiled. “In the dark,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

After a minute Eleanor said, “She also walks without making a sound.”

“Delightful old body.” Theodora turned, regarding her room. “I take it back, that about the best hotels,” she said. “It's a little bit like a boarding school I went to for a while.”

“Come and see mine,” Eleanor said. She opened the bathroom door and led the way into her blue room. “I was all unpacked and thinking about packing again when you came.”

“Poor baby. You're certainly starving. All
I
could think of when I got a look at the place from outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down. Maybe before we leave . . .”

“It was terrible, being here alone.”

“You should have seen that boarding school of mine during vacations.” Theodora went back into her own room and, with the sense of movement and sound in the two rooms, Eleanor felt more cheerful. She straightened her clothes on the hangers in the wardrobe and set her books evenly on the bed table. “You know,” Theodora called from the other room, “it
is
kind of like the first day at school; everything's ugly and strange, and you don't know anybody, and you're afraid everyone's going to laugh at your clothes.”

Eleanor, who had opened the dresser drawer to take out a pair of slacks, stopped and then laughed and threw the slacks on the bed.

“Did I understand correctly,” Theodora went on, “that Mrs. Dudley is not going to come if we scream in the night?”

“It was not what she agreed to. Did you meet the amiable old retainer at the gate?”

“We had a lovely chat. He said I couldn't come in and I said I could and then I tried to run him down with my car but he jumped. Look, do you think we have to sit around here in our rooms and wait? I'd like to change into something comfortable—unless we dress for dinner, do you think?”

“I won't if you won't.”

“I won't if
you
won't. They can't fight both of us. Anyway, let's get out of here and go exploring; I would very much like to get this roof off from over my head.”

“It gets dark so early, in these hills, with all the trees . . .” Eleanor went to the window again, but there was still sunlight slanting across the lawn.

“It won't be really dark for nearly an hour. I want to go outside and roll on the grass.”

Eleanor chose a red sweater, thinking that in this room in this house the red of the sweater and the red of the sandals bought to match it would almost certainly be utterly at war with each other, although they had been close enough yesterday in the city. Serves me right anyway, she thought, for wanting to wear such things; I never did before. But she looked oddly well, it seemed to her as she stood by the long mirror on the wardrobe door, almost comfortable. “Do you have any idea who else is coming?” she asked. “Or when?”

“Doctor Montague,” Theodora said. “I thought he'd be here before anyone else.”

“Have you known Doctor Montague long?”

“Never met him,” Theodora said. “Have you?”

“Never. You almost ready?”

“All ready.” Theodora came through the bathroom door into Eleanor's room; she is lovely, Eleanor thought, turning to look; I wish I were lovely. Theodora was wearing a vivid yellow shirt, and Eleanor laughed and said, “You bring more light into this room than the window.”

Theodora came over and regarded herself approvingly in Eleanor's mirror. “I feel,” she said, “that in this dreary place it is our duty to look as bright as possible. I approve of your red sweater; the two of us will be visible from one end of Hill House to the other.” Still looking into the mirror, she asked, “I suppose Doctor Montague wrote to you?”

“Yes.” Eleanor was embarrassed. “I didn't know, at first, whether it was a joke or not. But my brother-in-law checked up on him.”

“You know,” Theodora said slowly, “up until the last minute—when I got to the gates, I guess—I never really thought there
would
be a Hill House. You don't go around expecting things like this to happen.”

“But some of us go around hoping,” Eleanor said.

Theodora laughed and swung around before the mirror and caught Eleanor's hand. “Fellow babe in the woods,” she said, “let's go exploring.”

“We can't go far away from the house—”

“I promise not to go one step farther than you say. Do you think we have to check in and out with Mrs. Dudley?”

“She probably watches every move we make, anyway; it's probably part of what she agreed to.”

“Agreed to with whom, I wonder? Count Dracula?”

“You think
he
lives in Hill House?”

“I think he spends all his week ends here; I swear I saw bats in the woodwork downstairs. Follow, follow.”

They ran downstairs, moving with color and life against the dark woodwork and the clouded light of the stairs, their feet clattering, and Mrs. Dudley stood below and watched them in silence.

“We're going exploring, Mrs. Dudley,” Theodora said lightly. “We'll be outside somewhere.”

“But we'll be back soon,” Eleanor added.

“I set dinner on the sideboard at six o'clock,” Mrs. Dudley explained.

Eleanor, tugging, got the great front door open; it was just as heavy as it looked, and she thought, We will really have to find some easier way to get back in. “Leave this open,” she said over her shoulder to Theodora. “It's terribly heavy. Get one of those big vases and prop it open.”

