.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 40016
   :PG.Title: The Last Rose of Summer
   :PG.Released: 2012-06-17
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Rupert Hughes
   :DC.Title: The Last Rose of Summer
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1914
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

=======================
THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER
=======================

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. container:: coverpage

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. _`Cover`:

   .. figure:: images/img-cover.jpg
      :align: center
      :alt: Cover

      Cover

.. container:: frontispiece

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. _`Deborah at dressing table`:

   .. figure:: images/img-front.jpg
      :align: center
      :alt: Deborah at dressing table

      Deborah at dressing table

.. vspace:: 4

.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

   .. class:: x-large

   THE LAST ROSE
   OF SUMMER

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: small

   BY

   .. class:: medium

   RUPERT HUGHES

   .. vspace:: 2

   Author of
   *What Will People Say?*

   .. vspace:: 4

   .. class:: center medium

   HARPER & BROTHERS
   NEW YORK AND LONDON
   MCMXIV 

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: verso center white-space-pre-line

   .. class:: center small

   COPYRIGHT 1914, BY HARPER AND BROTHERS
   PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
   PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1914

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center x-large

   THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER
   
.. vspace:: 3   
   
.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2
   
It was as if Birdaline and Josie had
slipped a knife under Deborah's left
slipped a knife under Deborah's left
shoulder-blade and pushed it into her
heart.  She felt a mortal wound.  She
clung to the piano and remembered
something she had overheard Birdaline say in
exactly that tone far back in that
primeval epoch when Debby had been
sixteen–as sweetless a sixteen as a girl
ever endured.

Deborah had not been pretty then, or
ever before, or since.  But she had been
a girl, and had expected to have lovers
to select a husband from.

Yet lovers were denied to Deborah.
The boys had been fond of her and nice
to her.  For Deborah was a good fellow;
she was never jealous or exacting.  She
was jolly, understood a joke, laughed a
lot, and danced well enough.  She never
whined or threatened if a fellow neglected
her or forgot to call for his dance or pay
a party-call–or anything.  She accepted
attentions as compliments, not as taxes.
Consequently she collected fewer than
she might have had.  The boys respected
her so much, too, that none of them
insulted her with flirtatiousness.  But
how her hungry heart had longed to be
insulted!  How she had yearned to fight
her way out from a strong man's
audacious arms and to writhe away from his
daring lips!

On that memorable night Josie had
given a party and Deborah had gone.
No fellow had taken her; but, then,
Josie lived just across the street from the
Larrabees, and Debby could run right
over unnoticed and run home alone
safely afterward.  Debby was safe
anywhere where it was not too dark to see
her.  Her face was her chaperon.

Asaph Shillaber took Birdaline to
Josie's party that night, and he danced
three times with Debby.  Each time–as
she knew and pretended not to know–he
had come to her because of a mix-up
in the program or because she was the
only girl left without a partner.  But a
dance was a dance, and Asaph was awful
light on his feet, for all he was so big.

After she had danced the third time
with him he led her hastily to a chair
against the stairway, deposited her like
an umbrella, and left her.  She did not
mind his desertion, but sat panting with
the breathlessness of the dance and with
the joy of having been in Asaph's arms.
Then she heard low voices on the
stairway, voices back of her, just above her
head.  She knew them perfectly.

Asaph was quarreling with Birdaline.
Birdaline was attacking Asaph because
he had danced three times with Josie.

"But she's the hostess!" Asaph had
retorted, and Birdaline snapped back:

"Then why don't she dance with some
of the other fellas, then?  Everybody's
noticing how you honey-pie round her."

"Well, I danced with Deb Larrabee
three times, too," Asaph pleaded.  "Why
don't you fuss about that?"

Deborah perked an anxious ear to hear
how Birdaline would accept this rivalry,
and Birdaline's answer fell into her ear like poison:

"Deb Larrabee!  Humph!  You can
dance with that old thing till the cows
come home, and I won't mind.  But you
can't take me to a party and dance three
times with Josie Barlow.  You can't, and
that's all.  So there!"

Asaph had a fierce way with women.
He talked back to them as if they were
men.  And now he rounded on Birdaline:
"I'll take who I please, and I'll dance
with who I please after I get there, and
if you don't like it you can lump it!"

Deborah did not linger to hear the
result of the war that was sure to be
waged.  There was no strength for
curiosity in her hurt soul.  She wanted to
crawl off into a cellar and cower in the
rubbish like a sick cat.  Birdaline's
opinion of her was a ferocious condemnation
for any woman-thing to hear.  It was her
epitaph.  It damned her, past, present,
and future.  She sneaked home without
telling anybody good-by.

She had the next dance booked with
Phineas Duddy, but she felt that he
would not remember her if he did not
see her.  And since on the next day
nobody–not even Phineas–ever mentioned
her flight, she knew that she had
not been missed.

She cried and cried and cried.  She
told her mother that she had a bad
cold, to excuse her eyes that would not
stop streaming.  She cried herself out, as
mourners do; then gradually accepted
life, as mourners do.

That was long ago, and now, after all
these years–years that had proved the
truth of Birdaline's estimate of her;
years in which Birdaline had married
Asaph out of Josie's arms, and Josie had
married Phineas out of Birdaline's
private graveyard, and both of them had
borne children and endured their
consequences–even now Deborah must hear
again the same relentless verdict as
before.  Time had not improved her or
brought her luck or lover, husband or child.

She had thought that she had grown
used to herself and her charmless lot,
but the wound began to bleed afresh.
She had the same impulse to take flight–to
play the cat in the cellar–again.  But
her escape was checked by a little excitement.

Close upon the heels of Birdaline's
unconscious affront to Deborah, Birdaline
herself received an unconscious affront.

Asaph, desiring to be hospitable and
to pay beauty its due, came forward at
the end of the song to where little
Pamela stood, receiving Carthage's
homage with all the gracious condescension
of Peoria.  And Asaph roared out in the
easy hearing of both his own wife and of
Pamela's mother:

"Well, Miss Pamela, you sang grand.
I got no ear for music, but you suit me
right down to the ground.  And you're
so dog-on pretty!  I wouldn't care if you
sang like all-get-out.  You look like your
mother did when she was your age.  You
might not think it to look at your ma
now, but in her day she was one of the
best lookers in this whole town; same
color eyes as you–and hair–and, oh,
a regular heart-breaker."

Asaph's memory of Birdaline's eyes
and hair was wrong, as a man's usually
is.  His praise was a two-edged sword of
tactlessness.

He slashed Birdaline by forgetting her
color and by implying that she retained
no traces of her beauty, and he gashed
Josie because he implied a livelier
memory of Birdaline's early graces than a
husband has any right to cherish.

