Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories Read online

  ‘A fairy story, a macabre dream, a spiritual history—all these things . . . will return, and the creator who relies more upon the inference behind the fact than upon the fact itself, more upon the dream than the actual business, more upon the intangible world of poetry than upon the actual world of concrete evidence, this kind of creator will come into his kingdom again.’ 10

  Hugh Walpole

  NOTES

  1. The Crystal Box: Fragments of Autobiography, Hugh Walpole, Glasgow, Privately printed, 1924.

  2. Polchester in Glebeshire also features briefly in the earlier short story collection The Golden Scarecrow (1915), with a panoramic description of it in ‘Epilogue: Hugh Seymour’.

  3. Preface to The Cathedral, Hugh Walpole, London, Cumberland Edition, Macmillan, 1934.

  4. George Henry Somerset Walpole would become Bishop of Edinburgh in 1910.

  5. The Crystal Box, Op. Cit.

  6. Preface to A Second Century of Creepy Stories, Ed. Sir Hugh Walpole, London, Hutchinson, 1937.

  7. Figures in the Foreground: Literary Reminiscences 1917-1940, Frank Swinnerton, London, Hutchinson, 1963, p. 41.

  8. Hugh Walpole: A Biography, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, Macmillan, 1952, p. 296.

  9. Ibid, p. 319. ‘The Silver Mask,’ was dramatised by Edward Chodorov and George Haight under the title Kind Lady. It opened in New York in 1935, with Grace George, and in London in 1936 with Sybil Thorndyke. Two film versions appeared, the first in 1935 and a second, better version in 1951 with Ethel Barrymore and Maurice Evans.

  10. Preface to Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, Hugh Walpole, London, Everyman’s Library, J.M. Dent, 1935.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  1. Tradition and Hugh Walpole, Clemence Dane, London, Heinemann, 1930.

  2. Hugh Walpole: A Study, Marguerite Steen, London, Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1933.

  3. The Georgian Literary Scene, Frank Swinnerton, London, Hutchinson, 1936.

  4. Hugh Walpole: A Biography, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, Macmillan, 1952.

  5. Figures in the Foreground: Literary Reminiscences 1917-1940, Frank Swinnerton, London, Hutchinson, 1963.

  6. Hugh Walpole, Elizabeth Steele, Boston, Twayne’s English Author Series 120, Twayne Publishers, 1972.

  The Clocks

  HE LAY in bed, shaking with terror. One of those strange, sudden unaccountable panics that overwhelmed him so often had seized him now. It was not only at night that they came; he had known them in the daylight when the sun had been shining brilliantly on to the uneven flags of the old stone court, and everything—the dark elms, the shining borders of flowers, the red and brown of the twisted, uneven roof had stood out in sharp, brilliant outline against the bluest of skies—even then he had felt afraid.

  But it was at night that it came most frequently—or in these first grey hours of the early morning, when the shadows were creeping in flocks, strange shapes and outlines, over the floor.

  It was like that now; the blank, dead square of the window stared across the room at him with no expression but only a dull, lifeless gaze, like the open eyes of a dead man. The room was almost dark, but the half-light gave strange shape to the furniture; the huge cupboard against the wall by the window flung vast shadows across the ceiling; the two chairs near the door seemed to his excited fancy to move—their legs multiplied and dwindled before eyes; now there were four and two waved wildly in the air—now there was only one, and the chair hung foolishly forward as though it were about to fall.

  His clothes, flung wildly across the iron railing at the foot of the bed, were monstrous; now they were a mountain, blocking the grey window, and now, at every turn of the eye, they had dwindled to nothing at all, and the window stared at him again across the bare, uneven boards of the floor.

  The door was a little open, so that a thin bar of light crept in from the passage; it was almost white against the grey, shadowy room, and it was on this light that his eyes were fixed.

  He had woken suddenly with the thought that the gleam had gone; not that the door had closed; he could see that that was not so, but that someone or something had crossed it, blotting it out. To his wild brain this was no new thing; he had often watched the door with the same fear, but it was worse to wake up suddenly from a heavy, dreamless sleep and imagine it. It might have entered just before his waking—it might have been its entry that woke him—it might be in the room now; and he searched the room with staring eyes.

