The Haunting of Hill House (20 page)

“It’s too silly,” Eleanor said, trying to understand her own feelings. “I’ve been standing here looking at it and just wondering
why
. I mean, it’s like a joke that didn’t come off; I was supposed to be
much
more frightened than this, I think, and I’m not because it’s simply
too
horrible to be real. And I keep remembering Theo putting red polish . . .” She giggled, and the doctor looked at her sharply, but she went on, “It might as
well
be paint, don’t you see?” I can’t stop talking, she thought; what do
I
have to explain in all this? “Maybe I can’t take it seriously,” she said, “after the sight of Theo screaming over her poor clothes and accusing me of writing my name all over her wall. Maybe I’m getting used to her blaming me for everything.”

“Nobody’s blaming you for anything,” the doctor said, and Eleanor felt that she had been reproved.

“I hope my clothes will be good enough for her,” she said tartly.

The doctor turned, looking around the room; he touched one finger gingerly to the letters on the wall and moved Theodora’s yellow shirt with his foot. “Later,” he said absently. “Tomorrow, perhaps.” He glanced at Eleanor and smiled. “I can make an exact sketch of this,” he said.

“I can help you,” Eleanor said. “It makes me sick, but it doesn’t frighten me.”

“Yes,” the doctor said. “I think we’d better close up the room for now, however; we don’t want Theodora blundering in here again. Then later, at my leisure, I can study it. Also,” he said with a flash of amusement, “I would not like to have Mrs. Dudley coming in here to straighten up.”

Eleanor watched silently while he locked the hall door from inside the room, and then they went through the bathroom and he locked the connecting door into Theodora’s green room. “I’ll see about moving in another bed,” he said, and then, with some awkwardness, “You’ve kept your head well, Eleanor; it’s a help to me.”

“I told you, it makes me sick but it doesn’t frighten me,” she said, pleased, and turned to Theodora. Theodora was lying on Eleanor’s bed, and Eleanor saw with a queasy turn that Theodora had gotten red on her hands and it was rubbing off onto Eleanor’s pillow. “Look,” she said harshly, coming over to Theodora, “you’ll have to wear my clothes until you get new ones, or until we get the others cleaned.”

“Cleaned?” Theodora rolled convulsively on the bed and pressed her stained hands against her eyes.
“Cleaned?”

“For heaven’s sake,” Eleanor said, “let me wash you off.” She thought, without trying to find a reason, that she had never felt such uncontrollable loathing for any person before, and she went into the bathroom and soaked a towel and came back to scrub roughly at Theodora’s hands and face. “You’re filthy with the stuff,” she said, hating to touch Theodora.

Suddenly Theodora smiled at her. “I don’t really think you did it,” she said, and Eleanor turned to see that Luke was behind her, looking down at them. “What a fool I am,” Theodora said to him, and Luke laughed.

“You will be a delight in Nell’s red sweater,” he said.

She is wicked, Eleanor thought, beastly and soiled and dirty. She took the towel into the bathroom and left it to soak in cold water; when she came out Luke was saying, “. . . another bed in here; you girls are going to share a room from now on.”

“Share a room and share our clothes,” Theodora said. “We’re going to be practically twins.”

“Cousins,” Eleanor said, but no one heard her.

“It was the custom, rigidly adhered to,” Luke said, turning the brandy in his glass, “for the public executioner, before a quartering, to outline his knife strokes in chalk upon the belly of his victim—for fear of a slip, you understand.”

I would like to hit her with a stick, Eleanor thought, looking down on Theodora’s head beside her chair; I would like to batter her with rocks.

“An exquisite refinement, exquisite. Because of course the chalk strokes would have been almost unbearable, excruciating, if the victim were ticklish.”

I hate her, Eleanor thought, she sickens me; she is all washed and clean and wearing my red sweater.

“When the death was by hanging in chains, however, the executioner . . .”

“Nell?” Theodora looked up at her and smiled. “I really am sorry, you know,” she said.