Asaph had counted on doing a very
gracious thing.  When he had finished his
little oration he glanced at Birdaline for
recompense and received a glare of anger;
he turned away to Josie and received
from her eyes a buffet of wrath.  He felt
that he had made a fool of himself again,
and his ready temper was up at once.
He crossed glares with his wife, and
everybody in eye-shot instantly felt a duel
begun.  It was not going to be so dull
an evening, after all.  Even Debby
lingered to see what the result of the
Shillaber conflict would be.  She was also
checked by the evidences that
refreshments were about to be served.
Chicken-salad and ice-cream were not frequent
enough in her life to be overlooked.
Disparagement and derision were her
every-day porridge.  Ice-cream was a
party.  So she lingered.

The Shillabers' hired girl, in a clean
apron and a complete armor of blushes,
appeared at the dining-room door and
beckoned.  Josie summoned her more than
willing children to pass the plates.  She
nodded to Asaph to come and roll the
ice-cream freezer into place and scrape
off the salty ice.  Then she waylaid him
in the kitchen, and their wrangle reached
the speedily overcrowded dining-room in
little tantalizing slices as the swinging
door opened to admit or emit one of the
children.  But it always swung shut at
once.  It was like an exciting serial with
most of the instalments omitted.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2
   
The guests made desperate efforts
to pretend that they were unaware
to pretend that they were unaware
of the feud and at the same time to
follow it.  They were polite enough even
to try to ignore the salt the wrathful
Asaph had let slip into the ice-cream.

In the cheerful stampede for the
dining-room Debby had crowded into a sofa
alongside another re-visitor to the town,
Newton Meldrum, whom she had known
but slightly.  He had gone with the older
girls and had already left Carthage when
Debby came out–as far as she ever came
out before she went back.

Newt Meldrum had prospered, according
to Carthage standards.  He was now
the "credit man" for a New York wholesale
house.  Debby had not the faintest
idea what a credit man was.  But Asaph
knew all too well.  As the owner of
the largest department store in Carthage,
Asaph owed the New York house more
money than he could pay.  He gave that
as a reason for owing it still more.  The
New York house sent Meldrum out to
Carthage to see whether it would be more
profitable to close Asaph up or tide him
over another season.

Asaph's wife chose this anxious moment
to give a party to Birdaline!  Asaph
protested violently that it would make a
bad impression on Meldrum to be seen
giving parties when he could not pay his
bills.  But Josie was running a little
social business of her own, and not to
entertain Birdaline would be to go into
voluntary bankruptcy.  She could still
get the necessary things charged–and to
Josie getting a thing charged was just
a little cheaper than getting it for nothing.
It didn't put you under obligations, like
accepting gifts.  Asaph forbade her to
give the party, but of course she gave
it, anyway, and he was not brave enough
to forbid the grocer to honor her requisitions.

Asaph had to invite Meldrum, and
Josie announced that she would show
how much a wife can help her husband;
she promised to lavish on Meldrum
especial consideration and to introduce him
to some pretty girls (he was a notorious
bachelor).

She forgot him at once for her ancient
rivalry with Birdaline.  And now Asaph
forgot him in the excitement of quarrel.

Indeed, host and hostess ignored their
fatal guest so completely that they left
him to eat his supper alongside the
least-considered woman in town–poor old
"Dubby Debby."

Debby had long ago fallen out of the
practice of expecting attention from
anybody.  To-night she was so grievously
wounded that she forgot her custom of
squandering the consideration she rarely
got back.  She said nothing to her elbow
neighbor, but sat pondering her own
shame and trying to extract some
ice-cream from between the spots of salt.
A few big tears had welled to her eyelids
and dropped into her dish.  She blamed
herself for the salt.  Then she heard her
neighbor grumble:

"Say, Debby, is your ice-cream all salty?"

"Ye-es, it is," she murmured, fluttering.

"So's mine.  Funny thing, there's always
salt in the ice-cream.  Ever noticed it?"

"Tha-that's so; there usually is–a little."

"A lot!  That's life, I guess.  Poor
old Asaph!  Plenty of salt in his
ice-cream, eh?  What's the matter with that
wife of his, anyway?  Aren't they happy
together?"

"Oh, I guess they're as happy as
married folks ever are," Debby answered,
absently, and then gasped at the horrible
philosophy she had uttered.

Meldrum threw her a glance and laughed.

Debby winced.  He probably was
saying to himself, "Sour grapes!"  At least
she thought he would think that.  But
she had not meant to be foxy.  The fox
in the fable had tried to leap to the
grapes before he maligned them.  Debby
had hardly come near enough to them
or made effort enough toward them to
say that she had failed.

But Meldrum had not thought, "Sour
grapes!"  He only remembered that
"Debby" was "Debby."  In these
returns to childhood circles one rarely
knows what has happened between then
and now.  He remembered Debby as an
ugly little brat of a girl, and he saw that
she was still homely.  But plenty of
homely women were married.  He proved
his ignorance by his next words:

"You married, Debby?"

"N-no," she faltered, without daring
even to venture a "not yet."  He surprised
her shame with a laughing compliment:

"Wise lady!  Neither am I.  Shake!"

Then she turned on the sofa so that
she could see him better.  His eyes were
twinkling.  He was handsome, citified,
sleek, comfortable.  Yet he had never married!

He was holding out his hand.  And
because it commanded hers she put hers
in it, and he squeezed her long, fishy fin
in a big, warm, comfortable palm.  And
she gave her timid, smiling eyes into his
big, smiling stare and wondered why she
smiled.  But she liked it so much that
fresh tears rushed to her eyelids–little
eager, happy tears that could not have
had much salt in them, for one or two
of them bounced into her ice-cream.  Yet
it did not taste bitter now.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2
   
Asaph came in then and looked
around the room with defiant eyes
around the room with defiant eyes
that dared anybody to be uncomfortable.
He recognized Meldrum with a start, and
realized that the most important guest
had been left to Deb Larrabee, of all
people.  This misstep might mean ruin
to him.  His anger changed to anxiety,
and he made haste to carry Meldrum
away.  He was inspired to present him
to Pamela.

Deborah, abandoned on the sofa,
studied Pamela with wonder.  How
beautiful the child was!  How she drew the
men!  How their eyes fed upon her!
How she queened it in her little court!
Everywhere she went it must be so.  In
Peoria they must have gathered about
her just as here.  They must be missing
her in Peoria now.  When she went back
they would be glad.  Or if she went on
to Chicago men would gather about her
there–or in Omaha, or Council Bluffs,
or Toledo–anywhere!

