The Haunting of Hill House Page 8

  “There are no secret chambers in Hill House,” the doctor said with finality. “Naturally, that possibility has been suggested before, and I think I may say with assurance that no such romantic devices exist here. But tomorrow—”

  “In any case, oil is definitely old hat, nothing at all to discover on the property these days,” Luke told Theodora. “The very least Mrs. Dudley could murder me for in cold blood is uranium.”

  “Or just the pure fun of it,” Theodora said.

  “Yes,” Eleanor said, “but why are we here?”

  For a long minute the three of them looked at her, Theodora and Luke curiously, the doctor gravely. Then Theodora said, “Just what I was going to ask. Why are we here? What is wrong with Hill House? What is going to happen?”

  “Tomorrow—”

  “No,” Theodora said, almost petulantly. “We are three adult, intelligent people. We have all come a long way, Doctor Montague, to meet you here in Hill House; Eleanor wants to know why, and so do I.”

  “Me too,” Luke said.

  “Why did you bring us here, Doctor? Why are you here yourself? How did you hear about Hill House, and why does it have such a reputation and what really goes on here? What is going to happen?”

  The doctor frowned unhappily. “I don’t know,” he said, and then, when Theodora made a quick, irritated gesture, he went on, “I know very little more about the house than you do, and naturally I intended to tell you everything I do know; as for what is going to happen, I will learn that when you do. But tomorrow is soon enough to talk about it, I think; daylight—”

  “Not for me,” Theodora said.

  “I assure you,” the doctor said, “that Hill House will be quiet tonight. There is a pattern to these things, as though psychic phenomena were subject to laws of a very particular sort.”

  “I really think we ought to talk it over tonight,” Luke said.

  “We’re not afraid,” Eleanor added.

  The doctor sighed again. “Suppose,” he said slowly, “you heard the story of Hill House and decided not to stay. How would you leave, tonight?” He looked around at them again, quickly. “The gates are locked. Hill House has a reputation for insistent hospitality; it seemingly dislikes letting its guests get away. The last person who tried to leave Hill House in darkness—it was eighteen years ago, I grant you—was killed at the turn in the driveway, where his horse bolted and crushed him against the big tree. Suppose I tell you about Hill House, and one of you wants to leave? Tomorrow, at least, we could see that you got safely to the village.”

  “But we’re not going to run away,” Theodora said. “I’m not, and Eleanor isn’t, and Luke isn’t.”

  “Stoutly, upon the ramparts,” Luke agreed.

  “You are a mutinous group of assistants. After dinner, then. We will retire to our little boudoir for coffee and a little of the good brandy Luke has in his suitcase, and I will tell you all I know about Hill House. Now, however, let us talk about music, or painting, or even politics.”

  4

  “I had not decided,” the doctor said, turning the brandy in his glass, “how best to prepare the three of you for Hill House. I certainly could not write you about it, and I am most unwilling now to influence your minds with its complete history before you have had a chance to see for yourselves.” They were back in the small parlor, warm and almost sleepy. Theodora had abandoned any attempt at a chair and had put herself down on the hearthrug, cross-legged and drowsy. Eleanor, wanting to sit on the hearthrug beside her, had not thought of it in time and had condemned herself to one of the slippery chairs, unwilling now to attract attention by moving and getting herself awkwardly down onto the floor. Mrs. Dudley’s good dinner and an hour’s quiet conversation had evaporated the faint air of unreality and constraint; they had begun to know one another, recognize individual voices and mannerisms, faces and laughter; Eleanor thought with a little shock of surprise that she had been in Hill House only for four or five hours, and smiled a little at the fire. She could feel the thin stem of her glass between her fingers, the stiff pressure of the chair against her back, the faint movements of air through the room which were barely perceptible in small stirrings of tassels and beads. Darkness lay in the corners, and the marble cupid smiled down on them with chubby good humor.

  “What a time for a ghost story,” Theodora said.

  “If you please.” The doctor was stiff. “We are not children trying to frighten one another,” he said.

  “Sorry.” Theodora smiled up at him. “I’m just trying to get myself used to all of this.”

  “Let us,” said the doctor, “exercise great caution in our language. Preconceived notions of ghosts and apparitions—”

  “The disembodied hand in the soup,” Luke said helpfully.

