Read Online The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

from the door to the wardrobe to the dresser to the bed, telling herself that she was not afraid at all, when she heard, far below, the sounds of a car door slamming and then quick footsteps, almost dancing, up the steps and across the veranda, and then, shockingly, the crash of the great iron knocker coming down. Why, she thought, there are other people coming; I am not going to be here all alone. Almost laughing, she ran across the room and into the hall, to look down the staircase into the hallway below.
    “Thank heaven you’re here,” she said, peering through the dimness, “thank heaven somebody’s here.” She realized without surprise that she was speaking as though Mrs. Dudley could not hear her, although Mrs. Dudley stood, straight and pale, in the hall. “Come on up,” Eleanor said, “you’ll have to carry your own suitcase.” She was breathless and seemed unable to stop talking, her usual shyness melted away by relief. “My name’s Eleanor Vance,” she said, “and I’m so glad you’re here.”
    “I’m Theodora. Just Theodora. This bloody house—”
    “It’s just as bad up here. Come on up. Make her give you the room next to mine.”
    Theodora came up the heavy stairway after Mrs. Dudley, looking incredulously at the stained-glass window on the landing, the marble urn in a niche, the patterned carpet. Her suitcase was considerably larger than Eleanor’s, and considerably more luxurious, and Eleanor came forward to help her, glad that her own things were safely put away out of sight. “Wait till you see the bedrooms,” Eleanor said. “Mine used to be the embalming room, I think.”
    “It’s the home I’ve always dreamed of,” Theodora said. “A little hideaway where I can be alone with my thoughts. Particularly if my thoughts happened to be about murder or suicide or—”
    “Green room,” Mrs. Dudley said coldly, and Eleanor sensed, with a quick turn of apprehension, that flippant or critical talk about the house bothered Mrs. Dudley in some manner; maybe she thinks it can hear us, Eleanor thought, and then was sorry she had thought it. Perhaps she shivered, because Theodora turned with a quick smile and touched her shoulder gently, reassuringly; she is charming, Eleanor thought, smiling back, not at all the sort of person who belongs in this dreary, dark place, but then, probably, I don’t belong here either; I am not the sort of person for Hill House but I can’t think of anybody who would be. She laughed then, watching Theodora’s expression as she stood in the doorway of the green room.
    “Good Lord,” Theodora said, looking sideways at Eleanor. “How perfectly enchanting. A positive bower.”
    “I set dinner on the dining-room sideboard at six sharp,” Mrs. Dudley said. “You can serve yourselves. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast ready for you at nine. That’s the way I agreed to do.”
    “You’re frightened,” Theodora said, watching Eleanor.
    “I can’t keep the rooms up the way you’d like, but there’s no one else you could get that would help me. I don’t wait on people. What I agreed to, it doesn’t mean I wait on people.”
    “It was just when I thought I was all alone,” Eleanor said.
    “I don’t stay after six. Not after it begins to get dark.”
    “I’m here now,” Theodora said, “so it’s all right.”
    “We have a connecting bathroom,” Eleanor said absurdly. “The rooms are exactly alike.”
    Green dimity curtains hung over the windows in Theodora’s room, the wallpaper was decked with green garlands, the bedspread and quilt were green, the marble-topped dresser and the huge wardrobe were the same. “I’ve never seen such awful places in my life, ” Eleanor said, her voice rising.
    “Like the very best hotels,” Theodora said, “or any good girl’s camp.”
    “I leave before dark comes,” Mrs. Dudley went on.
    “No one can hear you if you scream in the night,” Eleanor told Theodora. She realized that she was