It was manifest enough why the men
gathered about the girl.  She delighted
the senses.  She improved the view.  She
was the view.  Suavity of contour,
proportion of feature, silkiness of texture,
felicity of tint; every angle masked with
a curve, every joint small and included,
desirableness, cuddlesomeness, kissableness,
warmth, and all the things that make
up loveliness were Pamela's.

The contrast between herself and
Pamela was so cruel that Deborah's
heart rebelled.  She demanded of Heaven:
"Why so much to her and none to me?
My mother was as good as her mother,
and better-looking in her day; and my
father was a handsome man.  Why was
I made at all if not well made?  Why
allowed to live if not fit for life?  My
elder sister that died was more beautiful
than Pamela, but she died.  Why couldn't
I have died in her place, or taken the
beauty she laid aside as I wore her
cast-off clothes?  Yet I live, and I shall never
be married, shall never be a mother, shall
never be of any use or any beauty.  Why?  Why?"

Bitter, bitter were her thoughts as she
sat with her plate in her lap.  She hardly
noticed when Josie took the plate away.
She fell into an almost sleep of reverie
and woke with a start to find that
everybody else was crowding forward to hear
Pamela sing.  She was repeating "The
Last Rose" by request.  Mr. Maugans
had said he would like another whack at
that accompa'ment.

Debby felt again that stab of
Birdaline's–"Poor Debby!  She never was a rose."

She could not bear to remain.  She
tiptoed from the dining-room, unnoticed,
and went out at the side-door, drawing
her shawl over her head.  She must
sneak home alone as usual.  Thank
Heaven, it was only a block and the
streets were black.

As she reached the front gate she met
a man who had just come down from the
porch.  It was Meldrum.  He peered at
her in the dim light of the street-lamp
and called out:

"That you, Debby?  Couldn't you
stand it any longer?  Neither could I.
That girl is a peach to look at, but she
can't sing for sour apples; and as for
brains, she's a nut, a pure pecan!  I
guess I'm too old or not old enough to be
satisfied with staring at a pretty hide
on a pretty frame.  Which way you
going?  I'll walk along with you if you
don't mind."

If she didn't mind!  Would Lazarus
object if Dives sat down on the floor beside
him and brought along his trencher?

Debby was so bewildered that the
sidewalk reeled beneath her intoxicated
feet.  She stumbled till Meldrum took
her hand and set it in the crook of his
arm, and she trotted along as meek as
Tobias with the angel.

All, all too soon they reached her house.
But he paused at the gate.  She dared
not invite him even to the porch.

If her mother heard a man's voice there
she would probably open the window
upstairs and shriek: "Murder!  Thieves!  Help!"

So Debby waited at the gate while
the almost invisible Meldrum chattered
on.  She was so afraid that he would go
every next minute that she hardly heard
what he said.  But he had only a hotel
room ahead of him.  He was used to
late hours.  He was in a mood for talk.
The paralyzed Debby was a perfect
listener, and in that intense dark she was
as beautiful as Cleopatra would have been.

To her he was solely a voice, a voice
of strange cynicisms, yet of strange
comfort to her.  He was laughing at the
people she held in awe. "This town's a
joke to me," he said.  "It's a side-show
full of freaks."  And he mocked the
great folk of the village as if they were
yokels.  He laughed at their customs.
He ridiculed many, many things that
Debby had believed and suffered from
believing.  He ridiculed married people
and marriage from the superior heights
of one who could have married many and
had rejected all.  It was strangely
pleasant hearing to her who had observed
marriage from the humble depths of one
whom all had rejected.  He talked till he
heard the town clock whine eleven times,
then he said:

"Good Lord!  I didn't know it was
so late.  I must have talked your arm
off, Debby.  I don't get these moods
often.  It takes a mighty good listener
to loosen me up.  Good night!  Don't
let any of these fellows bunco you into
marrying 'em.  There's nothing in it,
Debby.  Take it from me.  Good night."

She felt rather than saw that he lifted
his hat.  She felt again his big hand
enveloping hers, and she answered its
squeeze with a desperate little clench of
her own.

He left her wonderfully uplifted.  Now
she felt less an exile from marriage than
a rebel.  She almost convinced herself
that she had kept out of matrimony
because she was too good for it.  The
solitary cell of her bed was a queenly dais
when she crept into it.  She dreamed that
General Kitchener asked for her hand and
she refused it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2
   
Meldrum's cynicisms had been
strangely opportune to the
strangely opportune to the
despondent old maid.  He unwittingly
helped her over a deep ditch and got
her past a bad night.

But when she woke, the next morning
was but the same old resumption of the
same old day.  Poverty, loneliness, and
the inanity of a manless household were
again her portion.  The face she washed
explained to her why she was not sought
after by the men.  The hair she combed
and wadded on her cranium clouded with
no romance even in her own eyes.  She
realized that she was not loved for the
simple reason that she was not lovely.
She had never been a rose, and men did
not pluck dog-fennel to wear.  And the
camomile could never become a
marguerite by wishing to be one.

Debby haled her awkward self out of
her humble cot, out of her coarse and
frilless nightgown, into her matter-of-fact
clothes, and slumped down to a chill,
bare kitchen.  There she made a fire in
a cold stove, that she might warm up
oatmeal and fry eggs and petrify a few
slices of bread into a scratchy toast.

Not hearing her mother's slippers flap
and shuffle on the stairs as usual, she
climbed again to learn the cause.  She
found her mother filled with rheumatism
and bad news.  A letter had come the
day before, and she had concealed it from
Deborah so that the child might have a
nice time at the party; and did she have
a nice time, and who was there?  But
that could wait, for never was there such
news as she had now, and there was
never any let-up in bad luck, and them
with no man to lean on or turn to.

When Deborah finally pried the letter
from the poor old talons she found an
announcement that the A.G.&St.P.Ry. would
pass its dividend this year.  To
the Larrabees the A.G.&St.P. had
always been the most substantial thing
in the world next to the Presbyterian Church.

Deborah's father had said that his
death-bed was cheered by the fact that
he had left his widow and his child several
shares of that soulful corporation's stock.
He called it the "Angel Gabriel &
St. Peter Railway."  The dividend was as
sure as flowers in June.  It had never
failed, and the Larrabee women always
spent it before it was paid.  They had
pledged it this year.

If they had followed the stock-market,
of which they had hardly heard, they
would have known that the railroad's
shares had fallen from 203 to 51 in two
years and that the concern was
curving gracefully toward a receivership.  The
two women breakfasted that morning on
cold dismay and hot flashes of terror.
The few hundred dollars that had come
to them like semi-annual manna and
quails would not drop down this year,
perhaps not next year, or ever again.
Their creditors would probably throw
them into the town jail.  The poorhouse
would be a paradise.

