Looking at herself in the mirror, with the bright morning sunlight freshening even the blue room of Hill House, Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long. Abandoning a lifelong belief that to name happiness is to dissipate it, she smiled at herself in the mirror and told herself silently, You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness. Looking away from her own face in the mirror, she thought blindly, Journeys end in lovers meeting, lovers meeting.

‘Luke?’ It was Theodora, calling outside in the hall. ‘You carried off one of my stockings last night, and you are a thieving cad, and I hope Mrs Dudley can hear me.’

Eleanor could hear Luke, faintly, answering; he protested that a gentleman had a right to keep the favours bestowed upon him by a lady, and he was absolutely certain that Mrs Dudley could hear every word.

‘Eleanor?’ Now Theodora pounded on the connecting door. ‘Are you awake? May I come in?’

‘Come, of course,’ Eleanor said, looking at her own face in the mirror. You deserve it, she told herself, you have spent your life earning it. Theodora opened the door and said happily, ‘How pretty you look this morning, my Nell. This curious life agrees with you.’

Eleanor smiled at her; the life clearly agreed with Theodora too.

‘We ought by rights to be walking around with dark circles under our eyes and a look of wild despair,’ Theodora said, putting an arm around Eleanor and looking into the mirror beside her, ‘and look at us—two blooming, fresh young lovelies.’

‘I’m thirty-four years old,’ Eleanor said, and wondered what obscure defiance made her add two years.

‘And you look about fourteen,’ Theodora said. ‘Come along; we’ve earned our breakfast.’

Laughing, they raced down the great staircase and found their way through the game room and into the dining-room. ‘Good morning,’ Luke said brightly. ‘And how did everyone sleep?’

‘Delightfully, thank you,’ Eleanor said. ‘Like a baby.’

‘There may have been a little noise,’ Theodora said, ‘but one has to expect that in these old houses. Doctor, what do we do this morning?’

‘Hm?’ said the doctor, looking up. He alone looked tired, but his eyes were lighted with the same brightness they found, all, in one another; it is excitement, Eleanor thought; we are all enjoying ourselves.

‘Ballechin House,’ the doctor said, savouring his words. ‘Borley Rectory. Glamis Castle. It is incredible to find oneself experiencing it, absolutely incredible. I could not have believed it. I begin to understand, dimly, the remote delight of your true medium. I think I shall have the marmalade, if you would be so kind. Thank you. My wife will never believe me. Food has a new flavour—do you find it so?’

‘It isn’t just that Mrs Dudley has surpassed herself, then; I was wondering,’ Luke said.

‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ Eleanor said. ‘About last night, I mean. I can remember knowing that I was frightened, but I can’t imagine actually being frightened——’

‘I remember the cold,’ Theodora said, and shivered.

‘I think it’s because it was so unreal by any pattern of thought I’m used to; I mean, it just didn’t make sense.’ Eleanor stopped and laughed, embarrassed.

‘I agree,’ Luke said. ‘I found myself this morning telling myself what had happened last night; the reverse of a bad dream, as a matter of fact, where you keep telling yourself that it didn’t really happen.’

‘I thought it was exciting,’ Theodora said.

The doctor lifted a warning finger. ‘It is still perfectly possible that it is all caused by subterranean waters.’

‘Then more houses ought to be built over secret springs,’ Theodora said.

The doctor frowned. ‘This excitement troubles me,’ he said. ‘It is intoxicating, certainly, but might it not also be dangerous? An effect of the atmosphere of Hill House? The first sign that we have—as it were—fallen under a spell?’

‘Then I will be an enchanted princess,’ Theodora said.

‘And yet,’ Luke said, ‘if last night is a true measure of Hill House, we are not going to have much trouble; we were frightened, certainly, and found the experience unpleasant while it was going on, and yet I cannot remember that I felt in any physical danger; even Theodora telling that whatever was outside her door was coming to eat her did not really sound——’

‘I know what she meant,’ Eleanor said, ‘because I thought it was exactly the right word. The sense was that it wanted to consume us, take us into itself, make us a part of the house, maybe—oh, dear. I thought I knew what I was saying, but I’m doing it very badly.’

