The Purple Heights Part 11

"I sure am. And, Emma, listen. I--I'm sort of waked up. Even if things shouldn't turn out as I hope they will, I'll manage to go ahead, somehow. I'd get out, now, under any circ.u.mstances. Pike's Peak or bust!" said Peter.

"When you 'speck to go?"

"Just as soon as I can get out. I'm expected in New York within ten days at the latest. And then, Emma, the wide world! No more little-town t.i.ttle-tattle! All I've got to do, in the big world, is to deliver the goods. And I'm going to deliver the goods!" said Peter.

But Emma Campbell put her grizzled head on the dining-room table and began to cry.

"I nussed you w'en you had de croup en de colic. I used to tromp up en down dis same no' wid you 'crost my shoulder. It was me dressed Miss Maria de day she married wid yo' pa, en it was me dressed 'er for de coffin. You en me been stannin' togedder ever sence. How I gwine stan' by my alonese 'f now? I ole now, Mist' Peter."

"Emma," said Peter, after a pause, "tell me exactly what you want me to do for you and if I can I'll do it."

"I wants to go wid you. I jes' natch.e.l.ly ain't gwine stay 'yuh by my alonese 'f," wept Emma.

Peter looked at her with the sort of tenderness one must be born in the South to understand. Born in the last years of slavery, brought up in wild Reconstruction days, Emma couldn't read or write. She wasn't amenable to discipline. She was, as Ca.s.sius had complained, "so contrary she mus' be 'flicted wid de moonness." She wore a rabbit foot and a conjure bag and believed in ha'nts and hoodoos.

But, as far back as he could remember, Emma Campbell had formed a large part of the background of his life. He wondered just what he would have done if it hadn't been for Emma, after his mother's death. There slid into his mind the picture of a shabby youngster weeping over a cheap green-and-gold Collection of Poetic Gems; and he reached over and laid a brown hand upon a black one.

"Well, and why not?" mused Peter. "You stood by me when I hadn't any money; why should you leave me the minute I get it? But are you sure you really want to go along, Emma? I'm going into a foreign country, remember. You won't be able to understand a word anybody says.

You'll be a mighty lonesome old n.i.g.g.e.r over there."

"I can talk wid my cat, can't I?"

"Holy Moses! What, the cat, too?" Peter ran his hands through his hair, distractedly.

"Whah you goes, I goes. En whah I goes, dat cat goes. Dat cat 's we-all's folks."

"Oh, all right," said Peter, resignedly. After all, Emma Campbell and the cat _were_ all the folks he had.

He went to Charleston the next morning, in accordance with the instructions his uncle had given him in their last talk, and the bank at which he presented himself treated him with distinguished consideration. Peter heard for the first time the dulcet accents of Money.

Like Mr. Wilfer in "Our Mutual Friend," Peter had never had everything all together all at once. When he had a suit his shoes were shabby, and when it got around to shoes his coat was shiny in the seams and his hat of last year's vintage. He was boyishly delighted to buy at one time all that he wanted, but as made-to-order clothes were altogether outside of his reckoning as yet, he bought ready-made. His taste was too simple to be essentially bad, but you knew he was a country boy in store clothes and a made tie.

He had never been in Charleston before, and he reveled in the ineluctable charm of the lovely old town. No South Carolinian is ever disappointed in Charleston. Peter thought the city resembled one of her own old ladies, a dear dignified gentlewoman in reduced circ.u.mstances, in a worn silk gown and a mended lace cap and a cameo brooch. It might be against the old gentlewoman's religious convictions to bestow undue care upon her personal appearance, but hers was a venerable, unforgetable, and most beautiful old face for all that, and perhaps because of it. She knew that the kingdom of G.o.d is within; and being sure of that, she was sure of herself, serene, unpainted, unpretentious.

Peter wandered by old walled gardens in which were set wrought-iron gates that allowed the pa.s.ser-by a glimpse of greenery and flowers, but prevented encroachments upon family privacy. Every now and then a curving bal.u.s.trade, a gable, a window, or an old doorway of surpa.s.sing charm made his fingers itch for pencil and paper. He reflected, without bitterness, that the doors of every one of these fine old houses had on a time opened almost automatically to a Champneys. Some of these folk were kith and kin, as his mother had remembered and they, perhaps, had forgotten. This didn't worry him in the least: the real interest the houses had for Peter was that this one had a picturesque garden gate, that one a door with a fan-light he'd like to sketch.

He climbed St. Michael's belfry stairway and looked over the city, and toward the sea; and later wandered through its historic churchyard. One very simple memorial held him longest, because it is the only one of its kind among all those records of state honor and family pride, and seems rather to belong to the antique Greek and Roman world which accepted death as the final fact, than to a Carolina churchyard.

SARAH JOHNSTON born in this province 29th May 1690 Died 26th April 1774 In the 84th year of her age.

How lovd how valu'd once avails Thee not To whom related or by whom begot A heap of dust alone remains of Thee.

