Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories

by Hugh Ealpole

  Unfortunately it was just at this moment that Miss Emily Braid decided that it was time to take her niece in hand. ‘The child’s three, Violet, and very backward for her age. Why, Mrs Mancaster’s little girl, who’s just Angelina’s age, can talk fluently, and is beginning with her letters. We don’t want Jim to be disappointed in the child when he comes home next year.’ It would be difficult to determine how much of this was true; Miss Emily was aggravated and, although she would never have confessed to so trivial a matter, the perpetual worship of Rose—‘the ugliest thing you ever saw’—was irritating her. The days followed, then, when Angelina was constantly in her aunt’s company, and to neither of them was this companionship pleasant.

  ‘You must ask me questions, child. How are you ever going to learn to talk properly if you don’t ask me questions?’

  ‘Yes, auntie.’

  ‘What’s that over there?’

  ‘Twee.’

  ‘Say tree, not twee.’

  ‘Tree.’

  ‘Now look at me. Put that wretched doll down. . . . Now. . . That’s right. Now tell me what you’ve been doing this morning.’

  ‘We had bweakfast—nurse said I’—(long pause for breath)— was dood girl; Auntie Vi’let came; I dwew with my pencil.’

  ‘Say drew, not dwew.’

  ‘Drew.’

  All this was very exhausting to Aunt Emily. She was no nearer the child’s heart. . . . Angelina maintained an impenetrable reserve. Old maids have much time amongst the unsatisfied and sterile monotonies of their life—this is only true of some old maids; there are very delightful ones—to devote to fancies and microscopic intuitions. It was astonishing now how largely in Miss Emily Braid’s life loomed the figure of Rose, the rag doll.

  ‘If it weren’t for that wretched doll, I believe one could get some sense out of the child.’

  ‘I think it’s a mistake, nurse, to let Miss Angelina play with that doll so much.’

  ‘Well, mum, it’d be difficult to take it from her now. She’s that wrapped in it.’ . . . And so she was. . . . Rose stood to Angelina for so much more than Rose.

  ‘Oh, Wosie, when will He come again. P’r’aps never. And I’m forgetting. I can’t remember at all about the funny water and the twee with the flowers, and all of it. Wosie, you ’member—Whisper.’ And Rose offered in her own mysterious, taciturn way the desired comfort.

  And then, of course, the crisis arrived. I am sorry about this part of the story. Of all the invasions of Aunt Emily, perhaps none was more strongly resented by Angelina than the appropriation of the afternoon hour in the garden. Nurse had been an admirable escort because, as a lady of voracious appetite for life, with, at the moment, but slender opportunities for satisfying it, she was occupied alertly with the possible vision of any male person driven by a similar desire. Her eye wandered; the hand to which Angelina clung was an abstract, imperceptive hand— Angelina and Rose were free to pursue their own train of fancy —the garden was at their service. But with Aunt Emily how different! Aunt Emily pursued relentlessly her educational tactics. Her thin, damp, black glove gripped Angelina’s hand; her eyes (they had a ‘peering’ effect, as though they were always searching for something beyond their actual vision) wandered aimlessly about the garden, looking for educational subjects. And so up and down the paths they went, Angelina trotting, with Rose clasped to her breast, walking just a little faster than she conveniently could.

  Miss Emily disliked the garden, and would have greatly preferred that nurse should have been in charge, but this consciousness of trial inflamed her sense of merit. There came a lovely spring afternoon; the almond tree was in full blossom; a cloud of pink against the green hedge, clumps of daffodils rippled with little shudders of delight, even the statues of ‘Sir Benjamin Rundle’ and ‘General Sir Robinson Cleaver’ seemed to unbend a little from their stiff angularity. There were many babies and nurses, and children laughing and crying and shouting, and a sky of mild forget-me-not blue smiled protectingly upon them. Angelina’s eyes were fixed upon the fountain, which flashed and sparkled in the air with a happy freedom that seemed to catch all the life of the garden within its heart. Angelina felt how immensely she and Rose might have enjoyed all this had they been alone. Her eyes gazed longingly at the almond tree; she wished that she might go off on a voyage of discovery, for, on this day of all days, did its shadow seem to hold some pressing, intimate invitation. ‘I shall get back—I shall get back.. . . He’ll come and take me; I’ll remember all the old things,’ she thought. She and Rose, what a time they might have if only—She glanced up at her aunt.

