MAGNUS MERRIMAN-Chapter Thirteen

The bastard Faulconbridge, having discovered that the world was mad, came to a very sensible decision and declared:

Well, whiles I am a beggar I will rail

And say there is no sin but to be rich;

And being rich, my virtue then shall be

To say there is no vice but beggary.

Without having precisely formulated such a code, Magnus was not insusceptible to this chameleon philosophy, and frequently found himself in happy agreement with his surroundings—though there were occasions when he yielded to an anti-chameleon ethic and, in the midst of white, proclaimed himself all black. It was rather in this latter mood that he went to the football ground at Murrayfield, and after Uncle Henry’s port and his discussion with the Colonel he felt superior to, and impatient with people who had in their minds no thought but to be entertained by an idle game. Five minutes after the match started, however, he was at one with the vast throng about him, a very chameleon on that pounding field, coloured like eighty thousand others with the fierce hues of enthusiasm.

There is a kind of Rugby that is no more than dull squabbling in the mud, a drenched and witless wrangling punctuated by a fretful whistle. But, at its best, Rugby is a game that all the gods of Greece might crowd the northern skies to see, and, benched on our cold clouds, be not restrained either by frozen bottoms or the crowd’s chill sceptic hearts from plunging to the aid of stronger Myrmidons, of plucking from the scrimmage some Hector trodden in the mire and nursing him to strength again. Well might the Thunderer send fleet Mercury, swooping from the heights, to pick from the empty air Achilles’ mis-flung pass and with it race—dog-rose and buttercup fast springing in his track—to the eternal goal.

And that square Ajax—dirtier than his namesake and more brave—would Hera not guard his brow from flying boots as, dauntless, down he hurls himself to stop a forward rush? Is there in all that crowd a Helen not quick-breathing, tip-toed and ready to leave dull Menelaus in his office chair and flee with Paris there, who runs so lightning-swift on the left wing?—on the left wing only? Eagles would need two to fly so fast.

Rugby can be a game for gods to see and poets to describe, and such a match was this. L’audace, encore l’audace, et toujours l’audace was both sides’ motto, and which was more gallant—England, taller and bulkier-seeming because clad in white: Scotland, running like stags and tackling like thunderbolts in blue—no one can truthfully say and none would care to know. If Tallent for England was magnificent, Simmers for Scotland was superb. Did Tallent run the whole length of the field and score? Then Simmers, leaping like a leopard, snatched from the air a high cross-kick of Macpherson’s and scored from that. Did Black for England kick like a giant, long, true and hard? Then see what Logan at the scrum, Smith on the wing, did like giants for Scotland. And each side in turn, tireless and full of devil, came to the attack and ranged the field to score. Pace never slackened from start to finish, and every minute thrilled with excitement till, at the end, wisps of fog came down—perhaps the gods indeed, hiding their brightness in the mist—and in that haze the players still battled with unwearied zeal.

Judge, then, of the fervour of the crowd, poised as it were on the broad rim of a saucer, and as thick together as if the saucer had been smeared with treacle and black sand thrown on it. But they were more mobile than sand, and ever and again a movement would pass through them as when a wave of the wind goes through a cornfield. Ever and again, as when walls in an earthquake fall asunder, some twelve or fourteen thousand would shiver and drift away from their neighbouring twelve thousand and then, stability reasserted, fall slowly into place again. And now, like a monstrous and unheralded flowering of dark tulip-beds, the crowd would open to its heart and fling aloft, as countless petals, hats, sticks, and arms, and pretty handkerchiefs, and threaten to burst the sky with cheers. Now they were wild as their poorer neighbours who, some mile or two away, were cheering their paid teams with coarser tongues. Now all Scotland was at one, united in its heat, and only the most sour of moralists would decry that heat because it had been lighted by a trivial game.

Magnus carried his excitement with him, through the voluminous outpouring of the crowd, all the way to Francis Meiklejohn’s flat, and Frieda, walking beside him, was as fervid as he, and willing even to admit that Rugby such as this transcended the staccato violence of American football. But Meiklejohn, who had not been to the match, was sceptical of its virtues and scoffed at their enthusiasm. Mrs Dolphin, who entered the room with them to hear the news, rejoiced to learn that Scotland had won, but was disinclined to believe that such a game was worthy to show off her country’s virility.

