Magnus Merriman (17 page)

For half a minute there was a comparative silence, and Magnus, now facing his own companions but still speaking in a very loud voice, said decisively, ‘Shakespeare shines through the shoddy of everyday speech like the body of Cophetua's beggar maid through her rags.'

This remark was audible to some sixty or eighty people who were very astonished by it. Some were moved to laughter and others, thinking that the speaker was drunk—he was in truth not sober—made haughty motions of disgust. With some show of temper the orchestra recommenced, and several waiters drew in to Meiklejohn's table. The senior of them spoke severely to Magnus. They were, he said, prepared to allow a certain freedom of behaviour on such a night—this was indisputable: decorum now fingered a paper cap and soon might even wear it. Staid citizens carolled to the band. Here was a lady laughing in a way that would appal her mother's drawing-room, and there was a stout gentleman in evening dress, glazed of eye and sprinkling his words like a flower-pot, going from table to table with invitations to come and drink in Room Number 334, where, he said, there were bottles and bottles of fine liquor: ‘I've lost all my friends,' he said, ‘but I've lots and lots to drink. Dozens and dozens of bottles. Come and have a drink with me! Room 334. Three-three-four! Don't forget the number!'—reasonable licence, said the waiter, was permitted on such a night, but neither conduct so outrageous as an interruption
of the band nor speech so improper as to mention a young woman's body. If there was any further disturbance from this table they would all be asked to leave the hotel.

Magnus, in his usual manner, ignored the rebuke and ordered another bottle of champagne.

Frieda and Miss Beauly had been alarmed by Magnus's interruption of the orchestra and embarrassed by the consequent reprimand. They were very relieved when the waiter went away, and what was left of their anxiety they vented on Magnus, telling him that his behaviour had indeed been reprehensible, and that neither a lecture on Shakespeare nor a display of rowdyism were proper to entertain young women who had come out for an evening of polite amusement.

Meiklejohn waited impatiently till they had finished. During the waiter's admonition he had sat tapping with his fingers, testily interjecting ‘Yes, yes, that's all right,' and then he had been interrupted by Frieda and Miss Beauly and compelled to listen to their strictures while on his own tongue a whole troop of controversial opinions waited the opportunity to gallop into action. His chance came at last. ‘Shakespeare and Racine are as night and day,' he said. Frieda groaned.

‘Shakespeare is a cloudy sky, Racine is a clear sky,' he asserted. ‘Who cares?' said Miss Beauly, and helped herself to a little more champagne.

Meiklejohn was in fine voice. He quoted
Phèdre
, he quoted
Iphigénie
, he made bull-headed assertions and astonishing generalizations. Magnus grew warm and replied with lavish excerpts from
Lear, Timon, Henry IV
, and
Twelfth
Night
. Often they quoted against each other simultaneously, and with a great shock the French lines, glittering like cuirassiers in their silver breastplates, met the plumed and plunging chivalry of England in the middle of the table. Magnus and Meiklejohn forgot their surroundings and, declaiming splendid fragments, enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Sometimes, such was their emotion, their eyes were bright with tears, and their voices shivered like lances that have struck home. But Miss Beauly was very bored.

She was normally a girl of no imagination, and of perfect propriety, at any rate in public. But now the champagne
she had drunk made her inclined to giggle, and she felt a keen desire to do something foolish and unusual. She looked behind her and saw two saxophones balanced near the edge of the platform. The smaller one was quite close to her. For a minute she fiercely desired to take it and blow down its silver throat a furious unorchestrated medley of fun and egotism. But she had not drunk enough to be so brave as that, and wistfully she put away the temptation. Another took its place when Meiklejohn, having taken snuff, put down his box on the table and forgot it in the continued heat of argument.

Miss Beauly picked up the box and examined it. It was nearly full. She fingered the powder and almost yielded to curiosity by sniffing it. Anything must be better than listening to Meiklejohn's unintelligible French and—Magnus spouting in reply—English that was as meaningless as a foreign tongue. But in the very immediacy of snuffing a superior project occurred to her. With a quick and tiny giggle she turned and emptied the box into the mouth of the near-by saxophone. Then, a little overcome by her daring, she masked her emotion with a front of too-candid innocence and pretended to pay attention to the interminable literary discussion.

