Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories

by Hugh Ealpole

  Then came the war, and it shook the world to pieces. It did not shake Miss Morganhurst.

  For one bad moment she fancied that bridge would be difficult, and that it might not be easy to provide Tiny-Tee with her proper biscuits. She consulted with Mrs Mellish and Mrs Porter, and after looking at the thing from every side they were of opinion that it would be possible still to find a ‘four’. She further summoned up Mr Nix from the ‘vasty deeps’ of the chambers and endeavoured to probe his mind. This she did easily, and Mr Nix became quite confidential. He thoroughly approved of Miss Morganhurst, partly because she knew such very grand people, which was good for his chambers, and partly because Miss Morganhurst had no kind of morals and you could say anything you liked. Mr Nix was a kindly little man and a diplomatic, and he suited himself to his company; but he did like sometimes to be quite unbuttoned and not to have ‘to think of every word’.

  With Miss Morganhurst you needn’t think of anything. She found his love of gossip very agreeable indeed; she approved, too, of his honourable code. You were safe with him. Not a thing would he ever give away about any other inhabitant of Hortons. She asked him about the food for Tiny-Tee, and he assured her that he would do his best. And the little dinners for four? . . . She need not be anxious.

  After which she dismissed the war altogether from her mind. It would, of course, emphasise its more unagreeable features in the paper. That was unfortunate. But very soon the press cleverly discovered a kind of camouflage of phrase which covered up reality completely. ‘The hon. gentleman, speaking at Newcastle last night, said that we would not sheathe the sword until—’ ‘Over the top! Those are the words for which our brave lads are waiting—’ ‘Our offensive in these areas inflicted very heavy losses on the Germans and resulted in the capture of important positions by the Allied troops.’

  It seemed that Miss Morganhurst read these phrases for a week or two, and easily persuaded herself that the war was non-existent. She was happy that it was so. It appears incredible that anyone could have dismissed the war so easily, but then Miss Morganhurst was surely impenetrable.

  I have heard different explanations given, by people who knew her well, of Miss Morganhurst’s impenetrability. Some said that it was a mask, assumed to cover and defeat feelings that were dangerous to liberate; others, that she was so selfish and egoistic that she really did not care about anybody. This is the interesting point about Miss Morganhurst. Did she banish the war entirely from her consciousness and give it no further consideration, or was she, in truth, desperately and with ever-increasing terror aware of it and unable to resist it?

  She gave no sign until the very end; but the nature of that end leads me to believe that the first of the two theories is the correct one. People who knew her have said that her devotion to that wretched little canine remnant proves that she had no heart, but only a fluent sentimentality. I believe it to have proved exactly the opposite. I believe her to have been the cynic she was because she had, at some time or other, been deeply disappointed. She had, I imagine, no illusions about herself, and saw that the only thing to be, if she were to fight at all, was ruthless, harsh, money-grubbing, and, above all, to bury herself in other people’s scandal. She was, I rather fancy, one of those women for whom life would have been completely changed had she been given beauty or even moderate good looks. As life had not given her that, she would pay it back. And after all, life was stronger than she knew. . . .

  She did not refuse to discuss the war, but she spoke of it as of something remotely distant, playing itself out in the sands of the Sahara, for instance. Nothing stirred her cynical humour more deeply than the heroics on both sides. When politicians or kings or generals got up and before all the world said how just their cause was, and how keen they were about honour and truth and self-sacrifice, and how certain they were, after all, to win, Miss Morganhurst gave her sinister, villainous chuckle.

  She became something of a power during the bad years, when the air-raids came and the casualties mounted higher and higher, and Romania came in only to break, and the Russian revolution led to the sinister ghoulishness of Brest-Litovsk. People sought her company. ‘We’ll go and see the “Morgue,” ’ they said; ‘she never mentions the war.’ She never did; she refused absolutely to consider it. She would not even discuss prices and raids and ration-books. Private history was what she cared for, and that generally on the scabrous side, if possible. What she liked to know was who was sick of who, why so-and-so had left such-and-such a place, whether X—was really drinking, and why Z— had taken to cocaine. Her bridge got better and better, and it used to be a real trial of strength to go and play with her in the untidy, over-full, over-garish little flat. The arrival of the Armistice was, I believe now, her first dangerous moment. She was suddenly forced to pause and consider; it was not so easy to shut her eyes and ears as it had been, and the things that she had, against her will, seen and heard were now, in the new silence, insistent. She suddenly, as I remember noticing about this time, got to look incredibly old.