I would like to watch her dying, Eleanor thought, and smiled back and said, “Don’t be silly.”

“Among the Sufis there is a teaching that the universe has never been created and consequently cannot be destroyed. I have spent the afternoon,” Luke announced gravely, “browsing in our little library.”

The doctor sighed. “No chess tonight, I think,” he said to Luke, and Luke nodded. “It has been an exhausting day,” the doctor said, “and I think you ladies should retire early.”

“Not until I am well dulled with brandy,” Theodora said firmly.

“Fear,” the doctor said, “is the relinquishment of logic, the
willing
relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”

“I was wondering earlier,” Eleanor said, feeling she had somehow an apology to make to all of them. “I thought I was altogether calm, and yet now I know I was terribly afraid.” She frowned, puzzled, and they waited for her to go on. “When I
am
afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid I no longer exist in any relation to these things. I suppose because things are
not
afraid.”

“I think we are only afraid of ourselves,” the doctor said slowly.

“No,” Luke said. “Of seeing ourselves clearly and without disguise.”

“Of knowing what we really want,” Theodora said. She pressed her cheek against Eleanor’s hand and Eleanor, hating the touch of her, took her hand away quickly.

“I am always afraid of being alone,” Eleanor said, and wondered, Am
I
talking like this? Am I saying something I will regret bitterly tomorrow? Am I making more guilt for myself? “Those letters spelled out
my
name, and none of you know what that feels like—it’s so
familiar
.” And she gestured to them, almost in appeal. “Try to
see,
” she said. “It’s my own dear name, and it belongs to me, and something is using it and writing it and calling me with it and my own
name
. . .” She stopped and said, looking from one of them to another, even down onto Theodora’s face looking up at her, “Look. There’s only one of me, and it’s all I’ve got. I
hate
seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half, my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can’t stop it, but I know I’m not really going to be hurt and yet time is so long and even a second goes on and on and I could stand any of it if I could only surrender—”

“Surrender?”
said the doctor sharply, and Eleanor stared.

“Surrender?” Luke repeated.

“I don’t know,” Eleanor said, perplexed. I was just talking along, she told herself, I was saying something—what was I just saying?

“She has done this before,” Luke said to the doctor.

“I know,” said the doctor gravely, and Eleanor could feel them all looking at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I make a fool of myself? It’s probably because I’m tired.”

“Not at all,” the doctor said, still grave. “Drink your brandy.”

“Brandy?” And Eleanor looked down, realizing that she held a brandy glass. “What did I
say?
” she asked them.

Theodora chuckled. “Drink,” she said. “You need it, my Nell.”

Obediently Eleanor sipped at her brandy, feeling clearly its sharp burn, and then said to the doctor, “I must have said something silly, from the way you’re all staring at me.”

The doctor laughed. “Stop trying to be the center of attention.”

“Vanity,” Luke said serenely.

“Have to be in the limelight,” Theodora said, and they smiled fondly, all looking at Eleanor.

Sitting up in the two beds beside each other, Eleanor and Theodora reached out between and held hands tight; the room was brutally cold and thickly dark. From the room next door, the room which until that morning had been Theodora’s, came the steady low sound of a voice babbling, too low for words to be understood, too steady for disbelief. Holding hands so hard that each of them could feel the other’s bones, Eleanor and Theodora listened, and the low, steady sound went on and on, the voice lifting sometimes for an emphasis on a mumbled word, falling sometimes to a breath, going on and on. Then, without warning, there was a little laugh, the small gurgling laugh that broke through the babbling, and rose as it laughed, on up and up the scale, and then broke off suddenly in a little painful gasp, and the voice went on.

