He had turned away from me and was watching the girl intently. My glance followed his. I saw her deep blue skin fade to a dreadful pallor. She had lost her healthy colour; she suggested a piece of raw meat which is just beginning to go bad.
I jumped to my feet. I knew instinctively that the girl was about to collapse. The owner of the studio was bending over her. He looked at me over his shoulder out of the corners of his eyes.
“A case of indiscretion,” he observed, with bitter irony.
For the next quarter of an hour he fought for the girl’s life. King Lamus was a very skilled physician, though he had never studied medicine officially.
But I was not aware of what was going on. Cocaine was singing in my veins. I cared for nothing. Lou came over impulsively and flung herself across my knees. She held the goblet of Benedictine to my mouth, chanting ecstatically:
“O Thou sparkling wine-cup of light, whose foaming is the heart’s blood of the stars! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
We swooned into a deep, deep trance. Lamus interrupted us.
“You mustn’t think me inhospitable,” he said.
“She’s come round all right; but I ought to drive her home. Make yourselves at home while I’m away, or let me take you where you want to go.”
Another interruption occurred. The bell rang.
Lamus sprang to the door. A tall old man was standing on the steps.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” said Lamus.
“Love is the law, love under will,” replied the other.
It was like a challenge and countersign.
“I’ve got to talk to you for an hour.”
“Of course, I’m at your service,” replied our host. The only thing is –” He broke off.
My brain was extraordinarily clear. My self-confidence was boundless. I felt inspired. I saw the way out.
A little devil laughed in my heart: “What an excellent scheme to be alone with Lou!”
“Look here, Mr. Lamus,” I said, speaking very quickly, “I can drive any kind of car. Let me take Miss Hallaj home.”
The Arab girl was on her feet behind me.
“Yes, yes,” she said, in a faint, yet excited voice. “That will be much the best thing. Thanks awfully.”
They were the first words she had spoken.
“Yes, yes,” chimed in Lou. “I want to drive in the moonlight.”
The little group was huddled in the open doorway. On one side the dark crimson tides of electricity; on the other, the stainless splendour of our satellite.
“O Thou frail bluebell of moonlight, that art lost in the gardens of the stars! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
The scene progressed with the vivid rapidity of a dream. We were in the garage – out of it – into the streets – at the Egyptian girl’s hotel – and then –
Chapter III
Phaeton
Lou clung to me as I gripped the wheel. There was no need for us to speak. The trembling torrent of our passion swept us away. I had forgotten all about Lamus and his car. We were driving like the devil to Nowhere. A mad thought crossed my mind. It was thrown up by my “Unconscious”, by the essential self of my being. Then some familiar object in the streets reminded me that I was not driving back to the studio. Some force in myself, of which I was not aware, had turned my face towards Kent. I was interpreting myself to myself. I knew what I was going to do. We were bound for Barley Grange; and then, eh, the wild moonlight ride to Paris.
The idea had been determined in me without any intervention of my own. It had been, in a way, the solution of an equation of which the terms were firstly, a sort of mad identification of Lou with all one’s romantic ideas of moonlight; then my physical habit as a flying man; and thirdly, the traditional connection of Paris with extravagant gaiety and luxuriant love.
I was quite aware at the time that my moral sense and my mental sense had been thrown overboard for the moment but my attitude was simply: “Goodbye, Jonah!”
For the first time in my life I was being absolutely myself, freed from all the inhibitions of body, intellect, and training which keep us, normally, in what we call sane courses of action.
I seem to remember asking myself if I was insane, and answering, “Of course I am – sanity is a compromise. Sanity is the thing that keeps one back.”
It would be quite useless to attempt to describe the drive to Barley Grange. It lasted barely half a second. It lasted ageless aeons.
Any doubts that I might have had about myself were stamped under foot by the undeniable facts. I had never driven better in my life. I got out the sea-plane as another man might get out a cigarette from his case. She started like an eagle. With the whirr of the engine came Lou’s soft smooth voice in exquisite antiphony:
“O Thou trembling breast of the night, that gleamest with a rosary of moons! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
We soared towards the dawn. I went straight to over three thousand. I could hear the beat of my heart. It was one with the beat of the engine.
I took the pure unsullied air into my lungs. It was an octave to cocaine; the same invigorating spiritual force expressed in other terms.
The magnificently melodious words of Sieveking sprang into my mind. I repeated them rapturously. It is the beat of the British engine.
“Deep lungfuls! Deep mouthfuls! Deep, deep mental mouthfuls!”
The wind of our speed abolished all my familiar bodily sensations. The cocaine combined with it to anaesthetise them. I was disembodied; an eternal spirit; a Thing supreme, apart.
“Lou, sweetheart! Lou, sweetheart! Lou, Lou, perfect sweetheart!”
