The Wishing Carpet

WITH a sag of excitement, a sense of anti-climax, Glen found that Luke was not in his office: he would not return to the mill until late afternoon. This was not surprising, because old Ben Birdsall was shunting more and more of his own responsibilities upon his young assistant, and Luke Manders was doing much work which was far outside the borders of a bookkeeper’s position. He went frequently to outlying plantations and nearby towns on the mill’s business, and she was accustomed to his absences, but to-day it was disappointing out of all proportion.

But when her own work was well under way the feeling wore off; there was, indeed, an added zest in the delay. It gave her long hours for thinking—for thinking of her father, and of how satisfied he would be with them both, for remembering that day of their first meeting with Luke Manders in his mountains. So long as her mind and memory functioned, she would have that picture ... the dim interior of Granny Manders’ cabin with the setting sun in a shaft of concentrated radiance for the boy’s entrance, the bold, beautiful boy, gypsy-dark, richly weathered, fearless and free, his gun in his hands, wild as a hawk as his grandam had fitly said, scorning them! And scorning them still, he had come down from his heights to their drab levels, she considered, taking what was best of the lowlands—learning, gentler living, but had kept all that was finest from his forbears and his high hills.

How he stood out, Glen exulted, from the men about him—kindly, futile old Mr. ’Gene Carey, slow old Ben Birdsall, the sallow, spiritless mill workers, even the young blades from The Hill! He was a tall pine among garden shrubs.

Going quietly about her tasks at the Altonia, she pulsated with pride at the thought of him, planning the clear and purposeful path before them. They would read together and study together and work together, animated always by the ideal of service to the mill people and the mountaineers. They would preach Dr. Darrow’s sermons of air and clean houses and wholesome food; above all, they would fight for better conditions of labor. There were model mills all through the South—even in the same city, mills where children of working age spent half the day in school and made a fine development, body and brain, and it was Glen’s dream to bring the Altonia up to standard, but Manders confided to her that it was in a very bad way, financially. Between the superintendent who died, Miss Minnie, and blundering old Ben, the concern had very nearly gone on the rocks; it would take every effort to set her soundly afloat again.

“And old Carey wants money! You see, it cost him a lot to send his girl to Europe, and now she’s home, and he says she wants to do the house over from cellar to attic,” Luke Manders told Glen. “That’s why he’s putting on the screws.”

“It’s abominable!” she flared. “Grinding down the hands, keeping his mill twenty years behind the times, so that Nancy can have all the things she doesn’t need! Luke, I can’t stand it! I’m not going to stand it! I’ll find a way——”

“Careful!” he steadied her. “I know how you feel, Glen, but we’ve got to be patient.”

“Patient!” She blazed with chivalrous indignation, “I don’t want to be patient. I want to do something now!”

The mountaineer shook his head. “Wait. Trust me.”

Her hot blue gaze plumbed the dark depths of his. “I do, Luke! You know I trust you! But why can’t I go to Nancy Carey, and make her come down here and see conditions and contrast them with other mills, and realize— She’s a soft little thing, but she’s gentle and kind, and——”

He cut her short. “Yes—gentle and kind like old Carey’s gentle and kind—when it won’t interfere with their own comforts or profits. Carey’s good-natured; he wouldn’t kick a dog or curse a nigger, but he’ll grind every ounce of work out of his hands and house ’em like swine, and never figure he’s being hard. No, Glen—you wait!”

She was mutinous. “Wait, wait, wait! I’m sick of it, Luke? What am I waiting for?”

He considered in silence for a long moment. “Wait till I’m so necessary to him that he’ll have to listen to me.”

“But, Luke, he listens to you now! It’s wonderful the way he talks to you and takes your advice about things! Why, he’d listen to you this minute!” She came close to him, eager, ardent.

“Yes—and laugh at me, and tell me to mind my own business! And my business is to try to get the mill out of the red ink just now. No, Glen,” he said again, gravely, regretfully, “you wait.”

So the doctor’s daughter waited, perforce, and found a fresh outlet for her emotion. There had been a surprising influx of foreigners to the Altonia in recent years, dark-eyed, dark-skinned South Europeans whom Ben Birdsall disliked and distrusted.

