The Purple Heights | Page 3

tactful fashion of coming over with a plate of hot biscuit or a big bowl
of steaming okra-and-tomato soup.
Often a bowl of that soup fetched in by a thoughtful neighbor, or an
apronful of sweet potatoes Emma Campbell brought with her when she
did the washing, kept Peter's backbone and wishbone from rubbing
noses. But there were rainy days when neighbors didn't send in
anything, Emma wasn't washing for them that week, sewing was scanty,
or taxes on the small holding had to be paid; and then Peter Champneys
learned what an insatiable Shylock the human stomach can be. He
learned what it means not to have enough warm covers on cold nights,
nor warm clothes enough on cold days. He accepted it all without
protest, or even wonder. These things were so because they were so.
On such occasions his mother drew him closer to her and comforted
him after the immemorial South Carolina fashion, with accounts of the
former greatness, glory, and grandeur of the Champneys family; always
finishing with the solemn admonition that, no matter what happened,
Peter must never, never forget Who He Was. Peter, who was a literal
child in his way, inferred from these accounts that when the South
Carolina Champneyses used to light up their big house for a party,
before the war, the folks in North Carolina could see to read print by
the reflection in the sky, and the people over in Georgia thought they
were witnessing the Aurora Borealis.
She was a gentle, timid, pleasant little body, Peter's mother, with the
mild manners and the soft voice of the South Carolina woman; and
although the proverbial church-mouse was no poorer, Riverton would
tell you, sympathetically, that Maria Champneys had her pride. For one
thing, she was perfectly convinced that everybody who had ever been
anybody in South Carolina was, somehow, related to the Champneyses.
If they weren't,--well, it wasn't to their credit, that's all! She preferred to

give them the benefit of the doubt. Her own grandfather had been a
Virginian, a descendant of Pocahontas, of course, Pocahontas having
been created by Divine Providence for the specific purpose of
ancestoring Virginians. Just as everybody in New England is
ancestored by one of those inevitable two brothers who came over, like
sardines in a tin, in that amazingly elastic Mayflower. In the American
Genesis this is the Sarah and these be the Abrahams, the mother and
fathers of multitudes. They begin our Begats.
Mrs. Champneys sniffed at Mayflower origins, but she was firm on
Pocahontas for herself, and adamant on Francis Marion for the
Champneyses. The fact that the Indian Maid had but one bantling to her
back, and the Swamp Fox none at all, didn't in the least disconcert her.
If he had had any children, they would have ancestored the
Champneyses; so there you were!
Peter, who had a fashion of thinking his own thoughts and then keeping
them to himself, presently hit upon the truth. His was one of those
Carolina coast families that, stripped by the war and irretrievably
ruined by Reconstruction, have ever since been steadily decreasing in
men, mentality, and money-power, each generation slipping a little
farther down hill; until, in the case of the Champneyses, the family had
just about reached rock-bottom in himself, the last of them. There had
been, one understood, an uncle, his father's only brother, Chadwick
Champneys. Peter's mother hadn't much to say about this Chadwick,
who had been of a roving and restless nature, trying his hand at
everything and succeeding in nothing. As poor as Job's turkey, what
must he do on one of his prowls but marry some unknown girl from the
Middle West, as poor as himself. After which he had slipped out of the
lives of every one who knew him, and never been heard of again,
except for the report that he had died somewhere out in Texas; or
maybe it was Arizona or Idaho, or Mexico, or somewhere in South
America. One didn't know.
Behold small Peter, then, the last of his name, "all the sisters of his
father's house, and all the brothers, too." Little, thin, dark Peter, with
his knock-knees, his large ears, his shock of black hair, and, fringed by

thick black lashes, eyes of a hazel so clear and rare that they were
golden like topazes, only more beautiful. Leonardo would have loved
to paint Peter's quiet face, with its shy, secret smile, and eyes that were
the color of genius. Riverton thought him a homely child, with legs like
those of one's grandmother's Chippendale chair, and eyes like a cat's.
He was so quiet and reticent that nearly everybody except his mother
and Emma Campbell thought him deficient in promise, and some even
considered him "wanting."
Peter's reputation for