THE DEAR DAM-FOOL
"Dis place," said Emma Campbell, as the snaggle-toothed sky-line of
New York unfolded before her staring eyes, "ain't never growed up
natchel out o' de groun'; it done tumbled down out o' de sky en got
busted uneven in de fall."
Clinging to the bird-cage in which her cat Satan crouched, she
further remarked, as the taxi snaked its sinuous way toward the
quarters which a friendly waiter on the steamship had warmly
recommended to her:
"All I scared ob is, dat dis unforchunit cat 's gwine to lose 'is
min'. Seein' places like dis is 'nough to make any natchel cat run
crazy."
Whereupon Emma relapsed into a colossal silence. She was fed up on
surprises and they were palling upon her palate, which fortunately
wasn't down. Things had been happening so fast that she couldn't
keep step with them. To begin with, Peter had preferred to come
north by sea, and although Emma had been raised on the coast,
although she was used to the capricious tide-water rivers which this
morning may be lamb-like and to-night raging lions, although she
had crossed Caliboga Sound in rough weather and been rolled about
like a ninepin, that had been, so to speak, near the shore-line.
This was different: here was more water than Emma had thought was in
the entire world; and she had been assured that this wasn't a
bucketful to what she was yet to see! Emma fell back upon silent
prayer.
Then had come this astounding city jutting jaggedly into the clouds,
and through whose streets poured in a never-ceasing, turgid flow all
the peoples of the earth. And, more astounding than waterful sea and
peopleful city, was the last, crowning bit of news: _Peter was going
to be married_! And he didn't know the young lady he was to marry,
except that she was a Miss Anne Simms. He knew no more about his
bride than she, Emma, knew.
That was all Emma needed to reduce her to absolute befuddlement.
When food and drink were placed before her, she partook of both,
mechanically. If one spoke to her, she stared like a large black
owl. And when Peter had driven away in the taxi, leaving her for the
time being in the care of a highly respectable colored family, whose
children, born and raised in New York, looked upon the old South
Carolina woman as they might have looked upon a visitor from Mars,
Emma shut and locked her door, took the cat out of his cage, cuddled
him in her arms, tried to projeck,--and couldn't. The feel of
Satan's soft, warm body comforted her inexpressibly. He, at least,
was real in a shifting universe. She began to rock herself, slowly,
rhythmically, back and forth. Then the New York negroes heard a
shrill, sweet, wailing voice upraised in one of those speretuals in
which Africa concentrates her ages of anguish into a half-articulate
cry. In it were the voices of their fathers long gone, come back
from the rice-fields and the cane-brakes and the cotton-rows, voices
so sweet and plaintive that they were haunted.
"I we-ent out een de wilderness,
En I fell upon--mah--knees,
En I called upon--mah--Savior,
Whut sh-all I do--for--save?
He replied:
_Halleluian!_
Sinnuh, sing!
_Halleluian!_
Ma-ry, Mar-tha, _halle_--
_Hallelu_--
_Halleluian_!"
"Good Lord!" breathed the oldest boy, who was a high-school scholar.
"How weird and primitive!" said the daughter, who was to be a
teacher.
But the father's eyes narrowed, and the hair of his scalp prickled.
'Way back yonder his mother had sung like that, and his heart leaped
to it. If he hadn't been afraid of his educated and modern children,
he would have wept. Emma didn't know that, of course. She kissed the
big cat, placed him carefully on the bed, and lay down beside him in
the attitude of a corpse. She was resigning herself to whatever
should happen.
Peter, upon telephoning his uncle, had been advised to prowl about
until noon, when they were to lunch together. Wherefore he found
himself upon the top of a bus, rolling about New York, seeing that
of which he had read. He didn't see it as Nancy saw it; the city
appeared to him as might some subtle, hard, and fascinatingly plain
woman whose face had flashes of piercing and unforgetable beauty,
beauty unexpected and unlike any other. Unlike the beauty of the
Carolina coast, say, which was a part of his consciousness, there
was here something sinister and splendid.
