Books: The Law of the Land
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Emerson Hough >> The Law of the Land
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"I shouldn't wonder if it were your bag that I've got in my own room,
Mr. Decherd," said he. He rose and led the way, and Decherd,
perforce, must follow. "Is this yours?" He held up to Decherd's view
the valise which had once contained the book and papers earlier
mentioned. Eddring looked narrowly into Decherd's face. He saw it
suddenly change color, going from pale to sallow.
Decherd made a distinct effort at recovering himself. "Y-yes, that's
it--it looks like it, anyhow," said he.
Eddring handed him the valise. Decherd pressed the spring of the lock
and looked into the interior.
"Why, it's empty!" cried he. "What in--"
"Yes," said Eddring, simply, "it's empty." Decherd cast at him one
swift, veiled look, under which Eddring saw all the covert venom of a
dangerous serpent that is aroused. "It's not my bag, anyhow," said
Decherd, regaining his composure. "I thought it was, but mine had my
name on the plate."
"Yes?" said Eddring. "I am sorry I can't help you. Well, if the bag
isn't yours, I'll just keep it. I don't doubt the owner will be found
in time." The eyes of the two met fairly now; and from that instant
there was issue joined between them.
CHAPTER XVII
MISS LADY AND HENRY DECHERD
Why Henry Decherd should have remained so long at the Big House at
this particular time might have found plausible answer in any of a
dozen ways. There were reasons indeed why Decherd should be covertly
pleased at matters as he now found them. Colonel Blount touched his
pride keenly enough by practically ignoring his presence, yet he made
amends by continuing moody and aloof, spending little time about the
house. John Eddring had long since taken his departure for the city.
Mrs. Ellison was rarely visible about the house. There was an
atmosphere of uneasiness, an unsettled discontent over all things.
Yet, for the oblique purposes of Henry Decherd, matters could not
have been better arranged. So much being established, he played his
chosen part at least with boldness. In spite of all this recent
stress and strain, in spite of this continuing trace of sadness and
anxiety which lay over all, Henry Decherd none the less knew very
well that there was now at hand the best and perhaps the last
opportunity which, he might expect for the carrying out of a certain
intention which, above all other purposes, worthy or unworthy, had
long possessed his soul. At times he was absent from the Big House,
none knew where; for in the careless bigness of that place there were
no locks upon the doors and no hours for the spreading of the table.
Each came and went as he pleased. In no other situation could Decherd
have found things shaped better to his plan.
That plan, the sole motive which could have kept him at that time in
that certain locality, was to speak alone with Miss Lady. Even thus
favored by circumstances, he found this purpose difficult to
accomplish. Now it was Colonel Blount who passed moodily across the
yard; or it was Mrs. Ellison who accosted him just as he started to
follow the young girl down the hall or out on the gallery. Once or
twice the girl Delphine stopped him in some such errand and held him
on one pretext or another in some corner of the place. Yet Decherd,
involved as was the game he played, persisted and at length had his
more immediate wish.
He came upon Miss Lady at last in the twilight on the big gallery,
when the birds were chirping all about and the insects were attuning
their nightly orchestra. He walked directly up to her.
"Miss Lady," he said suddenly, without parley or preface, "ah, Miss
Lady, how glad I am to find you at last!"
The girl drew back from him, at once divining the import of his air
and tone; but he went on.
"I've waited so long," said he. "There's always been some one about.
Couldn't you see--don't you see what it is that brings me to you!" He
would have caught her hand in his own feverish one, but again she
drew away, looking at him with startled eyes.
"Dearest," he went on, "listen. I can't do without you. I have loved
you ever since first I saw you. Come, tell me--"
Even the icy silence of the girl scarce served to check him. There
was, indeed, evident on his face the existence of an emotion as
genuine as could be conceived in a soul like his. It was, moreover,
the very devil's instant for approaching this poor girl, hopeless,
outcast, overstrung, altogether and piteously in need of comfort. At
that time Miss Lady could count upon no friend in all the world. She
had no confidante, no counselor. That, of all possible moments, was
the most fortunate time for a man like Henry Decherd, even had the
sweet beauty and helplessness of this girl not wrung from him respect
as well as an unrestrained and passionate regard. What was it, then,
which at that moment intervened between these two? What was the
hidden guidance that came to Miss Lady at that time? She herself
could not explain. She could not have told what caused her to tremble
as though of an ague--could not have told why, though she sought to
see clearly the face of this man who came to her with the words of a
lover, there seemed to fall between them some interposing veil,
rendering his features uncertain, indistinct. Craving and needing a
friend at this hour of her life, none the less she saw not now that
friend.
