THE WISHING CARPET
RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
_By RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL_
THE WISHING CARPET
PLAY THE GAME
JANE JOURNEYS ON
NARRATIVES IN VERSE
CORDUROY
A WHITE STONE
_The_
WISHING CARPET
BY
RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
AUTHOR OF “A WHITE STONE,” “CORDUROY,” ETC.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: 1926 :: LONDON
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHT--1926--BY
D. APPLETON & COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
MY SISTERS
BARBARA AND JANE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. _Glenwood Darrow, looking only at
the eyes, overlooks the chin, and
a rarely beautiful Persian rug is
overshadowed by golden oak_ 1
II. _Mrs. Darrow seeks further for gentility,
and her daughter has her
hair pulled and doesn’t mind it_ 16
III. _Miss Ada Tenafee is faithful to ancestor
worship, while the Darrows
weave a golden legend about
a golden lad_ 27
IV. _Granny Mander’s curse is potent:
the hawk comes down to feed in
the barnyard_ 37
V. _Dr. Darrow damns the first families
with his last breath, and little
Miss Nancy Carey meets the
young mountaineer_ 47
VI. _Mr. ’Gene Carey finds a right-hand
man for the Altonia, and Glen
joins the noble army of labor_ 60
VII. _Luke Manders agrees with her entirely,
and Southern Europe contributes
some of its culls to the
mill, notably one Black Orlo,
whose vitriolic utterances the doctor’s
daughter finds nourishing_ 72
VIII. _Miss Ada Tenafee rejoices to have
her young protégée receive two
callers in one afternoon, and Miss
Nancy sees Luke Manders again_ 87
IX. _Glen Darrow dines for the first time
in her life, and tells her hostesses
her opinion of Peter Parker of
Pasadena; later confides to her
sleepless pillow that she doesn’t
like being touched_ 101
X. _Glen trusts to time to correct her
peculiarities, and occupies herself
with transforming her house to
harmonize with her Wishing
Carpet_ 110
XI. _Glen sets the day for her twentieth
birthday, and grieves because her
suitor is too busy to help her
better conditions, while Mr. ’Gene
Carey is crushed by the perfidy of
Old Ben_ 125
XII. _Mrs. Eugenia Parker, President of
the Federated Women’s Clubs,
bitterly shares Black Orlo’s opinion
that her son does not amount
to much, in which young Peter
cordially concurs_ 139
XIII. _Mr. Peter Parker of Pasadena,
visiting his mill for the first time,
is given the right hand of fellowship
and the cold shoulder in the
space of an hour_ 149
XIV. _Peter soaks up impressions and
rather fancies himself as a comedian,
but neither Glen Darrow
nor Henry Clay Bean find him
funny_ 166
XV. _Mrs. Eugenia Parker receives that
lowest form of human expression,
an anonymous letter and pays the
doctor’s daughter a call_ 183
XVI. _Gloriana-Virginia proves that it was
really a Wishing Carpet after
all!_ 198
XVII. _Young Peter sees something he never
saw before, and Glen finds that
her theory about herself was
wrong_ 211
XVIII. _Mrs. Eugenia Parker has the doubtful
satisfaction of seeing her trifling
son in action for the first
time_ 220
XIX. _Glen Darrow, being her father’s
daughter, decides that promises
are made to be kept_ 234
XX. _Peter Parker of Pasadena is less of
a fool than has been popularly
supposed, and the golden legend
is discovered to be tarnished brass_ 245
XXI. _Once more, the Wishing Carpet justifies
itself, and Henry Clay Bean,
breaks the solemnity of a lifetime_ 255
_The_
WISHING CARPET
CHAPTER I
_Glenwood Darrow, looking only at the eyes, overlooks the chin, and a
rarely beautiful Persian rug is overshadowed by golden oak._
ONCE, when Glen Darrow was six years old, she put a hand on her
mother’s thin knee and halted the reading of a fairy tale.
“Mummie,” she whispered, “is that one?”
