The Purple Heights Part 17

But the father's eyes narrowed, and the hair of his scalp p.r.i.c.kled.

'Way back yonder his mother had sung like that, and his heart leaped to it. If he hadn't been afraid of his educated and modern children, he would have wept. Emma didn't know that, of course. She kissed the big cat, placed him carefully on the bed, and lay down beside him in the att.i.tude of a corpse. She was resigning herself to whatever should happen.

Peter, upon telephoning his uncle, had been advised to prowl about until noon, when they were to lunch together. Wherefore he found himself upon the top of a bus, rolling about New York, seeing that of which he had read. He didn't see it as Nancy saw it; the city appeared to him as might some subtle, hard, and fascinatingly plain woman whose face had flashes of piercing and unforgetable beauty, beauty unexpected and unlike any other. Unlike the beauty of the Carolina coast, say, which was a part of his consciousness, there was here something sinister and splendid.

He got off at the Metropolitan Museum. He wished to see with his own eyes some of those pictures Claribel Spring had described to him, among them Fortuny's "Spanish Lady." He stood for a dazzled interval before her, so disdainful, pa.s.sionate, provocative, and so profoundly human. When he moved away, he sighed. He wasn't wondering if he himself should ever meet and love such a lady; but rather when he should be able so to portray in a human face all the secrets of the body and of the soul.

At lunch his uncle, remarking his earnest face, said regretfully:

"Oh, Peter, why couldn't you be content to be a rich man and play the game according to Hoyle? Art? Of course! You could afford to buy the best any of 'em could do, instead of trying to sell something you do yourself. Art is a rich man's recreation. Artists exist in order that rich men may buy their wares."

"Rich men were invented for the use of poor artists: it's the only excuse they have for existing at all, that I can see," said Peter, composedly.

"But you'd have a so much better time buying, than selling--or rather, trying to sell," said one of the rich men, smiling good-humoredly.

"I'll have a better time working, than in either buying or selling,"

said Peter, and looked at his uncle with uncompromising eyes.

Mr. Chadwick Champneys sighed, face to face with Champneys obstinacy. Peter would keep his promise to the letter, but aside from that he would live his own life in his own way.

He had stared, and his jaw dropped, when he was calmly informed that Peter intended to take old Emma Campbell and a black cat along with him. Then he had laughed, almost hysterically, and incidentally discovered that being laughed at didn't move Peter in the least; he was too used to it. He allowed you to laugh at him, smiled a bit wryly himself, and went right ahead doing exactly what he had set out to do. This sobered Mr. Champneys.

"Peter," said he, after a pause, "allow me to ask you a single question: do you propose to go through life toting old n.i.g.g.e.rs and black cats?"

"Uncle Chad," replied Peter, "do you remember how sweet potatoes roasted in the ashes of a colored person's fire used to taste, when you were a little boy?"

A reminiscent glow spread over Uncle Chad's face. He shaded his eyes with his hand, and stared under it at Peter. Something quizzical and tender was in that look.

"I see you do," said Peter, with the same look. "Well, Uncle Chad, Emma used to roast those potatoes--and provide them too. Sometimes they were all the dinner I had. Besides," mused Peter, "when all's said and done, n.o.body has more than a few friends from his cradle to his grave. If I've got two, and they don't want to part with me, why should they have to?"

Mr. Chadwick Champneys spread out his hands. "Put like that," he admitted, "why should they, indeed! Take 'em along if you like, Nephew." And of a sudden he laughed again. "Oh, Peter!" he gasped, "you dear dam-fool!"

Peter had a strenuous afternoon. Reservations had to be secured for Emma, for whom he also purchased a long coat and a steamer rug. He himself had to have another suit: his uncle protested vehemently against the nice new one he had bought in Charleston.

At dusk he watched New York's lights come out as suddenly and as goldenly as evening primroses. Riverton drowsing among its immemorial oaks beside the salty tide-water, the stars reflected in its many coves, the breath of the pines mingling with the wild breath of the sea sweeping through it, the little, deserted brown house left like a last year's nest close to the water--how far removed they were from this glittering giantess and her pulsating power! The electric lights winked and blinked, the roar of traffic arose in a mult.i.tudinous hum; and all this light and noise, the restless stir of an immense life, went to the head like wine.

The streets were fiercely alive. Among the throngs of well-dressed people one caught swift glimpses of furtive, hurrying figures, and faces that were danger signals. More than once a few words hissed into Peter's ears made him turn pale.

It was nearing midnight, and the street was virtually empty, when a girl who had looked at him sharply in pa.s.sing turned and followed him, and after a glance about to see that no policeman was in sight, stepped to his side and touched him on the elbow. Peter paused, and his heart contracted. He had seen among the negroes the careless unmorality as of animals. There was nothing of the prude in him, but, perhaps because all his life there had been a Vision before his eyes, he had retained a singularly untroubled mental chast.i.ty. His mind was clean with the cleanliness of knowledge. He could not pretend to misunderstand the girl. She was nothing but a child in years. The immaturity of her body showed through her extreme clothes, and even her sharp, painted little face was immature, for all its bold nonchalance. She was smiling; but one sensed behind her deliberate smile a wolfish anxiety.