The next dance was one of those sentimental pieces that, oozing like a sleepy python through a grove of sugar-canes, fill the air with abdominal colloquialism and an almost diabetic sweetness. To fortify the intentions of the dance the lights were turned low, and a sophisticated blue darkness descended on the room. Languorous now, but still close-packed as moonlit elvers in their homing stream, the dancers drifted on the warm and honeyed tide. The saxophone-player took his smallest instrument and came on to the floor to wander through the crowd and play, now into this ear, now into that, the dulcet accidents of the melody.

Presently a woman sneezed. It was a high-pitched sneeze, a most delicate sternutation, the merest zephyr tangled in a pretty, powdered, finger-tip of a nose. But then came a very blizzard of a sneeze that roared and burst in thunder as though its owner's nose were a fore-topsail carried away off Cape Horn. While that still echoed round the room three others followed: one that was no more than a draught, one
a kind of winter squall, and the third like the north-east Trade, it blew so steadily and long. Now the orchestra grew vexed with these interruptions and, sacrificing sweetness for strength, played somewhat louder. But wherever he went the saxophone-player spread more sneezes. When he had passed them a couple would halt, look at each other with a puzzled expression, see lips tremble, mouth open like a new-caught fish, eyes grow moist, nose redden, agitation spread quick and quicker, and then the hurricane before which all yields or is broken and flung aside. As palms in the Bermudas bend and houses shake when the ocean tempest hurls itself at them, so men wilted and women shrank away when some strong sneezer let fly his loud
Atishoo
—yet even as they turned themselves gave birth to storm, sternutation bred in their noses, and
Atishoo!
cried they all. And as in hurricanes, dull amid their large noises, there is the sombre thudding of falling coconuts, so on all hands was the little thudding noise of other sneezes caught at birth and smothered in the nose.

Now on the periphery epicentres of new storms appeared among the diners, and chaos increased when every squall blew flower-vases down or lifted a port-glass to the ground. But still, unscathed himself, the saxophone-player meandered down the decimated floor and puffed abroad his fatal tune. As he passed beneath them, the orchestra shuddered, caught their breath, and amidst a clatter of falling instruments sneezed in awful unison.

The lights were turned on and the ravages of the storm made visible. The dancers, dishevelled, weather-beaten, stood all awry, still twitching, still wet-eyed and haggard. Ties were askew, here was a shirt-front riven asunder and there a shoulder blown bare of its nosegay. Faces most carefully cosmeticked were streaked and plain, and the red strong faces of the men wore a startled, nervous look. Many dancers, and diners too, cowered like starlings in an August gale, and others shied like yearling horses whenever a sneeze rang out. The head waiter, himself weakened by successive paroxysms, strove to avert a panic and, valiant as a ship's officer when his vessel rams an iceberg, bade his customers be calm and return quietly to their own tables.

Meanwhile Miss Beauly, sneezing violently, was very frightened by the success of her trick, and Magnus, Meiklejohn, and Frieda laughed uproariously at it. Magnus quoted some lines describing the storm in
King Lear
, and when convulsions louder than usual startled the room cried: ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!'

Both Magnus and Meiklejohn offered to take the blame for Miss Beauly's misbehaviour if need should arise. Indeed, they began to quarrel as to who should have the privilege of taking the blame. Magnus maintained that as he had been quoting Shakespeare so liberally he had a special claim, for was there not a Shakespearean character, one Lance, a clown, who had taken the blame for his dog's misbehaviour?

‘What had the dog done?' asked Meiklejohn.

Magnus, screening his voice from Miss Beauly, whispered, ‘Piddled under the table.'

‘That's not a parallel case,' said Meiklejohn firmly, and maintained the contrary thesis that he, as champion of Racine and France, that was the birthplace of courtesy and the home of fine manners, had now clearly the right to defend Miss Beauly. And while they were still arguing the head waiter came to their table and asked if either of them was responsible for the storm that had not yet subsided.

‘Yes,' said Magnus.

‘I am,' said Meiklejohn, and they frowned irately, not at him, but at each other.

