The Haunting of Hill House (21 page)

“I never had a mother,” he said, and the shock was enormous. Is
that
all he thinks of me, his estimate of what I want to hear of him; will I enlarge this into a confidence making me worthy of great confidences? Shall I sigh? Murmur? Walk away? “No one ever loved me because I belonged,” he said. “I suppose you can understand that?”

No, she thought, you are not going to catch me so cheaply; I do not understand words and will not accept them in trade for my feelings; this man is a parrot. I will tell him that I can never understand such a thing, that maudlin self-pity does not move directly at my heart; I will not make a fool of myself by encouraging him to mock me. “I understand, yes,” she said.

“I thought you might,” he said, and she wanted, quite honestly, to slap his face. “I think you must be a very fine person, Nell,” he said, and then spoiled it by adding, “warmhearted, and honest. Afterwards, when you go home . . .” His voice trailed off, and she thought, Either he is beginning to tell me something extremely important, or he is killing time until this conversation can gracefully be ended. He would not speak in this fashion without a reason; he does not willingly give himself away. Does he think that a human gesture of affection might seduce me into hurling myself madly at him? Is he afraid that I cannot behave like a lady? What does he know about me, about how I think and feel; does he feel sorry for me? “Journeys end in lovers meeting,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I never had a mother, as I told you. Now I find that everyone else has had something that I missed.” He smiled at her. “I am entirely selfish,” he said ruefully, “and always hoping that someone will tell me to behave, someone will make herself responsible for me and make me be grown-up.”

He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting. “Why don’t you grow up by yourself?” she asked him, and wondered how many people—how many women—had already asked him that.

“You’re clever.” And how many times had he answered that way?

This conversation must be largely instinctive, she thought with amusement, and said gently, “You must be a very lonely person.” All I want is to be cherished, she thought, and here I am talking gibberish with a selfish man. “You must be very lonely indeed.”

He touched her hand, and smiled again. “You were so lucky,” he told her. “You had a mother.”

“I found it in the library,” Luke said. “I swear I found it in the library.”

“Incredible,” the doctor said.

“Look,” Luke said. He set the great book on the table and turned to the title page. “He made it himself—look, the title’s been lettered in ink: MEMORIES,
for
SOPHIA ANNE LESTER CRAIN;
A Legacy for Her Education and Enlightenment During Her Lifetime From Her Affectionate and Devoted Father,
HUGH DESMOND LESTER CRAIN;
Twenty-first June, 1881
.”

They pressed around the table, Theodora and Eleanor and the doctor, while Luke lifted and turned the first great page of the book. “You see,” Luke said, “his little girl is to learn humility. He has clearly cut up a number of fine old books to make this scrapbook, because I seem to recognize several of the pictures, and they are all glued in.”

“The vanity of human accomplishment,” the doctor said sadly. “Think of the books Hugh Crain hacked apart to make this. Now here is a Goya etching; a horrible thing for a little girl to meditate upon.”

“Underneath he has written,” Luke said, “under this ugly picture: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, Daughter, authors of thy being, upon whom a heavy charge has been laid, that they lead their child in innocence and righteousness along the fearful narrow path to everlasting bliss, and render her up at last to her God a pious and a virtuous soul; reflect, Daughter, upon the joy in Heaven as the souls of these tiny creatures wing upward, released before they have learned aught of sin or faithlessness, and make it thine unceasing duty to remain as pure as these.’ ”

“Poor baby,” Eleanor said, and gasped as Luke turned the page; Hugh Crain’s second moral lesson derived from a color plate of a snake pit, and vividly painted snakes writhed and twisted along the page, above the message, neatly printed, and touched with gold: “Eternal damnation is the lot of mankind; neither tears, nor reparation, can undo Man’s heritage of sin. Daughter, hold apart from this world, that its lusts and ingratitudes corrupt thee not; Daughter, preserve thyself.”

“Next comes hell,” Luke said. “Don’t look if you’re squeamish.”

“I think I will skip hell,” Eleanor said, “but read it to me.”

