The fantastic appointments of the studio were projections in terms of material substances of his mind interpreted through her consciousness. I had an uncanny feeling that if it were not for her, King Lamus would be invisible.
In his mind, there was no difference between any two things, but through her mediation he was able to pretend that there was.
The studio was divided into several parts by arrangements of curtains. There was a perpetual soft noise of laughter, singing, and dancing; interrupted only by periods of intense silence which was somehow more significant than the sound. The firelight threw doubtful shadow pictures upon the glass roof; and from time to time figures moved with intimate softness through the dark corners and out into the courtyard. These swathed and muffled forms possessed an uncanny quality of unreality.
The studio was full of subtle incense. No smoke was visible; it was as if the atmosphere had somehow been impregnated with it.
Our little party fell very silent. He had given Lou and myself some tablets which had the effect of silencing the nervous restlessness which had begun to seize us after even so short an abstinence from heroin.
“I want you to hang on a little,” explained our host. “The sting of abstinence will make the indulgence worth while. You have noticed, I am sure, that the vast majority of doses fail to produce any definite active effect.”
It was quite true. We had been cursing the drug for its failure to reproduce the original sensations. We had tried to overcome the difficulty by increasing the quantity. But a time had come when we were immune to its action; horridly aware of its absence, without obtaining any satisfaction from its presence.
“That stuff I have given you,” Lamus explained, “dilutes your symptoms, and enables you to some extent to bear the discomfort. I want you to take advantage of the fact to watch your discomfort as if it were somebody else. When you find that you can enjoy this instead of blindly rushing to heroin for relief, you will already have gone a long way in the direction of acquiring mental control.”
Several times during the night Lala intervened vigorously in such a way that it was impossible for us not to give her our attention. We found out later that this was part of the plan, that we were being watched for symptoms of acute disquietude, and that whenever these appeared, she interfered to prevent our dwelling on the subject.
I was astonished to find it about four o’clock in the morning, when King Lamus said:
“I’ve just been thinking that we should all be the better for a little heroin,” and proceeded to hand it around.
The effect was extraordinary. I was aware of an infinite sense of relief; but it was evanescent. It could only have been a few instants before I sank into a dreamless slumber.
Chapter II
FIRST AID
When I woke, the winter sun was already high. It streamed upon my face through the glass skylight of the studio. The sensation of waking was itself a revelation. For months past I had been neither awake nor asleep; simply passing from the state of greater to one of less unconsciousness. But this was a definite act.
King Lamus had gone out, and Lala had only just returned, for she was taking off her furs as I woke.
I had been covered with blankets. She came and took them off, and told me it was time to go and get my things from Greek Street and take them to the new rooms which she had engaged for us that morning.
Lou, it seemed, was already there; and had fallen asleep again, said Lala, only a few minutes before she left.
I could not help feeling a dislike for the way in which everything was being managed for me. I must have shown something of this in my manner. Lala, after bundling me into the automobile which I had driven to Barley Grange on that first tremendous night, began to turn the conversation so as to answer my unspoken resentment.
She made a pleasant little excuse for not offering me the steering-wheel. I knew too well that I couldn’t have driven that car a hundred yards through traffic. I had abdicated my manhood. I must resign myself to be driven where any one was willing to take me. I might count myself lucky if I had fallen into reasonably good hands.
At Greek Street we met with a surprise. It appeared that a few minutes before our arrival, a lady and gentleman had called and were very anxious to see me. They would come back in half an hour. I couldn’t imagine who on earth it could be, and the matter slipped from my mind. I was hot and eager to get out of the disgusting atmosphere of those rooms. I wouldn’t let Lala come in; but I found that I wasn’t strong enough to pack my stuff. The smell of the den was foul beyond all belief.
Lou has not described a hundredth part of the dark abominations which had become habitual.
In fact, I was overcome by the foetor. I had no strength left. I sunk helplessly into a chair, and began to look feebly about me for the heroin to buck me up.
I must have gone off into a sort of swoon; for I don’t know how it happened, but the fresh, cold air was blowing on my face. Our things had been packed as if by magic, and had been taken out to the motor. The bill had been paid.
As I set foot in the car, I heard the landlady asking what she should do if the lady and gentleman came back. I gave the address of my new rooms. As I stumbled into the seat the clear incisive tones of Lala rang across.
“You’d better tell them that Sir Peter’s far from well. He will probably not be able to see any one this week.”
I sat limply, shaken by the vibrations of the car.
I was an empty vessel; but I felt that, as we got out of the twisted network of streets, and the automobile bounded forward, I was escaping from some infernal labyrinth.
I found Lou at the new rooms. She was sitting in a big lounge chair holding tight to the arms. Her face told the same tale as my own. We felt that we had come through a great illness by a miracle. It struck me as dreadfully unfair that instead of being gently nursed back to health, a demand was to be made upon us for the exercise of the utmost moral and physical strength and courage.
