CHAPTER V
THE PHANTOM THAT ROSE FROM THE BOTTLE
The demon of the flute laughed and fell silent. The house grew veryquiet. A fresh log built its ragged shell of color within the libraryand Carl drank again and again, watching the play of firelight upon theamber liquor in his glass. It pleased him idly to build up aphilosophy of whiskey, an impudent, fearless reverie of fact and fancy.
"So," he finished carelessly, "every bottle is a crystal temple to thegreat god Bacchus and who may know what phantom lurks within, ready torise and grow from the fumes of its fragrant incense into a nebulouswraith of gigantic proportions. Many a bottle such as this has madehistory and destroyed it. A sparkling essence of tears and jest, ofromance and passion and war and grotesquerie, of treachery and ironyand blood and death, whose temper no man may know until he tests itthrough the alchemy of his brain and soul!"
To Starrett it gave a heavy courtesy; to Payson a mad buffoonery; toWherry pathos; to Carl himself--ah!--there was the rub! To Carl itsmessage was as capricious as the wind--a moon-mad chameleon changingits color with the fickle light. And in the bottle to-night lay afierce, unreasoning resentment against Diane.
"Fool!" said Carl. "One mad, eloquent lie of love and she would havesoftened. Women are all like that. Tell me," Carl stared whimsicallyinto his glass as if it were a magic crystal of revelation, "why is itthat when I am scrupulously honest no one understands? . . . Why thatmad stir of love-hunger to-night as Diane stood in the doorway? Whythe swift black flash of hatred now? Are love and hatred then akin?"
The clock struck three. Carl's brain, flaming, keen, master of thebottle save for its subtle inspiration of wounded pride and resentment,brooded morosely over Diane, over the defection of his parasiticcompanions, over the final leap into the abyss of parsimony and Diane'sflash of contempt at the mention of his mother. Half of Diane's moneywas rightly his--his mother's portion. And he could love vehemently,cleanly, if he willed, with the delicate white fire which few men werefine enough to know. . . . In the soft hollow of Diane's hand had lainthe destiny of a man who had the will to go unerringly the way hechose. . . . Love and hunger--they were the great trenchant appetitesof the human race: one for its creation, the other for itsperpetuation. . . . To every man came first the call of passion; thenthe love-hunger for a perfect mate. The latter had come to himto-night as Diane stood in the doorway, a slender, vibrant flame oflife keyed exquisitely for the finer, subtler things and hatingeverything 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, hadrefused him justice, salvation, respect to the memory of hismother! . . . So be it! . . . His to wrench from the mocking,gold-hungry world whatever he could and however he would. . . . Onlyhis mother had understood. . . . And Diane had mocked her memory.Still there had been thrilling moments of tenderness for him in Diane'slife. . . . But Diane was like that--a flash of fire and thenbewildering 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 andgold--they were indissolubly linked one with the other and the demon ofthe bottle had danced wild dances with each of them. A mad trio!After all, there was only one beside his mother who had ever understoodhim--Philip Poynter, his roommate at Yale. And Philip's lazy voicesomehow floated from the fire to-night.
"Carl," he had said, "you've bigger individual problems to solve thanany man I know. You could head a blood revolution in South Americathat would outrage the world; or devise a hellish philosophy ofhedonism that by its very ingenuity would seduce a continent intobarking after false gods. You've an inexplicable chemistry ofungovernable passions and wild whims and you may go through hell firstbut 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 andgrit to balance the rest."
Well, Philip Poynter was a staunch optimist with oppressive ideals, asplendid, free-handed fellow with brains and will and infernalpersistence.
