The Wishing Carpet

IF Dr. Darrow, in the celestial realms of whose actuality he had expressed a deathbed doubt, was cognizant of terrestrial affairs he must have grinned triumphantly and complacently over Luke Mander’s swift fulfillment of his prophesies. His progress was little short of being marvelous. He had galloped through business college at a speed which broke all their comfortable records, and his rapid rise at the mill was a never-ending wonder to his fellow workers. He was silent, tireless; he was the first one at work in the morning and the last one to leave at night; work was an obsession with him, a rapture and a dear delight.

“By gad,” ejaculated Mr. ’Gene Carey to his superintendent, “you know that boy likes to work! He does, by the eternal! And you listen to me, Ben, I want him pushed on, fast as he can go!”

The middle-aged and work-weary superintendent was nothing loath. The genial and gentle old owner knew very little more about the actual working of his mill than his daughter did, far away in her Northern finishing school, and Ben Birdsall, a dour and conscientious employee, carried all the load. He was an industrious, slow-minded, well-meaning creature, and after the death of the old superintendent and his own promotion from foreman he had felt decidedly out of his depths.

“I haven’t got the head fo’ it, suh, an’ that’s the Lawd’s truth,” he said earnestly, protesting his advancement. “I’m a willing worker, suh, yo’ know that; I’m free to admit it fo’ myself, but I’m no office man, and that gal that’s markin’ up our books, suh, she’s a little worse’n what I am!”

Mr. Carey put a kind hand on his shoulder. “Now, now, Ben, you just quit running yourself down! You suit me! I reckon I know honesty and ability when I see ’em. You’ve been with us——”

“Oh, I know all that, suh,” old Ben shook his head. “I’m honest, and I can boss the hands, but I’m no office man. Now, if you was to get rid of Miss Minnie——”

“But what do you reckon you’d find for her to do, Ben?” the owner worried.

“Lawd, I wasn’t fixing to find her another job, suh! I was just aiming to get her out of this one, and get that boy Luke in!”

“I could give her a mighty nice letter, of course,” Mr. Carey mused. “Luke, did you say? Why, Ben, do you reckon that boy could do our books, young as he is, and green?”

“He’s young, but he’s not green,” the superintendent contested. “Why, that feller handles figgers as easy as you’n me handles a knife and fork! And he’s right from business college, you might say—two—three years—right hot off the griddle, and you know in time there never was a harder worker.”

Mr. Carey, a little dazed at the suddenness of it, agreed with the proviso that Miss Minnie be provided for, and the thing worked out for Luke Manders as swiftly and smoothly as if Dr. Darrow had motivated it by his wishes, or the ancient granddam who had seen in him “a young-un with a headpiece, smartest of ary Manders ever heerd tell of.” Miss Minnie was comfortably placed in a needlework shop and the young mountaineer climbed up on her stool in the dim and breathless office of the Altonia Mill, and dived deep into the sea of difficulties and discrepancies which she had abandoned to him.

“By gad, Luke,” the owner wiped his steaming forehead, “I never dreamed poor Minnie was getting us into such a snarl! Of course, I knew she was no lightning striker, but her father was my father’s third cousin, and when he died and left her without a penny, why I naturally had to keep an eye on her—blood’s thicker than water— But, good Lord, I believe it’d have been cheaper to board her at the hotel and hire a man here!”

“I reckon so, sir,” Luke Manders agreed with him gravely. Gravely was the word for Luke Manders. He talked gravely, and walked gravely, and worked gravely, and it was to be seen that he thought gravely. There was no jest and youthful jollity in the young man from the mountains. He was as silent as one of the tall trees he had left behind him, and as strong, yet with always the sense of leashed action—action and power. Mr. ’Gene Carey and old Ben Birdsall felt it and leaned on it, and Miss Ada Tenafee felt it and feared it, and Glen Darrow felt it and rejoiced and exulted.

The kindly, rather innocent and futile old owner of the Altonia leaned on him pathetically, but the youth never overstepped; he never presumed for an instant on the man’s amiable familiarity; he maintained the delicate balance of their relationship.

He listened gravely when his employer told him things he already knew, and better than he did.