  ‘Look at that nice little boy, Angelina,’ Aunt Emily said. ‘See how good—’ But at that very instant that same playful breeze that had been ruffling the daffodils, and sending shimmers through the fountain, decided that now was the moment to catch Miss Emily’s black hat at one corner, prove to her that the pin that should have fastened it to her hair was loose, and swing the whole affair to one side. Up went her hands; she gave a little cry of dismay.

  Instantly, then, Angelina was determined. She did not suppose that her freedom would be for long, nor did she hope to have time to reach the almond tree; but her small, stumpy legs started off down the path almost before she was aware of it. She started, and Rose bumped against her as she ran. She heard behind her cries; she saw in front of her the almond tree, and then coming swiftly towards her a small boy with a hoop. . . . She stopped, hesitated, and then fell. The golden afternoon, with all its scents and sounds, passed on above her head. She was conscious that a hand was on her shoulder, she was lifted and shaken. Tears trickling down the side of her nose were checked by little points of gravel. She was aware that the little boy with the hoop had stopped and said something. Above her, very large and grim, was her aunt. Some bird on a tree was making a noise like the drawing of a cork. (She had heard her nurse once draw one.) In her heart was utter misery. The gravel hurt her face, the almond tree was farther away than ever; she was captured more completely than she had ever been before.

  ‘Oh, you naughty little girl—you naughty girl,’ she heard her aunt say; and then, after her, the bird like a cork. She stood there, her mouth tightly shut, the marks of tears drying to muddy lines on her face.

  She was dragged off. Aunt Emily was furious at the child’s silence; Aunt Emily was also aware that she must have looked what she would call ‘a pretty figure of fun’ with her hat askew, her hair blown ‘anyway,’ and a small child of three escaping from her charge as fast as she could go.

  Angelina was dragged across the street, in through the squeezed front door, over the dark stairs, up into the nursery. Miss Violet’s voice was heard calling, ‘Is that you, Emily? Tea’s been waiting some time.’

  It was nurse’s afternoon out, and the nursery was grimly empty; but through the open window came the evening sounds of the happy Square. Miss Emily placed Angelina in the middle of the room. ‘Now say you’re sorry, you wicked child!’ she exclaimed breathlessly.

  ‘Sowwy,’ came slowly from Angelina. Then she looked down at her doll.

  ‘Leave that doll alone. Speak as though you were sorry.’

  ‘I’m velly sowwy.’

  ‘What made you run away like that?’ Angelina said nothing. ‘Come, now! Didn’t you know it was very wicked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, why did you do it, then?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t say “don’t know” like that. You must have had some reason. Don’t look at the doll like that. Put the doll down.’ But this Angelina would not do. She clung to Rose with a ferocious tenacity. I do not think that one must blame Miss Emily for her exasperation. That doll had had a large place in her mind for many weeks. It were as though she, Miss Emily Braid, had been personally, before the world, defied by a rag doll. Her temper, whose control had never been her strongest quality, at the vision of the dirty, obstinate child before her, at the thought of the dancing, mocking garden behind her, flamed into sudden,
trembling rage.

  She stepped forward, snatched Rose from Angelina’s arms, crossed the room and pushed the doll, with a fierce, energetic action, as though there was no possible time to be lost, into the fire. She snatched the poker, and with trembling hands pressed the doll down. There was a great flare of flame; Rose lifted one stolid arm to the gods for vengeance, then a stout leg in a last writhing agony. Only then, when it was all concluded, did Aunt Emily hear behind her the little half-strangled cry which made her turn. The child was standing, motionless, with so old, so desperate a gaze of despair that it was something indecent for any human being to watch.

