“Meanwhile,” he pursued, “I keep you in perpetual torment, as you say. Try divorce. You have no cause in law, for I take care to give you none. My little, delicate, subtle, intangible, polite aggravations—all my skillful outrages and profanations of your soul and body, which drive you mad, or kill you slowly like poison, are not recognized in law. My courteous, maddening words and actions, which work, it is true, the effect, and worse than the effect, of the most brutal physical cruelty—they are all perfectly legal. It is doubtful whether they could even be stated for the purposes of a divorce suit. They are so subtle, so veiled in good nature, courtesy, kindness, legality, that if they were stated, people probably would laugh at you, and think you dishonest or deranged. At all events, though they slowly madden or murder you, they constitute no breach of holy matrimony.”
“They do,” she cried. “I do not care what the law says; such matrimony as I live in is not holy. It is”—
“Ah, no, dear Josephine,” he interrupted. “Decidedly you are wrong. Go to court—swear that you hate me, loathe me, abhor me—swear that life is insupportable with me, and plead for release, and the blessed old law will tell you that you are living, and must live, in holy matrimony! Go to any southern State—go to South Carolina, and state my refined and delicate cruelty. Why, Judge Somebody or other, in the next State, boasts that it is the unfading honor, as he calls it, of South Carolina, that she never has granted a divorce for any cause whatever. Well, go North—go to New York, for instance. Why, their great Panjandrum up there, the ‘Tribune’ man—what’s his name—Greeley—he will tell you that you are living, and must live, in holy matrimony. Bless him!” said Mr. Lafitte, piously. “I love him. I love him well. I hate him for his Abolitionism: I love him for his views on holy matrimony. I hate him because he tries to weaken my power over my slaves: I love him because he tries to strengthen my power over you, my angel. So do the rest of them. Go to any State you like, and they will all tell you that you are living, and must live, in holy matrimony. Every one, except that naughty, naughty Indiana. Ah, the bad State! The wicked, wicked State, that says a discordant marriage is hell, and saves people from it at the expense of holy matrimony! But you couldn’t go there even with your complaint of cruelty, for you haven’t a single witness—not one; and if you had, you wouldn’t go there, and presently I’ll tell you why. Meanwhile, the result is, that there’s no help for you anywhere. As for alleging any little infidelities on my part, that is clearly absurd. Thanks to our good Edward Livingstone’s code, you can get no testimony from the yellow girls, for slaves are not witnesses, you know, in law; and as for getting any legal testimony on that point, that I take care you can’t get, and your convictions are not evidence, my angel. Then, too, observe how the beautiful social system favors me. My little gaieties are reported, for instance, in New Orleans. Well, society does not taboo me. Mrs. Grundy smiles blandly upon me still. The men laugh, and say, ‘Ah, Lafitte, you gay dog!’ The women are soft as cream, and sweet as sugar. Whereas you—suppose even a whisper of that sort about you—even an idle rumor—ah, what a fine howl! You are quite finished at once, my dear.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and elevated his eyebrows with a grimace of mock pity, keeping his carnivorous eyes still fixed upon the raging silence of her face.
“And now,” he went on, “why do I keep you here? Why do I torture you daily? I answer—are you listening, my cherished one?—I answer that it is my little vengeance. Harken, Josephine. You and that handsome young Raynal were in love with each other when I first saw you. You were both poor. Raynal has got rich since, but he was then poor as charity. I, on the contrary, was wealthy, and your family wouldn’t let you marry Raynal, but were anxious that you should marry me, for they wanted to make a rich match for you. You liked me well enough then, for you only knew the best side of me, which the ladies say is charming; but you did not love me. I pressed my suit, however, and your family worried and drove you—poor young girl of fifteen, that you were—till, unable—for I will be strictly fair to you, Josephine—unable to resist longer, you yielded, and I got you.”
“Yes, you got me with a lie,” she passionately cried. “Never would I have yielded, had you and they not lied me into believing Raynal had abandoned me and engaged himself to another.”
“Oh,” returned Mr. Lafitte, with a leer, “you have found that out, have you? No matter. I got you, and you discovered your mistake in yielding as time passed on. Then, the year before I brought you here, when you were in much suffering—for I will be just to you, Josephine—you and Raynal had a little correspondence. Ha! you thought I did not know it! But I found it out. Your treacherous young Creole wench sold me your secret, and I took copies of every letter you wrote before I let her carry them to Raynal. I took copies also of his before they went to you. They are all eloquent, and I love to read them. And they put you both in my power, my lady!”
He saw that the blow struck home. She sat mute and still as marble, but all expression had gone from her face; the fire had faded from her eyes; her arms, still clasped on her bosom, were relaxed; and her bosom had ceased to heave. The planter watched her with an infernal smile on his dark visage.
“With those letters in my possession,” he continued, “you could not seek release even in Indiana. For writing them, you have to be tortured most exquisitely till you die, as before you wrote them, you had to be tortured for having loved Raynal. And yet, Josephine, I believe you and Raynal to be people of honor, and, though you loved, to have written those letters with innocent hearts. You were in loveless suffering, and you wanted the consolation a friend could give, and which Raynal gave. See how justly I state it! I will go further—I will admit that the letters are such as two friends might have written to each other. There is really nothing wrong in them. But they are full of passages which are too equivocal to be read in a court of law. There innocent words are made to seem guilty. And those letters, without much twisting, would convict you of conjugal infidelity, my beloved Josephine.”
He looked at her with fiendish enjoyment, but she sat still, and her face did not change.