"No," she called out, frightened. "No! Do not!" And that was all that
she could think, as all that she could do was to move yet farther
away.
He would not accept repulse, but followed on with eager and
impassioned words. "I love you!" he whispered. "Come, what is this
place to you? There's a big world full of things to see and do! We'll
be married, we'll travel, we shall see the world. You shall know what
love can mean--what life really is! Miss Lady, dearest--"
After all, by the will of the immortal gods, who sometimes have in
care the welfare of the Miss Ladys of this earth, Henry Decherd erred
in these very proofs of a passion sincere as he was capable of
feeling. A too hasty ardor failed where a calmer friendship had gone
further toward winning a heart-sore, helpless girl. The balance of
the issue, for a moment trembling in his favor, was, within the
instant, quite destroyed.
"Sir," said Miss Lady, and he paused as she freed her hand and
stepped back from him, strangely cold and calm, "I have given you no
possible right--"
"But you don't understand. Listen, I tell you," he began again.
"I can not listen; it is not right for me to listen. I am too
troubled with many things to listen to you now. You don't know who I
am. I do not know, myself, who I am. You've been deceived by her--you
don't know. I have no mother, as I thought I had. I am going away
from here to-morrow. I don't know where I shall go, but I know I
shall not stay here. It's wrong for me to stay. It's wrong for me to
listen to yon. I can't tell you all I've heard." Miss Lady's lip
trembled.
"Did she tell you? Has Mrs. Ellison--" cried Decherd, suddenly
flushing. But Miss Lady was too much disturbed to notice his speech
or his changed expression. She could only reiterate, "I am going
away."
"Oh, come now," said he, his voice again gaining confidence and his
face showing relief as he glanced about him. "Come, you are only
tired. I ought not to have troubled you this way, this evening, but I
could not help it--I could not wait. I was afraid--but then to-
morrow--I'll see you to-morrow. Think, Miss Lady, think--"
"I have thought," said Miss Lady, with sudden decision. "I have
thought; and as for to-morrow, there'll be none for me at this place.
I'm going away at once. I must begin life all over again. It has been
wrong for me to live here at all. Why did you ask us to come here? We
would have been better off where we were, even if we were poor and
helpless."
"It's been heaven here since you came."
"Oh, it was kind of you to get mamma and me a home here. It has been
home. It has been so sweet. I love it--I shall always love it. It is
big and free here for everybody. One can live here--one could live
here if it were right. Colonel Blount is a splendid man, a grand man--
"
"Yes?"
"Yes, yes, a splendid man."
"But you'll not stay here?" There was well-nigh as much eagerness as
regret in his tone. She did not note it.
"No, I can not," she replied. "I can't tell you everything--I don't
want to tell you everything. No one is to blame, I suppose. It's all
because I have just grown up, and find I'm in the wrong place. I have
been living along here just--just like one of the blacks out there in
the fields--without--without taking thought. If it were honest, if I
could do anything, if I belonged to any one and could feel that in
some way I earned the right to--to--not take thought, then it would
be different."
"That's what I say! That's as I want to have it," he began; but she
would not listen.
"But it isn't right," she went on. "I can't tell you everything. I
can't even tell you about Mrs. Ellison. Perhaps you have been
deceived. Ask her. Go ask Colonel Blount, and he may tell you what he
likes. But for me, just forget me. I couldn't love you--I couldn't
love any one now. I am cold, all through."
The plaintiveness of her speech touched even this man. He held out
his arms. "No, no," she cried, as she drew back. "I tell you, the
world has gone to pieces. I must find a new one. I am not myself, I
am lost; I don't know what I am." Again for a half-instant, touched
as he was, Decherd went near to forgetting the lover. There was
almost exultation on his face as he saw how fortune was now favoring
him in his plans. There was nothing he wished so much as that Miss
Lady might leave the Big House at once and for ever.
"I can't tell who I am!" the girl repeated, as though in an agony of
entreaty. "I'm some one else! It's so strange. I must go--"
"But where would you go?" said he.