  V

  Nurse came in from her afternoon. She had heard nothing of the recent catastrophe, and, as she saw Angelina sitting quietly in front of the fire she thought that she had had her tea, and was now ‘dreaming’ as she so often did. Once, however, as she was busy in another part of the room, she caught half the face in the light of the fire. To anyone of a more perceptive nature that glimpse must have seemed one of the most tragic things in the world. But this was a woman of ‘a sensible, hearty’ nature; moreover, her ‘afternoon’ had left her with happy reminiscences of her own charms and their effect on the opposite sex.

  She had, however, her moment. . . . She had left the room to fetch something. Returning, she noticed that the dusk had fallen, and was about to switch on the light when, in the rise and fall of the firelight, something that she saw made her pause. She stood motionless by the door.

  Angelina had turned in her chair; her eyes were gazing, with rapt attention, toward the purple dusk by the window. She was listening. Nurse, as she had often assured her friends, ‘was not cursed with imagination’, but now fear held her so that she could not stir or move save that her hand trembled against the wallpaper. The chatter of the fire, the shouts of some boys in the Square, the ringing of the bell of St Matthew’s for evensong, all these things came into the room. Angelina, still listening, at last smiled; then, with a little sigh, sat back in her chair.

  ‘Heavens! Miss ’Lina! What were you doing there? How you frightened me!’ Angelina left her chair, and went across to the window. ‘Auntie Emily,’ she said, ‘put Wosie into the fire, she did. But Wosie’s saved. . . . He’s just come and told me.’

  ‘Lord, Miss ’Lina, how you talk!’ The room was right again now just as, a moment before, it had been wrong. She switched on the electric light, and, in the sudden blaze, caught the last flicker in the child’s eyes of some vision, caught, held, now surrendered.

  ‘’Tis company she’s wanting, poor lamb,’ she thought, ‘all this being alone. . . . Fair gives one the creeps.’

  She heard with relief the opening of the door. Miss Emily came in, hesitated a moment, then walked over to her niece. In her hands she carried a beautiful doll with flaxen hair, long white robes, and the assured confidence of one who is spotless and knows it.

  ‘There, Angelina,’ she said. ‘I oughtn’t to have burnt your doll. I’m sorry. Here’s a beautiful new one.’

  Angelina took the spotless one; then with a little thrust of her hand she pushed the half-open window wider apart. Very deliberately she dropped the doll (at whose beauty she had not glanced) out, away, down into the Square.

  The doll, white in the dusk, tossed and whirled, and spun finally, a white speck far below, and struck the pavement.

  Then Angelina turned, and with a little sigh of satisfaction looked at her aunt.

  ’Enery

  I

  MRS SLATER was caretaker at No. 21 March Square. Old Lady Cathcart lived with her middle-aged daughter at No. 21, and, during half the year, they were down at their place in Essex; during half the year, then, Mrs Slater lived in the basement of No. 21 with her son Henry, aged six.

  Mrs Slater was a widow; upon a certain afternoon, two and a half years ago, she had paused in her ironing and listened.

  ‘Something,’ she told her friends afterwards, gave her a start —she ‘couldn’t say what nor how’. Her ironing stayed, for that afternoon at least, where it was, because her husband, with his head in a pulp and his legs bent underneath him, was brought in on a stretcher, attended by two policemen. He had fallen from a piece of scaffolding into Piccadilly Circus, and was unable to afford any further assistance to the improvements demanded by the Pavilion Music Hall. Mrs Slater, a stout, amiable woman, had never been one to worry. Henry Slater, Senior, had been a bad husband, ‘what with women and the drink’—she had no intention of lamenting him now that he was dead; she had done for ever with men, and devoted the whole of her time and energy to providing bread and butter for herself and her son.

  She had been Lady Cathcart’s caretaker for a year and a half, and had given every satisfaction. When the old lady came up to London Mrs Slater went down to Essex and defended the country place from suffragettes and burglars. ‘I shouldn’t care for it,’ said a lady friend, ‘all alone in the country with no cheerful noises nor human beings.’

  ‘Doesn’t frighten me, I give you my word, Mrs East,’ said Mrs Slater; ‘not that I don’t prefer the town, mind you.’

