CHAPTER XXVI.

A MAN OF RUINED BLOOD.

Where was Mr. Lafitte all this time? Had he returned to the sunny South, and to that particular part of its sunniness in which sweltered his negroes at their miserable toil?

Mr. Lafitte had not. He was still in the city, at the Tremont House, and for the last three days he had kept his room, sick and shattered with the terrible shock he had received, and raging like a devil in his impotent fury. That he should owe his life to the man he hated was bad enough; but to a woman, and worse still, to a negro—oh, to his rank and insolent pride this was the humiliation of humiliations! It had not come to him at first, but several hours after Harrington had left him, when he began to recover from the paralysis of spirit in which he lay, it outgrew upon him, and increased in intensity, till he raved in a phrenetic agony of infernal shame and rage.

In this delightful mood he had continued for three days. Exhausted on the night of the third by the violence of his frenzy, he had slept heavily, and awakened late on the morning of the fourth, calmer in spirit, and though, still somewhat weak, stronger and in better health than he had been. The Atkinses, father and sons, had called severally three times, during his illness, but he had left orders that he would see nobody, and they had not been admitted to his presence.

Up now and dressed, his breakfast eaten, two juleps imbibed and a cigar finished, he began to feel more like himself, and look more like the handsome brunette devil he usually was. A little less rich in color, to be sure, but still sufficiently so for good appearance’s sake; and as he walked up and down the plainly-furnished chamber, in the space between his bed and the window, he even felt something of his usual fiendish jocundity revive sullenly within him.

Three letters had arrived for him during his illness. He had not even looked at them, but let them lie unopened on the table where the servant had laid them. Now, however, when his mind was able to attend to their contents, he paused in his walk as his eye rested on them, and approaching the table, took them up, and gazed at their superscriptions and post-marks.

“That’s from my brother,” he muttered, “and that also, and this—‘Mobile—forwarded’—who can this be from?”

He tore it open, and ran his eye over the contents.

“Oh, pshaw!” he snarled, flinging it down. “Business. Business be cursed! I’m in no mood for business. Let’s see what Joseph has to say for himself. Which is the first—Oh, this is it.”

He opened the letter, deliberately smoothed it out, and caressing his moustache with one hand, while he held the sheet in the other, began to read with a face that flushed into a horrid and tigerish smile as he read on. This was the letter:

NEW ORLEANS, La., _May 20th, 1852_.

DEAR TORWOOD:

There’s been the devil to pay up on your plantation, and no mistake, and poor Tassle has gone the way of all flesh. On the 15th, Tassle lashed that mulatto wench Sally three or four times for falling down in the rows—the yellow beast pretending of course that she was sick, as they always do. Precious little work, at all events, was got out of her that day, and when night came, Tassle staked her down for a good flogging. That black Jim of yours, her husband, tried to beg her off the flogging, but Tassle wasn’t to be wheedled out of it, and struck Jim, so they tell me, across the face with the whip. Whereupon, Jim flew at him with an axe, and in a second it was all up with poor Tassle. The boy actually cut him to pieces, and then ran for the swamp. The planters were roused, however, got out the dogs, hunted him down, and in less than no time, I may say, a fire was lit by the bayou, and the black scoundrel trussed up and burned alive, screeching like mad, with all the niggers looking on. They’ll profit by the example, I reckon, and learn that it won’t do to murder a white man—the cursed brutes.

I am hurrying up to fix business, so that I can go; up river, and attend to the plantation for you, till you get back. But you’d better hurry home as quick as you can, for it’s a busy season with us here, and I can’t well be away.

In haste, your aff.,

JOSEPH LAFITTE.

P.S. By the way, the wench Sally gave birth to a fine piccaninny, a boy, that night—somewhat prematurely, I’m told. So you see there’s no small loss without some great gain. As for Tassle, he’s no loss at all, for you can easily replace him, and I’ve got my eye on a capital overseer for you.

J. L.

The smile on the sardonic visage of Mr. Lafitte expanded more and more tigerish, and as he came to the end of the letter, he burst into a smooth, soft roar of merriment, while floods of devilish delight raged within him.

