Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories

by Hugh Ealpole

  But all that Miss Morganhurst said was ‘Yes.’

  Miss Morganhurst went into her bedroom to dress for dinner, and Tiny-Tee was left, at full length in all her glory, trembling no longer, upon the red lacquer table.

  Agatha went downstairs for something, spoke to Fanny the portress, and returned. Outside the bedroom door, which was ajar, she heard a strange sound, like someone cracking nuts, she described it afterwards. She went in. Miss Morganhurst, her thin grey hair about her neck, clad only in her chemise, was sitting on her bed swinging her bare legs. At sight of Agatha she screeched like a parrot. As Agatha approached she sprang off the bed and advanced at her—her back bent, her fingers bent talon-wise. A stream of words poured from her lips. Every horror, every indecency, every violation of truth and honour that the war had revealed through the press, through books, through letters, seemed to have lodged in that brain. Every murder, every rape, every slaughter of innocent children, every violation of girls and old women—they were all there. She stopped close to Agatha and the words streamed out. At the end of every sentence, with a little sigh, she whispered: ‘I was there! I was there! . . . I’ve seen it.’

  Agatha, frozen with horror, remained; then, action coming back to her, she fled—Miss Morganhurst pursued her, her bare feet pattering on the carpet. She called Agatha by the name of some obscure German captain.

  Agatha found a doctor. When they returned Miss Morganhurst was lying on her face on the floor in the darkness, hiding from what she saw. ‘I was there, you know,’ she whispered to the doctor as he put her to bed.

  She died next day. Perhaps, after all, many people have felt the war more than one has supposed. . . .

  Mrs Porter and Miss Allen

  ONE OF the largest flats on the fourth floor of Hortons was taken in March 1919 by a Mrs Porter, a widow. The flat was seen, and all business in connection with it was done, by a Miss Allen, her lady companion. Mr Nix, who considered himself a sound and trenchant judge of human nature, liked Miss Allen from the first; and then when he saw Mrs Porter he liked her too. These were just the tenants for Hortons—modest, gentle ladies with ample means and no extravagant demands on human nature. Mrs Porter was one of those old ladies, now, alas! in our turbulent times, less and less easy to discover—‘something straight out of a book,’ Mr Nix called her. She was little and fragile, dressed in silver grey, forehead puckered a little with a sort of anticipation of being a trial to others, her voice cultured, soft, a little remote like the chime of a distant clock. She moved with gestures a little deprecatory, a little resigned, extremely modest—she would not disturb anyone for the world. . . .

  Miss Allen was, of course, another type—a woman of perhaps forty years of age, refined, quiet, efficient, her dark hair, turning now a little grey, waved decorously from her high white forehead, pince-nez, eyes of a grave, considering brown, a woman resigned, after, it might be, abandoning young ambitions for a place of modest and decent labour in the world—one might still see, in the rather humorous smile that she bestowed once and again upon men and things, the hint of defiance at the necessity that forced abnegation.

  Miss Allen had not been in Mrs Porter’s service for very long. Wearied with the exactions of a family of children whose idle and uninspiring intelligences she was attempting to governess, she answered, at the end of 1918, an advertisement in the ‘Agony’ column of The Times that led her to Mrs Porter. She loved Mrs Porter at first sight.

  ‘Why, she’s a dear old lady,’ she exclaimed to her ironic spirit—‘dear old ladies’ being in those days as rare as crinolines. She was of the kind for which Miss Allen had unconsciously been looking: generous, gentle, refined, and intelligent. More-over, she had, within the last six months, been left quite alone in the world—Mr Porter had died of apoplexy in August 1918. He had left her very wealthy, and Miss Allen discovered quickly in the old lady a rather surprising desire to see and enjoy life— surprising, because old ladies of seventy-one years of age and of Mrs Porter’s gentle appearance do not, as a rule, care for noise and bustle and the buzz of youthful energy.

  ‘I want to be in the very middle of things, dear Miss Allen,’ said Mrs Porter, ‘right in the very middle. We lived at Wimbledon long enough, Henry and I—it wasn’t good for either of us. Find me somewhere within two minutes of all the best theatres.’

