The Wishing Carpet

MRS. EUGENIA PARKER arrived at the Bella Vista with that lowest form of human expression, an anonymous letter, in her neat pigskin portfolio.

It had reached her just as she was closing a convention in Chicago, and she had caught the first possible train. It was clearly typed on a sheet of plain white paper, and was brief and unemotional.

“Your son,” it began abruptly, “is making a fool of himself over a mill girl. It is the talk of the town. For her sake, and for his safety, you had better call him home.”

Mrs. Parker telephoned to the Carey house as soon as she reached her room, but was told that her son, together with Miss Nancy, was enjoying a house-party at Beulah-land, the plantation of Mrs. Bob Lee Tenafee, and was not expected back for several days. She hung up the receiver with an expression of reprieve. “It will give me time,” she thought, compressing her earnest lips.

The next morning Glen Darrow received a letter on Bella Vista paper, written in a clear and forceful if rather old-fashioned hand.

Miss Ada’s observant eyes noted that Glen changed color as she read it. It had been a high-keyed fortnight for Miss Ada; she had not seen Peter Parker except at a distance, but she had heard him described with scorn and contumely by her young charge every morning at breakfast and every evening at supper, and she burned with indignation at the annoyance—the impertinence—which the young upstart continued to inflict upon Glen Darrow. She was almost goaded to the point of going to him, herself, and appealing to his better instincts (of whose existence she had grave doubts) and at other times she considering protesting to Mr. ’Gene Carey, whose chivalry would certainly extend to a young gentlewoman in his employ.

But Glen seemed entirely capable, it was to be admitted, of fighting her own battles with zest and something which closely resembled enjoyment. The bitterest thing about her encounters with her young employer was the fact that it was not until hours afterward that she thought of sufficiently caustic and biting replies....

The serious aspect of it all, which she did not reveal to Miss Ada, was that Luke Manders was blackly, murderously jealous. She tried earnestly to make him see the absurdity of his attitude, to convince him of the patent fact that the junior partner was merely by his farcical attitude of admiration, choosing the most perfect method of making himself objectional.

“I have eyes in my head,” the mountaineer reiterated. “I’m not a born fool. If you can’t see he’s crazy about you, I can. And he’s got everything in the world to offer you. I’ve got eyes to see that, too.”

“Luke! You know I wouldn’t—couldn’t—even if he——”

“Well, there’s only one way you can prove it to me!” He shut the door of the office and stood with his back against it, and caught hold of her and pulled her to him.

“But I’m—I’m going to prove it to you, Luke! On my birthday! The—the very day I’m twenty! I——”

“Prove it now! To-day. That’s how you can prove it, and that’s the only way!”

They were very difficult minutes. She came out of the scene shaken and unhappy, and Luke flung himself out of the room in a dark and silent fury, and Peter Parker came in by the other door, leaving it open behind him, so that he was a silhouette against the greenness of the lane. Ever since learning of old Ben Birdsall’s perfidy the youth had been taking a keen if clumsy interest in the business end of the Altonia, idling about the office and asking childish questions, to the intense irritation of the superintendent.

“If he knew anything, sir,” he complained to Mr. Carey, “the Lord knows we’d be glad to have his help, but just to have him nosing round, asking fool questions——”

“I know, I know, Luke,” said the senior partner sympathetically. “It’s mighty trying on you, I can see that. And the doctor won’t let me go down for another week or ten days, so I can’t help you out. But we can hardly throw him out of his own office, can we? Might look,” he chuckled, “as if there was something we didn’t want him to find! Something we wanted to keep covered up! But I’ll tell you, Luke, the young folks are going to have a house-party out to Beulah-land, and that’ll keep him amused, I reckon!”

And now the junior partner regarded the superintendent’s assistant with delight. “I am glad to see you,” he beamed. “It’s amazing, how cleverly you arrange these little secret meetings of ours!” He stepped nimbly after her and got between her and the door.

Glen moved toward the other door, slowly, so that it might be quite clear that he was not succeeding in flustering her, and he followed her just as slowly, and again prevented her exit.

“I’d better put my hands behind me,” he said wistfully, “because if I don’t, I shall touch your hair.... I’ve always wanted to ... but I don’t want to unless you want me to!” He waited hopefully, and then sighed a little. “It would be a very simple way for you to give a great deal of innocent pleasure, you know. A fellow could warm his hands in your hair ... he could warm his heart in it....” He smiled at her, a little uncertainly, with his wide and humorous mouth, and passed gently from the room by the other door.

Glen Darrow stood staring after him; it was a strange chance, a plethora of episode, which gave her two scenes with two different suitors in ten minutes in the same dingy old office, but they were poles apart, for one was the golden lad of the golden legend, her father’s familiar friend, the splendid young savage, the bold and beautiful mountaineer who had made full use of his time and talents, and one was the slim and fair young waster, the cumberer of the earth, on whom she and Black Orlo were utterly agreed.

And now, at her breakfast table, she held in her hand the businesslike note from his mother, stating that she would call on her with reference to a matter of great interest to them both.

