Magnus Merriman (13 page)

‘Don't put ideas into my head, or I'll marry you.'

‘You'll do no such thing. I'll cosset you and comfort you and bewilder you with love, but I'm damned if I'll marry you. I've got Blake's ideas about marriage: “Whoso touches a joy as he flies, lives in Eternity's sunrise, but whoso binds to his heart a joy doth the winged life destroy.” Besides, I think you're a witch yourself: they milk from the moon a
shining white liquor, as white as you, and sometimes a pool of it is found in high moorland places, and to touch it will drive a man mad.'

Magnus invariably grew loquacious when he was in high spirits, and he continued to talk enthusiastically about witchcraft and to relate several Orkney superstitions, one or two authentic, but the rest of which were his own invention. By and by Frieda said, ‘Say, did you wake me up to hear your stories, or to hear mine?'

‘I'm sorry! I was only filling in time till you were ready.'

‘Well, if you want to know what happened, I'll tell you. But it's no joke: remember that! I was scared to death at the time, and I'm still scared when I think about it. Well, I told you about the guy coming back, and then fainting? The old Dutchwoman undid his collar and I rubbed his hands, and presently he got better, and as soon as he could sit up he wanted us to go back with him to his girl's house. The old woman said no, she wouldn't move a step outside the door, not at that time of night. But Hyson—that was the drummer's name—he was just about frantic to go, though he could hardly stand by himself. So we talked some more to the old woman, and by and by she got a shawl, grumbling all the time and kind of frightened too, and out we went. The wind was blowing the snow up in a little vortex, and it was so cold it took your breath away. I don't know if it was owing to that or to something else, but just outside the other house I got a feeling as though I couldn't go in, no, not for anything. The old woman walked right in, though, and I thought I'd better follow her. Then we found the girl. She was lying on her bed, with the covers rumpled back and her nightgown torn, and she'd queer torn marks, some of them like tooth-marks, on her arms and breast. She was dead all right. Hyson just put his head in the covers and began to cry, and the old woman stood there shaking all over. Well, I thought I'd better see if we couldn't get some help, but there wasn't another soul in the house. So I asked the old woman what we should do, but she'd only speak German and I don't know what she said, till she began to talk about the girl's father, who was a carpenter. She seemed to think it was all his fault because he didn't make his coffins out
of good wood or screw down the lids properly. I didn't see what that had got to do with it, but Hyson looked up and screamed, ‘Witches, you fool! If a witch hears of a corpse that isn't properly buried she'll come and tear it to bits with her teeth. They're witch's marks on Elsa!” Then he cried again, sobbing and kind of holding his breath. It made you feel cold all over, and sick, too, to look at those marks after hearing that. I asked the old woman where Elsa's father was now, but she wouldn't answer. Hyson stopped crying, too, and just sat quiet. We all sat there, saying nothing. We sat there till morning, and we were so stiff with cold we could hardly move then.'

Magnus felt a pricking of the flesh and his blood seemed to run more chilly in his veins as he listened to this unpleasant story, and when Frieda spoke of that frozen room and the witch-marks on Elsa's body he even grew a little frightened of her—though he would indignantly have denied this—for she had sat there and seen the strangely torn flesh and carried as if by infection some tinge of the horror with her. But he made an effort to judge the story with common-sense scepticism and asked, as casually as he could, ‘And what happened the next day? What was the explanation of the girl's death?'

‘God knows,' said Frieda. ‘I didn't stay to hear. I said good-bye to them as soon as it was light and went out and stopped a car that was going to Harrisburg, and I got a ride as far as that. I'd had enough of that darned village. Wild horses wouldn't have drawn me back.'

‘But what do you think was the explanation?'

‘Say, I thought you
believed
in witches? And now when I tell you a story about them you ask me to explain it away. That doesn't seem reasonable to me.'

Magnus was very unhappy. His exultation, that had risen like a wave, had fallen like a wave, and when Frieda's voice grew sharp to rebuke his scepticism he felt a small but definite tremor of fear. He remembered inopportunely a verse about strange women whose feet go down to death and whose steps take hold on hell, and he recalled a story about a succubus, and he wished that he had lived more virtuously and thought hopefully of the rectitude he would
henceforth pursue. The lamplight shone white on Frieda's shoulder, and the discomforting thought returned of the witches' virus, that pale and shining fluid which is sometimes found on high heaths and is poison. All the tales of horror he had ever heard, and even those that he himself had confected, assailed his imagination, and in his ears the old Dutchwoman muttered rumours of hex-men.