  It was, on the whole, a pleasant life, that carried with it a certain dignity. Nobody who had seen old Lady Cathcart drive in her open carriage, with her black bonnet, her coachman, and her fine, straight back, could deny that she was one of Our Oldest and Best—none of your mushroom families come from Lord knows where—it was a position of trust, and as such Mrs Slater considered it. For the rest she loved her son Henry with more than a mother’s love; he was as unlike his poor father, bless him, as any child could be. Henry, although you would never think it to look at him, was not quite like other children; he had been, from his birth, a ‘little queer, bless his heart’, and Mrs Slater attributed this to the fact that three weeks before the boy’s birth, Henry Slater, Senior, had, in a fine frenzy of inebriation, hit her over the head with a chair. ‘Dead drunk, ’e was, and never a thought to the child comin’.“’Enery,” I said to him, “it’s the child you’re hittin’ as well as me”; but ’e was too far gone, poor soul, to take a thought.’

  Henry was a fine, robust child, with rosy cheeks and a sturdy, thick-set body. He had large blue eyes and a happy, pleasant smile, but, although he was six years of age, he could hardly talk at all, and liked to spend the days twirling pieces of string round and round or looking into the fire. His eyes were unlike the eyes of other children, and in their blue depths there lurked strange apprehensions, strange anticipations, strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come from him; his body would stiffen and his hands clench. If he was angry the colour in his face would darken and his eyes half close, and it was then that he did, indeed, seem in the possession of some disastrous thraldom—but he was angry very seldom, and only with certain people; for the most part he was a happy child, ‘as quiet as a mouse’. He was unusual, too, in that he was a very cleanly child, and loved to be washed, and took the greatest care of his clothes. He was very affectionate, fond of almost everyone, and passionately devoted to his mother.

  Mrs Slater was a woman with very little imagination. She never speculated on ‘how different things would be if they were different’, nor did she sigh after riches, nor possessions, nor any of the goods Fate bestows upon her favourites. She would, most certainly, have been less fond of Henry had he been more like other children, and his dependence upon her gave her something of the feeling that very rich ladies have for very small dogs. She was, too, in a way, proud. ‘Never been able to talk, nor never will, they tell me, the lamb,’ she would assure her friends, ‘but as gentle and as quiet!’

  She would sit, sometimes, in the evening before the fire and think of the old, noisy, tiresome days when Henry, Senior, would beat her black and blue, and would feel that her life had indeed fallen into pleasant places.

  There was nothing whatever in the house, all silent about her an
d filled with shrouded furniture, that could alarm her. ‘Ghosts!’ she would cry. ‘You show me one, that’s all. I’ll give you ghosts!’

  Her digestion was excellent, her sleep undisturbed by conscience or creditors. She was a happy woman.

  Henry loved March Square. There was a window in an upstairs passage from behind whose glass he could gaze at the passing world. The Passing World! . . . The shrouded house behind him. One was as alive, as bustling, as demonstrative to him as the other, but between the two there was, for him, no communication. His attitude to the Square and the people in it was that he knew more about them than anyone else did; his attitude to the House, that he knew nothing at all compared with what ‘They’ knew. In the Square he could see through the lot of them, so superficial were they all; in the House he could only wait, with fingers on lip, for the next revelation that they might vouchsafe to him.

  Doors were, for the most part, locked, yet there were many days when the rooms had to be dusted, and sometimes fires were lit because the house was an old one, and damp Lady Cathcart had a horror of.

  Always for young Henry the house wore its buried and abandoned air. He was never to see it when the human beings in it would count more than its furniture, and the human life in it more than the house itself. He had come, a year and a half ago, into the very place that his dreams had, from the beginning, built for him. Those large, high rooms with the shining floors, the hooded furniture, the windows gaping without their curtains, the shadows and broad squares of light, the little whispers and rattles that doors and cupboards gave, the swirl of the wind as it sprang released from corners and crevices, the lisp of some whisper, ‘I’m coming! I’m coming! I’m coming!’ that, nevertheless, again and again defeated expectation. How could he but enjoy the fine field of affection that these provided for him?