Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre

by Hugh Walpole

As he threaded his way along the garden paths that was at first all that he could see—that he was in love with that child in the shabby frock who was married to that odious creature, that bag-of-bones, who had not opened his mouth the whole evening long—that child terrified out of her life and appealing to him, a stranger, in her despair, to help her.

In love with a married woman, he, Charles Percy Harkness? What would his two sisters, nay, what would the whole of Baker, Oregon, say did they know?

But, bless you, he was not in love with her like that—no hero of a modern realistic novel he! He had no thought in that first ecstatic glow, of any thought for himself at all—only his eyes were upon her, of how he could help her, how serve her, now—at once—before it was too late.

He was deeply touched that she should trust him, but he also realised that at that particular moment she would have trusted anybody. And yet she had waited, watching him through all the first part of that meal, making up her mind—there was some tribute to him at least in that!

It was a considerable time before he could fight his way behind his own singing happiness into any detailed consideration of the facts.

He was in touch with real life at last, had it in both hands like a magic ball of crystal, after which for so long he had been searching.

Where had he been all his life, fancying that this was love and that? That ridiculous touching of hands over a tea-cup, that fancied glance at a crowded party, that half uttered suggested exchange of gimcrack phrases? And this! Why, he could not have stopped himself had he wished! None of the old considered caution to which he had now grown so accustomed that it had seemed like part of his very soul, could have any say in this. He was committed up to his very boots in the thing, and he was glad, glad, glad!

Meanwhile he had lost his way. He pulled himself up short. He had been walking just in any direction. He was in a far part of the garden. A lawn in the twilight like dark glass beneath whose surface green water played, stretched between scattered trees and beds of flowers now grey and shadowy. Sparks of fire were already scattered across a sky that was smoky with coils of mist as though some giant train had but now thundered through on its journey to Paradise. Little whistles of wind stole about the garden making secret appointments among the trees. Somewhere near to him a fountain was splashing, and behind the lingering liquid sound of it he could hear the merry-go-round and the drum. He cared little about the dance now, but in some fashion he must pass the time until nine-thirty when he would see her friend and learn what he might do.

Her friend? A sudden agitation held him. Her friend? Had she a lover? Was that all that there was behind this—that she had married in haste, for money, luxury, to see the world, perhaps, and now that she had had a month of it with that miserable bag-of-bones and his painted, talkative father, discovered that she could not endure it and called to her aid some earlier lover? Was that all that his fine knight-errantry came to that he should assist in some vulgar ordinary intrigue? He stopped, standing beside a small white gate that led out from the garden into the road. It was as though the gate held him from the outer world and he would never pass through it until this was decided for him. Her face came before him as she had sat there on the other side of the table, as it had been when their glances met. No, he did not doubt her for an instant.

Whatever her experiences of the last month she was pure in heart and soul as some child at her mother's knee. She had her pride, her pluck, her resolve, but also, above all else, her innocent simplicity, her ignorance of all the evil in the world. And as though the most urgent problem of all his life had been solved, he gave the little white gate a push and stepped through it into the open road.