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.
[Illustration: "HELLO!" HE WHISPERED, EXTENDING BOTH HANDS AND SMILING
AT HER UNTIL ALL HIS TEETH SHOWED]
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.
"I've made up my mind, Loo. There's a whole lot of sense in what you've
been saying--an' I'm going to do it."
"Now remember, Lil, I ain't buttin' in--I ain't the kind that butts into
other people's business; but, when you come down to the store the other
day and I seen how blue you was I got to talkin' before I meant to.
That's the way with me when I get to feelin' sorry for anybody; I ain't
always understood."
"You're just right in everything you said. It ain't like I was a girl
that wasn't used to anything. If I do say so myself, there never was a
more popular girl in the gloves than I was--you know what refined and
genteel friends I had, Loo."
"That's what I always say--some girls could put up with this all right;
but a person that had the swell time an' friends you did--to marry an'
have to settle down like this--it just don't seem right. I always said,
the whole time we was chumming together, you was cut out for a society
life if ever a girl was. Of course, I ain't saying nothing against
Charley, but no fellow can expect a girl like you to stick to this."
Miss Tracy fanned herself with a folded newspaper; her large,
even-featured face glistened with tiny globules of perspiration; her
blond hair had lost some of its crimp.
"Nobody can say I haven't done my duty by Charley, Loo. If ever a girl
had a slow time it's been me; but I have been holdin' off, hoping he
might get into something else. He ain't never wanted to stick himself;
but it just seems like poundin' ragtime is all he's cut out for."
"A girl's gotta have life--that's what I always say. Just because you're
married ain't no sign you're an old woman; but I don't want to poke into
your business. If you make up your mind just you come over tonight after
he leaves, and you can bunk with me in the old room, just like we used
to. Lordy! wasn't them good old times?"
"Don't be surprised to see me, Loo. I ain't never let on to Charley, but
it's been in my head a long time. I'd a whole lot rather be back in the
department again than watchin' these four walls--I would."
"It's a darn shame! Why, I'd go clean daffy, Lil, if I had to stick
round the way you do. What's the use o' bein' married, I'd like to
know!"
"It won't be so easy to get back in the department, I'm afraid."
"Easy? Why, you can get your old job back like that!" Miss Tracy snapped
her fingers with gusto. "It was only yesterday that an ancient dame with
a glass eye bought a pair of chamois and asked for you--and Skinny heard
her, too. He knows you had a good, genteel trade--and watch him grab you
back! You ain't no dead one if you have been buried nearly two years."
"Ain't it so, Loo? Here I have been married going on two years! I ain't
never let on even to you what I've been through. Charley's all right,
but--"
"Yes, but I could tell. You can ask any of the girls down at the store
if I wasn't always sayin' it was a shame for a girl with your looks to
'a' throwed herself away."
Lilly dabbed and swabbed at the inside of a stew-pan; the irises of her
eyes were unnaturally large--a wisp of hair, dry and electric, drifted
across her face. She blew at it, pursing out her lower lip.
"I've been a fool!" she said.
"There's Maisie--been married just as long as you; and honest, Lil, I
ain't been to a dance that I ain't seen her and Buck. Of course, Buck
has got his faults, but when he's sober there ain't nothin' he won't do
to give Maisie a swell time."
Lilly bristled. "One thing I will say for Charley--I believe in givin'
everybody his dues--Charley's never laid a hand on me; and that's more'n
Maisie Cloot can say!" She finished with some asperity.
"I guess there ain't none of them perfect when it comes right down to
it--ain't it so? I seen Maisie the week after she had that bad eye, and
I never see a sweller seal-ring than she was wearin'. Buck's rough, but
he tries to make up for it--not that I got anything against Charley."
Miss Tracy took a few steps that were suggestive of departure.
"I always say, Lil, it ain't so much the feller as how he treats you. It
ain't none of my put-in, but I'd like to see the man that could make me
sit at home alone seven nights in the week--that's what I would!"
"Well, if you gotta go, Loo, you gotta go. I'm so excited-like I kind o'
hate to have you leave."
"There's nothin' to get excited about. It's just like you say: you've
been thinkin', and now you've made up your mind. Now all you got to do
is act--you got the note written, ain't you?"
Lilly took a small square of yellow paper from her blouse and passed it
to her friend.
"Are you sure it reads all right, Loo?"
Miss Tracy read carefully:
DEAR CHARLIE,--You do not need to come after me,
as I am not coming back. I could not stand it--no girl could.
Yours truly,
LIL.
"Yes; that's great. So long as you ain't sore at him for no other
reason, there ain't no use kickin' up. That just shows him where he
stands. There ain't no use fightin'--just quit!"
Lilly slipped the bit of paper back into her blouse.
"I'll see you later," she said, with new determination.
"Now don't let me influence you. Make up your mind and do what you
think is best. Then don't be a quitter--when I start a thing I always
see it through. Give me a girl with backbone every time. I glory in your
spunk!"
"Oh, I got the spunk, all right, Loo." They linked arms and went through
the little bedroom into the parlor. At the door Miss Tracy lingered.