‘No physical danger exists,’ the doctor said positively. ‘No ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself. One cannot even say that the ghost attacks the mind, because the mind, the conscious, thinking mind, is invulnerable; in all our conscious minds, as we sit here talking, there is not one iota of belief in ghosts. Not one of us, even after last night, can say the word “ghost” without a little involuntary smile. No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armour of superstition and have no substitute defence. Not one of us thinks rationally that what ran through the garden last night was a ghost, and what knocked on the door was a ghost, and yet there was certainly something going on in Hill House last night, and the mind’s instinctive refuge—self-doubt—is eliminated. We cannot say, “It was my imagination,” because three other people were there too.’

‘I could say,’ Eleanor put in, smiling, ‘ “All three of you are in my imagination; none of this is real.” ’

‘If I thought you could really believe that,’ the doctor said gravely, ‘I would turn you out of Hill House this morning. You would be venturing far too close to the state of mind which would welcome the perils of Hill House with a kind of sisterly embrace.’

‘He means he would think you were batty, Nell dear.’

‘Well,’ Eleanor said, ‘I expect I would be. If I had to take sides with Hill House against the rest of you, I would expect you to send me away.’ Why me, she wondered, why me? Am I the public conscience? Expected always to say in cold words what the rest of them are too arrogant to recognise? Am I supposed to be the weakest, weaker than Theodora? Of all of us, she thought, I am surely the one least likely to turn against the others.

‘Poltergeists are another thing altogether,’ the doctor said, his eyes resting briefly on Eleanor. ‘They deal entirely with the physical world; they throw stones, they move objects, they smash dishes; Mrs Foyster at Borley Rectory was a long-suffering woman, but she finally lost her temper entirely when her best teapot was hurled through the window. Poltergeists, however, are rock-bottom on the supernatural social scale; they are destructive, but mindless and will-less; they are merely undirected force. Do you recall,’ he asked with a little smile, ‘Oscar Wilde’s lovely story, “The Canterville Ghost”?’

‘The American twins who routed the fine old English ghost,’ Theodora said.

‘Exactly. I have always liked the notion that the American twins were actually a poltergeist phenomenon; certainly poltergeists can overshadow any more interesting manifestation. Bad ghosts drive out good.’ And he patted his hands happily. ‘They drive out everything else, too,’ he added. ‘There is a manor in Scotland, infested with poltergeists, where as many as seventeen spontaneous fires have broken out in one day; poltergeists like to turn people out of bed violently by tipping the bed end over end, and I remember the case of a minister who was forced to leave his home because he was tormented, day after day, by a poltergeist who hurled at his head hymn books stolen from a rival church.’

Suddenly, without reason, laughter trembled inside Eleanor; she wanted to run to the head of the table and hug the doctor, she wanted to reel, chanting, across the stretches of the lawn, she wanted to sing and to shout and to fling her arms and move in great emphatic, possessing circles around the rooms of Hill House; I am here, I am here, she thought. She shut her eyes quickly in delight and then said demurely to the doctor, ‘And what do we do today?’

‘You’re still like a pack of children,’ the doctor said, smiling too. ‘Always asking me what to do today. Can’t you amuse yourselves with your toys? Or with each other? I have work to do.’

‘All I really want to do’—and Theodora giggled—‘is slide down that banister.’ The excited gaiety had caught her as it had Eleanor.

‘Hide and seek,’ Luke said.

‘Try not to wander around alone too much,’ the doctor said. ‘I can’t think of a good reason why not, but it does seem sensible.’

‘Because there are bears in the woods,’ Theodora said.

‘And tigers in the attic,’ Eleanor said.

‘And an old witch in the tower, and a dragon in the drawing-room.’

‘I am quite serious,’ the doctor said, laughing.

‘It’s ten o’clock. I clear——’

‘Good morning, Mrs Dudley,’ the doctor said, and Eleanor and Theodora and Luke leaned back and laughed helplessly.

‘I clear at ten o’clock.’

