The Law of the Land by Emerson Hough (the reader ebook .TXT) 📕
The forest, the deep, vast forest of oak and ash and gum and ghostlysycamore; the forest, tangled with a thousand binding vines andbriers, wattled and laced with rank blue cane--sure proof of a soilexhaustlessly rich--this ancient forest still stood, mysterious andforbidding, all about the edges of the great plantation. Here andthere a tall white stump, fire-blackened at its foot, stood, even infields long cultivated, showing how laborious and slow had been thewhittling away of this jungle, which even now continually encroachedand claimed its own. The rim of the woods, marked white by thedeadened trees where the axes of the laborers were reclaiming yetother acres as the years rolled by, now showed in the morning sundistinctly, making a frame for the rich and restful picture of theBig House and it
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Decherd caught her hands. “We shall not wait,” said he, “we’ll be married tomorrow.” His voice trembled in a real emotion, although on his face there sat an uneasiness not easily read. “Dearest, forget all this,” he repeated. “Go home and sleep, and tomorrow—”
Her eyes flashed in the swift, imperious anger wherewith upon the instant sex may dominate sex, leaving no argument or answer. Yet in the next breath the girl turned away, her anger faded into anxiety. She wavered, softened in her attitude.
“Oh, he told me, he told me!” murmured she to herself. “I can not—I can not!” She seemed unconscious of Decherd’s presence. But soon she forgot her own soliloquy. Once more she looked Decherd squarely in the face.
“I can not marry you,” she said. “I will not!”
“I’ll not allow you to make a fool of yourself, or of me,” said Decherd. “What do you mean—who is ‘he’?”
He had his answer on the moment, not from her lips, but by one of those strange freaks of fate which often set us wondering in our commonplace lives.
There came a tap at the door, and a call boy offered a card. “It’s against orders, I know, ma’am,” he began, “but then—”
Decherd, full of suspicion, sprang at the messenger and caught the card before Miss Lady saw it. His swift glance gave him small comfort.
“Eddring!” he cried. “By God! John Eddring! So—”
“Yes,” she flashed again at him. “You are rude; and there is your answer; and here is mine to you, and him.” She turned to the call boy.
“Tell the gentleman that Miss Loisson can not be seen,” said she.
A ghastly look had come upon Henry Decherd’s face at these words. His features were livid in his rage. “So Eddring is here, is he!” said he, “and he has been talking to you! By God, I’d kill him if I thought—”
“Carry my wrap, sir!” said Miss Lady, rising like a queen. “You may do so much for the last time. At the gate I shall bid you good-by. Open the door!”
As though in a dream, Miss Lady followed Decherd to the entrance, near which stood a carriage in the narrow little street. She scarcely looked at his face, and did not note his hurried words to the driver. Silent and distraught, she took no note of their direction as the wheels rattled over the rude flags of the medieval passageway. The carriage turned corner after corner in its jolting progress, and finally trundled smoothly for a time, but Miss Lady, hoping only that this journey might soon end, scarce noticed where it had ended. She saw only that it was not at the gate of Madame Delchasse’s house, and, startled at this, expostulated with Decherd, who reasoned, argued, pleaded.
Meantime, at the gate of the old house on the Esplanade, Madame Delchasse waited uneasily alone. Perhaps half an hour had passed, and madame could scarce contain herself longer, when finally she heard the rattle of wheels and saw descending at the curb a stranger, who hurriedly approached her carriage window.
“Pardon, Madame,” said he, as he removed his hat, “this carriage is, perhaps, for the house of Madame Delchasse?”
“It is, Monsieur,” said madame, frigidly. “I am Madame Delchasse.”
“Pardon me, Madame,” said the newcomer, “my name is Eddring, John Eddring. I would not presume to come at such an hour were it not that I have a message, a very urgent one, for Miss Loisson. She refused to see me at the theater, and I came here; she must have this message. It is not for myself that—”
Madame drew back into her carriage. “Monsieur,” said she, “I say to you, bah! and again, bah!”
“You mistake,” said Eddring, hurriedly. “It is only the message which I would have delivered. It is only on her account.” Something in his voice caught the attention of madame, and she hesitated. “It is strange mademoiselle do not arrive,” she said. “Monsieur Decherd should have brought her ‘ome before this.”
“Decherd!” cried Eddring.
“Mais oui. He is her fiance. What is it that it is to you, Monsieur?”
“Listen, listen, Madame!” cried Eddring, “We must find them. This message is one of life and death. Come, your carriage—” and before madame could expostulate the two were seated together in madame’s carriage, and it was whirling back on the return journey to the Odeon.
Eddring fell on the doorkeeper. “Miss Loisson! Where is she? When did she leave?” he demanded; and madame added much voluble French.
“Mademoiselle left with a young gentleman a half-hour ago,” said the doorkeeper. “I heard him say, ‘Drive to the levee.’ Perhaps they would see the high water, yes?”
“That’s likely!” cried Eddring, springing back into the carriage, “but we will go there, too.” Hence their carriage also whirled around corner after corner, and presently trundled along the smoother way of the levee. Passing between the interminably long rows of cotton-bales they met a carriage coming away as they approached, and Eddring, upon the mere chance of it, accosted the driver.
