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Page 1 of 51922 · PDF PAGE 372
358 The Diary of a Drug Fiend bridegroom was the Work which could never be satiated so long as we lived, and so could never lead to weariness and boredom. This honeymoon would blossom and bear fruit perennially, season by season, like the earth our mother and the sun our father themselves, an inexhaustible, frictionless enthusiasm. We were par- takers of the eternal sacrament; whatever happened was equally essential to the ritual. Death itself made no difference to anything; our calm continuous candescence burst through the chains of circumstan…
1922 · PDF PAGE 234
CHAPTER VI COLD TURKEY | September 23 I pon’tT remember what happened. -I know why. Basil told me long ago. that the mind only kept count of material things. So these spiritual events are recorded in a higher kind of mind of which we are not conscious until we get accustomed to spiritual life. So all I can put down is that we Ahad a complete success. The Devil, of course, needs a human interpreter if he is to communicate with this world, and so he took possession of Peter. He has been preparing Peter to represent him. He will make Peter pope, a…
1922 · PDF PAGE 158
144 The Diary of a Drug Fiend . Cockie came back for lunch with a very long face. Mr. Wolfe gave him a good talking-to about money. Well, that’s perfectly right. We had been going the pace. Cockie wanted to take me out and buy me some jewellery to replace what was stolen; but I wouldn’t let him, except a new watch and a wedding ring. I’ve got a horrid feeling about that. It’s frightfully unlucky to lose your wedding ring. I feel as if the new one didn’t belong to me at all. We had a long talk about Gretel being away. We tried one or two places,…
1922 · PDF PAGE 262
… something faintly attractive about the bustle of humanity. There was a momentary regret about leaving it. Yet we had already left it so long, so long ago, in every intelligible sense of the word. We should, I suppose, have been classed as human beings by statisticians, but surely by nobody else. We could never return to their midst. And even in the midst of our wretchedness, we felt a repulsion of contempt for the ruck of humanity which made us content to widen the gap between them and ourselves. Why preserve the outward semblance of these fut…
1922 · PDF PAGE 189
CHAPTER III THE GRINDING OF THE BRAKES September 9 PETER and I have had a long, nasty quarrel, and I had to pull his hair for him. It broke one of my nails. I’ve let them go very long. I don’t know when I was manicured last. For some reason, they're dry and brittle. I must have them done. I’d send the boy out, but I don’t like the idea of a strange girl coming here. One never knows what may go wrong. It doesn’t really matter, either. The body is merely a nuisance, and it hurts. “So blood wrenches its pain Sardonic through heart and brain.” I am…
1922 · PDF PAGE 129
…pes,” he said, ‘‘ but I think I ought in fairness to warn you that the Gatto Fritto is a pretty hot place. I wouldn’t mind taking you as long as you go in disguise and have a gun in your pocket, ~but I really can’t take it on my conscience to have Lady Pendragon along.”’ I was so full up with cocaine I hardly knew what he was saying. It was the easiest way out to nod assent and watch the clouds fighting each other to get hold of the sun. I was betting on that big white elephant on the horizon. There were two black cobras and a purple hippopotam…
1922 · PDF PAGE 164
…e better than nothing. And then, if you please, the beast pulled a review with a blue cover out of a revolving bookcase and read aloud a long poem. His intonation was so dramatic, he gave so vivid a picture that we sat spell-bound. It seemed as if he had long pincers twistedin our entrails, and were wrenching at them. He gave me the verses: when he had finished. ‘““You ought to paste these,” he said, ‘ ‘in your Magical Diary.” So I have. I hardly know why. There’s a sort of pleasure in torturing oneself. Is that it ?