It was impossible for either of us to put forth the slightest effort without the help of the drug. It seemed logically impossible that we should be able to stop drugs by our own efforts; and we knew only too well from experience that we had got to a state where even a few moments delay in taking a dose might result in complete collapse and death.
“I shall leave you children alone for an hour to get settled in, and then we might drive down and have lunch in the country, don’t you think? But of course you’ll be needing heroin all the time, and I notice that you have a plentiful supply, so there’s nothing to worry about there. It’s not taking the drug that does the harm, it’s the not knowing what you take. So I brought you a couple of charts marked off into hours; and what I want you to do is to promise to make a cross in the proper space every time you take it.”
The condition was easy enough. What we had been dreading, in spite of what Lamus had said, was the forcible suppression which we had experienced at Barley Grange, and which had brought us to such extremities.
But Lala’s last remark removed all our apprehensions. The matter was left entirely in our own hands. All we were asked was to keep a record of what we were doing.
I couldn’t see how the fact of putting a thing down could make any difference to the act itself.
At that moment King Lamus came in, and kept us amused for half an hour with a perfectly absurd story of some trifling adventure that had happened to him that morning. But despite his vivacity and the interest which he excited, I found my hands instinctively going to the little wooden box in which I kept my heroin.
I took a dose. Lamus immediately broke off his remarks.
“Go on,” I said feebly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“That’s all right,” said Lamus. “I’m only waiting for you to put it down.”
Lala had pinned my chart to the wall. I looked at my watch, and went over and scrawled a
cross in the proper section.
As I returned, I noticed that Lamus was watching with a smile of singular amusement. I know now that it was due to his recognising the nature of my annoyance.
He finished his story in a few words, and then asked me point-blank how the cure was going.
I said I didn’t see how I could even begin to be cured, and pointed out the nature of the deadlock.
“Well,” he said, “you aren’t making any allowance for something that the doctors all talk about and forget nine-tenths of the time, which is yet the only thing that saves them from being found out as the ignorant meddlers they are. Do you know that the post-mortems on people who die in New York hospitals show that about fifty per cent of the cases have been wrongly diagnosed? No, Sir Peter, while you and I are wasting our time discussing our troubles, there’s one thing working for us, never stops day or night, and that is Vis medicatyix nalurx.”
Lala nodded emphatically.
“Didn’t you notice that even in the Red-Cross?” she said to Lou. “The cases that got well were those that were left alone. All the surgeons did was to repair, as well as possible, the interference with nature caused by the wound. Anything beyond that was a mistake.”
“We’ll be back in about an hour,” said Lamus, “and take you to lunch at Hindhead. Have you a pocket-knife, by the way?”
“Why, yes,” I said with surprise. “Why?”
“Otherwise I would have left you mine. You may need one to sharpen your pencil.”
Lou and I fell to talking as soon as they were gone. We were already better in this respect, that we had begun to take an interest in ourselves once more. We resorted once or twice to heroin during the absence of our friend; and we made a kind of little family joke of keeping each other up to the mark in the matter of recording the facts.
I discovered what had amused King Lamus on the first occasion. I was conscious of a distinct shade of annoyance at having to get up and make a little cross. It had never occurred to me to break my word. There was a fascination in watching the record.
The drive was a revelation. It was like coming out of a charnel house into the fresh air. A keen cold wind beat against our faces, almost blinding us.
It was not until we reached the inn that we remembered that we had come out without any heroin. Lamus was immediately all sympathy when he heard of our plight. He offered to go out and get some immediately; but Lala protested that she was dying of hunger, and she was sure that lunch would restore our strength just as well, and King Lamus could go out immediately we were finished eating.
We agreed. We could hardly do anything else. As a matter of fact, the fresh air had excited in us both a very keen appetite. The meal did us a lot of good, and at its conclusion our host slipped out unostentatiously and returned in ten minutes with a little packet of powder.
It struck me as very extraordinary that he should have been able to procure it at so remote a place without a prescription. But Lou’s eyes were fixed on him with an expression of delighted curiosity. I felt as though somehow or other she had divined the secret.
She seemed intensely amused at my perplexity, and stroked my hair in her most patronising manner. “You poor brainless creature,” she seemed to be saying with her finger-tips.
Well, we all had heroin with our second cup of coffee, and my spirits rose immediately.
Lamus produced two little note books which he had bought in the village, so that we might record our doses while we were out and copy them on our charts when we got back.
We drove back to London, and had tea on the way in a cottage where the people seemed to know our friends very well. It was kept by a little old man and his wife who had the air of being family retainers. The cottage stood well away from the road in grounds of its own. Two mighty yew trees stood one on either side of the gate. Lala told us that the place belonged to the Order of which King Lamus was the head, and that he occasionally sent people down here for certain parts of his training which could only be carried out in solitude and silence.