He got off at the Metropolitan Museum. He wished to see with his own
eyes some of those pictures Claribel Spring had described to him,
among them Fortuny's "Spanish Lady." He stood for a dazzled interval
before her, so disdainful, passionate, provocative, and so
profoundly human. When he moved away, he sighed. He wasn't wondering
if he himself should ever meet and love such a lady; but rather when
he should be able so to portray in a human face all the secrets of
the body and of the soul.
At lunch his uncle, remarking his earnest face, said regretfully:
"Oh, Peter, why couldn't you be content to be a rich man and play
the game according to Hoyle? Art? Of course! You could afford to buy
the best any of 'em could do, instead of trying to sell something
you do yourself. Art is a rich man's recreation. Artists exist in
order that rich men may buy their wares."
"Rich men were invented for the use of poor artists: it's the only
excuse they have for existing at all, that I can see," said Peter,
composedly.
"But you'd have a so much better time buying, than selling--or
rather, trying to sell," said one of the rich men, smiling
good-humoredly.
"I'll have a better time working, than in either buying or selling,"
said Peter, and looked at his uncle with uncompromising eyes.
Mr. Chadwick Champneys sighed, face to face with Champneys
obstinacy. Peter would keep his promise to the letter, but aside
from that he would live his own life in his own way.
He had stared, and his jaw dropped, when he was calmly informed that
Peter intended to take old Emma Campbell and a black cat along with
him. Then he had laughed, almost hysterically, and incidentally
discovered that being laughed at didn't move Peter in the least; he
was too used to it. He allowed you to laugh at him, smiled a bit
wryly himself, and went right ahead doing exactly what he had set
out to do. This sobered Mr. Champneys.
"Peter," said he, after a pause, "allow me to ask you a single
question: do you propose to go through life toting old niggers and
black cats?"
"Uncle Chad," replied Peter, "do you remember how sweet potatoes
roasted in the ashes of a colored person's fire used to taste, when
you were a little boy?"
A reminiscent glow spread over Uncle Chad's face. He shaded his eyes
with his hand, and stared under it at Peter. Something quizzical
and tender was in that look.
"I see you do," said Peter, with the same look. "Well, Uncle Chad,
Emma used to roast those potatoes--and provide them too. Sometimes
they were all the dinner I had. Besides," mused Peter, "when all's
said and done, nobody has more than a few friends from his cradle to
his grave. If I've got two, and they don't want to part with me, why
should they have to?"
Mr. Chadwick Champneys spread out his hands. "Put like that," he
admitted, "why should they, indeed! Take 'em along if you like,
Nephew." And of a sudden he laughed again. "Oh, Peter!" he gasped,
"you dear dam-fool!"
Peter had a strenuous afternoon. Reservations had to be secured for
Emma, for whom he also purchased a long coat and a steamer rug. He
himself had to have another suit: his uncle protested vehemently
against the nice new one he had bought in Charleston.
At dusk he watched New York's lights come out as suddenly and as
goldenly as evening primroses. Riverton drowsing among its
immemorial oaks beside the salty tide-water, the stars reflected in
its many coves, the breath of the pines mingling with the wild
breath of the sea sweeping through it, the little, deserted brown
house left like a last year's nest close to the water--how far
removed they were from this glittering giantess and her pulsating
power! The electric lights winked and blinked, the roar of traffic
arose in a multitudinous hum; and all this light and noise, the
restless stir of an immense life, went to the head like wine.
The streets were fiercely alive. Among the throngs of well-dressed
people one caught swift glimpses of furtive, hurrying figures, and
faces that were danger signals. More than once a few words hissed
into Peter's ears made him turn pale.
It was nearing midnight, and the street was virtually empty, when a
girl who had looked at him sharply in passing turned and followed
him, and after a glance about to see that no policeman was in sight,
stepped to his side and touched him on the elbow. Peter paused, and
his heart contracted. He had seen among the negroes the careless
unmorality as of animals. There was nothing of the prude in him,
but, perhaps because all his life there had been a Vision before his
eyes, he had retained a singularly untroubled mental chastity. His
mind was clean with the cleanliness of knowledge. He could not
pretend to misunderstand the girl. She was nothing but a child in
years. The immaturity of her body showed through her extreme
clothes, and even her sharp, painted little face was immature, for
all its bold nonchalance. She was smiling; but one sensed behind her
deliberate smile a wolfish anxiety.
