File No. 113 by Emile Gaboriau (ebook reader browser TXT) 📖

Although this discovery filled Gaston with indignation and shame, he was prudent enough to conceal his impressions.

His remonstrances, no matter how eloquent, would have made no change in the opinions of Captain Warth regarding a traffic which brought him in more than a hundred per cent, in spite of the French and English cruisers, the damages, sometimes entire loss of cargoes, and many other risks.

The crew admired Gaston when they learned that he had cut two men into mince-meat when they were insolent to him; this was the account of Gaston’s affair, as reported to the captain by old Menoul.

Gaston wisely determined to keep on friendly terms with the villains, as long as he was in their power. To express disapproval of their conduct would have incurred the enmity of the whole crew, without bettering his own situation.

He therefore kept quiet, but swore mentally that he would desert on the first opportunity.

This opportunity, like everything impatiently longed for, came not.

By the end of three months, Gaston had become so useful and popular that Captain Warth found him indispensable.

Seeing him so intelligent and agreeable, he liked to have him at his own table, and would spend hours at cards with him or consulting about his business matters. The mate of the ship dying, Gaston was chosen to replace him. In this capacity he made two successful voyages to Guinea, bringing back a thousand blacks, whom he superintended during a trip of fifteen hundred leagues, and finally landed them on the coast of Brazil.

When Gaston had been with Captain Warth about three years, the Tom Jones stopped at Rio Janeiro for a month, to lay in supplies. He now decided to leave the ship, although he had become somewhat attached to the friendly captain, who was after all a worthy man, and never would have engaged in the diabolical traffic of human beings, but for his little angel daughter’s sake. He said that his child was so good and beautiful, that she deserved a large fortune. Each time that he sold a black, he would quiet any faint qualms of conscience by saying, “It is for little Mary’s good.”

Gaston possessed twelve thousand francs, as his share of the profits, when he landed at Brazil.

As a proof that the slave-trade was repugnant to his nature, he left the slaver the moment he possessed a little capital with which to enter some honest business.

But he was no longer the high-minded, pure-hearted Gaston, who had so devotedly loved and perilled his life for the little fairy of La Verberie.

It is useless to deny that evil examples are pernicious to morals. The most upright characters are unconsciously influenced by bad surroundings. As the exposure to rain, sun, and sea-air first darkened and then hardened his skin, so did wicked associates first shock and then destroy the refinement and purity of Gaston’s mind. His heart had become as hard and coarse as his sailor hands. He still remembered Valentine, and sighed for her presence; but she was no longer the sole object of affection, the one woman in the world to him. Contact with sin had lowered his standard of women.

The three years, after which he had pledged himself to return, had passed; perhaps Valentine was expecting him. Before deciding on any definite project, he wrote to an intimate friend at Beaucaire to learn what had happened during his long absence. He expressed great anxiety about his family and neighbors.

He also wrote to his father, asking why he had never answered the many letters which he had sent to him by returning sailors, who would have safely forwarded the replies.

At the end of a year, he received an answer from his friend.

The letter almost drove him mad.

It told him that his father was dead; that his brother had left France, Valentine was lately married, and that he, Gaston, had been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for murder.

Henceforth he was alone in the world; with no country, no family, no home, and disgraced by a public sentence.

Valentine was married, and he had no object in life! He would hereafter have faith in no one, since she, Valentine, had cast him off, forgotten him. What could he expect of others, when she had broken her troth, had lacked the courage to keep her promise and wait for him?—she, whom he had so trusted.

In his despair, he almost regretted the Tom Jones. Yes, he sighed for the wicked slaver crew, his life of excitement and peril. The dangers and triumphs of those bold pirates whose only care was to heap up money would have been preferable to his present wretchedness.

But Gaston was not a man to be long cast down.

“Money is the cause of it all!” he said with rage. “If the lack of money can bring such misery, its possession must bestow intense happiness. Henceforth I will devote all my energies to getting money.”

He set to work with a greedy activity, which increased each day. He tried all the many speculations open to adventurers. Alternately he traded in furs, worked in a mine, and cultivated lands.

Five times he went to bed rich, and waked up ruined; five times, with the patience of the castor, whose hut is swept away by each returning tide, he recommenced the foundation of his fortune.

Finally, after long weary years of toil and struggle, he was worth a million in gold, besides immense tracts of land.

He had often said that he would never leave Brazil, that he wanted to end his days in Rio. He had forgotten that love for his native land never dies in the heart of a Frenchman. Now that he was rich, he wished to die in France.

He made inquiries, and found that the law of limitations would permit him to return without being disturbed by the authorities. He left his property in charge of an agent, and embarked for France, taking a large portion of his fortune with him.

Twenty-three years and four months had elapsed since he fled from home.

On a bright, crisp day in January, 1866, he once again stepped on French soil. With a sad heart, he stood upon the quays at Bordeaux, and compared the past with the present.

He had departed a young man, ambitious, hopeful, and beloved; he returned gray-haired, disappointed, trusting no one.

Gold could not supply the place of affection. He had said that riches would bring happiness: his wealth was immense, and he was miserable.

His health, too, began to suffer from this sudden change of climate. Rheumatism confined him to his bed for several months. As soon as he could sit up, the physicians sent him to the warm baths, where he recovered his health, but not his spirits. He felt his lonely condition more terribly in his own country than when in a foreign land.

He determined to divert his mind by engaging in some occupation which would keep him too busy to think of himself and his disappointment.