Read Ebook: The Wishing Carpet by Mitchell Ruth Comfort

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Ebook has 963 lines and 60820 words, and 20 pages

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.

EFFIE DARROW died when Glen was twelve years old, quite suddenly and excitingly after long and uneventful years of invalidism.

She became, so patently that even the child could sense, if she could not understand it, a person of importance once more in the eyes of her husband. For seven tense and high-keyed days and nights she interested him intensely, though he had never expected her to interest him again. If he could not summon a handsome grief at will, at least he could and did produce an earnest solicitude which satisfied her amply as long as she was conscious.

His eyes blurred for an instant when he heard the dismal dropping of clay upon the coffin, but they brightened again at the thought that his child was now his indeed.

Driving back from the cemetery in a soft, warm rain, he fired his first gun. "Glen, how'd you like to leave Miss Josephine's and go to public school?"

"I don't care," the girl answered, heavy-eyed.

"All right, then--tell her you're quitting. Suits me fine. Never did like that namby-pamby, cambric tea outfit up there!" He scowled savagely. "Go where you're good as any and better than most--and they know it,--that's my idea!"

"I don't care," said the child again, her voice sodden with grief.

Glen spent all her free time with her father, driving him capably over the deeply rutted country roads, waiting for him in the mud-splashed buggy while he made his calls, her head bent over her lessons. He liked having her with him, but he fretted because she made no young intimacies.

It was the opposite with her father. "Whyn't you bring young ones home to supper?" he would demand. "Whyn't you go play with 'em?" He was secretly dashed. Was his system failing as utterly as his wife's had done? Then it was her fault--because she had spoiled the child in her formative years. He criticized and resented Effie more in her grave than ever when she was moving about his house at her hesitating gait, soft eyes and soft chin tremulous.

Once, tripping over the Persian rug, his temper flared. "Oh, damn that thing anyway! Always did detest it! Get rid of it! Give it to the darky!"

Glen, looking up from her Ancient History, stared at him. She could not know that his sore heart harked back to a honeymoon day, with a blue-eyed bride kneeling and worshiping, setting up her delicate standards to belittle his, but she did remember the incident of the fairy tale.

Then the doctor stamped out of the room, swearing, banging the door behind him, ashamed of himself, and furious for being ashamed, and his child looked after him consideringly.

His practice narrowed down to the mill hands and the mountaineers. It was the work which interested him most, and he put heart into it as well as head. They needed him; they were grateful, after their fashion, and though he raged at them for failing to follow his instructions for sanitation and hygiene, he continued to tend them faithfully. The mill workers were a sallow and bloodless lot, in the main, spiritless and indifferent, but the mountaineers gave him the keenest possible pleasure.

"Best stock in the country," he stated often to Glen. "Just give 'em roads and schooling, and watch 'em come on!"

He took a shameless delight in their blood feuds; it was exactly his own idea of settling disputes, for he grew more testy and truculent with the years. Evenings, when he was not called out, Glen read aloud to him from radical books and certain weeklies of daring and rather destructive opinions, and he got a satisfactory reaction for his vicarious rebellions. Actually, his radicalism was less than skin deep; he was, at heart, rather well content with his government's behavior, and swarthy soap-box orators roused him to heated combat, though the speakers might be voicing, more violently, the very same views as the weeklies.

But to the girl, her bright head bent over the pages, the burning words she read to him became the law and the gospel. The lonesomeness of a snubbed childhood and a proudly detached girlhood fed by these doctrines, grew into a curious creed which was one part Effie Darrow's blighted dreams and two parts Glenwood Darrow's determined scorn for things unattainable.

To the neighbors and the townspeople she was an accustomed sight--the doctor's daughter, that red-headed Darrow girl who carried a chip on her shoulder and flocked alone, but strangers always stared at her as they had done since her babyhood.

At fourteen she was a startling figure, tall, thin with a healthy and proper young thinness, square-chinned, steady-eyed. Her skin was remarkable. It had set out to be the delicate, very thin sort which goes, ordinarily, with red hair--the blue-whiteness of thriftily skimmed milk, prone to burn and peel and freckle unpleasantly, but her early removal to the warmer climate had darkened and thickened it. It was now a sort of golden olive which deeped at certain times and in certain lights to a positive amber. There was no further color in her cheeks and her mouth was red, straight, and unsmiling, but it was her hair which caught and held the eye.

Once, on a Saturday, she drove her father higher into the hills than they had ever gone before to see a very old woman who had sent for him. She was a witch-like crone, clay colored, shriveled and twisted, and her hot little eyes burned still with a horde of mountain loves and hates.

