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

In a little room of a poor hotel situated on a back street of the city of New Orleans, a man bent over an old trunk which had that day been unearthed from a long-time hiding-place. It had for years been left unopened. It was like opening a grave now to raise its cover. The man almost shuddered as he bent over and looked in, curious as though these things had never before met his gaze. There was a dull odor of dead flowers long boxed up. A faint rustling as of intangible things became half audible, as though spirits passed out at this contact with the outer air.

“Twelve years ago—and this is the sort of luggage I carried then,” he mused. “What taste! What a foolish boy! Dear me. Well—what?” His bravado failed him. He started, fearing something. Yet presently he peered in.

It was like a grave, yet one where some beneficent or some cruel process of nature had resisted the way of death and change. “Foolish boy!” he muttered, as he peered in and saw Life as it had been for him when he had shut down the lid. “God! it’s strange. There ought to be a picture or so near the top.” He touched the tray, and the dead flowers and dry papers rustled again until he started back. His face, tired, dissipated, deeply lined, went all the paler, but presently he delved in again.

“Pictures of myself, eh? the first thing. I was always first thing to myself. Nice, clean boy, wasn’t I? Wouldn’t have known it was myself. Might have been a parson, almost. Here’s another. Militia uniform, all that. Might have been a major, almost. Uh-hum! High school diploma here—very important. Eighteen—great God, was it so long ago as that? University diploma—Latin. Can’t read it now. Might have been a professor, mightn’t I? Diploma of law school; also Latin. Certificate of admission to the bar of—. Might have been a lawyer. Might have been a judge, mightn’t I? Might have a home now; white, green blinds, brick walk up to the door, paling fence—that kind of thing. Might have had a home—wife and babies—eh! Baby? Children? What? Well, I couldn’t call this much of a home, could I, now?”

He unfolded some old newspapers and periodicals of a departed period, bearing proof of certain of his own handicraft. “Might have been a writer—poet—that sort of thing!” He smiled quizzically. “Not so bad. Not so bad. I couldn’t do as well to-day, I’m afraid. Seem to have lost it—let go somewhere. I never could depend on myself—never could depend—ah, what’s this? Yes, here are the ladies, God bless them—la-ladies—God bless ‘em!”

The lower tray was filled with pictures of girls or women of all types, some of them beautiful, some of them coarse, most of them attractive from a certain point of view. “God! what a lot!” he murmured. “How did I do it? By asking, I reckon. Six—six—six of one—six of another. Women and men alike, eh? Well, I don’t know. Ask ‘em, you win. Or, don’t ask ‘em, you win.”

His hand fell upon the frame of a little mirror laid away in the old trunk. He picked it up and gazed steadily at what it revealed. “Changed,” he said, “changed a lot. Must have gone a pace, eh? Lawyer. Judge. Writer-man. Poet. I thought these beat all of that,”— and he looked down again at the smiling faces. He picked them up one at a time and laid them on the bed beside him. “Alice, Nora, Clara, Kate, Margaret—I’ll guess at the names, and guess at some of the faces now. It’s the same, all alike, the hunting of love: the hunting—the hunt—ing—of—love! Great thing. But of course we never do find it, do we? Ladies, good night.” This he said in half-mocking solemnity.

He bowed ironically; yet his face was more uneasy now than wholly mocking. He looked once more at the trunk-tray, and found what he apparently half-feared to see. “Madam!” he whispered. “Madam! Alice!” He gazed at a face strong and full, with deep curved lips, and wide jaw, and large dark eyes, deeply browed and striking, the face of a woman to beckon to a man, to make him forget, for a time—and that was Alice Ellison as he had known her years ago, before—before—He turned away and would not look at this. He tried to laugh, to mock. “Bless you, ladies,” he said, “I’ve often said I would like to see you all together in the same room. Eh—but the finding of it—oh, we never do find it, do we? Not love. I never could depend on myself.

“What! What’s this!” he exclaimed, as his hand now touched something else, a hard object in the bottom of the trunk, beneath the tray. “Why, here’s my old pistol. Twelve years old. I thought I’d lost it. Loaded! My faith, loaded for twelve years. Wonder if it would go off.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, looking into the trunk, the revolver in his hand. Slowly, slowly, as though against his will, his face turned, and he found himself looking down at the pictured smiling faces that stared up at him. The last picture seemed to frighten him with its smile. All the pictures smiled. “Alice!” he whispered.

“My God!” cried Henry Decherd, suddenly. “They’re alive! They’re coming to life!”

They stood about him now in the little room, smiling, beckoning; Alice, Nora, Kate, Jane, Margaret, all the rest, as he addressed them. They smiled and beckoned; but he could not reply, whether to those honest or not honest, to those deceived or undeceived.

The face of Alice Ellison, strong-jawed, dark-browed, large-eyed, stared at him steadily from behind a certain chair. He could see that her hair was wet. It hung down on her neck, on her shoulders. It clung to her temples. Her eyes gazed at him stonily now. He saw it all again—the struggle! He heard his own accusations, and hers. He heard her pleading, her cry for mercy; and then her cry of terror. He saw her face, staring up at him from the water. As he gazed, the other faces faded away into the darkness. He stood, staring, Henry Decherd, murderer of the woman whom he once had loved.

The porter of the hotel said on the next day that he remembered hearing late in the night a sort of crash, which sounded like the dropping of a trunk lid. He did not know what it was. The lid of the grave had fallen again for Henry Decherd!

[Illustration: “MY GOD! THEY’RE ALIVE. THEY’RE COMING TO LIFE!”]