Emma Campbell stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, lips pursed, eyes fixed on vacancy, a dish-cloth dangling from one hand, a carving-knife clutched in the other, and projecked. And the more she projecked about what was happening in Peter's house, the less she liked it. It had never occurred to Emma Campbell that Peter might go away from Riverton. Yet now he was going, and it had been taken for granted that she, Emma, who, as she said, had "raised 'im from a puppy up'ards," wouldn't mind staying on here after his departure. Fetching a cold sigh from the depths of an afflicted bosom, Emma moved snail-like toward the work in hand; and as she worked she howled dismally that nobody knew the trouble she saw, "nobody knew but you, Lawd."
When Peter came in to dinner, she addressed him with distant politeness as Mistuh Champneys, instead of the usual Mist' Peter. When he spoke to her she accordion-plaited her lips, and stuck her eyes out at him. Her head, adorned with more than the usual quota of toothpicks, brought the quills upon the fretful porcupine forcibly to one's mind.
Nobody but Peter Champneys could or would have borne with Emma Campbell's contrary fits, but as neither of them realized this they managed to get along beautifully. Peter was well aware that when the car that had suddenly appeared in the night had just as suddenly disappeared in the morning in a cloud of dust on the Riverton Road, Emma's peace of mind had vanished also. He understood, and was patient.
She clapped a platter of crisp fried chicken before him, and stood by, eyeing him and it grimly. And when hungry Peter thrust his fork into a tempting piece, "You know who you eatin'?" she demanded pleasantly.
Peter didn't know whom he was eating; fork suspended, he looked at Emma questioningly.
"You eatin' Lula, dat who you eatin'," Emma told him with grisly unction. "Dem 's de same laigs use to scratch roun' we kitchen do'. Dat 's de same lovin'-hearted hen I raise fum a baby. But, Lawd! Whutyoucare?You 'sde sort kin go trapesin' off by yo'se'f over de worl'. You dat uppidy dese days, whutyoucare 'bout eatin' up po' lil Lula?Sheain't nobody but us-all's chicken, nohow!"
Peter looked doubtfully at "po' lil Lula's" remains, and laid down his fork. Somehow, one can't be keen about eating a loving-hearted hen.
"But, Emma, we eat our chickens all the time! You've fried me many a chicken without raising a row about it!" he protested.
"Who tol' you dey wuz ours?"
As Peter hadn't a fitting reply in return for this ambiguous query, Emma bounced out of the dining-room, to return in a moment with the tea-pot; when Peter held out his cup, she poured into it plain boiling water. At that she set the tea-pot hastily upon the table, threw her gingham apron over her head, and plumped upon the floor with a thud that made the house shake. It frightened the cat into going through the window at a leap, taking with him all the flowers planted in tomato-cans.
"Emma," said Peter, severely, "I'm ashamed of you! Take that silly apron off your head and listen to me. You know very well you aren't being left to shift for yourself. You'll be provided for better than you've ever been. Why, all you'll have to do—"
"All I 'll hab to do is jes' crawl into my grave en stay dere. I done raised 'im fum de egg up, en now he 's got comb en kin crow it 's tail-feathers over de fence en fly off wid 'im! Ah, Lawd! You done made 'em en You knows whut roosters is like!"
"Emma! Look here, confound it!—"
"Who gwine look after 'im? I axes you fum my heart, who gwine do it?—Never did hab no mo' sense dan a rabbit widout I 's by, en now dey aims to tun 'im loose! Ah, Lawd!"
"Emma, listen! Emma, what the—"
"Dem furrin women 'll do 'im lak dem women done po' old Cassius.Dey 'll conjure 'im! En widout I by, who gwine make 'im put one live frawg on 'is nekked stummick, so 's to sweat de speret o' dat frawg een, en de speret o' dat conjure out? No-buddy. Den he 'll up en die. Widout one Gawd's soul o' 'is own folkses to put de coppers on 'is eyes en' tie up de corpse's jaws.—Ah Lawd, ah Lawd!"
"Oh, shut up, you old idiot! I'm not coming home to my meals any more, if this is how you're going to behave!" This from Peter, disgustedly.
"Ain't you, suh? All right, suh, Mistuh Champneys, you 's be boss. But I glad to my Gawd Miss Maria ain't 'yuh to see dis day!" And Emma began to sniffle.
Peter pushed his untouched dinner aside, and reached for his hat. He looked at Emma Campbell irefully.
"Damn!" exploded Peter.
Emma Campbell got to her feet with astounding quickness, ran into the kitchen, and returned in a moment with another platter of chicken, rice, and gravy.
