She laughed and turned to smile good-bye at the magic oleanders. Another day, she told them, another day I’ll come back and break your spell.
She stopped for lunch after she had driven a hundred miles and a mile. She found a country restaurant which advertised itself as an old mill and found herself seated, incredibly, upon a balcony over a dashing stream, looking down upon wet rocks and the intoxicating sparkle of moving water, with a cut-glass bowl of cottage cheese on the table before her, and corn sticks in a napkin. Because this was a time and a land where enchantments were swiftly made and broken she wanted to linger over her lunch, knowing that Hill House always waited for her at the end of her day. The only other people in the dining-room were a family party, a mother and father with a small boy and girl, and they talked to one another softly and gently, and once the little girl turned and regarded Eleanor with frank curiosity and, after a minute, smiled. The lights from the stream below touched the ceiling and the polished tables and glanced along the little girl’s curls, and the little girl’s mother said, ‘She wants her cup of stars.’
Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, ‘She wants her cup of stars.’
Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.
‘Her little cup,’ the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill’s good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. ‘It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.’ The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, ‘You’ll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?’
Don’t do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don’t do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.
‘You’re spoiling her,’ the father said. ‘She ought not to be allowed these whims.’
‘Just this once,’ the mother said. She put down the glass of milk and touched the little girl gently on the hand. ‘Eat your ice cream,’ she said.
When they left, the little girl waved good-bye to Eleanor, and Eleanor waved back, sitting in joyful loneliness to finish her coffee while the gay stream tumbled along below her. I have not very much farther to go, Eleanor thought; I am more than half-way there. Journey’s end, she thought, and far back in her mind, sparkling like the little stream, a tag end of a tune danced through her head, bringing distantly a word or so; ‘In delay there lies no plenty,’ she thought, ‘in delay there lies no plenty.’
She nearly stopped for ever just outside Ashton, because she came to a tiny cottage buried in a garden. I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin. . . . But the cottage was far behind, and it was time to look for her new road, so carefully charted by Dr Montague.
‘Turn left on to Route 5 going west,’ his letter said, and, as efficiently and promptly as though he had been guiding her from some spot far away, moving her car with controls in his hands, it was done; she was on Route 5 going west, and her journey was nearly done. In spite of what he said, though, she thought, I will stop in Hillsdale for a minute, just for a cup of coffee, because I cannot bear to have my long trip end so soon. It was not really disobeying, anyway; the letter said it was inadvisable to stop in Hillsdale to ask the way, not forbidden to stop for coffee, and perhaps if I don’t mention Hill House I will not be doing wrong. Anyway, she thought obscurely, it’s my last chance.
Hillsdale was upon her before she knew it, a tangled disorderly mess of dirty houses and crooked streets. It was small; once she had come on to the main street she could see the corner at the end with the gas station and the church. There seemed to be only one place to stop for coffee, and that was an unattractive diner, but Eleanor was bound to stop in Hillsdale and so she brought her car to the broken kerb in front of the diner and got out. After a minute’s thought, with a silent nod to Hillsdale, she locked the car, mindful of her suitcase on the floor and the carton on the back seat. I will not spend long in Hillsdale, she thought, looking up and down the street, which managed, even in the sunlight, to be dark and ugly. A dog slept uneasily in the shade against a wall, a woman stood in a doorway across the street and looked at Eleanor, and two young boys lounged against a fence, elaborately silent. Eleanor, who was afraid of strange dogs and jeering women and young hoodlums, went quickly into the diner, clutching her pocketbook and her car keys. Inside, she found a counter with a chinless, tired girl behind it, and a man sitting at the end eating. She wondered briefly how hungry he must have been to come in here at all, when she looked at the grey counter and the smeared glass bowl over a plate of doughnuts. ‘Coffee,’ she said to the girl behind the counter, and the girl turned wearily and tumbled down a cup from the piles on the shelves; I will have to drink this coffee because I said I was going to, Eleanor told herself sternly, but next time I will listen to Dr Montague.
There was some elaborate joke going on between the man eating and the girl behind the counter; when she set Eleanor’s coffee down she glanced at him and half-smiled, and he shrugged, and then the girl laughed. Eleanor looked up, but the girl was examining her fingernails and the man was wiping his plate with bread. Perhaps Eleanor’s coffee was poisoned; it certainly looked it. Determined to plumb the village of Hillsdale to its lowest depths, Eleanor said to the girl, ‘I’ll have one of those doughnuts too, please,’ and the girl, glancing sideways at the man, slid one of the doughnuts on to a dish and set it down in front of Eleanor and laughed when she caught another look from the man.
‘This is a pretty little town,’ Eleanor said to the girl. ‘What is it called?’
The girl stared at her; perhaps no one had ever before had the audacity to call Hillsdale a pretty little town; after a moment the girl looked again at the man, as though calling for confirmation, and said, ‘Hillsdale.’
‘Have you lived here long?’ Eleanor asked. I’m not going to mention Hill House, she assured Dr Montague far away, I just want to waste a little time.
‘Yeah,’ the girl said.
‘It must be pleasant, living in a small town like this. I come from the city.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you like it here?’
‘It’s all right,’ the girl said. She looked again at the man, who was listening carefully. ‘Not much to do.’
‘How large a town is it?’
‘Pretty small. You want more coffee?’ This was addressed to the man, who was rattling his cup against his saucer, and Eleanor took a first, shuddering sip of her own coffee and wondered how he could possibly want more.
‘Do you have a lot of visitors around here?’ she asked when the girl had filled the coffee cup and gone back to lounge against the shelves. ‘Tourists, I mean?’
‘What for?’ For a minute the girl flashed at her, from what might have been an emptiness greater than any Eleanor had ever known. ‘Why would anybody come here?’