  Miss Allen found Hortons, which is, as everyone knows, in Duke Street, just behind Piccadilly and Fortnum and Mason’s, and Hatchard’s and Hammam Turkish Baths and the Royal Academy and Scott’s hat-shop and Jackson’s Jams—how could you be more perfectly in the centre of London?

  Then Miss Allen discovered a curious thing—namely, that Mrs Porter did not wish to keep a single piece, fragment, or vestige of her Wimbledon effects. She insisted on an auction— everything was sold. Miss Allen attempted a remonstrance—some of the things in the Wimbledon house were very fine, handsome, solid mid-Victorian sideboards and cupboards, and chairs and tables.

  ‘You really have no idea, Mrs Porter,’ said Miss Allen, ‘of the cost of furniture these days. It is quite terrible; you will naturally get a wonderful price for your things, but the difficulty of buying—’

  Mrs Porter was determined. She nodded her bright bird-like head, tapped with her delicate fingers on the table, and smiled at Miss Allen.

  ‘If you don’t mind, dear. I know it’s tiresome for you, but I have my reasons.’ It was not tiresome at all for Miss Allen; she loved to buy pretty new things at someone else’s expense, but it was now, for the first time, that she began to wonder how dearly Mrs Porter had loved her husband.

  Through the following weeks this became her principal preoccupation—Mr Henry Porter. She could not have explained to herself why this was. She was not, by nature, an inquisitive and scandal-loving woman, nor was she unusually imaginative. People did not, as a rule, occur to her as existing unless she saw them physically there in front of her. Nevertheless she spent a good deal of her time in considering Mr Porter.

  She was able to make the Horton flat very agreeable. Mrs Porter wanted ‘life and colour’, so the sitting-room had curtains with pink roses and a bright yellow cage with two canaries, and several pretty water-colours, and a handsome fire-screen with golden peacocks, and a deep Turkish carpet, soft and luxurious to the feet. Not one thing from the Wimbledon house was there, not any single picture of Mr Porter. The next thing that Miss Allen discovered was that Mrs Porter was nervous.

  Although Hortons sheltered many human beings within its boundaries, it was, owing to the thickness of its walls and the beautiful training of Mr Nix’s servants, a very quiet place. It had been even called in its day ‘cloistral’. It simply shared with London that amazing and never-to-be-overlauded gift of being able to offer, in the very centre of the traffic of the world, little green spots of quiet and tranquillity. It seemed, after a week or two, that it was almost too quiet for Mrs Porter.

  ‘Open a window, Lucy dear, won’t you,’ she said. ‘I like to hear the omnibuses.’

  It was a chill evening in early April, but Miss Allen threw up the window. They sat there listening. There was no sound, only suddenly, as though to accentuate the silence, St James’s Church clock struck the quarter. Then an omnibus rumbled, rattled, and was gone. The room was more silent than before.

  ‘Shall I read to you?’ said Miss Allen.

  ‘Yes, dear, do.’ And they settled down to Martin Chuzzlewit.

  Mrs Porter’s apprehensiveness became more and more evident. She was so dear an old lady, and had won so completely Miss Allen’s heart, that that kindly woman could not bear to see her suffer. For the first time in her life she wanted to ask questions. It seemed to her that there must be some very strange reason for Mrs Porter’s silences. She was not by nature a silent old lady; she talked continually, seemed, indeed, positively to detest the urgency of silence. She especially loved to tell Miss Allen about her early days. She had grown up as a girl in Plymouth, and she could remember all the events of that time— the balls, the
walks on the Hoe, the shops, the summer visits into Glebeshire, the old dark house with the high garden walls, the cuckoo clock and the pictures of the strange old ships in which her father, who was a retired sea-captain, sailed. She could not tell Miss Allen enough about these things, but so soon as she arrived at her engagement to Mr Porter there was silence. London shrouded her married life with its thick grey pall. She hated that Miss Allen should leave her. She was very generous about Miss Allen’s freedom, always begging her to take an afternoon or evening and amuse herself with her own friends; but Miss Allen had very few friends, and on her return from an expedition she always found the old lady miserable, frightened, and bewildered. She found that she loved her, that she cared for her as she had cared for no human being for many years, so she stayed with her and read to her and talked to her, and saw less and less of the outside world.