After an instant’s hesitation she handed it over to Miss Ada, and the faded gentlewoman read it hastily and trembled with indignation.

“Glen, dear, do you suppose”—the little dabs of color which always marked excitement stung on her cheekbones—“is it possible that this woman has the effrontery to think that you are interested in her son?”

“That is exactly what she thinks, Miss Ada. Some one has told her how he has been following me about—it’s very probable that she has a detective watching him all the time, to protect him,” the doctor’s daughter finished with a curling lip.

Miss Tenafee bridled. “What shall you do, dear? Send her word that you are engaged at that hour? Let her come, and leave me to deal with her?” The spinster put herself into fierce italics.

“No,” Glen answered her, levelly, “I shall see her, and I shall talk to her, myself. I shall be—glad—to talk to her! It will be—interesting.”

“Of all the impertinence!” her friend sputtered. “Very ordinary people, without doubt, who have nothing but their money——”

“I wonder,” the girl gave a tight-lipped smile, “just how she will try to handle me, Miss Ada? Will she be stern, or conciliatory? Do you suppose she’ll shed tears and beg me not to ruin his life? Or will she offer to make a settlement on me if I will let him go?”

“Glen, dearest—don’t say such things!”

“That’s what she’s coming for, Miss Ada, to rescue her son from the clutches of a mill girl. The only wonder is that she didn’t simply order me to appear at the hotel!”

Glen thought of little else during the day. Over and over again she enacted the scene in her mind and rehearsed her set speech. She could not quite decide whether to let Mrs. Parker speak first, to permit her to plead or to threaten as the case might be, and then to deliver her broadside, or to hold up a hand before the Federation President could open her lips, and say—“Perhaps we shall save time, Mrs. Parker, if I tell you at once that your son’s pursuit of me has been wholly without encouragement. Indeed, I have let him see—so plainly that only a defective mentality or a deliberate insolence would fail to be convinced of it—that I feel for him only the greatest dislike and the deepest contempt, not only for what he is, but for the life he leads, and for everything about him!”

She committed the speech to memory, and when she came home to lunch she rehearsed it before her looking-glass, and she repeated it as she hurried up the hill at six.

Miss Ada had set the stage. The quaint and charming sitting room was in perfect order; there were bowls of flowers on the gate-legged table and on the desk-bookcase, a basket of delicate needlework, and two irreproachable books, and she wore her gray silk and the good lace and the jet jewelry which had been her father’s mother’s.

“My dear,” she said with unaccustomed firmness and finality, “I have decided that it will be best for me to receive Mrs. Parker.”

“But, Miss Ada, I want——”

Miss Ada held up a thin hand. “I said ‘to receive her,’ my child. I will come down first, after Phemie has admitted her. I will seat her, and greet her; I will exchange a few words with her—enough, and of a sort, to let her see that you are not without protection, and then I will summon you, and retire!”

Miss Tenafee followed her program perfectly. Glen, waiting in her bedroom with the sprigged wall paper and the hooked rugs, heard the firm step on the porch, the sharp jingle of the bell, and Phemie’s unhurried tread. There was a pause, during which, she knew, Miss Ada was entering from the dining room, and then, for something over five minutes, the vague murmur of faintly heard voices. This was followed by Miss Ada’s light and ladylike ascent of the stairs, and her flute-like tones, a little louder than usual—“Glen, my dear, a Mrs. Parker is calling. She says she has an appointment with you. Can you see her for a few minutes?”

As Glen passed her she gave her arm a feverish squeeze.

Mrs. Parker was standing when Glen came into the room, looking at the desk-bookcase. “Oh!”—she turned sharply, “Good afternoon, Miss Darrow!”

“Good afternoon,” the girl returned colorlessly.

“I—I was just looking at this interesting old piece of furniture,” the caller remarked. “It is, as of course you know, very unusual, very rare, in design.” She coughed. “I greatly admire——”

“It is not for sale,” the doctor’s daughter stated coldly.

“Certainly not! I—I had no such thought. I merely noticed—I have some very good things myself, but nothing quite of that order, and I always admire——”

It was a surprise to have the great lady speak so jerkily and hurriedly, but it did not carry the amazement to Glen Darrow that it would to the thousands who had heard Mrs. Eugenia Adams Parker on the platform. It was, nevertheless, a distinct disappointment. It would have been more satisfying to have her haughtier, more regal....

“I was talking of you with a mutual acquaintance, Miss Darrow, and— May I sit down?—” She chose the armchair of Miss Ada’s own dear father as Glen nodded permission, “Miss Jennings, who is likewise staying at the Bella Vista. You were schoolmates, she tells me.”

“For a brief period,” Glen disclaimed gentility. “Then I left Miss Josephine’s and went to public school.”

“That was an excellent move, I feel sure,” Mrs. Parker approved. “I am a hearty supporter of the public schools, Miss Darrow, and feel that no normal child should be deprived of that fine, well-rounded, democratic training.”

