The Wishing Carpet

STILL gently, the doctor’s daughter agreed with the President of the Federated Clubs that conditions of living and laboring were being steadily bettered, that the woman’s vote, already making itself definitely felt, was to be the world’s greatest power for constructive good—this in the lady’s able platform manner—but while she listened with every evidence of well-bred attention, what she really heard was two small speeches which repeated themselves over and over again in her mind and her memory——

“My father is dead, but he taught me to be a good hater.”

“And I am alive, and I shall teach you to be a good lover!”

Could he, she wondered, fearful with a delicious fear. Had he begun already? She lifted her hand and looked at the palm in the clear light of the moon. There was nothing there, of course. Absurd! She had known there wouldn’t be. It was only a trick of high-strung nerves which made the center of it throb and glow.

Desperately, in a panic, she set herself to determine a course of action.

If Peter did not go away at once, she herself would go away—away somewhere to hide and to wait for her twentieth birthday when Luke could come and marry her, and everything would be settled forever. She would have kept her two promises and her father—if he still had any cognizance of terrestrial things—would be satisfied. She put a firm period to her meditations at that point. She did not try to picture a lifetime with Luke, but clung doggedly to the feeling that, if she acted loyally and faithfully, things must come right.

Luke Manders, the splendid young mountaineer; Luke, the doctor’s discovery and pride; the golden lad of their golden legend.

Luke, Luke, Luke!

Surely, if she kept saying it over and over, it would fill her mind, and there wouldn’t be room for anybody—for anything else, and the silly place in her palm would stop pulsing, pulsing....

“Well, here we are!” said her companion, briskly. “A delightful night for a walk, and I have enjoyed it extremely. I try very hard to do a certain amount of walking every day, but in my intensely busy life it is apt to be crowded out.”

Luke Manders, scowling blackly, met them at the door. He greeted the mother of the young part owner with scant civility and was pushing past his assistant without a word, but she detained him with a hand on his arm.

“Luke, I heard the whistle, and I came as soon as I could. You heard about Glory?”

He nodded, making no comment.

She waited for an instant, as if expecting a word of condolence, and then went on. “But, Luke—I thought we were not going to work nights this week?”

He turned on her with more anger and impatience than he had ever displayed in all the history of their friendship, their courtship. Why wouldn’t they work nights? Weren’t they far behind and snowed under? Didn’t they have to get out those rush orders or throw up their hands? Was he working anybody any harder than he worked himself? Hadn’t she common sense enough to see the necessity of it?

It was not so much a matter of ugly words as ugly voice and manner; not so much the substance of what he said, but the sound of it—the snarl in his tone, the hot bitterness in his eyes. He caught himself up suddenly, muttered something—a scrap of apology, perhaps—and flung himself into the spinning room.

Mrs. Eugenia Parker looked after him with grave displeasure. “What a very morose and ill-tempered young man!”

The ancient loyalty reared its head, in spite of embarrassment and chagrin. “He is not like that, usually,” said the girl. “He has never spoken to me like that in all my life. It is just that he is under a dreadful strain. I don’t know how much you understand about this situation, Mrs. Parker, but the mill is in a very bad way. Mr. Carey is—not efficient, and the old superintendent, a man who’d been here forever and was absolutely trusted, had been systematically robbing the Altonia for years.”

“My word!” said the lady, impressed.

“Yes. It was a dreadful blow to Mr. Carey. It caused his stroke, the doctors thought. And you can imagine what a state things were in when Luke Manders took charge!”

“And my husband, and later my son, as absentee owners, shirking their share of responsibility,” the Federation President admitted sturdily.

“Yes,” Glen was honest about it, “that has made it much harder, of course. I don’t know the details; Luke has never really had time to explain to me, and he insists on carrying all the burdens himself.” Pride warmed in her voice again. “You can’t picture how hard he works—harder than any other three people under this roof!”

“I fancy,” the older woman was cordially approving, “you do not waste many moments yourself.”

“Well, I work as hard as I can, but Luke doesn’t let me help him as much as I wish he would.”

“I always consider,” said Mrs. Parker firmly, not to be lured into commendation of a person she disliked as much as she did the splendid-looking, saturnine superintendent, “that the test of a good executive is his ability to surround himself with capable assistants, and then delegate a reasonable amount of work and responsibility to them. When people lose poise and become irritable——”

“Oh, but he doesn’t, ordinarily!” Glen insisted quickly. “I have never seen him like this before. Why, he had no intention of running the mill to-night, when I saw him, early this evening—he must simply have worried and worried about it until he couldn’t bear the inaction. He had to be doing something, even though he’d decided we were too short handed to run night shifts at present.” She looked earnestly into the other’s face, expecting understanding.