"Ain't you lonesome?" she asked, fluttering her eyelids, and giving the young man a sly, upward glance.

"No," said Peter, very gently.

"Aw, have a heart! Can't you stand a lady somethin' to eat an' maybe somethin' to drink?"

The boy looked at her gravely and compa.s.sionately. Although her particular type was quite new to him, he recognized her for what she was, a member of the oldest profession, the strange woman "whose mouth is smoother than oil, but whose feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on h.e.l.l." Somehow he could not connect those terrible words with this sharp-featured, painted child. There was nothing really evil about her except the brutal waste of her.

"Will ten dollars be enough for you?" asked Peter. The wolfish look in her eyes hurt him. He felt ashamed and sad.

"Sure! Come on!" said she, and her face lighted.

"Thank you, I have had my dinner," said Peter. But she seized his arm and hurried him down a side street, w.i.l.l.y-nilly. "Seen a cop out of the tail of my eye," she explained, hurriedly. "They're fierce, some of them cops. I can't afford to be took up."

When they had turned the corner, Peter stopped, and took out his pocket-book. With another searching glance at her, he handed her one five, and two ten-dollar bills. Perhaps that might save her--for a while at least. He lifted his hat, bowed, and had started to walk away, when she ran after him and clutched him by the arm.

"Take back that fiver," said she, "an' come and eat with me. If you got a heart, come an' eat with me. I know a little place we can get somethin' decent: it's a dago caffay, but it's clean an' decent enough. Will you come?" Her voice was shaking; he could see her little body trembling.

"But why?" he asked, hesitatingly.

"Not for no reason, except I--I got to make myself believe you're real!" She said it with a gasp.

Peter fell in beside her and she led the way. The small restaurant to which she piloted him wasn't pretentious, but it was, as she had said, clean, and the food was excellent.

She said her name was Gracie Cantrell, and Peter took her word for it. While she was eating she discoursed about herself, pleased at the interest this odd, dark-faced young fellow with the soft, drawling voice seemed to take in her. She had begun in a box factory, she told him. And then she'd been a candy-dipper. Now, you work in a lowered atmosphere in order not to spoil your chocolate.

For which reason candy-dippers, like all the good, are likely to die young. Seven of the girls in Gracie's department "got the T.B." That made Gracie pause to think, and the more she thought about it, the clearer it seemed to her that if one has to have a short life, one might at least make a bid for a merrier one than candy-dipping. So she made her choice. The short life and merry, rather than the T.B.

and charity.

"And has it been so merry, Gracie?" asked Peter, looking at the hard young face wonderingly.

"Well, it's been heaps better than choc'late-dippin'," said Gracie, promptly. "I don't get no worse treated, when all's said an' done.

I've got better clothes an' more time an' I don't work nothin' like so hard. An' I got chanst to see things. You don't see nothin' in the fact'ry. Say I feel like goin' to the movies, or treatin' myself to a ice-cream soda or a choc'late a-clair, why, I can do it without n.o.body's leave--when I'm lucky. You ain't ever lucky in the fact'ry: you never have nothin', see? So I'd rather be me like I am than be me back in the fact'ry."

"And do you always expect to be--lucky?" Peter winced at the word.

"I can't afford to think about that," she replied, squinting at the red ink in her gla.s.s. "You got to run your risks an' take your chances. All I know is, I'll have more and see more before I die.

An' I won't die no sooner nor no painfuller than if I'd stayed on in the fact'ry."

Peter admitted to himself that she probably wouldn't. Also, that he had nothing to say, where Gracie was concerned. He felt helpless in the face of it--as helpless as he had felt one June morning long ago when he had seen old Daddy Neptune praying, after a night of horror, to a Something or a Somebody blind and indifferent. And it seemed to him that life pressed upon him menacingly, as if he and Neptune and this lost child of the New York streets had been caught like rats in a trap.

The girl, on her part, had been watching him with painful intensity.

"You're a new one on _me_," she told him frankly. "I feel like pinchin' you to see if you're real. Say, tell me: if you're real, are you the sort of guy that'd give twenty-five dollars, for nothin', to a girl he picked up in the street? Or, are you just a softy fool that a girl that picks him up in the streets can trim?

There's more of _him_ than the first sort," she finished.

"You must judge that for yourself," said Peter. "I may tell you, though, that I am quite used to being called a fool," he finished, tranquilly.

"So?" said she, after another long look. "Well, I--what I mean to say is, I wish to G.o.d there was more fools like you. If there was, there'd be less fools like me." After a pause she asked, in a subdued voice:

"You expect to stay in this town long?"

"I leave in the morning."

"I'm sorry," said she. "Not," she added hastily, "that I want to touch you for more money or anything like that, I don't. But I--well, I'd like to know you was livin' in the same town, see?"

Peter saw. But again he had nothing to say. Young as he was, he knew the absurdity of all talk of reform to such as Gracie. As things are they can't reform, they can't even be prevented. He looked at her, thoughtfully.

"I'm not only leaving New York, I'm leaving America to-morrow," he said at last. "I wish there was something I could do for you."

She shook her head. Her little painted face looked pinched. There were shadows under the eyes that should have been soft and dewy.