Four o'clock and the log dying! The city outside was a dark, clinkingworld of milkmen and doubtful stragglers, Carl finished the whiskey inhis glass and rose. His brain was very drunk--that he knew--for everylife current in his body swept dizzily to his forehead, focusing thereinto whirling inferno, but his legs he could always trust. He steppedto the table and lurched heavily. Mocking, treacherous demon of thebottle! His legs had failed him. Fiercely he flung out his arm toregain his balance. It struck a candelabrum, a giant relic of ancientwood as tall as himself. It toppled and fell with its candled branchesin the fire. Where the log broke a flame shot forth, lapping the darkwood 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 Spanishroom 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 burningcandlestick, doubtless a silent sentry at many a drinking bout of oldwhen roistering knights gathered about the scarred slab of table-woodbeneath his fingers. A pity though! Artistically the carven thing wassplendid.
Cursing himself for a notional fool, Carl jerked the candlestick fromthe fire and beat out the flames. The heavy top snapped off in hishands. The falling wood disclosed a hollow receptacle below thebranches . . . a charred paper. Well, there was always some insanewhim of Norman Westfall's coming to light somewhere and this doubtlesswas one of them.
The paper was very old and yellow, the handwriting unmistakablyforeign. French, was it not? The firelight was too fitful to tell.Carl switched on the light in the cluster of old iron lanterns abovethe table and frowned heavily at the paper. No, it was the precise,formal English of a foreigner, with here and there a ludicrous erroramong the stilted phrases. And as Carl read, a gust of wild,incredulous laughter echoed suddenly through the quiet room. Again heread, cursing the dizzy fever of his head. Houdania! Houdania! Wherewas Houdania? Surely the name was familiar. With a superhuman effortof will he clenched his hands and jaws and sat motionless, seeking thedifficult boon of concentration. Out of the maelstrom of his mindhaltingly it came, and with it memory in panoramic flashes.
Once more he heard the clatter of cavalry galloping up a windingmountain road to a gabled city whose roofs and turrets glinted ruddilyin the westering sun. There had been royalty abroad with a brilliantescort, handsome, dark-skinned men with a lingering trace of Arab aboutthe eyes, who galloped rapidly by him up the winding road to the littlekingdom in the mountains. Houdania!--yes that was it--of course.Houdania! A Lilliputian monarchy of ardent patriots. There had been aflaming sunset behind the turrets of a castle and he had climbedup--up--up to the gabled kingdom, seeking, away from the track of thetourist, relief from the exotic gayety of his rocketing over Europe.And high above the elfin kingdom on a wooded ravine where a silverrivulet leaped and sang along the mountain, a gray and lonely monasteryhad offered him a cell of retreat.
Houdania! Yes, he had found Houdania. Philip Poynter had told him ofthe monastery months before. Philip liked to seek and find thepicturesque. Thus had he come into Andorra in the Pyrenees and Wisbyin the Baltic. And he--Carl--had found Houdania. But what of it? Ah,yes, the burning candlestick--the paper--the paper! And again a gustof laughter drowned the fitful crackle of the fire. There was gold athis hand--great, tempting quantities of it!
"When the test comes, you'll ring true," came the crackle of Philip'svoice from the fire. "Mark that, old man, you'll ring true. I tellyou, I know." Well, Philip Poynter was his only friend. But Philipwas off somewhere, gone out of his life this many a day in acharacteristic burst of quixotism.
Carl laughed and shuddered, for a mad instant he held the temptingyellow paper above the fire--and drew it back, stared at the charredcandlestick and laughed again--but there was nothing of laughter in hiseyes.
They were darkly ironic and triumphant. There was blood in thefire--and gold--and Diane had mocked his mother. With a groan Carlflung his arms out passionately upon the table, torn by a conflict ofthe strangely warring forces within him. And with his head droopingheavily forward upon his hands he lay there until the melancholy dawngrayed the room into shadowy distinctness, his angle of vision twistedand maimed by the demon of the bottle. The candlestick loomedstrangely forth from the still grayness; the bottle took form; theyellowed paper glimmered on the table. Carl stirred and a spasm ofmirthless 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 togrow in time to a wraith of gigantic proportions. In the bottleto-night had lain tears and jest and love unending, romance andpassion, treachery and irony--blood and the shadow of Death.