“Wise of you,” the doctor said. “An illustration from Foxe; one of the less attractive deaths, I have always thought, although who can fathom the ways of martyrs?”

“See this, though,” Luke said. “He’s burnt away a corner of the page, and here is what he says: ‘Daughter, could you but hear for a moment the agony, the screaming, the dreadful crying out and repentance, of those poor souls condemned to everlasting flame! Could thine eyes be seared, but for an instant, with the red glare of wasteland burning always! Alas, wretched beings, in undying pain! Daughter, your father has this minute touched the corner of his page to his candle, and seen the frail paper shrivel and curl in the flame; consider, Daughter, that the heat of this candle is to the everlasting fires of Hell as a grain of sand to the reaching desert, and, as this paper burns in its slight flame so shall your soul burn forever, in fire a thousandfold more keen.’ ”

“I’ll bet he read it to her every night before she went to sleep,” Theodora said.

“Wait,” Luke said. “You haven’t seen Heaven yet—even
you
can look at this one, Nell. It’s Blake, and a bit stern, I think, but obviously better than Hell. Listen—‘Holy, holy, holy! In the pure light of heaven the angels praise Him and one another unendingly. Daughter, it is Here that I will seek thee.’ ”

“What a labor of love it is,” the doctor said. “Hours of time just planning it, and the lettering is so dainty, and the gilt—”

“Now the seven deadly sins,” Luke said, “and I think the old boy drew them himself.”

“He really put his heart into gluttony,” Theodora said. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be hungry again.”

“Wait till lust,” Luke told her. “The old fellow outdid himself.”

“I don’t really want to look at any more of it, I think,” Theodora said. “I’ll sit over here with Nell, and if you come across any particularly edifying moral precepts you think would do me good, read them aloud.”

“
Here
is lust,” Luke said. “Was ever woman in this humor wooed?”

“Good heavens,” said the doctor. “Good heavens.”

“He
must
have drawn it himself,” Luke said.

“For a
child?
” The doctor was outraged.

“Her very own scrapbook. Note Pride, the very image of our Nell here.”

“What?” said Eleanor, starting up.

“Teasing,” the doctor said placatingly. “Don’t come look, my dear; he’s teasing you.”

“Sloth, now,” Luke said.

“Envy,” said the doctor. “How the poor child dared transgress . . .”

“The last page is the very nicest, I think. This, ladies, is Hugh Crain’s blood. Nell, do you want to see Hugh Crain’s blood?”

“No, thank you.”

“Theo? No? In any case, I insist, for the sake of your two consciences, in reading what Hugh Crain has to say in closing his book: ‘Daughter: sacred pacts are signed in blood, and I have here taken from my own wrist the vital fluid with which I bind you. Live virtuously, be meek, have faith in thy Redeemer, and in me, thy father, and I swear to thee that we will be joined together hereafter in unending bliss. Accept these precepts from thy devoted father, who in humbleness of spirit has made this book. May it serve its purpose well, my feeble effort, and preserve my Child from the pitfalls of this world and bring her safe to her father’s arms in Heaven.’ And signed: ‘Thy everloving father, in this world and the next, author of thy being and guardian of thy virtue; in meekest love, Hugh Crain.’ ”

Theodora shuddered. “How he must have enjoyed it,” she said, “signing his name in his own blood; I can see him laughing his head off.”

“Not healthy, not at all a healthy work for a man,” the doctor said.

“But she must have been very small when her father left the house,” Eleanor said. “I wonder if he ever did read it to her.”

“I’m sure he did, leaning over her cradle and spitting out the words so they would take root in her little mind. Hugh Crain,” Theodora said, “you were a dirty old man, and you made a dirty old house and if you can still hear me from anywhere I would like to tell you to your face that I genuinely hope you will spend eternity in that foul horrible picture and never stop burning for a minute.” She made a wild, derisive gesture around the room, and for a minute, still remembering, they were all silent, as though waiting for an answer, and then the coals in the fire fell with a little crash, and the doctor looked at his watch and Luke rose.