"I do not know; somewhere."
"But then? Why, what could you do, alone? Think--here am I offering
you all you need, a home in some other place, comfort, safety, some
one to care for you--why, perhaps it might mean riches before long--I
will tell you--you'll find it hard enough alone."
"Yes, it will be new and hard," said Miss Lady, with a wan smile. "I
have never thought very much for myself. Some one has always seemed
ready to do things for me. I can't do very much. But then, you know,
sometimes the things you can't do show you the way to things that you
can."
"You are obstinate," cried Decherd, angry now, as only a weak man
would have been. "I'll follow you, wherever you go! The time will
come when you will be glad enough to see me."
"Mr. Decherd," said Miss Lady, straightening into a quick aloofness,
"you said you loved me. That sounds to me as if in some way you were
threatening me."
"Well, I will," he reiterated sullenly. "You'd better think."
Miss Lady shook her head slowly from side to side. "I am frightened,"
she said. "Perhaps some girls would not be. But, in some way, though
I am easy to frighten, I don't seem easy to frighten from things that
I think I ought to do."
Knowing now that he had found obstacle in this girl's will not thus
to be overcome, Decherd allowed his anger to get the better of him.
"Go, then!" he cried brutally.
"Sir," said Miss Lady, "you yourself may go now, if you please;" and
she stood so unagitated, so composed and certain of herself, certain
as well of his obedience, that Decherd knew here was a woman
different from any with whom he had hitherto had to do. Flinging out
his hands in anger at his own mistake, his own folly, he turned and
strode away. Miss Lady, sinking into the chair, gazed out at a world
now grown indistinct and shadowy, full of the terrors of uncertainty.
Decherd knew himself beaten for the time, when he left her. But
though he promised it to himself, he did not follow Miss Lady at that
time; for before another moon had lit the mysterious realm of the
forest beyond which lay an unknown world, Miss Lady was indeed gone.
Carrying with her not even a clear knowledge of her own past,
doubting her own parentage, doubting almost her own identity;
helpless, unprepared, and all too ignorant of the world from which
such as she should for ever be shielded and protected, she had left
the only spot on earth she knew as home, the only place where she
could claim a friend, and fared out into the unknown! It was as if
some evil harpy of the air had swooped down and borne her into the
pathless sky, as though the earth or the waters had closed over her
and left no trace. The simple and the sincere, those most direct and
frank, ofttimes are most difficult to follow in their actions when
they take counsel wholly of themselves. Miss Lady had no involved
motive, none but the one direct and imperative, no means except the
one immediately at hand. Hence, so impelled, so guided, she
disappeared completely, impossible as that might have seemed. Not
even in the piteous little note which Colonel Calvin Blount later
crushed in his hand, did she give any clue to her destination.
Henry Decherd did not take the down train on that day. Had he taken
Miss Lady's declarations seriously, and suspected a deliberate
intention on her part, he might have watched the only avenue of
escape possible for her. But this he did not do.
In truth the plans of Henry Decherd himself, _quasi_ guest at
the Big House, guest tolerated, guest under suspicion, were at that
time of a nature singularly intricate, and demanding all his skill
and resources. It was certain that Decherd did not disappear with
Miss Lady--so much was left to comfort Colonel Calvin Blount. It was
certain also that he said no adieus to his long-time host, nor gave
any hint as to his own departure. Yet it was clearly proved by many
of the servants about the Big House that Decherd was seen mounted and
riding to the westward at an early hour of the same morning in which
Miss Lady was thought to have left the place.
This fact, indeed Decherd himself, was well-nigh forgotten in the
grief which now came to the master of the Big House. Troubled as
Colonel Calvin Blount was, there was born, and there remained, in his
mind the unshakable belief that Miss Lady had not of her own will
gone with Henry Decherd.
CHAPTER XVIII
MISFORTUNE
How narrow and inefficient are sometimes all the ways of fate and
life! By how small a margin, passing upon the crowded ways of life,
do we ofttimes miss the friend who comes with running feet to meet
us! The very train which bore Miss Lady from the Big House brought
down from the northward John Eddring, eagerly bent upon an errand of
his own--John Eddring, for weeks restless, harried and driven of his
own heart, and now fully committed to a purpose whereon depended all
his future happiness. He must find Miss Lady, must see her once more;
must tell her this one thing indisputably sure, that the paths of
earth had been shaped solely that they two might walk therein for
ever! He must tell her of his loneliness, of his ambitions; and of
this, his greatest hope. Desperately in haste, he scarce could wait
until the train pulled up at the little station. He sprang off on the
side opposite from the station, and ran up the lane.