“I’m going to tell you something that’ll surprise you, Luke,” he said confidently. “I’m no business man. I’ve run the Altonia Mill, man and boy, most of my life, but that’s just because it was sort of wished on me by my father. I never liked it; I never—in a way, I mean—understood it; during my father’s lifetime, I depended on him, and after he left us, why, I just counted on my partner.”

“Yes, sir,” Luke listened respectfully.

“My partner, Mr. Oliver Parker, of Pasadena, you know.”

“Yes, sir.” Luke Manders said sir now, very handily, but it carried no servility with it.

“A fine man, Mr. Parker; mighty fine man! Great pity going as early as he did. I miss him, I can tell you! Only came on here once or twice a year, but when he did, well, things moved! Never saw anybody to equal him. Often wonder,” he mused, “whether that son of his—young Peter—has his father’s brains and his energy. Hope so, the Lord knows, now that he’s my partner!” He chuckled. “Reckon he’s not worrying much about the old Altonia! Typical millionaire’s son, from all I hear. This was just a drop in the bucket for Parker, of course. He dipped into everything—cotton, oil, mines—and pulled out a plum every time. But I reckon there won’t be many plums for the boy, way poor Minnie let things go, and old Ben kind of slowing down.”

“Well, we aim to pull things up, sir,” Luke Manders promised quietly.

“I hope to the Lord we can,” Mr. ’Gene Carey said fervently. “I certainly do hope to the Lord we can! I’ve got a young lady daughter coming on, and I want to do handsomely by her. I certainly do hope to the Lord we can make the old mill speed up, Luke.”

“That’s what we’re aiming to do, sir,” his new bookkeeper pledged again, gravely, and the senior partner went away heartened.

The next day he listened cordially to the youth’s suggestion that they make a place for Dr. Darrow’s daughter in the mill.

“She has finished business college, sir, and she will be a good worker. I can promise that.”

“But—look here, Luke, didn’t Dr. Darrow leave her provided for? Why, good land, he was the busiest man in town—always saw that old buggy of his rattling ’round!”

“I reckon he never crowded people to pay their bills,” young Manders offered. “She has that house, and a few hundred dollars in the bank, and that’s all.”

Mr. ’Gene Carey rumpled his abundant gray hair. “Shame, that’s what it is—man who spent his life taking care of folks— Well, that’s the way it goes, Luke! Certainly, we’ll make a place for her! Want her in here with you?”

Luke Mander’s dark gaze did not waver. “I was figuring to have her in here at first, sir, till we saw just where we could use her best.”

“Well, you go ahead and hire her, Luke,” the old gentleman was hearty. “You go right ahead and hire her, and if there isn’t anything she can do, why you make up something! Nice girl like that, pretty girl, too, seems to me I remember—red hair?”

“Yes, sir,” said Luke steadily.

“All right, then, I’ll leave it to you, Luke!” He went away well pleased with himself. It would be, no doubt, another case of poor Minnie, but with Luke at the books they could afford a passenger.

He found, however, directly Glen Darrow was installed at the Altonia, that it was not in the very least another case of poor Minnie. The girl was as silent as young Manders, almost as efficient, and with an equally hearty appetite for work. It worried the old gentleman a little; here was a girl who was his daughter’s sort—hadn’t she gone to Miss Josephine’s when they were little tads? Certainly she had! Well, then!—turned out into the cold world to earn her bread and butter! How’d he feel if it was his Nancy, eh? And a pretty piece, too, with that blaze of red hair round her face and those eyes and that skin, by gad! But when all was said and done, Glen Darrow seemed to be the kind of girl who could look out for herself. Pleasant enough, or at least civil enough, but—well, edgy. The doctor had been a crusty old customer; girl was a chip of the old block.

It was a matter of satisfaction to Mr. ’Gene Carey that his kinswoman had gone to live with her within the first year of her orphanhood; Ada Tenafee, he felt as did his Cousin Amos, the head of the clan, was a fine woman, a fine, high-spirited woman, all Tenafee, and a fatherless, motherless girl could not be more wisely and genteelly guarded and guided.