“The sun is over the yardarm,” the doctor said happily.

Theodora curled by the fire, looking up wickedly at Eleanor; at the other end of the room the chessmen moved softly, jarring with little sounds against the table, and Theodora spoke gently, tormentingly. “Will you have him at your little apartment, Nell, and offer him to drink from your cup of stars?”

Eleanor looked into the fire, not answering. I have been so silly, she thought, I have been a fool.

“Is there room enough for two? Would he come if you asked him?”

Nothing could be worse than this, Eleanor thought; I have been a fool.

“Perhaps he has been longing for a tiny home—something smaller, of course, than Hill House; perhaps he will come home with you.”

A fool, a ludicrous fool.

“Your white curtains—your tiny stone lions—”

Eleanor looked down at her, almost gently. “But I
had
to come,” she said, and stood up, turning blindly to get away. Not hearing the startled voices behind her, not seeing where or how she went, she blundered somehow to the great front door and out into the soft warm night. “I
had
to come,” she said to the world outside.

Fear and guilt are sisters; Theodora caught her on the lawn. Silent, angry, hurt, they left Hill House side by side, walking together, each sorry for the other. A person angry, or laughing, or terrified, or jealous, will go stubbornly on into extremes of behavior impossible at another time; neither Eleanor nor Theodora reflected for a minute that it was imprudent for them to walk far from Hill House after dark. Each was so bent upon her own despair that escape into darkness was vital, and, containing themselves in that tight, vulnerable, impossible cloak which is fury, they stamped along together, each achingly aware of the other, each determined to be the last to speak.

Eleanor spoke first, finally; she had hurt her foot against a rock and tried to be too proud to notice it, but after a minute, her foot paining, she said, in a voice tight with the attempt to sound level, “I can’t imagine why you think you have any right to interfere in my affairs,” her language formal to prevent a flood of recrimination, or undeserved reproach (were they not strangers? cousins?). “I am sure that nothing I do is of any interest to you.”

“That’s right,” Theodora said grimly. “Nothing that you do is of any interest to me.”

We are walking on either side of a fence, Eleanor thought, but I have a right to live too, and I wasted an hour with Luke at the summerhouse trying to prove it. “I hurt my foot,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” Theodora sounded genuinely grieved. “You know what a beast he is.” She hesitated. “A rake,” she said finally, with a touch of amusement.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to me
what
he is.” And then, because they were women quarreling. “As if
you
cared, anyway.

“He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it,” Theodora said.

“Get away with
what?
” Eleanor asked daintily.

“You’re making a fool of yourself,” Theodora said.

“Suppose I’m not, though? You’d mind terribly if you turned out to be wrong this time, wouldn’t you?”

Theodora’s voice was wearied, cynical. “If I’m wrong,” she said, “I will bless you with all my heart. Fool that you are.”

“You could hardly say anything else.”

They were moving along the path toward the brook. In the darkness their feet felt that they were going downhill, and each privately and perversely accused the other of taking, deliberately, a path they had followed together once before in happiness.

“Anyway,” Eleanor said, in a reasonable tone, “it doesn’t mean anything to you, no matter what happens. Why should you care whether I make a fool of myself?”

Theodora was silent for a minute, walking in the darkness, and Eleanor was suddenly absurdly sure that Theodora had put out a hand to her, unseen. “Theo,” Eleanor said awkwardly, “I’m no good at talking to people and saying things.”

Theodora laughed. “What
are
you good at?” she demanded. “Running away?”

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question—as “Do you love me?”—could never be answered or forgotten. They walked slowly, meditating, wondering, and the path sloped down from their feet and they followed, walking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation; their feinting and hesitation done with, they could only await passively for resolution. Each knew, almost within a breath, what the other was thinking and wanting to say; each of them almost wept for the other. They perceived at the same moment the change in the path and each knew then the other’s knowledge of it; Theodora took Eleanor’s arm and, afraid to stop, they moved on slowly, close together, and ahead of them the path widened and blackened and curved.