Presently Frieda, wearying of inactivity, said, ‘Well, there's no use worrying about something that happened three thousand miles away,' and approached him with tentative caresses. But Magnus could not strengthen his spirit nor rouse himself to respond, and the night, unflowering, dwindled bleakly to the dawn.

Henry Wishart had gone to London on business, and his wife had accompanied him partly for pleasure and partly from domestic habit, for she and her husband had rarely been separated for more than a day or two during the thirty years of their marriage. A matter of disputed inheritance in which the firm of Graham, Coldstream, and Wishart was interested had gone to the House of Lords on appeal, and Henry Wishart had accompanied it to explain to their lordships the difficulties they were required to unravel. In one way and another the case was delayed and judgment deferred, and two weeks elapsed before he could return to Edinburgh. During that interval of unguarded liberty Frieda fell seriously in love with Magnus, and Magnus was gravely hindered in the prosecution of his political studies and in the composition of his new poem.

He had found inspiration for the first part—that which should deal satirically with the existing order of society—in the National War Memorial in the Castle. This building, the most distinguished piece of recent architecture in Scotland, was of curious interest in that, without shame or concealment, it glorified the martial spirit while all elsewhere in the land it was considered fashionable and proper to exalt the name of peace. The Memorial contained, in addition to the names of the dead, trophies of the Scottish regiments and catalogues of their battle honours. Considering these
far-flung names that smelt of Indian temples and desert sand, of fields in France and roads in the Peninsula, of China and the islands of the sea, Magnus perceived that Pericles' praise of the dead—
All the earth is the grave of gal
¬
lant men
—might, with but little exaggeration, be rewritten as
All the earth is the grave of Scottish men
. And dwelling on the sound and savour of these names he began to compare them with the nomenclature of Scotland itself, and found the latter trivial beside them: he set Ramillies, Blenheim, and Malplaquet against Falkirk, Peebles and Troon; he balanced Chitral, Delhi, and Mysore with Motherwell, Galashiels, and Dundee; he contrasted Balaclava and Waterloo, Anzac and Coronel, with Forfar and Paisley and Cowdenbeath; and always the chorus of battle names, of the names of the places where men had died in bravery, was louder, more melodious, and apparelled in more glorious associations than the trios of peaceful names, of the names of the places where men merely lived. As it was absurd to believe that the reason for this difference was the superiority of death to life—his very bowels found blasphemy in the suggestion—Magnus was led to believe that Blenheim and Waterloo and Chitral rang in his mind with prouder euphony than Peebles and Paisley merely because Death, that distasteful creature, had in the former places worn brighter vestments, a more glorious bearing, than Life, that lovable thing, was encouraged to wear in the latter. With this incongruity in his mind he walked about till he came to a great bronze panel on which were sculptured in high relief representations of the different kinds of men who had served in the last war. There were soldiers laden with the panoply of battle, so thickly thewed and tall they could without stumbling carry rifle and three hundred cartridges, a great pack, a steel helmet, and a cartload of Picardy mud; there were sailors, severe of gaze to watch for periscope and reef and mine, and wrapped in oilskins against the bitterness of the North Sea; there were subalterns whose youth was grim, not gay; young airmen who had lived like hawks and poets and paladins and died the quick death of dragon-flies; there were solid stubborn ploughmen transformed by discipline to grandeur; there were nurses of gentle gallantry and grave beauty—and leading them in their unplanned path to
the laurel-grove a piper marched—O glory and grave of the McCrimmons!—whose pibroch like an evening wave lipped all the gleaming bronze.