"'Yuh, chile. Set down en eat yo' bittles. You ain't called on to hab no hard feelin's 'boutdischicken. 'T ain't none o' ours, nohow." Peter resumed his chair and waived cross-examination.
Mr. Champneys having come, so to speak, between dark and daylight, Riverton knew nothing about his visit, for Peter hadn't thought to inform them. This affair seemed so unreal, so improbable, so up in the air, that he dared not mention it. Suppose it mightn't be true, after all. Suppose fate played a cruel joke. Suppose Mr. Champneys changed his mind. So Peter, who had a horror of talk, and writhed when asked personal questions by people who felt that they had a perfect right to know all about his business, kept strict silence, and enjoined the same silence upon Emma Campbell, who could be trusted to hold her tongue when bidden.
Now, one simply cannot remember the price of pots and pans and sheet-iron and plows and ax-handles, when one is living in the beginning of an astounding fairy story, when the most momentous change is impending, when one's whole way of life is about to be diverted into different channels. The things one hates, like being a hardware clerk, for instance, automatically slide into the background when the desire of the heart approaches.
But Mr. Humphreys, whose mind and fortune naturally enough centered in his hardware store, couldn't be expected to know that the impossible had happened for Peter Champneys. He would hardly be able to take Peter's bare word for it, even if Peter should tell him: he didn't know that his absent-minded clerk really liked him, and longed to tell him that he was leaving Riverton shortly—he hoped for years and years—and was only awaiting the message that should speed his departure. Mr. Humphreys, then, cannot be blamed for complaining with feeling and profanity that of all the damidjits he had ever seen in his life, Peter Champneys was about the worst. Loony was no name for him, and what was to become of such a chump he didn't know. "If this thing keeps up, he'll be drooling before he's forty, and we'll have to hire a nigger to feed him out of a papspoon," said Mr. Humphreys, forebodingly.
And in the meanwhile the days dragged and dragged—two whole weeks of suspense and expectancy. On the Monday of the third week the end of Peter's waiting and of Mr. Humphreys's patience came together. One, in fact, brought about the other. The postman who drove in with the daily mail brought for Peter Champneys the yellow envelope toward which he had been looking with such feverish impatience.
He was really to go! The young man experienced that reeling, ecstatic shock which shakes one when a long-delayed desire suddenly assumes reality. He stood with the telegram in his fingers, and stared about the dusty, dingy, uninteresting store, and saw as with new eyes how hopelessly hideous it really was; and wondered and wondered if he were really himself, Peter Champneys, who was going to get away from it.
At that moment stout old Mrs. Beach entered the store and waddled up to him. Mrs. Beach was a woman who never knew what she really wanted, or if, indeed, she really wanted anything in particular; but then again, as she said, shemight. She didn't like to leave her house often; and when she did finally make up her mind to dress and go out, she popped into every store she happened to pass, on the chance that shemightwant something from it, and would thus save herself an extra trip to get it. She would say to a perspiring clerk:
"Now, let me see: there's something I wanted to get from this store. I know it, because on Tuesday last something happened to put me in mind of it—or was it Wednesday, maybe? I know it's something I need about the house—or maybe the yard. You'll have to help me out. I've got a poor memory, but you just sort of run over a list of things folks would be most likely to need and maybe you'll hit on the right thing, and if it's that I want, I'll get it right now. Don't stand there like a hitching-post, boy! Why can't you suggest something, and help out a woman old enough to be your mother?"
If by some fortuitous chance you happened to hit upon an article she thought she might happen to need, and it suited her, she would buy it. But it never occurred to her to thank you for your help, or to apologize for the nerve-racking strain to which she subjected you.
"Young man," said her testy voice in Peter's ear, "I've got to get something and I can't remember what it is. You've got to help me. I can't be wasting my time at my age o' life running around to hardware stores."
Peter thrust the miraculous telegram in his pocket, where he could feel it burn and tingle. Oh, it was true, it was true! He was going to get away from all this!
"For heaven's sake, boy, don't stand there gawping at me like a thunderstruck owl! You surely know about everything you've got in this store, don't you? Well, then, Peter Champneys, look about you and see if you can't light on what I'm most likely to need!"
Peter, mind on the telegram in his pocket, did indeed look at the old lady owlishly. Hazily he remembered certain grueling, sweating half-hours spent in trying to discover what Mrs. Beach thought she might want to buy. Hazily he looked from her to the littered shelves, and reached for the first object upon which his eyes happened to fall.