  Her nose seemed longer, her chin hookier, her hands bonier, and little brown spots like sickly freckles appeared on her forehead.

  Her dress got brighter and brighter. She especially affected a kind of purple silk, I remember.

  The Armistice seemed to disappoint her. It would have done us people a lot of good to get a thorough trouncing, I remember her saying. What would have happened to herself and her bridge had we had that trouncing I don’t think she reflected. So far as one could see, she regarded herself as an inevitable permanency. I wonder whether she really did. She developed, too, just about this time, an increased passion for her wretched little dog. It was as though, now that the war was really nearing its close, she was twice as frightened about that animal’s safety as she had been before. Of what was she afraid? Was it some ghostly warning? Was it some sense that she had that fate was surely going to get her somewhere, and that now that it had missed her through air-raids it must try other means? Or was it simply that she had more time now to spend over the animal’s wants and desires? In any case, she would not let the dog out of her sight unless on some most imperative occasion. She trusted Agatha, but no one would take so much care as one would oneself. The dog itself seemed now to be restless and alarmed as though it smelt already its approaching doom. It got, so far as one could see, no pleasure from anything. There were no signs that it loved its mistress, only it did perhaps have a sense that she could protect it from outside disaster. Every step, every word, every breath of wind seemed to drive its little soul to the very edge of extinction— then, with shudderings and shiverings and tremblings, back it came again. They were a grim pair, those two.

  Christmas came and passed, and the world began to shake itself together again. That same shaking was a difficult business, attended with strikes and revolutions and murder and despair; but out of the chaos prophets might discern a form slowly rising, a shape that would stand for a new world, for a better world, a kindlier, a cleaner, honester. . . .

  But Miss Morganhurst was no prophet. Her sallow eyes were intent on her bridge-cards—so, at least, they appeared to be.

  After the catastrophe I talked with only one person who seemed to have expected what actually occurred. This was a funny old thing called Miss Williams, one of Miss Morganhurst’s more shabby friends—a gossip and a sentimentalist—the last person in the world as I would have supposed to see anything interesting.

  However, this old lady insisted that she had perceived, during this period, that Miss Morganhurst was ‘keeping something back.’

  ‘Keeping what back?’ I asked. ‘A guilty secret?’

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ said Miss Williams. ‘Dear me, no. Dahlia wouldn’t have minded anything of that kind. No, it’s my belief she was affected by the war long before any of us supposed it, and that she wouldn’t think of it or look at it because she knew what would happen if she did. She knew, too, that she was being haunted by it all the time, and that it was all piling up, read
y, waiting for the moment. . . . I do hope you don’t think me fantastical—’

  I didn’t think her ‘fantastical’ at all, but I must confess that when I look back I can see in the Miss Morganhurst of these months nothing but a colossal egotism and greed.

  However, I must not be cruel. It was towards the end of April that fate was suddenly tired of waiting, took her in hand, and finished her off.

  One afternoon when, arrayed in a bright pink tea-gown, she was lying on her sofa, taking some rest before dressing for dinner, Agatha came in and said that her brother was there and would like to see her. Now Miss Morganhurst had a very surprising brother—surprising, that is, for her. He was a clergyman who had been for very many years the rector of a little parish in Wiltshire. So little a parish was it that it gave him little work and less pay, with the result that he was, at his advanced age, shabby and moth-eaten and dim, like a poor old bird shut up for many months in a blinded cage and let suddenly into the light. I don’t know what Miss Morganhurst’s dealings with her brother had been, whether she had been kind to him or unkind, selfish or unselfish; but I suspect that she had not seen very much of him. Their ways had been too different, their ambitions too separate. The old man had had one passion in his life, his son, and the boy had died in a German prison in the summer of 1918. He had been, it was gathered, in one of the more unpleasant German prisons. Mr Morganhurst was a widower, and this blow had simply finished him—the thread that connected him with coherent life snapped, and he lived in a world of dim visions and incoherent dreams.

