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, when the dressing-gown came to solve the problem.
We had only been a few days on the stunt, and what we had got from three or four sniffs, to begin with, meant almost perpetual stoking to carry on. However, that didn't matter, because we had an ample supply. There must have been a couple of kilograms of either C. or H. in that kimono. And when you think that an eighth of a gain is rather a big dose of H., you can easily calculate what a wonderful time you can have on a pound.
You remember how it goes-twenty grains one penny-weight, three penny-weights one scruple-I forget how many scruples one drachm, eight drachms one ounce, twelve ounces one pound.
I've got it all wrong. I could never understand English weights and measures. I have never met any one who could. But the point is you could go on a long time on one-eighth of a grain if you have a pound of the stuff.
Well, this will put it all right for you. Fifteen grains is one gramme, and a thousand grammes is a kilogramme, and a kilogramme is two point two pounds. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether it's a sixteen-ounce pound or a twelve-ounce pound. But I don't see what it matters anyway, if you've got a pound of snow or H. you can go on for a long while, but apparently it's rather awkward orchestrating them.
Quain says that people accustomed to opium and its derivatives can take an enormous amount of cocaine without any bother. In the ordinary way, half a grain of cocaine can cause death, but we were taking the stuff with absolute carelessness.
One doesn't think of measuring it as one would if one took it by hypodermic. One just takes a dose when one feels one needs it. After all, that's the rule of nature. Eat when you're hungry. Nothing is worse for the health than settling down to a fixed ration of so many meals a day.
The grand old British principle of three meat meals has caused the supply of uric acid to exceed the demand in a most reprehensible manner.
Physiology and economics, and, I should think, even geology, combine to protest.
Now we were living an absolutely wholesome life. We took a sniff of cocaine whenever the pace slackened up, and one of heroin when the cocaine showed any signs of taking the bit in its teeth.
What one needs is sound common sense to take reasonable measures according to the physiological indications. One needs elasticity. It's simply spiritual socialism to tie oneself down to fixed doses whether one needs them or not. Nature is the best guide. We had got on to the game.
Our misadventure at the Petit Savoyard had taught us wisdom. We were getting stronger on the wing every hour.
That chap Coud is a piker, as they say in America. "Every day, in every way, I get better and better," indeed ? The man must simply have been carried away by the rhyme. Why wait for a day ? We had got to the stage where every minute counted.
As the Scotchman said to his son, half-way through the ten-mile walk to kirk, when the boy said, " It's a braw day the day." " Is this a day to be ta'king o' days ?
Thinking of days makes you think of years, and thinking of years makes you think of death, which is ridiculous.
Lou and I were living minute by minute, second by second. A tick of the clock marked for us an interval of eternity.
We were the heirs of eternal life. We had nothing to do with death. That was a pretty wise bird who said, "To-morrow never comes."
We were out of time and space. We were living according to the instruction of our Saviour Take no thought for the morrow."
A great restlessness gripped us. Paris was perfectly impossible. We had to get to some place where time doesn't count.
The alternation of day and night doesn't matter so much ; but it's absolutely intolerable to be mixed up with people who are working by the clock.
We were living in the world of the Arabian Nights; limitations were abhorrent, Paris was always reminding us of the Pigmies, who lived, if you call it living, in a system of order.
It is monstrous and ridiculous to open and close by convention. We had to go to some place where such things didn't annoy us... *
An excessively irritating incident spoilt our lunch at the Cascade, We had made a marvellous impression when we