The Wishing Carpet

IT was with a sense of sanctuary, of what children call “King’s X,” that Glen gained the backyard of her home, Luke striding beside her, and found the black woman gathering up the towels which had been bleaching on the grass.

“Hi, dar, Miss Glen, honey, yo’ procative right in de house!” Phemie greeted her with a husky shout. “Yo’ all got comp’ny! Miss Ada, she lookin’ fo’ you ebery minnit!”

Company? Little company came to the dull house of the doctor’s choosing. Some connection of her companion’s, no doubt.... At the steps of the rear porch Glen stood still and faced him.

“Luke, I’m so sorry! Sorry and—ashamed! I don’t know what to say to you.”

“There’s only one thing to say to me,” he said, doggedly, his face dark. “That you’ll marry me, as you’ve always meant to! As you promised your father! What’s come over you, to make you——”

“Oh, Luke, I don’t know, myself!” the girl broke in, desperately. “I’m so proud of you, and so devoted to you, and Dad——”

He took imperious hold of her again without a backward glance at the negress, pottering about the mean little backyard. “It’s no use talking and explaining!” he said roughly. “For five years I’ve waited, and——”

With a scared glance at the house and another at Phemie, still stooping over her towels which flapped teasingly in the wind, Glen pulled herself free. “Oh, then you can—you will—wait a little longer, Luke! Why”—she caught at a straw of defense—“you’re always telling me to wait about the mill, and the children, and all the hands, and making me be patient! Now I’m begging you to wait—to be patient with me, just a little while, Luke!”

“How long?”

“Why—why—how can I tell, how long, exactly? Until I—until— You see, Luke, I can’t explain, but I’m not ready! Dad wanted me to wait, and——”

“Till you were nineteen or twenty, he said. Well, you’re nineteen.”

“I know. Oh, I know how silly and—and disloyal I seem, but if you’ll just trust me!”

He caught her slim young shoulders again in an iron grip. “Anybody else? Look at me. Look at me, I say! Is there anybody else?”

She met his furious eyes with the sad candor of her own. “No one, Luke. You know that.” The black woman, her bright calico apron heaped high with the towels, passed them and went into the kitchen and she paused until the door had closed behind her. “I—I admire you, and look up to you, and glory in what you’ve done——”

“But you don’t love me?” He was accusing, bitter.

She felt guilty and forlorn and forsaken, and the tears came into her eyes. “Oh, Luke, I love what you are, and what you’re going to do and to be— And I will marry you! I will! I want to, and Dad wanted me to, but if you’ll wait——”

“If it’s the Tenafee woman—” he began, between set teeth.

“Miss Ada? No, Luke, no! She has never said a word—we’ve never talked of you! It’s my own fault—my own wicked, ungrateful fault, but I’ll try, oh, I’ll try to——”

“Glen, dear! Oh, Glen!” fluted Miss Ada Tenafee’s gentle voice. She opened the door and looked out, her bright face clouding over at sight of Luke Manders. “Glen, honey, you have callers. Good afternoon, Luke!”

He stared at her rudely, consideringly, without answering.

“Oh, who is it, Miss Ada? Callers? For me? I was just coming in, and Luke is coming, too. Yes, Luke, please—” she laid her hand on his arm as he turned away. She could not let him go like that. “Come in, if only for a minute.”

Looking at Miss Ada, reading her quite visible hope that he would refuse, he turned and followed Glen into the house, the teacher fluttering after.

“It’s Nancy Carey, Glen, honey, and another old friend of yours! They’ve been here half an hour, and I gave them tea, and I was so anxious for fear you might be delayed at the mill——”

Nancy Carey, lovely and languid in the doctor’s shabby armchair, held up a pale hand. “Hello, Glen! Here’s somebody who was crazy to see you!” She indicated the other girl who jumped to her feet and came laughing to meet the mistress of the house.

“Well, look what spring has brought you!” Her voice was high and sharp, and her whole look was of sharpness—her very bright eyes with their darkened lashes, and brows plucked to a tiny black line, the almost mauve of her cheeks and her violent cerise mouth. “Know who I am?”

Glen shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t remember—” she began uncomfortably.

“Don’t remember the brat from the Bella Vista who was the solitary guest at your valentine party? I’m Janice Jennings. Greetings and hail! At the Bella Vista again, with my grandmother.”

“Oh....” Glen was a little dazed. She presented Luke to the two girls, hastily, fearful lest he should stride out in the blackness of his mood and have still further reason for resentment toward her.

Nancy Carey looked up at Luke Manders with her liquid hazel gaze and her soft little mouth smiling widely. “I’ve met you before,” she said calmly.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, yes, I have ... right here, just after Glen’s father died!” She waited in soft expectancy for his corroboration, and when it did not come she expelled a quick sigh. “Well, I’ve met you now, anyway.”

