CHAPTER VIII.

THE SHADOW OF THE HUNTER.

Muriel and Emily were sitting on the back seat of the carriage as the Captain came down Roux’s steps, nodding as he passed, and went down the street alone.

“Driver, North Russell street, and walk the horses,” said Harrington, leaping in on the front seat, beside the basket.

The carriage immediately set off as directed, and Harrington, leaning forward, took Emily’s gloved hands in his, and looked fervently into her beautiful face. Emily did not turn away this time, but forgetting that she thought him her lover, in her perception of an expression which recalled the look he had flashed at her in the room a few moments before, gazed anxiously with a vague tremor into his countenance, in which the winged nostrils were lifting.

“What is it, Harrington?” she faltered; “I’m afraid I have done something wrong, though”—

“No, dear Emily,” interrupted Harrington; “nothing wrong. Only unfortunate. You spoke from impulse; but it would have been better not to have said what you did before Roux.”

“I understand,” she replied, hurriedly. “I have raised hopes which may never be gratified. Heaven forgive me! O how thoughtless it was!”

Muriel put one arm around her, and looked into her face, with tender sympathy.

“You will think me ostentatious,” faltered Emily, tears wetting her long lashes; “but, Harrington, it is not so. The poor man’s distress touched me so keenly, that I could not forbear saying what I did.”

“No, Emily,” warmly returned Harrington, “you mistake. I do not think your offer was made in ostentation. Don’t think me insensible to the splendid generosity that would give so large a sum to bring joy to the home of a poor, despised negro, and he a stranger to you. It is not a common heart that could enter into the depths of his sorrow, and so promptly seek to relieve it. But, listen, Emily. Muriel and I have a secret to tell you.”

He released her hands to take a wallet from his breast-pocket, from which he drew a letter.

“God knows,” he resumed sadly, “it is at best a noble folly to give away wealth, as you would do, to ransom one man from that dismal pit of slavery when nearly four millions with as strong a claim on our hearts must be left behind. And yet these individual cases come to us so like special claims, that we cannot deny them. See now—in this noble folly there was another heart before you. Yes, Emily, Muriel, too, was touched to the ransom of Roux’s brother.”

“Muriel!” exclaimed Emily.

“We said nothing to Roux,” continued Harrington, “for the result was doubtful. And we had to proceed with caution lest this Lafitte should seek to capture him. I wrote a letter, which I had mailed from Philadelphia. Here is the fiend’s answer, received two months ago. Don’t read it unless you have strong nerves.”

Emily eagerly snatched the letter from Harrington, and looked at the envelope. It was postmarked from Marksville, Louisiana, and directed to John Harrington, Esquire, care of Joseph House, Esquire, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

“Jo House is a young literary friend of mine—an editor,” observed Harrington. “I explained the matter to him, telling the reason for secrecy, and got him to mail the letter for me, and transmit the answer. And by the way,” he continued, “to give you an idea of the risk of dealing with such a man as Lafitte, let me tell you that since this letter was received, Lafitte has been up to Philadelphia, and called on Jo for my address, desiring, he said, to enter into negotiation with me for the sale of Antony.”

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Emily, with sudden alarm, “I hope your friend did not tell him where you were.”

Harrington laughed.

“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “What do you think Jo told him? He told him with the utmost gravity that I resided in London. And when Lafitte looked incredulous, the jolly young Bohemian produced a London Directory he happened to have, and showed him my name among the Harringtons, offering to copy the address for him.”

Emily laughed delightedly.

“That was a brilliant fib, I declare,” said she. “What did Lafitte say?”

“Jo wrote me that he looked as blank as a board, declined the offer, and went away. I can imagine that Jo’s perfect soberness—for he’s an awfully solemn-looking fellow—together with the circumstance of the London Directory being in his possession, convinced Lafitte of the truth of the statement, and I’ll be bound he thinks Roux is on the other side of the Atlantic with my namesake.”

