The Merry Muse

by Eric Linklater

  He looked at the castle on its distant Rock and the autumn sunlight that gilded the waters of the Forth. ‘That’s what I have to face,’ he said, and went indoors.

  Mrs Arbuthnot, Jane, and Annie had now come down to breakfast, and Annie had taken the Scotsman to read, on the back pages, the latest news of Rugby football and the Border clubs; in which she found unfailing interest. Four women at his table and none of them capable of giving him any pleasure. Not a specific pleasure. Hangers-on, domestic furniture, consumers. Nothing else. And for a moment he thought — for a moment it seemed possible — that he might keep his promise to Paula; if he had made a promise. Montego Bay, with Paula, would give him a better view than his breakfast-table offered.

  ‘You’re not looking very well,’ said Mrs Arbuthnot. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’

  Toor Daddy,’ said Jean.

  ‘I am not your poor daddy, and I did sleep!’ he retorted.

  ‘According to an article here,’ said Annie, ‘the Hawick scrum weighs exactly two thirds of a ton. Surely that’s too much? Won’t they sink when the ground gets soft?’

  ‘Before you came down,’ said Jessie to Mrs Arbuthnot, ‘Max and I had a very useful little talk.’ She lowered her voice: ‘About the book, I mean.’

  ‘What book?’ asked Annie.

  ‘It has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Do you mean the dirty book that Charlie had? He often used to show it to me.’

  ‘Annie, be quiet!’

  ‘I have decided,’ said Max, ‘to let you deal with it yourself. As you’re not satisfied with what I’ve been doing for you, I think the best way to prevent ill-feeling, on either side, is to give it back to you. So if you’ll come to my office at five o’clock this afternoon, with the receipt I gave you, I’ll return your property and you can handle it as you think best.’

  Hard and triumphant, he smiled — perhaps a little theatrically — across the table, and Jessie’s self-confidence wavered. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ she said.

  ‘But you did, and now you’ll have to take the consequences.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ said Mrs Arbuthnot. ‘I suppose you and Jessie have had another quarrel, but there’s no need to take it seriously, is there? You’ve had plenty before … ’

  ‘The telephone!’ said Jane, and hurried from the room, hoping that Simon was going to speak to her. But she came back coldly and said, ‘It’s for you, father. Lord Ochiltree.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Paula’s father. Don’t I pronounce it properly?’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘You had better ask him. I didn’t.’

  ‘Perhaps you forgot to pay your bridge debts,’ said Mrs Arbuthnot.

  But a wilder, a more improbable explanation had occurred to Max. He knew it to be incredible, but he went from the room in the expectation of hearing a father’s injunction, perhaps a father’s plea. ‘I want you to promise me that you will never see Paula again’ — that is what he was half-afraid of, though Paula and her father, as he well knew, were hardly on speaking terms, and since returning to Edinburgh she had seen him only twice. Nor, indeed, had she ever needed anyone to look after her. But his nerve was shaken; he had heard, that morning, the menace that a telephone could utter; and though he was quite ready to tell old Ochiltree to mind his own business, he did not want to listen to a voice charged with emotion; and apprehensively he rubbed his ear.

  But the judge’s voice was thin and toneless. It knew nothing of emotion. ‘I have some welcome news for you, Arbuthnot,’ he said.

  It was about eleven o’clock when Max, in his office in Hill Street, sent for Hoyle, his clerk who had been with him for thirty years, and said, ‘I’m going off for the day, Hoyle, and before I go I’ve got to tell you how to deal with a lady who’s coming to see me this afternoon.’

  He paused, and went on, ‘It’s Mrs Moberley, whom you know. She’s coming at four, and she won’t see me, of course, because I won’t be here. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is this: she’s bringing a book for me, and you’ve got to get possession of it. When she finds I’m not here, she won’t want to leave it. But you must see that she does. That book has to remain here!’

  Hoyle coughed, a little nervously, and said, ‘If Mrs Moberley refuses to part with it, can you suggest the means by which I take possession?’