In her distraction Debby had an
impulse to consult Newt Meldrum.  She
hurried to Shillaber's Bazar, hoping he
might be there.  Asaph met her himself
and told her that Newt had gone back
to New York on an early train.  Debby
broke down and told of her plight.  She
supposed that she would have to go
to work at once somewhere.  But what
could she do?

Asaph was feeling amiable; he had
won a reprieve from Meldrum and had
made it up with his wife in private for
the public quarrel.  His heart melted at
the thought of helping poor old Dubby
Debby, whom everybody was fond of in
a hatefully unflattering way.  He had
helped other gentlewomen in distress,
and now he dumfounded Debby by saying,
"Why don't you clerk here, Debby?"

"Why, I couldn't clerk in a store!"
she gasped, terrified.  "I don't know the
least thing about it."

"You'd soon learn the stock, and the
prices are all marked in plain letters that
you can memorize easy.  You've got a
lot of friends, and we give a commission
on all the sales over a certain amount.
Better try it."

Debby felt now, for the first time,
all the sweet panic that most women
undergo with their first proposal.  This
offer of the job of saleswoman was as
near as Debby had come to being offered
the job of helpmeet.  She even
murmured, "This is so sudden," and, "I'll
have to ask mama."  It was an epoch-making
decision, a terrible leap from the
stagnant pool of the Larrabee cottage
to the seething maelstrom of Shillaber's
Bazar.  She went home to her mother
with the thrilling, the glorious news that
henceforth she could acquire all of five
dollars a week by merely being present
at Shillaber's for twelve hours or so a
day, except Sat'days, when the store was
open evenings till the last possible
customer had gone home to bed.  Mrs. Larrabee
apologized to Heaven for doubting
its watchfulness, commended Asaph
Shillaber to its attention, and bespoke for
him a special invoice of blessings.

And Asaph went home to his midday
dinner as cheerfully as if he had received
them.  First he announced the good word
about Meldrum's leniency, which Josie
greeted with:

"You see!  I told you that the party
would be the proper caper.  Maybe after
this you'll believe that your wife knows
a thing or two."

Asaph assured her that he would never
doubt that she knew at least that much.
Then, like the wag he was, he said that
he had added a new clerk to his staff–a
lady and a beauty, whose charms would
draw no end of custom to the store and
dazzle the drummers from far and near.

Josie's facile temper flashed at once
into glow.  One of her chief interests in
the Bazar had been to make sure that
it never harbored any saleswoman whose
beauty could possibly lure her husband's
mind from his ledgers or his home ties.
Under the pretext of purchases or
suggestions she made frequent tours of
inspection, and if a girl too young or a
pair of eyes too bright gleamed behind a
counter Asaph heard of it at once.  Some
years before he had bowed to the
inevitable and made it a rule to engage no
woman who could imaginably disturb
Josie's delicate equipoise.

Meldrum had noticed the strange
array and had been inclined to impute the
decline of the store's prosperity to the
appearance of its staff.

"Good Lord, Ase!" he had groaned.
"What you got here–the overflow of
the Home for Aged and Indignant
Females?  You've collected a bunch of
clock-stoppers that makes a suffragette
meeting look like a Winter Garden chorus.
People like those can't sell pretty things.
Send 'em all to the bone-yard and get
in some winners."

Asaph promised, and Meldrum
promised to arrange an extension of credit.
But Asaph would have feared bankruptcy
less than such a step.  As soon as
Meldrum was gone he put the cap-sheaf
to his little army of relicts and remnants
by engaging Debby Larrabee!  She made
the rest look handsome by contrast.

She was the joke that he tried to
spring on his wife.  Josie took the allusion
seriously, and Asaph was soon trying to
hold her down.

"Wait!  Wait till you hear who it
is!" he pleaded; but she stormed on:

"I don't care who it is.  I'm not going
to have you exposed to the wiles of any
of those designing minxes.  I won't have
her, I tell you."

At length he shouted above the din:
"I was only joking.  It's Debby
Larrabee!  I've engaged Debby Larrabee!
They've lost all their money."

When Josie understood, she saw the
joke.  She began to laugh with hysterics,
to slap and push her husband about
hilariously.  "Aw, you old fraud, you!
So you've engaged Dubby Debby!  Well,
you can keep her.  I don't care how late
you stay at the store as long as Debby's
there."

Deborah was fortunate enough not to
overhear this.  In fact, the long drought
in Debby's good luck seemed to be
ending.  The skies over her grew dark with
the abundance of merciful rain.  A gentle
drizzle preceded the cloudburst.  There
usually is a deluge after a drought.

A few days later found Debby installed
in the washable silks.  The change in her
environment was complete.  Instead of
dozing through a nightmare of ineptitude
in the doleful society of her old mother
in a dismal home where almost nobody
ever called, and never a man, now she
stood all day on the edge of a stream of
people; she chattered breezily all day to
women in search of beautiful fabrics.
She handled beautiful fabrics.  Her
conversation was a procession of adjectives
of praise.

Trying to live up to her surroundings,
she took thought of her appearance.
Dealing in fashions, with fashion-plates
as her scriptures, she tried to get in
touch with the contemporary styles.  She
bounded across eight or ten periods at
one leap.  First she found that she could
at least put up her hair as other women
did.  The revolution in her appearance
was amazing.  Next she retrimmed her
old hat, reshaped her old skirt–drew it
so tightly about her ankles that she was
forced to the tremendous deed of slitting
it up a few inches so that she could at
least walk slowly.  The first time her
mother noticed it she said:

"Why, Debby, what on earth!  That
skirt of yours is all tore up the side."

Debby explained it to her with the
delicious confusion of a Magdalen
confessing her entry upon a career of
profligacy.  Her mother almost fainted.  Debby
had gone wrong at this late day!  She
had heard that department-stores were
awful places for a girl.  The papers had
been full of minimum wages and things.

Worse yet, Debby began to attitudinize,
to learn the comfort of poses.  She
must be forever holding pretty things
forward.  She took care of her hands,
polished her nails.  Now and then she
must drape a piece of silk across her
shoulder and dispose her rigid frame into
curves.  She began to talk of "lines"
to cold-cream her complexion.

The mental change in her was no less
thorough.  Activity was a tonic.  Her
patience was compelled to school itself.
Prosperity lay in unfaltering courtesy,
untarnished cheer.  Cynicism does not sell
goods.  All day long she was praising
things.  Enthusiasm became her instinct.

