Part 21

"Rainin' like a needle shower, and I got to wear my new tan coat to-night, 'cause I told him in the letter I'd wear a tannish-lookin' jacket with a red bow on the left lapel, so he'd know me when I come in the drug store."

Mame placed the backs of her hands on her hips, breathed inward like a soprano testing her diaphragm, and leaned against a wooden spool-case.

"It is rainin' like sixty, ain't it? Say, can you beat it? Watch the old man put Myrtle out in the aisle at the mackintosh-table—there! Didn't I tell you! Gee! I bet she could chew a diamond, she's so mad."

"She ain't as mad as me; but I'm going to wear my tan if it gets soaked."

Tillie sold a packet of needles and regarded the patch of window with a worried pucker on her small, wren-like face.

"Honest, ain't it a joke, Til?—you havin' the nerve to answer that ad and all! You better be pretty white to me, or I'll snitch! I'll tell Angie you're writin' pink notes to Box 25, Evenin' News—Mr. Box 25! Say, can you beat it!"

Mame laughed in her throat, smoothed her frizzed blonde hair, sold a paper of pins and an emery heart.

"Like fun you'll tell Angie! I got it all fixed to tell her I'm going to the picture-show with you and George to-night."

"Before I'd let a old grouch like her lord it over me! It ain't like she was your sister or relation, or something—but just because you live together. Nix on that for mine."

"She don't think a girl's got a right to be young or nothin'! Look at me—a regular stick-at-home. Gee! a girl's got to have something."

"Sure she does! Ain't that what I've been tryin' to preach to you ever since we've been chumming together? You ain't a real old maid yet—you got real takin' ways about you and all; you ought to be havin' a steady of your own."

"Don't I know it?"

"Look how you got to do now—just because she never lets you go to dances or nothin' with us girls."

"She ain't never had it, and she don't want me to have it."

"Say, tell it to the Danes! She ain't got them snappy black eyes of hers for nothin'. Whatta you live with her for? There ain't a girl up in the corsets that's got any use for her."

"She's been pretty white to me, just the samey—raised me and all when I didn't have no one. She's got her faults; but I kinda got the habit of livin' with her now—I got to stick."

"Gee! even a stepmother like Carrie's'll let her have fun once in a while. It's Angie's own fault that you got to meet 'em in drug stores and take chances on ads and all."

"I'm just answerin' that ad for fun—I ain't in earnest."

"I've always been afraid of matrimonial ads and things like that. You know I was the first one to preach your gettin' out and gettin' spry—that's me all over! I believe in bein' spry; but I always used to say to maw before I was keepin' steady with George, 'Ads ain't safe.'"

"I ain't afraid."

"Lola Flint, over in the jewelry, answered one once—'Respectable young man would like to make the acquaintance of a genteel young lady; red hair preferred.' And when she seen him he had only one eye, and his left arm shot off."

"I ain't afraid. Say, if Effie Jones Lipkind can answer one, with her behind-the-counter stoop and squint, and get away with it, there ain't no reason why there ain't more grand fellows like Gus Lipkind writin' ads."

"Come out of the dark room, Til! Effie had two hundred saved up."

"I ain't ashamed of not havin' any steadies. Where's a straight-walkin' girl like me goin' to get 'em? Look at that rain, will you!—and me tellin' him I'd be there in tan, with red ribbon on the lapel!"

"Paper says rain for three days, too. Angie's a old devil, all-righty, or you could meet him in your flat."

"He's going to wear a white carnation and a piece of fern on his left coat lapel; and if he don't look good I ain't going up."

"What did he call hisself—'a bachelor of refined and retiring habits'? Thank Gawd!—if I do say it—George is refined, but he ain't over-retirin'. It's the retirin' kind that like to sit at home in their carpet slippers instead of goin' to a picture-show. Straighten that bin of pearl buttons, will you, Til? Say, how my feet do burn to-night! It's the weather—I might 'a' known it was goin' to rain."

Tillie ran a nervous finger down inside her collar; there was a tremolo in her quail-like voice.

"A fellow that writes a grand little letter like him can't be so bad—and it's better to have 'em retirin'-like than too fresh. Listen! It's real poetry-like: 'Meet me in the Sixth Avenue Drug Store, Miss 27. I'll have a white carnation and a piece of fern in my left buttonhole, and a smile that won't come off; and when I spy the yellow jacket I'm comin' up and say, "Hello!" And if I look good I want you to say "Hello!" back.' ... The invisible hair-pins only come by the box, ma'am. Umbrellas across the aisle, ma'am.... That ain't so bad for a start, is it, Mame?... Ten cents a box, ma'am."