(“That,” Glen told herself, “is put in to show me she is not a snob, and that she’s not objecting to me because I’m poor!”) She was meeting Mrs. Parker’s eyes more steadily than Mrs. Parker was meeting hers, which proved that she was dominating the situation, though it was possible that the young idler’s mother was not unmindful of the charm of the room, and that she found something to warrant more than a passing glance in the girl herself.

She spoke with painstaking enthusiasm of the beauty of the day and of the landscape, and regretted that this was her first visit further south than Baltimore, where she had conducted a convention several years earlier, of which Miss Darrow might have read, but it was disconcerting to Glen, to have the oppressor of the poor, the glutted tyrant whose heel was on the aching neck of the toilers, hesitating, and repeating and correcting herself.

Glen began to feel very uncomfortable. She was not going to feel sorry for this thick-bodied, sternly corseted, gray dowager, that was certain, but it was equally certain that much of the zest would go out of the affair if Mrs. Parker, as seemed only too probable, should beg and plead instead of threaten. It would be a relief to get it over with. “You said you wished to see me on a matter of interest to us both, Mrs. Parker.”

“Yes. Yes, I did, Miss Darrow.” Her voice steadied, but a slow and difficult red rose in her plain face. “It was, as you surmise, about my son.”

With a rush, almost as if she feared she would not do it if she hesitated, Glen flung herself into her speech. She remembered it perfectly, and did not miss a syllable of it. “Then, perhaps we shall save time, Mrs. Parker, if I tell you at once that your son’s pursuit of me has been wholly without encouragement. Indeed, I have let him see—so plainly that only a defective mentality or a deliberate insolence would fail to be convinced of it—that I feel for him only the greatest dislike and the deepest contempt, not only for what he is, but for the life he leads, and for everything about him.”

Mrs. Eugenia Parker’s embarrassed color ebbed slowly out of her face, and left her almost alarmingly pale. She opened her severely plain handbag and took out a good-sized handkerchief initialed with a small block P and wiped her lips. Then, without a word, she rose from the Tenafee chair and stepped to the window, and stood looking out into the glow of the setting sun.

(“She’s so surprised she doesn’t know what to say,” Glen thought. “Now she won’t have to beg or threaten or bribe, and it just takes her breath away.”) It was a surprise, and tumbled over all her preconceived ideas like ninepins, but a greater surprise was in store. Mrs. Parker faced about, and against the brightness of the window was merely a silhouette; it was impossible to see her features until she moved nearer.

“I—I expected—I thought—even before seeing you—after talking with Miss Jennings, that you would say that—at least”—she turned now, and the light was on her instead of behind her, and the amazing, incredible fact was plain: the President of the Federated Clubs was weeping—“or at least—that you would think that,” she finished with a little gulp. “I—I could not see how it could be otherwise. But I—hoped. The saying is that love is blind, Miss Darrow, but when you have lived as long as I have, you will know that that is not true; love, if it is worth anything, is Argus-eyed for faults in its object. I know, none better, what Peter’s faults are.” She blew her nose and swallowed twice. “I have seen them bud and blossom, and I have deplored them more than any words can tell you. But in spite of them—and they are not mean or cruel or low faults, Miss Darrow, I must say that in his defense—in spite of them, many people have found that he has endearing qualities. I—I have found it so myself, in spite of my constant disapproval of his idleness and his lack of guiding ambition. Have you—have you, by any chance, watched him in the presence of children and animals and old people? That is said to be a sign of something, isn’t it? I have never known him to do an unkind or ungenerous thing, unless, of course, in the sense that he has not awakened to any constructive activity. That would make his faults of omission, rather than commission,” she was warming to her theme, regaining a little of her platform poise. “Of course, I know that there is nothing, up to date, in his history or achievements to inspire faith in a young woman of your type, but I have always dreamed of the day when he might fall in love, and with a girl who would set his feet on the upgrade.”

Glen Darrow, looking at her and listening to her, had turned as pale as the President of the Federation. Twice she essayed to speak, but produced only a faltering murmur.

“What he needs—all he needs,” the older woman went on, “is an awakening; something to jar him out of this absurd pose of persiflage. I have been in such terror that he would be attracted by one of the girls in his young set; you know the type I mean; it would put the final seal upon his uselessness. But if a girl with character and purpose could possibly come to care for him, to see through the youth and nonsense of him what I honestly believe to be there”—the tears were coming again, faster than before, and she had to devote an instant to their disposal. “I beg your pardon; I am not an emotional woman, and rarely give way to my feelings. But—Miss Darrow—I suppose it is a waste of breath to ask you to reconsider—to ask if you think there is any chance that you might change——”

It was still bewilderingly hard to find words and produce them, but Glen shook her head with its brazen glory of copper-colored hair.

“I hadn’t much hope,” it came desolately. “But I find it much harder, now, to give up what little hope I had. Oh, Miss Darrow,” she stepped toward the doctor’s daughter who retreated a little as she advanced, and halted, by a pixie trick of circumstance upon the Persian rug, “I wish, I wish more than any words can express to you that you could find it in your heart to marry my son!”