Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories

by Hugh Ealpole

  She broke into passionate sobbing, cowering back on to the sofa as she had done before. The two women sat there, comforting one another. Miss Allen gathered the frail, trembling little body into her arms and, like a mother with her child, soothed it.

  But as she sat there she realised, with a chill shudder of alarm, that moment, a quarter of an hour before, when the room had been dimmed and the clock stilled. Had that been fancy? Had some of Mrs Porter’s terror seized her in sympathy? Were they simply two lonely women whose nerves were jagged by the quiet monotony and seclusion of their lives? Why was it that from the first she, so unimaginative and definite, should have been disturbed by the thought of Mr Porter? Why was it that even now she longed to know more surely about him, his face, his clothes, his height . . . everything.

  ‘You must go to bed, dear. You are tired out. Your nerves have never recovered from the time of Mr Porter’s death. That’s what it is. . . You must go to bed, dear.’

  Mrs Porter went. She seemed to be relieved by her outburst. She felt, perhaps, now less lonely. It seemed, too, that she had less to fear now that she had betrayed her ghost into sunlight. She slept better that night than she had done for a long time past. Miss Allen sat beside the bed staring into the darkness, thinking. . . .

  For a week after this they were happy. Mrs Porter was in high spirits. They went to the Coliseum and heard Miss Florence Smithson sing ‘Roses of Picardy,’ and in the cinema they were delighted with the charm and simplicity of Alma Taylor. Mrs Porter lost her heart to Alma Taylor. ‘That’s a sweet girl,’ she said. ‘I would like to meet her. I’m sure she’s good.’ ‘I’m sure she is,’ said Miss Allen. Mrs Porter made friends in the flat. Mr Nix met them one day at the bottom of the lift and talked to them so pleasantly. ‘What a gentleman!’ said Mrs Porter afterwards as she took off her bonnet.

  Then one evening Miss Allen came into the sitting-room and stopped dead, frozen rigid on the threshold. Someone was in the room. She did not at first think of Mr Porter. She was only sure that someone was there. Mrs Porter was in her bedroom changing her dress.

  Miss Allen said, ‘Who’s there?’ She walked forward. The dim evening saffron light powdered the walls with trembling colour. The canaries twittered, the clock ticked; no one was there. After that instant of horror she was to know no relief. It was as though that spoken ‘Who’s there?’ had admitted her into the open acceptance of a fact that she ought for ever to have denied.

  She was a woman of common sense, of rational thought, scornful of superstition and sentiment. She realised now that there was something quite definite for her to fight, something as definite as disease, as pain, as poverty and hunger. She realised, too, that she was there to protect Mrs Porter from everything— yes, from everything and everybody!

  Her first thought was to escape from the flat, and especially from everything in the flat—from the pink sofa, the gate-legged table, the birdcage and the clock. She saw then that, if she yielded to this desire, they would be driven, the two of them, into perpetual flight, and that the very necessity of escaping would only admit the more the conviction of defeat. No, they must stay where they were; that place was their battle-ground.

  She determined, too, that Mr Porter’s name should not be mentioned between them again. Mrs Porter must be assured that she had forgotten his very existence.

  Soon she arrived at an exact knowledge of the arrival of these ‘attacks’ as she called them. That month of May gave them wonderful weather. The evenings were so beautiful that they sat always with the windows open behind them, and the dim colour of the night-glow softened the lamplight and brought with it scents and breezes and a happy murmurous undertone. She received again and again in these May evenings that earlier impression of someone’s entrance into the room. It came to her, as she sat with her back to the fireplace, with the conviction that a pair of eyes were staring at her. Those eyes willed her to him, and she would not; but soon she seemed to know them—cold, hard, and separated from her, she fancied, by glasses. They seemed, too, to bend down upon her from a height. She was desperately conscious at these moments of Mrs Porter. Was the old lady also aware? She could not tell. Mrs Porter still cast at her those odd, furtive glances, as though to see whether she suspected anything, but she never looked at the fireplace nor started as though the door was suddenly opened.