She was pointing at a small and very beautiful Oriental rug which
seemed singularly out of place in the ugly and characterless sitting
room. Color, design, and texture were exquisite. A fanciful person,
contrasting it with the strident carpet, the atrocious vases and
pictures, the glistening golden oak furniture, might have thought it
was like a nobleman, briefly taking refuge in the mean hut of a peasant.
“Mummie, dear!” The child was insistent. “Is that a Wishing Carpet?”
Her mother did not answer immediately. Her blue gaze, with its
habitual expression of brooding pathos, rested on the rug, and she
sighed mistily before she spoke, which was her vaguely irritating
custom. She had the effect of pleading with the world to be sorry for
her. This seemed, to busy and hard-headed people, a waste of time--she
was so patently and amply sorry for herself.
“Yes, darling,” she replied at length, gently and tremulously, “it
_is_ a Wishing Carpet in a way, because, for nine long years I’ve been
looking at it and wishing for things I knew I could never have!”
“Well, maybe,” Glen Darrow suggested hopefully, “you didn’t stand right
on it with your eyes shut tight and your left hand on your heart, like
the old witch said?” Then, as Mrs. Darrow shook her head--“Well, when
I wish I’ll wish the right way!” She patted her mother’s knee again,
consolingly, this time. “And I won’t wish till I have to, and then I’ll
wish for something I think is going to happen anyway!”
That was her father in her, the woman reflected rather peevishly. That
was Glenwood Darrow all over. No striving after higher things, no
yearning.... Well, doubtless she would be better off. The fine-fibered,
over-sensitive people of the world were never really happy, as no one
knew better than herself.... Effie Darrow’s soft eyes filled and her
soft chin quivered.
The doctor had married her eyes without noticing her chin. She had
played the small, sobbing organ in the church he boredly attended while
he earned a summer vacation by caring for a godly and epileptic youth.
The top of the hymn book had cut her face in two. Glenwood Darrow
saw only a white brow under fine, fair hair, a mild gaze, blue and
beautiful, celestially sweet. The chin and the ineffectual mouth with
its permanent sag at the corners were not discovered until too late.
Young Glen’s eyes were like her mother’s in size and coloring, but
there was a drastic difference in their expression: they were not in
the least wistful or appealing. Features, however, were not going to
matter very much with Glen Darrow, because of the hair which framed her
face in a veritable flame of shimmering, blazing red, bequeathed by
some ancestor who was not even a legend on either side of the house.
People stopped and stared at it: sometimes the child could feel them
touching it with a tentative finger, as if to see if it really radiated
heat.
“All right. Never mind!” she said now, closing the issue of the Wishing
Carpet. “Go on, Mummie!”
The woman read steadily in her pretty and plaintive voice, but she
was not aware of the adventures of the prince and the princess and
the wicked witch, because her thoughts were making a melancholy
pilgrimage, walking backward....
When Dr. Darrow had brought her from her prairie town to Chicago she
was startled to find that he had already furnished the flat, office and
living quarters, in his own exuberant taste. She winced visibly when
her eyes fell upon the magenta and mustard colored roses in the carpet,
and lifted to the idealized Brussels sprouts on the wall paper, but she
had darted toward the Persian rug with a little cry of pure pleasure.
“Oh, Glenwood! How _lovely_!” Here, at last, was something she could
whole-heartedly praise, and she knelt and worshiped it. “I heard a
missionary lecture on Oriental rugs, once, and then I got a book and
studied, and I know enough to realize that this is really fine!” Her
soft little hand was held up to him. “Oh, dearest, I think you were
wonderful to choose it for me!”
Her bridegroom was ruefully honest. “Didn’t choose it. It’s a G. P.”
“What’s that?”
“‘Grateful Patient.’ Old Mrs. Ludermann, only rich family on my books.
Most of this junk”--he waved a complacent hand--“is wedding presents.”
He had many patients who were grateful, it appeared, but only one
with taste. There were appalling ornaments and pictures, among them,
inevitably, a feverishly tinted copy of “The Dying Child.” Darrow had
stirred the edge of the rug with the toe of his boot. “Well, Effie, I’m
glad something makes a hit with you! Fact is, I sort of figured we’d
take it back to Field’s and get credit for it. Old Lady Ludermann’d
never know the difference, and it’s out a’ place with the rest of our
stuff.”
