Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories

by Hugh Ealpole

  Well, she could not give anyone that kind of old-fashioned sugary devotion; it wasn’t in her, and Herbert knew it by this time.

  Nevertheless she loved Herbert in her own way, as he must know, know it so well that he ought to pay no attention to the bursts of temper. She wasn’t well. She would see a doctor in London . . .

  The little boys finished their carols, were properly rewarded, and tumbled like feathery birds out into the snow again. They went into the study, the two of them, and stood beside the big open log-fire. She put her hand up and stroked his thin beautiful cheek.

  ‘I’m so sorry to have been cross just now, Bertie. I didn’t mean half I said, you know.’

  But he didn’t, as he usually did, kiss her and tell her that it didn’t matter. Looking straight in front of him, he answered:

  ‘Well, Alice, I do wish you wouldn’t. It hurts, horribly. It upsets me more than you think. And it’s growing on you. You make me miserable. I don’t know what to do about it. And it’s all about nothing.’

  Irritated at not receiving the usual commendation for her sweetness in making it up again, she withdrew a little and answered:

  ‘Oh, all right. I’ve said I’m sorry. I can’t do any more.’

  ‘But tell me,’ he insisted, ‘I want to know. What makes you so angry, so suddenly?—and about nothing at all.’

  She was about to let her anger rise, her anger at his obtuseness, obstinacy, when some fear checked her, a strange unanalysed fear, as though someone had whispered to her, ‘Look out! This is the last time!’

  ‘It’s not altogether my own fault,’ she answered, and left the room.

  She stood in the cold hall, wondering where to go. She could feel the snow falling outside the house and shivered. She hated the snow, she hated the winter, this beastly, cold dark English winter that went on and on, only at last to change into a damp, soggy English spring.

  It had been snowing all day. In Polchester it was unusual to have so heavy a snowfall. This was the hardest winter that they had known for many years.

  When she urged Herbert to winter abroad—which he could quite easily do—he answered her impatiently; he had the strongest affection for this poky dead-and-alive Cathedral town. The Cathedral seemed to be precious to him; he wasn’t happy if he didn’t go and see it every day! She wouldn’t wonder if he didn’t think more of the Cathedral than he did of herself. Elinor had been the same; she had even written a little book about the Cathedral, about the Black Bishop’s Tomb and the stained glass and the rest . . .

  What was the Cathedral after all? Only a building!

  She was standing in the drawing-room looking out over the dusky ghostly snow to the great hulk of the Cathedral that Herbert said was like a flying ship, but to herself was more like a crouching beast licking its lips over the miserable sinners that it was for ever devouring.

  As she looked and shivered, feeling that in spite of herself her temper and misery were rising so that they threatened to choke her, it seemed to her that her bright and cheerful fire-lit drawing-room was suddenly open to the snow. It was exactly as though cracks had appeared everywhere, in the ceiling, the walls, the windows, and that through these cracks the snow was filtering, dribbling in little tracks of wet down the walls, already perhaps making pools of water on the carpet.

  This was of course imagination, but it was a fact that the room was most dreadfully cold although a great fire was burning and it was the cosiest room in the house.

  Then, turning, she saw the figure standing by the door. This time there could be no mistake. It was a grey shadow, and yet a shadow with form and outline—the untidy grey hair, the pale face like a moon-lit leaf; the long grey clothes, and something obstinate, vindictive, terribly menacing in its pose.

  She moved and the figure was gone; there was nothing there and the room was warm again, quite hot in fact. But young Mrs Ryder, who had never feared anything in all her life save the vanishing of her youth, was trembling so that she had to sit down, and even then her trembling did not cease. Her hand shook on the arm of her chair.

