THE BOTTLE DEMON.
Oh! that men should put an enemy in
Their mouths to steal away their brains; that we
Should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause,
Transform ourselves into beasts!
Oh! thou invisible Spirit of wine,
If thou hast no name to be known by,
Let us call thee Devil!--SHAKESPEARE.
After an absence of fifteen months, Oswald Waring and his inseparable
companion, Valentine, returned home.
Not in all respects was the master or the man improved by travel, as
circumstances soon demonstrated.
Mr. Waring brought back the same benevolent, careless, mirthful, yet
occasionally arrogant temper, that had always distinguished him; and
Valentine, the same affectionate, aspiring, quick, inflammable nature,
that made his conduct so uncertain.
The character of Oswald might have been easily read in his personal
appearance. He was a rather handsome specimen of a pure Anglo-Saxon; he
was of medium height, of a stout and well-set form; with a round head,
smooth, white, receding forehead, shaded with thickly clustered curls of
auburn hair; prominent, clear, light-blue eyes, whose prevailing
expression was that of frank mirthfulness; a straight nose; a
well-curved, but rather sensual mouth; and a full, rounded chin, that,
altogether, made up a countenance whose chief characteristics were good
nature, sensuality and gayety. His dress was equally remarkable for the
costliness of its material and the negligence of its arrangement; and
left the point at issue, whether the costume were the more extravagant
or the more slovenly. His manners were marked by habitual cheerfulness,
good temper and love of merriment. And, though he rarely emitted a flash
of wit, he was ever the quickest to appreciate that gift in others; and
it must have been a dull jest, indeed, that his ready laugh did not
hail. And it is not unlikely that to his sincere, hearty, contagious
laughter he owed a great deal of his popularity among men, and women
too. For who does not love a good laugher?
Valentine was in almost every respect the antipodes of his master, yet
resembled him in this, that his nature also might be easily read in his
dark but singularly beautiful face. I use the term "beautiful" instead
of the other term "handsome" advisedly, as more proper to the subject
under description. Valentine was rather below the medium height, and
slightly but elegantly formed, with a stately little head, delicate
aquiline features, a complexion dark as a Spaniard's, bluish-black hair
falling in many well-trained curls around the dark face, and light-blue
eyes so deeply veiled under their thicket of long, close lashes, that it
was only in moments of excitement, when they suddenly lightened, that
their strange, startling, almost terrible contrast to the blackness of
the hair and darkness of the skin could be noticed. In the matter of
dress, Valentine was fastidious to a degree. In other circumstances, he
might have been an exquisite and a _petit maitre_, as his master often
laughingly called him. As it was, the youth was undeniably a dandy; but
his love of dress was to be attributed fully as much to his innate love
of order, beauty, and propriety, as to his coxcombry. His fine
raven-black hair--his "favorite vanity," was carefully kept, and trained
to fall in those faultless ringlets; and it is upon record, that when
the owner was not in full dress, that "splendid head of hair" was
carefully bound down from injury by sun or dust, under a double silk
bandanna, arranged in the graceful folds and twists of a Turkish turban.
Valentine's "foppery" was a never-failing source of merriment to his
fun-loving master--though I think the boy's love of dress could scarcely
with fairness be called foppery, since he was never known to try the
effects of his most elegant toilet upon the hearts of any of the young
girls of his class, until his own heart was seriously engaged.
Valentine's deportment was characterized by habitual pensiveness and
reserve, occasionally broken by sudden unaccountable fits of excitement,
strange flights of fancy, and startling, frightful paroxysms of passion,
having many of the features of incipient insanity. These were
undoubtedly to be attributed to the antagonistic constituents of his
nature. What alchemy but the all-powerful grace of God could ever
harmonize the discordant elements of a being deriving his descent from
three races so different as the Indian, the Negro, and the Saxon, and
reconcile him to the position in which this boy was placed?
Mr. Waring, soon after his return home, began to lead a wild, reckless
life. He kept bachelor's hall at Red Hill, in extravagant style.
Frequent dinners, suppers, and wine parties, with cards, billiards,
dice, etc., converted the quiet old country house into a scene of wild
midnight orgies, with drinking, song-singing, and gambling, that
threatened soon to leave the young spendthrift without a house to revel
in, or a dollar to revel on.
And almost every day, when there was not a party at the house, Valentine
would have to drive his master in the buggy to the town. Upon such
occasions, the master would go to some favorite restaurant or billiard
saloon, or perhaps to some wine or card party, to which he had been
invited, while the man would take the buggy to the livery stable, and
lounge about town until the small hours of the morning, when he would
rouse the sleepy groom at the stables, get his buggy and horse, and take
his master home. Sometimes Mr. Waring would be slightly elevated by the
wine he had drank, but never to the degree of intoxication.
At first, and for a long while, Valentine resisted the temptations of
the life into which he was led; but, in the course of time, those
listless hours of waiting in town wore away his good habits; and it at
last happened that, while the master was gambling and drinking in some
splendid saloon, the man would be imitating him in some humbler scene of
dissipation. And when he would have to drive Mr. Waring home, it not
unfrequently happened that both were under the influence of wine.