Harrington laughed, but his laugh ended in a deep and weary sigh. Emily took the letter from the envelope, opened it, and began to read, while Muriel looked with sad tranquillity out at the carriage windows. The letter, read slowly in the swaying carriage, ran thus:

LAFITTE PLANTATION, _Parish of Avoyelles, Louisiana._

JOHN HARRINGTON, Esquire:

MY DEAR SIR: Your letter (appropriately dated the 7th of March—a souvenir of dear Mr. Webster—bless him! I can’t think of that great speech without emotion—it was so noble) came to hand. In reply I beg to say that the dear Antony is alive and well, and, vicariously, sends his love and this little bunch of his wool to his beloved brother, whom you do not mention, but who is undoubtedly under your wing. So penetrated was the dear boy with a refluent sense of his brother’s beastly ingratitude in leaving me, his affectionate master, that he was really unwilling to part with the wool, which I finally tore with loving violence from his black pate, and send in his behalf to your charge for the wicked William. As for Antony, the dear boy loves me so much that no money could persuade him to leave me, and for my part, I am so fond of him, that millions would not induce me to part with him. Thus, my dear sir, you will perceive that Antony is not for sale at any price.

I may add that dear Antony is a devout believer in the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and was so overcome with a new conviction of his brother’s wickedness in leaving me, that he insisted on being trussed up and receiving fifty lashes, which I administered with my own hand, of course with tears in my eyes. I am sure that if the depraved William could have heard dear Antony’s howls, he would have been stricken to the heart with a sense of his own unworthiness, and of the grandeur of this atoning love. To be frank with you, I am concerned lest Antony should carry his vicarious notions to the extent of demanding to be crucified for William’s sins. In which case, I should feel compelled to oblige him. It would be difficult to carry out this sublime design; but, at a pinch, I could send away my overseer, and ride with Antony into the swamp, where we could readily extemporize a Calvary.

Give my love to Mr. Joseph House, _who does your Philadelphia mailing_, and believe me, dear sir,

Affectionately yours,

TORWOOD LAFITTE.

_March 15th, 1852._

Emily turned white as marble over this insolent and horrible epistle, and, with her lips colorless, looked at Harrington, who took the letter from her hand.

“Charles Sumner has been in the Senate for six months, silent,” remarked Harrington. “I have a mind to send him this letter.”

“Now, John,” said Muriel, smiling, “I won’t tolerate any reflections on my neighbor. Every time I pass his house in Temple street, I think that he has not gone to Washington for nothing. Wait a little, and you shall hear the leap of the live thunder. In the meantime, as the knight Durindarte said to the weeping queen Belerma, ‘patience, and shuffle the cards.’”

“You are right, Muriel,” returned Harrington, with a faint smile, “we talk of his silence now, but we shall yet talk of his speech. Yes, the heart lives that shook Faneuil Hall for liberty, and we must not be impatient. But sometimes I despond, for it seems the destiny of our best men to lose power and purpose when they get into Congress.”

“No matter,” replied Muriel. “As King Pellinore said to Merlin, ‘God may foredo well destiny.’”

Harrington bent his head abstractedly.

“But to return,” said he. “You observe, Emily, that the only result of my letter was to bring torture upon poor Antony. In the letter was a bunch of the poor fellow’s hair, which this moral idiot tore from his head. You see, too, he flogged him in mere wantonness of cruelty. From all Roux tells me of the character of this man, I fear that he will end by killing Antony; and it is not too much to suppose, that with the opportunities the slave system gives him, he may even do it in the manner he suggests. Murders as dreadful take place on those obscure plantations, as escaped slaves tell us. Just see the infernal nature of a system which gives a fiend like this absolute, irresponsible control over his fellow creatures! Here is this pirate, with a pirate’s name and a pirate’s disposition; and the law of Louisiana, as of every Southern State in the Union, entrusts to his care as many men and women as he may choose to buy; and while it sanctions, by express statute, various degrees of cruelty toward them, makes it impossible to hold him to account for the most merciless torture and murder, by excluding the testimony of slaves.”

Emily listened, with a countenance deathly pale.

“I declare, Harrington,” she said, “when I read that letter I felt as if the earth had cracked and shown me a glimpse of hell. Is it possible that there can be such men as this? Are there many of them at the South?”

Harrington did not reply for a moment, and sat sadly looking into vacancy.

“It is not Southern nature,” he said, at length, “it is human nature. It is human nature depraved by a tyranny, and licensed, practically licensed, even in its wildest excesses, by a tyrant code. Read Shakspeare; there you have in representative figures, the scientific account of man. Here is Shakspeare’s Chiron, Demetrius, Iago, Cloten—a moral monster with statutory power to hold slaves, and treat them at his pleasure. But the blame is less with him than with the polity from which he sprang—which organized him and reared him. Bating for their life-long education in despotism, Southern men are no worse than Northern men. Put the code of Louisiana over Massachusetts, and you shall have the self-same results. Look at our Northern marine—that blot on our democracy; how does the despotism of it work on our captains, even with some sort of a legal check upon them? Read the criminal reports, or talk with seamen, and learn how Northern captains can maltreat the men under their command. No—human nature is no more incapable of degeneracy in Massachusetts than in Louisiana. If people are better here, it is because conditions are better.”