  She had created this thing out of her imagination of Elinor’s hatred of her and her own hatred of Elinor. It was true that they had never met, but who knew but that the spiritualists were right, and Elinor’s spirit, jealous of Herbert’s love for her, had been there driving them apart, forcing her to lose her temper and then hating her for losing it? Such things might be! But she had not much time for speculation. She was preoccupied with her fear. It was a definite, positive fear, the kind of fear that one has just before one goes under an operation. Someone or something was threatening her. She clung to her chair as though to leave it were to plunge into disaster. She looked around her everywhere; all the familiar things, the pictures, the books, the little tables, the piano were different now, isolated, strange, hostile, as though they had been won over by some enemy power.

  She longed for Herbert to come and protect her; she felt most kindly to him. She would never lose her temper with him again—and at that same moment some cold voice seemed to whisper in her ear: ‘You had better not. It will be for the last time.’

  At length she found courage to rise, cross the room and go up to dress for dinner. In her bedroom courage came to her once more. It was certainly very cold, and the snow, as she could see when she looked between her curtains, was falling more heavily than ever, but she had a warm bath, sat in front of her fire and was sensible again.

  For many months this odd sense that she was watched and accompanied by someone hostile to her had been growing. It was the stronger perhaps because of the things that Herbert told her about Elinor; she was the kind of woman, he said, who, once she loved anyone, would never relinquish her grasp; she was utterly faithful. He implied that her tenacious fidelity had been at times a little difficult.

  ‘She always said,’ he added once, ‘that she would watch over me until I rejoined her in the next world. Poor Elinor!’ he sighed. ‘She had a fine religious faith, stronger than mine, I fear.’

  It was always after one of her tantrums that young Mrs Ryder had been most conscious of this hallucination, this dreadful discomfort of feeling that someone was near you who hated you—but it was only during the last week that she began to fancy that she actually saw anyone, and with every day her sense of this figure had grown stronger.

  It was, of course, only nerves, but it was one of those nervous afflictions that became tiresome indeed if you did not rid yourself of it. Mrs Ryder, secure now in the warmth and intimacy of her bedroom, determined that henceforth everything should be sweetness and light. No more tempers! Those were the things that did her harm.

  Even though Herbert were a little trying, was not that the case with every husband in the world? And was it not Christmas time? Peace and Good Will to men! Peace and Good Will to Herbert!

  They sat down opposite to one another in the pretty little dining-room hung with Chinese wood-cuts, the table gleaming and the amber curtains richly dark in the firelight.

  But Herbert was not himself. He was still brooding, she supposed, over their quarrel of the afternoon. Weren’t men children? Incredible the children that they were!

  So when the maid was out of the room she went over to him, bent down and kissed his forehead.

  ‘Darling . . . you’re still cross, I can see you are. You mustn’t be. Really you mustn’t. It’s Christmas time and, if I forgive you, you must forgive me.’

  ‘You forgive me?’ he asked, looking at her in his most aggravating way. ‘What have you to forgive me for?’

  Well, that was really too much. When she had taken all the steps, humbled her pride.

  She went back to her seat, but for a while could not answer him because the maid was there. When they were alone again she said, summoning all her patience:

  ‘Bertie dear, do you really think that there’s anything to be gained by sulking like this? It isn’t worthy of you. It isn’t really.’

  He answered her quietly.

  ‘Sul
king? No, that’s not the right word. But I’ve got to keep quiet. If I don’t I shall say something I’m sorry for.’ Then, after a pause, in a low voice, as though to himself: ‘These constant rows are awful.’

  Her temper was rising again; another self that had nothing to do with her real self; a stranger to her and yet a very old familiar friend.

  ‘Don’t be so self-righteous,’ she answered, her voice trembling a little. ‘These quarrels are entirely my own fault, aren’t they?’

  ‘Elinor and I never quarrelled,’ he said, so softly that she scarcely heard him.

  ‘No! Because Elinor thought you perfect. She adored you. You’ve often told me. I don’t think you perfect. I’m not perfect either. But we’ve both got faults. I’m not the only one to blame.’

  ‘We’d better separate,’ he said, suddenly looking up. ‘We don’t get on now. We used to. I don’t know what’s changed everything. But, as things are, we’d better separate.’