“Did you bring two persons, a young lady and a young man, here a moment ago?” said he.
“Not here,” said the driver, pulling up. “But I took them lower down on the levee. They went on board the Opelousas Queen. You’ll have to hurry if you want to catch, them. She’s done whistled, an’ ‘ll be backin’ out mighty quick.”
Eddring hardly waited for the end of his speech. “We must find them,” said he to madame at his side, who now was becoming thoroughly frightened. “There is something wrong in this. I must get this message to Miss Loisson, and I must find out what all this means.”
A few moments later their own carriage brought up with a jerk, and Eddring, dragging madame by the arm, hurried across the stage plank almost as it was on the point of being raised.
“What do you mean?” growled the clerk to the hurried arrivals, as the Queen slowly turned out into the stream.
“Did a couple come aboard just now, a few minutes ahead of us?” cried Eddring, taking him by the shoulder in his excitement.
“Why, yes. But they didn’t come in such a hurry as you do. Where are you going?”
“Wait,” said Eddring. “What was the girl like? Tall, dark hair, wore a cloak, perhaps? And the man—was he rather thin, dark—had oddish eyes?”
“Why, yes; I reckon that’s who they were,” grumbled the clerk.
Eddring paid no attention to him. “Madame,” said he, “they must be on the boat.
“Now look; here is my message, Madame,” he resumed, as he led her apart to avoid the clerk. “You will see why I have brought you here, and why I had to find Miss Loisson and this Mr. Decherd.” He handed to her two pieces of paper—messages from Colonel Calvin Blount addressed to him at New Orleans. The first one read: “We are organized; come quick. More levee-cutting.”
“That is three days old,” said Eddring. “Here is one sent yesterday. It must have gone out by boat to some railway station, for the roads are washed out for miles in all the upper Delta. ‘Shot bad in levee fight. Come quick. We have caught Delphine, ring-leader. More proof implicating Decherd. Louise Loisson our Miss Lady. Find her; bring her. Watch Decherd. Come quick.—Calvin Blount.’
“Madame,” said Eddring, “Miss Louise Loisson was once Miss Lady Ellison, at the Big House plantation of Calvin Blount, in the northern part of Mississippi. Her friends have been looking for her for years, but in some way have missed her. I will say to you that she is a young woman lawfully entitled to property in her own name. This Henry Decherd is unfit company for her, if not dangerous company. As to this marriage, it must not be. Madame, take this message to Miss Loisson; if you can, induce her to go to her old and true friend, Colonel Blount,—if it be not too late now for that. I am sure you will be thankful all your life; and so will she. Find her; I will find Decherd. We must get up to Blount’s place then. He’s hurt. He may be killed.”
Madame stood troubled, fumbling the papers in her hand. She scarce had time to speak ere there came from the ladies’ cabin a sudden rush of footsteps, and in an instant Miss Lady and she were in each other’s arms.
“My shild! My soul!” cried madame. “What is it? Where have you been? What is this!” She patted Miss Lady with one plump hand, even as she wept; and all Miss Lady could do in turn was to put her face on the older woman’s shoulder and sob in sheer relief.
“Why you don’ come at ‘ome?” cried madame, severely. “We have wait’ so long. See, this boat, she don’ stop. Why do you come to the boat, when you say you come at ‘ome to me? Ah, Mademoiselle, you have never deceive’ me before.”
“I have not deceived you,” said Miss Lady. “I did not know that we were coming to the river-front in the carriage—I thought we were going home. When we got here he pleaded, he begged—it was just to ride across to Algiers, and come back, he said. He said it was the last time, the last hour that we would ever spend together. He threatened—what could I do, Madame? You would not have me make a scene; it was dark out there, I thought it safer to come aboard the boat—where there were lights—and other ladies. I went back to the ladies’ cabin. O Madame, Madame—”
Madame Delehasse threw her arms about the girl and they passed down the long cabin of the boat. Eddring turned to the clerk, grieved and wondering.
“Can you put these ladies ashore at Algiers across the river?” asked he. “There has been a mistake. They don’t want to go up river.”
“They’ll have to go, now,” said the clerk. “We’ll put them out at the ferry, up above a few miles. Best we can do. Algiers! Do you think we are running a street-car?”
“Very well,” said Eddring. “Get two state-rooms, then. We’ll go on up the river. You can put us ashore sometime after daylight. We wanted to catch a train up country, but if we can’t do that tonight, we’ll try it from some stopping-place up river.”
There had come to Eddring the lightning-like conviction that he was now suddenly flung into the chief crisis of his life. He looked hard at the widening gap of black water between him and the shore, and at the hurrying floods into which the boat was now beginning steadily to plow; but the night and the floods gave him no answer. He knew that he had taken upon himself responsibility for two women, one of whom he believed to have been practically a victim of abduction—this woman whom he had loved for years, had lost, and lost again, but who was now here, under his care, dependent on his own courage, his own resolution and decision. It was but for a moment that Eddring hesitated. The heart of the great boat throbbed on beneath him, but even with her strong pulse there rose his own resolve. He left the forward deck and passed back to seek out the clerk.
“Go tell the captain of this boat to come to me,” said he.
“What do you mean? Who are you?” the clerk asked.
“I must see
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