The Magic Carpet
“Well—‘Jack!’ Hullo, Unie! Haven’t you said good-bye to your flower
clock yet? Good-bye for six weeks to your flower clock! Oh-h! I’m so
excited over the start I just don’t know what to do with myself.”
Pemrose Lorry danced down the dew-blanched steps of the Grosvenor
mansion, at Lenox, just a little earlier, as clock and dial hand went,
than the “mornie” hour at which Una had descended them, seven weeks
before, with electrifying results.
The sun was in the act of rising, no May moon-calf now, but a summer
Sultan, proclaiming that July was here: Moon of Thunder, but moon of
summer idylls, too, of wonderful shadows in the triple greens of brooks,
of cardinal flowers fairly “smashing” across the eye with their joy of
color in mountain passes—the ideal month for campers.
The garden, the great, terraced garden, seemed to have paled a little in
July heat from its flush of June joy.
White flowers predominated—or light ones.
But, here and there, blue larkspur raised its dewy spires, one with the
dancing tint of the girl’s eyes.
Gladioli and hollyhocks, tall pages of the rising sun, in their
salmon-pink and crimson, bent to awaken their neighbor, the yellow tiger
lily, one of the flowers admitted to the lovely democracy of the sundial
bed, the flower clock, because it closed sleepily at night, to open at a
rather late hour of the morning—as would the dreaming carnation.
Una—Una was saying good-by to that dewy flower clock now, for which she
had won a Camp Fire honor for creation—original creation—or if the idea,
old as the hills as all ideas are, had been in the “flower-bab” brain of
some old botanist, a couple of hundred years before, it had been born
anew, impromptu, in hers: she had risen early and watched late, to work
it out.
Old Sods, who spurned daylight saving, going by any but the Lord’s time,
established custom, had repaired the pretty floral clock after the rude
shock of an aviator’s crashing down upon the heads of the sleeping
flowers.
Like Andrew, the contradictory old gardener, whose name fitted like a
glove, had an affection for the white flower of a girl whose hobby it
was!
He had risen early, on the morning after the “fiery note”, had deported
sleeping flower families from other beds and wild flowers from their
rustic haunts, to build up the new democracy.
But the ruined ash-tree he could not repair. Reduced almost, to a bare
trunk, it could no longer roll up the whites of its eyes, when
ruffled—show only the pale undersides of its crown of leaves—or it might
well have done so, this morning, over a miracle which presently took
place with its assistance.
“Hullo—Unie! Unie-Wunie! Well! isn’t the last long farewell to your
flower clock said?” cried Pemrose again, dancing down the silvery garden
path—her whole warm being simply on the fire-edge of vacation joy.
“Oh-h! this is a wonderful day to start for camp. A little
‘chilly-cold’, as Sods would say! But that makes it all the better for
hiking. And to-night—to-night we may be sleeping out by the Long Trail!
Oh! aren’t you just wild over it, too?”
There was an answering shout, rather faint, from the neighborhood of the
dim old sundial, within a stone’s throw of the wood.
“I expect she’s watering the ‘clocksie’ with a final tear,” said Pemrose
to herself. “Well! if she is feeling rather blue over saying good-bye to
her flowers—goodbye for this year to most of them—on top of the good-bye
to her father and mother when they started for Europe yesterday, I—I’m
going to spring a diversion on her.... Hi there, Jack,” she called
exultingly, “don’t you want the big end of a sensation, a sunrise
sensation; don’t you want to listen in on my ring; so early in the
morning as this we ought to be able to pick up something, before the
sounds ‘dim off’ with bright daylight—there are some strong sending
stations near?”
Una rose, a dewy sprite, from the neighborhood of her flower clock.
“Why are the sound waves stronger at night—or in the early morning?” she
asked.
“Search me!” The radio amateur shrugged her shoulders gayly. “Father did
venture some reason for it, something about ‘molecules’, but it didn’t
stick!” She tapped her forehead with a ringed forefinger. “Anyhow, he
said it was only an ‘out-shot’, merrily; that every day somebody was
making a new out-shot in the direction of radio, as _he_ did when he
discovered this new crystal, more wonderful than galena or silicon, or
any of the detectors which people have been using, as a ‘radio soul’, up
to the present.”
That listening soul was in the girl’s eyes now, her larkspur eyes. She
swung the radio head-phone, artistically carved, or engraved, with Camp
Fire symbols, connected by an enameled wire with a minute joint in the
deep ring upon her forefinger—a ring whose light-hued bakelite setting
shimmered like amber in the primrose dawn.
“Besides, at this hour, we’ll have the atmosphere to ourselves—or nearly
so—so that we may come in on something that’s broadcasted from some
powerful station in town,” she added hopefully, “or we may even steal in
on some fashionable amateur near by, in some one of the big camps or
houses along the lake! Some radio fiend, with a costly set, who is so
crazy over the new game that he has sat up all night over it and is
keeping on into daylight ... with my spiked heel in the soft ground of
the stream’s bank over there, by the—wood—”
“The wood!” echoed Una fearfully.
