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!"
"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.