Theodora’s grasp loosened, and tightened, and Eleanor, lulled for a minute by the sounds, started and looked across to where Theodora ought to be in the darkness, and then thought, screamingly, Why is it dark?
Why is it dark?
She rolled and clutched Theodora’s hand with both of hers, and tried to speak and could not, and held on, blindly, and frozen, trying to stand her mind on its feet, trying to reason again. We left the light on, she told herself, so why is it dark? Theodora, she tried to whisper, and her mouth could not move; Theodora, she tried to ask, why is it dark? and the voice went on, babbling, low and steady, a little liquid gloating sound. She thought she might be able to distinguish words if she lay perfectly still, if she lay perfectly still, and listened, and listened and heard the voice going on and on, never ceasing, and she hung desperately to Theodora’s hand and felt an answering weight on her own hand.

Then the little gurgling laugh came again, and the rising mad sound of it drowned out the voice, and then suddenly absolute silence. Eleanor took a breath, wondering if she could speak now, and then she heard a little soft cry which broke her heart, a little infinitely sad cry, a little sweet moan of wild sadness. It is a
child,
she thought with disbelief, a child is crying somewhere, and then, upon that thought, came the wild shrieking voice she had never heard before and yet knew she had heard always in her nightmares. “Go away!” it screamed. “Go away, go away, don’t hurt me,” and, after, sobbing, “Please don’t hurt me. Please let me go home,” and then the little sad crying again.

I can’t stand it, Eleanor thought concretely. This is monstrous, this is cruel, they have been hurting a child and I won’t let anyone hurt a child, and the babbling went on, low and steady, on and on and on, the voice rising a little and falling a little, going on and on.

Now, Eleanor thought, perceiving that she was lying sideways on the bed in the black darkness, holding with both hands to Theodora’s hand, holding so tight she could feel the fine bones of Theodora’s fingers, now, I will not endure this. They think to scare me. Well, they have. I am scared, but more than that, I am a person, I am human, I am a walking reasoning humorous human being and I will take a lot from this lunatic filthy house but I will not go along with hurting a child, no, I will not; I will by God get my mouth to open right now and I will yell I will I will yell “STOP IT,” she shouted, and the lights were on the way they had left them and Theodora was sitting up in bed, startled and disheveled.

“What?” Theodora was saying. “What, Nell? What?”

“God God,” Eleanor said, flinging herself out of bed and across the room to stand shuddering in a corner, “God God—whose hand was I holding?”

I am learning the pathways of the heart, Eleanor thought quite seriously, and then wondered what she could have meant by thinking any such thing. It was afternoon, and she sat in the sunlight on the steps of the summerhouse beside Luke; these are the silent pathways of the heart, she thought. She knew that she was pale, and still shaken, with dark circles under her eyes, but the sun was warm and the leaves moved gently overhead, and Luke beside her lay lazily against the step. “Luke,” she asked, going slowly for fear of ridicule, “why do people want to talk to each other? I mean, what are the things people always want to find out about other people?”

“What do you want to know about me, for instance?” He laughed. She thought, But why not ask what
he
wants to know about
me;
he is so extremely vain—and laughed in turn and said, “What can I
ever
know about you, beyond what I see?”
See
was the least of the words she might have chosen, but the safest. Tell me something that only I will ever know, was perhaps what she wanted to ask him, or, What will you give me to remember you by?—or, even, Nothing of the least importance has ever belonged to me; can you help? Then she wondered if she had been foolish, or bold, amazed at her own thoughts, but he only stared down at the leaf he held in his hands and frowned a little, as one who devotes himself completely to an absorbing problem.

He is trying to phrase everything to make as good an impression as possible, she thought, and I will know how he holds me by what he answers; how is he anxious to appear to me? Does he think that I will be content with small mysticism, or will he exert himself to seem unique? Is he going to be gallant? That would be humiliating, because then he would show that he knows that gallantry enchants me; will he be mysterious? Mad? And how am I to receive this, which I perceive already will be a confidence, even if it is not true? Grant that Luke take me at my worth, she thought, or at least let me not see the difference. Let him be wise, or let me be blind; don’t let me, she hoped concretely, don’t let me know too surely what he thinks of me.

Then he looked at her briefly and smiled what she was coming to know as his self-deprecatory smile; did Theodora, she wondered, and the thought was unwelcome, did Theodora know him as well as this?