“Such men as this Lafitte are more to be pitied than blamed,” said Muriel, gently. “I wish we were great enough to feel so.”

There was a moment’s silence, in which nothing was heard but the slow rattle of the carriage-wheels over the paving-stones.

“You see, Emily,” said Harrington, sadly, breaking the pause, “that your promise to Roux cannot be fulfilled. It is now our painful problem how to destroy his new hope, without giving him the anguish of an explanation. We are in a very difficult position.”

“Oh, if I had only known of this!” cried Emily, in bitter distress. “As long as Roux expected nothing, he had only his ordinary pain. But I have lifted the poor man to this height only to dash him into a pit of despair.”

“Hush, dear Emily,” said Muriel, tenderly. “Do not reproach yourself. You could not have imagined that an effort had been made to buy Roux’s brother. So don’t feel badly about it. We will devise some means of escape out of this dilemma. What I am most afraid of is, that Lafitte may, after all, find out Harrington, and get on the track of Roux.”

“In which case,” said Harrington, tranquilly, “it would be a good idea to take him to Southac street and show him Roux’s house.”

“Harrington!” exclaimed Emily, almost shrilly.

“Yes indeed it would,” said Harrington, quietly. “But before I showed him the house, I would say two words to Elkanah Brown. I’ll engage that he would hurry back to the pirate civilization that spawned him, resolved never to set foot in Boston again. The negroes here would sound a roar in his ears that he would remember to his dying day.”

“Good Heavens, Harrington,” cried Emily, “they would kill him!”

Harrington’s face was calm, but his blue eyes gleamed, and his broad nostrils lifted with passionate emotion.

“And if I were an American patriot, pure and simple,” he replied, “I would answer that it would be no matter if they did, and that Bunker Hill is near enough to keep tyrannicide in countenance. You remember what one of our leading Whigs said in convention many years ago—in the time, when to be a Whig was not to be a Webster Whig, with a fine speech for kidnapping. ‘Why, sir,’ foamed a slaveholder, ‘if your doctrines obtain, our slaves would cut our throats for us.’ ‘And in God’s name,’ said our Whig friend, tossing the words over his shoulder—‘in God’s name, why shouldn’t they!’”

“Oh, Harrington, Harrington,” said Emily, shaking her head, “is this you? I did not think John Harrington had the heart to hate any man—not even Lafitte—much less kill him, or see him killed.”

“Nor has he,” said Muriel, quickly.

“You are right,” said Harrington, calmly; “at least so far as the hating goes. It may be a defect in my organization, but I have never known what it is to hate anybody. I hope I never may. As for killing men, or seeing them killed, that is another matter. I believe that I could do both the one and the other without a pang. This Lafitte—a man in whom there is not one trait worthy to be called human—I could kill him or see him killed without the least regret. It is not his death but his life that should be regretted.”

“But, Harrington,” said Emily, “this is impossible. How could you beat a man, much less kill him, without hating him?”

“Christ beat the money changers in the temple: Was that hate?” answered Harrington.

Emily smiled vaguely.

“Well,” she continued, “that is ingenious—but not conclusive. Besides, to beat men is not to kill them. You could hardly kill a man without hating him.”

“Xenophon says Socrates shore down a soldier in the battle, and blessed him as he died: Was that hate?” answered Harrington.

Emily colored slightly, and looked up smiling into the calm countenance of the speaker.

“Death is not the worst fate that may befall a man,” continued Harrington. “If to kill a man were to end his life, we might well hold our hands. But the soul survives the blow that slays the body.”

“And to kill a man is only to shell him, Emily,” said Muriel with a smile.

“Mercy!” exclaimed Emily, laughing, “what a couple of Robespierres!”

