For about half a minute I resented him; then I let myself go and found myself soothed almost to slumber by the flow of his talk. A wonderful man, like an imbecile child nine-tenths of the time, and yet, at the back of it all, one somehow saw the deep night of his mind suffused with faint sparks of his genius.
I had not the slightest idea where he was taking me – I did not care. I had gone to sleep, inside. I woke to find myself sitting in the Cafe Wisteria once more.
The head waiter was excitedly explaining to my companion what a wonderful scene he had missed.
“Mr. Fordham, he nearly kill’ ze Lord,” he bubbled, wringing his fat hands. “He nearly kill’ ze Lord.”
Something in the speech tickled my sense of irreverence. I broke into a high-pitched shout of laughter.
“Rotten,” said my companion. “Rotten! That fellow Fordham never seems to make a clean job of it anyhow. Say, look here, this is my night out. You go ’way like a good boy, tell all those boys and girls come and have dinner.”
The waiter knew well enough who was meant; and presently I found myself shaking hands with several perfect strangers in terms which implied the warmest and most unquenchable affection. It was really rather a distinguished crowd.
One of the men was a fat German Jew, who looked at first sight like a piece of canned pork that has got mislaid too long in the summer. But the less he said the more he did; and what he did is one of the greatest treasures of mankind.
Then there was a voluble, genial man with a shock of grey hair and a queer twisted smile on his face. He looked like a character of Dickens. But he had done more to revitalise the theatre than any other man of his time.
I took a dislike to the women. They seemed so unworthy of the men. Great men seem to enjoy going about with freaks. I suppose it is on the same principle as the old kings used to keep fools and dwarfs to amuse them. “Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.”
But whichever way it is, the burden is usually too heavy for their shoulders.
You remember Frank Harris’s story of the Ugly Duckling? If you don’t, you’d better get busy and do it.
That’s really what’s so frightful in flying – the fear of oneself, the feeling that one has got out of one’s class, that all the old kindly familiar things below have turned into hard monstrous enemies ready to smash you if you touch them.
The first of these women was a fat, bold, red-headed slut. She reminded me of a white maggot. She exuded corruption. She was pompous, pretentious, and stupid. She gave herself out as a great authority on literature; but all her knowledge was parrot, and her own attempts in that direction the most deplorably dreary drivel that ever had been printed even by the chattering clique which she financed. On her bare shoulder was the hand of a short, thin woman with a common, pretty face and a would-be babyish manner. She was a German woman of the lowest class. Her husband was an influential Member of Parliament. People said that he lived on her earnings. There were even darker whispers. Two or three pretty wise birds had told me they thought it was she, and not poor little Mati Hara, who tipped off the Tanks to the Boche.
Did I mention that my sculptor’s name was Owen? Well, it was, is, and will be while the name of Art endures. He was supporting himself unsteadily with one hand on the table, while with the other he put his guests in their seats. I thought of a child playing with dolls.
As the first four sat down, I saw two other girls behind them. One I had met before, Violet Beach. She was a queer little thing – Jewish, I fancy. She wore a sheaf of yellow hair fuzzed out like a Struwwelpeter, and a violent vermilion dress – in case any one should fail to observe her. It was her affectation to be an Apache, so she wore an old cricket cap down on one eye, and a stale cigarette hung from her lip. But she had a certain talent for writing, and I was very glad indeed to meet her again. I admit I am always a little shy with strangers. As we shook hands, I heard her saying in her curious voice, high-pitched and yet muted, as if she had something wrong with her throat:
“Want you to meet Miss –”
I didn’t get the name; I can never hear strange words. As it turned out, before forty-eight hours had passed, I discovered that it was Laleham – and then again that it wasn’t. But I anticipate – don’t try to throw me out of my stride. All in good time.
In the meanwhile I found I was expected to address her as Lou. “Unlimited Lou” was her nickname among the initiates.
Now what I am anxious for everybody to understand is simply this. There’s hardly anybody who understands the way his mind works; no two minds are alike, as Horace or some old ass said; and, anyhow, the process of thinking is hardly ever what we imagine.
So, instead of recognising the girl as the owner of the eyes which had gripped me so strangely an hour earlier, the fact of the recognition simply put me off the recognition – I don’t know if I’m making myself clear. I mean that the plain fact refused to come to the surface. My mind seethed with questions. Where had I seen her before?
And here’s another funny thing. I don’t believe that I should have ever recognised her by sight. What put me on the track was the grip of her hand, though I had never touched it in my life before.
Now don’t think that I’m going off the deep end about this. Don’t dismiss me as a mystic-monger. Look back each one into your own lives, and if you can’t find half a dozen incidents equally inexplicable, equally unreasonable, equally repugnant to the better regulated type of mid-Victorian mind, the best thing you can do is to sleep with your forefathers. So that’s that. Goodnight.
I told you that Lou was “quite an ordinary and not a particularly attractive girl”. Remember that this was the first thought of my “carnal mind” which, as St. Paul says, is “enmity against God”.