"Yes 'm, Mrs. Beach. I reckon this is what you'd most likelyneed," said Peter, gently, and placed in her hand a fine new muzzle. (Paris, maybe Rome; and Florence! Oh, names to conjure with! And he should see them all, walk their historic streets, view immortal work, stand before immortal canvases, and say with Correggio: "And I, too, am a painter!")
"Oh, my dear Lord, save me from bursting wide open! Why, you impudent young reprobate!" Mrs. Beach's outraged voice banished his dream. "For two pins, Peter Champneys, I'd take you across my knees and spank the seat off your breeches! I need a muzzle, do I? I'm to be insulted by a little squirt that's just learning to keep his ears clean! Well! Girl and woman I've been dealing with Sam Humphreys and his father before him, but from this day forth I put no foot of mine across this store door!" All the while she spoke she brandished the muzzle at Peter and kept backing him off into a corner.
Mr. Humphreys came hurriedly out of his office upon hearing the uproar, and sought with soothing speech to placate his irate old friend and customer. But Mrs. Beach wasn't to be placated. She went out of the door and down the street like a hat on a windy day.
Mr. Humphreys watched her go. Then he turned and looked at Peter Champneys, ominously:
"Peter,"—Mr. Humphreys, carefully restraining himself, spoke in low and dulcet tones—"Peter, I have tried to do my duty as a Christian man; now I have to do it as a hardware man, and right here is where you and I say good-by. I have passed over," said Mr. Humphreys, swallowing hard, "your sending gravel to the grocer and a bellows to the minister by mistake; but this is the limit. If there is anybody advertising for a gilt-edged failure as a salesman, you go apply for the job and say I recommend you enthusiastically. I hate like the devil to fire you, Peter, but it's a plain case of self-defense with me: I have to do it. You're fired. Now. Come on in the office," said Mr. Humphreys, eagerly, "and I'll pay you off."
Peter slid his hand into his pocket and pinched that precious slip of paper. Then he smiled into Mr. Humphreys's empurpled visage.
"Why, thank you, Mr. Humphreys," said he, gratefully. "I know just how you feel, and I don't blame you in the least. I've been wanting to tell you I had to quit, and you've saved me the trouble."
Sam Humphreys knew that Peter Champneys had no right to stand there and smile like that at such a solemn moment. He should have appeared ashamed, downcast, humanly perturbed; and he didn't in the least.
"I've been wondering ever since the first day I hired you how I was going to keep from firing you before nightfall. Now the end's come. Say—suppose you go on home, right now. Because," said Mr. Humphreys, softly, "I mightn't be able to refrain from committing justifiable homicide. I'll send you your salary to-night. Go on home. Please!"
To his horror, Peter Champneys of a sudden laughed aloud. It was genuine laughter, that rang true and gay and glad. His eyes sparkled, and a dash of good red jumped into his sallow cheeks.
"Good-by, then, Mr. Humphreys. And thank you for many kindnesses, and for real patience," said Peter. He waved his hand at the dusty store in a wide-flung gesture of glad farewell.
"Oh, my God! He's run plumb crazy!" cried Mr. Humphreys, mopping his brow. "I always said that boy wasn't natural!"
But Peter, walking home in the bright afternoon sunlight, for the first time in his life felt young and free and happy. He wanted to laugh, to sing, to shout, to skip. Emma Campbell was just bringing the washed-and-dried dinner dishes back into the dining-room when he bounced in.
"Emma," said he, sticking his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and beaming at her, "Emma, I'm out of a job. Kicked out neck and crop. Fired, thank God!"
Emma stacked her dishes on the old deal dresser.
"Is you?"
"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 circumstances. 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 tittle-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' natchelly 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 Cassius 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 nigger 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 catwereall 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 circumstances, 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 God 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 passer-by a glimpse of greenery and flowers, but prevented encroachments upon family privacy. Every now and then a curving balustrade, a gable, a window, or an old doorway of surpassing 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 JOHNSTONborn in this province29th May 1690Died 26th April 1774In the 84th year of her age.
How lovd how valu'd once avails Thee notTo whom related or by whom begotA 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 passing 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 apron on which a basket of flowers was embroidered in red cross-stitch, 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 shore, 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 spaces. But the Carolina coast washome.
"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 shore-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 shore.
Peter Champneys straightened his shoulders. Youth and courage and hope flashed into his wistful face, and brightened his eyes that followed the Red Admiral.
