Read Online A Most Immoral Woman by Linda Jaivin - Free Book Online Page B

truth. Morrison freely confessed to the limitations of his owncraft; deep inside he knew that a worse problem was that in his public writing, at least, he was incapable of an unwavering allegiance to the truth. He could not deny to himself that how he understood the world did not always accord with the way he presented it to others. There was the odd doubt about an ally, which he thought unwise to voice, for example; information that for whatever reason he did not wish to share; strategic considerations; even, on occasion, necessary flattery.
    Morrison confided only to his journal, Lett’s No. 41 Indian and Colonial ROUGH DIARY Giving an Entire Page to a Day , a serious, manly notebook, bound in leather and bearing advertisements for Remington typewriters and Whitfield’s Safes & Steel Doors on its inside covers, its pages faintly lined for convenience. Morrison had his eye on posterity, and to posterity he would be true. At the same time he would be loyal to the place that, for all his travels, he kept close to his heart: Australia. His journals would return there in the end, even if he did not. It was to his journal—and those who lived under the big, forgiving Australian sky—that he would confide his most awkward truths, the latest being that he was wildly infatuated with Miss Mae Ruth Perkins. His Maysie. Maysie, Maysie . But he would not dawdle now over sentimental matters. The unopened sack of mail on his worktable reproached him.
    Morrison touched the precious handkerchief to his lips before folding it and replacing it in his pocket. Tipping the sack onto the table, he chose an envelope at random and sliced into it with his scrimshaw letter-opener. It was from J.O.P. Blunt, The Times correspondent in Shanghai. ‘What news from the City of Dreadful Dust?’ it began. Morrison could almost smell Blunt’s lavender pomade. Next was a note from some busybody in the Church,harping that Morrison had still not reported on a modern college the missionaries had established somewhere or other. Morrison wrote himself a reminder to look into it. His old neighbour Prince Su, meanwhile, had sent a note addressed ‘My dear younger brother’; Morrison knew enough of Chinese ways to perceive both the endearment and the condescension in the address. There was a letter from Bangkok: ‘I hope you are happy,’ wrote his friend Eliza R. Scidmore of the National Geographic Society. ‘At last you have your war.’
    As he sorted through the post, putting some letters on his desk to answer straight away and setting others aside, he stopped to dash off a line to Moberly Bell, pointedly noting to his editor how good it had been to be able to get out and see things for himself, and remarking, by the by, that his health had improved greatly since the outbreak of war.
    Much to do. He pulled on his sleeve guards and, seated at his desk, set up blotter and inkpot.
    Dear Mae. Dearest Mae. Maysie. Mae, dear. Dearest. After several false starts, his pen fairly flew down the sheet of paper, and the one after, and the one after that. He was just impressing his seal on the wax that fastened the envelope when a mighty sandstorm swooped upon the city. Howling winds rattled the windows and swirled yellow and orange dust through the air. Elsewhere in the compound he could hear doors slamming, flowerpots smashing and the cries of the servants as they rushed hither and thither securing the house. Morrison felt the excitement of the weather like a tremor throughout his body. Maysie.
    From behind the padded quilt that in winter helped trap his study’s meagre heat, the door banged in the wind. Snapping out of his trance, Morrison scrambled for the stitched bundle of ragshe kept to stuff in the crack by the floor. He adored the thrill of a storm but not the disorder it brought with it.
    When the winds abated, he emerged from his library to find Cook upset and cursing. Before Cook had been able to get to his lark, the cage had crashed to the ground and the