The Law of the Land, Emerson Hough [best beach reads of all time TXT] 📗

out to him that in all likelihood greater honors might await him at the hands of his district, as of the county. He found in this not so much personal pride as a sense of responsibility. Yet there remained comfort in the fact that he was growing, that he was in some measure attaining. As with any man truly great, this left him no more selfish, no more egotistic, than is the stringed instrument which, under the miracle of a higher power, finds itself capable of music.

Upon Eddring’s desk at that moment there lay close beside the opened letter certain papers, none other than the brief in the case of Louise Loisson against Henry Decherd, in ejectment, defendant charged with holding certain properties without legal title thereto. For years now Eddring had followed the curious and intricate question of the Loisson estate, and little by little he had seen the tangled skein unravel beneath his hand. There were necessary links of the evidence yet to be supplied.

As against all adverse title, there needed to be urged for his client descent for three generations, carried in each generation by a single child, who in each case bore the name of Louise Loisson—certainly a strange and singular legal contingency. There needed to be three ladies Louise; and of these he had found but two. There was no great difficulty in establishing the fact that the grandmother of Louise Loisson was the daughter of the Comte de Loisson; that she returned to Paris early in the nineteenth century; that in spite of her noble birth she figured for some years as a danseuse in leading Continental cities,—a dancer of strange dances. This Louise Loisson, as he discovered, had some years later, after declining all manner of titled suitors, married a distant cousin, by name Raoul de Loisson, of Favreuil-Chantry, France; a young nobleman of democratic tendencies, who later removed to New Orleans, in the state of Louisiana. So much for the first Louise Loisson.

Records showed that to Raoul and Louise Loisson was born one daughter, Louise, who married one Robert Fanning, a planter and cattle dealer. But the confusion of records brought about by the Civil War left it impossible to tell what became of this Louise Loisson-Fanning, or of either of her parents. The trail ended abruptly; nor could Eddring find any means of pursuing it further, certain as he was that, in the person of Miss Lady, he had found the third Louise Loisson and the rightful heiress of the Loisson properties in the mountains below St. Louis. Again he looked at his uncompleted papers, and again he sighed.

It was well toward noon, and Eddring was busying himself about other matters, when he heard the knock of his faithful henchman, Jack, and bade him enter.

“Lady done sent me over f’om de hotel, sah,” said Jack. “I brung her trunk up f’om de de-pot. Heah’s her kyard. She’s over to the hotel, an’ wants you to come oveh dah.”

Eddring started to his feet as he saw the name upon the card. “Tell the lady,” said he, “to come here to my own office. Tell her to come at once, and say that I will wait for her.” And thus, a half-hour later, there appeared at his door the figure of Alice Ellison, sometime adventurous, yet not always happy, woman of fortune.

Eddring gazed at her sharply. She seemed older. Traces of dissipation showed upon her face. Her eye, a trifle more furtive, glanced from side to side as though she felt herself pursued. Yet in spite of all, Alice Ellison, even at her years, was a woman not wholly without charm. She stood now, hesitating, her hand still upon the knob of the door, her face not altogether confident as she gazed at the man before her.

“Come in, Madam, and be seated,” said Eddring. “I am very glad to see you.”

His tone reassured her, and she entered, half-extending to him her hand.

“I—I know you are a good lawyer, Mr. Eddring,” said she, “and I— well, I’m in trouble. I’ve a case, a very interesting one, which means a great deal of money to some one. I thought that perhaps you’d like to take my case. I have always had so much respect for you, Mr. Eddring.”

She turned upon him eyes which might have been compelling enough under certain circumstances, but whose glance was lost upon the man before her. Eddring stepped quietly to the door, closed it and sprung the lock. “Madam,” said he, “are you alone in this case? Do you not really mean that you and Mr. Henry Decherd are partners in this enterprise?”

She started up. “Open the door!” she cried. “Let me out!”

“No,” said Eddring; “you can not go. In one way it is effrontery for you to come here. But in another, it was the best thing you could do. The case of yourself and this man Decherd might be taken without retainer by the prosecuting attorney of any of a half-dozen localities. You may know that I’m acquainted with many of the details of this case in the past; but still you have done well to come here.”

“You’ll not tell him—” she began.

“You mean Decherd?” She nodded, her hand at her throat. “I’m afraid of him,” she said. “He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me some day, surely. I wanted you—I wanted you to take care of me. I—I’ve always thought so much of you, Mr. Eddring.”