It wasn't a pleasant house, being of a dingy, bilious-yellow complexion, with narrow window eyes, and a mean slit of a doorway for a mouth; not sinister, but common, stupid, and uninteresting. If one should happen to be a house-psychologist, one would know that behind the Nottingham lace curtains looped back with soiled red ribbons, was all the tawdry, horrible junk that clutters such houses, even as mental junk clutters the minds of the people who have to live in them. One knew that the people who dwelt in that house didn't know how to live, how to think, or how to cook; and that if by any chance a larger life, a real thought, or a bit of good cooking confronted them, they would probably reject it with suspicion.
The elderly gentleman in white linen who made acquaintance with this particular house on a very sultry noon in early August, hesitated before he rang the bell. He glanced over his shoulder at the hot, dusty street where a swarm of hot, dusty children were shrilling and shrieking, or staring at him round-eyed, dived into his pockets, fished up a handful of small change, whistled to insure their greater attention, and flung the coin among them. While they were snatching at the money like a flock of pigeons over a handful of grain, the elderly gentleman rang the bell. He could hear it jangling through the house, but it brought no immediate response. After a decent interval he rang again. This time the door was jerked open, and a girl in a bungalow apron, upon which she was wiping her hands, confronted him. She was a very young girl, a very hot, tired, perspiring, and sullen girl, fresh from a broiling kitchen and a red-hot stove.
She looked at the caller suspiciously, her glance racing over his linen suit, his white shoes, the Panama hat in his hand. She was puzzled, for plainly this wasn't the usual applicant for board and lodging. Perhaps, then, he was a successful house-to-house agent for some indispensable necessity—say an ice-pick that would pull nails, open a can, and peel potatoes. Or maybe a religious book agent. She rather suspected him of wanting to sell her Biblical Prophecies Elucidated by a Chicago Seer, or something like that. Or, stay: perhaps he was a church scout sent out to round up stray souls. Whatever he might be, she was bitterly resentful of having been taken from the thick of her work to answer his ring. She wasn't interested in her soul, her hot and tired body being a much more immediate concern. Heaven is far off, and hell has no terrors and less interest for a girl immured in a red-hot kitchen in a Middle Western town in the dog-days.
"If it's a Bible, we got one. If it's sewin'-machines, we ain't, but don't. If it's savin' our souls, we belong to church reg'lar an' ain't interested. If it's explainin' God, nothin' doin'! An' if it's tack-pullers with nail-files an' corkscrews on 'em, you can save your breath," said the girl rapidly, in a heated voice, and with a half-dry hand on the door-knob.
Mr. Chadwick Champneys's long, drooping mustache came up under his nose, and his bushy eyebrows twitched.
"I am not trying to sell anything," he said hurriedly, in order to prevent her from shutting the door in his face, which was her evident intention.
She said impatiently: "If you're collectin', this ain't our day for payin', an' you got to call again. Come next week, on Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Sattiday." The door began to close.
He inserted a desperate foot.
"I wish to see Miss Simms—Miss Anne, or Nancy Simms. My information is that she lives in this house. I should have stated my errand at once, had I been allowed to do so." He looked at the girl reprovingly.
Before she could reply, a female voice from a back region rose stridently:
"Nancy! You Nancy! What in creation you mean, gassin' this hour o' day when them biscuits is burnin' up in the oven? Send that feller about his business, whatever it is, and you come tend to yours!"
The girl hesitated, and frowned.
"If you come to see Anne Simms, same as Nancy Simms, I'm her—I mean, she's me," said she, hurriedly. "I got no time to talk with you now, Mister, but you can wait in the parlor until I dish up dinner, and whilst they're eatin' I'll have time to run up and see what you want. Is it partic'ler?"
"Very."
"Come on in an' wait, then."
"Nancy! You want I should come up there after you? Oh, my stars, an' that girlknowshow partic'ler Poppa is about his biscuits; they gotta be jest so or he won't look at 'em, an' her gassin' and him likely to raise the roof!" screamed the voice.
"Oh, shut up! I'm comin'," bawled the girl in reply. "You better sit over there by the winder, Mister," she told her visitor, hastily. "There's a breeze there, maybe. You'll find to-day's paper an' a fan on the table." She vanished, and he could hear her running kitchenward, and the shrieking voice subsiding into a whine.
Mr. Chadwick Champneys slumped limply into a chair. Everything he looked at added to his sense of astonishment and unease.