1922 · PDF PAGE 35
…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 :— “QO Thou golden wine of the sun, that art poured over the dark breasts of night! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I AO!” The first part of the adoration was in a sort of Gregorian chant varying with the cadence of the words. But the chorus always…
1922 · PDF PAGE 304
… I am unable at present to see any part for me in the design. My mere approval of your product——”’ I took it out and treated myself to a long, languishing kiss—yes, kiss, there is no other word for it! My long-lost love, home to my heart once more | Platt in his turn assumed an air of Stygian melancholy. “My dear Sir Peter,” he pursued, with a heavy sigh, “you can easily understand that, huge as my fortune, thanks to the inscrutable ways of Destiny, now is, time is necessary to realise it fully—and, by a singular and most unfortunate conjunctio…
1922 · PDF PAGE 285
…and we ate very little of the light and exquisite food we had ordered. But at least the idea of food did not disgust us, as had been too long the case. Lamus came in in time to join us at coffee. It was easy to see that he was pleased at the result so far obtained. Lala was not with him. Instead, he had brought Maisie Jacobs. I found myself wondering acutely whether there was any serious reason for the change. I had got to the state where I suspected the man’s slightest action of having some occult significance, especially as he gave no explana…
1922 · PDF PAGE 136
…nd of course we had left our watches at home. We got a little impatient. We couldn’t remember whether Feccles had or had not told us how long he was likely to be. The air of the room was stifling. The lowest vagabonds of Naples crowded the place. Some were jabbering like apes; some singing drunkenly to themselves ; some shame- lessly caressing ; some sunk in bestial stupor. Among the last was a burly brute who somehow fascinated our attention. We thought ourselves quite safe in speaking English ; and for all I know we were talking at the top of…
1922 · PDF PAGE 312
…completely recovered himself; and was watching the scene with impersonal, professional interest. Lala bent over his chair, and whispered long and earnestly 1in his ear. He nodded. Again he cleared his throat, and then began to speak in a strained voice. | “T think the simplest way in the long run is for Lady Pendragon to tell Sir Peter, as she has already told us, exactly what has happened, as if she were in the witness-box.”’ Lou began to twist herself about uneasily. “I’m fed up,” she burst out at last. “The witness will kindly control hersel…
1922 · PDF PAGE 317
…romised to cure Sir Peter, too, and so my condition is that he comes with us.”’ She sprang to her feet as if a cobra had struck her. Her long arms wrestled against the unresisting air. The humiliation was unspeakable. Lamus put his pipe away in his pocket, rose to his feet, and stretched himself like some great lazy lion. He took her in his arms and held her firmly, fixing his eyes upon her tortured face ; the long jagged scarlet mouth stretched to a tragic square through which the scream refused to come. He shook her shoulders gently. Her rigi…
1922 · PDF PAGE 215
…” I faltered. “ Sir Peter’s very rich. We can afford to pay the price, whatever it is.’ He gave a funny little laugh. JI shrank from the long wolf-like mouth hanging over me greedily open, with its bared two white rows of sharp, long fangs. I was nauseated by the stale whisky in his breath. He understood immediately; let my chair back to its normal position, and went back to his desk. He sat there and watched me eagerly like a man stalking game. As if inadvertently, he took out the bottle and played with it aimlessly. In his smooth varnished vo…
1922 · PDF PAGE 110
…all wrong. I could never understand English weights and measures. I have never met any one who could. But the point is you could go on a long time on one-eighth of a grain if you have a pound of the stuff. , Well, this will put it all right for you. Fifteen grains is one gramme, and a thousand grammes is a kilogramme, and a kilogramme is two point two pounds. The only thing I’m not sure about is whether it’s a sixteen- ounce pound or a twelve-ounce pound. But I don’t see what it matters anyway, if you’ve got a pound of snow or H. you can go on …
1922 · PDF PAGE 78
… mind when many more important things had left no trace. He had hardly changed from when I had last seen him. Of middle height, he had a long and rather narrow face. There was a touch of the ecclesiastic in his expression. His eyes were small and gray; he had a trick of blinking. The nose was long and beaked like Wellington’s; the mouth was thin and tense; the skin was fresh and rosy. He had not developed even the tiniest wrinkle. He kept the old uneasy nervous movement which had been so singular in him as a boy. One would have said that he was…
1922 · PDF PAGE 282
…t does two precisely opposite things at the will of the taker.” oo, 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 tha…
1922 · PDF PAGE 160
…Savoy, utterly worn out and wretched. We kept on taking H. and C. all night; we couldn’t sleep, we talked about the drugs. It was just a long argument about how to take them. We felt we were somehow doing it wrong. I had been so proud of his medical knowledge, and yet it didn’t seem to throw any light. It seems that in the medical books, they speak of what they call “ Drug virginity.” The thing was to get it back; and according to the books the only way to do it is to take nothing for a long time. He said it was really just the same as any othe…
1922 · PDF PAGE 286
…ey had been maps and he was trying to work out his overland route from Bokhara to Khatmandu |! Ultimately he said, “‘ There seems a very long gap here—fifteen hours—g to 12, that’s right, isn’t it?” He turned to Maisie for confirmation. He was, so he said, quite unable to trust himself to calculate. Maisie entered into the spirit of the absurdity and counted it solemnly out on her fingers. The tone of his voice had been mournful, as if his plans had been seriously disconcerted. That was another trick of his that put people off. It was Lou’s spa…
1922 · PDF PAGE 132
… of the inferior animals. I humour them to some extent in their delusions, because they’re lunatics and ought to be humoured. But it’s a long way between that and admitting that their hallucinations have any basis in fact. I had been in their silly world of sense a million years or so ago, when I was Peter Pendragon. But why recall the painful past? Of course, one doesn’t come to one’s full strength in a minute. Take the case of an eagle. What is it as long as it’s in the egg? Nothing but an egg with possibilities. And the first day it’s hatche…