The Purple Heights Part 3

doors. Dem britches o' yourn looks like peep-thoo-de-winduh; daylight 's comin'." She added anxiously: "Don't you let a heavy rain ketch you in dem pants, Peter, or it 'll baptize you plum nekked to yo' shirt-tail."

Peter looked alarmed. One may with decency run barefooted only to the knees. Upon reflection, he sold his mother's sewing-machine--it was an old machine and didn't bring much--and bought enough to cover himself with.

"I wish I'd been born with my clothes on me, like you were," he confided to the Red Admiral. "Gee, you're lucky!"

The Red Admiral flirted his fine coat vaingloriously. _He_ didn't have to worry about trousers, nor yet shoes for his six feet! And all he had to do was to fly around a bit and he was sure to find his dinner waiting for him.

"Fairy," said Peter, soberly, "I'm not sniffling, but I'm not having what you'd call a good time. It's hard to be me, b.u.t.terfly. Nothing nice has happened in such a long time. I wish you'd think up something pleasant and wish it to happen to me."

If you'll hold out your first and second fingers and wiggle them in the friendliest way you know how, you'll see how the Red Admiral moved his feelers just then.

When Peter Champneys went home that night, after a long afternoon of weeding an old lady's garden and whitewashing a long-suffering chicken house, Emma Campbell spread before him, on a hot platter, and of a crispness and brownness and odorousness to have made St.

Simon Stylites slide down his pillar and grab for a piece of it, a fat chicken with an accompaniment of hot biscuit and good brown gravy. She didn't tell Peter how she had come by the chicken, nor did he wait to ask. He crammed his mouth, and Emma leaned against the door and watched him with profound satisfaction. When he had polished the last bone to an ivory whiteness, Emma reached behind her and handed Peter the book she had that morning wrested from a peddler whose shirt she had washed and ironed. Emma knew Peter liked books.

Now, Emma Campbell couldn't by any stretch of imagination be considered a beautiful person. She had pulled almost all of her hair out by the roots, from a fashion she had of twisting and winding it tightly around a tin spoon, or a match stem, to "pull her palate up." The colored people suffer from a mysterious ailment known as "having your palate down," for which the one specific is to take a wisp of your hair and wrap it as tightly around a tin spoon, or a match stem, as you can twist it; that pulls your palate up. It is, of course, absolutely necessary for you to have your palate up, even though you scalp yourself in the process of making it stay up.

Emma generally had a couple of spoons and two or three matches in what was left of her wool. She could screw her mouth up until it looked like a nozzle, and she could shoot her eyes out like a crab's. She was so big that most folks were afraid of her. But as she stood there beaming at Peter with the book in his hand, the loveliest lady in the land couldn't have looked better or kinder.

Peter laid the Collection of Poetic Gems on the table, and blinked at Emma Campbell. Then, because he was only a boy, and because nothing so pleasant as this had happened to him for a long, long time--not since his mother died--he put his head down on the green-covered book and cried as only a boy can cry when he lets go.

Emma Campbell seemed to grow about nine feet tall. "Peter," said she, in a terrifying voice, "I axes you not to lemme see you cryin'

like dat! When I sees Miss Maria's chile cryin', jes' 'cause a ole n.i.g.g.e.r woman gives 'im a book, I wants to go out an' bust dis town wide open wid a ax!"

When he had time to examine his Collection of Poetic Gems, Peter was overjoyed. The paper was poor, the cuts atrocious, the binding a poisonous green, but many of the Gems were of purest ray serene despite their wretched setting. Old-fashioned stuff, most of it, but woven on the loom of immortality. Peter, of course, had Simms's "War Poems of the South." He knew much of Father Ryan by heart. He, as well as another, could wave his brown stick of an arm and bid somebody "Take that banner down, 'tis tattered." He had been brought up on the story of the glory of the men who wore the gray, and for him the sword of Robert Lee would never dim nor tarnish. But these things were different. They talked to something deep down in him, that was neither Yankee nor Southerner, but larger and better than both. When Peter read these poems he felt the hair of his scalp p.r.i.c.kle, and his heart almost burst with a rapture that was agony.

But one can't exist on a collection of gems in a vile binding.

Shirts and shoes wear out, and trousers must be replaced when they're too far gone to stand another st.i.tch. Peter was too small to do any responsible work, and he was getting too big to be paid in pennies and dimes. People didn't exactly know what to do with him.

One can't be supercilious to a boy who is a Champneys born, but can one invite a boy who runs errands, is on very familiar footing with all the colored people in the county, and wears such clothes as Peter wore, to one's house, or to be one of the guests when a child of the family gives a birthday party? Not even in South Carolina!