  “My dear boy. If you please. I was trying to explain that our purpose here, since it is of a scientific and exploratory nature, ought not to be affected, perhaps even warped, by halfremembered spooky stories which belong more properly to a—let me see—a marshmallow roast.” Pleased with himself, he looked around to be sure that they were all amused. “As a matter of fact, my researches over the past few years have led me to certain theories regarding psychic phenomena which I have now, for the first time, an opportunity of testing. Ideally, of course, you ought not to know anything about Hill House. You should be ignorant and receptive.”

  “And take notes,” Theodora murmured.

  “Notes. Yes, indeed. Notes. However, I realize that it is most impractical to leave you entirely without background information, largely because you are not people accustomed to meeting a situation without preparation.” He beamed at them slyly. “You are three willful, spoiled children who are prepared to nag me for your bedtime story.” Theodora giggled, and the doctor nodded at her happily. He rose and moved to stand by the fire in an unmistakable classroom pose; he seemed to feel the lack of a blackboard behind him, because once or twice he half turned, hand raised, as though looking for chalk to illustrate a point. “Now,” he said, “we will take up the history of Hill House.” I wish I had a notebook and a pen, Eleanor thought, just to make him feel at home. She glanced at Theodora and Luke and found both their faces fallen instinctively into a completely rapt classroom look; high earnestness, she thought; we have moved into another stage of our adventure.

  “You will recall,” the doctor began, “the houses described in Leviticus as ‘leprous,’ tsaraas, or Homer’s phrase for the underworld: aidao domos, the house of Hades; I need not remind you, I think, that the concept of certain houses as unclean or forbidden—perhaps sacred—is as old as the mind of man. Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad. Hill House, whatever the cause, has been unfit for human habitation for upwards of twenty years. What it was like before then, whether its personality was molded by the people who lived here, or the things they did, or whether it was evil from its start are all questions I cannot answer. Naturally I hope that we will all know a good deal more about Hill House before we leave. No one knows, even, why some houses are called haunted.”

  “What else could you call Hill House?” Luke demanded.

  “Well—disturbed, perhaps. Leprous. Sick. Any of the popular euphemisms for insanity; a deranged house is a pretty conceit. There are popular theories, however, which discount the eerie, the mysterious; there are people who will tell you that the disturbances I am calling ‘psychic’ are actually the result of subterranean waters, or electric currents, or hallucinations caused by polluted air; atmospheric pressure, sun spots, earth tremors all have their advocates among the skeptical. People,” the doctor said sadly, “are always so anxious to get things out into the open where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so long as it has something of a scientific ring.” He sighed, relaxing, and gave them a little quizzical smile. “A haunted house,” he said. “Everyone laughs. I found myself telling my colle
agues at the university that I was going camping this summer.”

  “I told people I was participating in a scientific experiment,” Theodora said helpfully. “Without telling them where or what, of course.”

  “Presumably your friends feel less strongly about scientific experiments than mine. Yes.” The doctor sighed again. “Camping. At my age. And yet that they believed. Well.” He straightened up again and fumbled at his side, perhaps for a yardstick. “I first heard about Hill House a year ago, from a former tenant. He began by assuring me that he had left Hill House because his family objected to living so far out in the country, and ended by saying that in his opinion the house ought to be burned down and the ground sowed with salt. I learned of other people who had rented Hill House, and found that none of them had stayed more than a few days, certainly never the full terms of their leases, giving reasons that ranged from the dampness of the location—not at all true, by the way; the house is very dry—to a pressing need to move elsewhere, for business reasons. That is, every tenant who has left Hill House hastily has made an effort to supply a rational reason for leaving, and yet every one of them has left. I tried, of course, to learn more from these former tenants, and yet in no case could I persuade them to discuss the house; they all seemed most unwilling to give me information and were, in fact, reluctant to recall the details of their several stays. In only one opinion were they united. Without exception, every person who has spent any length of time in this house urged me to stay as far away from it as possible. Not one of the former tenants could bring himself to admit that Hill House was haunted, but when I visited Hillsdale and looked up the newspaper records—”

  “Newspapers?” Theodora asked. “Was there a scandal?”

