"Oh, all right," said Peter, resignedly. After all, Emma Campbell and the cat were all the folks he had.
He went to Charleston the next morning, in accordance with the instructions his uncle had given him in their last talk, and the bank at which he presented himself treated him with distinguished consideration. Peter heard for the first time the dulcet accents of Money.
Like Mr. Wilfer in "Our Mutual Friend," Peter had never had everything all together all at once. When he had a suit his shoes were shabby, and when it got around to shoes his coat was shiny in the seams and his hat of last year's vintage. He was boyishly delighted to buy at one time all that he wanted, but as made-to-order clothes were altogether outside of his reckoning as yet, he bought ready-made. His taste was too simple to be essentially bad, but you knew he was a country boy in store clothes and a made tie.
He had never been in Charleston before, and he reveled in the ineluctable charm of the lovely old town. No South Carolinian is ever disappointed in Charleston. Peter thought the city resembled one of her own old ladies, a dear dignified gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, in a worn silk gown and a mended lace cap and a cameo brooch. It might be against the old gentlewoman's religious convictions to bestow undue care upon her personal appearance, but hers was a venerable, unforgetable, and most beautiful old face for all that, and perhaps because of it. She knew that the kingdom of God is within; and being sure of that, she was sure of herself, serene, unpainted, unpretentious.
Peter wandered by old walled gardens in which were set wrought-iron gates that allowed the passer-by a glimpse of greenery and flowers, but prevented encroachments upon family privacy. Every now and then a curving balustrade, a gable, a window, or an old doorway of surpassing charm made his fingers itch for pencil and paper. He reflected, without bitterness, that the doors of every one of these fine old houses had on a time opened almost automatically to a Champneys. Some of these folk were kith and kin, as his mother had remembered and they, perhaps, had forgotten. This didn't worry him in the least: the real interest the houses had for Peter was that this one had a picturesque garden gate, that one a door with a fan-light he'd like to sketch.
He climbed St. Michael's belfry stairway and looked over the city, and toward the sea; and later wandered through its historic churchyard. One very simple memorial held him longest, because it is the only one of its kind among all those records of state honor and family pride, and seems rather to belong to the antique Greek and Roman world which accepted death as the final fact, than to a Carolina churchyard.
SARAH JOHNSTON
born in this province
29th May 1690
Died 26th April 1774
In the 84th year of her age.
How lovd how valu'd once avails Thee not
To whom related or by whom begot
A heap of dust alone remains of Thee.
That covered the Champneyses, too. To whom related or by whom begot, a heap of dust alone remained of them. So much for all human pride! Peter left St. Michael's dead to slumber in peace, and walked for an hour on the Battery, and in Legare Street, where life is brightest in the old city. All good Charlestonians think that after the final resurrection there may be a new heaven and a new earth for others, but for themselves a house in Legare Street or on the Battery.
Peter presently reappeared in Riverton, discreetly clad in his customary clothes, the habits of thrift being yet so firmly ingrained in him that he couldn't easily wear his best clothes on a week-day.