"Who should it be but the M'sieu Eddrang?" replied madame. "For a time it is like the book. Now it is not like the book. Ah, if I Clarisse Delcha.s.se, were a man, and I take the lady away from one man, I'd h'run away with her myself, me, and I'd keep on the h'run.

But M'sieu Eddrang, how is it that he does? Bah! He does not speak t'ree, four word to you the whole time on the boat. You, who have been the idol of the young _gentilhommes_ of New Orleans--you, who have been worship'! Now, it is not one man, and it is not another, although _ma 't.i.te fille,_ she is alone, here in this desert _execrable._ Bah! It is for you to disspise that M'sieu Eddrang. He is not _grand homme._ Come. I take you back to New Orleans."

Miss Lady looked at her with a curious shade of perplexity on her face. "You mistake, auntie," said she. "I do not wish to be back at New Orleans. I am done with the stage--I'll never dance again. I am-- I'm just lonesome--I don't know why. I have been so troubled. I don't know where I belong. Auntie, it's an awful feeling not to know that you belong somewhere, or to some one."

"You billong to me," said Madame Delcha.s.se, stoutly. "As to that h'idgit,--no, never!"

"But Mr. Eddring brought us safely through the forest," said Miss Lady, arguing now for him. "I don't know what became of Mr. Decherd, or why he left us, but we can't accuse Mr. Eddring of anything ungentlemanly after that time. But why was he so anxious to come? Why was Colonel Blount so anxious? I don't understand all these things.

And Mr. Eddring and Colonel Cal seem to want to talk to each other, and not to us."

"Bah! Those men!" said Madame Delcha.s.se. "What can they do but for us? This place, it is horrible neglect'. But come, I show you my soss-_pan."_

As Miss Lady had said, Blount and Eddring were long and eagerly engaged in conversation. They were rapidly running over the new links in the strange chain of evidence which had now for some time been forging, Eddring being especially curious now as to Blount's discoveries in connection with the girl Delphine.

"It's plain enough," said Blount, finally, "that this thing between Decherd and Delphine had been going on for a long time. Delphine left a good many papers, which we found among her belongings. It's all turned out just about as we figured before you went to New Orleans; but we found one letter from Decherd to Delphine that uncovered his hand completely, and it was this, to my notion, that made Delphine so desperate."

"Let me have that letter, Cal."

"All right, I'll get it for you after a while, along with all the other papers. It gives the whole thing away. He just told her he was through with her, and with Mrs. Ellison, too. Told her he wouldn't send her no more money, and turned her loose to take care of herself the best she could. He allowed that she, and Mrs. Ellison, too, could do what they wanted to. That was when he told Delphine that if she made him any trouble he'd come out and charge her with the train wreck. He was the planner of that wreck. He knew right where that log-pile was at. He wanted another accident on that railroad, and he wanted Delphine mixed up in it, so he could control her after that.

She was willing enough, because by that time I reckon she just about hated all the world. And Decherd came down on that very train, and got off at our station just before the smash. There was a little danger in that, but at the same time it was the best way in the world to rid himself of all suspicion. After the wreck he just mixed with the crowd, and n.o.body thought of him one way or the other. Pretty smooth, wasn't it?

"Oh, he had nerve, too, that fellow did. He wasn't scared, at least not of these two women, although I'm right sure Mrs. Ellison and he might have had reason to be scared of the law in some of their carryings-on before now. It is easy enough to see that Mrs. Ellison never was Miss Lady's mother."

"No," said Eddring, "that couldn't have been. Some day we'll know all about that. A good lawyer might get at the truth, even yet."

"Good lawyer?" said Blount. "How about you?"

Eddring shook his head.

"What do you mean?" asked Blount.

"Well," said Eddring, bitterly, "I told you I'd bring Miss Lady through, and I did. But that ends it. I am neither lawyer nor friend for any young woman who thinks I'm a thief."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, she told me to my own face that I stole that list of judgment claims from my own railroad. She told me that I was dishonest. She forbade me ever to see her again."

"Seems like you _did_ see her again," said Blount, philosophically.

"Well now, you just think over both sides of that. You want to forget some of the things women say."

"I'll forget nothing," replied Eddring, "I don't need any advice in such matters as that. No man, and no woman, can accuse me in that way and ever make it right without coming to me voluntarily and making apology and explanation. I say voluntarily, meaning for a woman. If it were a man, I'd take the first steps myself."

"Oh, well, get your feathers up, if you want to," said Blount. "I suppose every fellow is ent.i.tled to his own kind of d.a.m.ned foolishness. First thing, let's go on through with this Delphine business. Now, was that girl crazy, or was she just a natural devil?

Folks mostly have reasons for doing things."

"I should think this letter you mention would explain everything for Delphine," said Eddring. "She was born a good hater, and she was surely misled and deceived for years--finally thrown over and taunted."

"But where did they first hook up together, and what made 'em?"

"No doubt she and Decherd knew each other before either came to your place. Decherd's main motive was money. Delphine was no doubt his mistress, even here; but he was looking after the legal side of matters all the time. What he promised Delphine no one knows. It looks as though he and Mrs. Ellison were hunting in couple, too. Now, Mrs. Ellison had brains, and she was an attractive woman, too--full of s.e.x, full of love and hate, and full of unscrupulousness as well.

Rather a dangerous proposition, I should say, to have right here in your own house. Now, here was Decherd mixed up with two, or perhaps all three of these women at the same time! That took nerve."