  The two ladies made occasionally an expedition to a theatre or a concert, but these adventures, although they were anticipated with eagerness and pleasure, were always in the event disappointing. Mrs Porter loved the theatre; especially did she adore plays of sentiment—plays where young people were happily united, where old people sat cosily together reminiscing over a blazing fire, where surly guardians were suddenly generous, and poor orphan girls were unexpectedly given fortunes.

  Mrs Porter started her evening with eager excitement. She dressed for the occasion, putting on her best lace cap, her cameo brooch, her smartest shoes. A taxi came for them, and they always had the best stalls, near the front, so that the old lady should not miss a word. Miss Allen noticed, however, that very quickly Mrs Porter began to be disturbed. She would glance around the theatre, and soon her colour would fade, her hands begin to tremble; then, perhaps at the end of the first act, perhaps later, a little hand would press Miss Allen’s arm:

  ‘I think, dear, if you don’t mind—I’m tired—shall we not go?’

  After a little while Miss Allen suggested the cinema. Mrs Porter received the idea with eagerness. They went to the West End house, and the first occasion was a triumphant success. Mrs Porter loved it! Just the kind of story for her—Mary Pickford in Daddy Long Legs. To tell the truth, Mrs Porter cried her eyes out. She swore that she had never in her life enjoyed anything so much. And the music! How beautiful! How restful! They would go every week. . . .

  The second occasion was, unfortunately, disastrous. The story was one of modern life, a woman persecuted by her husband, driven by his brutality into the arms of her lover. The husband was the customary cinema villain—broad, stout, sneering, and over-dressed. Mrs Porter fainted and had to be carried out by two attendants. A doctor came to see her, said that she was suffering from nervous exhaustion and must be protected from all excitement. . . . The two ladies sat now every evening in their pretty sitting-room, and Miss Allen read aloud the novels of Dickens one after the other.

  More and more persistently, in spite of herself, did curiosity about the late Mr Porter drive in upon Miss Allen. She told herself that curiosity was vulgar and unworthy of the philosophy that she had created for herself out of life. Nevertheless it persisted. Soon she felt that, after all, it was justified. Were she to help this poor old lady to whom she was now most deeply attached she must know more. She could not give her any real help unless she might gauge more accurately her trouble—but she was a shy woman, shy, especially, of forcing personal confidences. She hesitated; then she was aware that a barrier was being created between them. The evening had many silences, and Miss Allen detected many strange, surreptitious glances thrown at her by the old lady. The situation was impossible. One night she asked her a question.

  ‘Dear Mrs Porter,’ she said, her heart beating strangely as she spoke, ‘I do hope that you will not think me impertinent, but you have been so good to me that you have made me love you. You are suffering, and I cannot bear to see you unhappy. I want, oh, so eagerly, to help you! Is there nothing I can do?’

  Mrs Porter said nothing. Her hands quivered; then a tear stole down her cheek. Miss Allen went over to her, sat down beside her, and took her hand.

  ‘You must let me help you,’ she said. ‘Dismiss me if I am asking you questions that I should not. But I would rather leave you altogether, happy though I am with you, than see you so miserable. Tell me what I can do.’

  ‘You can do nothing, Lucy, dear,’ said the old lady.

  ‘But I must be able to do something. You are keeping from me some secret—’

  Mrs Porter shook her head. . . .

  It was one evening in early May that Miss Allen was suddenly conscious that there was something wrong with the pretty little sitting-room, and it was shortly after her first consciousness of this that poor old Mrs Porter revealed her secret. Miss Allen, looking up for a moment, fancied that the little white marble clock on the mantelpiece had ceased to tick.

  She looked across the room, and for a strange moment fancied that she could see neither the clock nor the mantelpiece—a grey dimness filled her sight. She shook herself, glanced down at her hands, looked up for reassurance, and found Mrs Porter, with wide, terrified eyes, staring at her, her hands trembling against the wood of the table.

  ‘What is it, Lucy?’

  ‘Nothing, Mrs Porter.’