She reached out to him a pitiful hand, and on her face was the horrible mask of a woman endeavoring feminine arts while upon her soul there sat naught but horror and personal concern. Eddring looked at her in simple pity. “Be seated here, Madam,” said he. “Be quiet, and make yourself at ease. The safest thing you can do is to tell me the whole truth. I want your story, and I must have it. That will be the safest thing for you.”

“But I don’t want—I don’t want any one to hear us.”

“No one need hear us. We shall not need even a notary or a clerk. Talk to me freely, and afterward I will make a memorandum, which you can attest. In the case of a contested land title, that can later be introduced under a bill for the perpetuation of the evidence. You must simply tell me the truth, now, and in your own way.”

The face of Alice Ellison grew more haggard. Suddenly all the weakness of her sex swept over her—all the weakness also of the wrong-doer. The comfort of the confessional seemed the sole happiness possible for her. And so it was that she gave to Eddring the first direct confirmation of that which he had by piece-work reasoning convinced himself to be the truth. He first rapidly ran over the salient features of the Loisson story, explaining to her fully his interest In the same, and pointing out to her the certainty of his success as well as the hopelessness of any contest on the part of herself or Decherd. Thereafter his questions induced the other to speak definitely.

“You were right about the book,” said Alice Ellison. “It was found in the Congressional Library by that man, by Mr. Decherd. I took it from there myself, and I always kept it. The first Louise Loisson married her cousin, I think, in about 1841, and she and her husband came to New Orleans not long after that. Louise Loisson the second was born in 1848 at New Orleans, and she married, as you say, this Mr. Fanning. She was not known as Louise Loisson. Raoul de Loisson turned a very ardent democrat. He was known in New Orleans, or at least publicly known, under the name of Ellison, which form of his name he thought was more American.

“Louise, his daughter, was also known under the name of Ellison. She was not married until 1874. Before her marriage she was an orphan, and you might have found, had you been lucky enough, proof of the fact that she was known on the stage of the old French Opera House, even after the close of the Civil War. Her mother died while Louise, the second Louise, was in her youth. Her father, then a major in a Louisiana regiment, was killed during the war, in the fighting near Atlanta.

“Louise Ellison was thus, like all the other unfortunate girls of that family, left alone early in life. The first Louise perhaps learned her strange dancing in a school of her own somewhere in the West. Louise Ellison the second also had her own methods. She danced in New Orleans for a time, but went from there to Paris. They all danced—they could not help it. It was heredity, I suppose. The second one danced, like her mother—and then married.”

“I thought you said she was married in New Orleans.”

“Not in New Orleans, but in Paris. You know, at one time, the rich planters of Louisiana spent half the year regularly in Paris. It was so with Robert Fanning. The story is that he met her first in Paris, dancing at one of the theaters, and creating a furore, as her mother had before her. He learned that she was American and from New Orleans, and year after year he urged her to marry him. She must have been late in her twenties before she finally did so, for that was in 1874. They probably lived in Paris for a time, for it was not until 1877 that they came back to Fanning’s plantation, where her baby was born.”

The hand of John Eddring, lying upon the table before him, twitched and trembled. “And that child,” said he, “was Miss Lady Ellison? Tell me, tell me at once!”

“Yes,” whispered Alice Ellison, her eyes turned aside from his gaze. Eddring drew a long sigh of relief. “Thank God!” said he. “So that was our Miss Lady Ellison, and she was not your child. Now, tell me, as soon as you can, how did it all happen? Tell me, where did you meet Decherd? Who was he? Was he your husband? Tell me now, as fast as you can.”

Mrs. Ellison paled before his vehemence, and her voice broke a bit tremulously. “Well, then, wait,” said she. “I’m going to tell you. You must know all this is hard—awfully hard. If I told you this you could put me in prison. You could do anything. Promise me that you will not take any action.”

“I promise you,” said Eddring, sharply. “Tell me the truth, and help me to put this girl where she belongs, and I’ll see that you are not prosecuted. But now tell me about yourself and this man Decherd. Were you married? Where did you meet him?”

“I was born in the North,” she went on, hesitating. “I won’t tell you my name. My family was good enough. I may have been wild when I was a girl. I won’t say as to that. I was a good deal older than Henry Decherd when I first met him at New York. He attended a law school there. He told me he came of good family, and he seemed able and well-bred enough. He was infatuated with me. We—well, we left New York together.”

“Were you married?”

“You need not know. At least we were engaged then to be married, and God knows our lives were tangled closely enough from that time on. We were not very old, either of us. I presume we cared for each other— you know how that is. The trouble with him was he was following off after all the women in the world. Some think that is strength. Any woman who knows how to love knows it is weakness, and not strength. At any rate, it was that which made our first