‘Was there any blood?’ she asked, and on being told that injuries had been few, said, ‘It’s shinty they should have been playing. I remember seeing a game of shinty at Kingussie, and half the men there had bloody heads before it was over. Every other crack of the ball there was a man carried off the field, for if it wasn’t the ball that hit him it was the stick, and a shinty-stick is a fine weapon. There was a man called Alistair Mhor, and he stopped at one time and said, “What’s this on my stick?” And then he saw it was a man’s eyebrow he had knocked off. Alistair was a Macdonald and the man who had lost his eyebrow was a Campbell, so Alistair wasn’t as sorry as he would have been otherwise. Oh, shinty’s a fine game if you don’t mind it being a little bit rough. It pleased them well enough in Kingussie, for the people there said they hadn’t had such a treat for years.’

Though Meiklejohn was not sympathetic with his guests’ enthusiasm, his zeal for hospitality was unimpaired. Several other people arrived, and presently the room was full of the familiar sounds of Figaro, glass and bottle music, loud conversation, and Meiklejohn’s detonating laughter. Among the newcomers was a very pretty girl whom Meiklejohn greeted with a flourish of welcome and introduced as Miss Beauly. He gathered her and Magnus and Frieda into a corner and said, ‘We’re dining at the Tarascon tonight. I’ve got a table for four. Now I don’t want any argument or hard-luck stories of previous engagements. We’re going—so there’s no more to be said.’

Magnus alone, however, found no difficulty in tacit agreement. Miss Beauly said a great deal about the difficulty of getting dressed in time and the breaking of earlier promises that would be incidental to the acceptance of this new invitation, and made a fine show of reluctance before consenting to join them. Frieda was anxious to go, but was doubtful of her aunt’s compliance, and would not say yes till she had telephoned Mrs Wishart for permission. After that the party continued with such agreeable hilarity as to put them in danger of forgetting the subsequent engagement, and indeed they did not remember it till so late an hour that neither Miss Beauly nor anyone else had time to go home and change into evening dress. But fortified by Meiklejohn’s vodka they then found themselves ready to flaunt the conventions and dare the invasion of Edinburgh’s most distinguished restaurant in the permeable armour of ordinary clothes.

The Tarascon Restaurant was in the Albyn Hotel. It gave facilities for dancing and dining at approximately the same time: one could rise from one’s turbot maître d’hôtel, that is, and while forgetting its flavour in the polite amusement of a waltz, find diversion—if such were one’s nature—in the thought that all around one were agitated couples whose ears were full of music and whose stomachs were full of newly ingurgitated fragments of cutlet, potato salad, partridge and rum soufflé. In a mechanical age the mechanism of the human body is of universal interest, and the spectacle of mortality overcoming so many difficulties at once was enthralling: here was a brain zealously receiving afferent impulse from the American orchestration of an African melody, analysing it, and transmitting a hundred instructions to all the muscles from trouser-top to toe; and there were the muscles, huge fellows like the quadriceps extensor and tiny pink slips like the flexon digiti quinti—or some such thing—co-ordinating these instructions and obeying them with more than the discipline of a Guards’ battalion. And immediately above the trouser-line was a digestive system revolving the mixed bag of an eight-course dinner, sorting its contents with the care of a stamp collector before a tray of new specimens, telegraphing to the brain for hepatic aid and pancreatic reinforcements, and notifying its descending tracts of their imminent burden. Meanwhile the lungs were filtering oxygen from a bewildering indraught of cigarette smoke, perfume, and the odours of food; the ever-versatile brain was putting a score of facial and glottal muscles through their drill of social conversation, and still navigating its owner down the crowded fairway of the floor; and a host of tactile sensations were informing various parts of the body that of all God’s creatures there were only two kinds, and male and female created He them. Nor does this catalogue comprise more than half the activities of these dancers—whom many people would foolishly call idle—but of other physiological business and cortical traffic there is no need to speak, for enough has been said to account for the popularity of the Tarascon Restaurant in those classes of people that could afford to frequent it.