“Yes, you haven’t been ‘coming in’ on any funny murmur, uncanny murmur,
there, this morning; have you? I believe you’re a brand-new sort of
radio ‘bug’ yourself,” chaffingly.
“No—I haven’t.” The dark-eyed girl shivered, white-cheeked, in the dew.
“If I did—if I ever should again—I’d have to try to find out what made
it—though—”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d run to earth—to Sods. I know you! Well! come
along then.” Pemrose impetuously seized her friend’s hand. “With my heel
in the magic carpet—the wet moss, over there—and my two hundred feet of
antenna, fine, insulated wire strung out to the poor old ash-tree, we
ought to be able to get results—some results, at this hour.”
“Well! you’ll promise to let me listen in, too, you won’t hold on to
those magic ear-phones all the time yourself? I know _you_!” Una glanced
at the dangling “halo”, attached to the ring, yielding as she generally
did when Pemrose pulled the strings.
“But we’ll have to hurry, we won’t have much time,” she said, “as we
leave here before seven, in the big car with Andrew, to pick up the
other campers at Greylock village. We haven’t had breakfast yet; and,
oh! are we quite sure that we have everything in our packs?” with the
tremor of a novice.
“Everything—ducky! Including the last straw!” Pemrose was toying with
her ring. “The rolls of colored paper for our flower costumes, the Wild
Flower Pageant—your birthday, in August!” she murmured dreamily, really
thinking of those radio “fiends” who might, at the moment, be handling
their last few messages before broad daylight—on whom she might steal
in. “We ought to have sent them up with the camp stores and extra
clothing to the horse-farm—those rolls. When it comes to the last long
mile—”
“Pshaw! they don’t weigh any more than two pinheads,” laughed Una,
swaying like “white weed”, herself, her dark eyes, like her flowers,
“dressing themselves up in gold light.” “And the farmers’ wives, their
little children, they have so little in their lives!”
“Um-m. There may be very few ‘natives’ to admire us,” Pemrose was still
showing off the ring to the sunrise, “unless—unless you include
quack-natives,” merrily, “Treff and his father, who have a camp about
ten miles from the horse-farm.”
“Poor Treff!” She dimpled. “Didn’t we have a time teasing him into
getting well after his awful note? I believe if the world came to an end
to-morrow that boy would call it a ‘note’.... But I like a boy who has a
brown speck in one gray eye, just one—his fun-mill!”
“Wonder if he’s got a new ‘bus’ yet?” speculated Una.
“And whether he’s ‘pulling any more bones’ with his radio outfit?”
laughed the amateur. “Well! I’ll tell you what, I’m going to loop my
aërial round the old ash-tree, this morning, just to make up for what it
suffered through him!”
And now was the moment when that noble white ash, upon the garden side
of the wall, might have rolled up the whites of its eyes, ruffled the
pale lining of its leaves—if it had any left to ruffle—as a girl,
clambering up, looped her aërial, her shining wire, as loftily as she
could around the blackened trunk.
“Eh! What’s the merricle now?” grunted old Sods to the waking flowers,
as he peeped, from a distance, over that garden wall.
And they nodded that they did not know, that they might be still
dreaming, half open, as they saw that girl bounding lightly back over
the wall to the brook’s edge, to slip a steel creeper upon her heel, the
same that a girl might strap upon her daring heel, in icy weather—and
don a listening halo.
“You—you’re not going any further into the _wood_?” Una probed the pines
with glances, half fearful, half fascinated.
“No-o, ‘Peerie-Weerie?’ How are you going to stand sleeping out by the
Long Trail to-night, if you don’t ‘side-dish’ your fancies?” Pemrose
tilted the halo rakishly askew upon her little dark head. “Just look at
the ring!” she gasped. “Isn’t it a winner?”
A winner it truly was; fraught every inch with glamour, the divine
glamour of ingenuity.
“Four hundred turns of the finest hairwire wound round it, in this
bobbin-like groove! Isn’t that—that elfin, if you like it?” The blue
eyes danced. “And this ‘atomy’ lever which moves the cat-whisker to
touch the crystal—father’s new crystal that takes the shine out of the
others! And the miniature ‘bind-posts’, joints—three—one hooked on to my
ground connection,” the amateur displayed her heel, “another to my
aërial—the third to my hearing halo; father—oh! was there ever anybody
like him—” it was a transfigured sob—“worked over these magnetic
ear-phones, too, to make them extra sensitive.”
“I wish—if only they could pick up a little speech—music—for us,”
murmured Una, half her faint-heart in the wood, “if—if ever so
dimly—faintly!”
“Speech—music—before six o’clock in the morning! You don’t ask much!”
scoffed Pemrose. “I don’t suppose we’ll even get a twitter of
telephony—the twitter of an early bird.” She laughed excitedly.