Standing before the strong heroism of these figures Magnus began to think of living men, and imagined a panel that should represent, not his countrymen who had died, but his countrymen who still existed. Piety, reverence, and glory ran from his mind, and so violent was their outgoing that the inrush of contrary emotions was savage, and he filled his imagined frieze with the ignoblest spawning of the time: weaklings, fools, and knaves; dullards, fat profiteers, and starving dole men; the chatterers, the rushers to and fro, the self-doubters and the self-satisfied; with snivelling piety and supercilious unbelief; with empty heads and full bellies; with ossified Tories and rattle-brained Socialists; with pimping prettiness and ugliness too mean to hide itself; with cowardice, hypocrisy, greed, stupidity, and all the other ailments and emblems and deformities that satirists, from the earliest time, have discovered to be the characteristic features of humanity. Excited by this revelation he hurried home and worked on his poem with pious indignation and a fierce desire to cleanse and reform his degenerate country.

But though his brain was able to see visions and conceive a high poetic purpose, his flesh was irrepressible flesh, his blood had a stronger flow than the pale ichor of his mind, and his bone was simply the rude salts of the earth. When Frieda became his lover his fury dwindled and the zest departed from his hunting of iniquity. He was still convinced that the times were corrupt and men were base—with the possible exception of a few Nationalists—but in her company, as though she came attended by a moral thaw, this reformative indignation melted like an iceberg before the erosion of summer seas. And even when he sat alone his larger thoughts were likely to be interrupted by small thoughts of her, if not by the ringing of the telephone or her actual appearance at his door. He pursued his love-making with increasing interest and some uneasiness.

Frieda spent a part of every day with him, and often betrayed discretion by extending her visits far into the night.
She frankly confessed that her first surrender had been premeditated and inspired by nothing more than unruly appetite. Magnus, who thought she had already fallen in love with him, was somewhat perturbed by this admission.

‘The truth is that celibacy doesn't suit me' said Frieda. ‘I'd lived a pure life, unspotted by the world, for six months, and purity had gotten a taste like stale bread. I was tired of it. And as I'd seen a kind of dewy look in your eye, once or twice, I thought I could tap at your door without being treated as if I were trying to sell summer frocks to a colony of nudists.'

‘But you don't mean that you were ready to go to bed with anyone at all?'

‘Not anyone, perhaps, but I can think of a whole lot of men who'd have suited me pretty well.'

Magnus, his pride hurt, said warmly, ‘I'm not narrow-minded, and I'm not a Puritan, but I think that's a detestable statement. You're admitting yourself to be shamelessly wanton and completely immoral.'

‘Well, you slept in the same bed, so the same bad words apply to you.'

‘Not at all. I thought you were in love with me.'

‘And were you in love with me?'

‘I was very fond of you, and very interested in you.'

‘And that's quite enough to excuse a man playing happy families under the blanket, is it?'

‘A man's conduct can't be judged in the same way as a woman's,' said Magnus patiently. ‘There are many things that a man can do quite naturally and quite properly that would be improper and undesirable if a woman did them.'

‘Say, there's more whiskers on your ideas than the world has seen since the Hairy Ainus disappeared. Your morals are something that an archaeologist would be interested in, but nobody else. You want women to be pure and unattainable, but you like to have a good time with them just the same. Well, I'm going to teach you a thing or two before I've done with you.'

Magnus began to expose the flaws in her argument: ‘All I implied was that I dislike the idea of promiscuity. And I do dislike it. I don't approve of general looseness and
the complete abandonment of impulse that you apparently would agree to.'

‘How many women have you made love to in your young life?' Frieda interrupted.

‘That's got nothing to do with the question. I was discussing general principles.'

‘Yes, you would! And so long as your principles are all right you can act just as you please.'

‘Principles are very important and useful even though you don't always live up to them.'

‘Now you're putting hypocrisy on the programme.'

Magnus stood up and shouted: ‘I'm doing nothing of the sort! And if you haven't the wit to distinguish between the possession of principles and a pretence to principles then you ought to consult an alienist, though I don't suppose he could do anything for you. You're one of those people who want to abolish all the rules in the world because you're too damned lazy and incompetent to learn them. But I say the more rules the better, because then life would be more difficult and more interesting: there would be more rules to break. And that's not hypocrisy! You want to bring everything to a dead level, so that no one can be reproached with going downhill, and no one may be tempted to sweat and lose his breath climbing uphill. There used to be two sorts of women at least—good and bad—but you'd like to abolish the difference and make one kind only: automatic!'

‘To hell with you!' said Frieda. ‘I'm bad anyway.'