On this particular evening it was full as a hive in the honey months, and as busy, with people who had been to the football match and were unwilling to stay quietly at home after the excitement. As though disgorged by the teeming dance-and-dining room, tables lined the foyer and corridor outside, whose occupants might hear the muted music from within, and people were still coming and going on the stairs, greeting friends and blocking the way with fortuitous assembly. The table that Meiklejohn had reserved was in the restaurant itself. It cowered beneath the orchestra and was overshadowed, almost overgrown, by surrounding diners like a Mayan temple in the jungle.

Meiklejohn and his friends, dressed for daytime purposes, were received by the waiters with obvious displeasure, for tweed and flannel had a raffish, disrespectful look among the elegances of evening wear. The head waiter indeed was unwilling to admit them, but yielded when Magnus said loudly, ‘The law of the land declares that an inn, tavern, pub, pot-house, coffee-stall, brothel or posada shall not refuse admission to customers able to pay for what they eat and drink, and that such refusal is a criminal offence. If you don’t believe me send for the manager and I’ll argue with him.’ They were then allowed to proceed to their table, and the slow sequence of dishes began.

Owing to the contiguous noise of the orchestra they were compelled to speak at the top of their voices. Meiklejohn said, ‘The last time Magnus and I dined together we were arrested,’ and he told the tale of their visit to the High Street pub and the subsequent interposition of the police. Frieda had heard the story before. In the early days of her acquaintance with Magnus she had thought it amusing, but now, when she saw him in a graver light and love had made her both sensitive and practical, she deprecated such wildness and did not like to be reminded of it.

She said, ‘Well, I hope you’re not going to argue about Shakespeare and Racine tonight.’

‘Goodness, I hope not,’ said Miss Beauly. ‘I came here to be amused.’

‘Anyhow, we shan’t quarrel about them,’ said Magnus, and Meiklejohn agreed.

Now later in the evening it happened that Meiklejohn himself quoted Shakespeare and the topic was reborn. They had danced several times, Magnus with Frieda, Meiklejohn with Miss Beauly, on each occasion Meiklejohn complained of the crowded floor. Magnus, who was a bad dancer and moreover in a mood of benign contentment with the world, did not object to being crushed by mortal shoulders, impeded by mortal legs, and blown upon by mortal breath in the intimacy common to a herd of sheep; he held Frieda closely to him, talked to her with boisterous and extravagant affection, and happily pranced or limped in accordance with the prevailing density of the multitude. But Meiklejohn was a good dancer, and could not find room to exercise his skill; and Miss Beauly got kicked on the heel by some high-stepping Boeotian, and so they returned to their seats with tempers rather ruffled.

Filling his glass from a new-come bottle of champagne, Meiklejohn drank it off, still creaming, and said: ‘I hate the mutable rank-scented many.’

‘You hear that?’ said Magnus. ‘Even the Devil can’t get on without Scripture.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Frieda.

‘He quoted Shakespeare. He pretends to despise him, and yet he can’t do without him.’

‘My dear fellow!’ said Meiklejohn, ‘that’s an absurd thing to say. I happened to use a perfectly ordinary phrase…’

‘That you couldn’t have used if Shakespeare hadn’t invented it. And every day we use his inventions. English speech is full of them. Fat men from Glasgow and Manchester, tax-collectors and commercial travellers and sellers of soap and debentures and second-hand motor cars, and priggish old maids from Cheltenham, all make their speech glorious by talking about Triton of the minnows, and my prophetic soul! my uncle! and all the world’s a stage, and cakes and ale, and a lion among ladies, and the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, and maiden meditation fancy-free, and the hundred other things that Shakespeare said first. You talk about Racine, but did Racine create a whole speech? Shakespeare did. Shakespeare shines…’

At this point the music reached an unpleasant degree of loudness as all instruments blended in vulgar encouragement to the dancers, and Magnus, now very excited, found this opposition to his harangue utterly intolerable.

He jumped from his chair and confronting the orchestra shouted in tremendous tones: ‘Shut up!’

The music wavered through involuntary discords to half-silence. The agitated conductor looked round to see who had interrupted him, and, they also shaken and now released from the spell of the commanding baton, the remaining players put down their instruments.

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.