A great longing came upon me to experience the subtle peace which dwelt in this simple habitation. For some reason or other I felt a natural disinclination to take the dose of heroin which was offered to me. It seemed out of keeping with the spirit of the surroundings. I took it and enjoyed it; but the act was mechanical, and the effect in some obscure fashion unsatisfactory.
We drove back to town, and had dinner in my new apartment, where they had an excellent restaurant service.
I found that during the day I had had fifteen sniffs of heroin. Lou had only had eleven. The reaction in my mind was this: If she can get on with eleven, why shouldn’t I? – though I hadn’t sufficient logic to carry on the argument to the people, millions of them, who hadn’t had any at all, and seemed to be thriving!
We were both pretty tired. just as Lamus and Lala rose to leave I took a final sniff.
“What did you do that for?” he said, “if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Well, I think it was to go to sleep.”
“But this morning you told me you took it to wake up,” he retorted.
That was true, and it annoyed me; especially as Lou, instead of being sympathetic, gave one of her absurd little laughs. She actually seemed to take a perverse pleasure in seeing me caught out in a stupidity.
But Lamus took the matter very seriously.
“Well,” he said, “it certainly is extraordinary stuff if it does two precisely opposite things at the will of the taker.”
He spoke sarcastically. He refrained from telling me what he told me long afterwards, that the apparently contradictory properties that I was ascribing to it were really there, that it can be used by the expert to produce a number of effects, some of which seem at first sight mutually exclusive.
“Well, look here, Sir Peter,” went on Lamus. “You can’t have it both ways. You really ought to make up your mind as to the purpose of taking a dose.”
I replied rather piteously that we had found out long ago that we couldn’t sleep without it. Mabel Black had told us that.
“And the result of that delusion,” returned Lamus “is that she’s dead. I think your experience has been influenced by her foolish remark. You have told me yourself that the delightful result, in the first instance, was to keep you lying awake all night in a state of suspended animation, with a most fascinating flow of fancies filling your brain.”
I had to admit the truth of what he said.
“Heroin,” he explained, “is a modification of morphine, and morphine is the most active of the principles of opium. Now surely you remember what Wilkie Collins says in The Moonstone about opium and its preparations, that they have a stimulating effect followed by a sedative effect. Heroin is much more positive in its action than opium; and the reasonable thing to do, as it seems to me, would be to go ahead with it pretty hard in the morning and keep yourself going by that means, but to leave it entirely alone for some hours before you go to bed, so that the sedative effect may send you nicely to sleep at the proper time. I know the objection to that. The abuse of the drug has left you full of nervous irritability. The reason why you want heroin at night is to deaden yourself to that. When you take it in the morning after a night’s rest, you are giving it to a more or less healthy person refreshed by sleep; it is able to stimulate you because your sleep has given you some reserves of force on which it can work. When you take it at night, you are administering it to a sick person, which is a very different thing. However, what you should do is to replace it at night by these tablets, with a nice warm drink of whisky or rum and water, and you will find yourself asleep before you know it. Then in the morning, you awake much fresher than usual, and the heroin will have something more to catch hold of. The result of this will be that you will find quite a small quantity will do you as much good as a big one did last week, and more.”
Well, all that
seemed pretty sensible to me. We took his advice. We did not go to sleep at once. I felt my thoughts too varied. They wandered from one thing to another without reasonable sequence. There seemed to be gaps of unconsciousness between two sets of thoughts; but eventually the irritation subsided, and I knew no more till the morning.
We woke very late, completely exhausted. But as Lamus had prophesied, the heroin took hold immediately; the first two doses made us lively, and with the third we were out of bed and having a bath for the first time in – I’m ashamed to say how long.
Lou fell into a rage at the condition of our underwear, and of our outer clothes, too, for the matter of that. It was all soiled and dirty and stained. We must literally have stunk. And with the realisation of this came an acute feeling of disgrace that we should have been going about with Lamus and Lala in such a condition. If they had said anything about it to us, we might have worked up an artificial indignation about it. But that they should have said nothing was absolutely damnable.
We could not tolerate the idea of ourselves. And yet, only forty-eight hours before, nothing mattered at all.
Lou, in a state of almost insane excitement, was calling up Barley Grange on long distance. The housekeeper was to send up something to wear that morning.
While she shouted the order, I suddenly recollected that Lamus and Lala were coming in after lunch; the clothes couldn’t possibly reach us till after three o’clock. The best thing to do was to have some dressing-gowns sent up from Piccadilly.
They sent people round with a selection at once, and what with that and sending out for some toilet things, and having in the hairdresser, we made ourselves fairly presentable by half-past one.
That morning gave me the impression of a vaudeville turn or a farce. We had to dodge about from one room to another according as male or female angels ministered unto us.
Diary of a Drug Fiend Page 26