“Good Americans is good enough for me,” the superintendent liked to say virtuously. “Bunch o’ soreheads, always kickin’ about something. If it don’t suit ’em here, let ’em go back where they come from! Wish t’ th’ Lawd I dast clean ’em out, but we need ’em!”

Glen found them odd and interesting. There were graybeards among them with simmering passion in their eyes who exhorted fellow workers at stealthy evening meetings, swarthy youths who flared into open resentment at a word, richly colored, full-breasted girls who moved among the mill workers like sly flames, and one outstanding figure, by reason of fervor and superior intelligence, a man called Black Orlo, who edited a tiny paper named The Torch. It came out weekly or monthly, as the editor was able to manage, and was printed in secret on a crude hand press, and while Mr. Carey had ordered its suppression, the sparks still flew, and some of them ignited the red-haired girl.

“Glen,” Luke warned her, “I wouldn’t read that rag! I wouldn’t be caught with it!”

But she continued to read it, for Black Orlo said in vigorous print the things she swallowed back every day of her life, and she found it a safety valve. The man himself, dark, saturnine, unshaven, unsavory, was repulsive to her, but she found his utterances stimulating.

At five o’clock, on her nineteenth birthday, Luke had not returned to his office. She began to lose her hold on the radiant mood of the morning. She had wakened to such a definite sense of occasion but the day had jogged on in its accustomed groove, calmly and colorlessly, and being nineteen did not appear to have any especial significance after all.

Gloriana-Virginia Tolliver, a small putty-colored person at a loom, shot out a lean little claw and caught hold of her skirt as she passed. “Glen,” she wheedled, “yo’all was goin’ to gimme a fairy-tale book to read out of, and learn me the biggest words. Did yo’ jes’ pintly fo’git?”

Glen was remorseful. “I did forget, Glory. I thought of it the very last thing before I went to sleep, and I put it right where I would be sure to see it—it’s the one I read myself when I was little, you know—and then—” she colored swiftly before the uncomprehending eyes of the child—“I was busy this morning—I mean, something happened to make me forget——”

“Oh, hit’s all right!” Gloriana-Virginia reassured her. “Don’t yo’ go to frettin’ yo’sef, Glen! Jes’ any time’ll do. But I sho’ do crave story-readin’, an’ M’liss’, she reckons hit’s jes’ plumb foolishness.” She was a tiny, wizened creature, with curiously shaped hands which did not seem quite human, and her face, with its gentle dark eyes, always made Glen think of the wise and patient countenance of a little monkey. She was her especial favorite of all the mill children and she gave her a repentant hug now, and promised the book without fail for the morning.

The superintendent came hurriedly through the spinning room with an open letter in his hand. His face was red and his mild eyes were round with excitement. He waved an excited greeting to Glen as he went past her. “Say, my ship’s come in, Miss Glen! It sho’ has! Lawdy, Lawdy, I never suspicioned sech a thing could happen outside the movies!” He hurried into Mr. ’Gene Carey’s private office and shut the door behind him, just as Luke Manders came in from the door which led into the lane.

Gloriana-Virginia bent over her frame in earnest absorption as he came nearer them but Glen turned swiftly to greet him.

“Glen!” It was the simplest of salutations; nothing but her name, yet it restored instantly the sense of impending climax. It was in his voice and in his eyes, and she answered with his name, softly, on a caught breath. “Will you wait? I will walk home with you.”

“I will wait.”

“I won’t be a minute—just to report to Mr. Carey on the Beulah-land cotton—” He went into the owner’s office as swiftly as old Ben Birdsall had done, and the long and disappointing day was redeemed.

“Luke Manders, he skeers me,” Gloriana-Virginia whispered, peering round her frame.

“Oh, Glory, dear, you mustn’t say that! Why, Luke is your best friend! He’s trying all the time to make things better and easier for you—for you and all the children, and all the hands—and he has such fine plans for a rest house and playroom and shorter hours—only, of course, that’s a secret, and you mustn’t tell any one, not even M’Liss’ or grand-pap.”