It was, indeed, a most excellent arrangement for the woman as well as the girl: Miss Ada punctiliously paid her board, and—in the first week of her occupancy—sent the yellow slattern Emma-leen packing and installed a decent black woman in her place. The hideous house became clean and orderly again, meals were well cooked and served, and the very presence of a Tenafee in a Darrow house had a soothing—almost a sanctifying effect. Glen, feeling the pressure of her father’s prejudice, had faithfully tried half a dozen boarders before she asked Miss Ada to live with her—school-teachers, clerks in stores, a librarian—but without satisfaction, and her conscience was clear. She let herself enjoy the gentleness which the faded spinster brought with her, and the increased serenity of daily living, but she held herself sternly faithful to her father’s codes. The thing had seemed to arrange itself; “Miz-zada” was to come to her; they were predestined to live together.

And she had exactly the same feeling with regard to her position in the mill. Sensing her one woman friend’s antagonism to Luke, in spite of her careful tact, she tried honestly to settle herself in other situations—a book shop, the little city’s one big department store, a tea room—but the hours, the work, the pay, the surroundings, left something always to be desired, and when Luke told her Mr. Carey would make a place for her at the mill she went gladly. That, too, apparently had been decided for her; she and Luke Manders were to work together. Her father, she felt sure, would be glad to have her there, among his mill people, studying them, befriending them, discovering ways to better conditions.

As for the association with Luke, she approached it steadily, but with a tiny inward quiver of curiosity. Luke had been wonderful in his attitude since Dr. Darrow’s death; never by look or word had he betrayed his knowledge of her father’s dying wish, or urged her compliance. He came seldom, especially after Miss Ada’s establishment as duenna, and when he came he said little, but there was hardly a waking hour when the girl was not aware of him—his bold beauty, his eagle gaze, his poise, the strength and depth of his silence. “Wait till you’re nineteen ... twenty ...” the doctor had said, “and no foolishness in the meantime ... no hand-holding ... no mooning ’round ...” and she had obeyed him. It had been easy to obey him, with the fine austerity of Luke’s conduct. It was easy, still, in their close and constant companionship at the mill, for the young mountaineer never relaxed his vigilant curb upon himself. She was aware, however, that there was a curb; increasingly aware. On her nineteenth birthday she woke early to a riotous duet between a cardinal and a mocking bird on a bough beside her window, and they seemed, between them, to be giving rapturous expression to her morning meditations.

“Wait till you’re nineteen ... twenty....”

She was nineteen. She had waited. Need she wait any longer? Little as she had been about with boys and girls, few as were her contacts with the young life about her, and meager as had been her romantic reading (even after the doctor’s death she had kept on with the histories and philosophies and the fiery weeklies) she knew that theirs was an amazing friendship, an astonishing romance. He had never brought her a flower; they had never sat side by side on stools at the drug-store counter on summer evenings, drinking ice-cream sodas; they had never gone to a moving picture together. He came sometimes to the dull house in the dull street, and they sat on the veranda if Miss Ada was reading in the sitting room, in the sitting room, if she happened to be upstairs—the cheerful, tidy, ugly room with its golden oak and strident carpet, and Effie Darrow’s one treasure, the Persian rug, but their talk was always of work, his work, hers, or theirs, if she did not read aloud to him from her father’s books.

But that, she told herself, leaping from her bed, taking the frigid shower of her father’s prescribing, flying into vest and knickers and the stern simplicity of her business dress, all that belonged to the past, before she was nineteen ... twenty....

“My dear,” Miss Ada remarked with solicitude, “you’ve hardly sipped your coffee, and you haven’t touched your cereal!”

“I’m not hungry, Miss Ada.”

Her friend began a soft and anxious clucking. “You’re quite sure, honey, that you are perfectly well?”

Then Glen Darrow did a startling thing. She jumped up from her place at the breakfast table and made a disconcerting dash for the faded teacher and gathered her into a breathless young hug.

“Yes, Miss Ada, dear,” she spoke with her lips against the gentlewoman’s pallid cheek, “yes! I’m quite sure that I’m perfectly well and perfectly happy!”—and, leaving her wide-eyed and trembling, she sped out of the house and down the hill.

Miss Tenafee rang the bell and directed Phemie to bring her another cup of coffee, and she drank it black. “It’s come,” she told herself unhappily. “It can’t be anything else. She’s made up her mind to marry that young savage, and the doctor has beaten me. I’m helpless ... helpless....” she pushed her chair back and the slow tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over and ran down her lean cheeks and the taste of them was salt in her mouth. “She’ll marry him, and I’d rather see her in her grave!”