For instance, when Mrs. Humphreys gave a birthday party for her little girl, she was troubled about Peter Champneys, who hadn't been invited. Peter had weeded her garden the day before, and mowed her lawn; and he had looked such a little fellow, running that lawn-mower out there in the sun! And now, while all the other children were playing and laughing, dressed in their party finery, Peter was splitting wood for old Miss Carruthers, a little farther down the street. Mrs. Humphreys could see him from her bedroom window. It was a little too much for the good-hearted woman, who had liked his mother. She compromised with herself by taking a plate if ice-cream and a thick slice of cake, slipping out of her back door, and hurrying down to Miss Carruthers's back yard.

Peter stood there, leaning on his ax. Seated on a larger woodpile was old Daddy Christmas, one of the town beggars. Daddy Christmas was incredibly old, wrinkled, ragged, and bent. His grizzled, partly bald head nodded while he tried to talk to Peter.

"Peter," said Mrs. Humphreys, hastily, "here's some ice-cream and cake for you." She blushed as she spoke. "It's a hot day--and you're working. I thought you'd like something cool and nice." She thrust the plate upon him.

Peter smiled at her charmingly.

"You're mighty kind, Mis' Humphreys," he told her.

"I'll come back for the plate and spoon, after a while," she said, hurrying off. But at the gate, beside the thick c.r.a.pe-myrtle bushes, she paused and looked back. Somehow she wanted to see Maria Champneys's boy eating that ice-cream and cake.

"Daddy Christmas," said a voice, gaily, "if there'd been two plates and two spoons, and if you'd had any sort of a dinner to-day, I'd be perfectly willing to share this treat with you. As it is, you'll have to eat it all by yourself." A second later the voice added: "Funny, you just saying the Lord would provide; but I bet you didn't think He'd provide ice-cream and cake!" Followed the brisk strokes of the ax, swung by a wiry, nervous little arm.

Mrs. Humphreys walked down the lane to her house, with a very thoughtful face.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUL OF BLACK FOLKS

The negro to the white man, as the moon to the earth, shows one side only; the other is dark and unknown. It is an instinct with him to conceal the truth--any truth--from white men; who knows to what use they will put it and him? So deeply have ages of slavery and oppression ingrained this upon black men's subconsciousness, that only one white man in a thousand ever knows or suspects what his dark brethren think, or know, or feel. Peter Champneys happened to be the thousandth.

There wasn't a cabin in all that countrywide in which this barefooted last scion of a long line of slave-holding gentry wasn't known and welcome. There wasn't a negro in the county he didn't know by name: even "mean n.i.g.g.e.rs" grinned amiably at Peter Champneys.

They remembered what he had once said to a district judge whom he heard bitterly inveighing against their ingrat.i.tude, immorality, shiftlessness, and general worthlessness. Peter had lifted his quiet eyes.

"I've often thought, Judge, what a particularly mean n.i.g.g.e.r I'd have been, myself," he said, and studied the judge with disconcerting directness. "If you'd been born a colored man, and some folks talked and behaved to you like some folks talk and behave to colored men, don't you reckon you'd be in jail right this minute, Judge?"

The white men who heard Peter's remark smiled, and one of them said, spitting out a mouthful of tobacco juice, that it was just another piece of that boy's damfoolishness. But the negroes, who knew that judge as only negroes can know white men, chuckled grimly. They have an immense respect for intelligence, and they made no mistake where Peter's was concerned.

They knew him, too, a mild-eyed, brown-faced child reading out of a Book by the light of a kerosene lamp to groups of gray-headed, reverent listeners in lonely cabins. And Peter was always making pictures of them--Mindel at the wash-tub, Emma Campbell picking a chicken, old Maum' Chloe churning, Liza playing with her fat black baby, Joe Tuttle plowing, old Daddy Neptune Fennick leaning on his ax. Sometimes these sketches caught some fleeting moment of fun, and were so true and so amusing that they were received with shouts of delighted laughter, pa.s.sed from hand to hand, and cherished by fortunate recipients.

Now, no simple and natural heart can even for a little while beat in unison with other hearts, encased in whatsoever colored skin may please G.o.d, without a quickening of that wisdom which is one of the keys of the Kingdom to come. To be able really to know, truly to understand and come human-close to the lowly, to men and women under the bondage of age-old prejudice, or outcast by the color of their skin, is a terrible and perilous gift. This is the much knowledge in which there is much grief.

Peter Champneys saw both sides. He saw and heard and knew things that would have made his mother turn in her grave had she known. He knew what depths of savagery and superst.i.tion, of brute sloth and ignorance, lay here to drive back many a would-be white helper in despair, and to render the labor of many a splendid negro reformer all but futile. But he knew, too, the terrible patience, the incredible resignation, with which poverty and neglect and hunger and oppression and injustice are borne, until at times, child as he was, his soul sickened with shame and rage. He relished the sweet earthy humor that brightens humble lives, the gaiety and charity under conditions which, when white men have to bear them, go to the making of red terrorists. Some of the things he saw and heard remained like scars upon Peter's memory. He will remember until he dies the June night he spent with Daddy Neptune Fennick in his cabin on the edge of the River Swamp.

