The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley
Читать онлайн книгу.
let him keep you long," said Lou, with a petulant pout, and ran into the bedroom after a swift embrace, so violent that it disarranged my new Charvet necktie.
The man came up. I was a little bored by the gravity of his manner, and rather disgusted by its solemn deference. Of course, one likes being treated as a kind of toy emperor in a way, but that sort of thing doesn't go with Paris. Still less does it go with cocaine.
It annoyed me that the fellow was so obviously ill at ease, and also that he was so obviously proud of himself for having been sent to Paris on important business with a real live knight.
If there's one thing flying teaches one more than another, it is to hate snobbery. Even the Garter becomes imperceptible when one is flying above the clouds.
I couldn't possibly talk to the man till he was a little more human. I made him sit down and have a drink and cigarette before I would let him tell me his business.
Of course, everything was perfectly in order. The point was simply this, that the six thousand pounds wasn't immediately available, so, as I needed it urgently, it was necessary for me to sign certain papers which Mr. Wolfe had drawn up at once, on reccipt of my wire, and it would be better to have it done at the consulate.
"Why, of course, get a taxi," I said; " I'll be down in a minute."
He went downstairs. I ran in to Lou and told her that I had to go to the consul on business : I'd be back in an hour and we could do our shopping.
We took a big sniff of snow and kissed good-bye as if I were starting on a three years' expedition to the South Pole. Then I caught up my hat, gloves, and cane, and found my young man at the door.
The drink and the air of Paris had given him a sense of his own dignity. Instead of waiting humbly for me to get into the car, he was sitting there already ; and though his greeting was still solemnly deferential, there was a little more of the ambassador about it. He had repressed the original impulse to touch his hat.
I myself felt a curious sense of enjoyment of my own importance. At the same time, I was in a violent hurry to get back to Lou. My brain was racing with the thought of her. I signed my name where they told me, and the consul dabbed it all over with stamps, and we drove back to the hotel, where the clerk extracted a locked leather wallet from a mysterious inside hip pocket and counted me out my six thousand in hundred-pound notes.
Of course, I had to ask the fellow to lunch, it was only decent, but I was very glad when he excused himself. He had to catch the two o'clock train back to town.
" Good God, what a time you've been," said Lou, and I could see that she had been filling it in in a wonderful way. It was up to her neck. She danced about like a crazy woman with little jerky movements which I couldn't help seeing signified nervous irritability. However, she was radiant, beaming, glowing, bursting with excitement.
Well, you know, I don't like to be left in the lurch. I had to catch up. I literally shovelled the snow down. I ought to have been paid a shilling an hour by the County Council. The world is full of injustice.
However, we certainly didn't have any time to have questions asked in Parliament. There was Lou almost in tears because she had nothing to wear ; practically no jewellery-the whole idea of being a knight is that when you see a wrong it is your duty to right it.
Fortunately, there was no difficulty at the present moment. All we had to do was to drive down to the Rue de la Paix. I certainly almost fell down when I saw all those pearls on her neck. And that cabochon emerald I By George, it did go with her hair !
These shop men in Paris are certainly artists. The man saw in a moment what was wrong. There was nothing to match the blue of her dress, so he showed us a sapphire and diamond bracelet and a big marquise ring that went with it in a platinum setting. That certainly made all the difference ! And yet he seemed to be very uneasy. He was puzzled ; that's what it was.
Then his face lightened up. He had got the idea all right. You can always trust these chaps when you strike a really good man. What was missing was something red !
I told you about Lou's mouth; her long, jagged, snaky, scarlet streak always writhing and twisting as if it had a separate life of its own and were perpetually in some delicious kind of torture!
The man saw immediately what was necessary. The mouth had to be repeated symbolically. That's the whole secret of art. So he fished out a snake of pigeon's blood rubies.
My God! it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, except Lou herself. And you couldn't look at it without thinking of her mouth, and you couldn't think of her mouth without wanting to kiss it, and it was up to me to prove to Paris that I had the most beautiful woman in the world for my wife, and that could only be done in the regular way by showing her off in the best dresses and the most wonderful jewellery. It was my duty to her as my wife, and I could afford it perfectly well because I was a tolerably rich man to start with anyhow, and besides, the five thousand I was putting into Feccles' business would mean something like a quarter of a million at least, on the most conservative calculations, as I had seen with my own eyes.
And that was all clear profit, so there was no reason in the world why one shouldn't spend it in a sensible way. Mr. Wolfe himself had emphasised the difficulty of getting satisfactory investments in these times.
He told me how many people were putting their money into diamonds and furs which always keep their value, whereas government securities and that sort of thing are subject to unexpected taxation, for one thing, depreciation for another, with the possibility of European repudiation looming behind them all.
As a family man, it was my duty to buy as many jewels for Lou as I could afford. At the same time, one has to be cautious.
I bought the things I mentioned and paid for them. I refused to be tempted by a green pearl tie pin for myself, though I should have liked to have had it because it would have reminded me of Lou's eyes every time I put it on. But it was really rather expensive, and Mr. Wolfe had warned me very seriously about getting into debt, so I paid for the rest of the stuff, and we went off, and we thought we'd drive out to the Bois for lunch, and then we took some more snow in the taxi and Lou began to cry because I had bought nothing for myself. So we took some more snow, we had plenty of time, nobody lunches before two o'clock. We went straight back to the shop and bought the green pearl, and that got Lou so excited that the taxi was like an aeroplane; if anything, more so.
It's stupid to hang back. If you start to do a thing, you'd much better do it. What's that fellow say ? " I do not set my life at a pin's fee." That's the right spirit. " Unhand me, gentlemen, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me."
That's the Pendragon spirit, and that's the flying man's spirit. Get to the top and stay at the top and shoot the other man down !
Chapter VII.
The Wings of the Oof-Bird
The lunch at the Restaurant de la Cascade was like a lunch in a dream. We seemed to be aware of what we were eating without actually tasting it. As I think I said before, it's the anzesthesia of cocaine that determines the phenomena.
When I make a remark like that, I understand that it's the dead and gone medical student popping up.
But never you mind that. The point is that when you have the right amount of snow in you, you can't feel anything in the ordinary sense of the word. You appreciate it in a sort of impersonal way. There's a pain, but the pain doesn't hurt. You enjoy the fact of the pain as you enjoy reading about all sorts of terrible things in history at school.
But the trouble about cocaine is this ; that it's almost impossible to take it in moderation as almost any one, except an American, can take whisky. Every dose makes you better and better. It destroys one's power of calculation.
We had already discovered the fact when we found that the supply we had got from Gretel, with the idea that it would last almost indefinitely, was running very short,