The Purple Heights Part 8

Somebody grunted, and climbed out of the car. In the glare of the lamps Peter made out a man as tall as himself, in a linen duster that came to his heels, and with an automobile cap and goggles concealing most of his face. The stranger jerked the gate open, and a moment later Peter was confronting the goggled eyes.

"Are you," said a pleasant voice, "by good fortune, Peter Champneys?"

"Well," said Peter, truthfully, "I can't say anything about the good fortune of it, but I'm Peter Champneys."

The stranger paused for a moment. He said in a changed tone: "I have come three thousand miles to have a look at and a talk with you."

"Come in," said Peter, profoundly astonished, "and do it." And he stepped aside.

His guest shook himself out of dust-coat and goggles and stood revealed an old man in a linen suit--a tall, thin, brown, very distinguished-looking old man, with a narrow face, a drooping white mustache, bushy eyebrows, a big nose, and a pair of fine, melancholy brown eyes. He stared at Peter devouringly, and Peter stared back at him quite as interestedly.

"Peter Champneys: Peter Devereaux Champneys, I have come across the continent to see you. Well! Here you are--and here I am. Have you the remotest idea _who_ I am? what my name is?" Peter shook his head apologetically. He hadn't the remotest idea. Yet there was something vaguely familiar in the tanned old face, some haunting likeness to somebody, that puzzled him.

"My name," said the old gentleman, "is Champneys--Chadwick Champneys. Your father used to call me Chad, when we were boys together. I'm his brother--and your uncle, Nephew--and glad to make your acquaintance. I'll take it for granted you're as pleased to make mine. Now that I see you clearly, let me add that if I met your skin on a bush in the middle of the Sahara desert, I'd know it for a Champneys hide. Particularly the beak. You look like _me_." Peter stared. It was quite true: he did resemble Chadwick Champneys. The two shook hands.

"But, Uncle Chad--Why, we thought--Well, sir, you see, we heard you were dead."

"Yes. I heard so myself," said Uncle Chad, serenely. "In the meantime, may I ask you for a bite? I'm somewhat hungry."

Peter set another plate for his guest, and brewed tea, and the two drew up to the table. Emma Campbell had provided an excellent meal, and Mr. Chadwick Champneys plied an excellent knife and fork, remarking that when all was said and done one South Carolina n.i.g.g.e.r was worth six French chefs, and that he hadn't eaten anything so altogether satisfactory for ages.

The more the young man studied the elder man's face, the better he liked it. Figure to yourself a Don Quixote not born in Spain but in South Carolina, not clothed in absurd armor but in a linen suit, and who rode, not on Rosinante but in a motor-car, and you ll have a fair enough idea of the old gentleman who popped into Peter's house that Sunday night.

Peter asked no questions. He sat back, and waited for such information as his guest chose to convey. He felt bewildered, and at the same time happy. He who was so alone of a sudden found that he possessed this relative, and it seemed to him almost too good to be true. That the relative had never before noticed his existence, that he was supposed to be a trifler and a ne'er-do-weel, didn't cloud Peter's joy.

His relative put his feet on a chair, lighted and smoked a cutty, and presently unbosomed himself, jerkily, and with some reluctance.

His wife Milly--and whenever he mentioned her name the melancholy in his brown eyes deepened--had been dead some twelve years now. They had had no children. He had wandered from south to west, from Mexico and California and Yucatan to Alaska, always going to strike it lucky and always missing it. To the day of her death Milly had stood by, loyally, lovingly, unselfishly, his one prop and solace, his perfect friend and comrade. There was never, he said, anybody like her. And Milly died. Died poor, in a shack in a mining-town.

He had done something of everything, from selling patent medicines to taking up oil and mining-claims. He couldn't stay put. He really didn't care what happened to him, and so of course nothing happened to him. That's the way things are.

Three years after Milly's death he had fallen in with Feilding, the Englishman. Feilding was almost on his last legs when the two met, and Champneys nursed him back to life. The silent, rather surly Englishman refused to be separated from the man who, he said, had saved his life, and the two struck up a partners.h.i.+p of mutual misfortune. They tramped and starved and worked together, until Feilding died, leaving to his partner his sole possessions--a mining-claim and a patent-medicine recipe. He had felt about down and out, the night Feilding died, for the Englishman was the one real friend he had made, the one person who loved him and whom he loved, after Milly.

But instead of his being down and out, the tide had even then turned for Chadwick Champneys. His friendless wanderings were about done.

The mining-claim was worth a very great deal; and the patent medicine did at least some of the things claimed for it. He took it to a certain firm, offering them two thirds of the first and half of the second year's profits for handling the thing for him. They closed with the offer, and from the very first the medicine was a money-maker. It would always be a best-seller.

And then the irony of fate stepped in and took a hand in Chadwick Champneys's affairs. The man who had hitherto been a failure, the man whose touch had seemed able to wither the most promising business sprouts, found himself suddenly possessed of the Midas touch. He couldn't go into anything that didn't double in value. He wasn't able to fail. Let him buy a barren bit of land in Texas, say, and oil would presently be discovered in it; or a G.o.d-forsaken tract in the West Virginia mountains, and coal would crop out; or a huddle of mean houses in some unfas.h.i.+onable city district, and immediately commerce and improvement strode in that direction, and what he had bought by the block he sold by the foot.

Because he was alone, and growing old, Champneys's heart turned to his own people. He learned that his brother's orphaned son was still in the South Carolina town. And there was a girl, Milly's niece.