The outside of the house hadn't lied: the inside matched it. Mr. Champneys found himself staring and being stared at by the usual crayon portraits of defunct members of the family,—at least he hoped they were defunct,—the man with a long mule face and neck whiskers; and opposite him his spouse, with her hair worn like mustard-plasters on the skull. "Male and female created He them." Placed so that you had to see it the moment you entered the door, on a white-and-gold easel draped with a silkoline scarf trimmed with pink crocheted wheels, was a virulently colored landscape with a house of unknown architecture in the foreground, and mother-of-pearl puddles outside the gate. Mr. Champneys studied those mother-of-pearl puddles gravely. They hurt his feelings. So did the ornate golden-oak parlor set upholstered in red plush; and the rug on the floor, in which colors fought like Kilkenny cats; and a pink vase with large purple plums bunched on it; and the figured wall-paper, and the unclean lace curtains, and the mantel loaded with sorry plunder, and the clothespin butterflies, the tissue-paper parasols, and the cheap fans tacked to the walls. It was a hot and dusty room. The smell of bad cooking, of countless miserable meals eaten by men whose digestion they would ruin, clung to it and would not be gainsaid. Mr. Champneys thought the best thing that could happen to such houses would be a fire beginning in the cellar and ending at the roof.
His mind went back to another house—an old white house in South Carolina, set in spacious grounds, with high-ceilinged, cool, large rooms filled with fine old furniture, a few pictures, glimpses of brass and silver, large windows opening upon lawns and trees and shrubs and flowers, a flash of blue river, a vista of green marshes melting into the cobalt sky. A stately, lovely, leisurely old house, typifying the stately, leisurely life that had called it into being; both gone irrevocably into the past. He sighed.
He looked about this atrocious room, and his jaw hardened. This, for Milly's niece! Poor girl, poor friendless girl! He had known, of course, that the girl was poor. He and Milly had been poor, too. But, oh, never like this! This was being poor sordidly, vulgarly. He had seen and suffered enough in his time to realize how soul-murdering this environment might be to one who knew nothing better. He himself had had the memory of the old house in which he was born, and of low-voiced, gentle-mannered men and women; he had had his fine traditions to which to hold fast. He reflected that he would have a great deal to make up for to Nancy Simms!
The noon whistle had blown. People had begun to come in, men whose first movement on entering was to peel off collars and coats. They barely glanced at the quiet, white-clad figure as they passed the open parlor door, but stampeded for the basement dining-room. Mr. Champneys could hear the scraping of chairs, the rattling of dishes, the hum of loud conversation; then the steady clatter of knives and forks, and a dull, subdued murmur. Dinner was in full swing, a dinner of which boiled cabbage must have formed thepièce de résistance.
Came a hurried footstep, and Nancy Simms entered the room. He was sitting with his back to the window; she sank into the chair fronting him, so that the light fell full upon her.
She was strong and well-muscled, as one could see under the enveloping apron. Her hands bore the marks of dish-washing and clothes-washing and floor-scrubbing and sweeping. They were shapely enough hands, even if red and calloused. The foot in the worn, down-at-the-heels shoe was a good foot, with a fine arch; and the throat rising from the checked gingham apron was full and strong; her face was prettily shaped, if one was observant enough to notice that detail.
She was not pretty; not even pleasant. Her discontented face was liberally peppered with the sort of freckles that accompany red and rebellious hair; her mouth was hard, the lips pressed tightly together. Under dark, uncared-for eyebrows were grayish-green eyes, their expression made unfriendly by her habit of narrowing them. She had good teeth and a round chin, and her nose would have passed muster anywhere, save for the fact that it, too, was freckled. Unfortunately, one didn't have time to admire her good points; one said at first sight of her, "Good heavens, what a disagreeable girl!" And then: "Bless me, I'veneverseen so many perfectly unnecessary freckles and so much fighting-red hair on one girl!"
"You'll hafta hurry," she admonished him, fanning herself vigorously with a folded newspaper. She wiped her perspiring face on her arm, tilted back her chair, revealing undarned stockings, and waited for him to explain himself.
He handed her his card, and at the name Champneys a faint interest showed in her face.
"I had a aunt married a feller by that name," she volunteered. "Was you wishin' to find out somethin' about him or Aunt Milly? Because if so I don't know nothin' about him, nor yet her. I never set eyes on neither of 'em."
"I am your Aunt Milly's husband," he told her. "And I have come to find out something aboutyou."
"It's took you a long time to find your way, ain't it?" Her manner was not cordial.
"We will waive that," said he, composedly. "Iamhere, and my visit concerns yourself. To begin with, do you like living with your mother's step-sister? That is her relationship to your mother and to my wife, I believe?"
"No: I don't like livin' with no step-aunt, though she ain't that, bein' further off: an' no real kin. If you want to know why I don't like it, it's all work an' no pay, that's why. First off, when I was too little to do anything else, I minded the children an' run errands an' washed doilies an' towels an' stockin's an' sich, an' set table an' cleared table an' washed dishes an' made beds an' emptied slops. Then I helped cook. Now I cook. Along with plenty other things. How'd you like it yourself?" Her tone was suddenly fierce. The fierceness of a strong and young creature in galling captivity.
