Magnus Merriman Read Online Free PDF

them like antelopes. They had seemed to leap from dark coverts and speed withcurious significance among innominate flowers. But now he perceived the unmistakable flavour of mutton, and in the instant of recognition he remembered, from a poem called The Princess of Scotland , a stanza that read:
    Why do you softly, richly spea
    Â Â Â Â Rhythm so sweetly-scanned?
    Poverty hath the Gaelic and Greek
    Â Â Â Â In my land.
    As in the case of most poetry the assertion was, of course, quite untrue. But the idea was excellent, and confronted with its mellifluous wealth Magnus decided it was foolish to spend more time in exchanging barren thoughts in the bankrupt tongue that not only Margaret used, but the threescore surrounding diners and the farther circumference of London’s five or six or seven million inhabitants. He had a sudden vision of Gaelic and Greek in amiable contest among the mountains of Western Scotland or the tall black closes of Edinburgh—Pindaric ode stilling its unlicensed rhythm for the wilder nose of Ossian—and he determined to go northwards. He had not been in Scotland for nearly five years.
    Margaret was puzzled and mortified by this resolution, so unexpected and declared so brusquely. Her mouth, opened slightly for a fragment of smoked salmon, remained patent in bewilderment. It was a charming mouth, and the hue of the salmon was precisely that of the outer part of her lips; but the inner part, devoid of cosmetic, was noticeably paler.
    â€˜But you said you were going to live in London,’ she objected. ‘You can’t possibly leave it for good. Why, for anyone like you it’s the only place in the world to live in.’
    â€˜I don’t agree with you,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s far too big; it’s disgustingly untidy; its amusements are dull and its climate is abominable. ‘I’ve fallen out of love with it—or rather I’ve discovered that the idea I had of it is not justified by actuality—and so I’m going to leave it. London, I trust, will not be seriously affected by my desertion.’
    â€˜Have you fallen out of love with me, too?’
    â€˜Are you in love with me? Or are you simply enjoying an adventure?’
    â€˜You’re part of my life. You have been for years, and I can’t bear to let you go. You and Nigel and Rosemary—’
    â€˜I should make an abominable step-father.’
    â€˜Oh, why do you turn everything into a joke? This isn’t a joke to me. I’m terribly upset.’
    â€˜Good God! I’m as serious as you are: if I talk lightly it’s only for relief. I always seem flippant when I’m really in earnest. Do you know that Aeneas told a dozen bawdy stories to Dido just before he left her? There’s no use asking who said so, for I don’t think anyone did, but I’m perfectly sure it’s true. And don’t imagine that Aeneas was a provincial seducer having a bit of greasy fun with a taxi-dancer. There was hell in his heart when he left Carthage. But he had to go, and so have I. Look here, what are we going to drink?’
    Magnus’s eloquence had always had a slightly bemusing effect on Margaret. She listened to him with a certain remoteness—observing but not sharing the entertainment—in a way that a small boy will watch the conjurer at a party. Her unhappiness and hurt vanity were now mollified by his words as by a poultice, and she controlled her feelings enough to turn the pages of the wine-list. Presently, without reading what she saw, she said, a little sulkily: ‘I’d like some Montrachet.’
    Magnus leaned forward eagerly. ‘Would you really?’ he asked. ‘It’s a magnificent wine: I had no idea that you knew it. I thought your repertory consisted of champagne and Liebfraumilch and Benedictine.’
    â€˜You don’t know everything about me,’ said Margaret crossly. Magnus’s estimate of her