"Ain't you lonesome?" she asked, fluttering her eyelids, and giving
the young man a sly, upward glance.
"No," said Peter, very gently.
"Aw, have a heart! Can't you stand a lady somethin' to eat an' maybe
somethin' to drink?"
The boy looked at her gravely and compassionately. Although her
particular type was quite new to him, he recognized her for what she
was, a member of the oldest profession, the strange woman "whose
mouth is smoother than oil, but whose feet go down to death. Her
steps take hold on hell." Somehow he could not connect those
terrible words with this sharp-featured, painted child. There was
nothing really evil about her except the brutal waste of her.
"Will ten dollars be enough for you?" asked Peter. The wolfish look
in her eyes hurt him. He felt ashamed and sad.
"Sure! Come on!" said she, and her face lighted.
"Thank you, I have had my dinner," said Peter. But she seized his
arm and hurried him down a side street, willy-nilly. "Seen a cop out
of the tail of my eye," she explained, hurriedly. "They're fierce,
some of them cops. I can't afford to be took up."
When they had turned the corner, Peter stopped, and took out his
pocket-book. With another searching glance at her, he handed her one
five, and two ten-dollar bills. Perhaps that might save her--for a
while at least. He lifted his hat, bowed, and had started to walk
away, when she ran after him and clutched him by the arm.
"Take back that fiver," said she, "an' come and eat with me. If you
got a heart, come an' eat with me. I know a little place we can get
somethin' decent: it's a dago caffay, but it's clean an' decent
enough. Will you come?" Her voice was shaking; he could see her
little body trembling.
"But why?" he asked, hesitatingly.
"Not for no reason, except I--I got to make myself believe you're
real!" She said it with a gasp.
Peter fell in beside her and she led the way. The small restaurant
to which she piloted him wasn't pretentious, but it was, as she had
said, clean, and the food was excellent.
She said her name was Gracie Cantrell, and Peter took her word for
it. While she was eating she discoursed about herself, pleased at
the interest this odd, dark-faced young fellow with the soft,
drawling voice seemed to take in her. She had begun in a box
factory, she told him. And then she'd been a candy-dipper. Now, you
work in a lowered atmosphere in order not to spoil your chocolate.
For which reason candy-dippers, like all the good, are likely to die
young. Seven of the girls in Gracie's department "got the T.B." That
made Gracie pause to think, and the more she thought about it, the
clearer it seemed to her that if one has to have a short life, one
might at least make a bid for a merrier one than candy-dipping. So
she made her choice. The short life and merry, rather than the T.B.
and charity.
"And has it been so merry, Gracie?" asked Peter, looking at the hard
young face wonderingly.
"Well, it's been heaps better than choc'late-dippin'," said Gracie,
promptly. "I don't get no worse treated, when all's said an' done.
I've got better clothes an' more time an' I don't work nothin' like
so hard. An' I got chanst to see things. You don't see nothin' in
the fact'ry. Say I feel like goin' to the movies, or treatin' myself
to a ice-cream soda or a choc'late a-clair, why, I can do it without
nobody's leave--when I'm lucky. You ain't ever lucky in the fact'ry:
you never have nothin', see? So I'd rather be me like I am than be
me back in the fact'ry."
"And do you always expect to be--lucky?" Peter winced at the word.
"I can't afford to think about that," she replied, squinting at the
red ink in her glass. "You got to run your risks an' take your
chances. All I know is, I'll have more and see more before I die.
An' I won't die no sooner nor no painfuller than if I'd stayed on in
the fact'ry."