  An old grandfather clock in the corner of the room ticked monotonously. He hated the sound of it; he hated the sound of any clock, and they had so many in the house. There was one on the stairs, with a high, shrill cry like the voice of his grandfather when he was angry, and there was one down below in the hall that came up to him, softly and mysterious, like the hum of some enormous insect.

  There were others in the house, and he always thought of them as live people, quite as much alive as his aunt and grandfather, Captain Bulstrode and Lizzie; indeed, at times he thought that it was only the clocks that were alive—the clocks and himself—and that one day they would march upon him, with their terrible buzzing noise, and kill him.

  And now in the perfect silence of the house, with the grey dawn in the room, their voices seemed very loud, and they hid the stir that the Thing that had entered through the door would make. He did not know where it was, and he was afraid to look, but it would suddenly creep out upon him from behind the bed, and he could feel its long fingers twine about his neck and he could see its eyes gaze terribly into his.

  His heart was beating so that the bedclothes shook above him and his forehead was wet; his hands had clutched the blanket and held it as though it were a talisman that would keep him safe.

  Then suddenly from the courtyard came the crowing of a cock, and immediately his terror left him. That was Gabriel; he was always the first to crow. Soon there would be Hector, and, last of all, Robert; it must be nearly four, and it would soon be time for him to get up. He knew that the animals would be slowly waking, and the thought of their movements pleased him. There was company at last, and the gradually broadening light robbed the room of its fantastic terrors. He could see Gabriel, Hector, and Robert standing against the grey sky, watching solemnly the gradual approach of day. They were his best friends, kinder and more amusing than the people in the house; and he turned and fell into an uneasy, broken sleep.

  When the grandfather clock wheezed out four, he jumped from his bed and began to tumble on his clothes. For a moment he looked from the window into the courtyard below. There was Gabriel standing, sharp against the sky, on a ruined and crumbling wall that had once bound the garden. Already the sky was breaking, and white mists were creeping like serpents over the grass.

  He stood, a wild and uncouth figure, at the window. His yellow hair, falling to his shoulders, was tangled, and yet held pieces of grass and leaves that had caught in it when he had lain, the evening before, on the hill beyond the house watching the setting sun. His head was enormous and all his features were exaggerated—his body looked as if it were of tremendous strength, his long arms shot from his miserable coat, his trousers scarcely extended below his knees, and his great fingers closed and unclosed, their muscles making reports like so many little guns. He sighed heavily, picked up the battered candlestick, on which the candle had guttered in the draught until it lurched fantastically to one side, and groped for the matches.

  He found them at last, lit the candle, and crept softly into the passage. The noise of the clock in the hall stole up the staircase and surrounded him with a noise like the furious buzz of an insect. ‘They’re at it again,’ he said to himself, cross and angry. ‘They’ll be up one day. They’re angrier every week. I haven’t done anything to you,’ he went on. ‘It ain’t anything to do with me. I’d be afeared to touch you.’

  He crept, in his stockinged feet, down the stairs. He glanced furtively at the clock as he passed it and clung to the further wall; the candle shook a little in his hand. The grey light was penetrating thro
ugh the dim shutters of the house, and the dark outlines of the hall with its rows of hats, absurdly alive in the dim glow, an umbrella stand with sticks that leant rakishly to one side, the end of the cloth that had escaped its nail beating dustily against the floor, blown by the little draught through the heavy front door—all these things he faced with hurried little gasps of fright and wide, saucer-like eyes.

  To his hazy impression of things, these early morning hours, when he must light the fires and sweep the house, were full of horrors, and he faced the violent scoldings of his aunt and the cursings of Captain Bulstrode with far less fear. Those things were transient and ineffectual in their consequences, but the grey, ghostly mornings spread their mist about him throughout the weary length of the day.

  By seven o’clock the fires were burning brightly, the table was laid for breakfast, the floors were swept, and Janet, slattern and virago, general servant and indifferent cook, was already scolding in the kitchen.

