Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre

by Hugh Walpole

He tried to drive down his fancies and to control his body. That was his trouble—that every limb, every nerve, every muscle, seemed to be asserting its own independent life. His legs now—they belonged to him, but never would you have supposed it. His arms tugged away from him as though striving to be free. He was not trained for this kind of thing—a cultured American gentleman with two sisters who read papers to women's clubs in Oregon.

He beat down his imagination. He had been crawling on his hands and his knees, and now he put out one hand and touched space. His heart gave a sickening bound and lay still. Which way went the path, to right or to left? He tried to throw his memory back and recapture the shape of it. There had been a sharp curve somewhere as it bent out towards the sea, but he did not know how far now he had gone. He strained with his eyes but could see nothing but the wall of grey. Should he wait there until the fog cleared or Dunbar came to him: but the fog might be there for hours, and Dunbar might never come. No, he must not wait. The thought of Hesther alone in the fog, fearing every moment recapture by the Crispins, filled with every terror that her loneliness could breed in her, spurred him on. He must reach her, whatever the risk.

Stretching his arm at full length he touched the path again, but there was an interval. Had there been any break in the path when he came down it? He could not remember any. He felt backwards with his hand and found the curve, crept forward, then his foot slipt and his leg slid over the edge. He waited to stop the hammering of his heart, then, balancing himself, pulled it back then forward again.

Lucky for him that there was no wind, but again not lucky because had there been wind the fog might have been blown out of its course: as it was, with every instant it seemed to grow thicker and thicker.

Then he grew calmer. He must soon now be reaching the top, and happiness came to him when he thought that for a time at least he would be Hesther's only protection. On him, until Dunbar reached them, she would have absolutely to rely. She would be cold and he must shelter her, and at the thought of her proximity to him, he with his arm around her, wrapping her with his coat; holding perhaps her hand in his, he was, himself, suddenly warm, and his body pulled together and was taut and strong.

He fancied that he might walk now. Very carefully he pulled himself up, stood on his feet, stepped forward—and fell.

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. . . .