  ‘Now use your imagination, Hoyle. Use your wits. In the first place the book doesn’t belong to her. It belongs to me, Or rather, it belongs to a client. To my sister, Mrs Youghal, in fact, for whom I’m acting. Now Mrs Moberley claims to have found it, and, as you know, there’s a useful little offence called “stealing by finding.” Perhaps Mrs Moberley doesn’t know that — women and children don’t, as a rule — and it will be your duty to tell her about it, and make her realize that she’s already guilty. And when she’s admitted that, the rest should be easy.’

  ‘What do I do if Mrs Moberley won’t listen to me?’ asked Hoyle. ‘It may be, when I tell her you’re not here, that she’ll just turn round and walk away.’

  ‘When she arrives, let someone bring her up here,’ said Max. ‘Let her wait a few minutes. Then you’ll come up and explain that I’ve been called away on urgent business…

  ‘Where are you going, Mr Arbuthnot?’

  ‘There’s no need for you to know that. It may be better if you don’t know. But I shan’t be coming back to-day, so she. needn’t wait. Make sure she understands that. And then tell her about “stealing by finding.” Stand with your back to the door, and don’t let her out till she’s admitted her guilt and left the book on this table.’

  ‘Mrs Moberley has a very impetuous temper … ’

  ‘You’re not frightened of her, are you?’

  ‘No, not frightened —but you must admit it would be very disconcerting if she refused to listen to reason, and tried to force her way out. Mrs Moberley is a very well built young lady.’

  ‘If you’re nervous about that, let Atkinson come too. Let him take her up, and stay talking with her. Then you arrive, and make her see reason, while Atkinson holds the door. He weighs thirteen stone at least, and that’s enough to give you confidence.’

  ‘With Atkinson to assist, the plan does look more feasible,’ said Hoyle. ‘But still I don’t like it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Max. ‘You’ll have no difficulty at all. Persuade her she’s guilty, and the game is yours. And put the book in the safe. — Well, that’s settled, and now I must go. Is Thomson there?’

  ‘He’s at the door.’

  Fifteen minutes later, in the back seat of his Daimler, Max in his gentlest voice and a mood of pious happiness, began to sing:

  ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height,

  And in the depth be praise,

  In all His words most wonderful,

  Most sure in all his ways.’

  Not only were all his troubles over — or so he thought — but he was about to realize a long cherished ambition. On the one hand he had made sure — or so he believed — of regaining the elusive manuscript, and simultaneously, in the same operation, of teaching Paula how absurd was her notion of elopement, and how doubly absurd her hope of cajoling, bullying, and dominating him. On the other hand, he had been given the chance of buying, at a reasonable price, a large and handsome canvas painted by Landseer in the year 1866.

  ‘Oh loving wisdom of our God!

  When all was sin and shame,

  A second Adam to the fight

  And to the rescue came … ’

  Beneath his happiness he was still conscious of a certain uneasiness. He could not deny that Paula had been treated, or was about to be treated, with some cruelty, and if he had promised to run away with her, he was going to break his promise. But a measure of cruelty could not be avoided when stark and stubborn folly had to be rebuffed; and the only promise he could remember was the pledge of gratitude uttered that morning. Well, that he would keep.

  He would always be grateful to her
— if she brought the book back. But he was not going to give house-room to a sense of guilt. Be damned if he would! It was her own fault if she suffered, and he was guilty only of common sense.

  He drove those thoughts away, and let Landseer come in. It was Paula’s father, Lord Ochiltree the dry old judge with whom he played bridge two or three times a week, who had told him of the picture, over the telephone that morning; and was that ironical, or poetic justice? He chose to think it poetic justice.