But the bride had cried out in passionate protest. “No, Glenwood, _no_!
Please let me keep it! I think--I feel everything else is out of place
with this!”
“Suit yourself.” He had yielded, good-temperedly enough, but he was
a little hurt under his crust of gruffness. “It stays. Unless”--he
grinned--“unless it takes one good look around and starts crawling back
to Persia!”
During the early years of her marriage Effie Darrow had held the lovely
rug as a symbol, a goal, but without success. Her husband was a good
doctor, and a bad business man. He loved his work, and it bothered
him very little when people paid him slowly, in dribblets which never
seemed to count, or not at all, but the comfortable, shabby, easy-going
poverty which ensued crushed his wife completely.
After the birth of their only child--and Darrow had wanted six, and
four of them boys--she began definitely to droop.
A palely pretty creature, Glenwood Darrow continued to love her
faithfully, though he had stopped being in love with her rather early
in the second year. It is probable that he came to regard her more as a
patient than a wife,--a patient who never paid.
At any rate, when two of his colleagues met in consultation, decreed
that she must be moved to a milder climate, he submitted without
complaint or audible regret.
Effie rallied immediately. With every mile of the journey southward a
faint pink warmed in her cheeks and lips. It was not merely the thought
of a more indulgent thermometer: it was escape into a new life, a new
world. Not even the thought of the hideous carpets and the glistening
golden oak, following her slowly but inexorably by freight, could crush
her: she and her daughter were on the Wishing Carpet, which was bearing
them away to enchanted isles.
She had always been the type of Northerner who applauds violently
when the band plays “Dixie,” and now she visualized herself in softly
ruffled and gauzy frocks, rocking on a white pillared porch while her
child disported herself beneath the magnolia trees, and the dusky,
adoring servitors sang at their toil. There were other women in the
vision, delicate, high-bred creatures who dropped their _r_’s and spoke
in a sweet, languorous drawl--who understood her, and made her one of
them. The doctor did not appear in the picture very prominently. He
would be in his office or away on his calls, but even Glenwood Darrow,
she dared to hope, would mellow in that rich and golden atmosphere.
It was her slow, reluctant relinquishment of the fiction, her bitter
and rebellious acceptance of the fact, which put the seal of permanence
on her invalidism. She was better in body for a year or two, but the
will-to-live went out of her, never to return.
Dr. Darrow disliked the South and refused to adjust himself to it. He
was a rushing, bustling sort of person who enjoyed movement for its own
sake, and he went charging about among the slow-stepping, slow-speaking
Southerners and found himself with wide margins of time left over, and
grew caustic and choleric. He went out of his way to mention that his
father and two of his uncles had shared Sherman’s march to the sea, and
took pains to contrast the speed and efficiency of Chicago with the
meandering methods of the lovely, drowsy old Southern city.
It was both natural and just that they should resent his attitude, but
it was hard that Effie, who, like Agag, had come unto them delicately,
ready to rise at the first strains of “Dixie,” ready even to drop her
_r_’s as soon as she could get the knack of it, should be so inflexibly
ignored.
They were never actively unkind to her: they were simply--and
utterly--unaware of her. She felt, to the day of her death, snatching
at every chance to blame her heedless husband, that his choice of a
house had a great deal to do with her failure. He bought it while they
were staying at a hotel, without consulting her.
“Wanted to surprise you!” he beamed, but sensing very soon how
thoroughly and disastrously he had done so.
“Oh, Glenwood, _dear_,”--Effie always employed endearments in italics
when she found fault--“why didn’t you select a nicer neighborhood?”
“S’matter with the neighborhood? Darn’ good location, lemme tell
you--just halfway between the residence section and town!”
“That’s just it!” she wailed, hooding her blue gaze under grieving
white lids. “Halfway--always halfway....”
He stared for an instant and then cleared his throat. “Now, look here,
Effie, you want to get this front family bee out of your bonnet,”
he said gruffly. “I’ll never get a sniff of the top-layer practice!
