The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley
in Park Mansions. I knew she would stand for anything, and keep her mouth shut.
She was in, thank goodness. I don't know what tale I told her. I don't know why I was stupid enough to trouble my head to invent one. She's a real good sport, Maisie, and doesn't care what you do as long as you don't interfere with her.
She had some white silk, and we sewed up the H. in little packets, and stitched them in the flounces of my dress. I kept about half, and put it in an old envelope she had. That was to make my peace with Peter. But I needed two or three good goes on the spot.
I had a fit of hysterical crying and trembling. I must have fainted for a bit. I found myself on the sofa with Maisie kneeling by me and holding a glass of champagne to my lips.
She didn't ask any questions. It wasn't her business if my story was all lies.
I felt a bit better after a while. She began to talk about King Lamus. She had fallen for him the first time she met him, about a year ago, and had become an enthusiastic pupil. She could do what she liked; she was free, plenty of money of her own, no one to interfere.
In a way, I hated her for her independence. It was really envy of her freedom.
I felt that Basil was the only man that mattered, and I had missed my chance with him through not being worthy. I had ended by losing him altogether ; and the irony of it was terrible, for I had lost him through loyalty to Peter at the very moment when I thoroughly loathed and despised him.
Yet I knew that Basil would admire and love me for that very loyalty itself. It was the first thing that I had ever had to show him. My only asset had made me bankrupt for ever !
Maisie had been talking quietly while I was thinking these things. I slid out of my concentration to hear her voice once more. She was in the middle of an explanation of her relations with Basil.
" He claims to be utterly selfish," vibrated her tense tones, " because he includes every individual in his idea of himself. He can't feel free as long as there are slaves about. Of course, there are some people whose nature it is to be slaves ; they must be left to serve. But there are lots of us who are kings and don't know it ; who suffer from the delusion that they ought to bow to public opinion, all sorts of alien domination. He spends his life fighting to emancipate people in this false subjection, because they are parts of himself. He has no ideas about morality. His sense of honour, even, means nothing to him as such. It is simply that he happened to be born a gentleman. 'If I were a dog,' he said to me once, 'I should bark. If I were an owl, I should hoot. There's nothing in either which is good or bad in itself. The only question is, what is the natural gesture ?' He thinks it his mission in the world to establish this Law of Thelema."
She saw my puzzled look.
" Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,' she quoted merrily. " You must have heard those words before ! "
I admitted it. We laughed together over our friend's eccentricity.
" He says that to every one he meets," she explained, not only to influence them, but to remind himself of his mission and prevent himself wasting his time on anything else. He's not a fanatic ; and in the year that I have known him, I've certainly got on more with my music than I ever did in any five years before. He proved to me-or, rather, showed me how to prove to my own satisfaction-that my true Will was to be a singer. We began by going through all the facts of my life from my race and parentage to my personal qualities, such as my ear and my voice being physiologically superior to that of the average musician, and my circumstances enabling me to devote myself entirely to training myself to develop my powers to the best advantage. Even things like my guardian being a great composer ! He won't admit that was an accident."
" He claims that the coincidence of so many circumstances affords evidence of design ; and as so many of these are beyond the control of any human intelligence, it leads one to suppose that there is some individual at work somewhere beyond our limitations of sense who has made me a singer instead of a milliner."
" Oh, yes, Maisie," I interrupted, " but that's the old argument that the design of the Universe proves the existence of God ; and people have stopped believing in God chiefly because the design was shown to be incompatible with a consistent character."
" Oh, certainly," she admitted without a qualm. "The evidence goes to show that there are many different gods, each with his own aim and his own method. Whether their conflicting ambitions can be reconciled (as seems necessary from a philosophical point of view) is practically beyond the scope of our present means of research. Basil implored me not to bother my head about any such theories. He simply laughed in my face and called me his favourite nightingale. 'Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird,' he chuckled, 'but neither wast thou born to take a course of Neo-Platonism.' His whole point is that one mustn't leave the rails. If I had convinced myself that I was a singer, would I kindly refrain from meddling with other affairs ? "
" I know," I put in, " as the captain said when the first officer interrupted him, - What I want from you, Mr. Mate, is silence, and precious damned little of that ! ' "
Again we found ourselves laughing together. It was really very extraordinary the way in which talking to Basil or his pupils exhilarated the mind. I began to see why he was so distrusted and disliked. People always pretend to want to be lifted out of themselves, but in reality they're terribly afraid of anything happening to them. And Basil always strikes at the root of one's spiritual oak. He wants one to be oneself, and the price of that is to abandon the false ideas that one has of oneself. People like the sham teachers that soothe them with narcotic platitudes. They dread having to face reality in any form. That is the real reason for persecuting prophets.
Of course, I was full of H., but Maisie had made me forget all about it for a moment.
"Who's that thin girl that's always there?" I asked her.
It was an automatic spurt of jealousy.
" Oh, Lala," said Maisie, " she's rather a dear. She's a queer girl, one of the queerest ever. Swiss or something, I fancy. He's trained her for the last three years. He met her, I don't know how, and asked her to pose for him. She told me once how startled she was at the reason he gave. 'Did you write that psalm,' he asked her, '" I can tell all my bones, they look and stare upon me ? "' You know the girl hasn't got an ounce of flesh on her body. She's perfectly healthy ; she's just a freak of nature. And while he sketched her he asked her to suggest a title for the picture. 'Paint me as a dead soul,' she answered. He caught up the phrase with fiery enthusiasm, and began to work on an enormous screen, a triptych with the strangest beasts and birds and faces, all arranged to lead up to her as the central figure. She is standing naked with a disproportionately large head grinning detestably. The body is almost a skeleton covered with greenish skin. It made a perfectly grisly sensation. I wonder you haven't seen it."
As a matter of fact, I had seen a photograph of it in some newspaper, and now I remembered that Bill Waldorf had pointed her out, roaring with laughter, as the Queen of the Dead Souls. Basil had said that London was full of dead souls.
" It's nothing to do with that story of Gogol's," said Maisie. " Basil thinks-and it's only too ghastly true-that most of the people we see walking about, and eating and drinking and dancing, are really dead'dead in trespasses and sins,' as my old uncle used to say-in the sin of not knowing themselves to be Stars, True and Living Gods Most High--"
I sighed with sadness. I, too, was a dead soul-and I had given up the Lord of Resurrection that morning out of loyalty to another dead soul. And-the same afternoon ! Faugh! what a charnel-house Life is! How chill and damp and poisonous is the air! How the walls sweat the agony of the damned!
" And look at Lala now! " Maisie went on. " He had to put her through the most frightful ordealsfor she was very dead indeed-but she got to the other end of the tunnel all right. She's a Great Soul, if ever there was one in the world, and he has raised her mortal into immortality. Her corruptibility has put on incorruption-and she radiates light and life and love, leaping through the years in utter liberty-"
" But what does she do now ? " I asked with a dull pain at my heart.
" Why, her True Will, of course came back the flaming