Part 22

"Ain't it a shame?—and her such a good soul! Honest, Til, ain't it funny her being dead? Think of it—us home from the store and Angie dead! Who'd 'a' thought one of them heart spells would take her off?"

"I ain't goin' to let you stay here only up to noon, Mame. There's no use your gettin' docked a whole day. It's enough for me to go out to the cemetery. You report at noon for half a day."

"Like fun I'm goin' to work at noon! You think I'm goin' to quit you and leave you here alone? If Higgs don't like two of us being away from the counter the old skinflint knows what he can do! He can regulate our livin' with his stop-watch, but not our dyin'."

"There ain't nothin' for you to do round here, Mame—honest, there ain't—except ride 'way out there in the rain and lose half a day. She—she's all ready in her black-silk dress—all I got to do is follow her out now."

"Gawd! What a day, too!"

"Carrie and Lil was going to stay with me this morning, too; but I says to them, I says, there wasn't any use gettin' 'em down on us at the store. What's the use of us all getting docked when you can't do any good here? The undertaker's a nice-mannered man, and he'll ride—ride out with me."

"You all alone and—"

"Everything's fixed—they sent up her benefit money from the store, and I got enough for expenses and all; and she—she wouldn't want you to. She was a great one herself for never missin' a day at the store."

Large tears welled in Tillie's eyes.

"She was a grand woman!" said Mame, warm tears in her own eyes, taking a bite out of her slice of bread and washing it down with a swab of coffee. "There—there wasn't a girl in the corsets wasn't crying yesterday when they was gettin' up the collection for her flowers."

Tillie's lower lip quivered, and she set down her coffee untasted.

"She might have been a man-hater and strict with me, and all that—but what did she have out of it? She was nothing but a drudge all her life. Since I was a cash-girl she stuck to me like she—was my mother, all-righty; and once, when I—I had the mumps, she—she—"

Tillie melted into the wide-armed embrace of her friend, and together they wept, with the tap-tapping of the rain on the window behind them, and the coffee-pot boiling over through the spout, singing as it doused the gas-flames.

"She used to mend my s-stockings on—on the sly."

"She was always so careful and all about you keepin' the right company—it was a grand thing for you that you had her to live with—I always used to say that to maw. And what a trade she had! She could look at your figure and lace you up in a straight-front quicker'n any of the young girls in the department."

"I—I know it. Why, even in the Subway she could tell by just lookin' at a hip whether it was wearin' one of her double bones or girdle tops. If ever a soul deserved a raise it was Angie. She'd 'a' got it, too!"

"She was a grand woman, Til!"

"You tell the girls at the store, Mame, I—I'm much obliged for the flowers. Angie would have loved 'em, too; but gettin' 'em when she was dead didn't give her the chance to enjoy them."

"She's up in Heaven, sitting next to the gold-and-ivory throne, now; and she knows they're here, Til—she can look right down and see 'em."

"I'm glad they sent her carnations, then—she loved 'em so!"

"I kinda hate to leave you at noon, Til—the funeral and all."

"It's all right, Mame. You can look at her asleep before you go."

They tiptoed to the front room and raised the shades gently. Angie lay in the cold sleep of death, her wax-like hands folded on her flat breast, and quiet, as if the grubbing years had fallen from her like a husk; and in their place a madonna calm, a sleep, and a forgetting. They regarded her; the sobs rising in their throats.

"She looks just like she fell asleep, Til—only younger-like. And, say, but that is a swell coffin, dearie!"

Like Niobe all tears, Tillie dabbed at her eyes and dewy cheeks.

"She was always kicking—poor dear!—at having to pay a dime a week to the Mutual Aid; but she'd be glad if she could see—first-class undertaking and all—everything paid for."

"I've kicked more'n once, too, but I'm glad I belong now. Honest, for a dime a week—silver handles and all. Poor Angie! Poor Angie!"

Poor Angie, indeed! who never in all the forty-odd years of her life had been so rich; with her head on a decent satin pillow, and a white carnation at her breast; her black-and-white dotted foulard dress draped skilfully about her; and her feet, that would never more ache, resting upward like a doll's in its box!

"Oh, Gawd, ain't I all alone, though; ain't I, though?"

"Aw, Til!"

"I—I—Oh—"

"Watch out, honey—you're crushing all the grand white carnations the girls sent! Say, wouldn't Angie be pleased! 'Rest in Peace,' it says. See, honey! Don't you cry, for it says for her to rest in peace; and there's the beautiful white dove on top and all—a swell white bird. Don't you cry, honey."