Why, there’s doctors doddering around this berg that tapped a drum
in the Lost Cause, and their sons are carrying on their practice,
and grandsons on the mark, ready to go! It’s a close corporation; no
outsider’d ever get a smell! And that suits me,” he finished robustly.
“Plain man myself, likes to deal with plain people. I’ll get all I
need with the tradespeople and the mill workers and the mountaineers.
That’s our kind, Effie! Let small boats keep near the shore!”
The fine old residence section was on softly rolling ridges back of the
city and above it: the cotton mills were down on the level. One spoke
of The Hill, and the mills, and between the two, inevitably, was a
great gulf fixed. Dwellers on The Hill looked down on the rest of the
community, literally and figuratively, which was their quite natural
and pleasant prerogative, and had never annoyed anybody except the
Darrows, while mill hands and villagers looked up to The Hill, again in
the double sense and without rancor.
The Darrows’ characterless house was on a dull street which ran from
the business section to the heights: beneath the one in birth and
breeding and background (Effie was keen enough to know that money
mattered little) and above the other....
Often, during the first weeks, she took her child by the hand and
walked up to the seats of the mighty at her frail and hesitating gait.
The heat was modified by a piney and pungent breeze; they did not even
seek the shady side of the street. Fine old houses sat well back from
their gracious gateways; vague white and faintly tinted figures moved
among the trees and shrubbery; soft voices, light laughter, drifted
out to her. Sometimes a gorgeous cardinal would sit on a blossoming
bough and make joyous, liquid inquiry:
“_What cheer? What cheer? What cheer?_”
The woman was almost overborne by her yearning to go up the shaded
walks, to cross the ancient lawns, to mount the shallow steps, to
enter into and become a component part of the story-book life, but for
all their gates swung wide and vines wrapped confidently about rusted
hinges she could sense the barriers.
All hope was abandoned, presently, for herself, but surely the little
Glen, transplanted so young, must be allowed to take root, to climb
and cling, to bud and blossom in this rich soil! Childish friendships
were her liveliest hope, and she talked down the doctor’s democracy and
sent the child to a private school which had functioned since Civil War
days. Nancy Carey, a beautiful, mildly amiable child who had nodded and
smiled at Glen, attended Miss Josephine’s little seminary, and Effie
built feverishly upon her favor. The Careys owned a cotton mill, and
their shabby, stately ante-bellum mansion was her favorite of all the
dwellings on The Hill.
“Darling,” Effie urged her daughter, “you must be _very_ nice to that
little girl!”
“Why?” She was a downright child, with a measuring glance very like her
father’s, for all her startling beauty.
“Because--why, because she’s such a very _nice_ little girl, dearie,
and Mama hopes you’ll be little chums. You might walk home with her
after school, because the exercise is so good for you, and remember
what your father says about holding your shoulders back and taking deep
breaths. And if Nancy _should_ ask you to come in for a little while,
why, Mama wouldn’t mind!”
Mrs. Darrow’s valentine party for her daughter’s little schoolmates
was a gallant but ghastly effort, seared into the child’s memory for
all time. She always remembered her mother, hectic red spots on her
cheekbones, breathing fast, cutting out fat red hearts and stringing
them about the ugly room, making tiny heart-shaped cakes, slackly
assisted by the yellow slattern Emma-_leen_. She had taken the place of
the dusky servitor (adoring) who sang and toiled simultaneously in the
long-dead northern vision. Emma-_leen_ sang even less than she toiled,
and clearly scorned her timid mistress.
The day was mild and fine. Birds perched on greening branches and
butterflies balanced delicately on flowering shrubs: doors and windows
were wide and there was the feel of spring in the house. They were
ready early--Glen in a white dotted swiss with a blue sash and a blue
bow in her flaming hair.
Nobody came.
Mrs. Darrow had felt it cannier not to send written invitations. The
little girls were merely to trip home and say--“Glen Darrow wants me to
come to a party this afternoon!”--and the little girls had doubtless
carried out their part of the program perfectly. It was the mothers who
had missed their cues.