Few men swam into her ken, but in
learning to satisfy the exactions of women
she built up tact.  She had long since
omitted malekind from her life and her
plan of life.  She was content.  Women
liked her; women lingered to talk with
her; they asked her help in their vital
struggle for beauty.  It was enough.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2
   
One morning, as she was making
ready to go to the store, and taking
ready to go to the store, and taking
much time at the process, she observed
at her forehead a white hair.  It
startled her, frightened her for a moment;
then she laughed.

"Why, I'm growing old!"

What use had she for youth?  It had
never been kind to her.  All the loss of
it meant was that it might harm her a
little at the store.  She plucked out the
white thread and forgot it–nearly.

Another day there was another white
hair.  She removed that, too.  Then
came another, and others, swiftly, till she
was afraid to take any more away.

At last there was a whole gray lock.
She tucked it in and pinned it beneath
the nondescript mass of her coiffure.  It
would have terrified her more if she had
not been so busy.  She chattered and
proffered her wares all day long.  Hunger
became one of her most sincere emotions.
Fatigue wore her out but strengthened
her, sweetened her sleep, kept dreams
away.  When she woke she must hurry,
hurry to the store.  The old stupidity of
her life had given way to an eternal hurry.

And now the white hairs were hurrying,
too, like the snowflakes that suddenly
fill the air.  But with this snow
came the quickening of pulse and glistening
of eyes, the reddening of cheeks that
the snow brings.

The white fell about her hair as if she
stood bareheaded in a snow-storm.  There
was a kind of benediction in it.  She felt
that it softened something about her face,
as the snow softens old rubbish-heaps and
dreary yards and bleak patches.

People began to say, "How well you
look, Debby!"  They began to dignify her
as "Deborah" or "Miss Larrabee."  Her
old contemners came to her counter with
a new meekness.  Age was making it
harder and harder for them to keep the
pace.  Bright colors did not become them
any longer.  Their petals were falling
from them, the velvet was turning to
plush, and the plush losing its nap,
rusting, sagging, wearing through.  The
years, like moths, were gnawing, gnawing.

Debby felt so sorry for the women who
had been beautiful.  She could imagine
how the decay of rosehood must hurt.
It is not necessary to have been Napoleon
to understand Elba.

.. vspace:: 2

One day a sad, heavy figure dragged
along Deborah's aisle and sank upon the
mushroom stool in front of her.  Deborah
could hardly believe that it was Josie
Shillaber.  She could hardly force back
the shock that leaped to her expression.
From thin, white lips crumpled with
pain came a voice like a rustling of dead
leaves in a November gust.  And the
voice said, with a kind of envy in it:

"Why, Deborah, how well you look!"

"Oh, I am well!" Deborah chanted,
then repressed her cheer unconsciously.
It was not tactful to be too well.  "That
is, I'm tol'able.  And how are you this
awful weather?"

"Not well, Debby.  I'm not a bit well;
no, I'm never well any more.  Why, your
hair is getting right white, isn't it, dear?
But it's real becoming to you.  Mine
is all gray, too, you see, but it's awful!"

"Indeed it's not!  It's fine!  Your
children must love it.  Don't they?"

"Oh, the children!" Josie wailed.
"What do they think of me?  The grown
ones are away, all flirting and getting
married.  They say they'll come back,
but they never do.  But I don't care.
I don't want them to see me like this.
And the young ones are so selfish and
inconsiderate.  It's awful, getting old,
isn't it, Debby?  It don't seem to worry
you, though.  I suppose it's because you
haven't had sorrow in your life as I have.
I'm looking for something to wear,
Debby.  The styles aren't what they
used to be.  There's not a thing fit to
wear to a dog-fight in these new colors.
What are people coming to?  I can't
find a thing to wear.  What would you
suggest?  Do help me!"

Deborah emptied the shelves upon the
counter, sent to the stock-room for new
shipments that had not been listed yet,
ransacked the place; but there was
nothing there for the woman whose husband
owned it all.  The physician's wife was
sick with time, and even he could not
cure her of that.  The draper's wife was
turning old; he could not swaddle her
from the chill of that winter.  Josie was
trying to dress up a rose whose petals
had fallen, whose sepals were curled back;
the husk could not endure colors that
the blossom had honored.

Josie, however, would not acknowledge
the inevitable autumn; she would not grow
old with the grace of resignation.  She
limped from the store, shaking her
unlovely head.  Could this be Josie
Shillaber, who had romped through life with
beauty in and about everything she was
and wore and did?

Deborah could have moralized over
her as Hamlet over Yorick's skull: Where
be your petal cheeks, your full, red lips,
your concise chin, and that long, lithe
throat, and those pearly shoulders, and
all that high-breasted, spindle-hipped,
lean-limbed girlishness of yours?  And
where your velocity, your tireless
laughter, your amorous enterprise?

Could they have ever been a part of
this cumberer of the ground, creeping
almost as slowly and heavily as a vine
along a cold, gray wall.

Deborah's hand went to her heart,
where there was an ache of pity for one
who had never pitied her.  It was
Deborah now that was almost girlish of form;
she was only now filling out, taking flesh
upon her bones and rhythm into her
members.  And that scrawny chicken-chest
of hers was becoming worthy of that
so beautiful name for so dear a place; she
was gaining a bosom.  She did not know
how the whimsical sultan Time had
shifted his favor to her from his other slaves.

She knew only that Josie was in
disgrace with beauty and stared after her
in wet-eyed pity.  Who can feel so sorry
for a fallen tyrant as the risen victim
of tyranny?

A few weeks later Deborah went again
to the Shillaber house, sat again on the
sofa in the dining-room.  The children
had all come home.  Josie was in the
parlor, almost hidden in flowers.  She
did not rise to receive her guests.  They
all filed by and looked at her and shook
their heads.  She did not answer with
a nod.  Birdaline wept over her, looking
older and terrified.  But Pamela was
wonderfully pretty in black.  She sang
Josie's favorite hymn, "Jesus, lover of my
soul," with a quartet accompanying her.
Then the preacher said a few words and prayed.

Mr. Crankshaw was there, and so were
his camp-stools.  One of them had
collapsed, and the bass of the choir had
been unable to open his.  Some of the
young people giggled, as always.  But
even for them the laughter was but the
automatic whir of a released spring, and
there was no mirth in the air.

Deborah was filled with a cowering
awe, as one who sees a storm rush past
and is unhurt save by the vision of
its wreckage.  The girl Pamela had sung
here a year or so ago that song to the
rose, and had shredded the flower and
ruined it and tossed it aside.  So time
had sung away the rose that had been
Josie.  Deborah had heard the rose cry
out in its agony of dissolution, and now
it was fallen from the bush, scentless and
dead.  But it had left at least other
buds to replace it.  That was more than
Deborah had ever done.