Theodora wheeled one of the big stone vases from the corner of the hall, and they stood it in the doorway and rested the door against it. The fading sunlight outside was bright after the darkness of the house, and the air was fresh and sweet. Behind them Mrs. Dudley moved the vase again, and the big door slammed shut.

“Lovable old thing,” Theodora said to the closed door. For a moment her face was thin with anger, and Eleanor thought, I hope she never looks at
me
like that, and was surprised, remembering that she was always shy with strangers, awkward and timid, and yet had come in no more than half an hour to think of Theodora as close and vital, someone whose anger would be frightening. “I think,” Eleanor said hesitantly, and relaxed, because when she spoke Theodora turned and smiled again, “I think that during the daylight hours when Mrs. Dudley is around I shall find myself some absorbing occupation far, far from the house. Rolling the tennis court, perhaps. Or tending the grapes in the hothouse.”

“Perhaps you could help Dudley with the gates.”

“Or look for nameless graves in the nettlepatch.”

They were standing by the rail of the veranda; from there they could see down the drive to the point where it turned among the trees again, and down over the soft curve of the hills to the distant small line which might have been the main highway, the road back to the cities from which they had come. Except for the wires which ran to the house from a spot among the trees, there was no evidence that Hill House belonged in any way to the rest of the world. Eleanor turned and followed the veranda; it went, apparently, all around the house. “Oh, look,” she said, turning the corner.

Behind the house the hills were piled in great pressing masses, flooded with summer green now, rich, and still.

“It's why they called it Hill House,” Eleanor said inadequately.

“It's altogether Victorian,” Theodora said. “They simply wallowed in this kind of great billowing overdone sort of thing and buried themselves in folds of velvet and tassels and purple plush. Anyone before them or after would have put this house right up there on
top
of those hills where it belongs, instead of snuggling it down here.”

“If it were on top of the hill everyone could see it. I vote for keeping it well hidden where it is.”

“All the time I'm here I'm going to be terrified,” Theodora said, “thinking one of those hills will fall on us.”

“They don't fall on you. They just slide down, silently and secretly, rolling over you while you try to run away.”

“Thank you,” Theodora said in a small voice. “What Mrs. Dudley has started you have completed nicely. I shall pack and go home at once.”

Believing her for a minute, Eleanor turned and stared, and then saw the amusement on her face and thought, She's much braver than I am. Unexpectedly—although it was later to become a familiar note, a recognizable attribute of what was to mean “Theodora” in Eleanor's mind—Theodora caught at Eleanor's thought, and answered her. “Don't be so afraid all the time,” she said and reached out to touch Eleanor's cheek with one finger. “We never know where our courage is coming from.” Then, quickly, she ran down the steps and out onto the lawn between the tall grouped trees. “Hurry,” she called back, “I want to see if there's a brook somewhere.”

“We can't go too far,” Eleanor said, following. Like two children they ran across the grass, both welcoming the sudden openness of clear spaces after even a little time in Hill House, their feet grateful for the grass after the solid floors; with an instinct almost animal, they followed the sound and smell of water. “Over here,” Theodora said, “a little path.”

It led them tantalizingly closer to the sound of the water, doubling back and forth through the trees, giving them occasional glimpses down the hill to the driveway, leading them around out of sight of the house across a rocky meadow, and always downhill. As they came away from the house and out of the trees to places where the sunlight could still find them Eleanor was easier, although she could see that the sun was dropping disturbingly closer to the heaped hills. She called to Theodora, but Theodora only called back, “Follow, follow,” and ran down the path. Suddenly she stopped, breathless and tottering, on the very edge of the brook, which had leaped up before her almost without warning; Eleanor, coming more slowly behind, caught at her hand and held her back and then, laughing, they fell together against the bank which sloped sharply down to the brook.

“They like to surprise you around here,” Theodora said, gasping.

“Serve you right if you went diving in,” Eleanor said. “Running like that.”

“It's pretty, isn't it?” The water of the brook moved quickly in little lighted ripples; on the other side the grass grew down to the edge of the water and yellow and blue flowers leaned their heads over; there was a rounded soft hill there, and perhaps more meadow beyond, and, far away, the great hills, still catching the light of the sun. “It's pretty,” Theodora said with finality.

“I'm sure I've been here before,” Eleanor said. “In a book of fairy tales, perhaps.”

“I'm sure of it. Can you skip rocks?”

“This is where the princess comes to meet the magic golden fish who is really a prince in disguise—”

“He couldn't draw much water, that golden fish of yours; it can't be more than three inches deep.”

“There are stepping stones to go across, and
little
fish swimming, tiny ones—minnows?”

“Princes in disguise, all of them.” Theodora stretched in the sun on the bank, and yawned. “Tadpoles?” she suggested.

“Minnows. It's too late for tadpoles, silly, but I bet we can find frogs' eggs. I used to catch minnows in my hands and let them go.”