“And so William Tassle’s food for worms,” he soliloquized, shaking with internal laughter. “Poor Tassle, that’s the end of you. And Jim’s roasted. Good! I hope they made the fire slow. Infernal scoundrel! I wish I’d been there to hear him screech the soul out of him. That’s the way to keep the black devils under. God! if it wasn’t for a good fire round some of them when they lift their hands against us, I believe that they’d be up in insurrection, and give us St. Domingo. But that they never can do while the Union lasts. Ah, the glorious Union! Rise on us if you dare, my black angels, and see the short work the muskets of the Union will make with you. Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! That’s the ticket for you, my black cherubs!”

And again Mr. Lafitte burst into raging laughter.

“Ah, me, ah me!” he sighed, subsiding. “I feel refreshingly wicked to-day, spite of all. This news has done me good. But let’s see what Joseph has to say again,” he added, deliberately opening the other letter, and smoothing it out as he had done the first, with a sardonic smile on his brunette face.

Ah, Mr. Lafitte! What is this? As he began to read the color of his face vanished, like the flame of a blown-out lamp, his complexion became livid, with dark spots on its ghastliness, his eyes grew glassy, and his jaw fell. He did not drop the letter, but read slowly and steadily on—and this is what he read:

LAFITTE PLANTATION, AVOYELLES, LA. _May 23d, 1852._

TORWOOD, come home for God’s sake as quick as you can. There’s worse news here than I wrote you on the 20th. Josephine has eloped with young Raynal. I’m sorry to tell you so abruptly, but I don’t know how to break it to you. This is evidently a preconcerted affair, for Raynal, you know, was retiring from business just about the time you left, and has since been turning all his property into money. Anyhow, they’re gone—gone to Italy—and they’re out of the country by this time.

I’ve just arrived here, and I never was so horrified in my life as when I discovered this. I half suspected that there was something wrong when I heard that Raynal had been in the neighborhood, for I knew that he loved her before her marriage to you. But I didn’t get any idea of it till just now, when I came up to the house and inquiring for Josephine, was told by your cook that Raynal came there the night of Jim’s barbecue, and that she had left with him, taking only a single trunk with her. Which way they went, up river or down, nobody knows. But I went up-stairs into her chamber, and found a sheet of note paper lying on her writing-desk, addressed to you, on which was written just these words and no more: “Lafitte, I go away to-night to Italy, never to return.” That was every word.

Torwood, I’m devilish sorry for you. I had no idea that Josephine would do such a thing as this, for everybody knows and says you’ve been a good husband to her, and down in Orleans you were talked of as a model couple, and your constant courtesy and kindness to her was in everybody’s mouth. Well, women are the devil, and no mistake.

But come home as soon as you can. Nobody but me knows what has happened, and I think we can keep this matter private, and save you the disgrace. Of course her family must know it, but they’ll feel terribly cut up about it, and be willing to keep dark. I’ve spread it around that Raynal has taken her up North to you, so the wonder of her absence is explained. Then, perhaps, you can say that she died suddenly up North, and put on the bereaved dodge, and so cover it up for good.

Anyhow, come right along, and we’ll consult together about it.

In great haste, your aff.,

JOSEPH LAFITTE.

He slowly laid the letter down, and stood still. Livid and spotted as a corpse when decomposition has begun, his glassy orbs fixed on vacancy, his jaw fallen and rigid, his whole form motionless. Thus for a full minute. Then, his fallen jaw slowly lifted, his lips came together, and a still and frightful smile glided upon his features.

“God!” he exclaimed, in a low, clear, distinct voice, “it’s over. Josephine has escaped from holy matrimony.”

He said no more, but with the still and frightful smile upon his face, stood motionless for some minutes. Slowly his color returned, his glossy, blood-specked, tawny orbs outgrew again from the glassiness, and opening his tiger mouth, he burst into a long fit of smooth, soft, sardonic laughter.