‘We won’t keep you long. About fifteen minutes, please, and then you can clear the table.’

‘I clear breakfast at ten o’clock. I set on lunch at one. Dinner I set on at six. It’s ten o’clock.’

‘Mrs Dudley,’ the doctor began sternly, and then, noticing Luke’s face tight with silent laughter, lifted his napkin to cover his eyes, and gave in. ‘You may clear the table, Mrs Dudley,’ the doctor said brokenly.

Happily, the sound of their laughter echoing along the halls of Hill House and carrying to the marble group in the drawing-room and the nursery upstairs and the odd little top of the tower, they made their way down the passage to their parlour and fell, still laughing, into chairs. ‘We must not make fun of Mrs Dudley,’ the doctor said and leaned forward, his face in his hands and his shoulders shaking.

They laughed for a long time, speaking now and then in half-phrases, trying to tell one another something, pointing at one another wildly, and their laughter rocked Hill House until, weak and aching, they lay back, spent, and regarded one another. ‘Now——’ the doctor began, and was stopped by a little giggling burst from Theodora.

‘Now,’ the doctor said again, more severely, and they were quiet. ‘I want more coffee,’ he said, appealing. ‘Don’t we all?’

‘You mean go right in there and ask Mrs Dudley?’ Eleanor asked.

‘Walk right up to her when it isn’t one o’clock or six o’clock and just ask her for some coffee?’ Theodora demanded.

‘Roughly, yes,’ the doctor said. ‘Luke, my boy, I have observed that you are already something of a favourite with Mrs Dudley——’

‘And how,’ Luke inquired with amazement, ‘did you ever manage to observe anything so unlikely? Mrs Dudley regards me with the same particular loathing she gives a dish not properly on its shelf; in Mrs Dudley’s eyes——’

‘You are, after all, the heir to the house,’ the doctor said coaxingly. ‘Mrs Dudley must feel for you as an old family retainer feels for the young master.’

‘In Mrs Dudley’s eyes I am something lower than a dropped fork. I beg of you, if you are contemplating asking the old fool for something, send Theo, or our charming Nell. They are not afraid——’

‘Nope,’ Theodora said. ‘You can’t send a helpless female to face down Mrs Dudley. Nell and I are here to be protected, not to man the battlements for you cowards.’

‘The doctor——’

‘Nonsense,’ the doctor said heartily. ‘You certainly wouldn’t think of asking me, an older man; anyway, you know she adores you.’

‘Insolent greybeard,’ Luke said. ‘Sacrificing me for a cup of coffee. Do not be surprised, and I say it darkly, do not be surprised if you lose your Luke in this cause; perhaps Mrs Dudley has not yet had her own mid-morning snack, and she is perfectly capable of a filet de Luke à la meunière, or perhaps dieppoise, depending upon her mood; if I do not return’—and he shook his finger warningly under the doctor’s nose—‘I entreat you to regard your lunch with the gravest suspicion.’ Bowing extravagantly, as befitted one off to slay a giant, he closed the door behind him.

‘Lovely Luke.’ Theodora stretched luxuriously.

‘Lovely Hill House,’ Eleanor said. ‘Theo, there is a kind of little summerhouse in the side garden, all overgrown; I noticed it yesterday. Can we explore it this morning?’

‘Delighted,’ Theodora said. ‘I would not like to leave one inch of Hill House uncherished. Anyway, it’s too nice a day to stay inside.’

‘We’ll ask Luke to come too,’ Eleanor said. ‘And you, Doctor?’

‘My notes——’ the doctor began, and then stopped as the door opened so suddenly that in Eleanor’s mind was only the thought that Luke had not dared face Mrs Dudley after all, but had stood, waiting, pressed against the door; then, looking at his white face and hearing the doctor say with fury, ‘I broke my own first rule; I sent him alone,’ she found herself only asking urgently, ‘Luke? Luke?’

‘It’s all right,’ Luke even smiled. ‘But come into the long hallway.’

