Magnus Merriman Read Online Free PDF Page B

knowledge of wine had been very nearly correct: she had overheard, in casual conversation, the name Montrachet, and she had asked for it as a gesture of independence, to show that she was not compelled to seek her partner’s advice when Liebfraumilch was not to her fancy. But her apparently sapient and certainly unexpected discrimination delighted Magnus, and he began to talk with great gusto and cordiality about the merits of the wine she had chosen. For a little while his old belief in her returned to life; perhaps there really was some secret virtue in her; since, without his knowing it, she had been aware of Montrachet, she might have other wisdom unperceived byhim, other wealth of character, and treasures of knowledge. She was undeniably lovely, and to beauty much may be credited.
    When the wine came he drank heartily, and Margaret took her share rather as one who thirsts than as a connoisseur. For a little while she talked with wistful reminiscence of their youthful love-making in Inverdoon. Then she spoke of her marriage.
    â€˜I married Lawrence for his money,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’d never had a penny before that: I was desperately poor at University. I hated him really, and the honeymoon was agony. After we got home I didn’t sleep with him for months. He was terribly unhappy, but I couldn’t do it. Then Nigel was born, and I didn’t think of anyone but him. After that I had an affair with another man. I was careless and I found that I was going to have a baby, so I made it up with Lawrence and persuaded him, when the time came, that Rosemary was his. But she wasn’t. He didn’t suspect anything to begin with, but I quarrelled with him again, and I think he guessed the truth at last. That’s why he made a different will and left all his money to those damned charities.’
    To Magnus this bald narrative was very exciting. He felt a certain horror as he looked at this mercenary and wanton woman and saw in her, under so little apparent change, the chaste and elusive Margaret of his University days. But he admired her, after a fashion, for the cold straightforward way in which she had told her story—it was so much better than her usual chattering—and he also admired, with the kind of admiration a good play compels, the competence, save in one particular, with which she had arranged her life. He was conscious, too, of an irrational jealousy of Rosemary’s unknown father.
    â€˜Have you had any other lovers?’ he asked.
    â€˜One other,’ said Margaret.
    Self-pity came noisily into his mind. He felt betrayed. It seemed to him that he had been true to her for years while she had been faithless and incontinent. He forgot his own dalliance with other women in the surge of so exquisite a misery: he forgot the months and quarters during which he had never given Margaret a thought.She had deceived him and made naught of his devotion. But accompanying this misery there arose a more combative thought: he warmly desired to take yet more advantage of her incontinence, and with his own image he wanted to obliterate her memories of his predecessors in love. By sleeping with her once again he could forget his sorrow and at the same time revenge himself on the unknowns who had, it seemed, so cruelly cuckolded him.
    His voice deepened. ‘So I’m merely one in the procession, but you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved,’ he said, and believed most truly his own veracity. ‘I came home from the war and you took me captive, and I’ll never be free of you. I’ve scattered memories of you over half the world. I’ve thought of you in temples in Benares, in New Orleans, and in Oregon in the snow. I took you over the Elburz mountains with me, and across the Caspian. I’ve loved you in three continents and a dozen seas, Meg.’
    â€˜And now, when you could love me quite simply, without needing a map to help you, you’re going