Miss Ada was perturbed. The affair had started so beautifully—two callers for Glen at once, and one of them a Carey—and now the young savage had to walk into the scene, like—as her own dear father would have said—a bull in a china shop. If he must be there and some one must talk to him, let it be the Northern girl: Miss Ada interposed herself swiftly between Nancy and the intruder and talked brightly to her kinswoman.

Nancy got slowly out of the old armchair. “It’s late,” she said vaguely. “You coming, Janice?”

“No, I’ll stay with Glen a while. Thanks for bringing me, old thing! See you to-morrow!” Miss Jennings waved a careless hand.

“Glen, my dear!” Miss Ada was almost sharp about it. “Nancy’s going!”

“Oh,” said Glen awkwardly. “I’m sorry....” She simply could not pull her mind out of its deep morass of bewilderment and unhappiness for these small amenities.

Miss Ada, to cover her lapses, made a great point of seeing Nancy out, and Luke followed silently.

“Luke,” Glen called after him insistently, “you’ll come back to-night?”

“Not to-night,” he answered briefly, waiting an instant in brooding silence for Nancy Carey and Miss Ada to pass through the gate.

“Which way are you going?” Nancy looked up at him, adding with gentle emphasis, “I’m going up!”

“Down,” said the mountaineer curtly.

She stared after him as he strode down the hill, her soft under lip thrust out, and again she gave the quick little sigh.

“Nancy, honey, you are mighty sweet and kind,” Miss Ada was adoring. “You always want to put everybody at their ease. I’ll just walk a little piece with you,” she added, and again, as on the day of Dr. Darrow’s funeral, she tripped delicately by the side of her young connection, and again, incredibly, the young connection turned the talk, which Miss Ada would have chosen to be about Tenafees, to the mountaineer.

“Is Luke Manders still in the mill, Cousin Ada?”

“Why, yes; yes, he is still employed there. But you haven’t told me about dear Mary-Lou Tenafee! She’s managing that great plantation all soul alone? My, but she is a remarkable girl, Nancy, my dear! We may well be proud of her. So young, so lovely, widowed so early, yet——”

But Nancy Carey was pursuing her own line with soft ruthlessness. “Then, I suppose he’s doing very well, or he wouldn’t have stayed so long?”

“He—yes, I—I understand that he has advanced. He is, I believe, a good worker. People like that have great physical endurance, you know, and——”

To complete the flash-back of three years, Mr. ’Gene Carey’s daughter made almost the identical remark that she made then, and there was wistfulness in her voice, and soft wonder. “Cousin Ada, I do think he’s the handsomest thing I ever saw in real life....”

Glen, meanwhile, tried to fling off her unhappy preoccupation and listen to her caller.

“So you’ve lost both your father and your mother?” She was brusque about it, but her bright little eyes were kind.

“Yes.” She couldn’t be expansive about it, but she forced herself to be civil. “And your grandmother is still living?”

Miss Jennings laughed. “I’ll say she is! Say, the Grim Reaper is a bum shot, isn’t he? Grammer’s about a thousand and two, and gets crabbeder every minute. Your people were youngish, and good scouts, as I remember. You liked them both, didn’t you?” Glen’s murmur did not stop her. “Well, I liked my Dad; I was crazy about him.” Her bright little eyes became noticeably brighter. “I never could see my mother very far. And of course he died, three years after they were divorced, and she married the most sickening, cake-eating, old lounge lizard. Well, so it goes, doesn’t it? Hating the step-papa is the one subject on earth that Grammer and I agree on.”

She was moving restlessly about the room, and her roving gaze came to rest on the Persian rug. “Nice,” she commented briefly. “My Dad collected ’em: I’ve got miles of ’em in cold storage. Well, tell me about yourself! What do you do at the mill?”

Glen hesitated. “I don’t know what to call my position, exactly. I’m Luke’s assistant, really; I help him in any way he needs me. He has been bookkeeper and helped the superintendent, and now the old superintendent is leaving and Luke will have his place.”

“Luke? Oh, yes—the sheik who was just here!”

Glen stared.

“Sheik,” repeated Miss Jennings, mirthfully. “Maiden’s Dream. Very easy to look at, I’ll say. Seems to pack a grouch, though. Well, I see The Hill has kept it up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean, the little snobs are still high-hatting you, just as they did years ago. Nancy Carey admitted freely that she never saw you, but she added handsomely that you were a very nice girl. They can’t see you with a telescope, can they?”

“I don’t need them, and I don’t want them,” said Glen, briefly.

“’Atta girl!” The Northerner approved. “Tell ’em to go jump on themselves. Nancy’s harmless, though: no real meanness in her. She’s a dumb-bell. Well, then, who are your little playmates?”

Glen considered. “Miss Ada—who lives with me—and Luke Manders——”

It was Miss Jennings’s turn to stare. “No kids?”

“Oh, yes, of course—the children at the mill! On Sundays, I take them for picnics, and I teach them——”

“You don’t get me. I mean—girls of your own age—fellows. Don’t you ever step out?”

