CHAPTER XIV

AT THE BIG HOUSE

The fire lay gray in ashes at the dawn, when Eddring awoke, and the gray reek of the cane-brake mist was over everything. The leaves of the trees and of the cane dripped moisture, and the dew stood also in heavy beads upon the roof of the little green-thatched house. A short distance apart Eddring built another fire. Presently the sleepers in the little house awoke, and he saw emerge madame, tucking at her hair, and Miss Lady, in spite of all fresh and rosy in the wondrous possession of youth, as though she were a Dryad born of these surrounding trees. There seemed to sit upon her the primeval vigor of the wilderness. She came to him gaily enough and said good morning as though there had been but recent friendship and not aloofness. She pushed back her hair, and smoothed down her skirt and combed out with her fingers the bunch of bright ribbons at her waist. She and madame, having made ablutions at the island brink, returned, all the fresher and more laughing. Eddring's heart quickened in his bosom as he saw Miss Lady smile once more.

"Come," said she, "let's explore our desert island; yonder's such a pretty little path,"--and she pointed down the path which Eddring had already investigated.

"No," he said, "the cane is very wet; you'd better sit close by the fire, so that you will not feel the damp. Now, I will get the breakfast; and I promise you, this is to be our last meal in the forest."

"Our last?" said madame. "What you mean?"

"In a couple of hours we shall be at the Big House," said Eddring. "I have looked about, and I know this place perfectly. We are only four or five miles from the station, and the way will be plain."

"Monsieur," said madame, "I shall be almost sorry. It is the fine peek-_neek._ Never have I slept so before."

"I, too, have slept nicely," said Miss Lady, "and I want to thank you. Shall we be out of the wood so soon?" There was small elation in her own voice, after all. In her soul there was a wild, inexplicable longing that this present hour might endure. Fear was gone, in some way, she knew not how. What there might be ahead, Miss Lady did not know. Here in the forest she felt safe.

The hurried breakfast was soon despatched and Eddring, taking aboard his pa.s.sengers once more, pushed out into the broad sea which lay through all the heavy forest. The nearest road to the station was under water, and, as it offered few obstructions, Eddring for the most part followed its curves for the remainder of his boat journey.

At length, as he had said, he brought up within sight of the telegraph poles along the railway. He pa.s.sed by boat even beyond the little station-house, and landed at the edge of what had been the Big House lawn.

On every side there was ruin and desolation. The rude fence of the railway track had caught and held a certain amount of wreckage. Most of the field cabins were above the water, but others were half out of sight, deep in the flood. Fences were well-nigh obliterated. Half of the Big House plantation was under water. Above all this scene of ruin, high, strong and grim, the Big House itself stood, now silent and apparently deserted. Toward it the voyagers hurried. It was not until they knocked at the door that they met signs of life.

In response to repeated summons there appeared at the door the gaunt figure of Colonel Calvin Blount himself, shirt-sleeved, unshaven, pale, his left arm tightly bandaged to his side, his hawk-like eye alone showing the wonted fire of his disposition. Each man threw an arm over the other's shoulder after their hands had met in silent grasp.

"I am not too late," said Eddring. "Thank G.o.d!"

"No, not quite too late," said Blount. "There is a little left--not much. Who's with you?"

"The one you sent for," said Eddring, stepping aside, "and this is Madame Delcha.s.se, the one woman, Colonel, whom you and I ought to thank with all our hearts. She has been the friend of Miss Lady when certainly she needed one."

Blount stepped forward, a smile softening his grim face. "Oh, Miss Lady, Miss Lady," he cried, extending his unhampered hand. "You ran away from us! You didn't do right! What made you? Where have you been? What have you been doing?" Miss Lady's eyes only filled, and she found no speech.

"But now you're back," Blount went on. "You need friends, and you've come back to the right place. Here are three friends of yours. Madame Delcha.s.se--" this as Miss Lady drew her companion toward him with one hand, "I am glad to see you. It you ever befriended this girl, you are our friend here. Come in, and we will take care of you the best we can, though we've not much left--not much left.

