The Last Rose of Summer

by Rupert Hughes

  Produced by Al Haines.

  Cover]

  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 wasthe fact that "you could throw the dining-room into the poller" when youwanted to give parties or funerals or weddings or such things. You hadonly to fold up the accordeon-pleated doors, push the sofa back againstthe wall, and lay a rug over the register.

  To-night she had thrown the dining-room into the poller and filled bothrooms with guests. There were so many guests that they occupied everyseat in the house, including the up-stairs chairs and a large batch ofcamp-stools from Mr. Crankshaw's, the undertaker's.

  In Carthage it was never a real party or an important funeral unlessthose perilous old man-traps of Mr. Crankshaw's appeared. They alwaysadded a dash of excitement to the dullest evening, for at a criticalmoment one of them could be depended upon to collapse beneath someguest, depositing him or her in a small but complicated woodpile on thefloor.

  Less dramatic, but even droller, was the unfailing spectacle of thesolemn man who entered a room carrying one of these stools neatlyfolded, proceeded to a chosen spot, and there attempted vainly to openthe thing. This was sure to happen at least once, and it gave anirresistibly light touch even to the funerals. The obstinacy of some ofMr. Crankshaw's camp-stools was so diabolic that it almost implied aperverse intelligence. And the one that was not to be solved generallyfell to the solemnest man in the company.

  To-night at Mrs. Shillaber's the evening might be said to be well underway; fat Mr. Geggat had already splashed through his camp-stool, andDeacon Peavey was now at work on his; a snicker had just sneezed out ofthe minister's wife (of all people!), and the Deacon himself hadbreathed 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 ofAsaph Shillaber. Josie had got him away from Birdaline, and Birdalinehad married Phin Duddy for spite, just to show certain people thatBirdaline could get married as well as other people and to prove thatPhin Duddy was not inconsolable for losing Josie, whom he had courtedbefore 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 Josiecompletely. It was Josie who did not forgive Birdaline, for Peoria haddone wonders for Phin. Everybody said that; and Birdaline also broughtalong a grown-up daughter who was evidently beautiful and, according toher mother, highly accomplished. Why, one of the leading vocal teachersin Peoria (and very highly spoken of in Chicago) had heard her sing andhad actually told her that she ought to have her voice cultivated; hehad, indeed; fact was he had even offered to cultivate it himself, andat a reduced rate from his list price, too!

  It seemed strange to Birdaline and Josie to meet after all these yearsand be jealous, not of each other, but of daughters as big as theythemselves had been the last time they had seen each other. Both womentold both women that they looked younger than ever, and each saw thepillage of time in the opposite mien, the accretion of time in the onceso gracile figure. It was melancholy satisfaction at best, for eachknew all too well how her own mirror slapped her in the face with herown image.

  When Birdaline bragged of her daughter's voice, Josie had to be loyal toher oldest girl's own piano-playing. Birdaline, perhaps with serpentinewisdom, insisted on hearing Miss Shillaber play the piano; it was sure,she thought, to render the girl unpopular. But the solo annoyed theguests hardly at all, for they could easily talk above the feeble clamorof that old Shillaber piano, in which even the needy Carthage tuner hadrefused to twist another wrest-pin these many years.

  After the piano had ceased to spatter staccato discords, and people hadapplauded politely, of course Josie had to ask Birdaline's daughter tosing. And the girl, being of the new and rather startling school ofmanners which accedes without undue urging, blushingly consented,provided there was any music there that she could sing and some onewould 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 Presbyterianprayer-meetings, was mobbed into essaying the accompa'ment. He was nogreat 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 theguests forward in a huddle like cattle at home-coming time. Even DeaconPeavey gave up his vow to open that camp-stool or die and sat down in adraught to listen. The perspiration cooled on him and he caught aterrible cold, but that was Mrs. Peavey's business, not ours.

  Miss Pamela Duddy sidled into the elbow of the piano with a mostattractive kittenishness and waited for the prelude to be done. Thisrequired some time, since the ancient sheet-music had a distressinghabit of folding over and, as it were, swooning from the rack into thepianist's arms. Besides, Mr. Maugans was so used to playing themelodeon that instead of tapping the keys he was continually squeezingthem, and nothing came. And when he wished to increase his volume oftone he would hold his hands still and slowly open his knees againstswell-levers that were not there. This earnest futility gave so muchamusement to Josie's youngest daughter that she had to be eyed out ofthe room by her mother.

  Miss Pamela saved the day by a sudden inspiration, a recollection ofwhat she had seen done by one of the leading sopranos from Indianapolisat a recital in the Star course at Peoria; Miss Pamela bent her prettyhead and took from her juvenile breast one big red rose and held it inher hands while she sang. During the final stanza she plucked away itspetals one by one and at the end let the shredded core fall upon thehighly improbable roses woven in Josie's American Wilton carpet.

  The girl's features and her attitudes were sheer Grecian; her accent wasthe purest Peoria. Now and then she remembered to insert an Italian"a," but she forgot to suppress the Italian "r," which is exactly thesame as that of Illinois, but lacks its context or prestige. Her fresh,uncultivated voice was less faithful to the key than to her exquisitethroat. To that same exquisite throat clung one fascinated eye of Mr.Maugans's, whose other orb angrily glowered at the music as if tooverawe it. Had he possessed a third eye it might have guided his handsalong the keyboard with more accuracy, but this detail could haveaffected the result but little, since his hands were incessantlycompelled to clutch the incessantly deciduous music and slap it back onthe rack.

  Two stanzas had thus been punctuated before a shy old maid named DeborahLarrabee ventured to rise and stand at the piano, supporting the music.This compelled her to a closer proximity to a nice young man than shehad known for so many years that she almost outblushed the young girl.

  Deborah was afraid to look at anybody, yet when she cast her eyesdownward she had to watch those emotional knees of Mr. Maugans's slowlyparting 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 toodead to gyrate in their distant graves. The song, therefore, hadunmitigated success, and the words were so familiar that everybody knewpretty 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 shereached 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 daughterwas the next June's bud. The softened mood of Birdaline and the tearsthat bedewed her cheeks gave her back just enough of the beauty she hadhad 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 passingsympathy that warmed her tone as she squeezed Birdaline's arm and toldher how well her daughter had sung.

  A number of matrons felt the same attar of regret in the air. They hadbeen beautiful in their days and in their ways, and now they felt likethe dismantled rose on the floor. The common tragedy of beauty belatedand foredone saddened everybody in the room; the old women hadexperienced it, the young women foresaw it, the men knew it as thedestruction of the beauties they loved or had loved. Everybody was sadbut Deborah Larrabee.

  That homely little old spinster slipped impudently into the elbow of thepiano-into the place still warm from the presence of Pamela-and sherailed at the sorrow of her schoolmates, Josie and Birdaline. Her voicewas 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 ofsummer. It's the luckiest rose in the world. The rest of 'em havebloomed too soon or just when all the other roses are blooming, or whenpeople are sort of tired of roses. But this one is saved up till thelast. And then, when the garden is all dying out and the bushes arejust 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 roseand-blooms alone!

  "It's that way in my little yard. There's always a last rose that comeswhen the rest have gone to seed, and that's the one I prize. Seems tome 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-theorthodox paid no heed to the value of the argument; they simply resentedits impudence. But all they said to Deborah was an indulgent "That'sso, Debby," and a polite "I never thought of that."

  As Deborah turned away, triumphant, to repeat what she had just said toMr. Maugans, she overheard Birdaline murmur to Josie in a kinship ofcontempt, "Poor old Debby!"

  And Josie consented: "She can't understand! She never was a rose."