His wandering life had given him an insight into such conditions and situations; and once or twice he had seen orphan children raised in homes where they "helped out." Chattel slavery is easier by comparison and pleasanter in reality.
Before he could answer, "Nan-cy! You Nan-cy! Come on here an' set them pie-plates! My Gawd! that girl's goin' to run me ravin' crazy, tryin' to keep her on her job! Nancy!"
Nancy looked at Mr. Champneys speculatively.
"Is what you got to say worth me tellin' her to set them plates herself?" she asked.
"Well worth it," said Mr. Champneys, emphatically.
She jumped for the door with cat-like quickness. Also, she lifted her voice with cat-like ferocity.
"I'm busy! I can't co-ome. Set 'em yourself!"
"Can't come! What you doin'?" shrieked the other voice.
"I'm entertainin' comp'ny in the parler, that's what I'm doin'! It's somebody come to seeme. An' I'm goin' to wait right here till I find out what they comefor!"
On the heels of that, Nancy slammed the parlor door, and sat down.
"Now say what you got to say, an' don't waste no time askin' if I'm stuck on livin' here with somethin' like that!"
"You wish, then, to leave your aunt?"
"She ain't no aunt of mine, I tell you. She ain't nothin' but my mother's stepfather's daughter by his first wife. Sure I want to leave her. She took me because she needed a servant she didn't have to pay reg'lar wages to. I don't owe her nothin'. Nor him, neither. He's worse 'n her."
"They are not kind to you?"
"No, they ain't what you'd call kind to me. But you ain't come here to talk about them, I take it. What was you wantin' to see me about, Mister?"
"Suppose," said he, leaning forward, "that you should be offered, in exchange forthis," his gesture damned the whole room, "a beautiful home, travel, culture, ease, all that makes life beautiful; would that offer appeal to you?" He looked at her earnestly.
"No housework, no cooking! Clothes made for me especial? Not hand-me-downs an' left-overs? No kids to mind, neither day nor night?"
"Housework? Old clothes? Minding children? Certainly not! I am not hiring a servant! What are you thinking of?"
"I'm thinkin' ofme, that's what I'm thinkin' of! I'm wearin' her old clothes on Sundays now. I hate 'em. They look like her an' they smell like her and they feel like her—mean an' ugly an' tight. If I could ever get enough money o' my own together, an' enough clothes—" she stopped, and looked at him with the sudden ferocity that at times flashed out in her—"earned honest, though, and come by respectable," said she, grimly, "then I'd get out o' here an' try something else. I'm strong, an' if I had half a chanst I could earn my livin' easy enough."
His jaw hardened. He couldn't blind himself to the fact that he was disappointed in Milly's niece; so disappointed that he felt physically sick. Had he been less fanatical, less obstinate, less fixed upon his monomaniacal purpose, he would have settled a sufficient sum upon her, and gone his way. His disappointment, so far from turning him aside, hardened his determination to carry the thing through. He had so acutely felt the lack of money himself, that now, perhaps, he overestimated its power. Whatever money could accomplish for this girl, money should do. The zeal of the reformer gathered in him.
"I wish," he explained, "to adopt you—in a sense. I have no children, and it is my desire that you should bear the Champneys name—for your Aunt Milly's sake. I propose, then, to take you away from these surroundings, and to educate you as a lady bearing the name of Champneys should be educated. You will have to study, and to work hard. You will have to obey orders instantly and implicitly. Do you follow me?"
"As far as you go," said she, cautiously. "Go on: I'm waitin' to hear more."
"Aside from yourself, I have but one close relative, my brother's son. You two, then, are to be my children."
"How old is he?"
"About twenty."
"But if you got a real heir, where do I come in?" she wondered.
"Share and share alike. He's my nephew: you're Milly's niece."
She reflected, a puzzled frown coming to her forehead.
"You're aimin' to give us both a whole lot, ain't you? But I've found out nobody don't get somethin' for nothin' in this world. Where's the nigger in the woodpile? What do I do for what I get?"
"You make yourself worthy of the name you are to bear. You place yourself unreservedly in the hands of those appointed to instruct—and—ah—form you. Make no mistake on this head: it will be far from easy for you."
"Nothin' 's ever been easy for me, first nor yet last," said Nancy Simms. "Sothat's nothin' new to me. I want you should speak out plain. What you really mean I'm to do?"