"I—I won't."

"Me and George won't forget you. Honest, you never knew any one more sympathizing-like than George; there ain't a funeral that boy misses if he can help it. He's good at pall-bearing, too. If it was Sunday instead of Friday that boy would be right on tap. There, dearie, don't cry."

Again Mame's tears of real sympathy mingled with her friend's; and they wept in a tight embrace, with the hot tears seeping through their handkerchiefs.

At eleven o'clock a carriage and a black hearse embossed in Grecian urns drew up in the rain-swept street. Windows shrieked upward and heads leaned out. A passing child, scuttling along the bubbly sidewalks, ran his forefinger along the sweating glass sides of the hearse, and a buttoned-up, oilskinned driver flecked at him with his whip. Street-cars grazed close to the carriage-wheels, and once a grocery's delivery automobile skidded from its course and bumped smartly into the rear. The horses plunged and backed in their traces.

Mame reached her yellow head far out of the window.

"They're here, Til. I wish you could see the hearse—one that any one could be proud to ride in! Here, let me help you on with your coat, dearie. I hope it's warm enough; but, anyway, it's black. Say, if Angie could only see how genteel everything is! The men are comin' up—here, lemme go to the door. Good morning, gen'l'men! Step right in."

Miss Angie's undertaker was all that she could have wished—a deep-eyed young man, with his carefully brushed hair parted to the extreme left and swept sidewise across his head; and his hand inserted like a Napoleon's between the second and third buttons of his long, black broadcloth coat.

"Good morning, Miss Prokes! It's a sad day, ain't it?"

Tears trembled along her lids.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Lux; it's a sad day."

"A sad, sad day," he repeated, stepping farther into the room, with his two attendants at a respectful distance behind him.

There were no rites. Tillie mumbled a few lines to herself out of a little Bible with several faded-ribbon bookmarks dangling from between the pages.

"This was poor Angie's book. I'll keep it for remembrance."

"Poor Angie!" said Mame.

"'In the midst of life we are in death,'" said Mr. Lux. "If you're all ready now we can start, Miss Prokes. Don't be scared, little missy."

There was a moment of lead-heavy silence; then the two attendants stepped forward, and Tillie buried her face and ears on Mame's sympathetic shoulder. And so Angie's little procession followed her.

"I'm all for going along, Mr. Lux; but Tillie's that bent on my going back to the store for the half-day. I—I hate to let her go out there alone and all."

"I'm going out in the carriage myself, missy. There ain't a thing a soul could do for the little girl. I'll see that she ain't wantin' for nothin'—a Lux funeral leaves no stone unturned."

"You—you been awful good to me, Mame! I'll be back at the store Monday."

"Good-by, honey! Here, let me hold the umbrella while you get in the carriage. Gawd! ain't this a day, though? I'll go back up-stairs and straighten up a bit before I go to the store. Good-by, honey! Just don't you worry."

A few rain-beaten passersby huddled in the doorway to watch the procession off. Heads leaned farther from their windows. Within the hearse the Dove of Peace titillated on its white-carnation pillow as they moved off.

Tillie sank back against a soft corner of the carriage's black rep upholstery, which was punctured ever so often with deep-sunk buttons. There was a wide strap dangling beside the window for an arm-rest, and a strip of looking-glass between the front windows.

"I hope you are comfortable, little missy. If I say it myself, our carriages are comfortable—that's one thing about a Lux funeral. There ain't a trust concern in the business can show finer springs or better tufting. But it's a easy matter to take cold in this damp. I've seen 'em healthy as a herring go off just like that!" said Mr. Lux, snapping his fingers to emphasize the precipitousness of sudden death.

"I ain't much of a one to take cold—neither was poor Angie. There wasn't a girl in the corsets had a better constitution than poor Angie. She always ailed a lot with her heart; but we never thought much of it."

"I thought she was your sister; but they say she was just your friend."

"Yes; but she was all I had—all I had."

"Such is life."

"Such is life."

They crept through the city streets, stopping to let cars rumble past them, pulling up sharply before reckless pedestrians; then a smooth bowling over a bridge as wide as a boulevard and out into the rain-sopped country, with leafless trees stretching their black arms against a rain-swollen sky, and the wheels cutting the mud road like a knife through cold grease.

"Angie would have loved this ride! She was always hatin' the rich for ridin' when she couldn't."

