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.