Ah! blind one, not to see, not to feel, not to know that the dearest
dweller of the Big House was here, directly at hand upon the platform,
unseen, but upon the point of stepping aboard the train which had
brought him, and which was now to carry her away. Miss Lady, laying
her plans well, had practically concealed herself until the very
moment of the arrival of the train. And so now these two passed,
their feet thereafter running far apart.
Colonel Blount received his guest with a strikingly haggard look upon
his face; yet at first he made no explanations. He saw Eddring
glancing round, and knew whom he sought.
"She isn't here," the planter said very quietly, and handed him the
note which he had but a few moments earlier discovered. Eddring's
face went as bloodless as his own as he read the few simple lines.
"What's the reason of this?" he cried fiercely. "When did she go?"
"I don't know," said Blount, "unless it was right now. She may have
been right by you--right there at the train for all I know; and I
reckon like enough that's just how it happened."
"Where's Decherd?"
"I don't know--gone somewhere. He didn't go with her."
"But Mrs. Ellison?"
"She's not gone," said Blount, grimly, "but she's going. I don't
count her in any more. Here's the key to Mrs. Ellison's room. It's
better she shouldn't see any one this morning."
"But Blount--why, Cal, my friend--what does all this mean?"
"I don't know. All I can say is, hell's broke loose down here."
They passed down the hall together toward Blount's office room.
"By the way," said the latter, "here's a telegram that got here just
before you did. It's come from the city on a repeat order and must
have passed you on your way. It's railroad business, I reckon."
Eddring tore open the sleazy gray envelope and read the message. His
face was hardened into deep lines as he looked up at his friend, and
without comment handed over the bit of paper. The message read as
follows:
"Eddring, Division Superintendent Personal Injury Department,-----:
You are temporarily relieved duties your office by Allen, of
Hillsboro, pending investigation irregularities charged your
division. Strong developments of claims long considered abated.
Letter. Dix, Agent."
The two men looked at each other for a moment. Blount extended his
hand, and Eddring, gulping, took it.
"God!" he gasped, as he looked at the two bits of paper in his hand.
"Did more wrong and misery ever come to a fellow all at once than
I've got here in these?"
"I know what this telegram means," he said, "and it's all a mistake.
In a week or so I'd have put the whole thing before them. But now,
they suspect me of being a thief, and I'll never work another day for
them, exonerated or unexonerated."
"Well, what of that?" Blount speke hotly. "You're lucky to lose that
job--I've been hoping for a long time that cussed railroad would fire
you. There's bigger things in the world for you than drudging along
on a salary. You just go ahead and set up office for yourself--fight
'em every chance you get; give 'em hell; I'll stake you till you get
on your feet. But damn it, boy, that's not what's bothering me--it's
that girl--she's _got_ to be found."
"She's got to be found," Eddring repeated. Even Calvin Blount, little
used as he was to searching beneath the surface, knew that Eddring
had ceased to give the railroad a thought.
Blount looked at him keenly.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OP THE WILDERNESS
In the northern pine-lands Father Messasebe murmured to himself,
whispering among his rush-environed shores.
"You have taken from me my own," murmured Father Messasebe. "You have
swept away my children. You have made child's roads for yourselves
along my courses. You have had freedom with me, the Father of the
Waters. You, small, have had your liberties with me--with me, who am
great, ancient, abiding. But now, since you have taken away my red
wilderness, I shall make for myself a black wilderness. In time
between these two there shall lie a wilderness of that which once was
white!"
And so Father Messasebe, the mighty, the ancient, the abiding, called
upon the spirits of the air, which are his kin, and upon the spirits
of the earth, which are his friends, and these made cause. The small
drop of dew, which hung upon the green beard of the wild rice-plant,
dropped down into the hands of Father Messasebe. It did not tarry, as
had once been its wont, upon the mossy floor of the wilderness, but
hastened on. It met rain-drops shaken from the trees, these drops
also hastening. The fountains, once slow and deliberate among the
roots of the ancient forest floor, tarried not now upon their beds,
but hurried on to join the dew and the rain in a great journeying.