Chilled by his face and his voice and his smile, they got up silently and followed him through the doorway into the dark long hallway which led back to the front hall. ‘Here,’ Luke said, and a little winding shiver of sickness went down Eleanor’s back when she saw that he was holding a lighted match up to the wall.

‘It’s—writing?’ Eleanor asked, pressing closer to see.

‘Writing,’ Luke said. ‘I didn’t even notice it until I was coming back. Mrs Dudley said no,’ he added, his voice tight.

‘My flash.’ The doctor took his flashlight from his pocket, and under its light, as he moved slowly from one end of the hall to the other, the letters stood out clearly. ‘Chalk,’ the doctor said, stepping forward to touch a letter with the tip of his finger. ‘Written in chalk.’

The writing was large and straggling and ought to have looked, Eleanor thought, as though it had been scribbled by bad boys on a fence. Instead, it was incredibly real, going in broken lines over the thick panelling of the hallway. From one end of the hallway to the other the letters went, almost too large to read, even when she stood back against the opposite wall.

‘Can you read it?’ Luke asked softly, and the doctor, moving his flashlight, read slowly: HELP ELEANOR COME HOME.

‘No.’ And Eleanor felt the words stop in her throat; she had seen her name as the doctor read it. It is me, she thought. It is my name standing out there so clearly; I should not be on the walls of this house. ‘Wipe it off, please,’ she said, and felt Theodora’s arm go around her shoulders. ‘It’s crazy,’ Eleanor said, bewildered.

‘Crazy is the word, all right,’ Theodora said strongly. ‘Come back inside, Nell, and sit down. Luke will get something and wipe it off.’

‘But it’s crazy,’ Eleanor said, hanging back to see her name on the wall. ‘Why——?’

Firmly the doctor put her through the door into the little parlour and closed it; Luke had already attacked the message with his handkerchief. ‘Now you listen to me,’ the doctor said to Eleanor. ‘Just because your name——’

‘That’s it,’ Eleanor said, staring at him. ‘It knows my name, doesn’t it? It knows my name.’

‘Shut up, will you?’ Theodora shook her violently. ‘It could have said any of us; it knows all our names.’

‘Did you write it?’ Eleanor turned to Theodora. ‘Please tell me—I won’t be angry or anything, just so I can know that—maybe it was only a joke? To frighten me?’ She looked appealingly at the doctor.

‘You know that none of us wrote it,’ the doctor said.

Luke came in, wiping his hands on his handkerchief, and Eleanor turned hopefully. ‘Luke,’ she said, ‘you wrote it, didn’t you? When you went out?’

Luke stared, and then came to sit on the arm of her chair. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you want me to go writing your name everywhere? Carving your initials on trees? Writing “Eleanor, Eleanor” on little scraps of paper?’ He gave her hair a soft little pull. ‘I’ve got more sense,’ he said. ‘Behave yourself.’

‘Then why me?’ Eleanor said, looking from one of them to another; I am outside, she thought madly, I am the one chosen, and she said quickly, beggingly, ‘Did I do something to attract attention, more than anyone else?’

‘No more than usual, dear,’ Theodora said. She was standing by the fireplace, leaning on the mantel and tapping her fingers, and when she spoke she looked at Eleanor with a bright smile. ‘Maybe you wrote it yourself.’

Angry, Eleanor almost shouted. ‘You think I want to see my name scribbled all over this foul house? You think I like the idea that I’m the centre of attention? I’m not the spoiled baby, after all—I don’t like being singled out——’

‘Asking for help, did you notice?’ Theodora said lightly. ‘Perhaps the spirit of the poor little companion has found a means of communication at last. Maybe she was only waiting for some drab, timid——’

‘Maybe it was only addressed to me because no possible appeal for help could get through that iron selfishness of yours; maybe I might have more sympathy and understanding in one minute than——’

‘And maybe, of course, you wrote it to yourself,’ Theodora said again.

After the manner of men who see women quarrelling, the doctor and Luke had withdrawn, standing tight together in miserable silence; now, at last, Luke moved and spoke. ‘That’s enough, Eleanor,’ he said, unbelievably, and Eleanor whirled around, stamping. ‘How dare you?’ she said, gasping. ‘How dare you?’

