Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre

by Hugh Walpole

V

He screamed, and as he did so the Fog seemed to put its clammy hand against his mouth, filling it with boneless fingers. This was the end—this death. All space was about him and a roar of air sweeping up to meet him.

Then dimly there came to his brain the message, thrown to him like a life-line, that he was not falling in space but was slipping down a slope. He lurched out with his hands, caught some thick tufts of grass, and held. His legs slid forward and then dangled. With all his forces—and the muscles of his arms were but weak—he pulled himself upward and then held himself there, his legs hanging over space.

While the tufts held, and so long as his arms had the strength, he could stay. How long might that be? Sickness attacked him, a kind of sea-sickness. Tears were in his eyes, and an intense self-pity seized him. What a shame that such an end should come to a man who had meant no harm to any one, whose life had yet such possibilities. He thought of his sisters. How they would miss him! He had been tiresome sometimes, and been restless at home, and pulled them up sharply when they had said things that he thought stupid, but now only his good points would be remembered. He had been kind to them; he had a warm heart. He—and here his brain, working it seemed through his aching, straining arms, began suddenly to whirl like a top, flinging in front of his eyes a succession of the most absurd pictures—days in spring woods gathering flowers, his mother and father laughing at something childish that he had said, a bar of music from some musical comedy, Erda appearing before Wotan in Siegfried, a night when he had come to a dinner party and had forgotten to wear a dress tie, the moment when once before an operation he had been wheeled into the operating theatre, the day when he had plucked up his courage and decided that he could buy the Whistler "Little Mast," the grave, anxious, kindly eyes of Strang as he leant across the etching table, a morning when he had run for an omnibus up Shaftesbury Avenue and missed it, and the conductor had laughed, that hour with Maradick at the club, lights, scents, the cold fog drowning his mouth, his nose, his eyes—then chill space, a roaring wind and silence. . . .

How strange after that—and hours afterwards it seemed although it must have been seconds—to find that he was still living, that his arms were aching as though they were one extended toothache, and that he was still holding to those tufts of grass. He had a kind of marvel at his endurance, and now, suddenly, a wonder as to why he was doing this. Was it worth while? How stupid this energy! How much better to let himself go and to sleep, to sleep. How delicious to sleep and be rid of the ache, the cold, the clammy fog!

With that, one of the grass tufts to which he was clinging lurched slightly, and his whole soul was active in its energy to preserve that life that but now he had thought to throw away. With a struggle to which he would have supposed he could not have risen he drew his body up against the slope so that the earth to which he was clinging might the better restrain his weight. Then resting there, his fingers digging deep into the soil of the cliff, his head pressed against the rock, he uttered a prayer:

"O Lord, help me now. I have a life that has been of little use to the world, but I have, in this very day, seen better the uses to which I may put it. Help me from this, give me strength to live and I will try to leave my idleness and my selfishness and meanness and be a worthier man. O Lord, I know not whether Thou dost exist or not, but, if Thou art near me, help me at least now to bear my death worthily, if it must be that, and to live my life to some real purpose if I am to have it back again. Amen." Then he repeated the Lord's Prayer. After that he seemed to be quieted; a great comfort came to him so that he no longer had any anxiety, his heart beat tranquilly, and he only rested there, passive for the issue. "If death comes," he thought to himself, "I believe that it will be very swift. I shall feel no more than I felt just now when I first tumbled. I shall not have so much pain as with a toothache. I am leaving no one in the whole world whose existence will be empty because I have gone. Hesther after to-night I shall never, in any case, see again, and I am fortunate because, before I die, I have been able to feel the reality of life, what love is, and caring for others more than myself." He was quite tranquil. The tuft of grass tugged again. His legs were numb, and he had the curious fancy that one of his boots had slipped off, and that one foot, as light as a feather, was blowing loosely in the air.

Then it seemed to him—and now it was as though he were half asleep, working in a dream—that some one was, very gently, pushing him upwards. At least he was rising. His hands, one by one, left their tufts of grass and caught higher refuge, first a projecting rock, then a thick hummock of soil, then a bunch of sea-pinks. In another while, his heart now beating again with a new excited anticipation, his head lurched forward on the earth into space. With a last frantic urge he pulled all his body together and lay huddled on the path safe once more.

He had now a new trouble because his body refused to move. He had no body, nothing that he could count upon for action. He tried to find his connection with it, endeavoured to rest upon his knees, but it was as though he had been all dissipated into the fog and was turned, himself now, into mist and vapour. Then this passed, and once more he crawled forward.

He turned a corner and met again the Liddon bell. It was strange how deeply this voice reassured him. He had been all alone in a world utterly dead. He had not had, like Hardy's hero, the sight of the crustacean to connect him with eternal life. But this sudden, melancholy, lowing sound like a creature deserted, crying for its mate, brought him once more into reality. The bell was insistent and very loud. It swung through the fog up to him, ringing in his ear, then fading away again into distance. He spoke aloud as men do when they are in desperate straits: "Well, old bell," he cried, "I'm not beaten yet, you see. They've done what they can to finish me, but I'm back again. You don't get rid of me so easily as that, you know. You can come and look, if you like. Here I am, company for you after all."

There was a little breeze blowing now in his eyes and this cheered him. If only the wind rose the fog would move and all might yet be well. His clothes were torn, his hands bleeding, his hat gone. He crawled into a sitting position, shook his fist in the air, and cried:

"You old devil, you're there, are you! It's your game all this. You're seeing whether you can finish me. But I'll be even with you yet." And it did indeed seem to him that he could see through the mist that red head sticking out like a furze bush on fire. The hair, the damp pale face, the melancholy eyes, and then the voice:

"It's only a theory, of course, Mr. Harkness. My father, who was a most remarkable man. . . ."

The thought of Crispin enraged him, and the rage drove him on to his feet. He was standing up and moving forward quite briskly. He moved like a blind man, his hands before him as though he were expecting at every moment to strike some hard, sharp substance, but whereas before the fog had seemed to envelope him, strangling him, penetrating into his very heart and vitals, now it retreated from before him like a moving wall. The incline was now less sharp, and now less sharp again. Little pebbles rolled from beneath his feet, and he could hear them fall over down into distant space, but he had no longer any fear. He was on level ground. He knew that the down was spreading about him. He called out, "Hesther! Hesther!" not realising that this was the first time he had spoken her name. He called it again, "Hesther! Hesther!" and again and again, always moving as he fancied forward.

Then, as though it had been hurled at him out of some gigantic distance, the rugged wall of the cottage pierced the sky. He saw it, then herself patiently seated beneath it. In another moment he was kneeling beside her, both her hands in his, his voice murmuring unintelligible words.