The Wishing Carpet

GLEN DARROW’S bitter wish could hardly have been granted with propriety at that very instant, for the reason that young Mr. Peter Parker of Pasadena was in bed.

It was barely eight o’clock, which meant that he was just settling down into the final, delicious doze of the morning which he always allowed himself after an exceptionally full night. Takasugi, his valet, had not even opened the door a cautious crack to reconnoiter.

But if eight A.M. meant only a deeper dive into the depths of slumber for her son, it meant very nearly the middle of the forenoon to Mrs. Eugenia Parker, President of the Federated Women’s Clubs of the United States, eating her well-balanced breakfast from a tray in her study, three floors below. She was awake at five every morning, and arose after a few moments of marshaling her thoughts for the day, did a brisk Daily Dozen to the exhortations of a small, compact, traveling phonograph, got briskly in and out of a stone-cold tub, walked for ten vigorous minutes up and down the graveled driveway, and sat down to her desk.

At eight o’clock her breakfast was brought to her—fruit, dry toast, one slightly boiled egg, black coffee. At nine her secretary arrived and they were closeted until one o’clock, when the president paused for luncheon, either at home or abroad, as the case might be—likewise an austere meal. Afternoons and evenings were given over to official and semi-official duties, and midnight frequently saw her back at her desk for a hasty glance at the late mail, her thick iron-gray hair braided into an uncompromising pigtail, her thick figure relaxing thankfully in the freedom of a perfectly plain kimono of dark gray silk. Mrs. Parker was straightly and inexorably corseted by day and sat always rigidly erect in severe straight chairs, but in the late and intimate hours she leaned back and sighed luxuriously now and then. Nature’s idea had been to make her a soft, fat old lady, but Mrs. Eugenia Parker knew that it was not necessary to humor Nature in these little matters, and she was clearing sixty with a satisfying hardness and firmness of flesh. She was a plain woman and well aware of it, and went in for dignity rather than adornment, and there was force and character in her face, as well as much tolerant and unsentimental kindliness. When she presided at conventions the country women noted with surprise and a certain pleasure that her hair was not marcelled, nor were her short and serviceable nails conspicuously manicured, and on her salient chin there was a faint but determined little beard. Mrs. Parker did not consider that decorative, and sincerely meant to have it attended to, as soon as she could conscientiously take the time.

On that particular morning she read the solid and conservative editorial in her favorite daily with cordial approval, and turned to the little heap of newspapers which had come in by yesterday’s late mail and were still in their wrappers. People were always sending her marked copies ... a glance here, a marginal note for her secretary there.... There was a very slim one which was addressed to her son and had been put with her mail by mistake. She wondered, grimly, who could be sending Peter a marked copy ... who could believe that he would be interested.... She was just putting it aside when she noticed that it bore the postmark of the old southern city where her husband—and now her son—owned a half interest in a cotton mill, and after an instant’s hesitation (but there was certainly nothing private in a newspaper!) she tore it open and—dividing her attention with her breakfast—began to read.

Twenty minutes later she entered Peter’s suite with the sharpest of announcing raps and stood looking through the clever and attractive room to the sleeping porch beyond where a motionless figure lay at ease in a brilliant blue bed.

“Peter!” she said sharply, but the silent form did not even quiver, and she marched upon him with her short, decisive steps and stood looking down at him. It was almost a year since her only son who was likewise her only child had reached the age of twenty-one, and had legally, at least, become a man, but sleeping there in his bright blue pajamas which perfectly matched the enamel of the bed and its very decorative spread, his fair head pillowed on one up-flung arm, he gave decidedly more the effect of fourteen. “And I believe he is fourteen, essentially,” his mother reflected unhappily. She was in the habit of talking learnedly about juvenile delinquents who were, perhaps, chronologically sixteen, biologically twenty, and psychologically only eight, but it was not until this hour of shame and chagrin that she was willing to include her own offspring in that stern classification.

Peter had been a delightful baby, a charming child, and a most disappointing youth. He was—or he was considered to be—more delightful and more charming than ever, but his parent found him purposeless and utterly devoid of direction. Frankly, she wondered what people saw in him, and whatever it was, she sincerely wished they did not see it, and flatter and fool him and flock about him, to his further demoralization. She was rather sure that he had brains—it was hard, indeed, to see how he could escape them, but he concealed them like a deformity, and if he had convictions on any subject he was singularly adept at cloaking them in persiflage. Sometimes Mrs. Eugenia Parker went so far in her own mind as to wish that he had been old enough to be in the war; it seemed to her that drill and discipline, that hardship and horror, blood and agony, might have developed him, might, in the rubber-stamp phrase, have made a man of him: golf and tennis and polo and mountain climbing and mah jongg had not done so, up to date.

He continued to sleep, a faint smile on his wide mouth which turned up a little at the corners, even in repose, like a clown’s painted lips, beneath the pressure of her scorn and displeasure, and presently a sort of resentment rose in the earnest lady, and she laid hands upon him and shook him.

“Peter! Peter! Wake up!”

Peter woke up obediently, but by easy stages, and it was several moments before his mother could feel that she had really focused his attention upon the little paper she held in her hand.