The waiter suggested they should discuss the matter outside, and they followed him willingly. But at the door of the restaurant Meiklejohn, who was in front, turned to wave good-bye to Miss Beauly, and being uncertain both as to equilibrium and direction, unfortunately with his valedictory hand slapped Magnus on the cheek. Magnus promptly slapped in return. Meiklejohn hit back, retreated, trod on someone's toe, and became embroiled in a general scrimmage. Magnus, following him up, perceived that several people were apparently hindering him, and engaged them all. He succeeded in hitting Meiklejohn on the nose, and then both of them were hurried and bustled, tripped and tumbled, and finally thrown downstairs. At the bottom
they were held securely, now in a semi-conscious state, till a telephone message brought speedily a Black Maria to a rearward door of the hotel, and into that they were thrust and borne to a small divisional Police Station a few hundred yards away.

Magnus and Meiklejohn made an unhandsome spectacle in the Police Station. The violence to which they had been subjected had stirred up their huge potations, and the rising fumes had so smothered their wits that now they had barely strength to stand and listen to the charges made against them. They made no protest, but, sagging at the knees, limply acquiesced in whatever was said. They were taken to a small cell, and there fell instantly asleep.

An hour or two later they were roused again. The Black Maria had called to take them to the Central Police Station, and in company with several other prisoners they made a miserable journey thither.

The small spectacled sergeant who had received them on a previous occasion was again on duty, and he appeared genuinely distressed to see them.

‘Well?' he asked, ‘have you been arguing about literature again?'

A policeman in attendance said they had gravely disturbed the peace of the Albyn Hotel by committing a variety of assaults there, and the sergeant sighed and said, ‘Drink is a terrible thing.'

Meiklejohn, making an effort to defend himself, said in uncertain tones, ‘Just an accident, sergeant. Highly respectable party—but met with an accident.'

Magnus, however, made full confession. ‘We're drunk,' he said. ‘Irremedediably drunk. Irremedediably.' And he supported himself on a neighbouring policeman's arm.

‘You'll need to go to the cells,' said the sergeant, and consulted his book to see what accommodation was available. The police station was somewhat crowded, for in addition to the usual temptations of Saturday there had been the International game and a particularly thrilling match between the Hibernians and the Heart of Midlothian.

‘There isn't a vacant cell left,' said the sergeant, ‘but I won't put you in with strangers.' And he took a large key from a hook.

A massive gate was opened. Magnus and Meiklejohn were led down a stone passage. A confusion of small sounds issued from the peep-holes in narrow doors. There was a good deal of snoring, and someone recited, in a quiet monotone, the story of his wrongs. Another of the invisible prisoners was crooning a song of dismal sentimentality, and another was suffering from resonant hiccups. The passage was well lighted. They turned into a side corridor and the sergeant unlocked a door.

In a fair-sized cell two men were sleeping. Their boots had been taken off, and they lay, unblanketed, on a gently sloping platform against the far wall.

‘You won't feel the need of conversation tonight,' said the sergeant, ‘but you'll have company for tomorrow.'

The door closed, the loud lock was turned. Meiklejohn, with a final effort to greet destiny with a gesture, tried to pronounce ‘All hope abandon ye who enter here.' Had he been content to say it in English he might have succeeded, but a Latin spirit still flickered in him and he essayed the original Italian form. The sonorous sibilation of
lasciate
was too difficult, and a mere susurration escaped his lips. He sat on the floor and dolefully shook his head. Magnus lay down without pretence that he desired anything but rest, and instantly fell asleep.

Early in the morning they were half-awakened by the rattling of the little barred opening in the door. One of the original occupants of the cell, who had been asleep when Magnus and Meiklejohn were admitted, got up and took from the warder outside four cups of cocoa and four slices of dry bread. He turned to rouse the newcomers.

‘Come along, my lucky lads,' he said. ‘Rise and shine! You can't lie there till the sun burns a hole—God A'mighty, it's Mr Merriman!'

Magnus, groaning for his stiffness and his headache, sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘Hallo, Denny,' he said. ‘You here, too?'

It was indeed Sergeant Denny, with whom they had been
associated in their previous encounter with the police, and the fourth man in the cell was none other than Private McRuvie, late of the Black Watch. Denny was very surprised to see Magnus, and, when his surprise had worn off, overjoyed to meet an old friend again. But Magnus was suffering too keenly, both in mind and body, to be susceptible either to surprise or pleasure. Meiklejohn was also taciturn, and McRuvie was frankly surly. Denny alone seemed immune to remorse and unaffected by imprisonment, and for a long time his endeavours to promote a happy family atmosphere were unsuccessful.