  ‘It belongs to a curious old boy called Masham, Guy Masham,’ the judge had said. ‘He’s a cousin of my wife, and he lives near Longformacus. He and a step-brother live together, and both of them are rather odd. Oh, distinctly odd. They always have been. But you’ll find them agreeable, if you want to go and have a look at it, and they do themselves very well. It’s not a picture, mark you, that everyone would want, but you’ve told me several times that you were on the look-out for a Landseer, and I thought of you as soon as I saw it. The price seems reasonable … ’

  Max had immediately made up his mind to go that very morning to Longformacus. It was a chance that might easily be missed, if he did not take it quickly, and such a chance, he told himself, was not likely to come his way again. He now had, moreover, the excuse for which he had been looking: an excuse for leaving his office and avoiding Paula. It would have been an unpleasant task — and one deeply distasteful to him — to tell her, face to face, that her hope was all moonshine — and, on top of that, to insist on her giving him the manuscript. But Hoyle could do it easily enough. Hoyle wasn’t involved, he had no feelings in the matter. He could argue impersonally, with detachment; and that would make it easier for Paula. Easier for both of them. It was an ideal solution.

  Thomson drove at a steady, sober pace to Haddington, and turned south to the pleasant village of Gifford: a morsel of the eighteenth century living gratefully under the hills. From there a lesser road climbed high to cross the Lammermuirs, between Spartleton Edge on the one side, Meikle Law and the Twinlaw Cairns on the other, and twisted and dropped a little to the small valley of the Dye and the improbably named hamlet of Longformacus. There was a good inn beside the stream, and Thomson stopped there to ask the way to Mr Masham’s.

  Max got out to stretch his legs, and it occurred to him that mere civility required him to go in and have a drink for the good of the house. He turned towards the inn, and looking at him through a window saw Yacky Doo.

  Astonishment checked him for a moment, but astonishment gave way to pleasure, and with a wave of his hand he walked briskly to the door. Yacky Doo, without replying to the salute, disappeared from the window, and from the door came Thomson and the innkeeper.

  ‘Good morning!’ cried Max, in high feather. ‘I’m coming in to take a drink with you, and have a word with a friend of mine who’s staying here.’

  ‘That will be very pleasant for all of us,’ said the innkeeper. ‘But who is your friend?’

  ‘Mr Hector Macrae.’

  ‘I’m afraid you have been misinformed. He isn’t here.’

  ‘But I’ve just seen him — at that window!’

  ‘Not Mr Macrae.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Who in Scotland doesn’t?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you do. For he’s here, I tell you.’

  ‘Come in,’ said the innkeper, ‘and I’ll show you my register. It won’t take you long to read the current entry, for there are only three names in it.’

  They went in, and the innkeeper opened a book that lay on a table in the hall. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Mr and Mrs Yarrow from Carlisle, and Mr Henderson from Berwick-on-Tweed.’

  ‘What do they look like: the two men?’ ‘The Yarrows are elderly. Henderson is a man of forty or so. Middle size, clean shaven.’

  ‘Anything like Hector Macrae?’

  ‘In a general way, perhaps. Seen at a distance, in a poor light…’

  ‘But the man at the window was standing in a good light.’

  The innkeeper shrugged and smiled. ‘The human eye is a beautiful instrument,’ he said, ‘but our vision, in spite of it, is often faulty. — And now, sir, you said you would like a drink?’

  ‘Whisky and soda,’ said Max. ‘A long one. And have one with me, won’t you?’

  ‘It will be a pleasure, sir.’

  Out of the clear sky of equanimity came a cloud of depression and darkened Max’s view of the world. If I can make a mistake like that, he thought, I’m getting old. Old before my time, and damnably dilapidated. It was so extraordinarily like him — I had no doubt at all — but I suppose it can’t have been. I ought to have a look at Henderson, whoever he is, and see if there’s any resemblance. But if there isn’t I’ll feel a worse fool than ever.

  The innkeeper returned with their drinks, and showed an amiable readiness for conversation. But now Max was taciturn, and more inclined to be surly. He drank his whisky too fast, paid, and went out to his car again. Thomson had learnt where the Mashams lived. It was only a couple of miles away.

  As soon as the car had gone, Yacky Doo came downstairs and taking the innkeeper by the hand, shook it warmly.

  ‘Bare is his back who has no brother!’ he said. ‘You’re a good man, a true man, and I’m in your debt for the rest of my life.’

  ‘There’s no one living but you,’ said the innkeeper, ‘for whom I’d have told such a damned lie. But you have claims on us all, and you said you were in trouble.’