  There were times when Miss Allen, relaxing her self-control, admitted without hesitation that someone was in the room. He was tall, wore spectacles behind which he scornfully peered. She challenged him to pass her guard, and even felt the stiff pride of a victorious battle. They were fighting for the old lady, and she was winning. . . .

  At all other moments she scorned herself for this weakness. Mrs Porter’s nerves had affected her own. She had not believed that she could be so weak. Then, suddenly, one evening Mrs Porter dropped her cards, crumpled down into her chair, screamed, ‘No, no . . . Lucy! . . . Lucy! He’s here! . . .’

  She was strangely, at the moment of that cry, aware of no presence in the room. It was only when she had gathered her friend into her arms, persuading her that there was nothing, loving her, petting her, that she was conscious of the dimming of the light, the stealthy withdrawal of sound. She was facing the fireplace; before the mantelpiece there seemed to her to hover a shadow, something so tenuous that it resembled a film of dust against the glow of electric light. She faced it with steady eyes and a fearless heart.

  But against her will her soul admitted that confrontation. From that moment Mrs Porter abandoned disguise. Her terror was now so persistent that soon, of itself, it would kill her. There was no remedy; doctors could not help, nor change of scene. Only if Miss Allen still saw and felt nothing could the old lady still hope. Miss Allen lied and lied again and again.

  ‘You saw nothing, Lucy?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Not there by the fireplace?’

  ‘Nothing, dear. . . . Of course, nothing!’

  Events from then moved quickly, and they moved for Miss Allen quite definitely in the darkening of the sinister shadow. She led now a triple existence: one life was Mrs Porter’s, devoted to her, delivered over to her, helping her, protecting her; the second life was her own, her rational, practical self, scornful of shadow and of the terror of death; the third was the struggle with Henry Porter, a struggle now as definite and concrete as though he were a blackmailer confining her liberty.

  She could never tell when he would come, and with every visit that he paid he seemed to advance in her realisation of him. It appeared that he was always behind her, staring at her through those glasses that had, she was convinced, large gold rims and thin gold wires. She fancied that she had before her a dim outline of his face—pale, the chin sharp and pointed, the ears large and protuberant, the head dome-shaped and bald. It was now that, with all her life and soul in the struggle for her friend, she realised that she did not love her enough. The intense love of her life had been already in earlier years given. Mrs Porter was a sweet old lady, and Miss Allen would give her life for her—but her soul was atrophied a little, tired a little, exhausted, perhaps, in the struggle so sharp and persistent for her own existence.

  ‘Oh, if I were younger I could drive him away!’ came back to her again and again. She found, too, that her own fear impeded her own self-sacrifice. She hated this shadow as something strong, evil, like mildew on stone, chilling breath. I’m not brave enough. . . . I’m not good enough. . . . I’m not young enough! Incessantly she tried to determine how real her sensations were. Was she simply influenced by Mrs Porter’s fear? Was it the blindest imagination? Was it bred simply of the close, confined life that they were leading?

  She could not tell. They had resumed their conspiracy of silence, of false animation and ease of mind. They led their daily lives as though there was nothing between them. But with every day Mrs Porter’s strength was failing; the look of horrified anticipation in her eyes was now permanent. At night they slept together, and the little frail body tremb
led like a leaf in Miss Allen’s arms.

  The appearances were now regularised. Always when they were in the middle of their second game of ‘Patience’ Miss Allen felt that impulse to turn, that singing in her ears, the force of his ironical gaze. He was now almost complete to her, standing in front of the Japanese screen, his thin legs apart, his hostile, conceited face bent towards them, his pale, thin hands extended as though to catch a warmth that was not there.

  A Sunday evening came. Earlier than usual they sat down to their cards. Through the open window shivered the jangled chimes of the bells of St James’s.