"There ain't a trust company in town can beat my carriages. I got a fifty-dollar, one-carriage funeral here that can't be beat."

"Everything is surely fine, Mr. Lux."

"Lemme cover your knees with this rug, missy. We have one in all the carriages. You look real worn out, poor little missy. It's a sad day for you. Here, sit over on this side—it's quit rainin' now, and I'll open the window."

The miles lengthened between them and the city, the horses were mud-splashed to their flanks. They turned into a gravel way and up an incline of drive. At its summit the white monuments of the dead spread in an extensive city before them—a calm city, with an occasional cross standing boldly against the sky.

"Lots of these were my funerals," explained Mr. Lux. "That granite block over there—this marble-base column. I buried old man Snift of the Bronx last July. They've been four Lux funerals in that family the past two years. His cross over there's the whitest Carrara in this yard."

Tillie turned her little tear-ravaged face toward the window, but her eyes were heavy and without life.

"I—I don't know what I'd do if you wasn't along, Mr. Lux. I—I'm scared."

"I'm here—don't you worry. Don't you worry. I'm just afraid that little lightweight jacket ain't warm enough."

"I got a heavier one; but this is mournin', and it's all I got in black."

"It's not the outside mournin' that counts for anything, missy; it's the crape you wear on your heart."

They buried Angie on a modest hillside, where the early sun could warm her and where the first spring anemones might find timid place. The soggy, new-turned earth filled up her grave with muffled thumps that fell dully on Tillie's heart and tortured her nerve-ends.

"Oh! oh! oh!" Her near-the-surface tears fell afresh; and when the little bed was completed, and the pillow of peace placed at its head, she was weak and tremble-lipped, like a child who has cried itself into exhaustion.

"Ah, little missy!" said Mr. Lux, breathing outward and passing his hand over his side-swept hair. "Life is lonely, ain't it? Lonely—lonely!"

"Y-yes," she said.

The rain had ceased, but a cold wind flapped Tillie's skirts and wrapped them about her limbs. They were silhouetted on their little hilltop against the slate-colored sky, and all about them were the marble monoliths and the Rocks of Ages of the dead.

"Goodbye, Angie!" she said, through her tears. "Goodbye, Angie!" And they went down the hillside, with the wind tugging at their hats, into their waiting carriage, and back as they had come, except that the hearse rolled swifter and lighter and the raindrops had dried on the glass.

"Oh-ah!" said Mr. Lux, breathing outward again and blinking his deep-set eyes. "Life is lonely—lonely, ain't it?—for those like you and me?"

"Lonely," she repeated.

He patted her little black handbag, that lay on the seat beside her, timidly, like a man touching a snapping-turtle.

"You poor, lonely little missy—and, if you don't mind my saying it, so pretty and all."

"My nose is red!" she said, dabbing at it with her handkerchief and observing herself in the strip of mirror.

"Like I care! I've seen a good many funerals in my day—and give me a healthy red-nose cry every time! I've had dry funerals and wet ones; and of the two it's the wet ones that go off easiest. Gimme a wet funeral, and I'll run it off on schedule time, and have the horses back in the stable to the minute! It's at the dry funerals that the wimmin go off in swoons and hold up things in every other drug store. I'm the last one to complain of a red nose, little missy."

"Oh," she said, catching her breath on the end of a sob, "I know I'm a sight! Poor Angie—she used to say a lot of women get credit for bein' tender-hearted when their red noses wasn't from cryin' at all, but from a small size and tight-lacin'. Poor Angie—to think that only day before yesterday we were going down to work together! She always liked to walk next to the curb, 'cause she said that's where the oldest ought to walk."

"'In the midst of life we are in death,'" said Mr. Lux. The wind stiffened and blew more sharply still. "Lemme raise that window, little missy. It's gettin' real Novembery—and you in that thin jacket and all. Hadn't we better stop off and get you a cup of coffee?"

"When I get home I'll fix it," she said. "When—I—get—home." She lowered her faintly purple lids and shivered.

"Poor little missy!"

Toward the close of their long drive a heavy dusk came early and shut out the dim afternoon; the lights of the city began to show whimsically through the haze.

"We're almost—home," she said.

"Almost; and if you don't mind I ain't going to leave you all alone up there. I'll go up with you and kinda stay a few minutes till—till the newness wears off. I know what them returns home mean. I'd kinda like to stay with you awhile, if you'll let me, Miss Prokes."

"Oh, Mr. Lux, you're so kind and all; but some of the girls from the store'll be over this evening—and Mame and George."