  ‘Did you see something?’

  ‘No, dear.’

  ‘Oh, I thought . . . I thought . . .’ Suddenly the old lady, with a fierce, impetuous movement, pushed the table away from her. She got up, staggered for a moment on her feet, then tumbled to the pink sofa, cowering there, huddled, her sharp fingers pressing against her face.

  ‘Oh, I can’t bear it. . . . I can’t bear it. . . . I can’t bear it any more! He’s coming. He’s coming. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?’

  Miss Allen, feeling nothing but love and affection for her friend, but realising strangely too the dim and muted attention of the room, knelt down beside the sofa and put her strong arms round the trembling, fragile body.

  What is it? Dear, dear Mrs Porter. What is it? Who is coming? Of whom are you afraid?’

  ‘Henry’s coming! Henry, who hated me. He’s coming to carry me away!’

  ‘But Mr Porter’s dead!’

  ‘Yes. . . .’ The little voice was now the merest whisper. ‘But he’ll come all the same. . . . He always does what he says!’

  The two women waited, listening. Miss Allen could hear the old lady’s heart thumping and leaping close to her own. Through the opened windows came the sibilant rumble of the motor-buses. Then Mrs Porter gently pushed Miss Allen away. ‘Sit on a chair, Lucy dear. I must tell you everything. I must share this with someone.’

  She seemed to have regained some of her calmness. She sat straight up upon the sofa, patting her lace cap with her hands, feeling for the cameo brooch at her breast. Miss Allen drew a chair close to the sofa; turning again towards the mantelpiece, she saw that it stood out boldly and clearly; the tick of the clock came across to her with almost startling urgency.

  ‘Now, dear Mrs Porter, what is it that is alarming you?’ she said.

  Mrs Porter cleared her throat. ‘You know, Lucy, that I was married a great many years ago. I was only a very young girl at the time, very ignorant, of course, and you can understand, my dear, that my father and mother influenced me very deeply. They liked Mr Porter. They thought that he would make me a good husband and that I should be very happy. . . . I was not happy, Lucy, dear; never from the very first moment!’

  Here Mrs Porter put out her hand and took Miss Allen’s strong one. ‘I am very willing to believe that much of the unhappiness was due to myself. I was a young, foolish girl; I was disturbed from the very first by the stories that Mr Porter told me and the pictures he showed me. I was foolish about those things. He saw that they shocked me, and I think that that amused him. From the first it delighted him to tease me. Then—soon—he tired of me. He had mistresses. He brought them to our house. He insulted me in every way possible. I had years of that misery. God only knows how I lived through it. It became a h
abit with him to frighten and shock me. It was a game that he loved to play. I think he wanted to see how far I would go. But I was patient through all those many years. Oh! So patient! It was weak, perhaps, but there seemed nothing else for me to be.

  ‘The last twenty years of our married life he hated me most bitterly. He said that I had scorned him, that I had not given him children, that I had wasted his money—a thousand different things! He tortured me, frightened me, disgusted me, but it never seemed to be enough for him, for the vengeance he felt I deserved. Then one day he discovered that he had a weak heart—a doctor frightened him. He saw perhaps for a moment in my eyes my consciousness of my possible freedom. He took my arm and shook me, bent his face close to mine, and said: ‘Ah, you think that after I’m dead you will be free. You are wrong. I will leave you everything that I possess, and then—just as you begin to enjoy it—I will come and fetch you!’ What a thing to say, Lucy, dear! He was mad, and so was I to listen to him. All those years of married life together had perhaps turned both our brains. Six months later he fell down in the street dead. They brought him home, and all that summer afternoon, my dear, I sat beside him in the bedroom, he all dressed in his best clothes and his patent leather shoes, and the band playing in the Square outside. Oh! He was dead, Lucy dear, he was indeed. For a week or two I thought that he was gone altogether. I was happy and free. Then—oh, I don’t know—I began to imagine . . . to fancy . . . I moved from Wimbledon. I advertised for someone, and you came. We moved here. . . . It ought to be . . . it is . . . it must be all right, Lucy dear; hold me, hold me tight! Don’t let me go! He can’t come back! He can’t, he can’t!’