Lying long awake that night beside her placidly puffing spouse, Effie
tortured herself with imagined dialogues----
“_Why, honey-lamb, yo’ don’t know that child!-- Well, suppose she
does go to Miss Josephine’s--I don’t know her and I don’t know her
mother and I don’t even know where she lives! No, yo’ just tell little
what’s-her-name yo’ thank her just the same, but yo’ motha had otha
plans fo’ yo’._”
Not even Nancy Carey! She came as far as the front gate under convoy of
a stiffly starched young negress, and called up regretfully:
“Oh, Glen! I’m right sorry, but I can’t come! I have to go visiting
with my Auntie Lou-May!”
At four o’clock one guest was among those present, Janice Jennings, a
Northern child sojourning at the Bella Vista with a gay grandmother
while her parents were being divorced.
“Grammer said I could come for a while but I can’t eat any
refreshments,” she announced with sincere regret. “My stummick is
upset. She sent for your popper and he said I dassent eat any sweet
stuff for a week. Lookit!” She produced, as evidence, an unpleasant
tongue.
Pert, sharp with the brittle wisdom of a hotel child, she inspected
games and food and favors, contrasting them frankly with more opulent
affairs in her native Pittsburg, and when it seemed certain that no one
else was coming she retrieved her hat and wrap.
“No fun playing games with just us two,” she said, candidly, “and as
long as I can’t eat I’d rather sit on the hotel porch and listen to the
ladies talking. They tell about who’s trying to get married, and who’s
getting divorced, like my mother and father, and _about babies coming_,
and if I keep awful still they don’t tell me to run away and play like
a good girl.”
On departure, shaking hands primly and assuring them that she’d had a
perfectly lovely time, shrill mirth laid hold on her.
“Oh, golly,” she giggled, “you know what it makes me think of?
‘_Smarty had a party,
And nobody came,
And Smarty ate all the jelly-cake
And nearly died with the stummick ache!_’
Of course, it’s really ‘belly,’ to rhyme with ‘jelly,’” she explained
engagingly, “but my grammer makes me say ‘stummick’.”
Directly she was out of sight, Effie Darrow had hysterics, entirely
against her better judgment, for she well know that Emma-_leen_ would
gleefully carry the tale to other kitchens, but she was beyond caring
for the moment.
Glenwood Darrow, walking in on the scene, became the target of her
revilings.
“If you’d settled in a decent neighborhood! If we had a decent house!
If you tried--even _tried_--to get decent people for patients!”
The reproaches came forth in little yelps of woe. “If you ever
did _anything_--not for _me_--I expect nothing, but for your poor
_child_----”
The doctor picked her up roughly but capably, carried her upstairs
and put her to bed with a sleeping potion, and took his red-eyed,
hot-cheeked daughter for a ten-mile drive into the hills.
That trip, and her father’s words to her, stayed always in her memory
beside her mother’s tragic festivity.
“Now, you listen here to me,” he said sternly. “Don’t you ever think
you’re not good enough for those little washed-out blue bloods that
wouldn’t come to your party! You’re too good, d’you hear? Too good!
And I want you to let ’em see that you know you are, understand? My
God, I don’t know what they ever did, these people down here, to feel
so dressy about, except get beaten to a pulp! Your mother’s got her
head full of sentimental slush--well, she’s a sick woman, but you’re a
strong, hearty, sensible young one, and I want you to get this thing
straight!” Brutally, competently, he bound up the bleeding wounds of
her little pride, cauterizing them first with his own bitter, bracing
philosophy of life.
She was able to face her small, giggling world next day with dry eyes
and an upheld chin, even--when the hotel child repeated her ditty of
the day before--with an outthrust tongue.
The thing, therefore, trivial in itself, had definite consequences.
Young Glen Darrow stopped being her mother’s dear little girl and
became her father’s boyish daughter. She no longer sought to be very
nice to nice little girls in order that they might be nice to her; she
strove, instead, and with marked success, to show all little girls that
she did not like or heed or want them.
The vivid hair, flaming about her small truculent face, was a red flag
of defiance to all other children.