“I won’t name hit to nawbuddy,” the child promised obediently. “But I am jes’ pintly skeered of Luke Manders.”

“But you mustn’t be,” Glen insisted warmly. “It’s just his way, Glory—he seems stern, but he isn’t, really. He works so hard, and he hasn’t time to stop and talk with you as I have, but he feels just the same as I do, Glory. You believe me, don’t you, honey?”

“Yes, me’um.” She frowned over a broken thread and her lean fingers twisted it capably. “I b’lieve everything yo’all tell me. But I am jes’ pintly skeered of Luke Manders.”

Glen laughed and hugged her again. “But I tell you you mustn’t be! I’ll bring the fairy tales to-morrow, Glory.”

“Cross yo’ heart, hope-never-to-see-the-back-o’-yo’-neck?”

“Cross my heart!” She sped away for her hat and coat and slipped quietly out at the side door, waiting for Luke in the lane.

He came in five minutes, old Ben Birdsall trailing at his heels, the open letter still in his hand. She sensed instantly that Luke wanted to be rid of him; there was impatience in his stride which left the superintendent behind and annoyance in his sharp—“Ready, Glen? Come on!”

But the old fellow persisted. “Wait a minute! Hold on there, Luke! Yo’ hold yo’ hosses, cain’t yo’? I want to tell Miss Glen!”

The girl had started forward, obedient to Luke’s word, but she halted perforce when Ben caught up with her, thrusting his arm before her, the letter shaking in his shaking hand.

“My ship’s come in, Miss Glen, just like I said! Oh, my Lawdy, Lawdy! Look a’ here!” He continued to wave the letter before her. “It’s my niece Irene, my sister Hattie’s gal! Say, I never suspicioned, when she married that lunger and pulled up stakes and traipsed out west with him—‘Uncle Ben,’ she says—right here in this letter—‘Uncle Ben, you stood by me when I hadn’t nobody but yo’ and now I’m a’ going to pay yo’ back,’ she says.” He began to cry, childishly, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand.

“But—I don’t understand, Ben! Has she sent you money?” In spite of Luke’s insistent hand at her elbow, she could not begrudge this moment.

“Sent me money? Say, she’s sent fo’ me, that’s what she’s done—sent money right to the bank fo’ me to get me fixed up fine, and fo’ my ticket to Californy! ‘Uncle Ben,’ she says—”

Luke Manders cut in crisply. “Oil. Her husband has——”

“Now, yo’ hold yo’ hosses,” the old fellow pleaded. “First off, they got ’em a little ranch—coupla acres, I reckon, and ’lowed they’d raise oranges, but what with dry years and frosts and hard times, why, they never got ahead. And Albert, he didn’t gain like she hoped he would, and say, they was just about down and out, but it’s darkest just before dawn, like the saying goes, and if they haven’t struck oil! Oil—on an orange ranch? Wouldn’t that kill you? And a gusher, she says! And now, ’stead of fo’getting the holler log, the way lots would do, why she wants I should come out and live with ’em the rest of my bawn days! ‘Uncle Ben,’ she says——”

Luke’s touch was insistent. “It’s glorious, Ben, and I’m so happy for you!” Glen patted his shaking shoulder. “You’ve worked hard all your life and you’ve been kind, and it’s right that this should happen to you! And to-morrow I want to hear all about it, and all your plans, and I’d love to have you read the letter to me if you will!”

They left him smudging the tears into his grimy cheeks and trying to get his disheveled letter back into its envelop. “But say—wait a minute!” He called after them. “I never told you about Luke! He’s——”

“I’ll tell her,” said Luke curtly. “Come, Glen!”

“Poor old Ben! Isn’t it wonderful for him? To slave all these years, here, without seeing anything else, and now— Oh, can’t you just picture him out there—basking in it all?” She glanced at his absorbed face. “But what about you, Luke? Does this mean——”

He nodded. “Yes. Carey’s made me superintendent. He and Ben were talking of it, just as I came in. At first, Carey figured I was too young, but Ben made him see that I knew the ropes better than any outsider—that I’ve been learning, day in, day out, for five years——”

“Of course you have! Of course you’re capable! Oh, Luke, I’m so glad for you, and so proud!” She met his eyes and almost gasped at the blaze of excitement and exultation she saw there. He was breathing like a runner who has just breasted the tape. “Dad would be so proud,” she added, faltering a little. It was rather frightening to see his silence, his reserve, broken up like this. “Dad always said you would go far, Luke. He had such faith in you. He often said to me——”

They had been walking swiftly ever since leaving old Ben behind in the lane, choosing automatically a quiet back street, and now, turning a corner, they were alone. He caught her wrists in a grip of steel, cutting her sentence short.