"I should say it did," said Blount. "It was the same sort of nerve a fellow has to have when he starts on across a trembling bog. He just keeps on a-running."

"Well, he had to keep running, sure as you're born. A fine situation, all around, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Blount, tersely. "If I had known all that was going on here, I wouldn't maybe have felt altogether easy about it."

"Well, Miss Lady's going away helped Decherd. By this time he had to lighten cargo somewhere. We don't know about his first relations with Mrs. Ellison, and we don't know just how he got rid of her. Perhaps he didn't quite want to dispense with Mrs. Ellison, since he might need her in legal matters later on. He wanted to get rid of Delphine, but he couldn't kill her outright, and illegally, so he resolved to get her killed legally if he could! I have no doubt in the world, Cal, that Decherd planned the train wreck. Maybe he thought it meant more damage suits; but I think as you do, his main reason was to get rid of Delphine. He probably hid the handkerchief under the log-pile.

He probably was glad to see the dogs run the trail right to your door. But Delphine had a nerve of her own. I have no doubt it was she who turned your pack loose, and wiped out the sheriff's trail right there."

"By jinks!" said Blount, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Things were happening, right around here."

"They were happening, and they are not done happening yet. Now, I've brought you Miss Lady. You take care of her. Better keep that Frenchwoman here, too, if you can. Decherd may turn up again sometime, or maybe Mrs. Ellison, though I think Decherd's teeth are pretty well pulled, I can't act as Miss Lady's lawyer, but I'll promise to act as your friend."

"And hers?"

"Yes, and hers," said Eddring, hesitatingly. "We are hardly through with all this yet."

"It's been pretty bad down here," said the old planter.

"Yes, and we know now how it happened and who was at the head of the trouble, and what cat's-paws were used in it all. Decherd fails in his first attempt to get rid of Delphine legally, so he stirs her up to still worse acts; tells her there is no profit in law and order, but only in destruction. He tells her how to incite these ignorant n.i.g.g.e.rs; how to bring up all the old talk of their day of deliverance, the time when they won't have to work, the time when they will be not only the equals, but the superiors of the whites. He tells Delphine that she is the naturally appointed Queen of these people. She is savage enough to fit in with all their savagery. She does rule it as a queen. In her soul there are thoughts, wild thoughts which you and I can never understand, because we are white, and all white. Delphine is neither white nor black, neither red, nor white, nor black. She is a product of race amalgamation, a monstrosity, a horror, the germ of a national destruction. She is a queen--a queen of annihilation!

"And so this thing went on," resumed Eddring, after a time, "this plotting which meant war and destruction, not for this household alone, nor this district, nor this state, but for this nation! What prevented it? I'll tell you. It was our Miss Lady. It was the White Woman, the white woman of America. Whatever happens, whatever stands or falls, whatever is the law or is not the law, that is the thing to be cherished always and to be protected at any cost or any risk. This house is no better than the women in it, nor is any home, nor is any nation. Lawless, American men may be, but not so the women; and in them we reverence the law. When the women go, the nation goes. They are the salvation of this nation--the stronghold of its purity. In the commercialization and the corruption of a people the women are the last to go. In the South we have taken care of them always. I'm not preaching. I only say, it was our Miss Lady who, by the Providence of G.o.d, acted here as the spirit of all that means progress, all that means development and civilization.

"Cal, you think I'm a visionary, that I'm a dreamer. Perhaps I am.

But I think on my honor that the angel of our salvation here was one girl who had no conception of the part she played. I have told you, she is _our_ Miss Lady. There's nothing in this for me personally, but at least you and I can take off our hats to her.

Maybe sometime the picture will blur and merge, so that, for us two old fellows, Miss Lady will just mean Woman. I reckon all of us old fellows, and all the young ones, can take care of Her."

The two sat looking at each other a moment. Ere their silence was broken there came the sound of a quick step down the hall, and a light tap at the door. There appeared, framed in the doorway, the figure of Miss Lady herself; but not Miss Lady the dancer of New Orleans, nor yet Miss Lady as recently garbed for her voyage through the wilderness. In her rummaging about the once familiar recesses of the Big House, she had come across a simple gown of lawn, which she had worn long ago, when scarce more than a child. Now, albeit rounder, firmer and fuller of figure than when she had departed in search of that bigger world beyond the rim of the hedging forest, it was the same Miss Lady of the Big House once more. She had come back to her old friends, and to a world which now seemed strangely sweet and strangely dear. Her sleeves were rolled up; her hair was tumbled about her brow, and her eyes were dancing with new merriment.

"Please, gentlemen," said she, with a dainty courtesy, "and would you come out to dinner? You really should see what Madame Delcha.s.se has done with her new sauce-pan."

Blount and Eddring both arose; there was gravity in the gaze of either, though the heart of either might have leaped.

"So it is you, child," said Colonel Blount; "it is you again! Just as you went. You're Miss Lady, come back to us again." Impulsively forgetting everything but the one thought, he sprang to her and flung his arm about her shoulders. And Miss Lady could not find it in her heart to shrink from such a welcome.

"Oh, I'm glad to see you--glad to see you," repeated Calvin Blount.

"Mr. Eddring, here, was just saying how good it is to have you back again."

Mute, she turned her eyes toward Eddring. The short upper lip trembled; in her eyes there was more than half a suspicion of moisture.

"Yes, we are very glad," said John Eddring, simply. With no word she put out her hand to each, and drew them out into the hall.

CHAPTER XVI