THE PHANTOM THAT ROSE FROM THE BOTTLE
The demon of the flute laughed and fell silent. The house grew very
quiet. A fresh log built its ragged shell of color within the library
and Carl drank again and again, watching the play of firelight upon the
amber liquor in his glass. It pleased him idly to build up a
philosophy of whiskey, an impudent, fearless reverie of fact and fancy.
"So," he finished carelessly, "every bottle is a crystal temple to the
great god Bacchus and who may know what phantom lurks within, ready to
rise and grow from the fumes of its fragrant incense into a nebulous
wraith of gigantic proportions. Many a bottle such as this has made
history and destroyed it. A sparkling essence of tears and jest, of
romance and passion and war and grotesquerie, of treachery and irony
and blood and death, whose temper no man may know until he tests it
through the alchemy of his brain and soul!"
To Starrett it gave a heavy courtesy; to Payson a mad buffoonery; to
Wherry pathos; to Carl himself--ah!--there was the rub! To Carl its
message was as capricious as the wind--a moon-mad chameleon changing
its color with the fickle light. And in the bottle to-night lay a
fierce, unreasoning resentment against Diane.
"Fool!" said Carl. "One mad, eloquent lie of love and she would have
softened. Women are all like that. Tell me," Carl stared whimsically
into his glass as if it were a magic crystal of revelation, "why is it
that when I am scrupulously honest no one understands? . . . Why that
mad stir of love-hunger to-night as Diane stood in the doorway? Why
the swift black flash of hatred now? Are love and hatred then akin?"
The clock struck three. Carl's brain, flaming, keen, master of the
bottle save for its subtle inspiration of wounded pride and resentment,
brooded morosely over Diane, over the defection of his parasitic
companions, over the final leap into the abyss of parsimony and Diane's
flash of contempt at the mention of his mother. Half of Diane's money
was rightly his--his mother's portion. And he could love vehemently,
cleanly, if he willed, with the delicate white fire which few men were
fine enough to know. . . . In the soft hollow of Diane's hand had lain
the destiny of a man who had the will to go unerringly the way he
chose. . . . Love and hunger--they were the great trenchant appetites
of the human race: one for its creation, the other for its
perpetuation. . . . To every man came first the call of passion; then
the love-hunger for a perfect mate. The latter had come to him
to-night as Diane stood in the doorway, a slender, vibrant flame of
life keyed exquisitely for the finer, subtler things and hating
everything else.
Still he drank, but the fires of hell were rising now in his eyes.
There was treachery in the bottle. . . . Diane, he chose to fancy, had
refused him justice, salvation, respect to the memory of his
mother! . . . So be it! . . . His to wrench from the mocking,
gold-hungry world whatever he could and however he would. . . . Only
his mother had understood. . . . And Diane had mocked her memory.
Still there had been thrilling moments of tenderness for him in Diane's
life. . . . But Diane was like that--a flash of fire and then
bewildering sweetness. There was the spot Starrett's glass had struck;
there the ancient carven chair in which Diane had mocked his mother;
there was red--blood-red in the dying log--and gold. Blood and
gold--they were indissolubly linked one with the other and the demon of
the bottle had danced wild dances with each of them. A mad trio!
After all, there was only one beside his mother who had ever understood
him--Philip Poynter, his roommate at Yale. And Philip's lazy voice
somehow floated from the fire to-night.
"Carl," he had said, "you've bigger individual problems to solve than
any man I know. You could head a blood revolution in South America
that would outrage the world; or devise a hellish philosophy of
hedonism that by its very ingenuity would seduce a continent into
barking after false gods. You've an inexplicable chemistry of
ungovernable passions and wild whims and you may go through hell first
but when the final test comes--you'll ring true. Mark that, old man,
you'll ring true. I tell you I _know_! There's sanity and will and
grit to balance the rest."
Well, Philip Poynter was a staunch optimist with oppressive ideals, a
splendid, free-handed fellow with brains and will and infernal
persistence.
Four o'clock and the log dying! The city outside was a dark, clinking
world of milkmen and doubtful stragglers, Carl finished the whiskey in
his glass and rose. His brain was very drunk--that he knew--for every
life current in his body swept dizzily to his forehead, focusing there
into whirling inferno, but his legs he could always trust. He stepped
to the table and lurched heavily. Mocking, treacherous demon of the
bottle! His legs had failed him. Fiercely he flung out his arm to
regain his balance. It struck a candelabrum, a giant relic of ancient
wood as tall as himself. It toppled and fell with its candled branches
in the fire. Where the log broke a flame shot forth, lapping the dark
wood with avid tongue. With a crackle the age-old wood began to burn.
