Not the thirst of the throat,
Though that be the wildest and worst Of physical pangs that smote
Alone to the heart of Christ,
Wringing the one wild cry
'I thirst' from His agony,
While the soldiers drank and diced."
He thought he was Jesus on the Cross instead of the Dragon, as he really is. It makes me very nervous about him.
When he had finished reciting, his strength suddenly failed him, and he collapsed. The clatter of the fire-irons was the most hideous noise that I had ever heard....
When I can summon up enough strength to write in my diary, the pain leaves me. I see that there are two people here. I, myself, am the Woman clothed with the Sun, writing down my experiences. The other is Lou Pendragon, an animal dying in agony from thirst.
I said the last word aloud, and Peter caught it up. He crawled away from the grate towards me croaking out
" Not the thirst benign
That calls the worker to wine;
Not the bodily thirst
(Though that be frenzy accurst)
When the mouth is full of sand,
And the eyes are gummed up, and the ears Trick the soul till it hears
Water, water at hand,
When a man will dig his nails
In his breast, and drink the blood
Already that clots and stales Ere his tongue can tip its flood."
His mind had gone back to infancy. He thought that I was his mother, and came to me to be nursed.
But when he came near, he recognised me and crawled away again, hurriedly, like a wounded animal trying to escape from the hunter....
Most of the time, when we have energy to talk at all, we discuss how to get more H. and C. The C. has been finished long ago. It's no good without the H. We could go to Germany and get it ; or even to London, but something keeps us from decision.
I, of course, know what it is. It is necessary for me to undergo these torments that I may be purified completely from the flesh.
But Peter doesn't understand at all. He blames me bitterly. We go over the whole thing again and again. Every incident since we met is taken in turn as the cause of our misery.
Sometimes his brutal lust revives in his mind. He thinks I am a vampire sent from Hell to destroy him; and he gloats over the idea. I cannot make him understand that I am the woman clothed with the sun.
When he gets those ideas, they arouse similar thoughts in me. But they are only thoughts.
I am afraid of him. He might shoot me in a mad fit. He has got a target pistol, a very old one with long, thin bullets, and carries it about all the time. He never mentions the Germans now. He talks about a gang of hypnotists that have got hold of him, and put evil thoughts in his mind. He says that if he could shoot one of them it would break the spell. He tells me not to look at him as I do ; but I have to be on the watch lest he should attack me.
Then he mixes up my hypnotic gaze with ideas of passion. He keeps on repeating:
" Steadily stares and squarely, Nor needs to fondle and wheedle Her slave agasp for a kiss,
Hers whose horror is his That knows that viper womb, Speckled and barred with black On its rusty amber scales, Is his tomb The straining, groaning rack On which he wails-he wails! "
He takes an acute delight in the intensity of his suffering. He is wildly proud to think that he has been singled out to undergo more atrocious torments than had ever been conceived of before.
He sees me as the principal instrument of the torture, and loves me with perverse diabolical lust for that reason, yet the whole thing is a delusion on his part, or else it is a necessary consequence of his changing into the Dragon.
It is only natural that there should be strange incidents in a case of that sort, especially as it never happened before. It is wonderful and terrible to be unique. But, of course, he is not really unique in the way that I am....
We have lighted a huge fire in the billiard-room. We sleep there so far as we sleep at all. We got the waiter to bring down blankets and quilts from the bedroom, and he leaves the food on the table.
But fires are no good. The cold comes from inside us. We sit in front of the blaze, roasting our hands and faces; but it makes no difference. We shiver.
We try to sing like soldiers round a camp fire, but the only words that come are the appropriate ones. That poem has obsessed us. It fills our souls to the exclusion of everything else except the thirst.
" Every separate bone
Cold, an incarnate groan Distilled from the icy sperm Of Hell's implacable worm."
We repeated them over and over....
I don't know how one thing ever turns into another. We are living in an eternity of damnation. It is a mystery how we ever get from the fire to the table or the two big Chesterfields. Every action is a separate agony rising to a climax which never comes. There is no possibility of accomplishment or of peace. " Every separate nerve
Awake and alert, on a curve Whose asymptote's name is 'never' In a hyperbolic 'for ever ! ' "
I don't know what some of the words mean. But there is a fascination about them. They give the idea of something without limit. Death has become impossible, because death is definite. Nothing can really ever happen. I am in a perpetual state of pain. Everything is equally anguish. I suppose one state changes into another to prevent the edge being taken off the suffering. It would be incredibly blissful if one could experience something new, however abominable. The man that wrote that poem has left out nothing. Everything that comes into my mind is no more than an echo of his groans.
" Body and soul alike
Traitors turned black-hearted, Seeking a place to strike In a victim already attuned To one vast chord of wound."
The rhythm of the poem, apart from the words, suggests this moto Perbetuo vibration. Yet the nervous irritability tends to exhaust itself as such. It is so unendurable ; the only escape seems to be if one could transform it into action. The poison filters through into the blood. I am itching to do something horrible and insane.
" Every drop of the river
Of blood aflame and a-quiver With poison secret and sourWith a sudden twitch at the last Like certain jagged daggers."
When Peter crosses the room, I see him
" With blood-shot eyes dull-glassed The screaming Malay staggers Through his village aghast."
It is natural and inevitable that he should murder me. I wish he were not so weak. Anything to end it all.
The medical books said that if one didn't die outright from abstention, the craving would slowly wear off. I think Peter is already a little stronger. But I am so young to die ! He complains constantly of vermin under his skin. He says he could bear that ; but the idea of being driven mad by the hypnotists is more than any man can be expected to stand....
I felt I should scream if I went on a moment longer; and by scream I don't mean just an ordinary scream, I mean that I should scream and scream and scream and never stop.
The wind is howling like that. The summer has died suddenly-without a warning, and the world is screaming in agony. It is only the echo of the waffing for my own lost soul. The angels never come to me now. Have I forfeited my position ? I am conscious of nothing but this tearing, stabbing, gnawing pain, this restless raging trembling of the body, this malignant groping of a mad surgeon in the open wound of my Soul.
I am so bitter, bitter cold. Yet I can't stand the room. Peter is lying helplessly on the couch. He follows me about with his eyes. He seems to be afraid that he will be caught out in something. It's like it was when