And the doctor laughed, then, and she stared at him and then at Luke, who was smiling and watching her. What is wrong with me? she thought. Then—but they think Theodora did it on purpose, made me mad so I wouldn’t be frightened; how shameful to be manœuvred that way. She covered her face and sat down in her chair.

‘Nell, dear,’ Theodora said, ‘I am sorry.’

I must say something, Eleanor told herself; I must show them that I am a good sport, after all; a good sport; let them think that I am ashamed of myself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was frightened.’

‘Of course you were,’ the doctor said, and Eleanor thought, How simple he is, how transparent; he believes every silly thing he has ever heard. He thinks, even, that Theodora shocked me out of hysteria. She smiled at him and thought, Now I am back in the fold.

‘I really thought you were going to start shrieking,’ Theodora said, coming to kneel by Eleanor’s chair. ‘I would have, in your place. But we can’t afford to have you break up, you know.’

We can’t afford to have anyone but Theodora in the centre of the stage, Eleanor thought; if Eleanor is going to be the outsider, she is going to be it all alone. She reached out and patted Theodora’s head and said, ‘Thanks. I guess I was kind of shaky for a minute.’

‘I wondered if you two were going to come to blows,’ Luke said, ‘until I realised what Theodora was doing.’

Smiling down into Theodora’s bright, happy eyes, Eleanor thought, But that isn’t what Theodora was doing at all.

Time passed lazily at Hill House. Eleanor and Theodora, the doctor and Luke, alert against terror, wrapped around by the rich hills and securely set into the warm, dark luxuries of the house, were permitted a quiet day and a quiet night—enough, perhaps, to dull them a little. They took their meals together, and Mrs Dudley’s cooking stayed perfect. They talked together and played chess; the doctor finished Pamela and began on Sir Charles Grandison. A compelling need for occasional privacy led them to spend some hours alone in their separate rooms, without disturbance. Theodora and Eleanor and Luke explored the tangled thicket behind the house and found the little summerhouse, while the doctor sat on the wide lawn, writing, within sight and hearing. They found a walled-in rose garden, grown over with weeds, and a vegetable garden tenderly nourished by the Dudleys. They spoke often of arranging their picnic by the brook. There were wild strawberries near the summerhouse, and Theodora and Eleanor and Luke brought back a handkerchief full and lay on the lawn near the doctor, eating them, staining their hands and their mouths; like children, the doctor told them, looking up with amusement from his notes. Each of them had written—carelessly, and with little attention to detail—an account of what they thought they had seen and heard so far in Hill House, and the doctor had put the papers away in his portfolio. The next morning—their third morning in Hill House—the doctor, aided by Luke, had spent a loving and maddening hour on the floor of the upstairs hall, trying, with chalk and measuring tape, to determine the precise dimensions of the cold spot, while Eleanor and Theodora sat cross-legged on the floor, noting down the doctor’s measurements, and playing tic-tac-toe. The doctor was considerably hampered in his work by the fact that, his hands repeatedly chilled by the extreme cold, he could not hold either the chalk or the tape for more than a minute at a time. Luke, inside the nursery doorway, could hold one end of the tape until his hand came into the cold spot, and then his fingers lost strength and relaxed helplessly. A thermometer, dropped into the centre of the cold spot, refused to register any change at all, but continued doggedly maintaining that the temperature there was the same as the temperature down the rest of the hall, causing the doctor to fume wildly against the statisticians of Borley Rectory, who had caught an eleven-degree drop. When he had defined the cold spot as well as he could, and noted his results in his notebook, he brought them downstairs for lunch and issued a general challenge to them, to meet him at croquet in the cool of the afternoon.

‘It seems foolish,’ he explained, ‘to spend a morning as glorious as this has been looking at a frigid place on a floor. We must plan to spend more time outside’—and was mildly surprised when they laughed.

