" Forsitan haec olim meminisse juvabit," says AEneas in Virgil when recounting his hardships. (Quaint, by the way I I haven't thought of a Latin tag a dozen times since I left school. Drugs, like old age, strip off one's recent memories, and leave bare one's forgotten ideas.)
The most deeply seated instinct in us is our craving for experience. And that is why the efforts of the Utopians to make life a pleasant routine always arouse subconscious revolt in the spirit of man.
It was the progressive prosperity of the Victorian age that caused the Great War. It was the reaction of the schoolboy against the abolition of adventure.
This curious condition of mind possessed an eternal quality; the stream of thoughts flowed through my brain like a vast irresistible river. I felt that nothing could ever stop it, or even change the current in any important respect. My consciousness had something of the quality of a fixed star proceeding through space by right of its eternal destiny. And the stream carried me on from one set of thoughts to another, slowly and without stress ; it was like a hushed symphony. It included all possible memories, changing imperceptibly from one to another without the faintest hint of jarring.
I was aware of the flight of time, because a church clock struck somewhere far off at immense incalculable intervals. I knew, therefore, that I was making a white night of it. I was aware of dawn through the open French windows on the balcony.
Ages, long ages, later, there was a chime of bells announcing early Mass; and gradually my thought became more slow, more dim ; the active pleasure of thinking became passive. Little by little the shadows crept across my reverie, and then I knew no more.
Chapter VI.
The Glitter on the Snow
I woke to find Lou fully dressed. She was sitting on the edge of my bed. She had taken hold of my hand, and her face was bending over mine like a pallid flower. She saw that I was awake, and her mouth descended upon mine with exquisite tenderness. Her lips were soft and firm ; their kiss revived me into life.
She was extraordinarily pale, and her gestures were limp and languid. I realised that I was utterly exhausted.
"I couldn't sleep at all," she said, "after what seemed a very long time in Which I tried to pull myself together. My mind went running on like mad-I've had a perfectly ripping time-perfectly top-hole ! I simply couldn't get up till I remembered what that man Feccles said about a hair of the dog. So I rolled out of bed and crawled across to the H. and took one little sniff, and sat on the floor till it worked. It's great stuff when you know the ropes. It picked me up in a minute. So I had a bath, and got these things on. I'm still a bit all in. You know we did overdo it, didn't we, Cockie ? "
" You bet," I said feebly. " I'm glad I've got a nurse."
" Right-o," she said, with a queer grin. " It's time for your majesty's medicine."
She went over to the bureau, and brought me a dose of heroin. The effect was surprising ! I had felt as if I couldn't move a muscle, as if all the springs of my nerves had given way. Yet, in two minutes, one small sniff restored me to complete activity.
There was in this, however, hardly any element of joy. I was back to my normal self, but not to what you might call good form. I was perfectly able to do anything required, but the idea of doing it didn't appeal. I thought a bath and a shower would put me right ; and I certainly felt a very different man by the time I had got my clothes on.
When I came back into the sitting-room, I found Lou dancing daintily round the table. She went for me like a bull at a gate ; swept me away to the couch and knelt at my side as I lay, while she overwhelmed me with passionate kisses.
She divined that I was not in any condition to respond.
" You still need your nurse," she laughed merrily, with sparkling eyes and flashing teeth and nostrils twitching with excitement. I saw on the tip of one delicious little curling hair a crystal glimmer that I knew.
She had been out in the snowstorm !
My cunning twisted smile told her that I was wise to the game.
"Yes," she said excitedly, "I see how it's done now. You pull yourself together with H. and then you start the buzz-wagon with C. Come along, put in the clutch."
Her hand was trembling with excitement. But on the back of it there shimmered a tiny heap of glistening snow.
I sniffed it with suppressed ecstasy. I knew that it was only a matter of seconds before I caught the contagion of her crazy and sublime intoxication.
Who was it that said you had only to put salt on the tail of a bird, and then you could catch it ? Probably that fellow thought that he knew all about it, but he got the whole thing wrong. What you have to do is to get snow up your own nose, and then you can catch the bird all right.
What did Maeterlinck know about that silly old Blue Bird ?
Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.
But don't you go and forget what I hope you won't mind my calling ordinary prudence. Use a little common sense, use precaution, exercise good judgment. However hungry you may happen to be, you don't want to eat a dozen oxen en brochette. Natura non facit saltum.
It's only a question of applying knowledge in a reasonable manner. We had found out how to work the machine, and there was no reason in the world why we shouldn't fly from here to Kalamazoo.
So I took three quite small sniffs at reasonable intervals, and I was on the job once more.
I chased Lou around the suite ; and I dare say we did upset a good deal of the furniture, but that doesn't matter, for we haven't got to pick it up.
The important thing was that I caught Lou; and by-and-by we found ourselves completely out of breath; and then, confound it, just when I wanted a quiet pipe before lunch, the telephone rang, and the porter wanted to know if we were at home to Mr. Elgin Feccles.
Well, I told you before that I didn't care for the man so much as that. As Stevenson observes, if he were the only tie that bound one to home, I think most of us would vote for foreign travel. But he'd played the game pretty straight last night ; and hang it, one couldn't do less than invite the fellow to lunch. He might have a few more tips about the technique of this business anyhow. I'm not one of those cocksure fellows that imagine when they have one little scrap of knowledge, that they have drained the fount of wisdom dry.
So I said, " Ask hfin to be good enough to come up by all means."
Lou flew to the other room to fix her hair and her face and all those things that women always seem to be having to fix, and up comes Mr. Feccles with the most perfect manner that I have ever observed in any human being, and a string of kind inquiries and apologies on the tip of his tongue.
He said he wouldn't have bothered us by calling at all so soon after the case of indiscretion, only he felt sure he had left his cigarette case with us, and he valued it very much because it had been given him by his Aunt Sophronia.
Well, you know, there it was, right on the table, or rather, under the table, because the table was on top of it.
When we got the table on its legs again, we saw, quite plainly that the cigarette case had been under it, and therefore must have been on top of it before it was overturned.
Feccles laughed heartily at the humorous character of the incident. I suppose it was funny in a sort of way. On the other hand, I don't think it was quite the thing to call attention to. However, I suppose the fellow had to have his cigarette case, and after all, when you do find a table upside down, it's not much good pretending