The store was closed the day of the
funeral, and Deborah went home with
her mother.  All that her mother could
talk about was:

"Poor Josie!  But did you see Birdaline?
My, how poorly she looks!  And
so kind of scared.  And she used to be
such a nice-looking girl!  My, how she
has aged!  Poor Josie!  But Birdaline!
What was she so scared about?"

It was the very old triumphing over
the old for meeting the same fate.  In
her own summer Mrs. Larrabee had been
a rose and had shriveled on the stem.

That night Deborah thanked God that
He had not lent her beauty.  Its
repayment was such ruin.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2
   
The next morning the Bazar was
open at the regular hour.  Shoppers
open at the regular hour.  Shoppers
came as numerously as before.  People
were as eager as ever to enhance their
charms or disguise their flaws.  In a few
days Asaph Shillaber was again in his
office.  He wore black always, and a
black tie, and he moved about with
mourning in his manner.

A month later his cravat was brown,
not black, and the next week it was red.
He was taking more care of his costume.
He talked more with the women
customers, especially the young women, and
he did not keep his eye anxiously on
the front door.  He rubbed his hands
once more, recommending his goods.

In a few months younger girls were
behind many of the counters.  Deborah
felt that youth was invading and
replacing.  She wondered how soon her
turn would come.  It would be a sad
day, for she loved the work.

But she took some reassurance from
the praises of Asaph.  He paused now
and then to compliment her on a sale
or her progress.  He led up to her some
of his most particular customers and
introduced her with a flourish.
Sometimes he paused as he went down the
aisle, and turned back to stare at her.
She knew that she had blushed, because
her face was hot, and once
Mrs. Crankshaw, who was trying to match a
sample, whispered to her:

"Say, Deborah, what kind of rouge do
you use?  It gives you the nicest color,
and it looks like real."

When Deborah denied that she painted,
the undertaker's wife was angry.
She thought Deborah was trying to
copyright her complexion.  Deborah's
cheeks tactfully turned pale again,
now that Asaph had taken his strange
eyes from her, and now the woman said:

"You're right; it's your own.  It
comes and goes!  Look, now it's coming
back again."

And so was Asaph.  When Mrs. Crankshaw
had moved off Asaph hung about
awkwardly.  Finally he put the backs of
his knuckles on the counter and leaned
across to murmur:

"Say, Debby, I was telling Jim Crawford
yesterday that you made more sales
than any other clerk in the shop this
last month."

"Oh, really, did I?" Deborah gasped,
her eyes snapping like electric sparks.
They seemed to jolt Asaph; he fell back
a little.  Then he leaned closer.

"Crawford said he'd like to have you
in his store.  I told him you were a
fixture here.  Don't you leave me, Debby.
You won't, will you?"

"Why, Asaph!" she cried.

"Leastways, you'll let me know any
offer you get before you take it.  You
can promise me that, can't you?"

"Of course I will, but–  Well, I never!"

This last was true.  She never had
known till now that superlative rapture
of a woman, to have one man trying to
take her away from another.  Debby
had not known it even as a little girl,
for if two boys claimed the same
dance–which had happened rarely enough–they
did not wrangle and fight, but each
yielded to the other with a courtesy that
was odious.

On her way home Deborah began to
doubt the possibility of it all.  Asaph
had been talking about somebody else,
or he had been joking–he was such a
terrible fellow to cook up things and fool
people!  Or else Jim Crawford was just
making fun of Asaph.  She would not
tell her mother this news.

That night, as she was washing the
dishes after her late supper, the door-bell
burred.

"You go, mother, will you?  My hands
are all suds."

Mrs. Larrabee hobbled slowly to the
hall door, but came back with a burst
of unsuspected speed.  She was pale
with fright.

"It's a man!" she whispered.

"A man!  Who could it be?" Debby gasped.

"One of those daylight burglars,
prob'ly.  What 'll we do?"

"We could run out the back door
while he's at the front."

"He might have a confederut waiting
to grab us there."

"That's so!"

What possible motive a burglar could
have for grabbing these two women,
what possible value they would have for
him, they did not inquire.  But Debby,
in the new executive habit of her mind,
grew bold enough to take at least a peek
at the stranger.

The bell continued to ring while she
tiptoed into the parlor and lifted the
shade slightly aside.  She speedily
recognized a familiar suit.

"It's old Jim Crawford," she said.

There was a panic of another sort now,
getting Debby's hands dry, her sleeves
down, her apron off, her hair puffed, the
lamp in the parlor lighted.  Old Jim
Crawford was some minutes older before
he was admitted.

It was the first male caller Deborah
had had since her mother could remember.
The old lady received him with a
flourish that would have befitted a king.
That he was a widower and, for Carthage,
wealthy may have had something to do
with it.  A fantastic hope that at last
somebody had come to propose to
Deborah excited her mother so that she took
herself out of the way as soon as the
weather had been decently discussed.

Mr. Crawford made a long and
ponderous effort at small talk and came
round to his errand with the subtlety of
an ocean liner warping into its slip.  At
length he mumbled that if Miss Debby
ever got tired of Shillaber's there was a
chance he might make a place for her
in his own store.  O' course, times was
dull, and he had more help 'n he'd any
call for, but he was a man who believed
in bein' neighborly to old friends, and,
knowin' her father and all–

It was such a luxury to Deborah to be
sought after, even with this hippopotamine
stealth, that she rather prolonged
the suspense and teased Crawford to an
offer, and to an increase in that before
she told him that she would have to
"think it over."

He lingered on the porch steps to
offer Deborah "anything within reason,"
but she still told him she would think it
over.  When she thought it over she felt
that it would be base ingratitude to
desert Asaph Shillaber, who had saved
her from starvation by taking her into
his beautiful shop.  No bribe should
decoy her thence so long as he wanted her.

She did not even tell Asaph about it the
next day.  A week later he asked her if
Crawford had spoken to her.  She said
that he had mentioned the subject, but
that, of course, she had refused to
consider leaving the man who had done
everything in the world for her.

This shy announcement seemed to
exert an immense effect on Asaph.  He
thanked her as if she had saved his life.
And he stared at her more than ever.

A few evenings later there was another
ring at the Larrabee bell.  This time
Mrs. Larrabee showed no alarm except
that she might be late to the door.  It
was Asaph!  He was as sheepish as a
boy.  He said that it was kind of
lonesome over to his house and, seeing their
light, he kind of thought he'd drop
round and be a little neighborly.
Everybody was growing more neighborly nowadays.