  ‘I was, and I still am. I came here for refuge, and a refuge I found. A refuge and a friend in need. But what am I going to do? I can’t stay here for ever, and even if I could — but no, it’s no use. Your house is too permeable. There are windows in it, and people come and look through them.’

  ‘An innkeeper without custom,’ said the innkeeper, ‘is as badly off as a dictator without a police force.’

  ‘As badly off as a man on the run who doesn’t know where to go? What’s your advice?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re running away from. If you told me that … ’

  ‘Give me a drink, and I’ll tell you everything.’

  Guy Masham and his step-brother Leo were very like each other in appearance, but in character quite different. They were small and sturdy, brilliantly bald, and fatly fed. They had unlined, pink, cherubic faces, but where there was bone and character in Guy’s, there were only the soft and indeterminate contours of a child in Leo’s. Leo’s voice was light and high, Guy’s a deep, rich baritone. Both wore clothes of an old-fashioned, Edwardian cut — Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers of a soft, Shetland tweed — and both, in their youth, had attended schools of art in London and Paris. But Guy was the dominating personality. Guy was the more intelligent, the more imaginative, and by far the more talkative. Leo never said much in the presence of strangers, but assisted conversation by the readiness with which he laughed, in a rippling alto, at his brother’s sallies.

  They lived in a tall and forbidding mansion, built in the seventeenth century, of which they occupied only four or five rooms, and to look after them they had a fat, middle-aged housekeeper — a bonne à tout faire they called her — and an old deaf gardener who did the fires and cleaned their shoes. They had contrived, with some skill, a way of life that suited them, and they appeared to be happy.

  By the time he arrived at their house Max had recovered his spirits. The excitement he felt, of being about to see a good Landseer, and perhaps become its owner, was a tonic strong enough to banish any small depression, and as he looked up at the high stone walls, so massive and severe, he thought that a house of this sort might well contain a treasury of painting. A treasure unexplored of Scottish painters from Scougall to the older MacTaggart. He might find anything here: Jameson, Aikman, Allan Ramsay, Wilkie. He trembled with impatience and pulled strongly at a rusty iron bell.

  He waited a long time before the plump housekeeper came; who, when she appeared, made him welcome at once, and led him up two flights of stone stairs. She opened the
door of a large room and, puffing a little, announced, ‘Here’s a gentleman from Edinburgh that’s wanting to see you.’

  It was a strange scene that was revealed, and Max was given time to take it in — to appreciate it and catalogue its unexpected features — before he was required to make conversation. The elder of the Masham brothers, both of whom were there, did indeed spare a few moments, from the task at which he was busy, to tell him to come in, to beg him not to interrupt but to sit down and be patient for a little while. ‘Only a little while,’ he repeated. ‘In three or four minutes, no more than that, if all goes well, I’ll be very pleased to see you and you shall have all my attention.’ Then he went back to work.

  Against the opposite wall his brother Leo sat on top of a step-ladder, facing a large, unframed canvas that hung high; and to Leo’s right, beyond a tall window, another canvas was propped on a deal table. This second canvas, as Max immediately perceived, was the Landseer he had come to buy; and very beautiful he thought it. It showed a Highland piper at the door of his cottage. Not a piper in full fig, with ribbons flying and the bag under his arm, but a young man of delicate appearance — bareheaded, wearing only a grey shirt and a green kilt — who was shyly practising on the chanter; and at his feet, looking up at him with a lively devotion, was a black-and-white collie. Deride him as they will, thought Max, he was an artist, and a damned good painter. He determined to have the picture, whatever it cost.

  He got up, and moved softly to a place where he could see the other canvas, on which Leo Masham, from his step-ladder, was at work with careful and deliberate brushstrokes. It was a copy of the Landseer, apparently complete except for a cloud in the top right-hand corner; but a copy in a curious and improbable style.

  Guy Masham, silent until now, had been scrutinizing, first one canvas and then the other, through his curved hands that he held to his eyes as if they were field-glasses. But now he uttered a loud command: ‘Make it darker than that, Leo. A little Prussian blue in it, and much darker on top: there’s a storm coming. And keep it smooth! Smooth and flat, smooth and flat.’