The Haunting of Hill House (9 page)

“What a farmer's wife you might have made.”

“This is a place for picnics, with lunch beside the brook and hard-boiled eggs.”

Theodora laughed. “Chicken salad and chocolate cake.”

“Lemonade in a Thermos bottle. Spilled salt.”

Theodora rolled over luxuriously. “They're wrong about ants, you know. There were almost never ants. Cows, maybe, but I don't think I ever
did
see an ant on a picnic.”

“Was there always a bull in a field? Did someone always say, ‘But we can't go through that field; that's where the bull is'?”

Theodora opened one eye. “Did you use to have a comic uncle? Everyone always laughed, whatever he said? And he used to tell you not to be afraid of the bull—if the bull came after you all you had to do was grab the ring through his nose and swing him around your head?”

Eleanor tossed a pebble into the brook and watched it sink clearly to the bottom. “Did you have a lot of uncles?”

“Thousands. Do you?”

After a minute Eleanor said, “Oh, yes. Big ones and little ones and fat ones and thin ones—”

“Do you have an Aunt Edna?”

“Aunt Muriel.”

“Kind of thin? Rimless glasses?”

“A garnet brooch,” Eleanor said.

“Does she wear a kind of dark red dress to family parties?”

“Lace cuffs—”

“Then I think we must really be related,” Theodora said. “Did you use to have braces on your teeth?”

“No. Freckles.”

“I went to that private school where they made me learn to curtsy.”

“I always had colds all winter long. My mother made me wear woollen stockings.”

“
My
mother made my brother take me to dances, and I used to curtsy like mad. My brother still hates me.”

“I fell down during the graduation procession.”

“I forgot my lines in the operetta.”

“I used to write poetry.”

“Yes,” Theodora said, “I'm positive we're cousins.”

She sat up, laughing, and then Eleanor said, “Be quiet; there's something moving over there.” Frozen, shoulders pressed together, they stared, watching the spot of hillside across the brook where the grass moved, watching something unseen move slowly across the bright green hill, chilling the sunlight and the dancing little brook. “What is it?” Eleanor said in a breath, and Theodora put a strong hand on her wrist.

“It's gone,” Theodora said clearly, and the sun came back and it was warm again. “It was a rabbit,” Theodora said.

“I couldn't see it,” Eleanor said.

“I saw it the minute you spoke,” Theodora said firmly. “It was a rabbit; it went over the hill and out of sight.”

“We've been away too long,” Eleanor said and looked up anxiously at the sun touching the hilltops. She got up quickly and found that her legs were stiff from kneeling on the damp grass.

“Imagine two splendid old picnic-going girls like us,” Theodora said, “afraid of a rabbit.”

Eleanor leaned down and held out a hand to help her up. “We'd really better hurry back,” she said and, because she did not herself understand her compelling anxiety, added, “The others might be there by now.”

“We'll have to come back here for a picnic soon,” Theodora said, following carefully up the path, which went steadily uphill. “We really must have a good old-fashioned picnic down by the brook.”

“We can ask Mrs. Dudley to hard-boil some eggs.” Eleanor stopped on the path, not turning. “Theodora,” she said, “I don't think I can, you know. I don't think I really will be able to do it.”

“Eleanor.” Theodora put an arm across her shoulders. “Would you let them separate us now? Now that we've found out we're cousins?”

The sun went down smoothly behind the hills, slipping almost eagerly, at last, into the pillowy masses. There were already long shadows on the lawn as Eleanor and Theodora came up the path toward the side veranda of Hill House, blessedly hiding its mad face in the growing darkness.

“There's someone waiting there,” Eleanor said, walking more quickly, and so saw Luke for the first time. Journeys end in lovers meeting, she thought, and could only say inadequately, “Are you looking for us?”

He had come to the veranda rail, looking down at them in the dusk, and now he bowed with a deep welcoming gesture, “ ‘These being dead,' ” he said, “ ‘then dead must I be.' Ladies, if you are the ghostly inhabitants of Hill House, I am here forever.”