Once more Mrs. Larrabee vanished.
As she sat in the dining-room, pretending
to knit, she thought how good it was to
have a man in the house.  The rumble of
a deep voice was so comfortable that
she fell asleep long before Asaph could
bring himself to going home.

He had previously sought diversion in
the society of some of the very young and
very pretty salesgirls in his store, but he
found that, for all their graces, their
prattle bored him.  They talked all
about themselves or their friends.  Debby
talked to Asaph about Asaph.  He and
she had been children together–they
were of the same generation; she was a
sensible woman, and she had learned
much at the counter-school.  He got to
dropping round right often.

That long-silent door bell became a
thing to listen for of evenings.  Jim
Crawford dropped round now and then; the
elderly floor-walker at Shillaber's dropped
round one night and talked styles and
fabrics and gossip in a cackling voice.
When he had left, the matchmaker's
instinct led Mrs. Larrabee to warn Debby
not to waste her time on him.  "Two
old maids talkin' at once is more'n I
can stand."

Three times that year Newt Meldrum
was in town and called on Deborah.
She asked him to supper once, and he
simply raved over the salt-rising biscuits
and the peach-pusserves.  After supper
he asked if he might smoke.  That was
the last word in masculine possession.
If frankincense and myrrh had been
shaken about the room Debby and
Mrs. Larrabee could not have cherished them
as they did the odor of tobacco in the
curtains next day.  Mrs. Larrabee cried
a little.  Her husband had smoked.

Deborah was only now passing through
the stages the average woman travels in
her teens and early twenties, Deborah
was having callers.  Sometimes two men
came at once and tried to freeze each
other out.  And finally she had a
proposal!–from Asaph!–from Josie's and
Birdaline's Asaph!  They had left him
alone with Debby once too often.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII
   
.. vspace:: 2

It was not a romantic wooing, and
Asaph was not offering the first love
Asaph was not offering the first love
of a bachelor heart.  He was a
trade-broken widower with a series of assorted
orphans on his hands.  And his declaration
was dragged out of him by jealousy
and fear.

Jim Crawford, after numerous failures
to decoy Deborah, had at last offered
her the position of head saleswoman;
this included not only authority and
increase of pay, but two trips a year
to New York as buyer!

Deborah's soul hungered to make that
journey before she died, but she put even
this temptation from her as an ingratitude
to Asaph.  Still, when Asaph called
the next evening it amused her to tell
him that she was going to transfer herself
to Crawford's–just to see what he would
say and to amuse him.  Her trifling
joke brought a drama down on her head.

Asaph turned pale, gulped: "You're
going to leave me, Deborah!  Why, I–I
couldn't get along without you.  I don't
know what I'd do if I couldn't talk to
you all the time.  Jim Crawford's in love
with you, the old scoundrel!  But I won't
let you marry him.  I got a nicer house
than what he has for you to live in, too.
There's the childern, of course, but you
like childern.  They'd love you.  They
need mothering something awful.  I been
meaning to ask you to marry me, but
I was afraid to.  But I couldn't let you
go.  You won't, will you?  I want you
should marry me–right off.  You will,
won't you?"

Deborah stared at him agape.  Then
she cried: "Asaph Shillaber, are you
proposing to me or quarreling with me–which?"

"I'm proposin' to you, darn it, and I
won't take 'No' for an answer."

Deborah had often wondered what she
would say if the impossible should
happen and a man should ask for her hand.
And now it had come in the unlikeliest
way, and what she said was:

"Sakes alive!  Ase, one of us must be crazy!"

Asaph was in a panic; and he besieged
and besought till she told him she would
think it over.  The sensation was too
delicious to be finished with an immediate
monosyllable.  He went away blustering.
Her mother had slept through the
cataclysm.  Deborah postponed telling her,
and went to her room in a state of ecstatic
distress.

Her room was prettier than it had
been, and the bureau was more bravely
equipped.  It was a place of interesting
mystery; there were curling-irons and
skin-foods and nail-powders, and what not?

Now she was asked to give up this
loneliness, this lifelong privacy, with its
blessing and its bane, to move over into
a man's house and share his room and
her life with him.

Only, now she was asked this at the
period when many women were returning
to a second spinstership and one of her
friends, who had married young and
whose daughter had married young, was
a grandmother.  Deborah was experiencing
the terror that assails young brides,
the dread of the profoundest revolution
in woman's life.  Only in her case the
terror was the greater from the double
duration of her maidenhood.  She was
still a girl, and yet gray was in her hair.

The thought of marriage was almost
intolerably fearful, and yet it was almost
intolerably beautiful.

How wonderful that she should be
asked to marry the ideal of her youth–she,
the laughing-stock of the other girls;
and now she could have a husband, a
home, and children of various ages, from
the little tot to the grown-ups.  She
would never have babies of her own, she
supposed, but she could acquire them
ready-made.  All her stifled domestic
instincts flamed at the new empire offered her.

And then she remembered Josie and
Josie's sneer: "Poor old Debby.  She
never was a rose."

And now Josie was dead a year and
more, and Josie's children and Josie's
lover were submitted to her to take or
leave.  What a revenge it would be!
What a squaring of old accounts!  How
she would turn the laugh back on them!
How well she could laugh who waited to
the last!

Then she shook her head.  What had
she to do with revenge?  What meaner
advantage could anybody take than to
flaunt a dead enemy's colors?  We can
all deal sharply with our friends, but
we must be magnanimous with our foes.

No, it was impossible.  Josie had
suffered enough in the ebb of her beauty.
Debby could not strike at her in her grave.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2
   
She waited to announce her decision
till Asaph should call again.  Then
till Asaph should call again.  Then
she told him what she had decided, but
not why.  He suspected every other
reason except the truth.  He was always
a quick, hard fighter, and now Deborah
had to endure what Josie had endured
all her life.  He denounced her,
threatened her, cajoled her, pleaded with her,
but Josie's ghost chaperoned the two,
forbade the banns, seemed to whisper,
"His bad temper was what ruined my beauty."

The next day in the store Asaph looked
wretched.  Deborah grew the more
desirable for her denial.  He had thought
that he had but to ask her; and now
she refused his beseeching.  He paused
before her counter and begged her to
reconsider.

He called at her home every evening.
He went to her mother and implored her
aid.  The poor old soul could hardly
believe her ears when she heard that
Deborah was not only desired, but
difficult.  She promised Asaph that Deborah
would yield, and he went away happy.

There was a weird conflict in the
forsaken house that night.  The old pictures
nearly fell off the walls at the sight of
the stupefied mother trying to compel
that lifelong virgin to the altar.
Mrs. Larrabee pointed out that there would
never be another chance.  The
A.G.&St.P.Ry. was in the receiver's hands.
They would starve if Deborah lost her job.

