The Purple Heights Part 9

"But _why_? My good G.o.d! why?" Peter's eyes popped.

"Nephew," said his uncle, patiently, "you are the last Champneys; she is Milly's niece--my Milly's niece. And Milly is dead, and I am practically under sentence of death myself. I have got to put my affairs in order. I'd hardly learned I was a very rich man before I also learned my time was limited. On high authority. Heart, Nephew.

I may last for several years. Or go out like a puff of wind, before morning."

Peter was so genuinely shocked and distressed at this that his uncle smiled to himself. The boy was a true Champneys.

"There is no error in the diagnosis, so I accept what I can't help, and in the meantime arrange my affairs. Now, Nephew Peter, business man or artist the Champneys name is in your keeping. You are the head of the house, so to speak. I supply the funds to refurnish the house, we'll say, and I give you your opportunity to do what you want to do, to make your mark in your own way. In exchange you accept the wife I provide for you. When I meet Milly again, I want to tell her there's somebody of her own blood bearing our name, taking the place of the child we never had, enjoying all the good things we missed, and enjoying them with a Champneys, _as_ a Champneys. If there are to be Champneys children, I want Milly's niece to bear them. I won't divide my money between two separate houses; it must all go to Peter Champneys and his wife, that wife being Milly's niece." His eyes began to glitter, his mouth hardened.

"It is little enough to ask!" he cried, raising his voice. "I give you everything else. I do not ask you to change your profession. I make that profession possible by supplying the means to pursue it.

In payment you marry Milly's niece."

His manner was so pa.s.sionately earnest that the astonished boy took his head in his hands to consider this amazing proposition.

"But how in heaven's name can I study if I'm plagued with a wife?"

he demanded. "I want to be foot-loose!"

"All right. You shall be foot-loose, for seven years, let's say,"

said his uncle, quietly. "I reason that if you are ever going to be anything, you'll at least have made a beginning within seven years!

You're twenty now, are you not? When you marry my girl, you shall go abroad immediately. She'll stay with me until her education is completed. Your wife shall be trained to take her proper place in the world. On your twenty-seventh birthday you will return and claim her. I do not need anything more than the bare word of a Champneys that he'll be what a man should be. Milly's niece will be safe in your keeping.--Well?"

"Let me think a bit, Uncle."

"Take until morning. In the meanwhile, please help me get my car under shelter, and show me where I turn in for the night." Being in some things a very considerate old man, he did not add that he had found the day strenuous, and that his strength was ebbing.

Peter, lying on the lounge in the dining-room, was unable to sleep.

Was this the chance his mother had said would come? Wasn't matrimony rather a small price to pay for it? Or was it? And--hadn't he promised his mother to take it when it came, for the sake of all the Champneyses dead and gone, and for her own sake who had loved him so tenderly and believed in him against all odds?

At dawn he stole out of the house, and walked the three miles to the country cemetery where his mother slept beside his father. He sat beside her last bed, and remembered the cold hand that had crept into his, the faltering whisper that prayed him to take his chance when it came, and to prove himself.

If he refused this miraculous opportunity, there would be Riverton, and the hardware store, or other country stores similar to it, to the end of his days. No freedom, no glorious opportunities, no work of brain and hand together, no beauty wrought of thought and experience; the purple peaks fading into farther and farther distances until they faded out of his sky altogether; and himself a sorry plodder in a path whose dust choked him. Peter shuddered.

Anything but that!

Mr. Chadwick Champneys was sitting by the dining-room table talking to astonished Emma Campbell, and stroking the cat, when Peter came swinging into the room.

"Well?" with a keen glance at his nephew's face.

"Yes," said Peter, deliberately.

The old man went on stroking the cat for a moment or so, while Emma Campbell, the hominy-spoon in her hand, watched them both. She understood that something momentous portended. Not for nothing had this shrewd, imperious old man whom she had known in his youth as wild Chad Champneys, led Emma on to tell him all she knew about the family history since his departure, years ago. When Emma had finished, Chadwick Champneys felt that he knew his nephew to the bone; and it was Champneys bone!

"Thank you, Nephew," said he, in a deep voice. "You're a good lad.

You won't regret your bargain. I promise you that."

He turned to Emma Campbell:

"If my breakfast is ready, I'm ready too, Emma." And to Peter: "We were renewing our old acquaintance, Emma and I, while you were out, Nephew. She hasn't changed much: she's still the biggest n.i.g.g.e.r and the best cook and the faithfulest friend in all Carolina."

"Oh, go 'long, Mist' Chad! Who you 'speck ought to look after Miss Maria's chile, 'ceptin' ole Emma Campbell? Lawd 'a' mussy, ain't I wiped 'is nose en dusted 'is britches sense he bawn? Dat Peter, he belonged to Miss Maria en me. He's we chile," said Emma Campbell.

Over his coffee Mr. Champneys outlined his plans carefully and succinctly. Peter was to hold himself in readiness to proceed whither his uncle would direct him by wire. In the meantime he was to settle his affairs in Riverton.

"Uncle Chad," said Peter, to whom the thought had just occurred, "Uncle Chad, now that I have agreed to do what you wish me to do, what is the young lady's name? You didn't tell me."

"Her name? Why, G.o.d bless my soul, I forgot, I forgot! Well! Her name's Anne Simms. Called Nancy. Soon be Nancy Champneys, thank Heaven!" And he repeated: "Nancy Champneys! Anne Champneys!"

"Uncle," said Peter, deprecatingly, "you'll understand--I'm a little interested--excuse me for asking you--but what does the young lady look like?"

Mr. Chadwick Champneys blinked at his nephew.

"Look like? You want to know what Milly's niece looks like?"

"Yes, sir," said Peter, modestly. "I--er--that is, the thought occurred to me to ask you what she looks like."

Mr. Champneys scratched the end of his nose, pulled his mustache, and looked unhappy.

"Nephew Peter," said he, "do what I do: take it for granted Milly's niece looks like any other girl--nose and mouth and hair and eyes, you know. But I can't describe her to you in detail."

"No? Why?" Peter wondered.

"Because I have never laid eyes on her," said his uncle.

"Oh!" Peter looked thunderstruck.

"I came to you first," explained his uncle. "I gave you first whack.

Now I'm going to see her."

"Oh!" said Peter, still more thunderstruck.

"I'll wire you when you're to come," said his uncle, briskly, and got into dust-coat, cap, and goggles. A few minutes later, before the little town was well awake, he vanished in a cloud of dust down the Riverton Road.

CHAPTER VII

WHERE THE ROAD DIVIDED

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 n.o.body knew the trouble she saw, "n.o.body 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.

n.o.body 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.