“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!”
CHAPTER XXVII.
REVELATIONS.
Witherlee had not left the house in Temple street but a little while, when a couple of ladies, intimate with the family, who had seen the news of the marriage in the morning paper, called, on a visit of congratulation. Presently more came, and up to one o’clock there was a dropping shower of callers. Last of all arrived Miss Bean, a fat and spectacled childish old maiden lady, with a prude’s face—the same who, when poor Susan Hollingsworth was being flayed alive at Mrs. Binghampton’s party, had brought ignominy on her defender, young Mr. Mill, by inquiring if he was going to come out in favor of Mormonism. Received graciously, and having found out all she could about Mr. Harrington, and that the newly married couple were not going on a bridal tour, and that there was to be no reception, but that everybody was expected to call without formality, Miss Bean waddled off, and, as Muriel expected she would do, never rested till she had gone the entire round of her acquaintance, and spread the information she had received to the remotest borders of society.
Left alone, Harrington and Muriel, accompanied by Wentworth and Emily, went to call on the tabooed Hollingsworths, and returned in about an hour in great satisfaction. None but Muriel, however, knew the sweetest part of that visit; for poor Susan not appearing in the parlor, Muriel had begged to see her, and at last had been admitted to the sad chamber of her humiliation and anguish. And there, with all fond endearment, and sweet, wise words of sympathy and counsel, Muriel had cheered and comforted her, and prevailed on her to make the visit. It was not a deed that the lofty rectitude of a Bean or a Binghampton could approve; but alas, the beautiful blonde was not a Friend of Virtue!
That Susan was to make the visit, and that she was to come some time next week, was all that anybody but Susan and Muriel knew, but that was enough to set the party in a state of great gratification, and in that state they arrived again at Temple street.
Wentworth had been prevailed upon to spend the day, and after dinner, Harrington having said to him, “Richard, you are interested in Hungarian fugitives, come with us and see some fugitives of another color,” they had all gone up-stairs, Mrs. Eastman included, to listen to the story of Antony.
It was a story till then untold to any of them, even to Harrington; for in Antony’s weak health, and amidst the thick-crowding excitements and interests of the four preceding days, time and opportunity had been wanting. Now, however, they had come, and the story was told.
A touching and an awful story. The story of a man who had fled for Liberty or Death through the malignant horrors of a Southern fen, with the hounds and hunters of a pirate civilization on his trail, and who had lain for weeks like years, in cold, and stench, and hunger, with rats and vermin swarming over him, in the black and filthy antre of a Northern vessel’s hold, with a Northern ruffian to maltreat him daily in his wasting torture; earning thus, with pangs and fears that freemen never know, his right to the freedom Nature gave him for his own.