Just Around the Corner Part 67

"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 m.u.f.fled 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!"

"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!"