"You got your nerve, all-righty, Til—but, gee! I glory in your spunk. If I was tied to a old devil like Angie I'd try it, too. Is the back of my collar all right, Til? Look at Myrtle out there, will you—how she's lovin' that mackintosh sale!"

"Water spots tan, don't it?" said Tillie, balancing her cash-book.

At six o'clock the store finished its last lap with a hysterical singing of electric bells, grillingly intense and too loud, like a woman who laughs with a sob in her throat.

Tillie untied her black alpaca apron, snapped a rubber band about her cash-book, concealed it beneath the notion-shelves, and brushed her black-serge skirt with a whisk-broom borrowed from stock.

"Good night, Mame! I guess you're waitin' for George, ain't you? See you in the morning. I'll have lots to tell you, too."

"Good night, Til! Remember, if he turns out to be a model for a classy-clothes haberdashery, it was me put you on to the idea."

Tillie pressed a black-felt sailor tight down on her head until only a rim of brown hair remained, slid into her black jacket, and hurried out with an army of workers treading at her slightly run-down heels and nerves.

Youth, even the fag-end of Youth, is like a red-blooded geranium that fights to bloom though transplanted from a garden bed to a tin can in a cellar window. A faint-as-dawn pink persisted in flowing underneath the indoor white of Miss Prokes's cheeks—the last rosy shadow of a maltreated girlhood, which too long had defied the hair-line wrinkles, the notion-counter with the not-to-be-used stool behind it, nine hours of arc-light substitute for the sunshine on the hillside and the green shade of the dell.

At the doors a taupe-colored dusk and a cold November rain closed round her like a wet blanket. She shrank back against the building and let the army tramp past her. They dissolved into the stream like a garden hose spraying the ocean.

Broadway was black and shining as polished gunmetal, with reflections of its million lights staggering down into the wet asphalt. Umbrellas hurried and bobbed as if an army of giant mushrooms had suddenly insurrected; cabs skidded, honked, dodged, and doubled their rates; home-going New York bought evening papers, paid as it entered, and strap-hung its way to Bronx and Harlem firesides.

The fireside of the Bronx is the steam-radiator. Its lullabies are sung before a gilded three-coil heater; its shaving-water and kettle are heated on that same contrivance. It is as much of an epic in apartment living as condensed milk and folding-davenports.

All of which has little enough to do with Miss Tillie Prokes, except that in her lifetime she had hammered probably a caskful of nails into the tops of condensed-milk cans. Also she could unfold her own red-velours davenport; cold-cream her face; sugar-water her hair and put it up in kids; climb into bed and fall asleep with a despatch that might have made more than one potentate, counting sheep in his hair-mattressed four-poster, aguish with envy.

Miss Prokes yawned as she waited and regarded a brilliantly illuminated display window of curve-fingered ladies in exquisite waxen attitudes and nineteen-fifty crepe-de-Chine gowns. Her breath clouded the plate-glass, and she drew her initials in the circle and yawned again.

With the last driblet of employees from the store a woman cut diagonally through a group and hurried toward Miss Prokes.

"Come on, Tillie!"

"Gee! I was afraid you wouldn't have a umbrella, Angie. What made you so late? The rest of the corsets have gone long ago."

"Oh, I just stopped a minute to take a milk-and- rose-leaves bath—they're doin' it in our best families this year."

Tillie glanced at her companion sharply.

"What's the matter, Angie? You ain't had one of your spells again, have you? Your voice sounds so full of breath and all."

Angie pushed a strand of black-and-white hair up under her nest-like hat. Her small, black eyes were too far back; and her face was slightly creased and yellow, like an old college diploma when it is fished out of the trunk to show the grandchildren.

"I just keeled over like a tenpin—that's all! It came on so sudden—while I was sellin' a dame a dollar-ninety-eight hipless—that even old Higgs was scared and went up to the emergency-room with me hisself."

"Oh, Angie—ain't that a shame, now!"

Tillie linked her arm in the older woman's and, with their joint umbrella slanted against the fine-ribbed rain, they plunged into the surge of the street. Wind scudded the rain along the sidewalks; electric signs, all blurred and streaky through the mist, were dimmed, like gas-light seen through tears.

"We better ride home to-night, Angie—you with one of your spells, and this weather and all."

"You must 'a' been clipping your gilt-edge bonds this afternoon instead of sellin' buttons! It would take more'n only a bad heart and a rainstorm and a pair of thin soles to make me ride five blocks."

"I—I'll take your turn to-night for fixin' supper. You ain't feelin' well, Angie—I'll take your turn to-night."