After drinking their cocoa Magnus and Meiklejohn sat side by side in dismal silence, broken only by the interjection, first from one and then from the other, ‘My God, what fools we were!'

An appalling unhappiness possessed them both. Not only were their stomachs queasy, their heads aching, and their mouths most sourly flavoured, but their minds were full of shame and foreboding. At first they could scarcely remember what had happened, but then incident after incident came back to memory, and as each one returned their souls withered within them. That vain wounding wish, that time would turn back, assailed them, and they thought how easily they could have evaded this horrible occurrence. Meiklejohn had the additional misery of realizing that his job as editor of the
Evening
Star
was imperilled.

‘Oh, why do we get drunk?' he exclaimed.

Sergeant Denny looked round in a lively interested way. ‘Man,' he said, ‘its a grand feeling to be fou'! It's like climbing a mountain: you get a rare view of the world, and everything looks bonnier than you ever dreamt it would be. If I were a millionaire I'd never be sober.'

‘What about your job?' asked Meiklejohn. ‘You'll get the sack if you don't turn up in time on Monday morning.'

‘I havena been in work for three years,' said Denny. ‘And McRuvie's the same, or worse. Hey, McRuvie! How long is it since you've had a job?'

‘Four years,' said McRuvie, ‘or maybe five. I canna remember.'

‘You're living on the dole?' asked Magnus.

‘He is,' said Denny, ‘but no me. I had it for a while, but och, they're too particular with all their questions and the like, so I just gave it up.'

Magnus threw off some of his private cares and began to question Denny about his manner of life since leaving the army. Denny had had a varied career and was ready enough to talk. After the orthodox part of the war was over he had served in the North Russian force. Then he had come home, and for a year he had been a policeman. But the discipline was too exacting. He had worked for a while in the fish market at Inverdoon, and after that, for some eighteen months, he had been cook aboard a trawler. While he was at sea his wife had run away with a friend of his, and after a period of idleness in which he had dissipated his sorrow in drink he had occupied himself in the collection of street-corner bets for a bookie in a small way of business. But the police warned him off, and he took advantage of an offer of employment from an uncle in Leith, who had just bought a small greengrocer-shop. In the course of selling potatoes he had met a young woman and fallen in love with her. To avoid the misdemeanour of bigamy they had lived in sin, as the saying is. When his uncle went bankrupt Denny supported himself and his wife on the dole for some months, but presently the authorities, prying here and there and asking inconvenient questions, discovered that though his wife might be his helpmate in the eyes of God she was not his spouse in the sight of men, and charging Denny with perjury, fraud, and misrepresentation, mulcted him of his dole and sent him to prison for six weeks. On his release he had put ten shillings, which was all he possessed, on a greyhound called Idle Sam, and winning thereby the sum of two pounds, had since lived in reasonable comfort by betting on horses, dogs, and football teams.

Magnus was greatly cheered by this recital, for he was always delighted to meet a man who had fought the hardships and injustice of life with a series of pretty shifts and dependence on his own wit. So long as a man could maintain existence by his own strength he had no cause to worry about the opinions or the criticism of the rest of the world, and even the folly of drunkenness, the stain of
imprisonment, could by such a one be forgotten in a night's sleep. Magnus, with his moral opportunism, became aware, through his discomfort, of the freedom that pertains to the underdog, the gipsy, the outlaws of society. His expression grew happier. He slapped Denny on the shoulder, laughed, and said, ‘The Gay Gordons, what? Once a Gordon, aye a Gordon.'

‘That's the word,' said Denny.

McRuvie snorted.

‘And what about McRuvie?' asked Magnus, ‘has he lived as variously as you?'

But McRuvie, it appeared, had monotonously supported himself and his family on the dole ever since the yards at Rosyth had been closed in the interests of economy and their workers discharged
pour encourager les autres
. McRuvie had cause to be somewhat surly.

‘And what were you doing last night to get run in?'