"I'll just come up a minute, then," said Mr. Lux, "and see if the boys got all the things out of the flat. Only last week they forgot and left a ebony coffin-stand at a place."

The din of the city closed in about them: the streets, already lashed dry by the wind, spread like a maze as they rolled off the bridge; then the halting and the jerking, the dodging of streetcars, and finally her own apartment building.

Mr. Lux unlocked the door and held her arm gently as they entered. The sweet, damp smell of carnations came out to meet them, and Tillie swayed a bit as she stood.

"Oh!—oh!—oh!"

"Easy there, little one. It'll be all right. It's pretty bleak at first, but it'll come round all right." He groped for a match and lit the gas. "There—you set a bit and take it easy."

A little blue-glass vase with three fresh white carnations decorated the center of the small table.

"See!" said Mr. Lux, bent on diverting. "Ain't they pretty? A gentleman friend, I guess, sent them to cheer you up—not? My! ain't they pretty, though?"

"Just think—Mame doin' all that for me! Straightening up and going out and getting me them flowers before she went to work! And—and Angie not here!"

"Little missy, you need to drink somethin' hot. Ain't there some coffee round, or somethin'?"

"Yes," she said; "but I—I got to get used to bein' here—bein' here without Angie—oh!"

"Come now—the carriage is downstairs yet, and there's a little bakeshop, with a table in the back, over on Twentieth Street. If you'll let me take you over there it'll fix you up fine, and then I'll bring you back; and by that time your friends'll be here, and it won't be so lonesome-like."

She rose to her feet.

"I wanna go," she said. "I don't wanna stay here."

"That's the way to talk!" he said, smiling and showing a flash of strong, even teeth. "We'll fix you up all right!"

She looked up at him and half smiled.

"You're so nice to me and all," she said.

He felt of her coat-sleeve between his thumb and forefinger.

"Ain't you got somethin' warmer? It's gettin' cold, and you'll need it."

"Yes; but not—not mournin'."

"It's the crape of the heart that counts," he repeated.

"All right," she said, like a child. "I'll wear my heavier one." And she walked half fearfully into the little room adjoining.

When she returned her face was freshly powdered and the pink rims about her eyes fainter. Her tan jacket was buttoned snugly about her. She stood for a moment under the bracket of light and smiled gratefully at him.

"I'm ready."

Mr. Lux stepped toward her and hooked his arm, like a cotillion leader asking a debutante into the dinner-hall; then stopped, took another step, and paused again. A quick wave of red swept over his face.

"Why!" he began; "why! Well!"

She looked down at her skirt with a woman's quick consciousness of self.

"I told you," she said, with her words falling one over the other; "I told you it wasn't mournin'! I—I—"

She followed his gaze to her coat-lapel and to the magenta bow. A hot pink flowed under her skin.

"Oh!" she cried. "Ain't I the limit? That—that bow was on, and I forgot—me wearin' a red bow on poor Angie's funeral day! Me—oh—"

Her fingers fumbled at the bow, and smarting tears stung her eyes. But Mr. Lux stepped to the blue-glass vase on the table, snapped a white carnation at the neck, and stuck it in his left coat-lapel; then he tore off a bit of fern and added it as a lacy background. His deep-set eyes were as mellow as sunlight.

"Hello!" he whispered, extending both hands and smiling at her until all his teeth showed. "Hello!"

"Hello!" she said, like one in a dream.

THE SQUALL

Lilly raised the gas-flame beneath the coffee-pot and poked with a large three-pronged fork at the snapping chops in the skillet. The spark-spark of frying and the purl of boiling water grew madder and merrier, and a haze of blue smoke and steam rose from the little stove.

"I don't see why you can't stay for supper, Loo."

Miss Lulu Tracy opened her arms wide—like Juliet greeting the lark—and yawned.

"What's the use stickin' round?" she said, in gapey tones. "What's the use stickin' round where I ain't wanted? Charley ain't got no use for me, and you know it. I'll go over to the room and wait for you."

"Well, I like that! I guess I can have who I want in my own flat; he isn't bossin' me round—let me tell you that much." But she did not urge further.

"Oh, my feelin's ain't hurt, Lil. I jest dropped in on my way home from the store to see how things was comin' with you."

Lilly banged the little oven door shut with the toe of her shoe and, holding her brown-checked apron against her hand for protection, drained hot water from off a pan of jacketed potatoes—a billow of steam mounted to the ceiling, enveloping her.