I must have shouted the refrain. Even amid the roar, I heard her singing back.
“O Thou summer softness of lips, that glow hot with the scarlet of passion! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
I could not bear the weight of the air. Let us soar higher, ever higher! I increased the speed.
“Fierce frenzy! Fierce folly! Fierce, fierce, frenzied folly!”
“O Thou tortured shriek of the storm, that art whirled up through the leaves of the woods! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
And I felt that we were borne on some tremendous tempest. The earth dropped from beneath us like a stone into blind nothingness. We were free, free for ever, from the fetters of our birth!
“Soar swifter! Soar swifter! Soar, soar swifter, swifter!”
Before us, high in the pale grey, stood Jupiter, a four-square sapphire spark. “O Thou bright star of the morning, that art set betwixt the breasts of the Night! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
I shouted back.
“Star seekers! Star finders! Twin stars, silver shining!”
Up, still up, I drove. There hung a mass of thunder-cloud between me and the dawn. Damn it, how dared it! It had no business to be there. I must rise over it, trample it under my feet.
“O Thou purple breast of the storm, that art scarred by the teeth of the lightning! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
Frail waifs of mist beset us. I had understood Lou’s joy in the cloud. It was I that was wrong. I had not had enough cocaine to be able to accept everything as infinite ecstasy. Her love carried me out of myself up to her triumphal passion. I understood the mist.
“O Thou unvintageable dew, that art moist on the lips of the Morn! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
At that moment, the practical part of me asserted itself with startling suddenness. I saw the dim line of the coast. I knew the line as I know the palm of my hand. I was a little out of the shortest line for Paris. I swerved slightly to the south.
Below, grey seas were tumbling. It seemed to me (insanely enough) that their moving wrinkles were the laughter of a very old man. I had a sudden intuition th
at something was wrong; and an instant later came an unmistakable indication of the trouble. I was out of gas.
My mind shot back with a vivid flash of hatred toward King Lamus. “A case of indiscretion!” He’d as good as called me a fool to my face. I thought of him as the sea, shaking with derisive laughter.
All the time I had been chuckling over my dear old squad commander. Not a great flyer, am I? This will show him! And that was true enough. I was incomparably better than I had ever been before. And yet I had omitted just one obvious precaution.
I suddenly realised that things might be exceedingly nasty. The only thing to be done was to shut off, and volplane down to the straits. And there were points in the problem which appalled me.
Oh, for another sniff! As we swooped down towards the sea in huge wide spirals, I managed to extract my bottle. Of course, I realised instantly the impossibility of taking it by the nose in such a wind. I pulled out the cork, and thrust my tongue into the neck of the bottle.
We were still three thousand feet or more above the sea. I had plenty of time, infinite time, I thought, as the drug took hold, to make my decision. I acted with superb aplomb. I touched the sea within a hundred yards of a fishing smack that had just put out from Deal.
We were picked up as a matter of course within a couple of minutes. They put back and towed the ’plane ashore.
My first thought was to get more gas and go on, despite the absurdity of our position. But the sympathy of the men on the beach was mixed with a good deal of hearty chaff. Dripping, in evening dress, at four o’clock in the morning! “Like Hedda Gabler, one doesn’t do these things.”
But the cocaine helped me again. Why the devil should I care what anybody thought?
“Where can I get gas?” I said to the captain of the smack.
He smiled grimly. “She’ll want a bit more than gas.”
I glanced at the ’plane. The man was perfectly right. A week’s repairs, at the least.
“You’d better go to the hotel, sir, and get some warm clothes. Look how the lady’s shivering.”
It was perfectly true. There was nothing else to be done. We went together slowly up the beach.
There was no question of sleeping, of course. Both of us were as fresh as paint. What we needed was hot food and lots of it.
We got it.
It seemed as if we had entered upon an entirely new phase. The disaster had purged us of that orchestral oratorio business; but, on the other hand, we were still full of intense practical activity.
We ate three breakfasts each. And as we ate we talked; talked racy, violent nonsense, most of it. Yet we were both well aware that the whole thing was camouflage. What we had to do was to get married as quickly as we could, and lay in a stock of cocaine, and go away and have a perfectly glorious time for ever and ever.
We sent for emergency clothes in the town, and went stalking a parson. He was an old man who had lived for years out of the world. He saw nothing particularly wrong with us except youth and enthusiasm, and he was very sorry that it would take three weeks to turn us off.
The good old boy explained the law.
“Oh, that’s easy,” we said in a breath. “Let’s get the first train to London.”
There are no incidents to record. We were both completely aneasthetised. Nothing bothered us. We didn’t mind the waiting on the platform, or the way the old train lumbered up to London.
Everything was part of the plan. Everything was perfect pleasure. We were living above ourselves, living at a tremendous pace. The speed of the ’plane became merely a symbol, a physical projection of our spiritual sublimity.
