Read Online Magnus Merriman by Eric Linklater - Free Book Online Page A

Party?’
    â€˜What party?’ said Meiklejohn.
    â€˜The National Party.’
    Meiklejohn took snuff again with an elaborately casual air. ‘No,’ he said, ‘they’re not members.’
    â€˜Why not? You said the younger men were all in it.’
    â€˜Oh, yes, but not people like that. Two of them play for the Academicals or some such team and the others have been golfing. You can’t expect a revolution or a renascence to start among footballers and golfers. They’ll come in later, of course, but it’s very difficult to get people who play games seriously to be serious about anything else.’
    As though guessing at the nature of this dialogue—for it was muted and had an air of conspiracy—one of the golfers called to Meiklejohn: ‘How many recruits have you found this week, Frank?’
    â€˜When are you going to declare war?’ asked another.
    â€˜As soon as you join, and others who’ll do for cannon-fodder and for nothing else,’ said Meiklejohn. His voice was good-humoured though his words were not, but his face grew pale and his mouth tightened with hidden anger. He drank his brandy without regard for its quality.
    â€˜No more wars for me,’ said one of the golfers. ‘Think of getting up at five o’clock on a winter morning to go out and be shot to hell! I’m neutral from now till the cows come home.’
    Meiklejohn called impatiently for his bill. ‘Neutral,’ hemuttered. ‘They’re neuter as well as neutral. Half the country’s sitting on the fence like a gib-cat howling in the rain for a female he couldn’t match though he caught her. They make me angry! Let’s go somewhere else.’
    Magnus was impressed by this display of temper and the sincerity of feeling that it indicated, but the attitude towards Nationalism of their athletic acquaintances led him to wonder if Meiklejohn’s conception of the general situation were not more imaginative than actual. While they were in Bombay, he remembered, Frank had become a supporter of Indian Nationalism, and had once declared that Mahatma Gandi was making many converts even in the Yacht Club. This assertion was subsequently disproved to the satisfaction of everyone but its author.
    â€˜You weren’t exaggerating when you said that Nationalism was sweeping the country?’ he asked.
    â€˜That’s the simple truth,’ said Meiklejohn earnestly. ‘Of course you’ll find a lot of people who don’t believe in it, but that’s because they don’t believe in anything but sitting still and keeping their bottoms warm. There are bottom-warmers in every country on earth, and there always have been. You needn’t pay any attention to them. But all the people in Scotland who think for themselves are Nationalists, and all the people who feel they’re really different from the English: the men you meet in the Highlands, and the Outer Isles, and in low pubs. Let’s go to a pub in the High Street. There’ll be nothing half-hearted or English or respectable about it. Or shall we look for Hugh Skene? He’s probably in the Cosmopolitan just round the corner.’
    Hugh Skene was a poet whose work had excited more controversy than any Scottish author had been flattered by for many years. Those who admired his writing declared him to be a genius of the highest order, and those who disliked it, or could not understand it, said that he was a pretentious versifier who concealed his lack of talent by a ponderous ornamentation of words so archaic that nobody knew their meaning: for Skene’s theory was that the English language, having become devitalized by time, was incapable of sustaining any vigorous or truly poetic meaning, and that the proper material for Scottish writers was Gaelic or theancient language of Henryson and Dunbar. But whatever his merits he had roused much argument, and Magnus was eager to meet him.
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