“Yes,” he soliloquized, subsiding from his fiendish mirth into a fiendish smile—“yes, indeed, Josephine has escaped from holy matrimony. Oh, what a blow to the interests of morality! What a shock to the foundations of society! What a rupture of the sacred bonds of wedlock! What a profanation of the sacrament of marriage! And Joseph proposes to keep it dark. Oh, Joseph, Joseph, how can you? As a good Christian, as a friend of morality, and religion, and society, and, above all, holy matrimony, could I do it? Ah, never, never! And Joseph wants to save me the disgrace. The disgrace!”—and with a negrine _ptchih_, Mr. Lafitte went off into a fit of chuckling merriment.

“No, indeed, Joseph,” he resumed, “we must spread it, and spread it wide. We must get it into the papers, my beloved brother. We must get it into the New Orleans papers, and the Western papers, and the New York papers. Josephine must have the disgrace as my last love-touch, and I must have the sympathy of the Friends of Virtue, sweet Joseph. Oh, Lord!” and he chuckled, “what fun I shall have in my affliction reading the homilies of the moral editors! Let’s see, how will they go… Melancholy Case of Conjugal Infidelity… Yes, that’s pretty good… Free Love Invading the Family Circle… And that’s magnificent… The Results of Free Love Teachings… That’s magnificent, too. Let’s see… Another Base Violation of the Marriage Tie… Shocking Case of Seduction, Elopement, and Crime… Another Blow at the Foundations of Morality… Ruin of a Home and a Husband… Oh, they’re all good—capital! Then the articles. Lord, but won’t they be luscious! How I shall weep over the tender sympathy; how I shall mourn, yet say, it is just, over the stern condemnation of Josephine; what a moral glow I shall feel through all my being at the severe rectitude and fidelity to the best interests of morality which will pervade those high-toned editorials! Now let’s see. Let’s compose an appropriate one. It must be a piece of ignorant, stupid, brutal, sentimental twaddle, mal-apropos and blundering, and stuck full of stale quotations, or it won’t be in style. Hold on now,” and in a declamatory voice he went on as follows: “… We chronicle in another column a mournful case of conjugal perfidy, of which a too tender and confiding husband is the heart-broken victim. To what vortex are we rushing? Well may we say, in the language of the immortal dramatist, that such a deed as this—

—‘makes marriage vows As false as dicers’ oaths. Oh! such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul; and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words! Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire!’

Capital, capital!” roared Mr. Lafitte, with a spasm of chuckling merriment, rubbing his hands gleefully, as he spoke, “that’s the stock quotation, and doesn’t it come in gloriously! Rebellious hell in the matron Josephine’s bones—Oh, upon my soul, but that’s decidedly neat! Fire away, my boy… In this melancholy tragedy which has laid low the Lares and Penates of a once happy home, and brought the severest affliction on the fond and trusting heart of a highly respectable and estimable citizen, we trace the pernicious influence of those detestable and licentious doctrines which have become, alas! too prevalent throughout the land. We allude of course to the doctrines of Free Love, and let every man in his sober senses look upon this domestic tragedy, the legitimate result of those vile teachings whose poison is spread abroad through the very air, and ask what is to be the end, when such tenets are openly disseminated? Here was a woman—we call her woman, but every true woman’s heart will rise in just indignation to clutch away the name from such a moral monster! a female fiend rather, who could defile the inviolable sanctuary of wedded life, listen to the insidious honeyed words of a base seducer, fly from the tender endearments of home, ruthlessly abandon her fond and trusting husband and innocent children—Oh, damn it,” broke in Mr. Lafitte, “that won’t do! I’ve got no children. Ah, me! what a pity. It would be so pathetic if the children could be in it—the dear, little innocent children! No matter: … abandon her fond and trusting husband, with whom she had lived so many happy years, and who had lavished on her his wealth, his good name, and all the priceless riches of a generous and affectionate nature, surrounding her with every comfort and ministering with the tenderest assiduity to her lightest want—abandon all this, and depart with her paramour to a life of shame on the voluptuous and luxurious shores of Italy. Ah, well may this modern Messalina go to Italy!

