AN: Two nights ago, my choir gave its big spring concert. It was amazing and wonderful, but bittersweet, too, in that it was our last time all together. Some of us will be singing together over the summer, some of us will sing together next year, but some will have moved on and some will have moved up, and it will never be quite the same again.

This morning I sang one of our songs while washing dishes, and in my mind I could almost hear the alto line, and being of a romantic bent I said to myself, "I shall never sing this song again without hearing the ghosts of my fellow choristers singing beside me." I looked out the window at my mother's riotous red rosebushes, and this story was born. I spent all afternoon writing in the garden, listening to Charlotte Church sing "The Last Rose of Summer."

All the way there, Jennifer skipped along beside me, her little hand in mine. She chanted fragments of poetry:

"And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days.
When heaven tries earth, if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays."

She chattered about what Mary Lennox or Caddie Woodlawn had done, and sang catches of songs that were old when I was born.

"And they used to sing 'When I can shoot my rifle clear / At pigeons in the sky—' but why are passenger pigeons extinct, Uncle?"

She was an odd child, just nine, still utterly unconscious of herself, and the pink bud of girlhood yet showed no crack of unfurling womanliness. She lived entirely in her books and conversed for hours on end with her dolls and imaginary friends. Perhaps I encouraged her more than I ought, but she had begged so to be taken to see Mrs. Wright that I had promised to take her in the summer. Now it was summer, and I was making good on my promise. It was June, and it was a perfect day—the sunshine warm and caressing, the breeze playful, the bees visiting from flower to flower and gathering all the latest news.

She fell silent at the first glimpse of the lady waiting for us—always shy with strangers, she hung back now, her hand firmly in mine, and seemed awe-struck by our hostess, who smiled at her but did not press her to speak.
It was a lovely garden, in which the English flavor served only to season, and roses predominated in riotous, abundant, bloom. The honeysuckle twined 'round the hollyhocks, the morning-glories embraced the apple trees, and the daisies turned the grass into a meadow.

Mrs. Wright seemed much like her garden, for the English inflection just flavored her accent, and she, like Geoffrey, seemed not to have gathered flowers of speech in other men's gardens. Her air was neither cultivated gentility nor blunt artlessness, but a gentle and somehow tragic inborn grace to which I could not give a name.

"These are my roses," she said, lifting the colorful blooms toward the sun. "Are they not lovely?"

They were. "What kind do you like best?" I asked, for the garden was filled with roses of all hues and shapes.

She stood a moment, inhaling the scent of a wild white rose. It looked like nothing so much as a softly crumpled handkerchief, and the smell was divine. "These, I suppose, though I never can decide. My brother used to give me yellow roses, like the ones over there," she gestured to the bushes a few feet away, where yellow roses spilled across the grass in sunny profusion. "My little sister, though, always preferred the wild ones. She liked the way they smelled."

Jennifer leaned over to bury her nose in a flower, but said nothing.

"Both my brothers liked roses. My sister really preferred daisies, but she loved all flowers, especially wild roses, and apple blossoms. When she was very young, she said once that blue starflowers—the ones that come in early spring, after the snowdrops and daffodils—were the scraps of sky that fell down when the angels cut the holes for the stars, and that strawberry and apple blossoms were the souls of the fruits." She smiled, a fond, faraway smile.

"My elder brother used to wear a yellow rose in his buttonhole, sometimes red, if there were no yellow . . . gold and red were always his colors, in a way."

We had come to the red roses. She tenderly lifted a straggler to the sun. "My younger brother loved to comment, like Sherlock Holmes, on roses—indeed, on all beauty—as signs of God and his love for us."

I had nothing to say to that. I had only been half-listening, my mind occupied mainly with my writing, when Jennifer explained why she wanted to meet this mysterious Mrs. Wright, so I did not remember who, exactly she was. The writer of a beloved book, perhaps? We stood by the red roses a moment longer, then our hostess led us to the tea-table, set under twin apple trees and framed with curling morning-glories.