Carl watched it with a slight smile. It pleased him to watch it burn.
That would hurt Diane, for everything in this beautiful old Spanish
room linked her subtly to her mother. Yes, it would hurt her cruelly.
Beyond, at the other end of the table, stood a mate to the burning
candlestick, doubtless a silent sentry at many a drinking bout of old
when roistering knights gathered about the scarred slab of table-wood
beneath his fingers. A pity though! Artistically the carven thing was
splendid.
Cursing himself for a notional fool, Carl jerked the candlestick from
the fire and beat out the flames. The heavy top snapped off in his
hands. The falling wood disclosed a hollow receptacle below the
branches . . . a charred paper. Well, there was always some insane
whim of Norman Westfall's coming to light somewhere and this doubtless
was one of them.
The paper was very old and yellow, the handwriting unmistakably
foreign. French, was it not? The firelight was too fitful to tell.
Carl switched on the light in the cluster of old iron lanterns above
the table and frowned heavily at the paper. No, it was the precise,
formal English of a foreigner, with here and there a ludicrous error
among the stilted phrases. And as Carl read, a gust of wild,
incredulous laughter echoed suddenly through the quiet room. Again he
read, cursing the dizzy fever of his head. Houdania! Houdania! Where
was Houdania? Surely the name was familiar. With a superhuman effort
of will he clenched his hands and jaws and sat motionless, seeking the
difficult boon of concentration. Out of the maelstrom of his mind
haltingly it came, and with it memory in panoramic flashes.
Once more he heard the clatter of cavalry galloping up a winding
mountain road to a gabled city whose roofs and turrets glinted ruddily
in the westering sun. There had been royalty abroad with a brilliant
escort, handsome, dark-skinned men with a lingering trace of Arab about
the eyes, who galloped rapidly by him up the winding road to the little
kingdom in the mountains. Houdania!--yes that was it--of course.
Houdania! A Lilliputian monarchy of ardent patriots. There had been a
flaming sunset behind the turrets of a castle and he had climbed
up--up--up to the gabled kingdom, seeking, away from the track of the
tourist, relief from the exotic gayety of his rocketing over Europe.
And high above the elfin kingdom on a wooded ravine where a silver
rivulet leaped and sang along the mountain, a gray and lonely monastery
had offered him a cell of retreat.
Houdania! Yes, he had found Houdania. Philip Poynter had told him of
the monastery months before. Philip liked to seek and find the
picturesque. Thus had he come into Andorra in the Pyrenees and Wisby
in the Baltic. And he--Carl--had found Houdania. But what of it? Ah,
yes, the burning candlestick--the paper--the paper! And again a gust
of laughter drowned the fitful crackle of the fire. There was gold at
his hand--great, tempting quantities of it!
"When the test comes, you'll ring true," came the crackle of Philip's
voice from the fire. "Mark that, old man, you'll ring true. I tell
you, I know." Well, Philip Poynter was his only friend. But Philip
was off somewhere, gone out of his life this many a day in a
characteristic burst of quixotism.
Carl laughed and shuddered, for a mad instant he held the tempting
yellow paper above the fire--and drew it back, stared at the charred
candlestick and laughed again--but there was nothing of laughter in his
eyes. They were darkly ironic and triumphant. There was blood in the
fire--and gold--and Diane had mocked his mother. With a groan Carl
flung his arms out passionately upon the table, torn by a conflict of
the strangely warring forces within him. And with his head drooping
heavily forward upon his hands he lay there until the melancholy dawn
grayed the room into shadowy distinctness, his angle of vision twisted
and maimed by the demon of the bottle. The candlestick loomed
strangely forth from the still grayness; the bottle took form; the
yellowed paper glimmered on the table. Carl stirred and a spasm of
mirthless laughter shook him.
"So," he said, "Philip Poynter loses--and I--I write to Houdania!"
So from the bottle rose a phantom of glittering gold and temptation to
grow in time to a wraith of gigantic proportions. In the bottle
to-night had lain tears and jest and love unending, romance and
passion, treachery and irony--blood and the shadow of Death.