He's really kind of silly, Eleanor thought sternly, and Theodora said, “Sorry we weren't here to meet you; we've been exploring.”

“A sour old beldame with a face of curds welcomed us, thank you,” he said. “ ‘Howdy-do,' she told me, ‘I hope I see you alive when I come back in the morning and your dinner's on the sideboard.' Saying which, she departed in a late-model convertible with First and Second Murderers.”

“Mrs. Dudley,” Theodora said. “First Murderer must be Dudley-at-the-gate; I suppose the other was Count Dracula. A wholesome family.”

“Since we are listing our cast of characters,” he said, “my name is Luke Sanderson.”

Eleanor was startled into speaking. “Then you're one of the family? The people who own Hill House? Not one of Doctor Montague's guests?”

“I am one of the family; someday this stately pile will belong to me; until then, however, I am here as one of Doctor Montague's guests.”

Theodora giggled.
“We,”
she said, “are Eleanor and Theodora, two little girls who were planning a picnic down by the brook and got scared home by a rabbit.”

“I go in mortal terror of rabbits,” Luke agreed politely. “May I come if I carry the picnic basket?”

“You may bring your ukulele and strum to us while we eat chicken sandwiches. Is Doctor Montague here?”

“He's inside,” Luke said, “gloating over his haunted house.”

They were silent for a minute, wanting to move closer together, and then Theodora said thinly, “It doesn't sound so funny, does it, now it's getting dark?”

“Ladies, welcome.” And the great front door opened. “Come inside. I am Doctor Montague.”

The four of them stood, for the first time, in the wide, dark entrance hall of Hill House. Around them the house steadied and located them, above them the hills slept watchfully, small eddies of air and sound and movement stirred and waited and whispered, and the center of consciousness was somehow the small space where they stood, four separated people, and looked trustingly at one another.

“I am very happy that everyone arrived safely, and on time,” Doctor Montague said. “Welcome, all of you, welcome to Hill House—although perhaps that sentiment ought to come more properly from you, my boy? In any case, welcome, welcome. Luke, my boy, can you make a martini?”

Dr. Montague raised his glass and sipped hopefully, and sighed. “Fair,” he said. “Only fair, my boy. To our success at Hill House, however.”

“How would one reckon success, exactly, in an affair like this?” Luke inquired curiously.

The doctor laughed. “Put it, then,” he said, “that I hope that all of us will have an exciting visit and my book will rock my colleagues back on their heels. I cannot call your visit a vacation, although to some it might seem so, because I am hopeful of your working—although work, of course, depends largely upon what is to be done, does it not? Notes,” he said with relief, as though fixing upon one unshakable solidity in a world of fog, “notes. We will take notes—to some, a not unbearable task.”

“So long as no one makes any puns about spirits and spirits,” Theodora said, holding out her glass to Luke to be filled.

“Spirits?” The doctor peered at her. “Spirits? Yes, indeed. Of course, none of
us
. . .” He hesitated, frowning. “Certainly not,” he said and took three quick agitated sips at his cocktail.

“Everything's so strange,” Eleanor said. “I mean, this morning I was wondering what Hill House would be like, and now I can't believe that it's real, and we're here.”

They were sitting in a small room, chosen by the doctor, who had led them into it, down a narrow corridor, fumbling a little at first, but then finding his way. It was not a cozy room, certainly. It had an unpleasantly high ceiling, and a narrow tiled fireplace which looked chill in spite of the fire which Luke had lighted at once; the chairs in which they sat were rounded and slippery, and the light coming through the colored beaded shades of the lamps sent shadows into the corners. The overwhelming sense of the room was purple; beneath their feet the carpeting glowed in dim convoluted patterns, the walls were papered and gilt, and a marble cupid beamed fatuously down at them from the mantel. When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them. Eleanor, wondering if she were really here at all, and not dreaming of Hill House from some safe spot impossibly remote, looked slowly and carefully around the room, telling herself that this was real, these things existed, from the tiles around the fireplace to the marble cupid; these people were going to be her friends. The doctor was round and rosy and bearded and looked as though he might be more suitably established before a fire in a pleasant little sitting room, with a cat on his knee and a rosy little wife to bring him jellied scones, and yet he was undeniably the Dr. Montague who had guided Eleanor here, a little man both knowledgeable and stubborn. Across the fire from the doctor was Theodora, who had gone unerringly to the most nearly comfortable chair, had wriggled herself into it somehow with her legs over the arm and her head tucked in against the back; she was like a cat, Eleanor thought, and clearly a cat waiting for its dinner. Luke was not still for a minute, but moved back and forth across the shadows, filling glasses, stirring the fire, touching the marble cupid; he was bright in the firelight, and restless. They were all silent, looking into the fire, lazy after their several journeys, and Eleanor thought, I am the fourth person in this room; I am one of them; I belong.

