Chapter XV. CERTAIN MOTIVES
Miss Lady and her stout-hearted friend, Clarisse Delchasse, 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 noble 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'ass most tremenjouse! Fool par excellence!"
Miss Lady gazed to her in wonder. "Auntie," she cried, "who?"
"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 Delchasse, 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 'tite 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 Delchasse, 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 Delchasse. "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 nobody 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 entitled to his own kind of damned 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 sex, full of love and hate, and full of unscrupulousness as well. Rather a dangerous proposition, I should say, to have right here in your