‘’Tis the land of the East, ’tis the clime of the sun, Can he smile on the deeds that his children have done?’

… Capital!” again roared Mr. Lafitte, rubbing his gleeful hands, “Italy the land of the East! That’s a regular blunderbuss of a quotation, and therefore in exquisite keeping. Oh, upon my soul, that comes in finely! But fire away, Lafitte, you delicious dog. Let’s see now… What makes the criminality of this shameful woman’s conduct more inexcusable and inexplicable is the fact that she had lived for years in the most perfect harmony with her amiable and estimable husband, receiving from him the most unvarying tenderness, and to the eye of every person most familiar with their domestic life, evidently the happiest of the happy. We have it from the most reliable sources that no cloud ever appeared to mar the horizon of their home, and among their intimate friends, the courtesy and almost uxorious tenderness of his demeanor toward her, was absolutely proverbial. But why seek to trace the causes of this base and ungrateful treachery? Alas! since Eve listened to the temptings of the serpent, how many of the sex have sacrificed their conjugal Eden for the bleak wilderness of illicit love! Frailty, thy name is woman!”…

Mr. Lafitte stopped, and with another _ptchih_, went off into a fit of infernal merriment, wagging his head from side to side in the frenzy of his glee.

“That’s the way they do it!” he exclaimed, resuming. “Lord, I ought to be an editor! I was cut out for a high-pressure moral editor of the purest water! The blasted idiots—that’s the way they roll it out whenever one of these inexcusable and inexplicable cases of shameful criminality on the woman’s side, and heavenly love and tenderness on the man’s side, or vice versâ, come to their confounded eyes! The owls—the bats—the insufferable fraternity of asses! Lord, Lord! how often I’ve laughed till I ached over their moral gabble, thinking all the while of the sweet little hell the women or the men they were pitching into had cut away from, and which the witless ninnies hadn’t brains enough to fancy! And then their tender sympathy to the bereaved one—hold on—let me fancy how they’ll touch me off?… We proffer to the bereaved husband, in his sad affliction, our tenderest sympathy, and may God who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, give him strength to bear this terrible trial which has thus desolated the sanctuary of his lonely and forsaken home … and so forth, and so forth, and so forth. Yes, that’s the way they’ll pour the oil of healing into my aching wounds! Oh, but it’ll be touching. And then society—what sympathy I’ll have from society. I must be in New Orleans a few weeks to enjoy my affliction. How melancholy I’ll look—how interesting! And all the old ladies flocking around me with such doleful and tender faces, and oh, Mr. Lafitte, we feel so sorry for you, and oh, Mr. Lafitte, we read that beautiful article in the paper this morning, and it was so sweet and so noble and so high-toned, and so this, that, and the other. And the young ladies ogling me with melancholy eyes, and whispering to each other, oh, isn’t he handsome, and oh, isn’t he interesting, and oh, doesn’t he bear it beautifully, and how much did you say he was worth?—and dying to become Mrs. Lafitte, number two, every fool of them. And then the Friends of Virtue, men and women, young and old, in solid column, pitching into Josephine, and scandalizing her sky-high, and raking up everything she ever said or did, and twisting it against her. Oh, but it will be sweet! Sweeter than to have Raynal’s blood on my hands—the dog! Then when the grand hallali begins to die out, I’ll apply for my divorce, and revive it all once more. Ah, delicious! And then by and by, perhaps, I’ll marry again—some queen of a girl dead in love with the rich Mr. Lafitte, the handsome Mr. Lafitte, the gentle and courteous Mr. Lafitte, with the steel claw in the velvet paw. Ah! and if Fatima isn’t docile, Bluebeard will take her into the Blue Chamber where Josephine had a little private experience. Good, good! Lafitte, you gay dog, you are positively witty!”

Wagging his wicked head to himself, he walked slowly up and down, laughing softly and smoothly, with his face bent toward the carpet. He stopped his walk in a minute or two, and the smile on his visage faded slowly into a look of sullen and evil moodiness.