  She looked at him and knew that she loved him more than ever, but because she loved him so much she wanted to hurt him, and because he had said that he thought he could get on without her she was so angry that she forgot all caution. Her love and her anger helped one another. The more angry she became the more she loved him.

  ‘I know why you want to separate,’ she said. ‘It’s because you’re in love with someone else. (‘How funny,’ something inside her said. ‘You don’t mean a word of this.’) You’ve treated me as you have, and then you leave me.’

  ‘I’m not in love with anyone else,’ he answered her steadily, ‘and you know it. But we are so unhappy together that it’s silly to go on . . . silly. . . . The whole thing has failed.’

  There was so much unhappiness, so much bitterness, in his voice that she realised that at last she had truly gone too far. She had lost him. She had not meant this. She was frightened and her fear made her so angry that she went across to him.

  ‘Very well then . . . I’ll tell everyone, what you’ve been. How you’ve treated me.’

  ‘Not another scene,’ he answered wearily. ‘I can’t stand any more. Let’s wait. Tomorrow is Christmas Day . . .’

  He was so unhappy that her anger with herself maddened her. She couldn’t bear his sad, hopeless disappointment with herself; their life together, everything.

  In a fury of blind temper she struck him; it was as though she were striking herself. He got up and without a word left the room. There was a pause, and then she heard the hall door close. He had left the house.

  She stood there, slowly coming to her control again. When she lost her temper it was as though she sank under water. When it was all over she came once more to the surface of life, wondering where she’d been and what she had been doing. Now she stood there, bewildered, and then at once she was aware of two things, one that the room was bitterly cold and the other that someone was in the room with her.

  This time she did not need to look around her. She did not turn at all, but only stared straight at the curtained windows, seeing them very carefully, as though she were summing them up for some future analysis, with their thick amber folds, gold rod, white lines—and beyond them the snow was falling.

  She did not need to turn, but, with a shiver of terror, she was aware that that grey figure who had, all these last weeks, been approaching ever more closely, was almost at her very elbow. She heard quite clearly: ‘I warned you. That was the last time.’

  At the same moment Onslow the butler came in. Onslow was broad, fat and rubicund—a good faithful butler with a passion for church music. He was a bachelor and, it was said, disappointed of women. He had an old mother in Liverpool to whom he was greatly attached.

  In a flash of consciousness she thought of all these things when he came in. She expected him also to see the grey figure at her side. But he was undisturbed, his ceremonial complacency clothed him securely.

  ‘Mr Fairfax has gone out,’ she said firmly. Oh, surely he must see something, feel something.

  ‘Yes, Madam!’ Then, smiling rather grandly: ‘It’s snowing hard. Never seen it harder here. Shall I build up the fire in the drawing-room, Madam?’

  ‘No, thank you. But Mr Fairfax’s study . . .’

  ‘Yes, Madam. I only thought that as this room was so warm you might find it chilly in the drawing-room.’

  This room warm, when she was shivering from head to foot; but holding herself lest he should see . . . She longed to keep him there, to implore him to remain; but in a moment he was gone, softly closing the door behind him.

  Then a mad longing for flight seized her, and she could not move. She was rooted there to the floor, and even as, wildly trying to cry, to scream, to shriek the house down, she found that only a little whisper would come, she felt the cold touch of a hand on hers.

  She did not turn her head: her whole personality, all her past life, her poor little courage, her miserable fortitude were summoned to meet this sense of approaching death which was as unmistakable as a certain smell, or the familiar ringing of a gong. She had dreamt in nightmares of approaching death and it had always been like this, a fearful constriction of the heart, a paralysis of the limbs, a choking sense of disaster like an anaesthetic.

  ‘You were warned,’ something said to her again.

  She knew that if she turned she would see Elinor’s face, set, white, remorseless. The woman had always hated her, been vilely jealous of her, protecting her wretched Herbert.

  A certain vindictiveness seemed to release her. She found that she could move, her limbs were free.