For a moment the iron-willed old man hesitated; he remembered young Peter, eager, hopeful, crystal-clear young Peter, back there in South Carolina. He looked challengingly and fiercely at the girl, as if his bold will meant to seize upon her as upon a piece of clay and mold it to his desire. Then, "I mean you're to marry," he said crisply.
"Me? Who to? You?" asked Nancy, blankly.
"Me!" gasped Mr. Champneys. "Are you demented?"
"Well, then, who?" she asked, not unnaturally. "And why?"
"The other heir. My nephew. Peter Champneys. Because such is my will and intention," said he, peremptorily and haughtily, bending his eagle-look upon her.
"What sort of a feller is he? He ain't got nothin' the matter with him, has he?"
A wild desire to slap Milly's niece came upon Chadwick Champneys at that.
"He is my nephew!" he said haughtily. "Why on earth should he have anything the matter with him?"
It occurred to him then that it mightn't be such an easy matter to get a high-spirited young fellow, with ideals, to take on trust this young female person with the red hair. He felt grateful that he had exacted a promise from Peter. The Champneyses always kept their promises.
"I'm wonderin'!" said Nancy, staring at him. "Why are you so bent on him an' me marryin'? You say it's just because you want it, but that ain't no explanation, nor yet no reason. After all, it's me. I got the right to ask why, then, ain't I? You can't expect to walk in unbeknownst an' tell a girl you want she should marry a feller she's never laid eyes on, without bein' asked a few questions, can you?"
He knew he must try to make it clear to her, as he had tried to make it clear to Peter. Peter, being Peter, had presently understood. Whether this girl would understand remained to be seen.
"I wish you to marry, because, as I have already told you, you are my wife's niece, and Peter is my brother's son. I have of late years become possessed of—well, let's say a great deal of money, and I propose that this money shall go to my own people—but on my own conditions. These conditions being that it shall all be kept in the Champneys name. It is an old name, a good name, it was once a wealthy and an honored name. It must be made so again. I say, it must be made so again! There are but you two to make it so. The boy is the last, on my side; and you're Milly's. Milly must have her share in the upbuilding—as if you were her child. Now, do you see?"
"Good Lord! ain't you got funny notions, though! Who ever heard the beat? One name's about as good as another, seems to me. But seein' you've got the money to pay for your notions, them that's willin' to take your money ought to be willin' to humor 'em." Nancy, in her way, had what might be called a sense of ethics.
"You agree?"
"Well, I just got to make a change, Mr. Champneys. I can't stand this place no more. If I was to say 'No' to you, an' stay here, an' have time to think it over, down in that sizzlin' kitchen, with her squallin' at me all day, I'd end up in a padded cell. If I was to leave just so, I'd maybe get me a job in a shop at less than I could live on honest. You see?"
He nodded, and she went on somberly:
"So I'm most at the end of my tether. It's real curious you should come just now, with me feelin' that desperate I been minded to walk out anyhow an' risk things. You sure that feller ain't got nothin' ails him? Not crazy, nor a dope, nor nothin'?"
"My nephew is perfectly normal in every respect," said Mr. Champneys, frigidly.
"What's he look like in the face?" she demanded. "Is he as ugly as me?"
"He is a gentleman," said Peter's uncle, even more frigidly. "As to his appearance, I believe he resembles me. At least, he looks like what I used to look like."
"Well—I've seen worse," said she, and fetched a sigh.
A sudden thought struck him. "Perhaps," he suggested, making allowance for the sentimentality of extreme youth, "perhaps you have some notion about—er—ah—marrying for love, or something like that? There may be some young fellow you think you fancy? Young people in your—ah—that is, in the circumstances to which you unfortunately have been subjected, often rush into ill-considered entanglements."
"Inlove? Who, me? Who with, for Gawdsake? One feller means just as much to me as another feller: they're all alike," said she, contemptuously. "I just asked about him for—for references. You know what you're gettin', an' I got a right to know what I'm gettin'."
"You have: so please remember that you are getting a considerable portion of the Champneys money for doing what you're told to do," said he.
"I never knew till you told me so that the Champneyses had any money. But if it's there, I'm willing to do what I'm told, for my share. Why not? There ain't nothin' better for me, nowheres, nohow."
"I am to understand, then, that you agree?"
"What else can I do but agree?" she asked, twisting a fold of her apron.
The parlor door opened with violence; a thick-set man with a bald head and a red face, followed by a shrewish, thin woman with pinched lips, appeared on the threshold.