  He stepped out of the house into the garden. The sun was beating down on the uneven stones of the court, and he could see Gabriel crowing for joy on the ruined wall. There were butterflies—white and red and blue—and in the corner, against the red stone of the house, a cloud of yellow daffodils were blowing gently in the little morning wind. But the moment of escape was a short one. Soon the shrill voice of his aunt called him, and he shuffled back into the house. Why was it that as soon as there were pleasant things in the world—butterflies and flowers and a warm golden sun—in an instant they were all snatched away and the world was grey again? There were so many things that were hard to understand!

  They were all at breakfast when he returned; he saw their heads through the window as he passed; the straight, tightly-bound hair of his aunt, the bald, fat head of Captain Bulstrode on which the light would shine until you could see your face in it. He crept to his seat at the bottom of the table. There were never many words wasted at breakfast time, and there was very little said now.

  ‘Late as usual!’ sharply from his aunt. ‘Why can’t you come when it’s time?’

  She was a hard-featured woman who ran, on every possible opportunity, into points—her nose, her ears, her head, her arms, they all had sharp edges; and the stiff, steely folds of her black dress and the little steel reticule at her waist were in keeping. Captain Bulstrode was red and fat—his neck was short and thick, his eyes tiny, his cheeks heavy and flushed. He had, a little, the air of a navy man run to seed.

  By the large white-stone fireplace sat a very, very old man— Grandfather Tackity. He was so old and wrapt so thoroughly in rugs that it was difficult to see whether he were a man at all; he had been, as it were, extinguished by his wrappings, and the only thing that remained alive was the sharp yellow tip of a nose and two twinkling eyes. Occasionally he shuffled his feet, and two very wrinkled old hands were stretched outside the rug and held tremblingly a plate on which was a very small piece of bacon as withered as the old man himself.

  He muttered continually to himself, and, at times, his voice rose in shrill expostulation. He finished the tiny piece of bacon and turned the plate upside down to see whether something might have possibly clung to the bottom.

  ‘Well, Jane, my dear, just a leetle piece more for your old father—just a leetle, leetle bit, my dear; your poor old father’s so hungry, and it was such a very, very leetle piece and it’s all gone, my dear, all gone. Deary me, the old man’s so hungry—the poor old man! Just a leetle piece of bread, my dear, on this beautiful morning.’

  His grandson at the table watched him, and nodded, every now and again by way of encouragement and sympathy. He was never quite sure what his grandfather might be—sometimes he was the devil, and sometimes the spirit of one of the clocks, and sometimes nothing at all—but he understood the hungry feeling, and was sorry.

  The heap of rugs was violently agitated, and the plate fell with a crash to the ground.

  ‘Dear me!’ his voice rose in a little scream, his hands waved for a moment feebly in the air. Then a look of cunning flashed into the sharp eyes. Perhaps they hadn’t heard at the table. The rugs were convulsed again as he tried to move his foot towards the broken plate to cover it. But his daughter had heard. She was up in a moment and had moved towards him. His eyes closed and his nose seemed to shrink; his hands crept beneath the rug. ‘Come, father,’ she said, ‘don’t be so stupid now. Breakin’ good china like that.’ She shook him up until he disappeared altogether, then she picked up the pieces of plate and returned to her place.

  As she passed the fool at the table he had drawn his shoulders in and lowered his head as though he expected a blow, but she passed him without even glancing in his direction.

  He continued to watch her furtively. There was trouble in the air, trouble on every side, and it came, he knew instinctively, from her. The clocks were always louder in his ear when danger was at hand, and now he could hear them, it seemed to him, from every part of the house.

  Captain Bulstrode pushed back his plate and leant over the table. His neck bulged beneath his collar, and the chair creaked as he moved. He whispered something to the woman, and she started back. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘There are other ways.’

  He laughed coarsely, and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s easy enough. . . . I don’t know but it’s been done before, yer see?’

  The fool, watching his aunt, saw that she was different when she was looking at Captain Bulstrode. The sharp lines softened and there was light in her eyes; he wondered why. Fool though he was, he was wise enough to know that Captain Bulstrode was not beautiful.