My real first impression had been the tremendous psychological experience for which all words are inadequate.
Seated by her side, at leisure to look while she babbled, I found my carnal mind reversed on appeal. She was certainly not a pretty girl from the standpoint of a music-hall audience. There was something indefinably Mongolian about her face. The planes were flat; the cheek-bones high; the eyes oblique; the nose wide, short, and vital; the mouth a long, thin, rippling curve like a mad sunset. The eyes were tiny and green, with a piquant elfin expression. Her hair was curiously colourless; it was very abundant; she had wound great ropes about her head. It reminded me of the armature of a dynamo. It produced a weird effect – this mingling of the savage Mongol with the savage Norseman type. Her strange hair fascinated me. It was that delicate flaxen hue, so fine – no, I don’t know how to tell you about it, I can’t think of it without getting all muddled up.
One wondered how she was there. One saw at a glance that she didn’t belong to that set. Refinement, aristocracy almost, were like a radiance about her tiniest gesture. She had no affectation about being an artist. She happened to like these people in exactly the same way as a Methodist old maid in Balham might take an interest in natives of Tonga, and so she went about with them. Her mother didn’t mind. Probably, too, the way things are nowadays, her mother didn’t matter.
You mustn’t think that we were any of us drunk, except old Owen. As a matter of fact, all I had had was a glass of white wine. Lou had touched nothing at all. She prattled on like the innocent child she was, out of the sheer mirth of her heart. In an ordinary way, I suppose, I should have drunk a lot more than I did. And I didn’t eat much either. Of course, I know now what it was – that much-derided phenomenon, love at first sight.
Suddenly we were interrupted. A tall man was shaking hands across the table with Owen. Instead of using any of the ordinary greetings, he said in a very low, clear voice, very clear and vibrant, as though tense with some inscrutable passion:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
There was an uneasy movement in the group. In partic
ular, the German woman seemed distressed by the man’s mere presence.
I looked up. Yes, I could understand well enough the change in the weather. Owen was saying: “That’s all right, that’s all right, that’s exactly what I do. You come and see my new group. I’ll do another sketch of you – same day, same time. That’s all right.”
Somebody introduced the newcomer – Mr. King Lamus – and murmured our names.
“Sit down right here,” said Owen, “what you need is a drink. I know you perfectly well; I’ve known you for years and years and years, and I know you’ve done a good day’s work, and you’ve earned a drink. Sit right down and I’ll get the waiter.”
I looked at Lamus, who had not uttered a word since his original greeting. There was something appalling in his eyes; they didn’t focus on the foreground. I was only an incident of utter insignificance in an illimitable landscape. His eyes were parallel; they were looking at infinity. Nothing mattered to him. I hated the beast!
By this time the waiter had approached.
“Sorry, sir,” he said to Owen, who had ordered a ’65 brandy.
It appeared that it was now eight hours forty-three minutes thirteen and three-fifth seconds past noon. I don’t know what the law is; nobody in England knows what the law is – not even the fools that make the laws. We are not under the laws and do not enjoy the liberties which our fathers bequeathed us; we are under a complex and fantastic system of police administration nearly as pernicious as anything even in America.
“Don’t apologise,” said Lamus to the waiter in a tone of icy detachment. “This is the freedom we fought for.”
I was entirely on the side of the speaker. I hadn’t wanted a drink all evening, but now I was told I couldn’t have one, I wanted to raid their damn cellars and fight the Metropolitan Police and go up in my ’plane and drop a few bombs on the silly old House of Commons. And yet I was in no sort of sympathy with the man. The contempt of his tone irritated me. He was inhuman, somehow; that was what antagonised me.
He turned to Owen.
“Better come round to my studio,” he drawled; “I have a machine gun trained on Scotland Yard.” Owen rose with alacrity.
“I shall be delighted to see any of you others,” continued Lamus. “I should deplore it to the day of my death if I were the innocent means of breaking up so perfect a party.”
The invitation sounded like an insult. I went red behind the ears; I could only just command myself enough to make a formal apology of some sort.
As a matter of fact, there was a very curious reaction in the whole party. The German Jew got up at once – nobody else stirred. Rage boiled in my heart. I understood instantly what had taken place. The intervention of Lamus had automatically divided the party into giants and dwarfs; and I was one of the dwarfs.
During the dinner, Mrs. Webster, the German woman, had spoken hardly at all. But as soon as the three men had turned their backs, she remarked acidly:
“I don’t think we’re dependent for our drinks on Mr. King Lamus. Let’s go round to the Smoking Dog.”
Everybody agreed with alacrity. The suggestion seemed to have relieved the unspoken tension.
We found ourselves in taxis, which for some inscrutable reason are still allowed to ply practically unchecked in the streets of London. While eating and breathing and going about are permitted, we shall never be a really righteous race!
Chapter II
Over The Top!
It was only about a quarter of an hour before we reached “The Dog”; but the time passed heavily. I had been annexed by the white maggot. Her presence made me feel as if I were already a corpse. It was the limit.
