Portrait of a Man with Red Hair

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Excerpt

The soul of Charles Percy Harkness slipped, like a neat white pocket-handkerchief, out through the carriage window into the silver-blue air, hung there changing into a tiny white fleck against the immensity, struggling for escape above the purple- pointed trees of the dark wood, then, realising that escape was not yet, fluttered back into the carriage again, was caught by Charles Percy, neatly folded up, and put away.

The Browning lines–old-fashioned surely?–had yielded it a moment’s hope. Those and some other lines from another outmoded book:

“But the place reasserted its spell, marshalling once again its army, its silver-belted knights, its castles of perilous frowning darkness, its meadows of gold and silver streams.

“The old spell working the same purpose. For how many times and for what intent? That we may be reminded yet once again that there is the step behind the door, the light beyond the window, the rustle on the stair, and that it is for these things only that we must watch and wait?”

For Harkness had committed the folly of having two books open on his knee–a peck at one, a peck at another, a long, eager glance through the window at the summer scene, but above all a sensuous state of slumber hovering in the hot scented afternoon air just above him, waiting to pounce … to pounce …

First Browning, then this other, the old book in a faded red-brown cover, “To Paradise: Frederick Lester.” At the bottom of the title- page, 1892–how long ago! How faded and pathetic the old book was! He alone in all the British Isles at that moment reading it– certainly no other living soul–and he had crossed to Browning after Lester’s third page.

He swung in mid-air. The open fields came swimming up to him like vast green waves, gently to splash upon his face, hanging over him, laced about the telegraph poles, rising and falling with them… .

The voice of the old man with the long white beard, the only occupant of the carriage with him, broke sharply in like a steel knife cutting through blotting-paper.

“Pardon me, but there is a spider on your neck!”

Harkness started up. The two books slipped to the floor. He passed his hand, damp with the afternoon warmth, over his cool neck. He hated spiders. He shivered. His fingers were on the thing. With a shudder he flung it out of the window.

“Thank you,” he said, blushing very slightly.

“Not at all,” the old man said severely; “you were almost asleep, and in another moment it would have been down your back.”

He was not the old man you would have expected to see in an English first-class carriage, save that now in these democratic days you may see anyone anywhere. But first-class fares are so expensive. Perhaps that is why it is only the really poor who can afford them. The old man, who was thin and wiry, had large shabby boots, loose and ancient trousers, a flopping garden straw hat. His hands were gnarled like the knots of trees. He was terribly clean. He had blue eyes. On his knees was a large basket and from this he ate his massive luncheon–here an immense sandwich with pieces of ham like fragments of banners, there a colossal apple, a monstrous pear–

“Going far?” munched the old man.

“No,” said Harkness, blushing again. “To Treliss. I change at Trewth, I believe. We should be there at 4.30.”

“Should be,” said the old man, dribbling through his pear. “The train’s late… . Another tourist,” he added suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?” said Harkness.

“Another of these damned tourists. You are, I mean. I lived at Treliss. Such as you drove me away.”

“I am sorry,” said Harkness, smiling faintly. “I suppose I AM that if by tourist you mean somebody who is travelling to a place to see what it is like and enjoy its beauty. A friend has told me of it. He says it is the most beautiful place in England.”

“Beauty,” said the old man, licking his fingers–“a lot you tourists think about beauty–with your char-a-bangs and oranges and babies and Americans. If I had my way I’d make the Americans pay a tax, spoiling our country as they do.”

“I am an American,” said Harkness faintly.

The old man licked his thumb, looked at it, and licked it again. “I wouldn’t have thought it,” he said. “Where’s your accent?”

“I have lived in this country a great many years off and on,” he explained, “and we don’t all say ‘I guess’ every moment as novelists make us do,” he added, smiling.

Smiling, yes. But how deeply he detested this unfortunate conversation! How happy he had been, and now this old man with his rudeness and violence had smashed the peace into a thousand fragments. But the old man spoke little more. He only stared at Harkness out of his blue eyes, and said:

“Treliss is too beautiful a place for you. It will do you harm,” and fell instantly asleep.