‘Fighting,' said Denny simply, and related the whole story. He and McRuvie had gone to the football match between the Hibernians and the Heart of Midlothian. He supported the Hearts, McRuvie the Hibs, and there was some argument between them over a disputed goal and the dubious award of a penalty kick. But Denny had been magnanimous, and being in funds—he had won four pounds as the result of his week's betting—he had taken McRuvie to a pub and treated him to a large number of drinks. Then the discussion about the penalty kick had reawakened, and from hot debate about the rival merits of Hibs and Hearts they had progressed by stages which Denny could not clearly remember, but which at the time had seemed quite natural, to even warmer dispute about the emulous virtues of the Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders. They had been thrown out of the pub, and while punching conviction into each other outside the police had come upon the scene and arrested them. It was a simple story, plainly told and easy to comprehend.

It suddenly occurred to Magnus that Scotland was full of contending elements, and that the possibility of two Scotsmen living together in peace was regrettably small. If one were a Catholic and the other a Presbyterian then
there would certainly be enmity and suspicion between their houses; if one came from Glasgow and the other from Edinburgh then they would assuredly hate and despise each other; if one were a Campbell and the other a Macdonald they would have a fine bitter store of ancestral memories to feed their mutual execrations; the Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders, it seemed, could not be neighbours without a taunting interchange of references to Broken Squares and the Kaiser's Bodyguard; scarcely a village but called its proximate village dirty, drunken, or thievish; and even peaceful literary men, admirers of Shakespeare and Racine, were in danger of a punch on the nose if they made known their admiration.

It was indeed a combative land, and if the Nationalists succeeded in making it independent they would have a pretty task to reconcile all the contentious parts. Magnus grew thoughtful at the prospect of this difficulty, but presently consoled himself by pretending that local rivalries were a sign of national vitality. He turned to engage Meiklejohn in conversation, who was still sitting mute and unhappy because he might soon cease to be editor of the
Evening
Star
.

The hours ebbed slowly. At midday a warder brought them each a bowl of soup and another slice of bread. No one but Denny had much appetite, and he cleaned the bowls and finished every crust. They sat for a long time in silence broken only by a rumbling belch from McRuvie.

Then the office-sergeant, the little spectacled man, came in and looked at them over the top of his spectacles, and said how sorry he was to have them all here. Meiklejohn asked if they could be released on bail, but the sergeant said that was impossible. They had done a certain amount of damage in the Albyn Hotel, it seemed, and they would have to go before the magistrate and take their punishment.

‘I let you out on bail once before,' said the sergeant, ‘and the warning should have been enough for you if, as they say, it's only a fool who can't learn by experience. I'm very sorry indeed to see you in here, but I can't do anything to help you now. You'd better plead guilty in the morning. It'll save you trouble.'

He paused and cleared his throat. ‘There's a scripture reader outside,' he said. ‘If any of you would like to hear a chapter read I can tell him to come in.'

No one appeared to want this consolation, and the sergeant said, ‘Well, I thought it might pass the time for you, but it's for yourselves to say. You'll be finding the day wearisome, I doubt.'

‘Very,' said Magnus.

The sergeant put something in his hand and whispered, ‘I'll come back for that later.' Then, with a solemn shaking of his head, he left them and closed the door hard behind him.

It was a pack of cards he had given Magnus, and everyone grew a little more cheerful to see them. Denny in particular praised the sergeant loudly for his clemency and kindness. ‘He's a grand wee man,' he said, ‘if there was more like him it would be a pleasure to be putten in gaol.'

Neither Denny nor McRuvie could play bridge, and there was some difficulty in deciding what other game would be suitable. They played a few hands of vingt-et-un, and made a trial of brag, but their lack of money—for all their possessions except their clothes had been taken from them—made these games uninteresting, and the keeping of a score without markers was soon found to be impracticable. Then Denny, having shuffled the cards with expert fingers, showed them how to cut the pack for banker and be reasonably sure of winning. ‘Do you mind the Crown and Anchor board I used to run?' he asked Magnus. ‘That's a fine game. Sometimes I made seven or eight pounds on a pay-night. Man, it wasna so bad a war as some folk try to make out.'

Meiklejohn, fearing a spate of wartime reminiscences, hurriedly suggested a game of solo whist, and they played that for several hours.

In the early evening the warder reappeared with bowls of thin gruel and more bread. Denny suggested they should play banker for the bread, and because the others had seen him demonstrate the way of it they thought they could beat him, and agreed. He won all four slices.