The next two days passed like pantomime. We were married in a dirty little office by a dirty little man. We took back his car to Lamus. I was amused to discover that I had left it standing in the open half over the edge of the lake.
I made a million arrangements in a kind of whirling wisdom. Before forty-eight hours had passed we were packed and off for Paris.
I did not remember anything in detail. All events were so many base metals fused into an alloy whose name was Excitement. During the whole time we only slept once, and then we slept well and woke fresh, without one trace of fatigue.
We had called on Gretel and obtained a supply of cocaine. She wouldn’t accept any money from her dear Sir Peter, and she was so happy to see Lou Lady Pendragon, and wouldn’t we come and see her after the honeymoon?
That call is the one thing that sticks in my mind.
I suppose I realised obscurely somehow that the woman was in reality the mainspring of the whole manoeuvre.
She introduced us to her husband, a heavy, pursy old man with a paunch and a beard, a reputation for righteousness, and an unctuous way of saying the right kind of nothing. But I divined a certain shrewdness in his eyes; it belied his mask of ostentatious innocence.
There was another man there too, a kind of half-baked Nonconformist parson, one Jabez Platt, who had realised early in life that his mission was to go about doing good. Some people said that he had done a great deal of good – to himself. His principle in politics was a – very simple one: If you see anything, stop it; everything that is, is wrong; the world is a very wicked place.
He was very enthusiastic about putting through a law for suppressing the evil of drugs.
We smiled our sympathetic assent, with sly glances at our hostess. If the old fool had only known that we were full of cocaine, as we sat and applauded his pompous platitudes!
We laughed our hearts out over the silly incident as we sat in the train. It doesn’t appear particularly comic in perspective; but it’s very hard to tell, at any time, what is going to tickle one’s sense of humour. Probably anything else would have done just as well. We were on the rising curve. The exaltation of love was combined with that of cocaine; and the romance and adventure of our lives formed an exhilarating setting for those superb jewels.
“Every day, in every way, I get better and better.”
M. Coué’s now famous formula is the precise intellectual expression of the curve of the cocaine honeymoon. Normal life is like an aeroplane before she rises.
There is a series of little bumps; all one can say is that one is getting along more or less. Then she begins to rise clear of earth. There are no more obstacles to the flight.
But there are still mental obstacles: a fence, a row of houses, a grove of elms or what not. One is a little anxious to realise that they have to be cleared. But as she soars into the boundless blue, there comes that sense of mental exhilaration that goes with boundless freedom.
Our grandfathers must have known something about this feeling by living in England before the liberty of the country was destroyed by legislation, or rather the delegation of legislation to petty officialdom.
About six months ago I imported some tobacco, rolls of black perique, the best and purest in the world. By-and-by I got tired of cutting it up, and sent it to a tobacconist for the purpose.
Oh, dear no, quite impossible without a permit from the Custom House!
I suppose I really ought to give myself up to the police.
Yes, as one gets into the full swing of cocaine, one loses all consciousness of the bumpy character of this funny old oblate spheroid. One is really very much more competent to deal with the affairs of life, that is, in a certain sense of the word.
M. Coué is perfectly right, just as the Christian Scientists and all those people are perfectly right, in saying that half our troubles come from our consciousness of their existence, so that if we forget their existence, they actually cease to exist!
Haven’t we got an old proverb to the effect that “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over”?
When one is on one’s cocaine honeymoon, one is really, to a certain extent, superior to one’s fellows. One attacks every problem with perfect confidence. It is a combina
tion of what the French call elan and what they call insouciance.
The British Empire is due to this spirit. Our young men went out to India and all sorts of places, and walked all over everybody because they were too ignorant to realise the difficulties in their way. They were taught that if one had good blood in one’s veins, and a public school and university training to habituate one to being a lord of creation, and to the feeling that it was impossible to fail, and to not knowing enough to know when one was beaten, nothing could ever go wrong.
We are losing the Empire because we have become “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”. The intellectuals have made us like “the poor cat in the adage”. The spirit of Hamlet has replaced that of Macbeth. Macbeth only went wrong because the heart was taken out of him by Macduff’s interpretation of what the witches had said.
Coriolanus only failed when he stopped to think. As the poet says, “The love of knowledge is the hate of life.”
Cocaine removes all hesitation. But our forefathers owed their freedom of spirit to the real liberty which they had won; and cocaine is merely Dutch courage. However, while it lasts, it’s all right.
Chapter IV
Au Pays De Cocaine
I can’t remember any details of our first week in Paris. Details had ceased to exist. We whirled from pleasure to pleasure in one inexhaustible rush. We took everything in our stride. I cannot begin to describe the blind, boundless beatitude of love. Every incident was equally exquisite.
Diary of a Drug Fiend Page 5