He made a valiant effort to keep his eyes open. “Oh, I see.... Yes, certainly I understand, Eugenia....” He yawned enormously and smiled in deprecation. “Sorry! I get you perfectly. Some Red doesn’t care for my mill, isn’t that it?”

“Peter, that’s only part of it, only the beginning! Read it! Read it, and see if you can endure to have such things said of you!”

“Are they libels, Eugenia?”

The Federation President flushed suddenly and furiously. “No, Peter, no; that’s the most dreadful part of it. What this man says, in its essence, is true!”

“Well, then,” said her son, reasonably, “we can’t do anything about it, can we, Eugenia?” His mother sat down heavily in a chair beside the bed, and he regarded her warily. “Now, suppose I have my shower, and my coffee, and then we—besides, isn’t Miss Dexter waiting for you?”

“Miss Dexter can wait,” said the lady levelly. “I want you to read this article about you, Peter.”

“But what,” he wanted genially to know, “is the big idea? The gentleman thinks and says, probably with much force and emphasis, that I’m no good? Well, that’s not a news item, Eugenia. You know it for a fact, and I’ve long suspected it, so why muss up our minds with it this bright morning?—this pearly dawn!” he added meaningly, pulling his watch from under his pillow. “I hate being harrowed so early.... I think my resistance is low at this hour. Don’t you think that may be it?”

“My son,” she insisted, “cannot you see that I am serious?”

He sighed. “Certainly I can see that you are serious, Eugenia. I have seen nothing else since I have been old enough to make an intelligent estimate of your character, and it has, I might mention in passing, darkened my young life.... However ... to return to the matter in hand, unless this sob stuff is violent enough to be funny, there are lots of things I’d rather read!”

“Peter, I have been very unhappy about this mill for years. I urged your father not to invest in it. I knew—I suspected, at least, from its location—that the labor conditions would be deplorable, and of late years I have been convinced of it. Nevertheless—and I blame myself severely for it——”

“Oh, now, don’t be severe with yourself, Eugenia,” he pleaded engagingly. “There’s always me to revile, you know!”

“I have been so engulfed in other affairs, in fighting for things in general, that the particular, in this instance, has escaped me. And now this article, which, in spite of its almost hysterical attack upon you, personally, has a very authentic ring, proves that the Altonia is one of the bad mills.”

“I could have told you it was one of the bad mills, Eugenia. Darn’ dump’s passed its dividends twice, I understand from Judson.”

His mother stared. She hadn’t supposed, really, that this fritterling knew what a dividend was, but she returned instantly to her text. “I didn’t mean bad in that sense, of course, as you know quite well. I mean that it flagrantly disregards the laws with reference to employing children under a certain age, and working children of any age at night. If you will read it, Peter——”

“Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Eugenia. You leave it right here—right here beside me on the bed, see?—so I can’t possibly lose it, and after I’ve had my shower and my coffee, and while Takasugi’s shaving me——”

Mrs. Eugenia Parker got to her feet and walked to the end of the sleeping porch and stood for several moments looking out into the effective garden which surrounded her house. When she came back to her son her voice was low and steady.

“Will you try to realize what this means to me, personally, Peter? In the first place, because you are my son, and in the second place because, publicly, I stand for proper working and living conditions, compulsory education—law enforcement—and privately, I or at least a member of my family—Peter, we are the accessories after the fact! We are guilty, you and I, of breaking laws, not only the laws of the country, but the laws of common humanity. Peter, are you listening to me? You are not going to sleep again?”

“Not if I can possibly help it, Eugenia,” he assured her warmly, “but there’s something so soothing about your voice....”

She rose again and stood frowning down on him. “Peter, I ask you once more, will—you—read—this article?”

“I’ll compromise with you, Eugenia! You read it, and I’ll listen!” He propped himself up on an elbow. “It’s a long time since you’ve read aloud to me, isn’t it, Eugenia? Remember how I used to want the ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ twice a year? And ‘Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas,’ and ‘Thro’ Swamp and Glade,’ and ‘The Prince and the Pauper’? You wouldn’t read Frank Merriwell to me—‘Blooey, blooey, and eight more redskins bit the dust!’—and I always rather held it against you,” he smiled at her cozily. “Now, you go right ahead and get this off your mind, Madame President! Shoot!”

Mrs. Parker sat down again, stiffly, on the edge of her chair. “Peter, will you never grow up?”

“Certainly. I did. I am. There are those who consider me entirely mature. For example, the very determined young lady from Arizona who endeavored to espouse me at Del Monte last month, and the——”

“Peter, please!” The consuming terror of her life was that her only son would make a thoroughly unsuitable marriage and he was quite well aware of her anxiety on the subject.

“Well, what do you suppose it is, Eugenia? What is the secret of my fatal attraction? If I didn’t take Takasugi with me, there are times when I should be actually overpowered.... You wouldn’t say, would you,” he flung back the bright blue spread and sat up in his bright blue pajamas, his fair hair mussed, his arms about his knees, “that I am the caveman type, popularly supposed to be irresistible? It must be my girlish laughter. But to return—I have no objection, I never had, to growing up, a process which carries with it many pleasant prerogatives. But I will not—I will never, and it is useless for you to plead with me and importune me, Eugenia, grow old. Madame President, consider the bleakness of it!” He shivered and dove under his covers again. “Eugenia, I tell you frankly, I’m in a Peter Panic about growing old!”