“Some one, Masefield, I believe,” said Mrs. Parker rather grudgingly, “has said that ‘energy is agony expelled.’ Ah—” she had looked over her shoulder at a sound—“there is Peter now, with Nancy Carey and the Jennings girl from the hotel!”

They made a pleasing group, the three modish young persons in evening clothes, if rather out of drawing in the dingy Altonia, and Nancy was an excellent foil for Janice Jennings’s hard-finished smartness.

“’Lo, Glen! Evening, Mrs. Parker!” the girl from Pittsburg greeted them. “What am I doing here, you ask—the butterfly in the ant hill? Or, should you say, grasshopper? Less picturesque but possibly more accurate. Well, I decided to see how the other half lives. Nancy had been dining with me at the B.V.D., and I persuaded her to bring me slumming. Pretty place you have here, Glen! The House Beautiful!”

Little Miss Carey merely trailed her heavy white lids over her hazel gaze and smiled faintly; it was amazing, how seldom Nancy spoke.

“But I think I’ll go back to the fleshpots, if any. Peter is a flop to-night; a flat tire. C’mon, Nancy!” Miss Jennings shot a sharp glance from the young part owner of the mill to the superintendent’s assistant. “In spite of Peter Piper’s pleas, I insist—” She stopped and stared at Pap Tolliver, advancing toward them at his shambling gait, his accordion under his arm, and a twist of grimy paper in his fingers.

“Page Rip Van Winkle,” said the northerner softly.

“Say, Glen,” the old man quavered, “I plumb fo’got to give yo’ th’ letter feller gimme fo’ yo’!” He tendered the note apprehensively. “M’liss,’ she jes’ purely took my haid off!”

“Never mind, Pap,” Glen comforted him, taking it curiously. “When did you get it?”

“This mawnin’,” said Pap Tolliver, hanging his head.

“Oh, well, it probably isn’t so important,” she was opening it.

“Not Rip Van Winkle,” Janice Jennings whispered, “but a nice, mild old billygoat. Perfect! His beards part in the middle when he speaks! I’d adore to watch him eat!”

Glen Darrow was staring at the paper in her hand. “Who gave this note to you, Pap?”

“Why—” he scratched his head—“I disremember ’zackly who ’twas, Glen! One o’ them furrin’ fellers ... all pretty much of a muchness, they are.”

She leaned nearer to him, put a hand on his shoulder, gave him a slight shake. “Pap! You must remember! Was it—Black Orlo?”

He grinned delightedly. “Yes, me’um! That’s hit! That’s jes’ who hit were! Or leastways,” his face clouded over, “one o’ them furrin’ fellers....” He grasped the handles of his accordion and shuffled away, and his inevitable tune came back to them furtively and faintly, in little wheezing gasps.

Glen had kept her eyes resolutely away from Peter Parker, but he was watching her intently, and it seemed to him that she had paled. He stepped forward quickly.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know—I must see Luke!” She turned and ran toward the office, her employer at her heels, his mother and the two girls following after.

“Why the mob scene?” he asked, looking back at them, but they pressed forward, and presently they were all in the dingy room where Luke Manders held despotic sway.

The superintendent was at his desk, and rose at sight of them.

“Luke,” said his assistant, “I think we had better dismiss the hands! I have a note here—some one gave it to Pap Tolliver—” She smoothed out the crumpled, soiled half sheet of cheap notepaper and read the message aloud——

“You keep away from mill at nights.”

“Well, what of it?” Manders demanded truculently. “Some sore-headed Slavonian—” He dismissed it with a gesture.

“But, Luke, you know you posted a notice that we wouldn’t work night shifts this week, and——”

“What of it?” The mountaineer was trying hard to be civil, Mrs. Parker considered, but without marked success.

“Luke, I’m frightened! You know there have been threats. And this week, when—as they supposed—the hands would not be here at night—would be the time they would choose for—for wrecking the mill! Luke, please send them all home!”

He shook his head. “Can’t do it, Glen! Up to our eyes in a rush order, you know that as well as I do! We can’t——”

“I think we’ll dismiss the hands immediately, Manders,” said Peter Parker quietly.

“You are quite right, Peter,” said the Federation President, regarding her offspring with surprised respect.

The superintendent started to speak and caught himself. He might have been, in childish fashion, counting ten before he spoke. “Mr. Parker, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t take orders from you in this case. I know our needs a good deal better than you do, and I know how much attention to pay to a bluff like this—” he took the note from Glen’s hand, tore it contemptuously, and dropped it into the wastebasket.

Janice Jennings, her thin bare arms folded, leaning against a small cupboard set cornerwise, noted with amusement the look of rapturous admiration and approval which Nancy Carey bent upon Manders, and the grieved shock in Glen Darrow’s eyes. The girl from Pittsburg was having an exceptionally good time.

