"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."