Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: Deborah at dressing table]
THE LAST ROSE
OF SUMMER
BY
RUPERT HUGHES
Author of
_What Will People Say?_
HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT 1914, BY HARPER AND BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1914
THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER
CHAPTER I
As Mrs. Shillaber often said, the one good thing about her old house was
the fact that "you could throw the dining-room into the poller" when you
wanted to give parties or funerals or weddings or such things. You had
only to fold up the accordeon-pleated doors, push the sofa back against
the wall, and lay a rug over the register.
To-night she had thrown the dining-room into the poller and filled both
rooms with guests. There were so many guests that they occupied every
seat in the house, including the up-stairs chairs and a large batch of
camp-stools from Mr. Crankshaw's, the undertaker's.
In Carthage it was never a real party or an important funeral unless
those perilous old man-traps of Mr. Crankshaw's appeared. They always
added a dash of excitement to the dullest evening, for at a critical
moment one of them could be depended upon to collapse beneath some
guest, depositing him or her in a small but complicated woodpile on the
floor.
Less dramatic, but even droller, was the unfailing spectacle of the
solemn man who entered a room carrying one of these stools neatly
folded, proceeded to a chosen spot, and there attempted vainly to open
the thing. This was sure to happen at least once, and it gave an
irresistibly light touch even to the funerals. The obstinacy of some of
Mr. Crankshaw's camp-stools was so diabolic that it almost implied a
perverse intelligence. And the one that was not to be solved generally
fell to the solemnest man in the company.
To-night at Mrs. Shillaber's the evening might be said to be well under
way; fat Mr. Geggat had already splashed through his camp-stool, and
Deacon Peavey was now at work on his; a snicker had just sneezed out of
the minister's wife (of all people!), and the Deacon himself had
breathed an expletive dangerously close to profanity.
The party was held in honor of Mrs. Shillaber's girlhood friend,
Birdaline Nickerson (now Mrs. Phineas Duddy). Birdaline and Mrs.
Shillaber (then Josie Barlow) had been fierce rivals for the love of
Asaph Shillaber. Josie had got him away from Birdaline, and Birdaline
had married Phin Duddy for spite, just to show certain people that
Birdaline could get married as well as other people and to prove that
Phin Duddy was not inconsolable for losing Josie, whom he had courted
before Asaph cut him out.
Luck had smiled on Birdaline and Phin. They had moved away-to Peoria,
no less! And now they were back on a visit to his folks.
When Birdaline saw what Time had done to Asaph she forgave Josie
completely. It was Josie who did not forgive Birdaline, for Peoria had
done wonders for Phin. Everybody said that; and Birdaline also brought
along a grown-up daughter who was evidently beautiful and, according to
her mother, highly accomplished. Why, one of the leading vocal teachers
in Peoria (and very highly spoken of in Chicago) had heard her sing and
had actually told her that she ought to have her voice cultivated; he
had, indeed; fact was he had even offered to cultivate it himself, and
at a reduced rate from his list price, too!
It seemed strange to Birdaline and Josie to meet after all these years
and be jealous, not of each other, but of daughters as big as they
themselves had been the last time they had seen each other. Both women
told both women that they looked younger than ever, and each saw the
pillage of time in the opposite mien, the accretion of time in the once
so gracile figure. It was melancholy satisfaction at best, for each
knew all too well how her own mirror slapped her in the face with her
own image.
When Birdaline bragged of her daughter's voice, Josie had to be loyal to
her oldest girl's own piano-playing. Birdaline, perhaps with serpentine
wisdom, insisted on hearing Miss Shillaber play the piano; it was sure,
she thought, to render the girl unpopular. But the solo annoyed the
guests hardly at all, for they could easily talk above the feeble clamor
of that old Shillaber piano, in which even the needy Carthage tuner had
refused to twist another wrest-pin these many years.
After the piano had ceased to spatter staccato discords, and people had
applauded politely, of course Josie had to ask Birdaline's daughter to
sing. And the girl, being of the new and rather startling school of
manners which accedes without undue urging, blushingly consented,
provided there was any music there that she could sing and some one
would play her accompa'ment.
A tattered copy of "The Last Rose of Summer" was unearthed, and Mr.
Norman Maugans, who played the melodeon at the Presbyterian
prayer-meetings, was mobbed into essaying the accompa'ment. He was no
great shucks at sight-reading, he said, but he would do his durnedest.
The news that the pretty and novel Miss Buddy would sing brought all the
guests forward in a huddle like cattle at home-coming time. Even Deacon
Peavey gave up his vow to open that camp-stool or die and sat down in a
draught to listen. The perspiration cooled on him and he caught a
terrible cold, but that was Mrs. Peavey's business, not ours.
Miss Pamela Duddy sidled into the elbow of the piano with a most
attractive kittenishness and waited for the prelude to be done. This
required some time, since the ancient sheet-music had a distressing
habit of folding over and, as it were, swooning from the rack into the
pianist's arms. Besides, Mr. Maugans was so used to playing the
melodeon that instead of tapping the keys he was continually squeezing
them, and nothing came. And when he wished to increase his volume of
tone he would hold his hands still and slowly open his knees against
swell-levers that were not there. This earnest futility gave so much
amusement to Josie's youngest daughter that she had to be eyed out of
the room by her mother.