“Since we
are
all here,” Luke said suddenly, as though there had been no pause in the conversation, “shouldn't we get acquainted? We know only names, so far. I know that it is Eleanor, here, who is wearing a red sweater, and consequently it must be Theodora who wears yellow—”

“Doctor Montague has a beard,” Theodora said, “so you must be Luke.”

“And you are Theodora,” Eleanor said, “because
I
am Eleanor.” An Eleanor, she told herself triumphantly, who belongs, who is talking easily, who is sitting by the fire with her friends.

“Therefore
you
are wearing the red sweater,” Theodora explained to her soberly.

“I have no beard,” Luke said, “so
he
must be Doctor Montague.”

“
I
have a beard,” Dr. Montague said, pleased, and looked around at them with a happy beam. “My wife,” he told them, “
likes
a man to wear a beard. Many women, on the other hand, find a beard distasteful. A clean-shaven man—you'll excuse me, my boy—never looks fully dressed, my wife tells me.” He held out his glass to Luke.

“Now that I know which of us is me,” Luke said, “let me identify myself further. I am, in private life—assuming that this is public life and the rest of the world
is
actually private—let me see, a bullfighter. Yes. A bullfighter.”

“I love my love with a B,” Eleanor said in spite of herself, “because he is bearded.”

“Very true.” Luke nodded at her. “That makes me Doctor Montague. I live in Bangkok, and my hobby is bothering women.”

“Not at all,” Dr. Montague protested, amused. “I live in Belmont.”

Theodora laughed and gave Luke that quick, understanding glance she had earlier given Eleanor. Eleanor, watching, thought wryly that it might sometimes be oppressive to be for long around one so immediately in tune, so perceptive, as Theodora. “I am by profession an artist's model,” Eleanor said quickly, to silence her own thoughts. “I live a mad, abandoned life, draped in a shawl and going from garret to garret.”

“Are you heartless and wanton?” Luke asked. “Or are you one of the fragile creatures who will fall in love with a lord's son and pine away?”

“Losing all your beauty and coughing a good deal?” Theodora added.

“I rather think I have a heart of gold,” Eleanor said reflectively. “At any rate, my affairs are the talk of the cafés.” Dear me, she thought. Dear me.

“Alas,” Theodora said, “I am a lord's
daughter.
Ordinarily I go clad in silk and lace and cloth of gold, but I have borrowed my maid's finery to appear among you. I may of course become so enamored of the common life that I will never go back, and the poor girl will have to get herself new clothes. And you, Doctor Montague?”

He smiled in the firelight. “A pilgrim. A wanderer.”

“Truly a congenial little group,” Luke said approvingly. “Destined to be inseparable friends, in fact. A courtesan, a pilgrim, a princess, and a bullfighter. Hill House has surely never seen our like.”

“I will give the honor to Hill House,” Theodora said. “I have never seen
its
like.” She rose, carrying her glass, and went to examine a bowl of glass flowers. “What did they
call
this room, do you suppose?”

“A parlor, perhaps,” Dr. Montague said. “Perhaps a boudoir. I thought we would be more comfortable in here than in one of the other rooms. As a matter of fact, I think we ought to regard this room as our center of operations, a kind of common room; it may not be cheerful—”