The ravaged forest gave up its springs. The brooks ran dry, and left
barren the penetralia of the tamaracks and cedars. All these hurried
on, little flow meeting little flow, and they joining yet others; and
so finally a great flood joined itself to others great, and this
volume coursed on through lake and channel, and surged along all the
root-shot banks of the great upper water-ways.
The floods passed on, making a merriment which grew more savage and
exultant. The scarred and whitening trees stood silent, watching the
waters pass; and the round hills smiled not as their feet were washed
high with the hurrying floods. And when Father Messasebe at length
came into the country where tall hills stood, neither did these hills
protest, but joined in that which was now forward, and sent down red
and gray and brown trickles of their own to augment the tawny waters.
And then the country of low hills, which had no trees, sent out its
sluggish streams also, across the deep loam-lands, to stain still
further the once clean stream of Messasebe. And word went abroad that
Father Messasebe had rebelled--word that reached the white-topped
mountains far in the West; and these mountains, loyal, sent their
white waters down until they, too, grew red, but still tarried not,
and rolled on to meet the general stream. And the green mountains in
the East, also loyal, sent their floods as well; until Father
Messasebe, hating gathered all his armies, marched on and on, to make
anew a wilderness of his own.
Thus the floods came at length to a wide land covered with great
trees, a land deep and rich, filled with all manner of growing and
brooding things; a land of fat soil carried thither no one knows
whence; a land apart and prepared. So Messasebe, having traveled many
miles, came to a country inhabited by the slow snake, by the otter,
and the beaver, the panther, the deer, the bear--many children whom
he long had loved.
Along the edge of this lower land there ran low earthen fences made
by the white man, who had laid claim upon the kingdom of the Father
of the Floods--vainly-builded fences of earth, hopelessly seeking to
hedge out the imperious flow of Messasebe, the ancient, the enduring.
Father Messasebe, seeing these things, called back to the following
legions of his children that here was time for sport. And all the
waters laughed loud and long, dallying with their prey.
"In the North they have robbed me," said Father Messasebe to his
legions. "Here in the South they would bind me. Ho! now for the game
of letting in the floods, of making anew my wilderness.
"For a wilderness," said Father Messasebe, "the world has ever had.
And whether gentle overpower barbarian, or barbarian in turn overcast
the gentle, always there will be a wilderness, and out of it will
come combat.
"But the World is ancient and abiding," said Father Messasebe to his
children, "and the World cares no whit for those things sometimes
called good and new. In the years, that which is new becomes old.
Only the World and its children endure. Only the old prevails. Only
the wilderness, and the combat of weak and strong, remain for ever.
"And at all combat," said Father Messasebe to his children, "the
World smiles, knowing that the strong must win; and knowing that in
time the strong will become weak. Wherefore let us build our
wilderness for a time, like to that which will one day rise again
along all my shores, great trees growing where cities are to-day.
"Only in the ages," said Father Messasebe to his children, "do the
weak come to be the strong. Wherefore must the strong prevail, each
in his own day. It is the Law!"
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
EDDRING, AGENT OP CLAIMS
Some three years subsequent to that mysterious departure of Miss
Lady in search of a world beyond the rim of the confining forest,
there sat in his office, one fine morning in June, no less a person
than John Eddring, formerly claim agent of the Y.V. railway. Eddring
looked older, more wearied. He seemed disappointed in his years of
fruitless search, in the following of false clues, in the death of
new hopes. And yet from the man's clear eye there shone a certain
grim comfort of accomplishment.
He was now surrounded, as before, with the customary paraphernalia of
a business office. A few desks, a cabinet letter-file, a typewriter
stand or two, a chart, a picture askew upon the wall--this might
still have been the office of the Y.V. railway. Indeed, there was
printed upon the office door the modest sign, "John Eddring, Agent of
Claims."
Yet this was no longer the office of Eddring, claim agent of the
railway. There had been change. Eddring, agent of claims, was in
business for himself, and upon the other side of the pretty game of
cross purposes. That which he had taken for calamity had proved good
fortune. The world had loved him, even as it tried him. The advice of
his old mother he had discovered to be almost prophetic. At last he
found himself making use of that legal profession which had formerly
been but one of the adjuncts of his earlier occupation. He had opened
office for himself, and now paid service to no man.
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