The Only Rose

"The Only Rose" is a poignant short story by Sarah Orne Jewett that explores themes of love, loss, and nostalgia. Set in a small New England town, the narrative centers around an elderly woman who reminisces about a cherished rosebush planted by her late husband. As she reflects on their life together and the passage of time, the story delves into the significance of memory and the enduring nature of love. Jewett's lyrical prose captures the beauty of simplicity and highlights the connections that persist even in the face of loss, making it a touching meditation on the human experience.

• Short story

								
                                   I.

Just where the village abruptly ended, and the green mowing fields
began, stood Mrs. Bickford’s house, looking down the road with all its
windows, and topped by two prim chimneys that stood up like ears. It was
placed with an end to the road, and fronted southward; you could follow
a straight path from the gate past the front door and find Mrs. Bickford
sitting by the last window of all in the kitchen, unless she were
solemnly stepping about, prolonging the stern duties of her solitary
housekeeping.

One day in early summer, when almost every one else in Fairfield had put
her house plants out of doors, there were still three flower pots on a
kitchen window-sill. Mrs. Bickford spent but little time over her rose
and geranium and Jerusalem cherry-tree, although they had gained a kind
of personality born of long association. They rarely undertook to bloom,
but had most courageously maintained life in spite of their owner’s
unsympathetic but conscientious care. Later in the season she would
carry them out of doors, and leave them, until the time of frosts, under
the shade of a great apple-tree, where they might make the best of what
the summer had to give.

The afternoon sun was pouring in, the Jerusalem cherry-tree drooped its
leaves in the heat and looked pale, when a neighbor, Miss Pendexter,
came in from the next house but one to make a friendly call. As she
passed the parlor with its shut blinds, and the sitting-room, also
shaded carefully from the light, she wished, as she had done many times
before, that somebody beside the owner might have the pleasure of living
in and using so good and pleasant a house. Mrs. Bickford always
complained of having so much care, even while she valued herself
intelligently upon having the right to do as she pleased with one of the
best houses in Fairfield. Miss Pendexter was a cheerful, even gay little
person, who always brought a pleasant flurry of excitement, and usually
had a genuine though small piece of news to tell, or some new aspect of
already received information.

Mrs. Bickford smiled as she looked up to see this sprightly neighbor
coming. She had no gift at entertaining herself, and was always glad, as
one might say, to be taken off her own hands.

Miss Pendexter smiled back, as if she felt herself to be equal to the
occasion.

“How be you to-day?” the guest asked kindly, as she entered the kitchen.
“Why, what a sight o’ flowers, Mis’ Bickford! What be you goin’ to do
with ’em all?”

Mrs. Bickford wore a grave expression as she glanced over her
spectacles. “My sister’s boy fetched ’em over,” she answered. “You know
my sister Parsons’s a great hand to raise flowers, an’ this boy takes
after her. He said his mother thought the gardin never looked handsomer,
and she picked me these to send over. They was sendin’ a team to
Westbury for some fertilizer to put on the land, an’ he come with the
men, an’ stopped to eat his dinner ’long o’ me. He’s been growin’ fast,
and looks peakëd. I expect sister ’Liza thought the ride, this pleasant
day, would do him good. ’Liza sent word for me to come over and pass
some days next week, but it ain’t so that I can.”

“Why, it ’s a pretty time of year to go off and make a little visit,”
suggested the neighbor encouragingly.

“I ain’t got my sitting-room chamber carpet taken up yet,” sighed Mrs.
Bickford. “I do feel condemned. I might have done it to-day, but ’twas
all at end when I saw Tommy coming. There, he’s a likely boy, an’ so
relished his dinner; I happened to be well prepared. I don’t know but
he’s my favorite o’ that family. Only I’ve been sittin’ here thinkin’,
since he went, an’ I can’t remember that I ever was so belated with my
spring cleaning.”

“’Twas owin’ to the weather,” explained Miss Pendexter. “None of us
could be so smart as common this year, not even the lazy ones that
always get one room done the first o’ March, and brag of it to others’
shame, and then never let on when they do the rest.”

The two women laughed together cheerfully. Mrs. Bickford had put up the
wide leaf of her large table between the windows and spread out the
flowers. She was sorting them slowly into three heaps.

“Why, I do declare if you haven’t got a rose in bloom yourself!”
exclaimed Miss Pendexter abruptly, as if the bud had not been announced
weeks before, and its progress regularly commented upon. “Ain’t it a
lovely rose? Why, Mis’ Bickford!”

“Yes’m, it’s out to-day,” said Mrs. Bickford, with a somewhat plaintive
air. “I’m glad you come in so as to see it.”

The bright flower was like a face. Somehow, the beauty and life of it
were surprising in the plain room, like a gay little child who might
suddenly appear in a doorway. Miss Pendexter forgot herself and her
hostess and the tangled mass of garden flowers in looking at the red
rose. She even forgot that it was incumbent upon her to carry forward
the conversation. Mrs. Bickford was subject to fits of untimely silence
which made her friends anxiously sweep the corners of their minds in
search of something to say, but any one who looked at her now could
easily see that it was not poverty of thought that made her speechless,
but an overburdening sense of the inexpressible.

“Goin’ to make up all your flowers into bo’quets? I think the
short-stemmed kinds is often pretty in a dish,” suggested Miss Pendexter
compassionately.

“I thought I should make them into three bo’quets. I wish there wa’n’t
quite so many. Sister Eliza’s very lavish with her flowers; she’s always
been a kind sister, too,” said Mrs. Bickford vaguely. She was not apt to
speak with so much sentiment, and as her neighbor looked at her narrowly
she detected unusual signs of emotion. It suddenly became evident that
the three nosegays were connected in her mind with her bereavement of
three husbands, and Miss Pendexter’s easily roused curiosity was quieted
by the discovery that her friend was bent upon a visit to the
burying-ground. It was the time of year when she was pretty sure to
spend an afternoon there, and sometimes they had taken the walk in
company. Miss Pendexter expected to receive the usual invitation, but
there was nothing further said at the moment, and she looked again at
the pretty rose.

Mrs. Bickford aimlessly handled the syringas and flowering almond
sprays, choosing them out of the fragrant heap only to lay them down
again. She glanced out of the window; then gave Miss Pendexter a long
expressive look.

“I expect you’re going to carry ’em over to the burying-ground?”
inquired the guest, in a sympathetic tone.

“Yes’m,” said the hostess, now well started in conversation and in quite
her every-day manner. “You see I was goin’ over to my brother’s folks
to-morrow in South Fairfield, to pass the day; they said they were goin’
to send over to-morrow to leave a wagon at the blacksmith’s, and they’d
hitch that to their best chaise, so I could ride back very comfortable.
You know I have to avoid bein’ out in the mornin’ sun?”

Miss Pendexter smiled to herself at this moment; she was obliged to move

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