Magnus Merriman by Eric Linklater Read Free Book Online Page A

arrangements for watch and ward with the caretaker who sustained a twilit and beetle-haunted existence in the basement. Then he telephoned to Margaret to request a last interview at which, to justify his sonnet, they would both behave with admirable composure, aware of sadness but showing nothing of it unless, perhaps, in the gentleness of their temper or in some phrase of slightest irony. Margaret, however, was not at home. A maid replied that she had been called out to a consultation.
    Magnus found it a little strange that she should be able to conduct her life and her profession as though nothing hadhappened while he, unshaved and queasy, his half-packed belongings scattered in awful confusion on the floor, showed so clearly the effects of disaster. He sat in a muddle of shirts and books; a dispatch-case full of press-cuttings and unanswered letters had spilled its contents upon a table where last night’s glasses stood; a bowl of withered chrysanthemums drooped over a pair of evening trousers that lay limp and awry… And at this same moment Margaret, neat as a packet of pins and smart as new paint, would be discussing with a colleague—her voice calm and cool, her mind single, her knowledge all in trim array—some distemper of the colon, or cardiac lesion, as impersonally and efficiently as though she herself possessed neither heart nor bowels. There was something inhuman about women. They indeed were of the earth and as indomitably pursued the seasons. They, far more than men, were at home in the world, and moved with the cold certainty of a hostess from room to familiar room. Magnus reassured himself that for the future he would live celibate and strong in the inviolable tower of his mind—and busied himself with unimportant tasks until such time as he could again telephone to Margaret.
    In the pocket of an old coat he discovered a forgotten letter from Francis Meiklejohn, the man with whom he had journeyed through Persia and the Caucasus on his way home from India. Meiklejohn was now a journalist in Edinburgh. He had written to Magnus: ‘Why the hell do you stay in London when there’s room for you in Edinburgh? Come to Scotland. A renascence is on the way—political and literary—so come and be its midwife. You are, I suppose, a Nationalist? If you are not one already, you will be. There’s a wind in the trees and a muttering in the heather. We talk of liberty when we’re sober, and dream of it when drunk. Come to Scotland, you pestilent renegade.’
    Magnus had a large affection for Francis Meiklejohn, who was an amiable talkative man, a great liar, and given to hearty enthusiasms. He now thought it would be a pleasant and convenient thing to spend a few days in Edinburgh before going farther north, for he would be glad to see Meiklejohn again, and it occurred to him that as he had not written to his people in Orkney for some considerable time he wouldbe well-advised to warn them of his intended visit. The reference to a Nationalist movement in Scotland did not interest him, though he was vaguely aware of its existence. There had been so many loud expressions of nationalism in post-war Europe that the muttering in Scottish heather had been almost inaudible. Such people as the Latvians and the Esthonians and the Czechs might well have good cause to fight for independence; but what freedom could Scots imagine that they did not already enjoy? Magnus concluded that the mutterers were simply cranks and oddities and splenetic seceders of the kind that fomented so much obscure disruption in the Church, and finally retired, in self-righteous defeat, to the moors where only whaups and lapwings could contradict them. Nationalism won’t find a recruit in me, he thought; but I should like to see Frank again, and find out how many lies he’s told about his travels abroad.
    In the late afternoon he telephoned to Margaret, and again she was out; and in the early evening he was