Oh, fatal day that he placed again to his lips the maddening glass! All have seen how dangerous is such a relapse. It is generally a sudden and hopeless fall. It was so in the case of this poor fellow. He took the first glass, and, liking its effects, took a second and a third before stopping. If he awoke in the morning to remember his troubles, he drank all day to forget them, and fell at night into a heavy sleep. He zealously followed the medical prescription--nay, he quite overdid it, and kept himself not "slightly" under the influence of alcohol. And in a short space of time, if his master or his mistress remonstrated with him, it was not for total abstinence from intoxicating spirits, but for the opposite extreme of an habitual intemperance. Such was the state of affairs at Red Hill for a few weeks, during which Valentine had no direct or certain intelligence of Fannie and his little child.
I pray thee take thy fingers from my throat: For though I am not splenetive and rash, Yet have I in me something dangerous, Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand!--SHAKESPEARE.
One morning, near the last of August--yet, stay! Such mornings dawn unheralded by any sign to warn us what the fated day shall bring forth ere its close. Such mornings dawn as other mornings do--the doomed men and women rise as other people do--as you or I arose this morning, upon the dread day that unpremeditated crime or sudden death shall fix their mortal doom forever.
That morning Mr. Waring arose, feeling rather unwell and irritable, which was no unusual circumstance of late, for he was chafing between two conflicting interests, one of which called him away, while the other bound him at home. He was very anxious, with his wife, to leave the neighborhood of the infected city; but, in the present condition of affairs he hesitated to trust the plantation and negroes to the care of the overseer.
Valentine arose with the same heavy heart that had marked his waking hours for many days, yet dressed himself and combed his raven black curls with the habitual regard to neatness and beauty that had become a second nature. And it was curious to see how this habit of neatness and elegance lasted through all the darkest hours of his life.