“Listen—listen to that early bird, up there, in the tallest pine,”
pushing the ear-phones up, “do you know what he’s saying—that brown
thrasher? A brown thrasher it is! He’s chanting advice to the farmers:
“‘Shuck it, shuck it, sow it, sow it,
Plow it, plow it, hoe it, hoe it.’
“And he doesn’t know that he’s away behind the times with his old song!”
Pemrose’s black brows were lifted archly. “That the air is just full of
advice ‘stuff’ about him to which he’s deaf: ships, far out at sea,
signaling reports about the weather, local Weather Bureaus sending in
radio reports to headquarters—perhaps, we may come in on some of that!
Oh! was there ever—ever, before, a time when it was so much better to be
a girl than a bird?”
Fairly translated, now, in her excitement, that favored girl was
selecting a nice, wet, oozing spot in the moss of the magic carpet into
which to dig her heel—that fairy carpet more wonderful than ever was
genii’s for transporting the one who stepped on it, thus, afar—so far as
one sense was concerned, at least.
“Good ground connection!” she murmured. “That ought to bring results. Of
course anything we do pick up will be awfully faint, just dot and dash,
easier to glean—and in which two-thirds of the messages are sent out.
Hus-sh!”
Deeper she ground her heel into the sparkling moss—Pemrose Lorry, radio
amateur. She straightened her halo. She moved the bronze cat-whisker to
touch the crystal and stood a statue as, the magic ring “rubbed”, those
highly sensitive ear-phones became active—began to glean from the
morning air.
“Do you ... are you—oh! are you—getting—anything?” Una watched her,
hands clasped.
“Hush!” frowned the radio fan. “Your—your hor-rid racket!”
“I didn’t make any. Needn’t be so peeved!... You have—have to make
allowance for radio ‘fiends’; they’re savage if you disturb them!”
murmured Una mischievously to the pines—her interest was beginning to be
concentrated on the experiment now.
Five minutes passed. A finger was pointed at her, shooting her straight
through the heart with thrill.
“Are you ... oh! are you ...” she ventured again.
“I—am.”
“Wha-at?” in a bewitched whisper.
“Just a little dot an’ dash—faint ticking—weather station in town,
couple of miles off—three maybe—but I could—understand.”
She gave her hand to the sunrise, the inventor’s daughter, the new
crystal flashing like a diamond. Never did queen of the middle ages,
never did Begum of the Indies dream of such a ring upon her forefinger.
“L-let—me. I have been studying code a little, since father—”
Una’s lips barely fluttered upon the whisper, like a flower.
And now—now the halo was upon _her_ dark head. She was listening in
through the other girl’s ring, through the other girl’s heel, through
the other girl’s heart, as it were, to the faint, faint murmur in the
air.
But a smattering of code could make nothing of that swooning tick.
Again Pemrose transferred the headpiece.
And now time as well as space was annihilated—even the approaching
departure forgotten.
Una began to feel as if a Meg-of-the-many-feet, a centipede, was
stealing down her back, but its hundred little feet were
silver-pointed—tipped with light.
“I—got—it!” Again a finger was pointed at her—not the ring finger, that
was held out level. “Not—not dot an’ dash, this time: whisper—speech, I
got it; one amateur asking another—‘play a few holes of golf—before
breakfast!’” Never had a girl’s eyebrows gone so high in the world of
wonder, of mischief, before, as those black ones lifted over the blue,
listening eyes—for every organ of the body was now “listening in.”
“Word here, word there—repeated an’ repeated—I got it. B-but what’s
this? Never—never singing, before six o’clock in the morning. So-o
faint! Oh! it seems—seems to come from the far edge of nothing.”
And to the “far edge of nothing” Pemrose Lorry listened, every pulse an
ear, until her hearing, so trained in this new aërial communication,
began to pick up syllables—words—faint as far moon-shine, indeed, yet
half-clear upon the air:
“Night ... done, stars ... to rest,
Perhaps in soft, white clouds ... a nest,
Among your—dewy flowers....”
“Oh! l-let me!” shivered Una, half-sobbing—transfigured sobs.
Mechanically Pemrose transferred the headpiece.
“Among ... dewy flowers ... see you stand,
You do not know ... in my hand!”
“I hate it! Oh-h, I hate it—it.” Passionately the other girl tore the
phones from her ears. “It’s like the hum—” the little stand in her right
dark eye was fixed in fear—“makes me feel queer—creepy—I don’t know
why!” She began to cry. “I don’t want to listen in! I’ll—never—”
“Nonsense!” said Pemrose sharply. “Only some amateur—crazy
amateur—singing into a horn at a near-by station, quite near-by, that’s
‘going strong’!”
But, for a moment, her bright face had looked “sparrow-blasted”, too.
Far away, in the silence, a fox barked.