That early June day had been cloudy from dawn; Peter was glad of that, for he meant to pick black-berries, and a sunless day for berry-picking is an unmixed blessing. The little negroes are such nimblefingered pickers, such locust-like strippers of all near-by patches, that Peter had bad luck at first, and was driven farther afield than he usually went; his search led him even to the edge of the River Swamp, a dismal place of evil repute, wherein cane as tall as a man grew thickly, and sluggish streamlets meandered in and out of gnarled cypress roots, and big water-snakes stretched themselves on branches overhanging the water. On the edges of the swamp the unmolested vines were thick with fruit. In the late afternoon Peter had filled his buckets to overflowing with extra-fine berries.

It had been a sultry day for all its sunlessness, and Peter was tired, so tired that his head and back ached. He looked at the heavy buckets doubtfully; it would be a man-size job to trudge the long sandy road home, so laden. While he sat there, hating to move, Daddy Neptune Fennick came in sight, hoe and rake and ax on his st.u.r.dy shoulder. The old man cast a shrewd, weather-wise eye at the darkening sky.

"Gwine to hab one spell o' wedder," he called. "Best come on home wid me, Peter, en wait w'ile."

Even as he spoke a blaze of lightning split the sky and lighted up the swamp. A loud clap of thunder followed on the heels of it. Daddy Neptune seized one bucket, Peter the other, and both ran for the shelter of the cabin, some eighth of a mile farther on. They reached it just as the rain came down in swirling, blinding sheets.

The old man built a fire in his mud fireplace, and prepared the evening meal of broiled bacon, johnny-cake, and coffee. He and his welcome guest ate from tin plates on their knees, drinking their coffee from tin cups. Between mouthfuls each gave the other what county news he possessed. Peter particularly liked that orderly one-roomed cabin, and the fine old man who was his host.

He was an old-timer, was Daddy Neptune, more than six feet tall, and ma.s.sively proportioned. His bald head was fringed with a ring of curling gray wool, and a white beard covered the lower portion of an unusually handsome countenance. He had a shrewd and homely wit, an unbuyable honesty, and such a simple and unaffected dignity of manner and bearing as had won the respect of the county.

The old man lived by himself in the cabin by the River Swamp. His wife and son had long been dead, and though he had sheltered, fed, clothed, and taught to work several negro lads, these had gone their way. Peter was particularly attached to him, and the old man returned his affection with interest.

The dark fell rapidly. You could hear the trees in the River Swamp crying out as the wind tormented them. On a night like this, with lightning snaking through it and wild wind trying to tear the heart out of its thin cypresses, and the cane-brake rustling ominously in its unchancy black stretches, one might believe that the place was haunted, as the negroes said it was. Daddy Neptune was moved to tell Peter some of his own experiences with the River Swamp. He spoke, between puffs of his corn-cob pipe, of the night Something had come out of it--_pitterpat! pitterpat!_--right at his heels. It had followed him to the very edge of his home clearing. Daddy Neptune wasn't exactly _afraid_, but he knew that Something hadn't any business to be pitterpattering at his heels, so he had turned around and said:

"Ef you-all come out o' hebben, you 's wastin' good time 'yuh. Ef Dey-all lef' you come out o' h.e.l.l, you bes' git right back whah you b'longs. One ways, _I_ ain't got nothin' I kin tell you; t'other ways, _you_ ain't got nothin' I 's gwine to let you tell me. I 's axin' you to _git_. En," finished Neptune, "dat t'ing done went right _out_--whish!--same lak I 's tellin' you! Yessuh! hit went spang _out_!" He threw another chunk of fatwood on the fire, and watched the smoky flame go dancing up the chimney. In the red glow he had the aspect of a kindly t.i.tan.

"It never bothered you again, Daddy Nep?" Peter was always curious about these experiences. He had a glimmer that negroes are nearer to certain Powers than other folks are, and although he wasn't superst.i.tious, he wasn't skeptical, either.

"Never bothered me a-tall, less'n dat 's whut 's been meddlin' wid my fowls, whichin ef I catches it, I aims to blow its head plum off, ghostes or no ghostes," said the old man, stoutly.

"Ghosts don't steal chickens. I reckon it's a wild-cat gets yours. I heard one scream in the swamp not so long since."

"Well, I aims to git Mistuh Wildcat, den. I done got me a couple o'

guinea-fowls for watch, en dey sho does set up a mighty potrackin'

w'en anything strange comes a-snoopin' roun' de yahd."

After a while Daddy Neptune put away his pipe and took down from a shelf his big battered Bible, and Peter read the Twenty-first and Twenty-second chapters of Revelation, to which the old man listened with clasped hands and an uplifted face, his lips moving soundlessly as he repeated to himself certain of the words:

And G.o.d shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are pa.s.sed away.... He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his G.o.d and he shall be my son ...