That covered the Champneyses, too. To whom related or by whom begot, a heap of dust alone remained of them. So much for all human pride!

Peter left St. Michael's dead to slumber in peace, and walked for an hour on the Battery, and in Legare Street, where life is brightest in the old city. All good Charlestonians think that after the final resurrection there may be a new heaven and a new earth for others, but for themselves a house in Legare Street or on the Battery.

Peter presently reappeared in Riverton, discreetly clad in his customary clothes, the habits of thrift being yet so firmly ingrained in him that he couldn't easily wear his best clothes on a week-day.

"Peter! You Peter Champneys! Look here a minute, will you?" Mrs.

Beach called, as he was pa.s.sing her house.

Peter stopped. His smiling countenance somewhat astonished Mrs.

Beach.

"Peter, I've heard about Sam Humphreys firing you on account of me getting mad at you about that muzzle. Now, while I know in my heart you'd have been fired about something or other, sooner or later, I do wish to my Lord it hadn't been on account of me. Not that I don't think you're an impudent young rapscallion, that never sets his nose inside a church door, and insults old women with muzzles. But I knew your mother well, and I wish it wasn't on account of me Sam Humphreys discharged you." There was real feeling in the testy old lady's face and voice.

"Don't you bother your head about it one minute more, Mrs. Beach.

All I'm sorry for is that I appeared to be impertinent to you, when I hadn't any such notion. I was thinking about something else at the time. So you'll just have to forgive me."

"I do," said the old lady, mollified. After all, Maria Champneys's boy couldn't be altogether trifling! "Is what I hear true, that you're going away from Riverton? Folks say you've got a job in the city."

"Yes 'm, I'm going away."

"I reckon it's just as well. You'll do better away from Riverton.

You'll have to."

"Yes 'm, I'll have to," agreed Peter. He held out his hand, and the old lady found herself wringing it, and wishing him good luck.

At home he found Emma Campbell carefully packing up all the worthless plunder it had taken her many years to collect. When he had heartlessly rejected all she didn't need, she had one small trunk and a venerable carpet-bag. Everything else was nailed up. The house itself was to be looked after by the town marshal, who was also the town real-estate agent. Peter was very vague as to his return.

No railroad runs through Riverton, but the river steamers come and go daily, the town usually quitting work to foregather at the pier to welcome coming and speed departing travelers. All Riverton made it a point to be on hand the morning Peter Champneys left home to seek his fortune.

Peter never did anything like anybody else. There was always some diverting bit of individual lunacy to make his proceedings interesting. This morning Riverton discovered that Emma Campbell was going away, too. Emma appeared in a black cashmere dress, a blue-and-white checked gingham ap.r.o.n on which a basket of flowers was embroidered in red cross-st.i.tch, and a white bandana handkerchief wound around her head under a respectable black sailor hat. She carried a large, square cage that had once housed a mocking-bird, and now held the Champneys big black cat. Laughter and delighted comments greeted the bird-cage, and her carpet-bag received almost as much attention and applause. Riverton hadn't seen a bag like that since Reconstruction, and it made the most of its opportunity.

"Emma! Aren't you afraid you'll let the cat out of the bag?"

Emma remained haughtily silent.

"Emma, where you-all goin'?"

"We-all gwine whah we gwine, dat 's whah we gwine." This from Emma, succinctly.

"What you goin' to do when you get there?" persisted the wag.

"Who, us? We gwine do whut you-all ain't know how to do: we gwine min' our own business," said Emma, politely.

"Good-by, Peter! Don't set the world on fire, old scout!"

When the boat turned the bend in the river that hid the small town of his birth from his view, Peter felt shaken as he had never thought to be. Good-by, little home town, where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune had rained upon him!

The boat swung into a side channel to escape a sand-bar. She was in deep water, but very close to the sh.o.r.e, so close that he could see the leaves on the trees quivering and shimmering in the river breeze and the late summer sunlight. Over there, as the crow flies, lay the River Swamp, and Neptune's gray, deserted cabin. They had been his refuge. No other place, no other woods in all the world could quite take their place, or be like them. And he knew there would be many a day when he must ache with homesick longing for the coast country, for the tide-water, and the jessamines, and the moon above the pines, and the scent of the bay in flower on summer nights. The world was opening her wide s.p.a.ces. But the Carolina coast was _home_.

"I wish," said Peter, and his chin quivered, "I wish there were some one thing that typified you, something of you I could take with me wherever I go. I wish you had a spirit I could see, and know."

Out from the sh.o.r.e-line, where the earliest golden-rod was just beginning to show that it intended to blossom by and by, and the ironweed was purple, and the wild carrot was white and lacy, and the orange-red milkweed was about ready to close her house for the season, came fluttering with a quick, bold sureness the gallantest craft of all the fairy sail-boats of the sky, hovered for a bright second over the steamer's rail, and scudded for the other sh.o.r.e.

Peter Champneys straightened his shoulders. Youth and courage and hope flashed into his wistful face, and brightened his eyes that followed the Red Admiral.