Deborah's only answer was that she
would go to Crawford's.  Her mother
could not shake her decision, and
hobbled off to bed in senile dismay.  She
had always been asking what the world
was coming to, and now it was there.
Deborah's heart was a whirlpool of
indecision.  Asaph's gloom appalled her,
his evident need of her was his one
unanswerable argument.  He had given
her her start in life.  How could she
desert his store, how could she refuse
him his prayer?  But how could she
take Josie's place, kidnap Josie's children?
Why was such a puzzle forced upon her,
where every decision was cruel to some
one, treacherous to something?

The turmoil made such a din in her
soul that she could hardly transact the
business at her counter.  As she stood
one morning asking a startled shopper
if a bolt of maroon taffeta matched a
clipping of magenta satin, she saw
Newton Meldrum enter the store.  As he
went by to the office he saw her, lifted
his hat, held it in air while he gazed, then
went on.

It occurred to Deborah that he could
help her.  She could lay the case before
him, and he would give her an impartial
decision.  She waited for him, and when
he left the office she beckoned to him
and asked him shyly if he would take
supper with her and her mother.

"You bet I will!" he said, and stared
at her so curiously that she flashed red.

Through the supper, too, he stared at
her so hard that she buttered her thumb
instead of her salt-rising biscuit.
Afterward she led him to the parlor and closed
the door on her mother.  This was in
itself an epoch-making deed.  Then she
said to Newt: "Better light the longest
cigar you have, for I have a long story
to tell you.  Got a match?"

He had, but he said he hadn't.  She
fetched one, and was so confused that
she lighted it for him.  Her hand
trembled till he had to steady it with his
own big fingers, and he stared at her
instead of at the match, whose flickering
rays lighted her face eerily.

When she had him settled in a chair–the
best patent rocker it was–she told
him her story.  There is no surer test of
character than the problem a mind
extracts from a difficulty.  As Meldrum
watched this simple, starved soul
stating its bewilderment he saw that her one
concern was what she should do to be
truest to other souls.  There was no
question of her own advantage.

He studied her earnestly, and his eyes
were veiled with a kind of smoke of their
own behind the scarf of tobacco-fumes.
When she had finished she raised her
eyes to his in meek appeal and
murmured, "And now what ought I to do?"

He gazed at her a long while before he
answered, "Do you want to go to Crawford's?"

"Well, I'd get more money and I'd
get to see New York, but I don't like to
leave Asaph.  He says he needs me."

"Do you–do you want to marry Asaph?"

"Oh no! I–I like him awfully much,
but I–I'm kind of afraid of him, too.
But he says he needs me; and Josie's
children need me, he says."

"But do you–l-love Asaph?"

"Oh no!  not the kind of love, that
is, that you read about.  No, I'm kind
of afraid of him.  But I'm not expecting
the kind of love you read about.  I'm
wondering what I ought to do?"

"And you want me to decide?"

"If you only would."

"Why do you leave it to me, of all people?"

"Because you're such a fine man; you
know so much.  I have more–more respect
for you than for anybody else I know."

"You have!"

"Oh yes!  Oh yes, indeed!"

"And you'll do what I tell you to?"

"Ye-yes, I will."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"Give me your hand on it."

He rose and stood before her and put
forth that great palm of his, and she
set her slim white fingers in it.  And then
there must have been an earthquake or
something, for suddenly she was swept
to her feet and she was enveloped in
his big arms and crushed against him,
and his big mouth was pressed so
fiercely to hers that she could not breathe.

She was so frightened that her heart
seemed to break.  And then she knew
nothing till she found herself in the
patent rocker, with him kneeling at her
side, pleading with her to forgive him
for the brute he was.

She was very weak and very much
afraid of him and entirely bewildered.
She wanted to run away, but he would
not let her rise.  The only thing that
eased her was his saying over and over
again, "You are the most beautiful thing
in this world."

She had to laugh at that, and she
heard herself saying, "Why, Newt
Meldrum, one of us must be crazy!"

"I am–crazy with love of you."

"But to call me beautiful–poor old Debby!"

"You are beautiful; you're the
handsomest woman I know."

"Me–with my white hair!"

"White roses.  I don't know what's
happened to you.  You're not the woman
I talked to at Asaph's, at all.  You're
like a girl–with silver hair–only
you've got a woman's big heart, and you
haven't the selfishness of the young,
but that kind of wonderful sadness that
sweetens a soul more than anything else."

Meldrum was as much amazed as
Deborah was at hearing such rhapsodies
from his matter-of-fact soul.

Her comment was prosaic enough.
She fell back and sighed.  "Well, I
guess both of us must be crazy."

"I guess we are."  He laughed
boyishly.  "We'd better get married and
keep the insanity in one family."

"Get married!" she echoed, still
befuddled.  "And after you telling me what you did!"

"Yes, but I didn't know the Lord
was at work on a masterpiece like
you–girl, woman, grandmother, child, beauty,
brains–all in one."

Deborah was as exhausted by the
shock as if she had been stunned by
lightning.  She was tired out with the
first kiss an impassioned man had ever
pressed upon her lips, the first
bone-threatening hug an ursine lover had ever
inflicted upon her wicker ribs.

She was more afraid of Newt Meldrum
than she had been of Asaph.  But when
she told him she would think it over he
declined to wait.  He laughed at her pleas.
She had promised to abide by his
decision, and he had decided that she should
go neither to Asaph's nor to Crawford's,
but to New York–not as any old buyer,
either, except of things for her own
beautiful body and some hats for that
fleecy white hair of hers.  And she should
live in New York, take her mother there
if she wanted, and close up this house
after they had been married in it.

She had been shaking her head to all
these things and dismissing them gently
as the ravings of a delirious boy.  But
now she said: "Oh, I could never be
married in this town."

"And why not?"

"Oh, I don't know.  I just couldn't."

She was still afraid that people would
laugh at her, but more afraid that they
would think she was trying to flaunt her
triumph over them–the triumph of
marrying the great Newton Meldrum.  She
could bear the laughter; she was used
to the town's ridicule.  But she could
not endure to be triumphing over anybody.

Meldrum did not fret over her motives;
he simply nodded.

"All right; then we'll be married in
New York.  How soon can you start?"

She stared at him, this amazing man.
"How soon?  Why, I haven't said I'd
marry you yet!  I'll have to think it over."

He laughed and crushed her in his arms
and would not let her breathe till she
breathed "Yes."  He was the most
amazing man.  But, then, men were all
so amazing when you got to know them.
They must have all gone crazy at once, though.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center small

   THE END

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::