Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

IX

A LIGHTED CIGAR outlined unintelligible gestures in the shade, reflecting dimly in the lenses of Hamilton's glasses. There was fire in the room and my cheeks flushed, though not because of the heat.

"John." 

"Your Excellency."

Hamilton sat in his armchair, facing the door, his eyes riveted on me. Here is the amusing part: my anxiety at once tightened abruptly into formality. I bowed my head, doing so out of amiability, fully convinced that I was agreeably flattering his vanity. I had noticed long before that this vainglorious, spoiled gentleman, this "benefactor," was simply trying to curry favor with me, even with avidity. He liked it when I acknowledged his superiority.

Hamilton stood up, smiled, and affably offered me an easy chair facing him. I sat down, ashamed and trembling all over. He produced on me the impression of some sort of reptile, some huge spider. He was enjoying his taunts at me. He was playing with me like a cat with a mouse, supposing that I was altogether in his power. It seemed to me (and I understood it) that he took a certain pleasure, found a certain sensual gratification in the shamelessness; he savored my fear.

"Will you have tea?" inquired Hamilton, but with an air, of course, which would prompt a polite refusal. I shook my head and stared at my hands. They shook. "From fear," I thought. "It's a trick! He wants to decoy me there, poison me... The worst of it is I'm almost light-headed... I may not be able to defend myself..."

"Are you ill?"

I raised my head and looked him in the face, bringing out my feelings with a tell-tale blush of shame; and then there came across me as in a flash the memory of everything that had happened, and the fight, and the hot confessions and the kiss that I was even now feeling, the impulsive promise to come back—and now, to find myself full of this, looking round for things—this divan, this table... Immediately I was going to say something offensive, I wanted to hit him even, but in a second I stopped myself and decided to wait. 

"No, I am not. Just tired."

Hamilton nodded.

"I am tired, too. The party was something else."

A moment of silence. Lighted up by the fire Hamilton's face seemed thin and irregular, and the deep darkness of his eye sockets gave him an air of exhaustion. He looked like a wounded man or one who has undergone some terrible physical suffering. Although I really liked his glasses – they made him look older, by five years at least. His irregular features seemed more sophisticated.

Hamilton took off his spectacles like an automaton, wiped them leisurely, put them on his nose, then looked at me.

"Well, how does it feel? To come back to social life?"       

I see, he is going for a long shot. 

"I don't know."     

"Is that alright?"

"I don't know," I repeated, simpering painfully. "I did not come back to social life; also I have the honor to remain your garçon... That is, not yours... In a wide sense. Although, perhaps I can call myself yours, and not a garçon only... Quelque chose comme un laquais, n'est-ce pas? Yet I remain your waiter. Not yours, that is. In a wide sense..."

I went red like a catfish. Hamilton could not help laughing.

"True, true. But still, you amaze me — I usually need three days or so to recover, and you look so well already..."

This remark confounded me. I had a foreboding from the very beginning that this was all premeditated, and that there was some motive behind it, but I was in such a position that whatever happened I was bound to listen to him. But at the same time I marveled at his power of controlling himself and hiding his feelings in a patient who the previous day had, like a monomaniac, fallen into a frenzy because of whiskey.