  He was not, in fact, quite right in his head.

  Agatha must have thought the couple a strange and depressing pair as they stood together in that becoloured and becrowded room, if, that is to say, she ever thought of anything but herself. Poor old Morganhurst was wearing an overcoat really green with age, and his squashy black hat was dusty and unbrushed.

  He wore large spectacles, and his chin was of the kind that seems always to have two days’ growth upon it. The bottoms of his trousers were muddy, although it was a dry day. He stood there uneasily, twisting his hat round and round in his fingers and blinking at his sister.

  ‘Sit down, Frederick,’ said his sister. ‘What can I do for you?’

  It seemed that he had come simply to talk to her. He was going down to Little Roseberry that evening, but he had an hour to spare. The fact was that he was besieged, invaded, devastated by horrors of which he could not rid himself.

  If he gave them to someone else might they not leave him? At any rate, he would share them—he would share them with his sister. It appeared that an officer, liberated from Germany after the Armistice, had sought him out and given him some last details about his son’s death.

  These ‘details’ were not nice. There are, as we all know, German prisons and German prisons. Young Morganhurst seemed to have been sent to one of the poorer sort. He had been rebellious and had been punished; he had been starved, shut up for days in solitary darkness . . . at the end he had found a knife somewhere and had killed himself.

  The old man’s mind was like a haystack, and many details lost their way in the general confusion. He told what he could to his sister. It must have been a strange meeting: the shabby old man sitting in one of those gaudy chairs trying to rid himself of his horror and terror and, above all, of his loneliness. Here was the only relation, the only link, the only hope of something human to comfort him in his darkness; and he did not know her, could not see how to appeal to her or to touch her . . . she was as strange to him as a bird of paradise. She on her side, as I now can see, had her own horror to fight. Here at last was the thing that throughout the war she had struggled to keep away from her. She knew, and she alone, how susceptible she was! But she could not turn him away; he was her brother, and she hated him for coming—shabby old man—but she must hear him out.

  She sat there, the dog clutched shivering to her skinny breast. I don’t suppose that she said very much, but she listened. Against her will she listened, and it must have been with her as it is with some traveller when, in the distance, he hears the rushing of the avalanche that threatens to overwhelm him. But she didn’t close her ears. From what she said afterwards one knows that she must have heard everything that he said.

  He very quickly, I expect, forgot that he had an audience at all. The words poured out. There was some German officer who had been described to him, and he had grown, in his mind, to be the very devil himself. He was a brute, I dare say; but there are brutes in every country. . . .

  ‘He had done simply nothing—just spoken back when they insulted him. They took his clothes off him—everything. He was quite naked. And they mocked him like that, pricking him with their swords. . . . They put him into darkness . . . a filthy place, no sanitation, nothing. . . . They twisted his arms. They made him imagine things, horrible things. When he had dysentery they just left him. . . . They made him drink . . . forced it down his throat.’

  How much of it was true? Very little, I dare say. Even as the old man told it, details gathered and piled up. ‘He had always been such a good boy. Very gentle and quiet—never any trouble at school. . . . I was hoping that he would be ordained, as you know, Dahlia. He always loved life . . . one of the happiest boys. What did they do it for? He hadn’t done them any harm. They must have made him very angry for him to say what he did—and he didn’t say very much. . . . And he was all alone. He hadn’t any of his friends with him. And they kept his parcels and letters from him. I’d just sent him one or two little things. . . .’

  This, more than anything else, distressed the old man: that they’d kept the letters from the boy. It was the loneliness that seemed to him the most horrible of all.

  ‘He had always hated to be alone. Even as a very little boy he didn’t like to be left in the dark. He used to beg us. . . . Night-lights, we always left night-lights in his room. . . . But what had he done? Nothing. He had never been a bad boy. There was nothing to punish him for.’