“It’s what I was aiming for the day I started to work,” he said, tensely. “Do you hear? I promised myself, then. And now you listen to me, Glen, you listen, and remember. Five years from the time I started in here as a hand, I’m superintendent: in less than five years more, I’ll own the Altonia!”

“Luke!”

“You listen to me, and you keep still about it, but you remember what I say!” A new Luke Manders, fiery, implacable—new voice, new eyes, new grasp of iron. Gloriana-Virginia Tolliver’s persistent word flashed into her mind and out again—“I’m jes’ pintly skeered of Luke Manders....” It came in of its own volition but she drove it out, loyally, in a panic at herself for harboring it even an instant.

“And your granny!” The image of his ancient kinswoman that day of the first meeting—“hit’s ontelling, what you might do and be, if you was to be fotched on!” How unerringly the old crone had divined power and purpose in her “son’s son’s son!”

“Yes, Granny would be satisfied.” He relaxed a trifle, letting go of her throbbing wrists, and she wondered if his mind had reverted to the witch-woman’s threat to “ha’nt him” unless he came to Dr. Darrow. “She would be satisfied.” He repeated it, gravely, and there was reassurance in sensing the return to his normal manner.

He was walking swiftly, with long strides, and Glen, in spite of her fine height, had to take a skipping step now and then to keep up with him. With a touch at her elbow he guided her from the deserted side street into a winding, mounting lane which led, in rambling, dallying fashion to the back of her house, and looking up into his face again, Glen saw that her hour had come—the hour she had visualized on waking that morning.

She stood still when he did, and met his eyes fearlessly and gladly. There was no self-consciousness, no shyness, no maiden reserves. She was conscious of a deep wonder within herself. Was it like this, then? Not in the few romances she had read! She had known since she was fourteen that she would some day fall in love with Luke Manders, and now she was nineteen, the age of her father’s stipulation, and she was falling in love with him, or rather, she had fallen in love with him this morning. Bold, beautiful, fearless and free, the golden lad of their golden legend; she was carrying out her father’s last and dearest wish, living and dying. “If there’s anything in this ‘hereafter’ stuff ... if I’m—anywhere—you’ll know I’m glad!”

Her eyes looked very blue in the sudden pallor of her golden-olive face with its halo of glowing hair. It was not like the books, then; she felt solemn, thankful, uplifted; very close to her father.

Again Luke Manders was breathing like a runner, and again his voice was strange, with another strangeness. There was about him now a warmth and a softness, but they were as implacable as the harshness had been, and as little to be denied. “Remember that first day? How I caught you by your hair and jerked you back?”

“Yes.” She was a little breathless. “You said—‘Hi, Sis, run duck your head in the Branch! Didn’t you know your hair was a-fire?’” She laughed, but he did not laugh with her. Instead, she felt herself swept into an embrace which was compounded of flame and steel, and heard the second of his strange new voices.

“I’ve never touched your hair since that day, have I? I’ve never touched you. Not because I didn’t want to. Not because I didn’t crave to, and hunger to, and thirst to, honing for you, every hour of the day, every hour of the night!” He slipped back into the picturesqueness of his mountain diction; even his accent reverted. He might have been, in that moment, the boy who leaped into the shaft of setting sunlight with his feud rifle in his hands. “But I promised your father to wait, and I’ve waited. But you are nineteen, and I am superintendent of the Altonia Mill”—it was almost like a chant of triumph—“and I’ll wait no longer! I have been aiming for this, just as I’ve been aiming for the mill, ever since—” Fingers of steel under her chin, lifting it, forcing her face upward. “I’ll wait no longer!”