Sometimes they read to her, and she listened patiently, occasionally
asking a question, but more often falling asleep.
"I wish," she said one day, when she was alone with Carl, "that I could
hear something you had written."
"Why, Miss Ainslie," he exclaimed, in astonishment, "you wouldn't be
interested in the things I write--it's only newspaper stuff."
"Yes, I would," she answered softly; "yes, I would."
Something in the way she said it brought the mist to his eyes.
She liked to have Ruth brush her hair, but her greatest delight was in
hearing Winfield talk about her treasures.
"Won't you tell me about the rug, Carl, the one on the sandal wood
chest?" she asked, for the twentieth time.
"It's hundreds of years old," he began, "and it came from Persia, far,
far beyond the sea. The shepherds watched their flocks night and day,
and saved the finest fleeces for the rug. They made colour from flowers
and sweet herbs; from strange things that grew on the mountain heights,
where only the bravest dared to go. The sumac that flamed on the hills,
the rind of the swaying pomegranates, lichens that grew on the rocks by
the Eastern sea, berries, deep-sea treasures, vine leaves, the juice of
the grape--they all made colours for the rug, and then ripened, like old
wine.
"After a long time, when everything was ready, the Master Craftsman
made the design, writing strange symbols into the margin, eloquent with
hidden meanings, that only the wisest may understand. "They all worked
upon it, men and women and children. Deep voices sang love songs and the
melody was woven into the rug. Soft eyes looked love in answer and the
softness and beauty went in with the fibre. Baby fingers clutched at it
and were laughingly untangled. At night, when the fires of the village
were lighted, and the crimson glow was reflected upon it, strange tales
of love and war were mingled with the thread. "The nightingale sang into
it, the roses from Persian gardens breathed upon it, the moonlight put
witchery into it; the tinkle of the gold and silver on the women's dusky
ankles, the scent of sandal wood and attar of rose--it all went into the
rug.
"Poets repeated their verses to it, men knelt near it to say their
prayers, and the soft wind, rising from the sea, made faintest music
among the threads.
"Sometimes a workman made a mistake, and the Master Craftsman put him
aside. Often, the patient fingers stopped weaving forever, and they
found some one else to go on with it. Sometimes they went from one place
to another, but the frame holding the rug was not injured. From mountain
to valley and back again, urged by some strange instinct, past flowing
rivers and over the golden sands of the desert, even to the deep blue
waters that broke on the shore--they took the rug.