Peter admitted to himself that she probably wouldn't. Also, that he
had nothing to say, where Gracie was concerned. He felt helpless in
the face of it--as helpless as he had felt one June morning long ago
when he had seen old Daddy Neptune praying, after a night of horror,
to a Something or a Somebody blind and indifferent. And it seemed to
him that life pressed upon him menacingly, as if he and Neptune and
this lost child of the New York streets had been caught like rats in
a trap.
The girl, on her part, had been watching him with painful intensity.
"You're a new one on _me_," she told him frankly. "I feel like
pinchin' you to see if you're real. Say, tell me: if you're real,
are you the sort of guy that'd give twenty-five dollars, for
nothin', to a girl he picked up in the street? Or, are you just a
softy fool that a girl that picks him up in the streets can trim?
There's more of _him_ than the first sort," she finished.
"You must judge that for yourself," said Peter. "I may tell you,
though, that I am quite used to being called a fool," he finished,
tranquilly.
"So?" said she, after another long look. "Well, I--what I mean to
say is, I wish to God there was more fools like you. If there was,
there'd be less fools like me." After a pause she asked, in a
subdued voice:
"You expect to stay in this town long?"
"I leave in the morning."
"I'm sorry," said she. "Not," she added hastily, "that I want to
touch you for more money or anything like that, I don't. But
I--well, I'd like to know you was livin' in the same town, see?"
Peter saw. But again he had nothing to say. Young as he was, he knew
the absurdity of all talk of reform to such as Gracie. As things are
they can't reform, they can't even be prevented. He looked at her,
thoughtfully.
"I'm not only leaving New York, I'm leaving America to-morrow," he
said at last. "I wish there was something I could do for you."
She shook her head. Her little painted face looked pinched. There
were shadows under the eyes that should have been soft and dewy.
"You can't do nothin'. I'll tell you why. Somehow--I--I'd like you
to know."
And she sat there and told him.
"You see?" said she, when she had finished.
"I see," said Peter; and the hand that held his cigarette trembled.
The thing that struck him most forcibly was the stupid waste of it
all.
"Look here, Gracie," he said at last, "if you ever get--very
unlucky--and things are too hard for you--sort of last ditch, you
know,--I want you to go to a certain address. It's to my uncle," he
explained, seeing her look blank. "You'll send in the card I'm going
to give you, and you will say I sent you. He'll probably investigate
you, you know. But you just tell him the truth, and say I told you
he'd help. Will you do that!"
She in her turn reflected, watching Peter curiously. Then she fell
to tracing patterns on the table-cloth with the point of her knife.
"All right," she said. "If ever I have to, an' I can find him, I
will--an' say you sent me."
Peter took out his pocket memorandum, wrote his uncle's name and the
address of the house in the Seventies which he was presently to
occupy, added, "I wish you'd do what you can, for my sake," and
signed it. He handed the girl the slip of paper, and she thrust it
into her low-necked blouse.
"And now," he finished kindly, "you'd better go home, Gracie, go to
bed, and sleep." He held out his brown hand, and she, rising from
her chair, gripped his fingers as a child might have done, and
looked at him with dog's eyes.
"Good-by!" said she, huskily. "You _are_ real, ain't you?"
"Damnably so," admitted Peter. "Good-by, then, Gracie." And he left
her standing by the table, the empty wine-glass before her. The
streets stretched before him emptily.--That poor, done-for kid! What
_is_ one to do for these Gracies?
"Mister! For God's sake! I'm hungry!" a hoarse voice accosted him. A
dirty hand was held out.
Mechanically Peter's hand went to his pocket, found a silver dollar,
and held it out. The dirty hand snatched it, and without so much as
a thank you the man rushed into a near-by bakery. Peter shuddered.
When he reached his room, he sat for a long time before his open
window, and stared at the myriads and myriads of lights. From the
streets far below came a subdued, ceaseless drone, as if the huge
city stirred uneasily in her sleep--perhaps because she dreamed of
the girls she prostituted and the men she starved. And it was like
that everywhere. If the great cities gave, they also took,
wastefully. Peter was tormented, confronted by the inexorable
question:
"What am _I_ going to do about it?"