“Peter!” His mother’s tone was admonitory.

“Sit tight, Eugenia,” said her son, and then, addressing himself to the superintendent’s assistant, “Will you be good enough to ring the bell or press the button or blow the whistle—whatever the signal is for ‘All ashore?’”

“Yes!” Glen Darrow started toward the door, but halted sharply.

Miss Jennings had emitted a small shriek. Her feet seemed glued to the spot on which they were placed, but she had risen on her toes and was leaning forward, away from the corner cupboard, looking back at it over her shoulder, her bright little eyes as wide as possible.

“Say, listen, is there a clock in here?”

“There’s the clock,” said Manders, pointing to an ancient timepiece on the wall.

“No—in here! In this cupboard! I tell you I hear it ticking!”

“There are clock-work bombs—” Mrs. Parker cried out.

“You’re on, Eugenia,” said her son cordially. “Manders, clear the building instantly, and then open this cupboard! Snap into it!” They could all hear the ticking now, they were so quiet.

There was an instant when the tall young mountaineer seemed incapable of action, his rich coloring drained from his face, his piercing gaze dulled to a curious blankness: then he plunged for the door.

“Wait! Give me your keys!” Peter shouted, and Glen went after him calling.

“Luke! Luke! Give me the keys! We’ll get it out while you tell the hands! Wait, Luke!” She ran after him, down the hall, calling his name. Her voice came back to them, sharp, agonized.

Nancy Carey clasped her plumply pretty hands on her breast and her soft gaze was misted over. “Oh,” she breathed, “he is going to save the hands!”

“He is going to save himself!” Janice Jennings amended briskly. “Come on, Nancy!— Us for the Paul Revere!” She shepherded her swiftly to the door and out into the hall. “You go through those rooms and yell your head off! I’ll take this side! Beat it, dumb-bell!”

There were left then, in the dingy and unbeautiful office of the Altonia, only the President of the Federated Women’s Clubs of America and her trifling son, and the unseen thing which was ticking softly and swiftly behind the locked cupboard door, and in that tense moment they seemed to be taking each other’s measure.

“Comes down to a family party, doesn’t it? On your way, Eugenia!” commanded the youth crisply.

She shook her head. “When you go, Peter—after you’ve got it out.”

“’Atta boy, Madame President!” He grinned at her sunnily, picking up the heavy stool on which Luke Manders sat to keep the Altonia’s books and advancing on the cupboard.

“Wait!” Glen was back, breathless, her face crimson. “There are some other keys here—” She tore open a desk drawer, fished out a jingling bunch and flew across the room, fitting one after another into the lock with steady fingers.

Peter Parker took the keys away from her. “Good girl, but this is my Roman holiday. You take Eugenia out into the great open spaces, will you, please? And Eugenia, will you please take care of Glen for me—extra special care? This is a solo act. Your presence is distinctly not requested!” He looked over his shoulder at them reprovingly. “Darling dumb-bells, did you hear what I said! Out! You aren’t helping a bit, and you cramp my style! But at that,” he chuckled tenderly, “it is to be admitted that you are there a million! Page Molly Pitcher!” He threw the keys, jingling, to the floor. “Not a leaf stirring! We crash the gate! Out, you nit-wits!”

The old, warped door of the little closet splintered into fragments at the first blow.

“There she is!” He crowed in triumph, lifting out a crudely fashioned box. “Common or garden variety! A child can run it! Steady, girls—back, please! ’Way for the Lord High Executioner! Sports of all nations—opening bombs in the Sunny South!” He was in the hall; he was at the door, out of the door, in the lane, running ... running ... running....

“Back! Keep back!”

He was far ahead, but his voice seemed to stay behind with them as they ran after, holding each other back, urging each other on.

“All right!” Janice Jennings screamed to the mill hands, herded in the narrow halls, fighting their way to the doors, falling over the threshold—“It’s all right, I tell you! He’s got the bomb out! Everything’s all right!”

That was, however, a debatable question, for the instant her sharp and imperative voice was silent something happened far down the lane. There was a dull detonation, and a brief flash of flame, and the flying figure went suddenly down to the earth and was still, and Glen Darrow, leaving Mrs. Eugenia Parker behind, went forward in a spurt of speed.

When they came up to her, Janice Jennings and Nancy Carey and Luke Manders, the President of the Federated Clubs, and the crowding, clamoring workers from the Altonia, they found her seated on the ground with the broken and bleeding thing which had been young Mr. Peter Parker of Pasadena in her arms, his blood on her hands, on her face, on her blazing hair, but she rose at once, without a word, relinquishing him to his mother.