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

Cosmopolitan was noisier and more populous than the Café de Bordeaux and Meiklejohn failed to find Skene in the crowd. He made his way with difficulty to the bar and asked the barman if he had seen him.
    â€˜He was here a while back,’ said the barman, ‘but he wasna looking very weel, and he went early. He said the beer had upset his stomach.’
    Somewhat saddened by this discovery of frailty in the constitution of a fellow-Scot, Meiklejohn and Magnus left the clamorous bar and walked towards the High Street. The weather had moderated. Having completed its allegro movement, the storm had passed with diminished vigour to an andante of pleasing melancholy. The wind no longer leapt from wall to pavement, lifting with a shout and cold finger protesting skirts, but in the farther purlieus the sky debated with fleeing clouds a serious and more gentle theme. Pale stars came into view, against a lighter background and the old tall houses of the High Street showed in solid darkness. From Holyroodhouse to the Castle the ridge runs, hard and high, like the rough spine of Edinburgh, and the tall houses are its vertebrae, and in its marrow is a wilder life than that which animates the dignified terraces and sedate Georgian crescents below. Those lofty houses are not an aristocracy decayed and subdued, but an aristocracy debauched and ruined, sprawling in rags and dirt where it once flaunted itself in threadbare finery and three-piled pride, and lived in the high perfume of insolence and treachery and blood. As a wounded eagle, scabby and fly-infected, is a nobler and more tragic spectacle than a sick barnyard fowl, so are those houses, once turbulent with all the nobility of Scotland, more tragic and nobler than houses of the solid citizenry abandoned in the dull ebb of fashion. And as an eagle, even in its last hours, will shake from its feathers the buzzing flies, and rise in its excrement to fight, so do those houses seem fiercer than shop-keeping brick and mortar, and those who inhabit them, breathing the spirit of their dead greatness, have more vitality than their more respectable neighbours.
    Magnus, who had been unusually quiet, was still disinclined for conversation. He was conscious of opposing arguments in his mind. On the one hand there was a romantic urging to believe all Meiklejohn said and to throw himself into the task of re-fashioning on prouder lines his native country—how splendid, how intoxicating, to assist in the rebirth of a nation!—and on the other hand there was a colder and more rational inclination to discount Meiklejohn’s assertions and to pursue his original plan of securing happiness and fame for himself in the solitude of poetry. He had intended to retreat from life, and now he was tempted to advance into its liveliest activity. He thought with regret of the peace he had contemplated, but the prospect of action grew more and more alluring. He still tried to convince himself of the wisdom of selfishness and regression, but his natural inclinations depreciated his arguments and beckoned him forward.
    Meiklejohn, now silent also, was somewhat ill-tempered. The irritation caused by the golfers’ mockery of Nationalist aspirations had been aggravated by disappointment at not finding Hugh Skene, and his pride as a host was hurt by the failure of the evening to achieve the high degree of conviviality that he desired. Down his throat and his guest’s had gone generous draughts of vodka and Chablis, of claret and brandy, and yet both were disappointingly sober. They should have been shouting to the stars. But wine is a fickle thing.
    Like a great battlement the north side of the High Street confronted them. From their lower level a long flight of steps led upwards, a narrow passage between black walls whose farther end was invisible, and on whose middle distance a lamp shone dimly. Here and there on the steps, obscurely seen, were vague figures. Under the lamp, with harsh voice