They turned into a high-walled, black, cross-town street. The wind turned with them and beat javelin-like against their backs and blew their skirts forward, then shifted and blew against their breathing.

"Gawd!" said the older woman, lowering their umbrella against the onslaught. "Honest, sometimes I wish I wuz dead and out of it. Whatta we get out of livin', anyway?"

"Aw, Angie!"

"I do wish it!"

They leaned into the wind.

"I—I don't mind rain much. Me and Mame and George are going to the Gem to-night—they're showing the airship pictures over there. I ain't goin' unless you're feelin' all right, though. They've got the swellest pictures in town over there."

"It's much you care about leavin' me alone or not when you can run round nights like a—like a—"

"Don't begin, Angie. A girl's got to have fun once in a while! Gee! the way you been holding on to me! I—I ain't even met the fellows like the other girls. All you think I like to do is sit home nights and sew. Look at the other girls. Look at Mamie Plute—she's five years younger'n me—only twenty-three; and she—"

"That's the thanks I get for protectin' and watchin' and raisin' and—"

"Aw, Angie, I—"

"Don't Angie me!"

"I—I ain't a kid—the way you fuss at me!"

They turned into their apartment house. A fire-escape ran zigzag down its front, and on each side of the entrance ash-cans stood sentinel. At each landing of their four flights up a blob of gas-light filled the hallway with dim yellow fog, and from the cracks of closed doors came the heterogeneous smells of steam, hot vapors, and damp—the intermittent crying of children.

After the first and second flights Miss Angie paused and leaned against the wall. Her breath came from between her dry lips like pants from an engine, and beneath her eyes the parchment skin wrinkled and hung in small sacs like those under the eyes of a veteran pelican.

"You take your time comin', Angie. I'll go ahead and light up and put on some coffee for you—some real hot coffee."

Tillie ran lightly up the stairs. Through the opacity of the fog her small, dark face was outlined as dimly as a ghost's, with somber eyes burning in the sockets. Theirs was the last of a long hall of closed doors—drab-looking doors with perpendicular panels and white-china knobs.

Tillie fitted in her key, groped along the shadowy mantel for a match, and lighted a side gas-bracket. Her dripping umbrella traced a wet path on the carpet. She carried it out into the kitchenette and leaned it in a corner of the sink. When Angie faltered in a moment later a blue-granite coffee-pot was already beginning to bubble on the two-burner gas-stove and the gentle sizzle of frying bacon sent a bluish haze through the rooms.

"Say, Angie, how you want your egg?"

"I don't want none."

"Sure you do! I'll fry it and bring it in to you." Angie flopped down on the davenport. Her skirt hung thick and dank about her ankles, and the back of her coat and her sleeve-tops were rain-spotted and wet-wool smelling where the umbrella had failed to protect her.

She unbuttoned the coat and the front of her shirt-waist, unlaced her shoes and kicked them off her feet. In the sallow light her face, the ocher wallpaper, the light oak center-table, the matting on the floor, and the small tin trunk were of a color. She took up her shoes in one hand, her coat in the other, and slouched off to a small one-window box of a room, with an unmade cot and a straight chair two-thirds filling it.

Happy the biographers whose Desdemonas burrow damask cheeks into silken pillows, whose Prosperines limp on slim ghost-feet through Lands of Fancy! Angie limped, too; but in her flat-arched, stockinged feet, and to an unmade, tousled bed. And all the handmaids of her sex—Love, Romance, and Beauty—were strangely absent; or could the most sybaritic of biographers find them out?

Only half undressed she tumbled in, pulled the coverings tight up about her neck, and turned her face to the wall. Poor Angie! Neither Prosperine, Desdemona, nor any of the Lauras, Catherines, or Juliets, had ever sold corsets, faced the soul-racking problem of eight dollars a week, or been untouched by the golden wand that transforms life into a phantasmagoria of love.

Tillie spread her little meal on the golden-oak table in the front room.

"Come on, Angie—or if you ain't feeling well I'll bring you in a bite."

"I ain't sick."

"Well, if you ain't sick, for Gawd's sake, where did you get the grouch?"

"I'm comin' in if you give me time. Where's my wrapper?"

They dined in a desultory sort of way, with Tillie up and down throughout the meal for a bread-knife, a cup of water, sugar for Angie's strong coffee.

"If you ain't feelin' good to-night I won't go, Angie."

"I'm feelin' all right—I'm used to sittin' home alone."

"If you talk like that—I won't go, then."

"Sure! You go on! Don't mind me."

"There's another corset sale advertised for to-morrow, ain't there? Gee! They don't care how many sales they spring on the girls down there, do they? Didn't you just have your semi-annual clearin'?"