To poor Phaedra, who happily had some time since found that grace of God
that she had so long and humbly and earnestly desired, this conduct in
her young master and her son gave the greatest distress and anxiety.
With Valentine she often and earnestly expostulated; and the impressible
boy, for boy he continued to be to the day of his death, would promise
with tears in his eyes, to amend. Even with Oswald Waring, using the
privilege of the old nurse, she ventured to reason, faithfully,
fearlessly, sorrowfully.
But, in his thoughtless, good-humored way, he laughed in her face,
called her a well-meaning old woman, but advised her to attend to her
own concerns.
Yet Phaedra did not slacken in making what poor opposition she could to
the approach of ruin.
It was not the least deplorable and dangerous feature in the mutual
relations of Oswald Waring and his favorite slave that their mutual
positions often seemed temporarily reversed. Valentine would, upon
occasions, seem, or really for the hour be, the leader, and Oswald the
follower.
Unfortunately, Mr. Waring was singularly wanting in those qualities that
command habitual respect from inferiors; nay, he even lacked
self-respect and the dignity that it gives; while, more unhappily still,
his servant Valentine possessed a large share of self-esteem, that, in
his excitable nature, would, under provocation or temptation, rise to
insufferable insolence. And this frequently placed them in false and
trying attitudes toward each other. It was a baleful circumstance, too,
that when, under the effects of wine, the master fell from easy
good-nature into maudlin tenderness and sentimentality, varied by
eccentric impulses of domineering authority, all of which was extremely
distasteful and irritating to the servant, whose pride, instigated by
the like baleful spirit, would rise to an intolerable arrogance. It was
a situation full of dire bodency to both.
It happened one evening that Valentine had driven Mr. Waring into town
to be present at a wine and card party. It was late at night, or
speaking more accurately, early in the morning, when they were returning
home. It was difficult to say which of the two was most excited. Mr.
Waring was in his most maudlin mood of familiarity, Valentine
in his most insolent humor. Each perceived the intoxication of
the other, without being conscious of his own state. Oswald broke
out in a bacchanalian song, which he sung all wrong, and by
snatches--occasionally, in a sudden fit of maudlin affection, varying
the performance by throwing his arm around his servant, and hugging him
closely. Valentine bore this once, but, the second time it was repeated,
he shook his master's arm off, exclaiming: "I am not one of your
companions." But Oswald laughed aloud, rolled himself from side to side,
and breaking out into another low song:
"Life is all a wariorum,
And we cares not how it goes!"
"You will frighten the horses presently. Can't you behave yourself with
common decency?" exclaimed Valentine, shaking off the hand that had been
laid upon his shoulder.
"Let them talk about decorum,
As has characters to lose,"
sang the inebriate, chuckling and slapping the boy upon the back.
"If you do not be quiet, I'll get out of this buggy, and leave you to
drive home as you can," said Valentine, impatiently.
This seemed to amuse the other very much; he burst out into a peal of
laughter, falling back, and clasping his knees, and rolling with the
tipsy enjoyment of the joke. When he had laughed himself into a fit of
the hiccoughs, and hiccoughed himself into comparative calmness, he
still seemed to enjoy the drollery of the idea, and recommenced laughing
and singing by fits, and slapping Valentine upon the back.
"I tell you, if you do not quit this, I will get out!" exclaimed the
boy, angrily. "You a gentleman!"
This language, instead of rousing Oswald to anger, seemed to strike him
as the drollest of speeches, for he fell back into another peal of
laughter; and when he had recovered himself he began, not in
displeasure, but in a maudlin, jesting way, and with a very thick
utterance, to taunt Valentine:
"Why, you ins'lent f'low, do you know who you're talking to? You're a
spoiled negro--that is what you are! Now, don't you know, if I wa'n't
the most forgivin' f'low in the world, that I'd have you tied up and
whipt for such language?"
"Me?"
It is utterly impossible to convey in words any idea of the fierce,
savage, almost demoniac glare of hatred and defiance with which that
single monosyllable was uttered. But it was lost upon the tipsy master,
who replied, nodding and chuckling:
"Yes, you, my little fellow! and I think it will have to be done, too,
to bring you to a sense of your condition. Sit down, sir! What the devil
do you mean by standing up and looking at me in that way?"
Valentine had risen to his feet, still unconsciously holding the reins,
but no longer guiding the horses, who went on their own way, while he
stood and glared at his master, with an almost maniacal light blazing
from those pale-gray eyes.
"Sit down, sir, I say! What the h--ll do you mean? Sit down, I say, or,
by the Lord Harry! I'll do as I've threatened!"
This is not a proper scene to go on with. Both were mad with wine, and
one also with rage. The master, though not angry, nor by any means
disposed to punish, grew every moment, from very wantonness, more
taunting in his manner--the man became each instant more insolent; words
rose higher between them; Valentine grew frenzied, dashed his clenched
fist with all his strength into his master's face, and sprang from the
buggy, leaving him to his fate.