Emily listened, with a countenance deathly pale.
“I declare, Harrington,” she said, “when I read that letter I felt as if the earth had cracked and shown me a glimpse of hell. Is it possible that there can be such men as this? Are there many of them at the South?”
Harrington did not reply for a moment, and sat sadly looking into vacancy.
“It is not Southern nature,” he said, at length, “it is human nature. It is human nature depraved by a tyranny, and licensed, practically licensed, even in its wildest excesses, by a tyrant code. Read Shakspeare; there you have in representative figures, the scientific account of man. Here is Shakspeare’s Chiron, Demetrius, Iago, Cloten—a moral monster with statutory power to hold slaves, and treat them at his pleasure. But the blame is less with him than with the polity from which he sprang—which organized him and reared him. Bating for their life-long education in despotism, Southern men are no worse than Northern men. Put the code of Louisiana over Massachusetts, and you shall have the self-same results. Look at our Northern marine—that blot on our democracy; how does the despotism of it work on our captains, even with some sort of a legal check upon them? Read the criminal reports, or talk with seamen, and learn how Northern captains can maltreat the men under their command. No—human nature is no more incapable of degeneracy in Massachusetts than in Louisiana. If people are better here, it is because conditions are better.”
“Such men as this Lafitte are more to be pitied than blamed,” said Muriel, gently. “I wish we were great enough to feel so.”
There was a moment’s silence, in which nothing was heard but the slow rattle of the carriage-wheels over the paving-stones.
“You see, Emily,” said Harrington, sadly, breaking the pause, “that your promise to Roux cannot be fulfilled. It is now our painful problem how to destroy his new hope, without giving him the anguish of an explanation. We are in a very difficult position.”
“Oh, if I had only known of this!” cried Emily, in bitter distress. “As long as Roux expected nothing, he had only his ordinary pain. But I have lifted the poor man to this height only to dash him into a pit of despair.”