Glen shook her head. “I work all day, you see, and at night I read and study.”

“Gee ... it sounds devilish,” her guest grinned. Miss Ada had come back into the room, a little breathless and flushed from her brief promenade. “Well”—Miss Jennings consulted a diamond and platinum wrist watch—“Grammer’ll be dragging the lake, if any! On my way!”

Glen surprised herself greatly, and delighted Miss Ada, by asking her to stay for supper. It was partly because the creature was patently friendly, but chiefly because it offered a respite before she must begin to think. There loomed before her a great mountain of doubt and distress and remorse to be tunneled through, and she shrank from beginning her toil. “I wish you would stay,” she heard herself urging.

“Thanks a lot, but I can’t ditch The White Man’s Burden! Her national anthem is ‘I need thee every hour’ and especially at meal times; can’t digest her food unless she has me there to crab at. But listen,—why don’t you come and have dinner with us at the Bella Vista?” Then, as Glen did not reply—“I don’t blame you for not getting a kick out of it—music’s rotten and the food’s nothing to write home about. And every third guest playing hookey from the Pyramids. Say, when the doctors sent Grammer down here they said—‘Wonderful climate! Nobody ever dies there!’ Well, it isn’t quite true; they die, but they don’t bury ’em; they park ’em at the Bella Vista. But if you can’t stick the B. V. D.—(that stands for the damn’ Bella Vista) why, there’s that Southern Home Cooking joint——”

“It isn’t that,” Glen interposed. “It isn’t that I don’t like the Bella Vista. I have never been there. It’s just——”

Miss Jennings emitted a shrill little yelp of astonishment. “Never been there? Brought up here, and never been inside the town’s one and only Class G hotel? Page Cinderella! Well, that settles it. Go put on the soup and fish, sweet child of nature, and I’ll lead you forth into the wicked world. But I suppose,” she regarded her with good-humored shrewdness, “you haven’t any soup and fish?”

Miss Ada Tenafee, who thought Miss Jennings was now proposing that they have the first two courses there, stated apologetically that they were merely having cold lamb and a salad that evening, and that she did wish dear Glen would accept Miss Jennings very kind invitation.

“Right-o,” approved the guest. “You shush her along! Listen—I won’t dress, if you’d rather. I’ll go as is.”

Glen still hesitated. It was an unheard of thing ... but it would take up more time; it would interpose a screen of novelty between her and her unhappy cogitations. “I have no evening dress—” she began.

“That’s all right; come in your unspoiled girlish beauty! I told you I wouldn’t change.”

“There’s your little buff crêpe de chine, honey!” Miss Ada suggested eagerly. “And my amber beads!”

“’Atta girl!” Miss Jennings approved of her cordially. “Well, I’ll beat it now, and you come over as soon as you’re ready. Make it snappy!” She paused at the door. “Say, you won’t run out on me? You won’t ditch me?”

The woman answered for her, excitedly. “She will come, Miss Jennings! I pledge you my word! She will be there!”

Miss Ada was overjoyed. She shepherded Glen upstairs and waited nervously through the period of bathing and brushing, and then slipped the slim yellow dress over her head. “At last you are wearing it!” she exulted. It was rather of a tender subject between them, the little yellow-buff crêpe de chine. Miss Ada, by the exercise of much innocent guile, had contrived an invitation for Glen to attend the New Year’s reception at her Cousin Amos Tenafee’s, and then, knowing that the child had not sufficiently gala raiment, went to the smart little shop in the Bella Vista and dipped recklessly into her shallow bank account.

But Glen would not go. She was stirred and touched and grateful, but she couldn’t go to the pleasures and palaces of The Hill—The Hill which had broken her mother’s heart, her soft-eyed, soft-chinned mother; The Hill which her father had damned with his dying breath.

Miss Ada, passionately desiring a fuller and richer life for her charge, came at last to see that it must come from without, not from the sacred inner circle, and she relinquished all hope of ever hearing her dear Cousin Amos, high priest and head of the clan, say—“And this is our young friend, Miss Glen Darrow, the protégée of our dear Cousin Ada.” Her remodeled desire, thereafter, took the form of distinguished strangers who would see at once the beauty and worth of her child, and she prayed for it nightly, with simple fervor. Miss Ada’s god was, after all, a tribal god: when she said—‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ she had in mind a composite likeness of her own dear father and Cousin Amos, somewhat magnified and glorified, but with the same essential standards and sympathies, and it was necessary, therefore, to pray very earnestly and persuasively to have the child of an obscure (and truculent) Chicago physician receive any special favors.

Janice Jennings might seem, at first glance—a glance staggered by her beaded lashes and her mauve cheeks and her cerise mouth—an unlikely instrument of Providence, but Miss Ada was well aware that fathers, on earth and in heaven, moved in mysterious ways their wonders to perform, and she saw Glen off for the Bella Vista with misty eyes and a pounding heart.