The Last Rose of Summer

  CHAPTER VIII

  It was not a romantic wooing, and Asaph was not offering the first loveAsaph was not offering the first love of a bachelor heart. He was atrade-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 lastoffered her the position of head saleswoman; this included not onlyauthority and increase of pay, but two trips a year to New York asbuyer!

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

  Asaph turned pale, gulped: "You're going to leave me, Deborah! Why, I-Icouldn't get along without you. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn'ttalk to you all the time. Jim Crawford's in love with you, the oldscoundrel! But I won't let you marry him. I got a nicer house thanwhat 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 somethingawful. I been meaning to ask you to marry me, but I was afraid to. ButI couldn't let you go. You won't, will you? I want you should marryme-right off. You will, won't you?"

  Deborah stared at him agape. Then she cried: "Asaph Shillaber, are youproposing 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 shouldhappen and a man should ask for her hand. And now it had come in theunlikeliest 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 shewould think it over. The sensation was too delicious to be finishedwith an immediate monosyllable. He went away blustering. Her mother hadslept through the cataclysm. Deborah postponed telling her, and went toher room in a state of ecstatic distress.

  Her room was prettier than it had been, and the bureau was more bravelyequipped. It was a place of interesting mystery; there werecurling-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 andshare his room and her life with him.

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

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

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

  And then she remembered Josie and Josie's sneer: "Poor old Debby. Shenever was a rose."

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

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

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