Miss Pamela saved the day by a sudden inspiration, a recollection of
what she had seen done by one of the leading sopranos from Indianapolis
at a recital in the Star course at Peoria; Miss Pamela bent her pretty
head and took from her juvenile breast one big red rose and held it in
her hands while she sang. During the final stanza she plucked away its
petals one by one and at the end let the shredded core fall upon the
highly improbable roses woven in Josie's American Wilton carpet.
The girl's features and her attitudes were sheer Grecian; her accent was
the purest Peoria. Now and then she remembered to insert an Italian
"a," but she forgot to suppress the Italian "r," which is exactly the
same as that of Illinois, but lacks its context or prestige. Her fresh,
uncultivated voice was less faithful to the key than to her exquisite
throat. To that same exquisite throat clung one fascinated eye of Mr.
Maugans's, whose other orb angrily glowered at the music as if to
overawe it. Had he possessed a third eye it might have guided his hands
along the keyboard with more accuracy, but this detail could have
affected the result but little, since his hands were incessantly
compelled to clutch the incessantly deciduous music and slap it back on
the rack.
Two stanzas had thus been punctuated before a shy old maid named Deborah
Larrabee ventured to rise and stand at the piano, supporting the music.
This compelled her to a closer proximity to a nice young man than she
had known for so many years that she almost outblushed the young girl.
Deborah was afraid to look at anybody, yet when she cast her eyes
downward she had to watch those emotional knees of Mr. Maugans's slowly
parting in the crescendo that never came.
It was an ordeal for everybody-singer, pianist, and music-sustainer.
But the audience was friendly, and the composer and the poet were too
dead to gyrate in their distant graves. The song, therefore, had
unmitigated success, and the words were so familiar that everybody knew
pretty well what Pamela was driving at when she sang:
'Tis thuh lah-ha-ha strow zof sum-mah
Le-ef' bloo-oo-hoo-minnng uh-lone;
Aw lur lu-uh-uh vlee come-pan-yun
Zah-har fay-ay-yay dud ahnd gawn-
No-woe flow-wurr rof her kinn-drud,
No-woe ro-hose buh dis ni-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye
To re-fle-eh-ec' bah-cur blu-shuzz
Aw-hor gi-yi-hiv su-high for su-high!
There was hardly a dry eye or a protesting ear in the throng as she
reached the climax:
Thu-us ki-yine-dlee I scat-tur-r-r
Thy-hi lea-heave zore thuh be-eh-eh-eh-eh-head
Whur-r-r thy may-hay-yate zuv thuh gar-r-dun-n-n-n
Lie-eye sceh-eh-entluss ahnd dead,
Whur-r thy may-YAH-YAH-yah thuh gah-dah
Lie-eye sceh-heh-hen-less ahnd-ah dead-ah.
The girl's mother was not hard to find among the applauding auditors.
She looked like the wrecked last September's rose of which her daughter
was the next June's bud. The softened mood of Birdaline and the tears
that bedewed her cheeks gave her back just enough of the beauty she had
had to emphasize how much she had lost.
And Josie, her quondam rival in the garden, was sweetened by melancholy,
too. It was not hospitality alone, nor mere generosity, but a passing
sympathy that warmed her tone as she squeezed Birdaline's arm and told
her how well her daughter had sung.
A number of matrons felt the same attar of regret in the air. They had
been beautiful in their days and in their ways, and now they felt like
the dismantled rose on the floor. The common tragedy of beauty belated
and foredone saddened everybody in the room; the old women had
experienced it, the young women foresaw it, the men knew it as the
destruction of the beauties they loved or had loved. Everybody was sad
but Deborah Larrabee.
That homely little old spinster slipped impudently into the elbow of the
piano-into the place still warm from the presence of Pamela-and she
railed at the sorrow of her schoolmates, Josie and Birdaline. Her voice
was as sharp as the old piano-strings:
"That song's all wrong, seems to me, girls. Pretty toon and nice words,
but I can't make out why ever'body feels sorry for the last rose of
summer. It's the luckiest rose in the world. The rest of 'em have
bloomed too soon or just when all the other roses are blooming, or when
people are sort of tired of roses. But this one is saved up till the
last. And then, when the garden is all dying out and the bushes are
just dead stalks and the other roses are wilted and brown and folks say,
'I'd give anything for the sight of a rose,' along comes this rose
and-blooms alone!
"It's that way in my little yard. There's always a last rose that comes
when the rest have gone to seed, and that's the one I prize. Seems to
me it has the laugh on all the rest. The song's all wrong, I tell you,
girls!"
This heresy had the usual success of attacks on sacred texts-the
orthodox paid no heed to the value of the argument; they simply resented
its impudence. But all they said to Deborah was an indulgent "That's
so, Debby," and a polite "I never thought of that."
As Deborah turned away, triumphant, to repeat what she had just said to
Mr. Maugans, she overheard Birdaline murmur to Josie in a kinship of
contempt, "Poor old Debby!"
And Josie consented: "She can't understand! She never was a rose."