  The old man didn’t cry. He sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and once he brought out a dirty handkerchief. The thing that he couldn’t understand was why this had happened to the boy at all. Also, he was persecuted by the thought that there was something still that he could do. He didn’t know what it might be, but there must be something. He had no vindictiveness. He didn’t want revenge. He didn’t blame the Germans. He didn’t blame anybody. He only felt that he should ‘make it up to his boy’ somehow. ‘You know, Dahlia,’ he said, ‘there were times when one was irritated by the boy. I haven’t a very equable temper. No, I never have had. I used to have my headaches, and he was noisy sometimes. And I’m afraid I spoke sharply. I’m sorry enough for it now—indeed, I am. Oh, yes! But, of course, one didn’t know at the time. . . .’

  Then he went back to the horrors. They would not leave him, they buzzed about his brain like flies. The darkness, the smell . . . the smell, the filth, the darkness. And then the end! He could not forget that. What the boy must have suffered to come to that! Such a happy boy! . . . Why had it happened? And what was to be done now?

  He stopped at last and said that he must go and catch his train. He was glad to have talked about it. It had done him good. It was kindly of Dahlia to listen to him. He hoped that Dahlia would come down one day and see him at Little Roseberry. It wasn’t much that he could offer her. It was a quiet little place, and he was alone, but he would be glad to see her. He kissed her, gave her a dim, bewildered smile, and went.

  Soon after his departure Mrs Mellish arrived. It is significant of Mrs Mellish’s general egotism and ignorance that she perceived nothing odd in Miss Morganhurst! Just the same as she always was. They talked bridge the next afternoon. Bridge. Four women. What about Norah Pope? Poor player. That’s the worst of it. Doesn’t see properly and won’t wear glasses. Simply conceit. But still, who else is there? Tomorrow afternoon. Very difficult. Mrs Mellish admits that on that particular day she was preoccupied about a dress that she couldn’t g
et back from the dressmakers. These days. What has come to the working-classes? They don’t care. THEY DON’T CARE. Money simply of no importance to them. That’s the strange thing. In the old days you could have done simply everything by offering them a little more. . . . But not now. Oh, dear no! . . . She admits that she was preoccupied about the dress, and wasn’t noticing Dahlia Morganhurst as she might have done. She saw nothing odd. It’s my belief that she’ll see nothing odd at the last trump. She went away.

  Agatha is the other witness. After Mrs Mellish’s departure she came in to her mistress. The only thing that she remarked about her was that ‘she was very quiet.’ Tired, I supposed, after talking to that Mrs Mellish. And then her old brother and all. Enough to upset anyone.

  Miss Morganhurst sat on the edge of her gaudy sofa looking in front of her. When Agatha came in she said that she would not dress just yet. Agatha had better take the dog out for a quarter of an hour. The maid wondered at that, because that was a thing that she was never allowed to do. She hated the animal. However, she pushed its monstrous little head inside its absurd little muzzle, put on her hat, and went out.

  I don’t know what Miss Morganhurst thought about during that quarter of an hour, but when at the end of that time Agatha returned, scared out of her life with the dog dead in her arms, the old lady was sitting in the same spot as before. She can’t have moved. She must have been fighting, I fancy, against the last barrier—the last barrier that kept all the wild beasts back from leaping on her imagination.

  Well, that slaughtered morsel of skin and bone finished it. The slaughtering had been the most natural thing in the world. Agatha had put the creature on the pavement for a moment and turned to look in a shop window. Some dog from the other side of the street had enticed the trembling object. It had started tottering across, uttering tiny snorts of sensual excitement behind its absurd muzzle. A Rolls-Royce had done the rest. It had suffered very little damage, and, laid out on Miss Morganhurst’s red lacquer table, it really looked finer than it had ever done. Agatha, of course, was terrified. She knew better than anyone how deeply her mistress had loved the poor, trembling image. Sobbing, she explained. She was really touched, I think— quite truly touched for half a minute. Then, when she saw how quietly Miss Morganhurst took it, she regained her courage, Miss Morganhurst said nothing but ‘Yes.’ Agatha regained, with her courage, her volubility. Words poured forth. She could needs tell madame how deeply, deeply she regretted her carelessness. She would kill herself for her carelessness if madame preferred that. How she could! Madame might do with her what she wished . . .