The Wishing Carpet

GLEN would have been very lonely in the months which followed if it had not been for her increased activities with the mill workers, and her joy in her transformed house, for she saw less and less of Luke Manders.

She had to fight a feeling of disappointment which bordered sometimes on resentment: Luke’s advancement, instead of knitting them more closely together, seemed rather to come between them and force them apart. He was so absorbedly, relentlessly busy! Glen, unhappy over the way in which he drove the hands, had to admit that he drove himself most cruelly of all, and the hardest thing she had to bear was her helplessness to help him. She was bewildered by the fact that her duties, in spite of the tremendous pressure under which the mill was being run, were lighter than ever before. She longed ardently to lift burdens from him, but he constantly assumed more and more of the work which she had been in the habit of doing—even taking over the bulk of the correspondence, and taking full charge of certain of the files. When she protested he was adamant; he had to keep the reins in his own hands; he was so pushed he hardly knew whether he was on “foot or horseback,” and it confused him if he didn’t keep his eye on all the details.

And when she put a hand on his sleeve and said earnestly—“But Luke, I want to help you!” he had an instantaneous transition to the Luke of the lane on her birthday.

“You know how you can help me!” He was almost savage in voice and eyes, in the embrace in which he caught her. “You can help me if you want to—by marrying me! By keeping your promise to your father!”

She was frightened by his vehemence, and still more by her own reaction to it. She took herself firmly in hand; she would not fail him and her father because she was that curious and unfortunate creature, the person who doesn’t like to be touched. “But I will marry you, Luke! I will!”

“When?”

Strong walls closing round about her, closing in, nearer and nearer; so near, so close, so tight, that she could hardly breathe, hardly think. “When—when—when I’m twenty, Luke!”

“The day you’re twenty?”

“The day—I’m twenty!”

He released her, after a long moment, and flung himself out of the office, and Glen dropped unsteadily into her chair. Presently, however, there came a distinct sense of relief. It was settled, then. On her twentieth birthday. It put a period to evasions and delays. On the day that she was twenty, she would marry Luke, keep her word, please her father.

Meanwhile, in her greater leisure, she went into the Tollivers’ home and others of its sort and tried faithfully to water where the doctor had planted, in spite of stony soil. Gloriana-Virginia was ailing, and Glen tried first to handle her case from the angle of the mill.

“Luke,” she said earnestly, waylaying the superintendent in the hall, “I think Glory should be laid off for a month. She’s so miserable——”

He nodded, frowning. “Looks no worse than she usually does—always was a pindling young one, but she’s pretty tough and wiry, and she’s a good hand. I’d hate to lay her off now, with these rush orders coming in—she keeps the other kids hustling, too.” Then, at the unhappiness in her face—“Just wait till I get the reins in my own hands, Glen! We’ll make a model mill out of the Altonia! You wait!”

“But Glory can’t wait,” the girl was mutinous. “Surely Mr. Carey——”

“You think you know old Carey, but you don’t,” he cut in harshly. “Mighty soft and mealy-mouthed with you, because he liked your father, but with me, he’s always putting on the screws. No use your naming it to him. He’d say—‘Yes—lay her off! Give ’em all a month on full pay’—to you, and next day he’d give me the wink to put ’em back.”

And when Glen raged at the duplicity of the Altonia’s owner, again he urged patience. Let her trust him; he would soon be in a position to dictate. Why, that niece of the old man’s—the widow—Mrs. Bob Lee Tenafee, wasn’t that her name?—she’d been there with a bunch of club women, scolding about conditions in the mill, comparing it with others in the community, and he was soft as silk with her—but what did it amount to? Wait; wait!

Then Glen, with a twinge of treachery to Luke, went to the most responsible member of the Tolliver family, M’liss’, the maiden aunt.

