Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories

by Hugh Ealpole

  ‘I know you don’t like ladders,’ he said. ‘Some people can’t stand ’em. I knew an old gentleman once terrified of ladders, and his eldest son, a bright, promising lad, must become a steeplejack. Only profession he had a liking for.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ cried Sir Roderick, paling. ‘What a horrible pursuit! Whatever did his father do?’

  ‘Persuaded him to be a diver instead,’ said Mr Huffam. ‘The lad took to it like a duck to water. Up or down, it was all the same to him, he said.’

  In fact, Mr Huffam looked after Sir Roderick as a father his child, and, before the day was out, the noble Baronet was asking Mr Huffam’s opinion on everything—the right way to grow carnations, the Gold Standard, how to breed dachshunds, and the wisdom of Lord Beaverbrook. The Gold Standard and Lord Beaverbrook were new to Mr Huffam, but he had his opinions all the same. Tubby, as he listened, could not help wondering where Mr Huffam had been all these years. In some very remote South Sea island surely! So many things were new to him. But his kindness and energy carried him forward through everything. There was much of the child about him, much of the wise man of the world also, and behind these a heart of melancholy, of loneliness.

  ‘He has, it seems,’ thought Tubby, ‘no home, no people, nowhere especially to go.’ And he had visions of attaching him to the family as a sort of secretarial family friend. Tubby was no sentimentalist about his own sex, but he had to confess that he was growing very fond of Mr Huffam. It was almost as though he had known him before. There were, in fact, certain phrases, certain tones in the voice that were curiously familiar and reminded Tubby in some dim way of his innocent, departed childhood.

  And then, after dinner, there was the conquest of Agatha Allington. Agatha had taken an instant dislike to Mr Huffam. She prided herself on her plain speech.

  ‘My dear,’ she said to Lady Winsloe, ‘what a ruffian! He’ll steal the spoons.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Lady Winsloe with dignity. ‘We like him very much.’

  He seemed to perceive that Agatha disliked him. He sat beside her at dinner—he wore a tail-coat of strange, old-fashioned cut, and carried a large gold fob. He was, as Tubby perceived, quite different with Agatha. He was almost, you might say, an old maid himself—or, rather, a confirmed old bachelor. He discovered that she had a passion for Italy—she visited Rome and Florence every year—and he described to her some of his own Italian journeys, taken many years ago: confessed to her that he didn’t care for frescoes, which he described as ‘dim virgins with mildewed glories’. But Venice! Ah! Venice! with its prisoners and dungeons and lovely iridescent waters! All the same, he was always homesick when he was out of London, and he described the old London to her, the fogs and the muffin-bells and the ‘growlers,’ and enchanted her with a story about a shy little bachelor, and how he went out one evening to dine with a vulgar cousin and be kind to a horrible godchild. Indeed they all listened, spellbound: even Mallow stood, with a plate in his hand and his mouth open, forgetting his duties. Then, after dinner, he insisted that they should dance. They made a space in the drawing-room, brought up a gramophone, and set about it. Then how Mr Huffam laughed when Tubby showed him a one-step.

  ‘Call that dancing!’ he cried. Then, humming a polka, he caught Agatha by the waist and away they polkaed! Then Lady Winsloe, who had adored the polka once, joined in. Then the Barn Dance. Then, few though they were, Sir Roger.

  ‘I know!’ Mr Huffam cried. ‘We must have a party!’

  ‘A party!’ almost screamed Lady Winsloe. ‘What kind of a party?’

  ‘Why, a children’s party, of course. On Christmas night.’

  ‘But we don’t know any children! And children are bored with parties. And they’ll all be engaged anyway.’

  ‘Not the children I’ll ask!’ cried Mr Huffam. ‘Not the party I’ll have! It shall be the best party London has seen for years!’

  III

  It is well known that good-humoured, cheerful, and perpetually well-intentioned people are among the most tiresome of their race. They are avoided by all wise and comfort-loving persons. Tubby often wondered afterwards why Mr Huffam was not tiresome. It was perhaps because of his childlikeness; it was also, most certainly, because of his intelligence. Most of all it was because of the special circumstances of the case. In ordinary daily life, Mr Huffam might be a bore—most people are at one time or another. But on this occasion no one was a bore, not even Agatha.

  It was as though the front wall of the Hill Street house had been taken away and all the detail and incidents of these two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, became part of it. It seemed that Berkeley Square was festooned with crystal trees, that candles—red and green and blue—blazed from every window, that small boys, instead of chanting ‘Good King Wenceslas’ in the usual excruciating fashion, carolled with divine voices, that processions of Father Christmases, with snowy beards and red gowns, marched from Selfridges and Harrods and Fortnum’s, carrying in their hands small Christmas trees, and even attended by reindeer, as though brown-paper parcels tied with silver bands and decorated with robins fell in torrents through the chimney, and gigantic Christmas puddings rolled on their own stout bellies down Piccadilly, attended by showers of almonds and raisins. And upon all this, first a red-faced sun, then a moon, cherry-coloured and as large as an orange, smiled down, upon a world of crusted, glittering snow, while the bells pealed and once again the Kings of the East came to the stable with gifts in their hands.

  Of course, it was not like that—but most certainly the Winsloe house was transformed. For one thing, there was not the usual present-giving. At breakfast on Christmas Day, everyone gave everyone else presents that must not by order cost more than sixpence apiece. Mr Huffam had discovered some marvellous things—toy dogs that barked, Father Christmases glistening with snow, a small chime of silver bells, shining pieces of sealing-wax.