  ‘Well, he won’t come yet . . .’ was Miss Allen’s thought. Then with that her nightly resolve: ‘When he comes I must not turn—I must not look. She must not know that I know.’

  Suddenly he was with them, and with a dominant force, a cruelty, a determination that was beyond anything that had been before.

  ‘Four, five, six. . . .’ The cards trembled in Mrs Porter’s hand. ‘And there’s the spade, Lucy dear.’

  He came closer. He was nearer to her than he had ever been. She summoned all that she had—her loyalty, her love, her honesty, her self-discipline. It was not enough.

  She turned. He was there as she had always known that she would see him, his cruel, evil, supercilious face, conscious of its triumph, bent towards them, his grey clothes hanging loosely about his thin body, his hands spread out. He was like an animal about to spring.

  ‘God help me! God help me!’ she cried. With those words she knew that she had failed. She stood as though she would protect with her body her friend. She was too late.

  Mrs Porter’s agonised cry, ‘You see him, Lucy! . . . You see him, Lucy!’ warned her.

  ‘No, no,’ she answered. She felt something like a cold breath of stagnant water pass her. She turned back to see the old woman tumble across the table, scattering the little cards.

  The room was emptied. They two were alone; she knew, without moving, horror and self-shame holding her there, that her poor friend was dead.

  Lizzie Rand

  LIZZIE RAND was just forty-six years of age when old Mrs Roughton McKenzie died, leaving her all her money. Months later she had not thoroughly realised what had happened to her.

  Until that day of Mrs McKenzie’s death she had never had any money. She had spent her life, her energies, her pluck and her humour in the service of one human being after another, and generally in the service of women. It seemed to her to be really funny that the one who had during her life begrudged her most should in the end be the one who had given her everything. But no one had ever understood old Mrs McKenzie, and as likely as not she had left her money to Lizzie Rand just to spite her numerous relations. Lizzie had expected nothing. She never did expect anything, which was as well, perhaps, because no one ever gave her anything. She was not a person to whom one naturally gave things; she had a pride, a reserve, an assertion of her own private liberty that kept people away and forbade intimacy. That had not always been so. In the long ago days when she had been Adela Beaminster’s secretary she had given herself. She had loved a man who had not loved her, and out of the shock of that she had won a friendship with another woman, which was still perhaps the most precious thing that she had. But that same shock had been enough for her. She guarded, with an almost bitter ferocity, the purity and liberty of her soul.

  All the women whose secretary she had afterwards been had felt this in her, and most of them had resented it. Old Mrs McKenzie had resented it more than any of them. She was a selfish, painted, over-decorated old creature, a widow with no children and only nephews and nieces to sigh after her wealth. One of Lizzie’s chief duties had been to keep these nephews and nieces from the door, and this had been done with a certain grim austerity, finding that none of them cared for the aunt, and all for the money. The outraged relations decided, of course, at once that she was a plotting, despicable creature; it is doing her less than justice to say that the idea that the money would be left to her never for a single instant entered her head. Mrs McKenzie taunted her once for expecting it.

  ‘Of course, you’re waiting,’ she said, ‘like all of them, to pick the bones of the corpse.’

  Lizzie Rand laughed.

  ‘Now is that like me?’ she asked. ‘And, more important, is it like you?’

  Mrs McKenzie sniggered her tinkling, wheezy snigger. There was a certain honesty between them. They had certain things in common.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how anyone could. You’re too self-sufficient—but certainly you have a sense of humour.’

  There had been a time once when many people liked Lizzie, and she reflected now, with a little shudder, that perhaps only one person in the world, Rachel Seddon, the woman friend before-mentioned, liked and understood her. Why had she shut herself off? Why presented so stiff, so immaculate, so cold a personality to the world? She was not stiff, not cold, not immaculate. It was, perhaps, simply that she felt that it was in that way only that she could get her work done, and to do her work thoroughly seemed to her now to be the job best worthwhile in life.