M’liss’ Tolliver had been a tall woman, to begin with, but her shoulders sagged and her chest caved in and her stomach protruded until she had eliminated several inches from her height. She was as flat and thin as a paper doll, her skin was the color of tripe, and her dull eyes were utterly and absolutely devoid of all expression. The shapeless, dun-hued dress she wore was stained with snuff and tobacco juice, and her scanty hair was twisted into a frowsy knot at the back of her neck.

She received without enthusiasm Glen’s suggestion that Gloriana-Virginia be kept at home.

“No, me’um, I allus aim to keep young-uns to work,” she stated sagely. “Hit kindly does ’em good to keep movin’. I named hit to Super to put Beany on reg’ler—he’s the least one, that’s been dinner-totin’—but Super, he says they got a lot o’ pesky new-fangled laws ’bout not lettin’ young-uns make their salt!”

Glen let the general issue slide and held to the case in point. “But, M’liss’,—Glory isn’t well!”

The aunt shrugged a lean shoulder and treated herself generously to snuff before she answered. “Well’s she ever was; well’s she’ll ever be, I reckon. Her paw was pindlin’, too, and that young-un was borned sick.”

“M’liss’, listen to me! If you don’t take care of that child—she’ll die!”

“Well, won’t we all of us? Old pap, thar—” she nodded toward her sire, dozing in the sun, “he’s daid a’ready, only he don’t know ’nuff to lay still ’twell we bury him! No, me’um,” she spat with languid emphasis, “that Glory-chile, ef she was to lay off, she’d feel a heap sight wuss’n she do now, and what’s mo’, she’d be so plumb spi’lt thar’d be no livin’ with her!”

That evening, with a still greater sense of disloyalty to Luke, Glen sat down at Miss Ada’s beautiful old desk-bookcase and wrote an earnest letter to a certain society, begging them to send an investigator to the Altonia. Its conditions of safety and sanitation, she stated, were far below standard; it was breaking or evading the law in a dozen different directions; it was the worst mill in the community, in the state.

She signed and sealed the letter and sat staring at it unhappily, and once she made a motion to tear it up. Luke would be furious if he knew, and even though she had asked that her communication be regarded as confidential, it would doubtless come out in time.

Luke, driven, cumbered Luke, whom she was already treating so shabbily, who was enslaving himself to put the mill on the right side of the ledger again, needed every hand he had on his pay roll—even Gloriana-Virginia’s small claws—and she was deliberately making trouble for him. He did not mean to be hard. He was hounded by old Mr. ’Gene Carey, that mild-mannered, moist-eyed old hypocrite, who, in his turn, was being relentlessly goaded by Peter Parker of Pasadena, worthless young waster, lolling in luxury (she grew almost lyric, after the fashion of the heated weeklies) on the cruel profits of a business he had never seen.

She felt no resentment toward Luke, only a remorseful realization that his hands were tied, and she must act, now, for them both, and she ran swiftly to the letter box at the corner, dropped in her communication and came back with her chin held high.

The surcease from all her sorrows was her house. It received her like a lover. Sometimes, in the restful dining room, in the quaint chamber, establishing herself for a quiet evening in the sitting room where now the Persian rug seemed to lie relaxed and at ease, she had the happy fancy that her mother, pale Effie, was there, moving through the transformed house with her frail and hesitating gait. And sometimes there came likewise the thought that Dr. Darrow, crusty and choleric, was stamping after her, hotly and profanely disapproving, loudly lamenting his golden oak and the robust flowers of the carpets.

At those times she flung herself hastily into his books or the vehement weekly, or slipped down the hill to hear Black Orlo’s feverish philippics, which always gave her a sort of Charlotte Corday thrill.