"Yes; but they got a batch of Queenly shapes—two-ninety-eight—they want to get rid of. They're goin' to discontinue the line and put in the Straight-Front Flexibles."

Angie sipped her coffee in long draughts. Her black flannel wrapper fell away at the neck to reveal her unbleached throat, with two knobs for neck-bones.

"Let the dishes be, Angie—I'll do 'em in the morning. I wonder if it's raining yet? It's sure too cold to wear my old black. I'll have to wear my tan."

Rain beat a fine tattoo against the windows. Tillie crossed and peered anxiously out, cupping her eyes in her hand and straining through the reflecting window-pane at the undistinguishable sky; her little wren-like movements and eyes were full of nerves.

"It'll be all right with an umbrella," she urged—"eh, Angie?"

"Yes."

Tillie hurried to the little one-window room. There were two carmine spots high on her cheek-bones; as she dressed herself before a wavy mirror her lips were open and parted like a child's, and the breath came warm and fast between them.

"I'll be home early to-night, Angie. You sleep on the davenport. I don't mind the lumps in the cot."

She frizzed her front hair with a curling-iron she heated in the fan of the gas-flame, and combed out the little spring-tight curls until they framed her face like a fuzzy halo. Her pink lawn waist came high up about her neck in a trig, tight-fitting collar; and when she finally pressed on her sailor hat, and slid into her warm-looking tan jacket the small magenta bow on her left coat-lapel heaved up and down with her bosom.

"Say," she called through the open doorway, "I wish you'd see those seventy-nine-cent gloves, Angie—already split! How'd yours wear, huh?"

Silence.

"You care if I wear yours to-night, Angie?"

Silence.

"Aw, Angie, if you're sick why don't you say so and not go spoilin' my evening? Gee! If a girl would listen to you she'd have a swell time of it—she would! A girl's gotta have life."

She fastened a slender gold chain with a dangling blue-enamel heart round her neck.

"Aw, I guess I'll stay home. There ain't no fun in anything, with you poutin' round like this."

Tillie appeared in the doorway, gloves in hand. Angie was still at the uncleared table; her cheek lay on the red-and-white table-cloth, and her face was turned away.

"Angie!"

The room was quiet with the ear-pressing silence of vacuum. Tillie crossed and, with hands that trembled a bit, shook the figure at the table. The limp arms slumped deeper, and the waist-line collapsed like a meal-sack tied in the middle.

"Angie, honey!" Tillie's hand touched a cheek that was cold, but not with the chill of autumn.

Then Tillie cried out—the love-of-life cry of to-day and to-morrow, and all the echoing and re-echoing yesterdays—and along the dim-lit hall the rows of doors opened as if she had touched their secret springs.

Hurrying feet—whispers—far-away faces—strange hands—a professional voice and cold, shining instruments—the silence of the tomb—a sheet-covered form on the red-velvet davenport! The fear of the Alone—the fear of the Alone!

Miss Angie's funeral-day dawned ashen as dusk—a sodden day, with the same autumn rain beating its one-tone tap against the windows and ricochetting down the panes, like tears down a woman's cheeks.

At seven three alarm-clocks behind the various closed doors down the narrow aisle of hallway sounded a simultaneous call to arms; and a fourth reveille, promptly muffled beneath a pillow, thridded in the tiny room with the rumpled cot and the wavy mirror.

Miss Mamie woke reluctantly, crammed the clock beneath the pillow of her strange bed, and burrowed a precious moment longer in the tangled bedclothes. Sleep tugged at her tired lids and oppressed her limbs. She drifted for the merest second, floating off on the silken weft of a half-conscious dream. Then memory thudded within her, and the alarm-clock again thudded beneath the pillow.

She sprang out of bed, brushed the yellow mat of hair out of her eyes, and wriggled into her clothes in tiptoe haste.

"Til!" she cried, peering into the darkened room beyond and pitching her voice to a raspy little whisper. "Why didn't you wake me?"

She veered carefully round the gloom-shrouded furniture and dim-shaped, black-covered object that occupied the center of the room, into the kitchenette.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep, Til; honest, I didn't. Gee! Ain't I a swell friend to have, comin' to stay with you all night and goin' dead on you? But, honest, Til—may I die if it ain't so—with you away from the counter all day yesterday, and the odds-and-ends sale on, I was so tired last night I could 'a' dropped."

Tillie raised the gas-flame and pushed the coffee-pot forward. Through the wreath of hot steam her little face was far away and oyster-colored.

"Come on, Mame; I got your breakfast. Ain't it a day, though? Poor Angie—how she did hate the rain, and her havin' to be buried in it!"