  Produced by Al Haines. [image] Cover [image] Deborah at dressing table THE LAST ROSE BY RUPERT HUGHES Author of HARPER & BROTHERS COPYRIGHT 1914, BY HARPER AND BROTHERS 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:
There was hardly a dry eye or a protesting ear in the throng as she reached the climax:
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." CHAPTER II 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. CHAPTER III 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. CHAPTER IV 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. CHAPTER V 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. |
|