Mr. ’Gene Carey was home again, a wholesome color in his face and a spring in his step, when he received the news of old Ben Birdsall’s death, and he grieved over it sincerely. “Poor old Ben! Looks like he couldn’t stand prosperity! One of those old truck horses that ought to die in harness! Yes, sir, if he’d stayed on here at the Altonia with us, old Ben’d been good for fifteen, twenty years yet, but sitting in the sunshine, picking oranges off the tree, watching the gusher gush, he just naturally slowed down and stopped, that’s what he did! Poor old Ben! He was a faithful soul if ever there was one! I miss him. By the eternal, I miss him! Used to look at me with those old eyes of his ... kind of like a dog that trusts you....” He winked and blew a blast into his handkerchief.

Nancy, who came for him every afternoon, patted and soothed him. He mustn’t take it like that; wasn’t it fine that old Ben had so much happiness before he went? She lifted her lovely hazel eyes to Luke for confirmation of her comforting theory but Luke was not sympathetic. He had no solemn comments to make whatever, and made an excuse to leave the office at once.

His attitude fretted the old gentleman. “Funny thing, Lady-bird, that Luke can’t show a little feeling over poor old Ben! I wanted to shut the mill down for a day, in memory of him, or half a day, anyhow, but Luke won’t hear of it, and he hasn’t a good word to say of the old chap. Can’t understand it. Why, if he was here, you might say it was jealousy, Luke being so ambitious to do everything his own way, but a dead man, Lady-bird! It’s—it’s hard! I don’t like it!”

He told his young superintendent that he didn’t like it—told him with vigor and feeling, in the middle of a driving, high-keyed afternoon, in spite of his daughter’s coaxing hand on his arm.

Luke Manders started to speak excitedly, got hold of himself, paced up and down the room for a moment and then faced his employer gravely.

“Mr. Carey, sir,” he began, with something in his tone which made Glen, passing through to the spinning room, stop and stare, “you think it’s queer I can’t take on over Birdsall. Well, I’m not shedding any tears over a thief.”

“Luke!” It was Glen who cried out.

Mr. ’Gene Carey’s genial old face flushed an angry cardinal. “Now, look here, Manders, I won’t stand for that! I won’t listen to a word against old Ben, not even from you. You’re jealous of him for some reason, Lord knows why, for he was a good friend to you while he was here, and always glad to see you advance! I think it’s pretty small business, Luke, when a man’s dead and gone, to——”

The mountaineer colored likewise but he held his head high, and there was patience in his voice, and regret. “I’m mighty sorry, Mr. Carey. I wish I could keep still about it all. I’d put the flag at half mast and hang crape over the whole place, yes, and cry like a nigger at a gospel meeting, if I could keep you fooled. But I couldn’t, Mr. Carey. You’d have to know sometime, sir. You’d have to know.”

It was very still in the stuffy little office of the Altonia, and the old man and the two girls who were looking at him and listening to him seemed to hold their breath. Nancy was the least moved of the three, but her tender and lyrical gaze grew softer, and Glen Darrow paled swiftly, while the senior partner’s dark and dangerous flush increased until his face was mottled and congested looking.

“What do you mean?” he managed thickly. “What are you trying to tell me, Luke Manders, about poor old Ben Birdsall, lying in his grave out there in California?”

The superintendent cleared his throat. There was nothing hard about him now. He hesitated, and showed in look and tone and tempo the most unmistakable distaste for his unlovely task.

“I wish I didn’t have to try to tell you, sir. I wish to God I didn’t! You won’t believe me, at first. You won’t want to believe me. But I can show you the books, and I can show you the files.”

After a hectic quarter of an hour, Mr. ’Gene Carey got hold of himself, and was able to listen intelligently, and to take in and assimilate the heavy tidings Luke Manders had brought him. Old Ben Birdsall, the young superintendent told him, as briefly and coolly as possible, had been cheating him for years, pilfering from the Altonia, altering the books, destroying incriminating letters, covering up his perfidy with a depth of guile amazing in a man of his mentality—or of what they had innocently believed to be his mentality.

The old gentleman took it very hard. The two girls, palely listening, were afraid he would swoon in the violence of his grief and indignation, and Glen, witnessing the slow death of his faith in his old retainer, found her heart softening toward him.

