Free The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Page A

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