248 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
I believe it was this alone that dragged us up from
the dirty bed from which we had not moved for weeks,
sunk in a state which was neither sleep nor waking.
It was by a gigantic effort that I got up and put some
clothes on, and went out and got shaved. Nothing but
excitement and the idea of death enabled me to do it.
I found the same thing in the war; and so did lots of
men.
It seems as if the soul is tired of the body, and welcomes
the chance to be done with it once and for all. But it
wants to offer itself gallantly in a flight or a charge.
It objects to dyingin a ditch passively. I am sure that
.nothing less would have got us up from that foetid
stupor. |
We had some champagne before starting, and then
tottered giddily over the unfamiliar streets. There was
something faintly attractive about the bustle of
humanity. There was a momentary regret about
leaving it. Yet we had already left it so long, so long
ago, in every intelligible sense of the word. We should,
I suppose, have been classed as human beings by
statisticians, but surely by nobody else. We could
never return to their midst. And even in the midst of
our wretchedness, we felt a repulsion of contempt for
the ruck of humanity which made us content to widen
the gap between them and ourselves. Why preserve
the outward semblance of these futile insects? Even
their happiness disgusted us; it was so stupidly
aewstiallow.
We could see that the people of the Wisteria were
shocked at our appearance. The mattre d’hotel bustled
over and made some sympathetic remarks about our
not having been there for a (long time. I told him that
we had both been very ill; |and-then-Eow put in;-in. a
“ We shall -be-better-te-night,”
der intonation was so sinister that the man almost
d. I was afraid for the moment that everything
be spoilt, but I saved the situation by some silly