"You see," said he, turning toward Eddring, "that boy Jack of yours came down with the news of this uprising that I mentioned in my message. He brought along his woman; and I must say that though I don't much mind this--"--he pointed to his injured arm--"if I have to eat that woman's cooking much longer, I'm going to die."

Then it was that Clarisse Delcha.s.se arose grandly to the occasion.

"Monsieur Colonel," she said, as she divested herself of her bonnet, "I have swear I would cook no more; but me? I am once the best cook in New Orleans. I cook not for money, ah, _non!_ but from pity!

Sir, humanity it is so outrage' by the poor cook that I have pity!

So, Monsieur, I have pity also of you. Show me this girl that can not cook, and show me also the kitshen. Ah, we shall see whether Clarisse Delcha.s.se have forget!"

"Show her, Miss Lady," said Blount. "Show her. The place is yours.

Oh, girl, we're glad enough to have you back. Go get that gold- toothed woman of Jack's, go get 'em all, if you can find any of 'em around. Get Bill, he's around somewhere--get any of 'em you can find, and tell 'em to take care of you. Child, child, it's glad enough we all are to have you back again. Ah, Miss Lady, what made you go away?"

Even as he spoke, Madame Delcha.s.se, rolling up her cuffs, was marching down the hall. "By jinks!" said Blount, looking after her admiringly. "By jinks! It looks like things were going to happen, don't it?" His strained features relaxed into a smile.

"But now come on, son," he said, turning to Eddring, "you and I have got to have a talk. I'll tell you about some of the things that _have_ happened. We've been busy here in Tullahoma."

Drawing apart into another room, Blount met Eddring's hurried queries as to his own safety, and heard in turn the strange story of the late voyage and the incidents immediately preceding it. He told Blount of the discovery of Miss Lady living in the care of the old Frenchwoman, Madame Delcha.s.se--Miss Lady, as they had both more than suspected, none other than Louise Loisson, the mysterious dancer in the city of New Orleans; told of the plot which he was satisfied had been the motive of Henry Decherd in inducing Miss Lady to accompany him upon the steamer. Blount added rapid confirmation here and there, and presently they came to a topic which could no longer be avoided.

"I know what was done," said Eddring at length, after a slight pause in the conversation. "I found the place where it all happened. That's where we spent the night, on the ridge, near the house."

"Did they see? Did they know?" asked Blount, nodding toward the place where the two women had disappeared.

"No," said Eddring. "I did not tell them. Blount, it's awful. Where's the law gone in this country?"

"Law?" cried Blount, fiercely, "_we_ were the law! We sent for that n.i.g.g.e.r sheriff--the one they elected for a joke--h.e.l.l of a joke, wasn't it?--and he wouldn't come. We had with us the old sheriff, Jim Peters, a good officer in this county, as you know, before now. We had with us every white voter in this precinct, every tax-payer. We found them, these levee-cutting, house-burning fools, right at their work. We left some of them dead there, and run some into the cane, and we took the balance over to that church of theirs which you saw.

The water wasn't so high then as you say it is now. There was a regular fight, and the n.i.g.g.e.rs were plumb desperate. They had guns.

Jim Bowles, down below here, was shot pretty bad, though I reckon he'll get well. I was shot, too--not bad, but enough to make me some dizzy. Jim Peters--and I reckon he was the real officer of the law-- was shot, too, so bad that he died pretty soon. Now I reckon you can tell what we found to be at the bottom of this, and who it was that's been making all this deviltry here for years."

"Delphine!"

"It was n.o.body else," said Blount. "You talk about human tigers, and fiends, and all that kind of thing; that woman beat anything I ever did see or hear of. She was brave as a lion. Peters and Bowles and I closed in on her, wanting to take her, but she fought like a man, and a brave one. She had two six-shooters, and she dropped us, all three of us; and then before the others could close in on her, she turned loose on herself, and killed herself dead as h.e.l.l. She didn't see the finish of the others."

Eddring buried his face in his hands and inwardly thanked Providence that he himself had not been present at such a scene.

Blount resumed presently. "Peters didn't die right away," said he.

"He lay there with his head propped on a coat rolled up for a piller, and he talked to us all like we was at home in the parlor. 'Keep on with it, boys,' said he. 'Do this thorough. Make this a white man's country; or if you kain't, don't leave no white men alive in it.'

