Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre

by Hugh Walpole

They moved, keeping to the shadows, and reached the path that led to the door in the wall. Here their feet crunched on the gravel, and every step was an agony of anticipated alarm. It seemed to Harkness that the house sprang into life, that lights jumped in the windows, figures passed to and fro, but he dared not look back, and then Jabez's hand was on the door, he was through and out safely in the wide free road.

Then, for an instant, he did look back, and there the house was, dark, motionless, rising out of the trees like part of the rock on which it was built, the high tower climbing pale in the mist above it.

Only an instant's glimpse, because there was the jingle, the pony, Dunbar and the girl. An absurd emotion took possession of him at the sight of them. He had been through a good deal that evening, and the picture of them, safe, honest, sane, after the house and the company that he had left, came with the breeze from the sea reassuring him of normality and youth.

Jabez, too, standing over them like a protective deity. His whole heart warmed to the man, and he vowed that in the morning he would do something for him that would give him security for the rest of his days. There was something in the patient, statuesque simplicity of that giant figure that he was never afterwards to forget.

But he had little time to think of anything. He had climbed into the jingle, and without a word exchanged between any of them they were off, turning at once away from the road to the right over a turfy path that led to the Downs.

Dunbar, who had the reins, spoke at last.

"My God," he said, "I thought you were never coming."

"I had a queer time," Harkness answered, whispering because he was still under the obsession of his escape from the house. "You must remember that I'm not accustomed to such adventures. I've never had such an odd two hours before, and I shouldn't think that I'm ever likely to have such another again."

They all clustered together as though to assure one another of their happiness at their escape. The strong tang now of the sea in their faces, the freshness of the wide open sky, the spring of the turf beneath the jingle's wheels, all spoke to them of their freedom. They were so happy that, had they dared, they would have sung aloud.

But Harkness now was conscious only of one thing, that Hesther Crispin, a black shawl over her head, only the outline of her figure to be seen against the blue night, was pressed close to him. Her hand touched his knee, the strands of her hair, escaping the shawl, blew close to his face, he could feel the beating of her heart. An ecstasy seized him at the sense of her closeness. Whatever was to come of that night, at least this he had—his perfect hour. The elder Crispin and his madness, the younger and his strangeness, the dim faded house, the jewels and the torn "Orvieto," the mad talk, all these vanished into unreality, and, curiously, this ride was joined directly to the dance around the town as though no other events had intervened.