The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley
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 Mom ! 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, gray 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 that 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 I 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 I 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, go 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 manceuvre.
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. Coue's now famous formula is the precise intellectual expression of the curve of the cocaine honey-moon. 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,