  “Oh, yes,” the doctor said. “A perfectly splendid scandal, with a suicide and madness and lawsuits. Then I learned that the local people had no doubts about the house. I heard a dozen different stories, of course—it is really unbelievably difficult to get accurate information about a haunted house; it would astonish you to know what I have gone through to learn only as much as I have—and as a result I went to Mrs. Sanderson, Luke’s aunt, and arranged to rent Hill House. She was most frank about its undesirability—”

  “It’s harder to burn down a house than you think,” Luke said.

  “—but agreed to allow me a short lease to carry out my researches, on condition that a member of the family be one of my party.”

  “They hope,” Luke said solemnly, “that I will dissuade you from digging up the lovely old scandals.”

  “There. Now I have explained how I happen to be here, and why Luke has come. As for you two ladies, we all know by now that you are here because I wrote you, and you accepted my invitation. I hoped that each of you might, in her own way, intensify the forces at work in the house; Theodora has shown herself possessed of some telepathic ability, and Eleanor has in the past been intimately involved in poltergeist phenomena—”

  “I?”

  “Of course.” The doctor looked at her curiously. “Many years ago, when you were a child. The stones—”

  Eleanor frowned, and shook her head. Her fingers trembled around the stem of her glass, and then she said, “That was the neighbors. My mother said the neighbors did that. People are always jealous.”

  “Perhaps so.” The doctor spoke quietly and smiled at Eleanor. “The incident has been forgotten long ago, of course; I only mentioned it because that is why I wanted you in Hill House.”

  “When I was a child,” Theodora said lazily, “—‘many years ago,’ Doctor, as you put it so tactfully—I was whipped for throwing a brick through a greenhouse roof. I remember I thought about it for a long time, remembering the whipping but remembering also the lovely crash, and after thinking about it very seriously I went out and did it again.”

  “I don’t remember very well,” Eleanor said uncertainly to the doctor.

  “But why?” Theodora asked. “I mean, I can accept that Hill House is supposed to be haunted, and you want us here, Doctor Montague, to help keep track of what happens—and I bet besides that you wouldn’t at all like being here alone—but I just don’t understand. It’s a horrible old house, and if I rented it I’d scream for my money back after one fast look at the front hall, but what’s here? What really frightens people so?”

  “I will not put a name to what has no name,” the doctor said. “I don’t know.”

  “They never even told me what was going on,” Eleanor said urgently to the doctor. “My mother said it was the neighbors, they were always against us because she wouldn’t mix with them. My mother—”

  Luke interrupted her, slowly and deliberately. “I think,” he said, “that what we all want is facts. Something we can understand and put together.”

  “First,” the doctor said, “I am going to ask you all a question. Do you want to leave? Do you advise that we pack up now and leave Hill House to itself, and never have anything more to do with it?”

  He looked at Eleanor, and Eleanor put her hands together tight; it is another chance to get away, she was thinking, and she said, “No,” and glanced with embarrassment at Theodora. “I was kind of a baby this afternoon,” she explained. “I did let myself get frightened.”

  “She’s not telling all the truth,” Theodora said loyally. “She wasn’t any more frightened than I was; we scared each other to death over a rabbit.”

  “Horrible creatures, rabbits,” Luke said.

  The doctor laughed. “I suppose we were all nervous this afternoon, anyway. It is a rude shock to turn that corner and get a clear look at Hill House.”

  “I thought he was going to send the car into a tree,” Luke said.

  “I am really very brave now, in a warm room with a fire and company,” Theodora said.

  “I don’t think we could leave now if we wanted to.” Eleanor had spoken before she realized clearly what she was going to say, or what it was going to sound like to the others; she saw that they were staring at her, and laughed and added lamely, “Mrs. Dudley would never forgive us.” She wondered if they really believed that that was what she had meant to say, and thought, Perhaps it has us now, this house, perhaps it will not let us go.