  During the war she had almost broken from her secretary-ship and gone forth to do Red Cross work or anything that would help. A kind of timidity that had grown upon her with the years, a sense of her age and of her loneliness, held her back. Twenty years ago she would have gone with the first. Now she stayed with Mrs McKenzie.

  Mrs McKenzie died on the day of the Armistice, November 11th, 1918. Her illness had not been severe. Lizzie had had, at the most, only a week’s nursing; it had been obvious from the first that nothing could save the old lady. Mrs McKenzie had not looked as though she were especially anxious that anything should save her. She had lain there in scornful silence, asking for nothing, complaining of nothing, despising everything. Lizzie admitted that the old woman died game.

  There had followed then that hard, bewildering period that Lizzie knew by now so well where she must pull herself, so reluctantly, so heavily towards the business of finding a new engagement. She did not, of course, expect Mrs McKenzie to leave her a single penny. She stayed for a week or two with her friend, Rachel Seddon. But Rachel, a widow with an only son, was so tumultuously glad at the return of her boy, safe and whole, from the war, that it was difficult for her just then to take any other human being into her heart. She loved Lizzie, and would do anything in the world for her; she was indeed for ever urging her to give up these sterile companionships and secretaryships and come and make her home with her. But Lizzie, this time, felt her isolation as she had never done before.

  ‘I’m getting old,’ she thought. ‘And I’m drifting off . . . soon I shall be utterly alone.’ The thought sent little shivering ghosts climbing about her body. She saw in the gay, happy, careless, kindly eyes of young Tom Seddon how old she was to the new generation.

  He called her ‘Aunt Liz’, took her to the theatre, and was an angel . . . nevertheless an angel happily, almost boastfully, secure in another, warmer planet than hers.

  Then came the shock. Mrs McKenzie had left her everything—the equivalent of about eight thousand pounds a year.

  At first her sense was one of an urgent need of rest. She sank back amongst the cushions and pillows of Rachel’s house and refused to think . . . refused to think at all. . . . She considered for a moment the infuriated faces of the McKenzie relations. Then they too passed from her consciousness.

  When she faced the world again, she faced it with the old common sense that had always been her most prominent characteristic. She had eight thousand a year. Well, she would do the very best with it that she could. Rachel, who had appeared to be more deeply excited than she over the event, had various suggestions to offer, but Lizzie had her own ideas. She could not remember the time when she had not planned what she would do when somebody left her money. . . .

  She took one of the most charming flats in Hortons, bought beautiful things for it, etchings by D.Y. Cameron, one Nevinson, and a John drawing, some
Japanese prints; she had books and soft carpets and flowers and a piano; and had the prettiest spare room for a friend. Then she stopped and looked about her. There were certain charities in which she had been always deeply interested, especially one for Poor Gentlewomen. There was a home, too, for illegitimate babies. She remembered, with a happy irony, the occasion when she had tried to persuade Mrs McKenzie to give something to these charities and had failed. . . . Well, Mrs McKenzie was giving now all right. Lizzie hoped that she knew it.

  There accumulated around her all the business that clusters about an independent woman with means. She was on committees; many people who would not have looked twice at her before liked her now and asked her to their houses.

  Again she stopped and looked about her.

  Still there was something that she needed. What was it? Companionship? More than that. Affection, a centre to her life; someone who needed her, someone to whom she was of more importance than anyone else in the world. Even a dog. . . .

  She was forty-six. Without being plain she was too slight, too hard-drawn, too masculine, above all too old to be attractive to men. An old maid of forty-six. She faced the truth. She gave little dinner-parties, and felt more lonely than ever. Even it seemed there was nobody who wanted to make her a confidante. People wanted her money, but herself not at all. She was not good conversationally. She said sharp, sarcastic things that frightened people. People did not want the truth; they wanted things to be wrapped up first, as her mother and sister had wanted them years ago.

  She was a failure socially, in spite of her money. She could not be genial, and yet her heart ached for love.