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Updated: June 13, 2025
Fairfax's efforts to take part in the conversation. 'That child is an original character, she observed. 'Do you know who they are, Nesta? 'Yes, Mr. Crump was telling me the other day; their father is the Member for Stonycroft, and their mother that Mrs. Stuart who is so busy in philanthropical objects in town. She was one of the Miss Champneys, the clever Miss Champneys, as we used to call 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.
All dat time I been a-wearin' clo'es, en now you come en tarrygate me, sayin' I got to stan' up in de nekked rind en wave fedders 'cause I in slaveryment? You bes' ain't let Mistuh Peter Champneys hear you talkin' lak dat!" The bewildered and baffled young man raved in three languages, but Emma Campbell flatly refused either to be in "slaveryment" or in the "nekked rind."
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.
"There will NOT!" said Champneys hastily. "We will now," he announced, "go into committee of the whole and decide how we are to face financial failure. Our assets consist of two stories, accepted, but not paid for, and fifteen stories not accepted." In cash, he spread upon the table a meagre collection of soiled bills and coins. "We have twenty-seven dollars and fourteen cents.
Fancy his wishing to send such a girl to his uncle and being sure that old Chadwick wouldn't misunderstand! Gracie cast a new light upon Peter Champneys, and a very likable one. Vandervelde had seen in the uncle something of that same unworldliness that the nephew displayed, and it had established the human equation between Peter and the shrewd old man.
What had happened on a smaller scale in Florence, happened on a large scale here at home. Something of the Champneys story had crept out, the early marriage, which had kept all the wealth in the family; the departure of the bridegroom to become an artist, and the fact that he had really become a noted one. The halo of romance encircled her head.
There wasn't a negro in the county he didn't know by name: even "mean niggers" grinned amiably at Peter Champneys. They remembered what he had once said to a district judge whom he heard bitterly inveighing against their ingratitude, immorality, shiftlessness, and general worthlessness. Peter had lifted his quiet eyes.
He presented the living image of Shakespeare himself, in Yorick, and his large, broad, stately style gave weight to Don Manuel, in She Would and She Wouldn't; to that apt type of the refined British aristocrat, Sir Geoffrey Champneys, in Our Boys; and to many a noble father or benevolent uncle of the adapted French society drama.
She looked at the girl before her, and realized her possibilities. Mrs. Peter was for the time being virtually a young widow, she had no relatives, and she was co-heir to the Champneys millions. Properly trained, she should have a brilliant social career ahead of her. And here she was shut up in a really beautiful house, of course with nobody but an insufferable frump of an unimportant Mrs.
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