He couldn't answer, any more than any other earnest and decent boy
could answer, whose whole and sole weapon happened to be a
paint-brush. One thing he resolved: he wouldn't add to the sum
total; nobody should be the worse off because he had lived. So
thinking, the bridegroom fell asleep.
When he awoke in the morning, he lay for a moment staring at the
strange ceiling overhead; his mind had an uneasy consciousness that
something impended. Then he sat up suddenly in his bed, and clutched
his head in his hands.
"Lord have mercy on me!" cried Peter. "I've got to get up and get
married!"
By ten o'clock his luggage was on its way to the steamer. Dressed in
his new clothes, ring and license carefully tucked away in his
pocket, Peter took an hour off and jumped on a bus. It delighted him
to roll around the streets on top of a bus. He felt that he could
never see enough of this wonderful, terrible, beautiful, ugly,
cruel, and kind city. Everywhere he turned, something was being torn
down or up, something was being demolished or replaced. New York was
like an inefficient and yet hard-working housekeeper, forever
house-cleaning; her house was never in order, and probably never
would be, hence this endless turmoil. Yet, somehow, Peter liked it.
She wasn't satisfied with things as they were.
He stopped at Grant's Tomb, looked at the bronze tablet
commemorating the visit of Li Hung Chang, then went inside and
stared reflectively at the torn and dusty flags.
"It was worth the price," he decided. "But," he added, with a
certain deep satisfaction, "I'm glad we gave them a run for their
money while we were at it!" The Champneyses, one remembers, were on
the other side.
When he got back to his hotel the car that his uncle had sent for
him had just arrived. Deferential help brought out his remaining
belongings, were tipped, and stood back while the door was slammed
upon the departing one. The car was held up for seven minutes on
Forty-second Street, while Peter leaned forward to get his first
view of congested traffic. He had once seen two Ford cars and an
ox-cart tie up the Riverton Road.
Arrived at Emma Campbell's quarters, he found her sitting stiffly
erect, her foot upon her new suit-case, her new cloak over her arm,
and the bird-cage under her hand. The expressman who had called for
her trunk early that morning had good-naturedly offered to carry the
bird-cage along with it, but Emma had flatly refused to let the cat
get out of her sight. Even when she climbed into the car she held
fast to the cage.
"I don't say nothin' 'bout _me_. All I scared ob is, dat dis
unforchnate cat's gwine to lose 'is min' before we-all finishes up."
It was with difficulty that Peter persuaded her to leave the cage in
the car when they reached his uncle's hotel.
"Mistuh," said Emma to the chauffeur, "is you-all got any fambly
dependin' on you?"
"One wife. Three kids," said the chauffeur, briefly.
"I ain't de kin' ob lady whut makes threats agin' a gent'man," said
Emma, looking him unblinklngly in the eye. "All I says is, dat I
started whah I come fum wid dat cat an' I 'specks to lan' up whah I
's gwine to wid dat same cat in dat same cage. Bein' as you 's got
dem chillun en dat wife, I calls yo' 'tenshun to dat fac', suh."
The chauffeur, a case-hardened pirate, laughed. "All right, lady,"
said he, genially. "It ain't in my line to granny cats, but that one
will be the apple of me good eye until you git back. I wouldn't like
the missus to be a widder: she's too darn good-lookin'."
With her mind at ease on this point, Emma consented to leave
Satan in the car and follow Peter. Emma looked resplendently
respectable, and she knew it. She was dressed as well as if she
had expected to be buried. By innate wisdom she had retained the
snowy head-handkerchief under her sailor hat, and she wore her big
gold hoop-earrings. Smart colored servants were common enough at
that hotel, but one did not often see such as this tall and erect
old woman in her severe black-and-white. Emma belonged almost to
another day and generation, although her face, like the faces of
many old colored women, was unwrinkled. She had a dignity that the
newer generation lacks, and a pride unknown to them.