She poured out the tea, which had kept warm over a candle, and passed scones, clotted cream, and cake.

"Do you spend a lot of time tending your garden?" said I.

"A great deal, yes. It is my main occupation now that Mr. Wright has left me." The old-fashioned way of referring to her husband seemed not out-of-place. "I pull the weeds and train the vines and loosen the soil around the young plants, just as Mary Lennox did—have you read it, Jennifer?"

But Jennifer had slipped out of her chair to plait a daisy chain and did not hear.

Mrs. Wright only smiled. "The children come here sometimes and I tell them stories. Margaret—she's a sweet girl who lives down the way—comes and has tea with me of an afternoon. And often I sit here alone, listening as the bees hum and the trees rustle to one another. I would have a brook if I could, to murmur and laugh to itself, but the nearest spring is too far off, and the lie of the land is all wrong. The birds sing to each other, though, perched in my apple trees. I don't sing much, these days, and it's pleasant to hear the birds."

"Do you like music?"

"Oh, very much. We used to sing together, my brothers and sister and I. We loved making music together."

"What part did you sing?"

"Alto, always. My sister had a clear soprano voice, my elder brother had a lovely tenor, and my younger brother sang bass. We used to sing folk songs in four-part harmony—songs like the one Jennifer is humming. My sister and I used to sing that together." She listened a moment, then sang,

"'Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming—" She stopped and she shook her head. "I'm sorry. Mr. Wright always said I had a lovely singing voice, but I only sing in church, now, when there's congregational singing. I can't sing the melody of any of the old songs—can't even sing the alto lines without hearing their ghosts singing with me. Do you sing?"

I shook my head. "Jennifer sings—" but Jennifer, crowned with daisies, had found a fading rose and her childish soprano lifted over it.

". . . All her lovely companions are faded and gone."

My companion gazed at the daisy-crowned, rosy-cheeked girl and seemingly unconsciously began to hum with her, then softly, lowly, to weave a rich harmony beneath it.

"No flower of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh.
To reflect back her blushes and give sigh for sigh."

Together they sang the song through, the girl stealing shyly closer to the woman who sang, I thought, with the memory of her sister. The girl's hair was what her beloved books would have called golden; only a few strands of the woman's retained their original black among the silver. By the last line, ("Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone?") Jennifer stood close beside Mrs. Wright. The last notes floated over the roses, and my niece shyly held out her five-petaled, yellow rose.

Smiling and dabbing at her eyes, the older woman took it, and together they moved away toward the bush from which it came. Slowly, I buttered and ate the remainder of the scones as I watched them. Their heads bent together and they spoke too low for me to hear, but I saw them laughing together.

On the way home, Jennifer laughed and skipped, her hand in mine, and she chattered about Mrs. Wright and how Mrs. Wright had said, "You must visit again, Jennifer," and the things they would do that summer.

"She said I may climb her apple trees and dig in her garden, and she will tell me stories. Isn't that wonderful, Uncle?"

I found myself promising to take her again, soon, and I mused to myself on the afternoon.

Notes Without Which I Cannot Bear to Live:

"Day in June" quote from Prelude to Part First of the Vision of Sir Launfal by James Russell Lowell.

Parody of "When I Can Read My Title Clear" from Caddie Woodlawn.

Girlhood as a half-blossomed rosebud inspired by Mabel Hale's Beautiful Girlhood.

The rose as proof of the existence of God borrowed from Conan Doyle's "Adventure of the Naval Treaty" and used due to WillowDryad.

The name "Mrs. Wright" from my own "A Weary Way."

Title and lyrics from Thomas Moore's "The Last Rose of Summer."

I was going to finish and post the fourth chapter of "Still Waters" before I posted anything else, but WillowDryad wouldn't hear of it. Rest assured that it is coming, and my thanks, faithful readers, for your patience.