Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre

by Hugh Walpole

All the soil of the English country, all the deep lanes with their high dark hedges, the russet cornfields with their sudden dips to the sea, the high ridges with the white cottages perched like birds resting against the sky, the smell of the earth, the savour of the leaves wet after rain, the thick smoke and damp of the closed-in rooms, the mud, the clay, the running streams, the wind through the thick-sheltering trees, all these were in Gideon's speech as he stood, close pressed, thigh to thigh with Harkness.

He was happy although he knew not why, and Harkness was happy because he was in love for the first time in his life and tingled from head to foot with that knowledge. And up and down and all around it was the same. This was the night of all the nights of the year when enmities were forgotten and new friendships made. As Maradick once had felt the current of love running strong and true through a thousand souls, so Harkness felt it now, and, as with Maradick once, so with Harkness now, it seemed strange that life might not be simply run, that the lion might not lie down with the lamb, that nations might not be for ever at peace the one with another, and that the Grand Millennium might not immediately be at hand.

All beer you say? Maybe, and yet not altogether so. Something anxious and longing in the human heart was rising, free and strong, that night, and would never again entirely leave some of the hearts that knew it.

Harkness for one. There were to be many years in the future when he was to feel again the beating of Gideon's heart under his arm. Something of Gideon's was his, and something of his was Gideon's forevermore, though they would never meet again.

V

And now the procession was arranged. Harkness looking back could see how it stretched, a winding serpent black in the shadows of the leaping bonfire, through the square. They were off again. The drum had started. Down the hill they went, all packed together, all swinging with the tune. A kind of divine frenzy united them all. Young and old, men and women, married and single, good and evil, vicious and virtuous, all were together bound in one chain. Harkness was with them. For the first time in all his life restraint was flung aside. He did not smell the beer nor did the sweat of the perspiring bodies offend his sensitive nostrils, nor the dung from the fields, nor the fishy odours of the sea. With Gideon on one side and a young man's girl on the other, he swung through the town.

Details for a time eluded him. He was singing the song at the top of his voice, but what words he was singing he could not have told you; he was dancing to the measure, but for the life of him he could not have afterwards repeated the rhythm.

They swung down into the heart of the town. The doors of all the houses were crowded with the very aged and the very young who stood laughing and crying out, pointing to their friends and acquaintances, laughing at this and cheering at that.

And always more were joining in, pushing their way, dancing the more energetically because they had missed the first five minutes. Now they were down on the fish-market all sprinkled with silver under the little moon and the cloth of stars. Here the wind from the sea came to meet them, and through the music and the singing and the laughter and the press-press of the dancing crowd could be heard the faint breath of the tide on the shore "seep-seep-sough-sough," wistful and powerful, remaining for ever when they all were gone. The sheds of the fish-market were gaunt and dark and deserted. For one moment all the naked place was filled with colour and movement. Then up the hill they all pressed.

It was difficult up the hill. There were breaths and pants and "Eh, sirs," and "Oh, the poor worm," and "But my heart's beating," and "I cannot! I cannot!" One woman fell, was picked up and planted by the side of the road, a young man staying with melancholy kindness beside her. The rest passed on.