  Then they all went to church at St James’s, Piccadilly. At the midday meal Sir Roderick had turkey and Christmas pudding, which he hadn’t touched for many a day.

  In the evening came the Party. Tubby had been allowed to invite Diana—for the rest the guests were to be altogether Mr Huffam’s. No one knew what was in his mind. At a quarter past seven exactly came the first ring of the door-bell. When Mallow opened the portals, there on the steps were three very small children, two girls and a boy.

  ‘Please, sir, this was the number the gentleman said,’ whispered the little girl, who was very frightened. Then up Hill Street the children came, big children, little children, children who could scarcely walk, boys as bold as brass, girls mothering their small relations, some of them shabby, some of them smart, some with shawls, some with mufflers, some with collars, some brave, some frightened, some chattering like monkeys, some silent and anxious—all coming up Hill Street, crowding up the stairs, passing into the great hall.

  It was not until they had all been ushered up the stairs by Mallow, were all in their places, that Sir Roderick Winsloe, Bart., Lady Winsloe, his wife, Tubby Winsloe, their son, were permitted to see their own drawing-room. When they did they gasped with wonder. Under the soft and shining light the great floor had been cleared, and at one end of the room all the children were gathered. At the other end was the largest, the strongest, the proudest Christmas Tree ever beheld, and this Tree shone and gleamed with candles, with silver tissue, with blue and gold and crimson balls, and so heavily weighted was it with dolls and horses and trains and parcels that it was a miracle that, Tree as it was, it could support its burden. So there it was, the great room shining with golden light, the children massed together, the gleaming floor like a sea, and only the crackle of the fire, the tick of the marble clock, the wondering whispers of the children for sound.

  A pause, and from somewhere or other (but no one knew whence) Father Christmas appeared. He stood there, looking across the floor at his guests.

  ‘Good evening, children,’ he said, and the voice was the voice of Mr Huffam.

  ‘G
ood evening, Father Christmas,’ the children cried in chorus.

  ‘It’s all his own money,’ Lady Winsloe whispered to Agatha. ‘He wouldn’t let me spend a penny.’

  He summoned them then to help with the presents. The children (who behaved with the manners of the highest of the aristocracy—even better than that, to be truthful) advanced across the shining floor. They were told to take turn according to size, the smallest first. There was no pushing, no cries of ‘I want that!’ as so often happens at parties, no greed and satiety. At last the biggest girl (who was almost a giantess), and the biggest boy (who might have been a heavyweight boxing champion) received their gifts. The Tree gave a little quiver of relief at its freedom from its burden, and the candles, the silver tissue, the red and blue and golden balls shook with a shimmer of pleasure because the present-giving had been so successful.

  Games followed. Tubby could never afterwards remember what the games had been. They were no doubt Hunt the Slipper, Kiss in the Ring, Cross-your-Toes, Last Man Out, Blind Man’s Buff, Chase the Cherry, Here Comes the Elephant, Count Your Blessings, and all the other games. But Tubby never knew. The room was alive with movement, with cries of joy and shouts of triumph, with songs and kisses and forfeits. Tubby never knew. He only knew that he saw his mother with a paper cap on her head, his father with a false nose, Agatha beating a child’s drum and on every side of him children and children and children, children dancing and singing and running and sitting and laughing.

  There came a moment when Diana, her hair dishevelled, her eyes shining, caught his arm and whispered:

  ‘Tubby, you are a dear. Perhaps—one day—if you keep this up—who knows?’

  And there was a sudden quiet. Mr Huffam, no longer Father Christmas, arranged all the children round him. He told them a story, a story about a circus and a small child who, with her old grandfather, wandered into the company of those strange people—of the fat lady and the Living Skeleton, the jugglers and the beautiful creatures who jumped through the hoops, and the clown with the broken heart and how his heart was mended.

  ‘And so they all lived happily ever after,’ he ended. Everyone said goodnight. Everyone went away.

  ‘Oh dear, I am tired!’ said Mr Huffam. ‘But it has been a jolly evening!’

  Next morning when Rose the housemaid woke Lady Winsloe with her morning cup of tea she had startling news.

  ‘Oh dear, my lady, the gentleman’s gone!’

  ‘What gentleman?’

  ‘Mr Huffam, my lady. His bed’s not been slept in and his bag’s gone. There isn’t a sign of him anywhere.’

  Alas, it was only too true. Not a sign of him anywhere. At least one sign only.

  The drawing-room was as it had always been, every chair in its proper place, the copied Old Masters looking down solemnly from the dignified walls.

  One thing alone was different. The first edition of Martin Chuzzlewit in its handsome purple binding was propped up against the marble clock.

  ‘How very strange!’ said Lady Winsloe. But, opening it, she found that on the fly-leaf these words were freshly written:

  For Lady Winsloe

  with gratitude

  from her Friend

  the Author—

  And, under this, the signature, above a scrawl of thick black lines, ‘Charles Dickens’.

  Contents

  Copyright

  CONTENTS

  Hugh Walpole: An Introduction

  The Clocks

  The Twisted Inn

  The Silver Mask

  The Staircase

  A Carnation For An Old Man

  Tarnhelm

  Seashore Macabre

  The Little Ghost

  Mrs Lunt

  The Snow

  Miss Morganhurst

  Mrs Porter and Miss Allen

  Lizzie Rand

  The Tarn

  Major Wilbraham

  The Tiger

  Hugh Seymour

  Angelina

  ’Enery

  The Fear of Death

  Field With Five Trees

  The Conjurer

  The White Cat

  The Perfect Close

  Mr Huffam