Mr. Lafitte, with a negrine ptchih, went off in a spasm of devilish merriment, keeping his eyes fixed on the bowed and pallid face of the woman opposite him.
“You were in love with young Raynal when I married you,” he continued, “and you were bullied and badgered by your amiable family into wedlock with me. Of that, however, I will not speak now. But suppose, Josephine, that you wish a divorce. How are you going to get it? On what grounds? Now apropos of my mistresses: by the law of Louisiana, were you false to me, I could get a divorce from you. By the same laws—oh, how I love them!—you could only get that divorce from me if I kept my mistress in your dwelling, or publicly and openly. Suppose you emigrated to another State where they grant divorces on the ground of the husband’s infidelity. Could you get a separation then? No. Why not? Because you have no evidence, and I have taken good care that you can have none. Ha! my dear, what do you think of your position?”
“My God, my God!” she moaned, “what have I done that I should be outraged thus! How have I borne this life—how can I bear it! I tell you, Lafitte,” she cried, raising her voice, hoarse with anger and agony, into a higher key, and throwing out her arms with a furious gesture, “I tell you that this life is Hell. I know now, what I wondered when I was a child—where Hell is and what it looks like. It is here and it looks like this. This is one of its chambers, and this one of its mansions. These walls, those books, those pictures, this furniture, that fruit, that wine, they all belong to it. Those are its flowers clambering around the windows—this is its light and these are its shadows—this scorching heat is the heat of it, that sun is the sun of it, these slaves swelter in it—I, a slave like them, am tortured in it, and you are the fiend of it, hard, cruel, sensual, heartless, pitiless devil that you are!”
Flinging her arms together again in a convulsive clasp on her bosom, her frame shuddering, her breath coming and going in quick gasps through her clenched teeth, which gleamed behind lips deadly white and tensely drawn, she glared at him with fixed nostrils and flaming eyes, like a beautiful maniac. Save that he had ceased his balancing, that his eyes were a shade more tigerish, and that his form crouched slightly forward in his chair, Mr. Lafitte was as cool and collected as ever, and his face wore the same sardonic smile.
“Now Josephine,” he remarked in a tone more nonchalant, serene and soft than before, if that could be, “let me close this delightful conversation by a few brief observations on the value of opportunity. First, with regard to the dear negroes. I am a rich, but I have my little desire to be a very rich planter. Therefore I lay plans for a large cotton crop, on which, by the way, I have heavy bets pending. In order that I may have the large crop, which means a great deal of money, and in order that I may win my bets, which are considerable, I make the dear negroes work furiously. But in order that they shall work with due ardor, and lest that tender bond of fidelity and devotion to their master’s interests which the good divines up north expatiate so eloquently upon—lest that should not sufficiently inspire them, I get my excellent William Tassle to stimulate them with a plantation whip, and I stimulate them myself with another when I feel like it, which I often do. And they labor like angels—dear me! how they do spring to it, to be sure! It is enchanting. Indeed I get a great deal out of them. But in order that I may get a great deal out of them, I must flog them up handsomely at their work, and punish them profusely after their work if their work has not been what the ardent soul of Lafitte could wish. Hence the cruelty, as you harshly call it, my Josephine—hence the floggings, the paddlings, the buckings, hence the howlings that annoy you, my angel, and which, by the way, I really cannot help, since the black beasts will make a clamor—unless, indeed, I could induce some of those cursedly ingenious Yankees to invent me a patent anti-howling machine for their abominable throats. Positively, it is an idea, and I must reflect upon it. But see now. In doing all this, I only avail myself of my legal opportunities. Could I do it if I had not my opportunities? Alas, no. Could I do it up North? Alas, no. I should not have my opportunities. I should have to calculate, and circumvent, and plot and scheme till my poor brain would be fatigued, and then be bothered and baffled with strikes for higher wages, and ten hour systems, and God knows what else. Now here, thanks to our good Livingstone, who was really a fine jurist, I have a code which gives me all the advantages and puts my black laborers completely and comfortably under my thumb. They have no opportunities, and so they work without wages and are well flogged into the bargain. I have my opportunities, which I improve, and hence they work for me. Ha! it is charming! They get their two plantation suits a year, their three and a half pounds of bacon and their peck of meal apiece a week, which is not costly, and keeps them in working order. They are up early and down late, and so profits accrue. Hence the value of opportunities with regard to the dear negroes—my little exactions of whom wound your sensibilities, my angelic Josephine.”
He paused to drink his claret slowly and refill his glass, keeping his eyes fixed upon his wife, who sat secretly wondering what he meant by all this devilish frankness.
“Now,” resumed the planter, “observe again the value of opportunities in relation to yourself, ma chère. I marry you. Good. We live in much elegance, to your soul’s delight, in New Orleans. Good again. But one fine day I bring you up here, and here I keep you, where you don’t want to stay. Why do you stay, then? Ah! the beautiful social system gives me the opportunity to make you. Could you bring me up here? Oh, no. Could you make me stay? Oh, no. The beautiful social system does not give you that opportunity.”
“No,” she cried, “it gives me nothing.”
“And why?” he continued. “Is it because you are morally, mentally, or in any way, my inferior? Oh, no. Why, then? Simply because you are a woman. You are less than I by virtue of your sex, my angel. Ha! it is curious. The beautiful social system makes you something like my slave, dear wife. I bring my negroes here, and I bring you here. None of you want to come, but you can’t help yourselves, and so come you do. But my negroes cannot bring me here. No. Nor can you bring me here. No. Do my negroes run away? I set Dunwoodie’s hounds after them, and run them down. Do you run away? That dear old Mrs. Grundy sets her hounds after you, and runs you down. Ah!”
He paused to drink a little claret, keeping his eyes fixed upon her face.