Peter and Emma went up in an elevator and were ushered into a
private sitting-room, where were awaiting them Mr. Chadwick
Champneys, a gentleman who was obviously a clergyman, another who
was as obviously a member of the Bar, and the latter's wife, a very
handsome lady handsomely and expensively panoplied. There was the
usual hand-shaking, as Peter was introduced, and the handsome lady
stared openly at Emma; one doesn't often see a bridegroom come in
accompanied by an old colored woman. Emma courtesied, with the
inimitable South Carolina bending of the knees, and then took a
modest seat in the background and faded into it. She had good
manners, had Emma.
Mr. Champneys glanced at his watch, and presently left the room. The
clergyman, book in hand, stepped into the middle of the floor, and
looked importantly religious. The lawyer smilingly invited Peter to
take his place beside him. Everybody assumed a solemn look.
And then the door opened and the bride appeared, leaning on her
uncle's arm. Emma Campbell, leaning forward, got one glimpse of the
face but slightly concealed by the thin, floating tulle veil pinned
on with a wreath of orange-blossoms, caught one gleam from the
narrowed eyes; and her own eyes bulged in her head, her mouth fell
open. Emma wished to protest, to cry, to pray aloud.
The bride was magnificently dressed, in a gown that was much too
elaborate for her angular and undeveloped young figure. It made her
look over-dressed and absurd to a pitiful degree, as if she were
masquerading. The hair-dresser whom she had called to her aid had
done her worst. Nancy had an unusual quantity of hair, and it had
been curled and frizzed, and puffed and pulled, until the girl's
head appeared twice its natural size. Through the fine lace of her
sleeves were visible her thin, sunburned arms. Her naturally dark
eyebrows had been accentuated, and there was a bright red patch on
each cheek, her lips being equally crimson. Out of the rouged and
powdered face crowned by towering red hair, the multitude of
freckles showed defiantly, two fierce eyes lowered.
As Peter met the stare of those narrowed eyes, to save his life he
couldn't keep from showing his downright consternation. His aversion
and distaste were so manifest, that a deeper red than rouge stained
the girl's cheek and mottled her countenance. Her impulse was to
raise her hand and strike him across his wincing mouth.
What Nancy saw was a tall, thin, shambling young fellow whose face
was pale with an emotion not at all complimentary to herself. He
didn't like her! He thought her hideous! He despised her! So she
read Peter's expressive eyes. She thought him a fool, to stand there
staring at her like that, and she hated him. She detested him.
Puppy!
She saw his glance of piteous entreaty, and Mr. Chadwick Champneys's
bland, blind ignoring of its silent reproach and appeal. And then
the long-legged young fellow pulled himself together. His head went
up, his mouth hardened, and his voice didn't shake when he promised
to cherish and protect her, until death did them part.
All the while Peter felt that he was struggling in a hideous dream.
That bride in white satin wasn't real; his uncle wouldn't play him
such a trick! Peter cringed when the defiant voice of the girl
snapped her "I do" and "I will."
The clergyman's voice had trailed off. He was calling her "Mrs.
Champneys." And Mr. Vandervelde and his handsome wife were shaking
hands with her and Peter, and saying pleasant, polite, conventional
things to them both. She signed a paper. And that old nigger-woman
kept staring at her; but Peter avoided meeting her eyes. And her
uncle was saying that she must change her frock now, my dear:
Peter's boat sailed within the hour, remember. And then she was back
in her room, tearing off the dress that only last night she had so
fondly fingered.
It lay on the floor in a shimmering heap, and she trampled on it.
She had torn the tulle veil and orange-blossoms from her hair, and
she stamped on those, too. The maid who had been engaged to help her
stood aghast when the bride kicked her wedding-gown across the room.
She folded it with shaking hands and smoothed the torn veil as best
she could. The beautiful lace-and-ivory fan was snapped and torn
beyond hope of salvage. Nancy tossed it from her. With round eyes
the maid watched her tear hair-pins out of her hair, rush into the
bath-room, and with furious haste belabor her head with a wet brush
to remove the fatal frizzings; but the work had been too thoroughly
done to hope to remove all traces of it so easily. Nancy brushed it
as best she could, and then rolled it into a stout coil on the top
of her head. Her satin slippers came hurtling across the room as
she kicked them off, and the maid caught them on the fly.
