Confessions of Aleister Crowley

499 {785} passing steamboat. We had a great lunch with the burgundy and absinthe and old brandy, which I had brought back from New York. But some people are never satisfied. She apparently expected to find a young palace with livery lackeys by the dozen, so she explained that she had merely dropped in for lunch, as per invitation, on her way to visit her brother, the incumbent of the parish of Staatsburg. She gave so many details so ingenuously that I might have believed her if I had not happened to know that the amenities of Staatsburg did not include any such person as she described. I politely professed to credit her and promised to take her ashore in time to reach him by dinner. To pass the afternoon we went for a paddle round the island. Near the northern point I noticed that my feet were wet. I knew that the canoe leaked slightly and forgot it. A hundred yards or so further on I found my ankles immersed. It was evident within the next minute that the leak was serious. We were opposite the cliffs, landing was impossible. The water gained. Nothing remained but to bale and paddle for dear life and reach the south inlet before sinking. She thought the opportunity unequalled for a display of hysterics. But I spoke so sharply and sternly that she postponed the performance and began to bale. We just did it and only just, thanks to the help of two boys who had come to camp close to the landing place a couple of days earlier. They rushed in waist deep and pulled us in. By that time the water-logged wreck hardly answered the paddle. We dragged the canoe up the beach. The water poured from the stern through a gap six inches across. We sat and smoked and swapped stories, while Madeleine had her hysterics. When she tired of being not noticed, I took her back to the tent and made tea. "And that", I remarked, is good night to the visit to the vicarage. If we can mend that bundle of firewood at all, which I doubt, we can't even begin till we've got materials from Staatsburg, which means tomorrow morning!" "But I must get to my brother's!" she persisted petulantly. I gave a short, but instructive lecture on the physical geography of islands, especially insisting on the definition as a piece of land wholly surrounded by water. She began to howl like a hyena. (I knew, of course, that she had not the slightest intention of going, had Neptune himself arrived to conduct her.) "But I must go!" she wailed, and then put up a big bluff about her virtue and her reputation. I said I would ask the boys to row her ashore in their boat. They of course agreed, but when I came back with the good news, she had bethought herself of the privilege of her sex, and declared that here she was and here she would stay. Again I acquiesced. She spent some time trying to think up some excuse for a fresh fuss, but the best she could do was to say that she must have a bath. "Make your mind easy," said I, and quoted statistics about the area of the Hudson river. It took her quite a long time to convince herself that I was really one of those inhuman {786} monsters who cannot be dislodged from the fortress of patient smiling politeness and imperturbable good temper. But after dinner she gave it up with a sigh. "Oh well," she thought, "if I can't have my holiest joy of keeping a man on the jump, I suppose I may as well make shift with the next best thing, my famous imitation of a grand passion." She suited the action to the thought, and swooned into my embrace. Having mended the canoe as well as I could --- it was old and rotten beyond permanent repair --- I took her to Central Park on Tuesday. Meanwhile, her stay had been otherwise exciting. I spent my nights watching for signals on the west shore, and sure enough, from time to time the dark mass of the woods was lit up, now here, now there, by shafts of momentary brilliance at irregular intervals. I noted the exact time of each and