Just Around the Corner Part 68

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-cla.s.s 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 hea.r.s.e embossed in Grecian urns drew up in the rain-swept street. Windows shrieked upward and heads leaned out. A pa.s.sing child, scuttling along the bubbly sidewalks, ran his forefinger along the sweating gla.s.s sides of the hea.r.s.e, and a b.u.t.toned-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 b.u.mped 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 hea.r.s.e--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 b.u.t.tons 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 pa.s.sersby huddled in the doorway to watch the procession off. Heads leaned farther from their windows. Within the hea.r.s.e the Dove of Peace t.i.tillated 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 b.u.t.tons.

There was a wide strap dangling beside the window for an arm-rest, and a strip of looking-gla.s.s 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 const.i.tution 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 c.r.a.pe you wear on your heart."