  “Let us have a little more brandy,” the doctor said, “and I will tell you the story of Hill House.” He returned to his classroom position before the fireplace and began slowly, as one giving an account of kings long dead and wars long done with; his voice was carefully unemotional. “Hill House was built eighty-odd years ago,” he began. “It was built as a home for his family by a man named Hugh Crain, a country home where he hoped to see his children and grandchildren live in comfortable luxury, and where he fully expected to end his days in quiet. Unfortunately Hill House was a sad house almost from the beginning; Hugh Crain’s young wife died minutes before she first was to set eyes on the house, when the carriage bringing her here overturned in the driveway, and the lady was brought—ah, lifeless, I believe is the phrase they use—into the home her husband had built for her. He was a sad and bitter man, Hugh Crain, left with two small daughters to bring up, but he did not leave Hill House.”

  “Children grew up here?” Eleanor asked incredulously.

  The doctor smiled. “The house is dry, as I said. There were no swamps to bring them fevers, the country air was thought to be beneficial to them, and the house itself was regarded as luxurious. I have no doubt that two small children could play here, lonely perhaps, but not unhappy.”

  “I hope they went wading in the brook,” Theodora said. She stared deeply into the fire. “Poor little things. I hope someone let them run in that meadow and pick wildflowers.”

  “Their father married again,” the doctor went on. “Twice more, as a matter of fact. He seems to have been—unlucky in his wives. The second Mrs. Crain died of a fall, although I have been unable to ascertain how or why. Her death seems to have been as tragically unexpected as her predecessor’s. The third Mrs. Crain died of what they used to call consumption, somewhere i
n Europe; there is, somewhere in the library, a collection of postcards sent to the two little girls left behind in Hill House from their father and their stepmother traveling from one health resort to another. The little girls were left here with their governess until their stepmother’s death. After that Hugh Crain declared his intention of closing Hill House and remaining abroad, and his daughters were sent to live with a cousin of their mother’s, and there they remained until they were grown up.”

  “I hope Mama’s cousin was a little jollier than old Hugh,” Theodora said, still staring darkly into the fire. “It’s not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.”

  “They felt differently,” the doctor said. “The two sisters spent the rest of their lives quarreling over Hill House. After all his high hopes of a dynasty centered here, Hugh Crain died somewhere in Europe, shortly after his wife, and Hill House was left jointly to the two sisters, who must have been quite young ladies by then; the older sister had, at any rate, made her debut into society.”

  “And put up her hair, and learned to drink champagne and carry a fan . . .”

  “Hill House was empty for a number of years, but kept always in readiness for the family; at first in expectation of Hugh Crain’s return, and then, after his death, for either of the sisters who chose to live there. Somewhere during this time it was apparently agreed between the two sisters that Hill House should become the property of the older; the younger sister had married—”

  “Aha,” Theodora said. “The younger sister married. Stole her sister’s beau, I’ve no doubt.”

  “It was said that the older sister was crossed in love,” the doctor agreed, “although that is said of almost any lady who prefers, for whatever reason, to live alone. At any rate, it was the older sister who came back here to live. She seems to have resembled her father strongly; she lived here alone for a number of years, almost in seclusion, although the village of Hillsdale knew her. Incredible as it may sound to you, she genuinely loved Hill House and looked upon it as her family home. She eventually took a girl from the village to live with her, as a kind of companion; so far as I can learn there seems to have been no strong feeling among the villagers about the house then, since old Miss Crain—as she was inevitably known—hired her servants in the village, and it was thought a fine thing for her to take the village girl as a companion. Old Miss Crain was in constant disagreement with her sister over the house, the younger sister insisting that she had given up her claim on the house in exchange for a number of family heirlooms, some of considerable value, which her sister then refused to give her. There were some jewels, several pieces of antique furniture, and a set of gold-rimmed dishes, which seemed to irritate the younger sister more than anything else. Mrs. Sanderson let me rummage through a box of family papers, and so I have seen some of the letters Miss Crain received from her sister, and in all of them those dishes stand out as the recurrent sore subject. At any rate, the older sister died of pneumonia here in the house, with only the little companion to help her—there were stories later of a doctor called too late, of the old lady lying neglected upstairs while the younger woman dallied in the garden with some village lout, but I suspect that these are only scandalous inventions; I certainly cannot find that anything of the sort was widely believed at the time, and in fact most of the stories seem to stem directly from the poisonous vengefulness of the younger sister, who never rested in her anger.”