Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

II

HAMILTON had not come to see me since. I do not blame him for that and, to be frank, never did I blame him. What was really at the bottom of it was our quarreling, our mutual recriminations at the time, in fact, wounded vanity on both sides. I don't know what hurt him more: my words or the fact that I lived. All my slavish life was here, on the palm of my hand, with all its cynicism, monstrous and coarse injustice. My illness was looked upon as lightly and facetiously, just as simply and without suffering, as a cold would be; my infection was treated with vodka and nettle– Hamilton did not wish to provide any sort of remedy. He had treated me with such absence of even a hint at endearment, with such disdain and wooden indifference, as no human being is treated; not even a dog or a horse, and not even an umbrella or boot, but like some dirty object, for which a momentary, unavoidable need arises, but which, at the passing of its needfulness, becomes foreign and useless. Perhaps he was taking revenge for all the evenings that he had wasted on me.

All the time I was ill felt as in a dream, as through a mist. I remember clearly waking up and always seeing Vella's compassionate and anxious little face leaning over me. She brought me something to drink, arranged my bedclothes, changed my bandages, or sat looking at me, quiet and distressed like a ghost. Another time, suddenly waking up in the night, by the light of the oil lamp I saw her lying with her face on my pillow with her cheek resting on her hand, and her lips half parted in an uneasy sleep.  Once I remember her gentle kiss on my forehead.

Two weeks passed, and on Saturday I woke up almost fully recovered– only the uneasiness of the body and my usual pain in the back reminded me of illness. My wounds did not heal, yet they stopped bleeding. I sat up and stretched, feeling I had cast off that fearful illness that had so long been weighing upon me, and all at once there was a sense of relief and peace in my soul. I got up and went back and forth across the room. Strange to say, now that I am sitting alone in a prison cell, abandoned by all whom I loved so fondly and intensely, some trivial incident of that past, often unnoticed at the time and soon forgotten, comes back all at once to my mind and suddenly takes quite a new significance. The bright sun, the sweet exhalations of the wind which entered the room through a half-open window, the joyous sensation of the strength and alertness of my body– is that what made me smile? I'm looking around me, I'm searching for this feeling, but all I can feel are traces of mortal anguish and regret. I grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to return, that it flashed upon me so treacherously, so vainly, grieve because I had not even time to pay attention...

Somewhere far away, it might be in the parlor, two voices were shrilly quarreling. One – hysterical and raspy alto, so awfully familiar; the other one – an unknown baritone. I came closer to the door and began listening; I was about to go out, but suddenly, on the floor below, a door was noisily opened. The voices became clearer.

"When did I say that the misdeed is bound to happen?" argued Hamilton. "To be cruel or not to be, everyone must decide for himself. Here's... how shall I tell you.... It's the same idea by which I for instance consider that a misdeed is permissible if the criminal is evil."

"Define evil."

"A crime. Any crime is evil by nature."   

"But you can't think that capital punishment is applicable to any crime."

"A crime is a crime..."

"There are thousands and millions of combinations and possibilities. A murderer murders and knows he is a scoundrel. But, let us say, the Jack Laurens' incident..."

"It's John."

"Yes, the John Laurens' incident. The boy thought he was doing a gentlemanly thing!"

My face turned hot.