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!”