Back into the bath-room again, and the maid could hear her splashing
around, as she scrubbed her face. When she came out, it was
brick-red, but powderless and paintless. She got into her blue
tailored suit without assistance, and, sitting on the floor,
buttoned her shoes with her own fingers, to the maid's disgust. Then
she jerked on her hat, stuck a hat-pin through it carelessly,
snatched up gloves and hand-bag, and was ready for departure. The
expression of her face at that moment sent the maid cowering against
the wall, and tied her tongue; the bride looked as if she were quite
capable of pitching an officious helper out of a ten-story window.
"My God!" said the girl to herself, as Nancy, without so much as a
word or a look in her direction, slammed the door behind her. "My
God, if that poor fellow that's just been married to _her_ was any
kin to me, I'd have a High Mass said for his soul!"
The brick-red apparition that swept into the room put the final
touch upon Peter's dismay. He thought her the most unpleasant human
being he had ever encountered, and almost the ugliest. The
Vanderveldes had taken the clergyman off in their car, and only
Peter, his uncle, and Emma remained.
"I'm ready!" snapped the bride. She didn't glance at the bridegroom,
but the look she bestowed upon Emma made that doughty warrior quail.
Emma conceived a mortal terror of Peter's wife. She took the place
of the Boogerman and of ha'nts.
Chadwick Champneys had his hand on his nephew's shoulder, and was
talking to him in a low and very earnest voice--rather like a
clergyman consoling a condemned man with promises of heaven after
hanging. Peter received his uncle's assurances in resigned silence.
Two cars were waiting outside the hotel for the wedding-party. As
Emma Campbell stepped into the one that was to convey her and Peter
to the boat, Nancy saw her stoop and lift a large bird-cage
containing, of all things, an immense black cat, which mewed
plaintively at sight of her. It was the final touch of grotesqueness
upon her impossible wedding. The two Champneyses wrung hands
silently. The older man said a few words to the colored woman, and
shook hands with her, too.
Then the two cars were rolling away, Nancy sitting silent beside her
uncle. At the corner Peter's vanished. The bride hoped from the
bottom of her heart that she would never lay eyes upon her
bridegroom again. She didn't exactly wish him any harm, greatly as
she disliked him, but she felt that if he would go away and die he
would be doing her a personal favor.
Peter and Emma made their boat ten minutes before the gang-plank was
pulled in. A steward took Emma in charge, and carried off the
bird-cage containing Satan. Emma, who had been silent during the
drive to the pier, opened her mouth now:
"Mist' Peter," said she, "ef yo' uncle 's wuth a million dollars, he
ought to tun it over to you dis mawnin'. 'T ain't for me," said
Emma, beginning to tremble, "to talk 'bout Mis' Champneys whut you
done got married to. But I used to know Miss Maria. And dat 's
how-come," finished Emma, irrelevantly, "dat 's how-come I mighty
glad we 's gwine to furrin folkses' countries, whichin I hopes to
Gawd dey 's a mighty long way off fum dat gal." And Peter's heart
echoed Emma's sentiments so fully that he couldn't find it in him to
reprove her for giving utterance to them.
With a sense of relief, he watched New York receding from his sight.
Hadn't he paid too high a price, after all? Remembering his bride's
eyes, pure terror assailed him. No woman had ever looked at Peter
like that before. He tried to keep from feeling bitter toward his
uncle. Well! He was in for it! He would make his work his bride, by
way of compensation. For all that he was a bridegroom of an hour or
so, and a seeker bound upon the quest of his heart's desire, Peter
turned away from the steamer's railing with a very heavy heart.
A tall, fair-faced woman turned away from the railing at the same
instant, and their eyes met. Hers were brightly, bravely blue, and
they widened with astonishment at sight of Peter Champneys. She
stared, and gasped. Peter stared, and gasped, too.
"Miss Claribel!" cried Peter.
"Mrs. Hemingway," she corrected, smiling. "It isn't--Yes, it is,
too! Peter! Oh, that Red Admiral _is_ a fairy!"