  ‘Damn them clocks!’ said the Captain. ‘What do yer have so many for? With their filthy row’—he broke into muttering—‘a fellow can’t hear himself speak. . . . Wake the dead.’ The fool sympathised with that, but then the clocks knew what they were doing. They never ticked so loudly when there was nothing the matter. He wanted to press his hands into his ears to stop the noise that they made, but when he took them out again the sound hit him like a blow, and things were worse than ever.

  Grandfather Tackity, having considered that the episode of the plate might be supposed to have passed, tried once more to attract his daughter’s attention.

  ‘Such a fine dahter and such a leetle piece of bacon.’ He seemed to connect the two facts: Having such a beautiful daughter, why not a larger piece of bacon? ‘Your poor old father.’

  ‘Poor old father!’ he repeated several times. But the two at the table were whispering, and paid no attention at all. She had leaned over and touched his arm, and was urging something, but he was slowly rolling his head from side to side; his eyes had disappeared altogether.

  Pathos failing, the old man poked his head from the rugs and laughed—a very croaking, frog-like laugh that had little that was humorous in it.

  ‘Oh! my dear! Your old father’s so hungry! Dear me! You’d never guess how hungry he is! Such a hungry man, and such a leetle piece of bacon.’ He tried to raise himself in his chair, but collapsed and disappeared entirely. There were sounds of coughing from beneath the rugs, and at last he reappeared—his nose was purple.

  ‘Drat you father!’ said his daughter, rising from the table. ‘Why can’t you be quiet like a decent old man? I’d be ashamed— at your age, too.’

  She shook him up into his place again, and in reply to some muttering: ‘No, yer can’t have anything now—as late as it is, too. Yer greedy old man. I’d be ashamed—’

  She opened the door and called for Lizzie, the servant. They began to clear the table. She turned suddenly on her nephew:

  ‘Well? What are you standing about fer? Haven’t yer got anything to do, yer great lazy lout, you? Get to work, now! Isn’t it enough that we feed yer and clothe yer! Yer hulking fool that yer are!’ He stood in front of her with his head lowered and his arm up—then he moved, slouching, away.

  Bulstrode stood at the window and watched the old man with a smile on his lips. The old man, scarcely recovered from
his shaking, was looking at the fire. Suddenly he felt that the other’s eyes were upon him. He turned very slowly in his chair and faced him. The two men gazed at each other.

  Bulstrode crossed the room and leant over the chair. ‘Tell us where it is,’ he said. ‘We won’t touch it, but it’s safer, you know . . . much safer.’

  ‘No, no!’ The old man shook his head violently. ‘Yer shan’t know—none of yer. Yer think yer so clever, but yer aren’t. Yer shan’t know.’

  Bulstrode frowned. ‘You’d better, you know,’ he said, softly. ‘It’s safer—’ Then he left the room.

  Tackity beckoned his grandson to him.

  ‘He’s the Devil, you know,’ he said, in a hoarse whisper. ‘Such a clever devil, too! Oh! Dear me! But I’m cleverer—much cleverer!’ He chuckled.

  ‘Is he really the Devil?’ said the fool, looking at the door.

  ‘Oh, dear me, yes—Old Tackity knows. He knows a thing or two.’ He continued to chuckle hoarsely like a watch that had run down and was being wound.

  In the things that had to be done in the morning the fool generally forgot the rest of the world. The butterflies and the sun were lost behind the carrying of coals and the scolding of Lizzie and his aunt. But today everything was doubly heavy; the shadowy kingdom of his world was shot with strange colours, and the passages and stairs of the house were filled with figures that vanished mysteriously as he approached them. He had seen such shadows before—they had often met him and surrounded him in his dreams, and come to him in the first grey morning hours, but he had never known them so urgent in the glare of the daylight. From the wide window at the turn of the staircase the sun poured into the house; a great golden bee buzzed furiously against the pane, and a white mist of roses hung like a cloud in mid-air, with a burning sky of blue beyond. But the figures thronged the stairs and pressed upon him and touched his arm as he stood with his finger in his mouth watching the clock at the stairhead. ‘They’re up to their mischief. They know. They never call out like that when there’s nothing the matter. You devils! You devils!’ He shook his great fist at the clock; then he heard his aunt’s step on the floor above, and crept about his work again.