But I think the ordeal served to bring up in my mind some inkling of the true nature of my feeling for Lou.
The Smoking Dog, now ingloriously extinct, was a night club decorated by a horrible little cad who spent his life pushing himself into art and literature.
The dancing room was a ridiculous, meaningless, gaudy, bad imitation of Klimt.
Damn it all, I may not be a great flyer, but I am a fresh-air man. I detest these near-artists with their poses and their humbug and their swank. I hate shams.
I found myself in a state of furious impatience before five minutes had passed. Mrs. Webster and Lou had not arrived. Ten minutes – twenty – I fell into a blind rage, drank heavily of the vile liquor with which the place was stinking, and flung myself with I don’t know what woman into the dance.
A shrill-voiced Danish siren, the proprietress, was screaming abuse at one of her professional entertainers – some long, sordid, silly story of sexual jealousy, I suppose. The band was deafening. The fine edge of my sense was dulled. It was in a sort of hot nightmare that I saw, through the smoke and the stink of the club, the evil smile of Mrs. Webster.
Small as the woman was, she seemed to fill the doorway. She preoccupied the attention in the same way as a snake would have done. She saw me at once, and ran almost into my arms excitedly. She whispered something in my ear. I didn’t hear it.
The club had suddenly been, so to speak, struck dumb. Lou was coming through the door. Over her shoulders was an opera cloak of deep rich purple edged with gold, the garment of an empress, or (shall I say?) of a priestess.
The whole place stopped still to look at her. And I had thought she was not beautiful!
She did not walk upon the ground. “Vera incessu paluit dea,” as we used to say at school. And as she paced she chanted from that magnificent litany of Captain J. F. C. Fuller, “Oh Thou golden sheaf of desires, that art bound by a fair wisp of poppies adore thee, Evoe! I adore thee, I A O!”
She sang full-throated, with a male quality in her voice. Her beauty was so radiant that my mind ran to the breaking of dawn after a long night flight.
“In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, but westward, look! the land is bright!”
As if in answer to my thought, her voice rolled forth again:
“O Thou golden wine of the sun, that art poured over the dark breasts of night! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
The first part of the adoration was in a sort of Gregorian chant varying with the cadence of the words. But the chorus always came back to the same thing.
I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!
EE-AH-OH gives the enunciation of the last word. Every vowel is drawn out as long as possible. It seemed as if she were trying to get the last cubic millimetre of air out of her lungs every time she sang it.
“O Thou crimson vintage of life, that art poured into the jar of the grave! I adore Thee, Evoe!
I adore Thee, I A O!”
Lou reached the table, with its dirty, crazy cloth, at which we were sitting. She looked straight into my eyes, though I am sure she did not see me.
“O Thou red cobra of desire, that art unhooded by the hands of girls! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
She went back from us like a purple storm-cloud, sun-crested, torn from the breasts of the morning by some invisible lightning.
“O Thou burning sword of passion, that art torn on the anvil of flesh! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
A wave of almost insane excitement swept through the club. It was like the breaking out of anti-aircraft guns. The band struck up a madder jazz.
The dancers raved with more tumultuous and breathless fury.
Lou had advanced again to our table. We three were detached from the world. Around us rang the shrieking laughter of the crazy crowd. Lou seemed to listen. She broke out once more.
“O Thou mad whirlwind of laughter, that art meshed in the wild locks of folly! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
I realised with nauseating clarity that Mrs. Webster was pouring into my ears an account of the character and career of King Lamus.
“I don’t know how he dares to come to England at all,”
she said. “He lives in a place called Telepylus, wherever that is. He’s over a hundred years old, in spite of his looks. He’s been everywhere, and done everything, and every step he treads is smeared with blood. He’s the most evil and dangerous man in London. He’s a vampire, he lives on ruined lives.”
I admit I had the heartiest abhorrence for the man. But this fiercely bitter denunciation, of one who was evidently a close friend of two of the world’s greatest artists, did not make his case look blacker. I was not impressed, frankly, with Mrs. Webster as an authority on other people’s conduct.
“O Thou Dragon – prince of the air, that art drunk on the blood of the sunsets! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O! “
A wild pang of jealousy stabbed me. It was a livid, demoniac spasm. For some reason or other I had connected this verse of Lou’s mysterious chant with the personality of King Lamus.
Gretel Webster understood. She insinuated another dose of venom.
“Oh yes, Mr. Basil King Lamus is quite the ladies’ man. He fascinates them with a thousand different tricks. Lou is dreadfully in love with him.”
Once again the woman had made a mistake. I resented her reference to Lou. I don’t remember what I answered. Part of it was to the effect that Lou didn’t seem to have been very much injured.
Mrs. Webster smiled her subtlest smile.
“I quite agree,” she said silkily, “Lou is the most beautiful woman in London tonight.”
“O Thou fragrance of sweet flowers, that art wafted over blue fields of air! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
Diary of a Drug Fiend Page 3