"I s'pose," said the woman, with elaborate courtesy, "we kin come in our own parler, Miss Simms? Has you resigned your job that you gotta pick out the parler to set in whilst I'm doin' your work for you?"
Nancy's visitor rose, and at sight of the tall old gentleman an avid curiosity appeared in both vulgar faces.
"Mr. Champneys, this is the lady an' gentleman I live with and work for without wages, Mister an' Missis Baxter. Mister an' Missis Baxter, this gentleman is Aunt Milly's husband, an' he's come to see me; an' you ain't called to show off the manners you ain't got!"
"Well, why couldn't you say who he was at first, an' have done with it?" grumbled the man. "But no, you gotta upset the whole house! She's the provokin'est piece o' flesh on the created earth, when she starts," he explained to the visitor.
"To aggravate an' torment them that's raised her an' kept her out of the asylum an' fed an' clothed an' learned her like a daughter, is what Nancy Simms 'd rather do than eat an' drink," supplemented Mrs. Baxter, acridly.
Nancy snorted. Mr. Champneys said nothing.
"Well! An' so you're poor Milly's husband!" said the woman, staring at him. "You wasn't so awful anxious to find out nothin' about her kith an' kin, was you? Not that I'm any kin," she added, hastily. "When all's said an' done, Nancy ain't no real kin, neither. You an' her's only connected by marriage, but bein' as you have come at last, I hope she'll have more gratefulness to you than she's got forme. As you ain't never done nothin' by her, an' I have, she's sure to."
"You make me so sick!" Nancy, with her hands on her hips, glared at the pair. "Anything you ever done for me you paid yourself for double. If you don't owe me nothin', like you said this mornin', I don't owe you nothin', neither, so it's quits. You'd oughta be glad I'm goin'."
"Goin'? Who's goin'? Goin' where?" Mrs. Baxter's voice rose shrilly. "Now, ain't it always so? You take a orphan child to your bosom an' after many days it'll grow up like a viper, an' the minute your back 's turned it'll spit in your face!"
"Goin', hey? Where you goin' to when you go?" demanded Mr. Baxter, hoarsely.
"She is going with me," said Mr. Champneys. The whole situation nauseated him; he felt that if he didn't escape from that red-plush parlor very soon, he was going to be violently sick. "I am now in a position to look after my wife's niece, and I propose to do so. From what I have heard from you both, I should think you would be rather glad than sorry to part with her."
"You won't gain nothin' by raisin' a row," put in Nancy, in a hard voice. "I'm goin'. Make up your minds tothat."
"Oh, you are, are you, Miss Simms? That's all the thanks I mighta expected from you, you red-headed freckle-face! I sure hope he'll get his fill of you before he's done! Walkin' off like a nigger without a minute's notice, an' me with my house full of men comin' to their meals they've paid for an' has to have!"
"Hire another nigger an' pay 'em somethin', so's they won't quit without notice, then," suggested the girl, unfeelingly.
"How you know this feller's Milly Champneys's husband?" asked Mr. Baxter. "Who's to prove it?"
Nancy looked at him and laughed. But Milly Champneys's husband said hastily: "Let us go, for God's sake! If there's a telephone here, ring for a cab or a taxi. How soon can you be ready?"
"I can walk out bag and baggage in ten minutes," she replied, and darted from the room.
The South Carolina Don Quixote looked at the sordid, angry pair before him. He felt like one in an evil dream, a dream that degraded him, and Milly's memory, and Milly's niece.
"If you wish to make any inquiries, I shall be at the Palace Hotel until this evening," he told them. "And—would a hundred dollars soothe your feelings?"
The woman's eyes slitted; the man's bulged.
"You musta come by money since Milly died," said Mrs. Baxter. "Yes, sure we'll take the hundred. We ain't refusin' money. It's little enough, too, considerin' all I done for that girl!"
Mr. Champneys counted out ten crisp bills into the greedy hand, and the three waited silently until Nancy appeared. Champneys almost screamed at sight of her. His heart sank like lead, and the task he had set for himself of a sudden assumed monumental proportions.
"I ain't took nothin' out of this house but the few things belongin' to my mother. You're welcome to the rest," she told the woman, briefly. The man she ignored altogether.
A cab rattled up to the door. In silence the aristocratic old man in white linen, and the red-headed girl in a cheap embroidered shirt-waist, a dark, shabby skirt, and a hat that was an outrage on millinery, climbed in. There were no farewells. The girl settled back, clutching her hand-satchel. "Giddap," said the driver, and cracked his whip. The cab rolled away from the dingy, smelly house, and turned a corner. So rode Nancy Simms out of her old life into her new one.