The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley

      Chapter IV.

       Below the Brutes

       Table of Contents

      Septembey 13

      I wonder how I have lived through this. Peter came in last night just after I had closed my diary. I had never seen him like it before ; his eyes were half out of his head, bloodshot and furious. He must have been drinking like a madman. He was trembling with rage. He came straight up to me, and hit me deliberately in the face.

      " That'll teach you," he shouted, and called me a foul name.

      I couldn't answer. I was too hurt, not by the blow, but by the surprise. I had pictured it so differently.

      He staggered back into the middle of the room and pointed to the blood that was running down my face. The edge of his ring had cut the corner of my eye. The sight sent him into fits of hysterical laughter.

      The only feeling in my mind was that he was ill that it was my duty to nurse him. I tried to go to the door to get help. He thought I was escaping, and flung me back right across the room on to the bed, howling with rage.

      " You can get away with it at once," he said, " but that's enough. You wait right here, and see whether Mr. Bloody King Lamus will come to fetch you. Don't fret ; I expect he will. He likes dirt, the filthy beast ! "

      I burst out crying. The contrast between the two men was too shocking. And I belonged to this screaming swearing bully with his insane jealousy and his senseless brutality I

      I would rather have swept out Basil's studio for the rest of my life than be Lady Pendragon.

      What masters of irony the gods are ! I had been swimming in a glowing flood of glory; I had been almost delirious to think I was the wife of a man in whose veins ran the blood of England's greatest king; of him whose glamour had gilded the centuries with romance; to think that I might hold such royal heirship under my heart. What radiant rapture !

      And Peter himself had shown himself worthy of his ancestry. Had not he too beaten back the heathen and saved England ?

      So this was the end of my dream ! This brawling ruffian was my man !

      I sat stupefied while his incoherent insults battered my brain ; but my indignation was not for myself. I had deserved all I was getting ; but what right had this foul-mouthed coward to take in his mouth the name of a man like King Lamus ?

      My silence seemed to exasperate him more than if I had taken up the quarrel. He swayed and swore with blind ferocity. He didn't seem to know where I was. It was getting dark. He groped his way round the room looking for me; but he passed me twice before he found me. The third time he stumbled up against me, gripped me by the shoulder, and began to strike.

      I sat as if I were paralysed. I could not even scream. Again and again he swore and struck me savagely, yet so weakly that I could not feel the blows. Besides, I was dulled to all possible pain. Presently he collapsed, and rolled over on the bed. I thought for a moment he was dead, and then he was seized by a series of spasms; his muscles twisted and twitched; his hands clawed at the air ; he began to mutter rapidly and unintelligibly. I was horribly frightened.

      I got up and lit the gas. The poor boy's face was white as death ; but small, dark crimson flushes burnt on the cheek-bones.

      I sat at the table for some time and thought. I didn't dare send for a doctor. He might know what was the matter and take him away from me ; take him to one of those torture-traps, and he'd never get out.

      I knew what he wanted, of course; a little heroin would bring him round all right. I told him I had some. I had to tell him several times before he understood.

      When he did, the mere thought helped to restore him but there remained an ort of rage, and he told me to give it him, with a greedy snarl. If I had wanted to keep it from him, I shouldn't have let him know I had it.

      I brought him the stuff, sitting down by his side and lifting his head with one hand while I gave it to him on the back of the other. My heart sank like a stone in deep water. The old familiar attitude, the old familiar act !-and yet how different in every point!

      The convulsive movements stopped immediately. He sat up almost at once on one elbow. The only sign of distress was that he still breathed heavily. All his anger, too, had disappeared. He seemed tired, like a convalescent, but as tractable as a child. He smiled faintly. I don't know if he had any consciousness or memory of what had passed. He talked as if there had been no quarrel at all. The colour came back to his face, the light to his eyes.

      " One more go like that, Lou," he said, " and I'll be all right."

      I wasn't at all sure what King Lamus would have said; but it was my own responsibility, and I couldn't refuse him.

      He went off to sleep very soon after. In the morning I found out what had happened to him. He had been round to some of the men he used to know in the hospital to get them to give him some H., but they hadn't dared to do it. They were suffering from a sense of insult about the new law, the Diabolical Dope Act. They had undergone a long and expensive training and had diplomas which made them responsible for the health of the community; and now they weren't allowed to prescribe for their own patients. It was natural enough that they should be indignant.

      The fourth man to whom Peter had gone told the same story, but had been very cordial. He thought he'd help things by standing Peter a dinner and filling him up with alcohol, with the idea that that would help him to support the lack of the other stimulant. It seems that I had to pay for the prescription.

      No, Lou, you're a naughty girl. You mustn't be bitter like that. It's your fault for getting born into a world where ignorance and folly are in constant competition for the premiership of the minds of the educated classes. The commonest ploughman would have had more horse-sense than that doctor.

      I gave Peter the tablet with plenty of water when he began to get restless. It soothed him a great deal. I wished I had one for myself. I felt my irritability returning ; but I didn't break out because it couldn't be long till Basil came round. I looked forward to his coming as to a certain end to all our troubles....

      What actually happened was quite different. I hardly know how to write it down. The shame and the disappointment are blasting. I feel that the doors of hope have been slammed in my face. I can imagine the grinding of the key as it turns in the lock, the screech of the rusty bolt as it is driven home.

      The moment Basil appeared, Peter's insanity blazed up. He poured out a stream of insults, and accused Basil to his face of trying to get me away.

      If Basil had only known how eagerly I would have gone ! A man in sexual mania is not fit to consort with human beings. I never realised before why women despise men in their hearts so deeply. We respect men who have mastered their passions, if only because we are ourselves uftimately nothing but those passions. We expect a man to show himself superior. It will not do to kill passion, like Klingsor ; the sexless man is even lower than " the wounded king," Amfortas, the victim of his virility. The true hero is Parsifal, who feels the temptations. " A man of like passions with ourselves." The more acutely alive he is to love, the greater are his possibilities.