Then after a while he turns to me and says he, 'Colonel, you know I'm not a rich man. Now I've got a couple of mighty fine b'ah-dogs, and I want to give 'em to you; but if you don't mind, I'd like mighty well if you'd send my wife over a good cow. She's going to be left in pretty poor shape, I'm afraid, for you know how things have been going on the plantations,' I told him I would. We was both laying on the ground together. I told him I would take care of his folks, for he was a friend of mine, and the right kind of man. He talked on a while like that, and finally he says, 'Well, boys, I'm not going to live, and you've got a heap to do right now, and I mustn't keep you from it. Jake,' says he, 'you Jake, come here.'--Jake was his n.i.g.g.e.r boy that he always kept around with him. We had three or four good darkies with us. My boy Bill, out there, was along, and this Jake and some others. 'Jake,' says Jim Peters to this boy, 'come around here an' take this piller out from under my head. Lay me down, and lemme die!' Jake he didn't want to, but Jim says to him again, 'Jake, d.a.m.n you,' says he,'do like I tell you'; so then Jake he took the piller out, and Jim he just lay back and gasped once, 'Oh!' like that, and he was gone. I call that dying like a gentleman," said Blount.

"The poor fools," presently went on the firm voice of the man who was recounting these commonplaces of the recent savage scenes, "they think, and they told us, some of them, that they've got the North behind them. They think the time is going to come when they won't have to work any more. They want to make all this Delta black, and not white. If we could give it to them and fence them in we would be well rid of the whole proposition, North and South alike. These poor fools say that the North will make another war and set them free again! There'll never be another war between the South and the North.

Next time it will be North and South together, against the slaves, white and black. But as to the Delta going black, while we men in here are left alive--well, I want to say we'll never live to see it.

If the people up North could only know the trouble they make--could only know that that trouble lands hardest on the n.i.g.g.e.rs, I think maybe they'd change a few of their theories. They don't understand.

They think that maybe after a while they can make us people think that black is white, and white is black. Carry that out, and it means extermination, on the one side or the other.

"Law?" he went on bitterly; "I wish you'd tell me what _is_ the law.

Good G.o.d, we white men in this country are anxious enough in our hearts to settle all these things. We want to be law-abiding, but how can we, unless we begin everything all over again? Law? You tell me, what _is_ the law!"

CHAPTER XV

CERTAIN MOTIVES

Miss Lady and her stout-hearted friend, Clarisse Delcha.s.se, found abundance at hand to engage their activities. Miss Lady ran from one part to another of the great house which once she had known so familiarly. Everywhere was an unlovely disorder and confusion, which spoke of shiftlessness and lack of care. The touch of woman's hand had long been wanting. Colonel Blount, in the hands of his indifferent servants, had indeed seen all things go to ruin about him. To Miss Lady, concerned with the swift changes in her own life, wondering what the future might presently have in store for her, all this seemed a sorry home-coming. She leaned her head against the door and wept in a sudden sense of loneliness; yet presently she lost in part this feeling in a greater access of pity which she felt for the helpless master of the Big House, who had been living thus abandoned and alone. With this there came the woman-like wish to restore the place to some semblance of a home. Even as she dried her eyes, to her entered presently madame, with her sleeves rolled to the elbow and her face aglow in the n.o.ble ardor of housekeeping.

"_Voila_!" she cried. "I have foun' it! I have dig it h'out. Here is the soss-_pan_ of copper. It was throw' away. It was disspise'. _Mais oui_, but now I shall cook! This house it is ruin'. Such a place I never have seen since I begin. You and I, Mademoiselle, it is for us to make this a place fit for the to-live--but you, what is it? Ah, Mademoiselle, why you weep? Come, Come to me!" And Miss Lady was indeed fain to lay her head upon the broad shoulders, to feel the comforting embrace of madame's fat arms.

"H'idgit!" cried madame, suddenly, starting back.

"H'idgit congenital! H'a.s.s most tremenjouse! Fool _par excellence!"_

Miss Lady gazed to her in wonder. "Auntie," she cried, "who?"