These two were the only human beings with whom the rich and lonely man could claim any family ties.

Peter was so breathless with interest and sympathy, so moved by the wanderings of this old Ulysses, and so altogether swept off his feet by the irruption of an uncle into his uncleless existence, that he hadn't time for a thought as to the possible bearing it might have upon his own fortunes. When, therefore, his uncle wound up with, "I'll tell you, Nephew, it's a mighty comforting thing for a man to have some one of his own blood and name close to his hand to carry on his work and fulfil his plans," Peter came to his senses with a shock as of ice-water poured down his backbone. He knew it wasn't in _him_ to carry out any business schemes his uncle might have in mind.

"Uncle Chad," said he, honestly. "Don't be mistaken about me, and don't set your heart on trying to train me into any young Napoleon of Finance. It's not in me." And he added, gently, "I'm sorry I'm a dub. I'd like to please you, and I hate to disappoint you; but you might as well know the truth at once."

Uncle Chad looked him up and down with shrewd eyes.

"So?" said he, and fell to pulling his long mustache. "What's the whole truth, Nephew? If you don't feel equal to learning how to run a million-dollar patent-medicine plant, what _do_ you feel you'd be good at, hey?"

"I'm good in my own line: I want to be an artist. I am going to be an artist, if I have to starve to death for it!" said Peter. He spread out his hands. "I have one life to live, and one thing to do!" he cried.

"Oh, an artist! I've never heard of any Champneys before you who had such a hankering, though I'm quite sure it's all right, if you like it, Nephew. There's no earthly reason why an artist shouldn't be a gentleman, though I could wish you'd have taken over the patent-medicine business, instead. Have you got anything I can see?"

Shyly and reluctantly, Peter began to show him. There were two or three oils by now; powerful sketches of country life, with its humor and pathos; heads of children and of negroes; bits of the River Swamp; all astonis.h.i.+ngly well done.

"Paintings are curious things; some have got life and some haven't got anything I can see, except paint. There was one I saw in New York, now. I thought at first it was a mess of spinach. I stood off and looked, and I walked up close and looked, and still I couldn't see anything but the same green mess. But--will you believe it, Nephew?--that thing was The Woods in Spring! Thinks I, They evidently _boil_ their Woods in Spring up here, before painting 'em!

The things one paints nowadays don't look like the things they're painted from, I notice. I'm afraid these things of yours look too much like real things to satisfy folks it's real art.--You sure the Lord meant you to be an artist?"

Peter laughed. "I'm sure I mean myself to be an artist, Uncle Chad."

"Want to get away from Riverton, don't you? But that costs money?

And you haven't got the money?"

"I want to get away from Riverton. But that costs money, and I haven't got the money," admitted Peter.

"I see. Now, Nephew, when it gets right down to the thing he really wants to do, every man has some horse sense, even if he happens to be a fool in everything else. I'll talk to your horse sense and save time."

Peter, in the midst of scattered drawings, and of the few oils backed up against the dining-room wall, paused.

"I could wish," said his uncle, slowly, "that you were--different.

But you are what you are, and it would be a waste of time to try to make you different. You say you have one thing to do. All right, Peter Champneys, you shall have your chance to do it,--with a price-tag attached. Do you want to be what you say you want to be hard enough to be willing to pay the price for it?"

"You mean--to go away from here--to study? To see real pictures--and be a student under a real teacher?" Peter's voice all but failed him. His face went white, and his eyes glittered. He began to tremble. His uncle, watching him narrowly, nodded.

"Yes. Just that. Everything that can help you, you shall have--time, teachers, money, travel. But first you must pay me my price."

Peter could only lean forward and stare. He was afraid he was going to wake up in a minute.

"Let me see if I can make it quite clear to you, Peter. You never knew Milly--my wife Milly. You're not in love, Son, are you? No?

Well, you won't be able to understand--yet."

"There was my mother, sir," said Peter, gently.

"I'm sorry," said the other, just as gently. "I wish it had come sooner, the luck. But it didn't, and I can't do anything for Milly,--or for your mother. They're gone." For a moment he hung his head.

"But, Peter, I can do considerable for you, and I mean to do it.

Only I can't bear to think Milly shouldn't have her share in it. We never had a child of our own, but there's Milly's niece."

"Oh, but of course, Uncle Chad! Aunt Milly's niece ought to come in for all you can do for her, even before me," said Peter, heartily, and with entire good faith.

"You are your father's son," said Uncle Chad, ambiguously. "But what I wish to impress upon you is, that neither of you comes before the other: you come together." He paused again, and from this time on never removed his eyes from his nephew's face, but watched him hawk-like. "You will understand there is a great deal of money--enough money to found a great American family. Why shouldn't that family be the Champneyses? Why shouldn't the Champneyses be restored to their old place, put where they rightfully belong? And who and what should bring this about, except you, and Milly's niece, and my money!"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said Peter, and looked as bewildered as he felt. He wasn't a quick thinker. "What is it you wish me to do?"

Still holding his eyes, "I want you to marry Milly's niece," said Chadwick Champneys. "_That's my price_."

"Marry? I? Oh, but, Uncle Chad! Why, I don't even know the girl, nor she me! I've never so much as heard of her until this minute!" cried Peter.

"What difference does that make? Men and women never know each other until after they're married anyhow," said his uncle, sententiously.

"Peter, do you really wish to go abroad and study? Very well, then: marry Milly's niece. I'll attend to everything else."