“Seriously, now,” said Harrington, “I think Muriel is right. A killed man is a shelled man, and not a dead man. ‘Where shall we bury you?’ asked the friends around the dying Socrates. And the escaping soul replied, ‘Wherever you please, if you can catch me.’ But with regard to this matter. If I believed in free will and moral responsibility, and all the doctrines professedly accepted by the mass of my fellow-citizens, I should hold that, on the principle of justice, we had a right to terminate the life of a man who was willfully using it to the injury of his fellow-creatures. For I agree with Lord Bacon that men without goodness of nature are but a nobler kind of vermin. But, as I happen to think that such men are the necessary product of an unscientific order of society, and that society is responsible for them and their misdeeds, I could only kill them at the cry of a terrible expediency, not to punish them, but simply to arrest their mischief. At the same time I go with Shakespeare, rather to ‘prevent the fiend’ than to kill the fiend. I would not kill a rattlesnake lying harmlessly in the sun, simply because he is a rattlesnake, and may bite to-morrow. But if he coils to strike, I slay him, purely as a measure of safety, not in hate, not forgetting that forces external to him organized him for malice and venom. So, too, with the nobler vermin—the human reptiles. I do not hate them; I pity them. I do not forget that they are a consequence, and not self-caused. But I cannot let them flesh their fangs in the innocent, when the saving mercy of a death-blow can rescue their blameless victims to lives of human use and accomplishment. When such men as Lafitte come here to hunt the poor, I baffle and drive them away if I can, and, as a last resort, I kill them. That is not hate—it is love. It is stern love, but it is love. Wo to the civilization that makes it necessary! Wo to the state that suffers an injury to be done to the humblest man or woman, or leaves his or her protection to the chance charity of the private citizen! And treble wo to the government that gives despotic power to ruffians, and arms and guards them in their crime against mankind with the prestige and forms of civil law!”

Harrington ceased, and they all sat in silence with brooding faces.

“Well, I trust that this wretch may never trouble Boston,” said Emily, at length, with a sigh.

“I trust not,” replied Harrington. “He is shrewd and subtle though, and I have, I own, an anxious foreboding that he will come this way. I am sorry I wrote that letter. You observed the underlined sentence in his reply, didn’t you? It is curious that he should have so readily conjectured that the letter was sent to Jo House to mail.”

“Very curious,” responded Emily.

“Here’s North Russell street,” said Harrington. “I’ll leave you, and rush home, for I have my article to finish.”

“Harrington—whisper,” said Muriel, bending her face toward him with a charming smile.

Harrington, who was just putting out his hand to unfasten the carriage door, leaned forward, while Emily turned away. The young man felt, with a delicious thrill, the balmy breath of Muriel on his cheek, and her soft lips touch his ear, and the hot blood flew to his face before she had spoken a word.

“John,” she whispered, “you write your article to make some money. Hush, now! Let it go, and let me supply you—just for once now, pray do. Don’t be proud and foolish, but let me make you a present, for I have plenty, and come with us and have a day of recreation, for you are pale with work and study—now, John.”

“Now, John,” was said aloud with arch reproach, for Harrington had drawn back, flushed and laughing, with a gesture of negation.

“Not a bit of it,” he answered, gaily. “Did I ever?”

“No, you never did, bad young man that you are,” returned Muriel, aloud, with a face of playful reproach. “But see here, John”—she bent forward again to whisper, her face so sweetly pleading that it was hard to resist giving the besought audience.

“I won’t—that’s flat,” said Harrington, laughing and blushing, and putting out his hand to the hasp, for he felt that Muriel’s entreaty was getting dangerous.

“Very well,” she said. “That’s settled. But come up to tea this evening—come up early, if you can, and we’ll have a fencing lesson, and then, after tea, we’ll go to the Convention, trusting our luck to hear Wendell Phillips. How will that do?”

“Capital,” replied Harrington. “I’ll come.”

“And bring Wentworth with you.”

“Yes. Good bye. Good bye, Emily.”

Emily turned and nodded, with her face scarlet at the mention of Wentworth’s name. She had been living in broader life for the last hour, and now her heart was painfully sinking back to its private love and sorrow.

Without stopping the carriage, Harrington opened the door, sprang out, and walked for a moment between the wheels to refix the hasp, then stepped back, touched his hat, and was gone.

Muriel turned and watched from the oval window in the back of the carriage his martial figure as it strode up the street.

“There goes a chevalier,” she said, gaily, as she turned away.

“Yes,” replied Emily. “First in war, first in peace”—

“And first in the hearts of his countrywomen,” concluded Muriel.

They laughed merrily, and the carriage went on.