  She passed to the door, ran down the passage, into the hall. Where would she be safe? She thought of the Cathedral, where tonight there was a carol service. She opened the hall door and just as she was, meeting the thick, involving, muffling snow, she ran out.

  She started across the green towards the Cathedral door. Her thin black slippers sank in the snow. Snow was everywhere —in her hair, her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth, on her bare neck, between her breasts.

  ‘Help! Help! Help!’ she wanted to cry, but the snow choked her. Lights whirled about her. The Cathedral rose like a huge black eagle and flew towards her.

  She fell forward, and even as she fell a hand, far colder than the snow, caught her neck. She lay struggling in the snow and as she struggled there two hands of an icy fleshless chill closed about her throat.

  Her last knowledge was of the hard outline of a ring pressing into her neck. Then she lay still, her face in the snow, and the flakes eagerly, savagely, covered her.

  Miss Morganhurst

  IT MAY be that in future years, when critics and commentators look back upon the European War, one of the aspects of it that will seem to them strangest will be the attitude of complete indifference that certain people assumed during the course of it. Indifference! That is an inefficient word. It is not too strong to say that hundreds of men and women in London during those horrible years were completely unconscious, save on the rare occasions when rationing or air-raids forced them to attend, that there was any war at all. There were men in clubs, women in drawing-rooms . . . old maids and old bachelors . . . old maids like Miss Morganhurst.

  How old Miss Morganhurst really was, for how long she had been raising her lorgnette to gaze scornfully at Society, for how many years now she had been sitting down to bridge on fine sunny afternoons with women like Anne Carteledge and Mrs Mellish and Mrs Porter, for how many more years she had lived in No. 30 flat at Hortons she alone had the secret—even Agatha, her sour and confidential maid, could not tell.

  No one knew whence she came; years ago some young wag had christened her the ‘Morgue’, led to that diminutive by the strange pallor of her cheeks, the queer, bone-cracking little body she had, and her fashion of dressing herself up in jewellery and bright colours that gave her a certain sort of ghastliness. She had been for years an intimate of all sorts of sets in London; no one could call her a snob—she went just everywhere, and knew just everyone; she was after two things in life—scanda
l and bridge— and whether it were the old Duchess of Wrexe’s drawing-room (without the Duchess, of course) or the cheapest sort of provincial tea-party, she was equally at home and satisfied. She was like a ferret with her beady eyes—a dressed-up ferret. Yes, and like the ‘Morgue’ too, a sniff of corruption about her somewhere.

  People had said for many years that she was the best bridge-player in London and that she lived by her winnings. That was, I dare say, true enough. Her pale face looked as though it fed on artificial light, and her over-decorated back was always bent a little, as though she were forever stooping over a table.

  I’ve seen her play bridge, and it’s not a sight one’s likely to forget—bent almost double, her hooky fingers, of a dull yellow loaded with rings, pointing towards some card, and her eyes literally flashing fire. Lord! How these women played! Life and death to them truly . . . no gentle card-game for them. She was a woman who hated sentiment; her voice was hard and dry, with a rasp in it like the movement of an ill-fitting gate. She boasted that she cared for no human being alive, she did not believe in human affection. Her maid, Agatha, she said, would cut her throat for twopence; but, expecting to be left something in the will, stayed on savagely hoping.

  It is hard, however, for even the driest of human souls to be attached to nothing. Miss Morganhurst had her attachment—to a canine fragment of skin and bone known as Tiny-Tee. Tiny-Tee was so small that it could not have been said to exist had not its perpetual misery given it a kind of spasmodic liveliness. It is the nature of these dogs to shiver and shake and tremble, but nothing ever lived up to its nature more thoroughly than Tiny-Tee. Miss Morganhurst (in her own fierce, rasping way) adored this creature. It never left her, and sat on her lap during bridge shuddering and shivering amongst a multitude of little gold chains and keys and purses that jangled and rattled with every shiver.