‘Is there still a world somewhere?’ Eleanor asked wonderingly. Mrs Dudley had made them a peach shortcake, and she looked down at her plate and said, ‘I am sure Mrs Dudley goes somewhere else at night, and she brings back fresh cream each morning, and Dudley comes up with groceries every afternoon, but as far as I can remember there is no other place than this.’

‘We are on a desert island,’ Luke said.

‘I can’t picture any world but Hill House,’ Eleanor said.

‘Perhaps,’ Theodora said, ‘we should make notches on a stick, or pile pebbles in a heap, one each day, so we will know how long we have been marooned.’

‘How pleasant not to have any word from outside.’ Luke helped himself to an enormous heap of whipped cream. ‘No letters, no newspapers; anything might be happening.’

‘Unfortunately——’ the doctor said, and then stopped. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he went on. ‘I meant only to say that word will be reaching us from outside, and of course it is not unfortunate at all. Mrs Montague—my wife, that is—will be here on Saturday.’

‘But when is Saturday?’ Luke asked. ‘Delighted to see Mrs Montague, of course.’

‘Day after tomorrow.’ The doctor thought. ‘Yes,’ he said after a minute, ‘I believe that the day after tomorrow is Saturday. We will know it is Saturday, of course,’ he told them with a little twinkle, ‘because Mrs Montague will be here.’

‘I hope she is not holding high hopes of things going bump in the night,’ Theodora said. ‘Hill House has fallen far short of its original promise, I think. Or perhaps Mrs Montague will be greeted with a volley of psychic experiences.’

‘Mrs Montague,’ the doctor said, ‘will be perfectly ready to receive them.’

‘I wonder,’ Theodora said to Eleanor as they left the lunch table under Mrs Dudley’s watchful eye, ‘why everything has been so quiet. I think this waiting is nerve-racking, almost worse than having something happen.’

‘It’s not us doing the waiting,’ Eleanor said. ‘It’s the house. I think it’s biding its time.’

‘Waiting until we feel secure, maybe, and then it will pounce.’

‘I wonder how long it can wait.’ Eleanor shivered and started up the great staircase. ‘I am almost tempted to write a letter to my sister. You know—“Having a perfectly splendid time here in jolly old Hill House. . . .” ’

‘ “You really must plan to bring the whole family next summer,” ’ Theodora went on. ‘ “We sleep under blankets every night. . . .” ’

‘ “The air is so bracing, particularly in the upstairs hall. . . .” ’

‘ “You go around all the time just glad to be alive. . . .” ’

‘ “There’s something going on every minute. . . .” ’

‘ “Civilisation seems so far away. . . .” ’

Eleanor laughed. She was ahead of Theodora, at the top of the stairs. The dark hallway was a little lightened this afternoon, because they had left the nursery door open and the sunlight came through the windows by the tower and touched the doctor’s measuring tape and chalk on the floor. The light reflected from the stained-glass window on the stair landing and made shattered fragments of blue and orange and green on the dark wood of the hall. ‘I’m going to sleep,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been so lazy in my life.’

‘I’m going to lie on my bed and dream about streetcars,’ Theodora said.

It had become Eleanor’s habit to hesitate in the doorway of her room, glancing around quickly before she went inside; she told herself that this was because the room was so exceedingly blue and always took a moment to get used to. When she came inside she went across to open the window, which she always found closed; today she was half-way across the room before she heard Theodora’s door slam back, and Theodora’s smothered ‘Eleanor!’ Moving quickly, Eleanor ran into the hall and to Theodora’s doorway, to stop, aghast, looking over Theodora’s shoulder. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

‘What does it look like?’ Theodora’s voice rose crazily. ‘What does it look like, you fool?’

And I won’t forgive her that, either, Eleanor thought concretely through her bewilderment. ‘It looks like paint,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Except’—realising—‘except the smell is awful.’

‘It’s blood,’ Theodora said with finality. She clung to the door, swaying as the door moved, staring. ‘Blood,’ she said. ‘All over. Do you see it?’