She picked up her skirts and danced an agile mimicry of the age's tarantism, a rapid, knee-slapping, haunch-wagging, shaking and shivering nimbleness that flattered the Creator's ingenuity in devising joints and muscles.

‘You just hate the sound of your own voice, don't you?' she asked. Then she threw a couple of cushions at Magnus, who threw them back, and the debate finished in a wrestling-match, that presently grew gentler. Arm-locks became embraces, a head-hold the prelude to a caress. Argument vanished like cream in the cat's saucer, and disagreement was obliterated by the emollience of love's amiable gossip.

Within three or four days Frieda had expiated her immorality by very seriously falling in love. In the excitement of
earliest intimacy she had talked with greater detail than before, and with a certain boastfulness, about her previous liaisons, but now when Magnus, still curious, asked further questions, she grew sulky and taciturn.

One day she exclaimed, with heat and unhappiness, ‘I never want to speak again about anything that happened to me in America. I never want to think about it. I used to be proud of having lived as I have, and done everything I wanted to without fear of the consequences, and I used to despise people who had lived easy, sheltered, virtuous lives. I never regretted anything till now. But now there's a hundred things I hate to think of, and I wish …'

‘What?' said Magnus.

‘That I had never loved anyone but you.'

Magnus experienced a variety of emotions. He was in truth very fond of Frieda, and even in love with her if to be in love does not necessarily connote resignation to love's continuance, but may exist in satisfaction with the moment only. He was flattered by her complete surrender, and slightly perturbed by the responsibility that it put upon him. And he was distressed by the sight of her distress. He did his best to comfort her with a variety of casuistical arguments, telling her that what would disfigure one person might well leave another healthy and whole; that innocency's loss was gain to experience; that remorse for sins of commission was less bitter than regret for omitted sins; that what had happened yesterday was dead as Nineveh and all its deeds; and that her recital of misadventure, so far from making a distasteful impression, had filled him with admiration for the courage with which she had oversailed adversity.

Frieda suddenly stood up, thrust back her hair with impatient fingers, pulled her dress straight, and said: ‘Hell! I'm getting soft. I didn't mean what I was saying then. There's no man on earth can dominate me, and I'm not dependent on any man. I can look after myself. I'm going now; I want to get some air.'

‘It's raining.'

‘Then I'll get wet too. Give me my hat.'

But when Frieda came back on the following afternoon she brought an old silver snuff-box that she had bought
for Magnus in a second-hand shop in the High Street, and on succeeding occasions she presented him with a book, a silk muffler, and a pair of cuff-links. These presents Magnus accepted with more embarrassment than pleasure, for though a young man may bestow gifts in a mood of lightest dalliance, a young woman seldom gives anything away except under the compulsion of serious intentions. Woman's nature is conservative, and her presents to a man are tainted with a suspicion that they are ultimately destined for the enrichment of her own household. Magnus, however, put this disturbing thought from him, and restored his self-respect by purchasing a hand-bag and a handsomely illustrated edition of
Candide
that together cost, according to his calculations, some ten shillings more than the aggregate price of Frieda's gifts.

She was delighted to receive them, and showed a pleasure in possessing them that was childish in its extravagance. She thanked him so warmly, so enthusiastically, that he was touched by her joy and used her with a somewhat elderly fashion of affection that she appeared to welcome. Presently they sat together turning the pages of
Candide
, while Magnus talked volubly about the charm of irony and condemned the English habit of mind that could not appreciate it. ‘For,' he said, ‘they cannot stand ridicule. The whole policy of their lives is designed to ensure comfort of mind and body, and though they pride themselves on their sense of humour, their humour consists of little gobbets of laughter stuck in the chinks of their walls to keep out the wind of criticism or contrary opinion. Irony is one of the chief graces of literature, but the English will have none of it, because it makes them feel uncomfortable. They won't allow tragedy on their stage or in their novels, because tragedy makes them think; though sometimes they accept it in translations from a foreign tongue, as then the tragedy obviously occurred too far from home to be of any importance to them. And they won't take a serious view of comedy because when comedy is taken seriously it becomes as disturbing as tragedy. All they want and all they will pay to see or read are aphrodisiacs, hobbledehoy farces, multifarious peacocking pageants, and something that will
curdle the blood for twenty hectic minutes in the benign assurance of an ultimate happy ending.'