"Hit's not that I were ailing," she explained to the doctor. "I'm right peart, and aiming to live two, three year yet, but I have kindly heard of you from all my tribe and kinnery, and I was wishful to name hit to you consarning my boy Luke."

Darrow sat down beside her, companionably. "Well, what about your son?"

Good roads and schooling would come too late for Ailsa Manders, but she had glimpsed the vision for lack of which her people were perishing. The doctor knew the Manders; a hard and reckless lot; killers. The old woman had the look of a ruthless tribal priestess. She caught sight of Glen and beckoned to her to come nearer.

"Howdy, Sis? Red h'ar is my delight!" She ran her gnarled fingers through it, making little mouthing sounds of pleasure. "Hit purely warms a bordy! Air you wedded yet?"

"Lord, no," the doctor exploded. "She's a youngster in school--will be, for years!"

"But how about this boy, Luke?" he brought her back to her main theme.

The lad had learned to read and write and figure--he was smart as a steel trap at figures--at the evening school down on the Branch, but his ancient kinswoman wanted real learning for him, a chance to work for his board in a town family, advanced schooling.

"But, sir, I'm pine-blank skeered he won't go! Wild as a hawk, he is! Hit's even ontelling if he'll see you!" She lifted a gourd horn and blew a surprisingly lusty blast.

After a perceptible pause, long enough to indicate indifference, brief enough to preclude all possibility of fear, a tall youth lounged into the room. There were no windows in the tiny shack, but between the two doors, front and back, was a shaft of golden sunlight, a concentrated radiance in which the boy stood. He was gypsy-dark, richly tinted, bold-fearless, and free, and the modeling of his arms and legs, his lean young torso, was magnificent.

"Well, my lad," the physician's eye roved delightedly over the perfection of the splendid young animal, "so you want to come to town and get an education?"

"No!" snarled Luke Manders, shooting a malevolent glance at his great-grandmother.

"But, honey-lamb-chile," the old woman quavered, "hit'll pine-blank break my heart to have you stay here and do so fashion!" Her gaze rested on the weapon. "Live and die in battle and bloodshed! You air the smartest of ary Manders heard tell of, and if you was to be fotched on--" She was trembling with eagerness.

A furious outpouring, vigorous, incoherent, picturesque and profane. Boyish bombast, but something more than that: a seething hatred incompatible with fresh youth.

Glen Darrow, looking and listening with breathless interest, saw with amazement that her father was keeping his temper--the temper which boiled up and over so promptly for less cause than this.

"Well, by George, boy," he stated with amusement and approval, "I believe your grandma's right about you! I believe you'll go pretty far, once you get something under your skull beside fancy cuss words, and learn to do something smarter than aim a pop gun behind berry bushes!"

The pacific speech further enraged the young savage. "I don't want to know anything but what my pap knew!" he shouted. "I don't aim to do anything but what my pap did!"

Luke Manders flung himself out of the cabin, cursing and snarling, and the old crone began to weep the slow and difficult tears of age, bright drops trickling grudgingly from her hot little eyes.

"Don't you fret yourself, Granny Manders!" Dr. Darrow took her leathery old claws in a warm and reassuring grip. "That's a great boy, and he'll come out all right--you mark my words!"

The great-gandmother hung her head. "I am purely shamed of my kin, for unmannerly orneryness! Shamed to my marrow bones."

"Kid stuff, that's all! Never you mind," he insisted cordially. "Just crazy, hot-headed kid stuff! Showing off! I glory in his spunk!"

"Now, now, don't you bother your head about that! Come along, Glen!" Chuckling, he waved his daughter toward the door. "I glory in his spunk! I do, for a fact, glory in his spunk!"

They went out of the frowsy little cabin, into the frowsy dooryard, but before they had traversed the brief distance to their waiting vehicle the young savage had plunged out of a thicket and come after them.

Swooping down upon Glen, he caught up a handful of her glowing mane, halting her sharply and painfully.

"Hi, Sis," he drawled, "run duck your head in the Branch! Didn't you know your h'ar was a-fire?"

THE continuing marvel was that even then the doctor was not angry. Glen jerked herself free with a force which brought tears to her eyes, and laid a hand on her father's arm, fearful of the wrath about to descend upon the wild young mountaineer.

But Glenwood Darrow was still chuckling, seeming to regard this heavy yokel pleasantry as high comedy.

"I don't mind," said the girl, stressing the pronoun, marveling at him still.

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