Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre

by Hugh Walpole

IX

He went racing through the darkness, the two thoughts changing, mingling, changing incessantly over and over in his brain—that he must catch them at the hotel before they left it, and that he loved, he loved her, he loved her with an intensity that seemed to increase with every step that he ran.

In some way, although Dunbar had said so little about her, his picture of her was infinitely clearer and stronger than it had been before. He saw her in that small village of hers struggling with that drunken father, with insufficient means, with the individualities and rebellions of her two brothers who however deeply they loved her (and normal boys are not conscious of their deep emotions), must have kicked often enough against the limitations of their conditions, sneering servants, spying neighbours, jesting and scornful relations, the father in his cups abusing her, insulting her and for ever complaining—and yet she, through all of this, showing a spirit, a hardihood, a pluck and, he suspected, a humour that only this last fatal intercourse with the Crispin family had broken down.

Harkness was the American man at his simplest and most idealistic, and than this there is nothing simpler and more idealistic in the whole of modern civilisation. The Englishman has too much common sense and too little imagination, the Frenchman is too mercenary, the Southern peoples too sensuous to provide the modern Quixote. In the United States of America to-day there are as many Quixotes as there are builders of windmills to be tilted at—and that is saying much.

So that, with his idealism, his hatred of cruelty and abnormality, Harkness saw far beyond any personal aggrandisement in this pursuit. He was not thinking now of himself at all, he had danced himself that night into a new world.

In the market-place he had to pause for breath. He had run all the way down the High Street, meeting no one as he went; he had already had considerable exercise that evening, and he was in no very fine condition of training. The market-place was quiet enough, only a few stragglers about; the Town Hall clock told him it was twenty-eight minutes to eleven.

He started up the hill, he arrived breathless at the hotel gates, the sweat pouring down his face. He stopped and tried to arrange himself a little. It would be a funny thing coming in upon them all with his tie undone and lines of sweat running down his face. But, after all, he could make the dance account for a good deal. He pushed his stud through the two ends of his collar and pulled his tie up, finding it difficult to use his hands because they were so hot, wiped his face with his handkerchief, pushed his cap straight on his head.

His face wore an expression of grim seriousness as though he were indeed Sir George off to rescue his Princess from the Dragon.

His heart gave a jump of relief when he saw that the Dragon was still there, standing quite unconcernedly in the main hall of the hotel, his son and daughter-in-law quietly beside him. Harkness's first thought at view of him was that Dunbar's story was built up of imagination. The little man was standing, a soft felt hat tilted a little on one side of his head, a dark thin overcoat covering his evening clothes. Because his hair was covered and his face shaded there was nothing about him that was at all startling or highly coloured. He simply looked to be a nice plump little English gentleman who was waiting, a smile on his face, for his car to arrive that it might take him home. Nor was there anything in the least exceptional in the pair that stood beside him, the man, thin, dark, immobile; the girl, her head a little bent, a soft white wrap over her shoulders, her hands at her side. At once it flashed into Harkness's brain that all the scene with Dunbar had been imagined; there had been no "Feathered Duck," no melodramatic story of madness and tyranny, no twopence-coloured plan for a midnight rescue.

He was about to drive a mile or two to see some beautiful things, to smoke a good cigar and drink some admirable brandy—then to retire and sleep the sleep of the divinely worthy.