‘Of course I see it. And it’s not all over. Stop making such a fuss.’ Although, she thought conscientiously, Theodora was making very little of a fuss, actually. One of these times, she thought, one of us is going to put her head back and really howl, and I hope it won’t be me, because I’m trying to guard against it; it will be Theodora who . . . And then, cold, she asked, ‘Is that more writing on the wall?’—and heard Theodora’s wild laugh, and thought, Maybe it will be me, after all, and I can’t afford to. I must be steady, and she closed her eyes and found herself saying silently, O stay and hear, your true love’s coming, that can sing both high and low. Trip no further, pretty sweeting; journeys end in lovers meeting . . .

‘Yes indeed, dear,’ Theodora said. ‘I don’t know how you managed it.’

Every wise man’s son doth know. ‘Be sensible,’ Eleanor said. ‘Call Luke. And the doctor.’

‘Why?’ Theodora asked. ‘Wasn’t it to be just a little private surprise for me? A secret just for the two of us?’ Then, pulling away from Eleanor, who tried to hold her from going farther into the room, she ran to the great wardrobe and threw open the door and, cruelly, began to cry. ‘My clothes,’ she said. ‘My clothes.’

Steadily Eleanor turned and went to the top of the stairs. ‘Luke,’ she called, leaning over the banisters. ‘Doctor.’ Her voice was not loud, and she had tried to keep it level, but she heard the doctor’s book drop to the floor and then the pounding of feet as he and Luke ran for the stairs. She watched them, seeing their apprehensive faces, wondering at the uneasiness which lay so close below the surface in all of them, so that each of them seemed always waiting for a cry for help from one of the others; intelligence and understanding are really no protection at all, she thought. ‘It’s Theo,’ she said as they came to the top of the stairs. ‘She’s hysterical. Someone—something—has got red paint in her room, and she’s crying over her clothes.’ Now I could not have put it more fairly than that, she thought, turning to follow them. Could I have put it more fairly than that? she asked herself, and found that she was smiling.

Theodora was still sobbing wildly in her room and kicking at the wardrobe door, in a tantrum that might have been laughable if she had not been holding her yellow shirt, matted and stained; her other clothes had been torn from the hangers and lay trampled and disordered on the wardrobe floor, all of them smeared and reddened. ‘What is it?’ Luke asked the doctor, and the doctor, shaking his head, said, ‘I would swear that it was blood, and yet to get so much blood one would almost have to . . .’ and then was abruptly quiet.

All of them stood in silence for a moment and looked at HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR written in shaky red letters on the wallpaper over Theodora’s bed.

This time I am ready, Eleanor told herself, and said, ‘You’d better get her out of here; bring her into my room.’

‘My clothes are ruined,’ Theodora said to the doctor. ‘Do you see my clothes?’

The smell was atrocious, and the writing on the wall had dripped and splattered. There was a line of drops from the wall to the wardrobe—perhaps what had first turned Theodora’s attention that way—and a great irregular stain on the green rug. ‘It’s disgusting,’ Eleanor said. ‘Please get Theo into my room.’

Luke and the doctor between them persuaded Theodora through the bathroom and into Eleanor’s room, and Eleanor, looking at the red paint (It must be paint, she told herself; it’s simply got to be paint; what else could it be?), said aloud, ‘But why?’—and stared up at the writing on the wall. Here lies one, she thought gracefully, whose name was writ in blood; is it possible that I am not quite coherent at this moment?

‘Is she all right?’ she asked, turning as the doctor came back into the room.

‘She will be in a few minutes. We’ll have to move her in with you for a while, I should think; I can’t imagine her wanting to sleep in here again.’ The doctor smiled a little wanly. ‘It will be a long time, I think, before she opens another door by herself.’

‘I suppose she’ll have to wear my clothes.’

‘I suppose she will, if you don’t mind.’ The doctor looked at her curiously. ‘This message troubles you less than the other?’

‘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 got red on her hands and it was rubbing off on to 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 half-way.’

‘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 carefully 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 on to 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 afraid.’

‘Not at all,’ the doctor said, still grave. ‘Drink your brandy.’

‘Brandy?’ And Eleanor looked down, realising 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 centre 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 dishevelled.

‘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?’