Nancy took him home at last, bewildered and broken, and it was arranged that Luke should come to see him that evening, after he had dined and rested, and tell him more of the grim details.

Glen, left alone with Luke, felt a great uprushing tide of loyalty and admiration engulfing her. No wonder he had become almost a fanatic on work, with this avalanche of debt and treachery sliding down upon the Altonia! No wonder he had seemed ruthless in his zeal to make up for the scandalous losses!

She, too, had liked and trusted old Ben Birdsall, and was shocked at his deep and calculating wickedness, and the whole thing left her dazed and shaken. Timidly, she tried to make Luke see a little of what she was feeling, but he took her words somberly, in a deep preoccupation, and she slipped away, to leave him with his grave and serious responsibilities.

When she came down to breakfast next morning Miss Ada’s eyes, never without the look of recent tears, showed signs of fresh weeping. Mr. ’Gene Carey, after a long evening with his superintendent, had fallen into an uneasy sleep, and at four in the morning had suffered a stroke. One side was paralyzed, and he could not speak.

Glen went down the hill to work in a tight-lipped silence. In view of his dreadful physical calamity, added to his business tragedy, and remembering his stout-hearted loyalty to old Ben, it was impossible to keep on casting him for the villain of the piece. She did not idealize him in the least, but she pitied him, and saw him for what he was—a rather futile and pathetic unit in a vicious feudal system. The bulk of her rage and resentment, hereafter, would center on Peter Parker of Pasadena, and directly she reached the mill she found Black Orlo and held earnest converse with him.

Mr. Carey’s condition, after a week, was more hopeful. Save for a slight thickness of speech, he was able to talk normally, and the doctors promised that he would be getting about with a cane in three months’ time. He was, his daughter told her friends, the vast tribe of Careys and Tenafees and their ilk who “claimed kin,” simply angelic in his patience and gentleness, and he showed a touching and pitiful gratitude to his young henchman, Luke Manders.

The superintendent had confessed that he had been putting his own salary back into the business ever since the revelation of old Ben Birdsall’s duplicity, and the Altonia’s trembling on the brink of ruin: the mill owed him considerably more than a thousand dollars.

“You must keep account, boy,” his employer said brokenly. “You shall have every penny back, and interest—yes, sir, by the eternal. Eight per cent! Just let me get in action again—oh, damn this fool leg—and we’ll work it out! We’ll get her afloat again!”

There was no possible doubt of it, Manders assured him, and he was not to worry about his back pay; his expenses were small, and he had saved a good deal. Any time at all would do; he was in no hurry; Mr. Carey was to forget that, and hurry up and get well again. Miss Ada would have been amazed beyond measure at the gentleness, the respect, the veneration of the young savage; it made Nancy Carey’s hazel gaze grow liquid and tender.

The weeks went on in a dull procession; Mr. Carey improved slowly, Gloriana-Virginia grew slowly worse; Luke Manders made himself slowly more and more necessary to his employer; Glen Darrow began slowly to accumulate a small and austere trousseau. It was a heavy and languid spring, humid and enervating. Gloriana-Virginia seemed visibly to shrink and shrivel, but she lived so completely in her fairy tales that she was quite literally absent from the body and present with the witches and the princess and the ogres.

“Glen,” she whispered once at eleven o’clock on a stifling forenoon, wiping the sweat out of her eyes with a backward motion of her sallow hand, “ef yo’all was to stand on that Wishin’ Cyarpet, wishin’ so hard yo’ jes’ pintly bend yo’ wishbone, whar’d yo’ wish to be at?”

The doctor’s daughter smiled and opened her lips to reply lightly and in kind, but the pupils of her eyes dilated swiftly and darkly at a sudden thought.

“Glory,” she caught the child’s thin shoulders in a hard young grip, “Glory, I’d wish to be where I could see what our Peter Parker of Pasadena is doing this moment!”