“The revenge is sweet,” he muttered, “but there is gall in it. She has escaped from her hell with me, and she will be happy with Raynal. Yes, there in that lovely Italy, far away from all the howls of the slandering curs, she will be happy with Raynal. For he loves her, and they are both young still, and she is beautiful, and will be fond and sweet, and he is tender to women, and manly—bah! I hate him!”

He walked up and down in silence for a few minutes, with an evil and moody face, and finally paused with his gloomy eyes fixed on vacancy.

“People will rave at them,” he muttered, “but what matter is it what people will say! Fools! Look at it. What was she? The prey of my lust—the victim of my cruelty. God! I will not lie to myself whoever else I lie to! That is just what she was. I won her, a young, inexperienced, innocent girl—she lived with me as she did, and they call it holy matrimony. She flies now from lust and cruelty to love and tenderness, and they call it adultery. Oh, world, world, world! Should I have been what I am, if you had not been what you are! Damn you! you have ruined me!—from my very cradle you have ruined me! I hate you—I despise you—I have grown up hating and despising you—soured, and corrupted, and depraved by you—and I shall be glad when this wretched candle of a life goes out in the blackness of darkness forever. Well, well! Be happy, Josephine, with your Raynal. I hate you both, and what I can do to harm you I will.”

He sat down near the table, and leaned his head on his hand. As he did so, a tap came to the door.

“Come in,” he snarled.

It was a servant, who said a gentleman wanted to see him.

“What’s his name? No matter. Show him up.”

With an uneasy, furtive glance at him, the man departed, and in two or three minutes appeared again with Captain Bangham.

“Well, what do you want?” snarled Lafitte, the moment he appeared. “Have you found that curse, Antony?”

The captain looked savage and sullen at this reception, and hated Lafitte ten times worse than ever, while, at the same time, he was afraid of him.

“No, I haven’t found him,” he said, snappishly. “I’ve been two or three times up where that Roux lives, and he’s not there, and nobody knows where he is; and as for the other, I can’t get any clue to him.”

Mr. Lafitte rose from his chair, and with glossy, tigerish eyes, and a ferocious face, advanced upon Bangham, who winced a little as he came, as if he would like to run from the room but for the shame of it. Bullies are not always cowards, but this bully was.

“Hark you, Bangham,” said Mr. Lafitte, in a low, smooth voice, “I’m going home in the first train, and you may tell Atkins I’ve gone, for I shan’t see him again. That Roux I don’t want, so let him alone. But you find Antony for me, or look out. You’re in a fix, my captain, and you know it. You can’t bring any evidence against the presumption of the law that you willfully refused to return that slave. Where are your witnesses to the contrary? Your mate has left Atkins’s employ—your sailors don’t go back to New Orleans with you. You know the penalty for not bringing back a slave you find on board your brig—from three to seven years in prison, and the payment of the full value of the slave; and I’ll set that value high, Bangham, you may depend. Let your brig touch the Levee again and he not on board, and I’ll make you suffer to the full extent of my power, and spread stories around which will ruin Atkins in New Orleans for good. Mind what I say to you. Now go.”

At the haughty mandate of the Southerner, spoken with an outstretched finger, as though he was ordering away his meanest slave, Bangham slunk from the room without a word.

“Whelp,” snarled Lafitte, walking away from the door with a shrug of contempt. “Yes, I’ll let Roux go. I owe so much to that good fool, Harrington, I suppose. Curse me, if I don’t almost hate myself for liking that fellow! There’s another happy pair. He and that bright creature will be marrying presently, and going in for domestic felicity with a rush. Blast them, I hope they’ll be miserable together through life, and I wish I could make them so! Well—now to pack up and leave this cursed city for home. I burn to get at my black cattle again, and ease my heart of its hatred on them. I hate them and they hate me, and life is thick and sweet with hate. Oh, but I’ll work, and flog, and torture them worse than ever now! Thanks to the blessed laws of Louisiana, I can do it, as long as the glorious Union lasts. Till these northern curs dissolve that, my rule is secure, but when they do, if they ever do, ’ware Lafitte, ’ware my Southern brethren, for the black worm will turn, and hey for St. Domingo!”